Obsidian & Blood

the air was still stiflingly hot: most people were inside, sheltering from the heat. The streets were deserted, and only a few boats bypassed us on the canals.

  Neutemoc walked bent, with slow steps, like an old man – so unlike the Jaguar Knight who had been my parents' pride that something fluttered in my chest.

  When we were within two or three streets of Neutemoc's house, I felt the air turn to tar.

  What? I span, my good hand on my obsidian knife. Neutemoc had felt it, too. His head snapped up and his muscles tightened. So it wasn't an illusion, or something I'd imagined.

  The street was utterly empty, or had become so in the past few minutes. So were the canals. But the air pulsed with magic: a rhythm that was the rush of blood in my heart, the air exhaled from my lungs.

  Something moved, at the corner of my eye, shimmering over the water of the canal. I couldn't get a hold of it no matter how I cocked my head.

  But Neutemoc grunted and fell, a fresh wound blossoming on his thigh.

  The slave Quechomitl rushed to guard his master, and whatever had felled Neutemoc also wounded him: marks appeared on Quechomitl's chest out of thin air, as if claws were being drawn across his skin.

  Mihmatini screamed for help, but soon fell silent. It was quite obvious that no help would be coming. But what in the Fifth World was attacking us?

  I closed my eyes, extending my priest-senses, and saw them, quivering at the edge of my vision: three shapeless beings with clawed hands, cackling as they crowded around Neutemoc. Their bodies were completely transparent, and only the glint of sunlight as they moved had betrayed them.

  Keeping my eyes closed, I unsheathed one of my obsidian knives and, still one-handed, threw it. A good thing that my right hand wasn't the one in the sling.

  The blade flew towards the nearest assailant but, somehow, the thing wasn't there when the knife struck. It cackled contemptuously, a sound like hundreds of insects skittering on a stone floor, and went again towards Neutemoc.

  The Duality curse them and all their kind!

  Mihmatini was kneeling on the ground, drawing a circle in the dirt with the knife in her belt. She was chanting as she did so. I couldn't make out all the words, but it sounded like a hymn to Huitzilpochtli, the Southern Hummingbird, in His incarnation as   the Sun – a request for divine protection.

  So far, Quechomitl was acting as a shield for Neutemoc. But Quechomitl was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and I didn't know how long he could hold on.

  I withheld a curse and, drawing a new knife from my belt, slashed at what I could see of the creatures.

  It was utterly ineffective. I could make them out, but not always. In the intervals when I couldn't see them, they would just shift out of the path of my blade, and I sliced only through air. It did not deter the creatures, which continued to converge on Quechomitl.

  Quechomitl's face was growing paler and paler, and his grip on Neutemoc was slackening as his blood dripped onto the ground. His blood. Living blood: a powerful source of magic. Fool that I was!

  I ran towards Neutemoc, snatching up my fallen obsidian knife as I did. Then I knelt by Quechomitl, closing my eyes again. The creatures were still crowding around him, trying to get past him – mindless, obsessed only by the idea of reaching Neutemoc. They paid little heed to me.

  What in the Fifth World had my brother got himself into?

  Mihmatini was opening her veins now, and pouring her blood on the ground. I dipped my hands in Quechomitl's blood and drew a sign on my forehead, calling on Quetzalcoatl, God of Creation and Knowledge, to grant me true sight.

'Yours is the knowledge of the priests,

Yours is the knowledge of the stars wheeling in the sky

You find the precious jade, the precious feathers…'

  Fresh wounds opened on Quechomitl's arm, leaking blood in inexorable rivulets. The slave's face was pale, contorted in pain. I hurriedly finished my hymn.

'You find the hidden things, the secret treasures

Grant us Your sight, the sight of the gods.'

  The blood on my forehead went blazing hot, searing a mark into my skin.

  A veil descended before my eyes, until the whole street went dark, the houses and the canals receding into faint shadows. Only the pulsing shape of Mihmatini's pattern retained some substance – that and the three creatures, hissing angrily at me.

  With my eyes open, I reached towards the nearest one, letting the emptiness of Mictlan fill me, and sank the obsidian knife into it, where the heart would have been. This time, the blade went all the way in.

  The creature hissed like a scalded jaguar and withdrew, but only a few hand spans. Numbness spread from the point of contact, up the hilt and through the obsidian blade – and into my hand, freezing my fingers into insensitivity.

  Quechomitl grunted as three fresh wounds opened on his chest. His hand went slack and he started slowly, inexorably, to slide towards the ground.

  The two others were already gathering around Neutemoc, in a frenzy to feed upon him. At Neutemoc's feet, his slave lay quietly emptily himself of the blood in his veins, his eyes already glazed, staring at nothing in the Fifth World.

  With my awkward, frozen hand, I hefted my knife, trying to see where the creatures were coming from: if there was some thread of power I could follow to a summoner.

  There was nothing.

  Just a dying slave, and three creatures, gathering to feed on my brother.