We didn't speak and the only sounds were flocks of herons, wheeling around us with harsh cries, and the distant sound of thunder, like the roaring of jaguars. As we crested a ridge about halfway up, we saw Tlalocan spread out under us, a mass of green and yellow shimmering in the sunlight, the distant rectangles of Floating Gardens interspersed with canals, with the shades of drowned peasants harvesting maize from the eternally ripe sheaves of corn, forever happy in Tlaloc's paradise.
The thunder peals got louder and, as we ascended on the path, storm-clouds moved to cover the sky, darkening the air all around us. I glanced at Acamapichtli, but he was still looking stubbornly ahead.
Tlaloc had given His permission, which meant we walked here without gagging or shedding flesh, but that didn't mean He wasn't saving things for later. I remembered the last time I'd seen the god in the Fifth World: the shadowy figure perched on the shoulder of his child agent; His fanged mouth level with the child's ears; the voice that had shaken like thunder; the words that dripped poison after poison – and I, sinking down with my brother's body in my arms, desperately struggling to come up, to breathe air again…
Ahead, the path flared; the texture of the ground under our feet had subtly changed. I paused to catch my breath and saw the curling pattern beneath us: a single skin going all the way to the top, and…
Outlined against the darkened sky were the head and jaws of a huge snake, its crown of feathers ruffled in the rising wind, its eyes the same bright red as Acamapichtli's blood, its fangs shining like pearls in the muck.
Acamapichtli was already headed towards the snake; I followed after taking the time to catch my breath – gods, how I hated that every step seemed to cost me, that even lifting the cane seemed to quench the breath in my lungs.
A familiar litany for the Dead was running in my mind – though my patron god Mictlantecuhtli wasn't there, couldn't ever be there.
"We live on Earth, in the Fifth World
Not forever, but a little while
As jade breaks, as gold is crushed
We wither away, like jade we crumble
Not forever on Earth, but a little while…"
The snake was half-sunk within the earth, its head facing the sky and the storm-clouds – so that its open jaws formed a cave. The higher ring of fangs looked as though they'd clamp shut any moment, and the lower ring was pierced through in the centre, leaving a space just large enough for a man to squeeze through, so that Acamapichtli and I had to enter single file, instinctively bowed, as if to protect ourselves against the fall of the huge teeth glinting above us.
Inside, it was dark and cool, smelling faintly of moist earth, with the pungent aftertaste of copal incense, a smell that clung to the inside of my mouth and throat as if I'd smelled nothing else for days and days – as I might have, for who knew what time the gods considered Their own?
"Ah, Acamapichtli," a voice said. I'd expected it to be sombre, vindictive – the way I still remembered it in my nightmares – yet while it was deep, reverberating in the darkness, there was nothing in it but mild interest, the same one a priest might have shown to an unexpected pilgrim. "What a pleasure to see you."
Acamapichtli had removed his sandals and set them aside; and he was crouching, his eyes on the ground – not grovelling, as he might have done before the Revered Speaker, but still showing plenty of respect. I crouched next to him, setting my sandals aside.
"And you brought company, too," Tlaloc said. He spoke in accents similar to the Texcocan ones, reminding me incongruously of Nezahual-tzin – or perhaps my mind superimposed the accent afterwards, struggling for a human equivalent to the speech of the gods.
"My Lord." I looked down and did not move, not even when footsteps echoed under the ceiling of the cave, and a shadow fell over me.
Tlaloc laughed, and it was thunder over the lake. "Oh, do get up. I'm not Huitzilpochtli, and there is no need for ceremony, not for high priests."
Slowly, carefully, I pulled myself upwards with the help of my cane, and looked at Tlaloc.
He was tall, impossibly so, towering over us in the dim light – but then all gods were, especially in Their own lands. I caught only glimpses of His aspect: a quetzal-feather headdress streaming in the wind like unbound hair, fangs glistening in a huge mouth, a cloak that shifted and shone with the iridescence of a thousand raindrops, before I looked down. He was the rain and the thunder: savage, cruel and wild; one of the Old Ones who had been there since the First Age. Staring straight at Him would have been like looking at the face of the Fifth Sun.
"You know why we are here," Acamapichtli said.
"I know you are desperate," Tlaloc said. "Not many people come offering heart's blood." A touch of malice crept into His voice. "As your companion said, you are lucky not to have lost the hand, or worse."
"I live for Your favour."
Again, that terrible laughter – thunder and rain, and the sounds of a storm heard from a boat adrift on the lake. "We both know you don't."
Acamapichtli didn't move. "I respect Your power, and Your will."
"Yes. That you do."
I hadn't spoken up – I had to steer this conversation back to its proper goal, or they would be talking to each other for hours to come. But the prospect of doing so, to have Tlaloc's undivided attention fixated on me, was enough to cause nausea in the pit of my stomach.
What in the Fifth World had possessed me to come here?
"My Lord," I said. My voice was shaking; I quelled it, as best as I could. "There is an epidemic in the city."
Even looking at the ground, I felt His attention shifting to me – the weight of His gaze, the air around me turning tight and warm, like the approach to a storm. "There is." His voice was mildly curious. "As, as High Priest of Lord Death, no doubt you feel it concerns you."
"It concerns us all," I said. The pressure around me was growing worse. Now I knew why Acamapichtli had gone so strangely inarticulate.
"Unless it is Your divine will," Acamapichtli said, from some faraway place.
This time, Tlaloc's laughter seemed to course through me – through my ears and into my ribcage, lifting my heart clear of the chest and squeezing it until it bled. The ground rose up to meet me,and I fell down – pain radiating from my left knee, echoing the frantic beat within my chest.
"My will? You know nothing about My will, save what you see in the Fifth World."
"I need to know…" Acamapichtli's voice drifted from very far away, but I was too weary to focus on anything but the grooves in the ground under my hands, and my cane – lying discarded some distance away.
"Know what?" Tlaloc's voice was mocking again.
"If we're setting ourselves against You." His words fell, one by one, into the open maws of silence.
"What a dutiful High Priest," Tlaloc said, at last. "Your companion, of course, isn't so enthusiastic." I'd expected malice, but it was a simple statement of fact.