Beyond. To speak to Eleuia.'
'Can't I come?' Neutemoc asked.
Gods, could the man think of nothing else but his would-be mistress?
'No,' I said, curtly. That would be risking two lives instead of one. 'You stay here.'
I withdrew the owl from its cage and slit its chest. Blood spurted out in a rush of quiescent magic, its pungent animal smell mingling with the bittersweet odour of decomposition from Eleuia's body. I retrieved the owl's heart, and set it on the jade plate, above the First Level.
Magic blazed, closing the water-glyph pattern. It was if a veil had been thrown over the room, hiding Neutemoc and the altar, and the stone walls. The ground under my feet shifted, started to become mud.
Beyond the water-glyph, meadows were coalescing into existence, covered with the whiteness of maize flowers, lit by the warm afternoon sun. Somewhere, children were laughing, with such careless innocence that my heart ached.
Something pushed at me: two cold, dripping hands laid upon my shoulders. Startled, I lost my balance within the water-glyph and set one hand outside of the line of blood.
The meadows wavered, and were lost. The children's laughter slowly faded into insignificance. The golden light lost its warmth and colour, turning instead into a harsh, white radiance that out lined the bones under my skin. No. No. There was nothing left now; nothing of innocence, nothing of comfort. I could have wept.
The veil across the water-glyph hadn't returned either. Puzzled, I looked around me. I'd expected to return to the temple if my spell failed; but this was clearly no Fifth World place. Under my feet, the earth was black, and utterly dry. In fact, it wasn't earth. It was dust.
'Acatl,' a voice said, behind me. 'What a surprise.'
Trying hard to contain the frantic beat of my heart, I rose and turned.
The harsh, white radiance came from a dais made of bones: skulls, arms and legs, ribcages poking out at odd angles. And on the dais… Mictlantecuhtli, Lord Death, and His wife, Mictecacihuatl, watching me as one might watch an unworthy insect.
I wasn't in the Fifth World at all. Somehow, I'd found my way into the deepest level of Mictlan.
Because there was nothing else I could do, I bowed. 'My lord. My lady. I wasn't expecting to be here either.'
Lord Death smiled: an eerie expression, stretching across His sunken cheeks. 'Understandable. But one place leads to another.'
'Tlalocan?' I asked.
Mictlantecuhtli crossed both arms over His skeletal ribcage. 'The dead all take the same path. It's only the end of it that differs.'
'That still doesn't explain why someone pushed me out of Tlalocan.'
He smiled again. 'You seem to have lost the Storm Lord's favour, if you ever had it.'
There was an obvious reason. 'I annoyed His High Priest recently,' I said.
Mictlantecuhtli shook His head. 'By the look of it, I would say it's an older offence.'
'I don't see which one,' I said, finally. But it was a lie. I knew why. I knew the only vigil I hadn't undertaken; I still remembered Father's drowned body, lying in the emptiness of the temple for the Dead – and of how I'd run away, unable to face the reproach still etched in every one of his features. Some things I just could not find the courage for.
Lord Death said nothing. He wasn't a god who judged, after all. He just received all the dead no other god had claimed. He wasn't fussy.
'There is no way in, then?' I asked.
'Not into Tlaloc's dominions,' Mictlantecuhtli said. 'If you've lost His favour, it's likely you've also lost Chalchiutlicue's.'
I'd never been a worshipper of the Goddess of Lakes and Streams, and She wouldn't forgive my unfulfilled vigil. Father, after all, also belonged to Her.
'I was trying to find a priestess. Eleuia,' I said, finally. Mictlantecuhtli, after all, was my patron. He would perhaps be inclined to offer hints. 'Something is going on.'
'In the Fifth World?' He asked. 'Something is always going on. But it doesn't concern Us.'
'It concerns the other gods.'
