Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,110
And, as a matter of fact, it was our best chance yet, though the main purpose wasn’t escape at all. “Look,” I said. “I’m just trying to make this as fast as possible. It’s in none of our interests to have the star-demons come down.”
Nezahual-tzin’s gaze rested on Teomitl, thoughtfully. “You can try,” he said at last. “It should keep you busy until I’m done. But I don’t expect any results.” He gestured to four of his warriors. “Go with them.”
Not unexpected. We’d have to see about those later.
The wall around the complex was lower than the Serpent Wall which circled Tenochtitlan’s Sacred Precinct. It had familiar elements though, the same snakes’ heads on top of it, the same dark green carvings along its length.
The warriors had deployed to form an escort around us and Teomitl, who, judging by his dark face, could hardly wait to attack them.
We passed under a wide arch, and found ourselves in the religious complex. Before us stretched a long alley, bordered by dozens of smaller buildings like primitive shrines, and from every one of them wafted only silence, a heavy, oppressive atmosphere I knew all too well, the silence of the grave.
The alley was called the Avenue of the Dead, and each of the small edifices held a body, the physical remnants of those who had once been gods, before They offered up Their blood to the Fifth Sun and gave up Their mortal nature.
About halfway up the avenue was a pyramid, a huge, massive thing made of uncemented stone, every section of its construction visible. Even under the cloudy sky it shone like limestone in sunlight, like polished obsidian or chalcedony, the light pulsing to a slow, fierce rhythm like that of sacrificial drums. “That’s where…?” Teomitl asked, seeing the direction of my gaze.
I swallowed. “Yes,” I said. Even this far, I could feel I wouldn’t be welcome there. “That’s where the Fifth Sun rose into the sky from His pyre.”
I tried to keep my eyes from the end of the Alley of the Dead, all the way past all those tombs, to the smaller but still massive pyramid which shone with a colder light, the one where the Moon, who was She of the Silver Bells, who was our bitterest enemy, had risen into the sky, hoping to challenge Her brother’s radiance and dominion.
”Right,” Teomitl said. He shook his head. “And now?”
”I’m not sure.” I eyed the Alley of the Dead. Someday, I would know the place better, but I hadn’t been High Priest for long enough to have come there for a formal celebration. On the other side, a white-and-ochre wall surrounded what looked like a complex within a complex. A procession was exiting through the main gates, priests in green and red, their hair matted with blood and their earlobes torn from years of penance, carrying a feather standard in the direction of the tombs. Priests of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent; the pyramid looming over the complex, not quite as grand as that of the Moon or that of the Sun, looked to be dedicated to the Feathered Serpent.
I could have chosen this place for the spell, for Quetzalcoatl was neutral to me, unlike the Southern Hummingbird or the Storm Lord. But the Feathered Serpent was also Nezahualtzin’s god, and I had had quite enough of the boy’s peculiar brand of magic for the time being.
”Come on,” I said to Teomitl, and headed towards one of the tombs. As I walked, it grew larger in my sight, and yet still remained small and pathetic, diminished like a corpse in death. Silence spread around me, the chants of the priests receding in the background, meaningless snatches in a language that no longer seemed mine. It wasn’t the silence of the grave, but something different, something indefinable, like the quiet after a battle, like the calm after a death, when the priest for the Dead has just arrived, a sense that something of large import had happened here and wouldn’t take place again, it was a memory of a moment like a held breath, now vanished into the depths of this age, a moment that wouldn’t happen again until Grandmother Earth split apart and the Fifth Sun tumbled from the heavens.
I bypassed the first such tomb, and the second. At the third, however, the silence was a little heavier than it should have been, and twisted a little more in my chest, like a hooked spear.