Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,51

black points like beads on a necklace’s thread.

His hand rested lightly on my shoulder, balanced on a dozen obsidian shards as sharp as the points of knives and a tight, cool feeling spread from the points of contact, enough for me to focus again. “Acatl. I am here.”

I managed to utter words, through chattering teeth. “You can… see.”

”Yes,” the Wind of Knives said. His voice was like the water of the cenote, dark, without warmth or sunlight. “I see.”

Before I could say anything more, He flowed, fluid, inhuman, towards the star-demon.

The creature had turned, its pale head shifting between the Wind of Knives and Manatzpa, who had pulled himself on an elbow and was daubing Echichilli’s blood into the beginning of a huge arc around himself, chanting all the while in harsh words I couldn’t make out. The dim light glinted against the tears in his eyes.

The Wind of Knives met the star-demon with a screeching sound, obsidian blades sliding on shell rattles. They fought each other, flowing across the room in an embrace. Obsidian shards glinted. Here and there pale fragments of skin flashed blue in the darkness as they moved past, again and again, spraying drops of Echichilli’s blood all over the room like warm rain. It was almost hypnotic, that play of colours, of darkness on light, if the consequences hadn’t been so absurdly terrifying…

”Acatl-tzin!” Teomitl screamed.

With growing horror, I realised that the star-demon was coming straight at me. Behind it, the Wind of Knives lay pinned to the floor by something jagged and white – a huge fragment of shell under which the Wind struggled to free Himself.

Of course. It thought to kill me, and thus cut the Wind of Knives’ link to the Fifth World.

It was almost close enough to touch, Its eyes held me, and my hands started to shiver and contract. I held onto the knife, to the stretched emptiness of Mictlan, the only part of my body that seemed not to writhe in pain.

Teomitl bypassed me, his macuahitl sword at the ready. He moved more slowly as the star-demon’s gaze transferred to him, but his features became harsher, the whites of his eyes glazing into green. His sword came up, hundreds of obsidian shards glittering in the light, ready for a strike.

The star-demon was faster. It sidestepped in a rattle of shells, and threw itself at me.

I went down in a tangle of flailing limbs, fighting to regain control of my own body. Up close, it seemed almost human, its face as pale as a corpse, with the bluish tinge of death, its cheeks swollen and tinged with black spots, its eyes without corneas or pupils…

The Wind of Knives was still down. Manatzpa was still chanting, but it did not seem to be having any effect on the star-demon. I was the only one who could save myself…

Fighting all the while, I raised the knife, sank it into whatever I could reach. It howled, but remained upon me. I watched its hands rise as if from a great distance. The fingers curled into claws as sharp as broken obsidian, tiny stars at the joints that were also the eyes of monsters. The claws fell, and swiped across my chest, opening my flesh in a flower of pain.

The star-demon howled, shaking its head. Through the growing haze, I saw Teomitl’s face, transfigured into jade. He was going to strike again, and I couldn’t remain inactive. I tried to roll over, but my chest felt as if it was splitting open. I raised my hand again, flailing, desperately trying to focus on what I needed to do. The blade of the knife quivered in a blur of black reflections as I drove it up to the hilt into the star-demon’s chest.

The blade slid into its flesh without resistance, as if there had been no substance to it at all. Something warm and pulsing fell over me, a suffocating river that smelled of cold, dry earth, nothing like blood. Every one of its eyes closed for a moment, leaving us in darkness, and then they opened again, and its claws swept down, faster than I could follow.

Everything went dark in a burst of pain.

TEN

Aftermath

I woke up, tried shifting, and almost screamed when the pain in my chest flared again.

”Don’t move, Acatl-tzin.” Teomitl’s face swam into focus, his skin dark brown again, all traces of the goddess purged from him.

I managed to shift my gaze down to see my chest swathed in a mass of bandages.