Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,81

cane and snarl, but Hun-Kamé would not. It was a double humiliation, in words and gesture, the mark of the deepest scorn. And the old man knew it. He stepped back, gripping his cane tightly with one hand, his face red.

He handed his cane to one of the young men who stood next to him and took a deep drag from his cigarette.

“Carnival magicians, huh?” the Uay Chivo repeated.

The sorcerer inspected his cigarette with great care. Flames curled out from his mouth, resting there, hot against his lips, before he spat them out and pushed them away with a wrinkled hand, tossing a fireball against Hun-Kamé. The impact of it sent the god crashing against the floor, toppling a side table and a vase in the process.

Casiopea leaned over him.

“Does that seem like the work of a carnival magician?” the sorcerer said triumphantly.

“Hun-Kamé,” Casiopea whispered urgently, touching his neck, his chest, his brow. The fireball had not ignited his clothes, yet his skin felt feverish to her touch. His eyes were closed. She shook him a little.

The sorcerer’s assistants were holding knives in their hands, cutting their palms, and the Uay Chivo had started speaking, weaving words and a spell together. Casiopea, not knowing what to do, held Hun-Kamé in her arms and watched as the men pressed their bloodied hands against the floor, tracing a circle around them, the blood bubbling and sizzling, as if water had hit a hot pan.

Despite her fear, which was real and alive, sharp enough to make her fingers tingle, Casiopea chased away panic. It would do no good to cry or scream. She knew no magic, she realized that she could not undo this spell; therefore she merely drew Hun-Kamé closer to her, as if she might protect him with her touch. She clutched him and stared at the men who circled them not with her face deformed by terror but with a more distant look.

A wall of fire rose from the spot where the blood had fallen. It was a fire born of a strange flame, blue in its cast. One moment it was solid, the next as flimsy as a spider web, yet it shivered as a flame would. The sorcerer tossed a handful of ash against it, and the fire acquired an almost violet hue.

The old man and the young ones were pleased with themselves; they chuckled and yelled a few obscenities in their triumph.

Casiopea, knowing nothing, unable to understand the nature of the spell, extended an arm, intending to touch the wall of fire.

“Don’t,” Hun-Kamé said, grabbing her arm.

He had finally opened his dark eye and stared at her. Casiopea felt such stupid joy in this, in the realization that he was not grievously injured—although he couldn’t have died of such an injury, immortal as he was—that she almost spoke an inane term of endearment before she was cut off by the laughter of the sorcerer.

“You won’t be able to get out, but it will hurt like the devil if you try,” Hun-Kamé whispered in her ear. “Hotter than blazing coals.”

Casiopea pulled her arm back, nodding.

“What was that?” the Uay Chivo asked. “Speak up. Or have you been rendered speechless by my magic?”

Hun-Kamé did not appear aggrieved. His eye was cool, though it was a tad too dark, too flat, a pool of ink directed at the silver-haired sorcerer.

“Your magic is thin, like watered-down pulque, no bite to it. Do you think your spell will hold? I can already see the strain it causes you,” Hun-Kamé said, and his voice had the same flatness of the eye.

“Strain? Not with this lovely necklace in my possession,” the Uay Chivo said, touching the jade beads, the sharp points of the oyster shell.

“Your face tells a different story, flushed like a fool’s.”

The Uay Chivo was indeed flushed, beads of sweat on his forehead, streaming now down his narrow, angry face, as if he’d been running for a while. Even his voice sounded breathless. The accusation made it worse, the face growing redder. The sorcerer bit into his cigarette with such strength Casiopea thought he’d snap it in two.

“I don’t have to hold you forever, Hun-Kamé. I only have to slow you down. By the time you reach Baja California, if you ever reach it, you’ll be weak as a kitten,” the Uay Chivo said.

“Don’t count on it,” Hun-Kamé said, and his voice was like the dead of night, utterly still, it clouded everything, it dimmed the lights for a