Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,49

still be summoned, by the adepts, or the foolhardy.

With any other minor underworld deities, I would have drawn a quincunx in blood, and stood chanting at the centre. But I had once merged my mind with the Wind of Knives, to bring down a god’s agent in the city; and the link had remained.

As we ran, I slashed my earlobes, and let the blood pool into my hands, warm and pulsing, an anchor into the Fifth World. I sent my mind questing high above the deserted city, past the Houses of Joy and the warriors’ banquets, past the peasants’ dwellings squatting at the river’s edge and the myriad reed boats bobbing at their anchor, down, into a dark cenote where rainwater pooled, away from the sunlight and the warmth of the Fifth World.

There was a shock, as if I’d run into a wall. Acatl, a voice like the keening of dead souls said. You are timely. The boundaries are breached. I am coming.

I could feel Him, gathering darkness into Himself, emerging from the cenote, wisps of shadows and fog trailing behind Him. He was flowing up the canals like a miasma, covering in instants what would have taken hours for a man on foot.

”Bad news,” I said to Teomitl.

”What?”

”The boundaries are breached.” The summoner, whoever he was, was already in the process of calling down a star-demon into the world.

Teomitl’s face shifted, became the colour of jade. “Then I’m summoning the ahuizotls.”

The ahuizotls were Jade Skirt’s creatures, small and wizened beings which lived at the bottom of Lake Texcoco, dragging men down into the water to feast on their eyes and fingernails.

I shook my head. “They won’t be effective.” The palace was on the main island of Tenochtitlan, as far away from the water as it was possible to be in a city of canals and boats. Even accounting for the ahuizotls’ supernatural speed, they wouldn’t be here for a while, assuming they managed to get past the wards at the palace entrance.

”Do you have a better plan?”

Then again, the Wind of Knives probably wouldn’t be here on time, either.

At length, we reached a courtyard much like Teomitl’s, a quiet, secluded place where only a few slaves swept the ground. I glanced upwards: the stars remained in the same position, and there was no gaping emptiness. For once, we were on time.

The Wind of Knives was in my mind, a pressure like water against a dike, a whistle like the passage of air through obsidian mountains, a grave voice tearing at me like a grieving lament. Acatl. I am coming. He was flowing up the stairs of the palace now, the guards scattering in His wake like a flock of parrots.

Almost there…

I knelt, and collected more blood from my earlobes to trace a quincunx on the ground. “Acatl-tzin!” Teomitl said, exasperated.

”You heard me,” I said. “The boundaries are breached. I’d rather have protection.”

I started a litany for the Dead:

“In the region of the fleshless, the region of mystery

The dead men go forward

They crawl on bleeding feet, on bleeding hands

Forward into darkness

Away from the Fifth World’s reach.”

A veil fell over me, darkening the courtyard, and the stars in the sky receded, became as insignificant as scattered bones. The world shifted and danced, and the faces I glanced at – Teomitl’s, Manatzpa’s – seemed those of old men. Teomitl’s voice came to me, tinny and weak, the veil leeching all resonance, all warmth from his words.

Gods, I hated that spell.

”Acatl-tzin!”

”Let’s go,” I said.

Teomitl pulled the entrance-curtain aside and strode in, barely holding it long enough for me to enter in turn.

The room stretched before us, as long and narrow as a fishing boat, interspersed with carved columns. Its walls were painted a vibrant ochre, engraved with leaping deer and jaguars.

Near the centre, Echichilli was seated on reed mats a halfconsumed meal before him maize flatbread, tomatoes and the bones of fowl.

”Manatzpa?” His wrinkled face looked puzzled. “I thought–”

”Later,” Manatzpa said. Teomitl had his macuahitl sword out, the obsidian shards glinting in the reddish lights of the brazier. “We need to get you out of here. Now.”

I’d expected Echichilli to protest. He certainly had not been shy about his opinions beforehand, but he remained silent, his eyes fixed on the nibbled fowl-bones. “Venerable Echichilli?” I asked.

He smiled, revealing a few yellowed teeth stuck haphazardly in his mouth. “I think it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”

”What do you mean?” I asked. But, as I did so, a cold wind lifted the entrance-curtain, and