The Crystal City Page 0,86

different language to the blacks. Alvin was stunned but delighted when the two groups immediately intermingled and started up two games of cards and some dice-throwing.

"Don't tell me them cards is printed on your side of the river," said Alvin.

"Those black fellows you sent me had them," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "They play betting games, but their money is pebbles. Whoever wins the most struts for an hour, but the next time they play, they all start even again."

"Sounds civilized."

"On the contrary," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "It sounds like childish savages."

His grin had a bit of old pain in it, but Alvin understood. "Well, we white devils would simply regard it as a golden opportunity, and we'd play them with tokens representing all their property and then cheat till we had it all."

"Whereupon we red devils would kill most of you and torture the rest to death because of the power that we could draw from the pain." He held up a hand. "This is what I wanted to talk to you about. Until your brother sailed for Mexico it was not your business, but now it is."

"So he really has joined up with them fools," said Alvin.

"The Mexica have been a problem for us. There's a wide desert between our lands and theirs, but it's not as clear a wall as this river. There are plenty of tribes that live in those dry lands, and plenty of trade and travel back and forth, and stories about how the Mexica rose up against the Spanish and drove them out, except the five thousand they kept for sacrifice, one a day, his heart ripped out of his living body."

"Doesn't sound like your kind of people," said Alvin.

"They live a different way. We remember well when their ancestors came down from the north, a fierce people who spoke a language different from all others. The Navaho were the last wave, the Mexica the first, but they did not trust in the greensong. They took their powers from the pain and blood of their enemies. It's a way of power that was practiced among our peoples, too. The Irrakwa league was notorious for it, and you had a run-in, I think, with others who loved bloodshed and torture. But always we could set it aside and get back into the music of the living land. These reds can't, or don't try, which amounts to the same. And they scoff at my teaching of peace and send threatening embassies demanding that we supply them with white men to sacrifice or they'll come and take captives from our people."

"Have they done it yet?"

"All threats, but we hear from other tribes farther south that once that threat is given, it's only a matter of time before it's carried out."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Not a fog," said Tenskwa-Tawa wryly. "Not enough moisture in that high desert air, and besides, they'd just torture somebody and draw power from his pain, enough to dispel whatever I put in their way."

"So ... if that ain't your plan..."

"We live in harmony with the earth," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "They soak their earth in blood. We believe that with a little encouragement, we can waken the giant that sleeps under their great city of Mexico."

Alvin was baffled. "There's real giants? I never knowed that."

Tenskwa-Tawa looked pained. "Their city is built right on top of an upwelling of hot flowing rock. It hasn't broken through in many years, but it's growing restless, with all the killing."

"You're talking about a volcano."

"I am," said the prophet.

"You're going to do to them what was done to Pompeii."

"The earth is going to do it."

"Ain't that kind of like war?" asked Alvin.

Tenskwa-Tawa sighed. "None of us will raise a weapon and strike down a man. And we've sent them due warning that their city will be covered with fire if they don't stop their evil sacrificing of human beings and set free all the tribes they rule over by fear and force."

"So this is how you wage war now," said Alvin.

"Yes," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "We'd be at peace with every people on earth, if they'd let us. As long as we don't come to love war, or to use it in order to rule over others, then we are still a peaceful people."

"So I take it the Navaho weren't just persuaded to take the oath of peace."

"They had a long period of drought, where the only rain that fell was on Hopi fields."

"I reckon that got the message to them."

"Alvin," said Tenskwa-Tawa, "I