Oh, gods. "I take it back. Ghosts can be a menace. A sorcerer advising someone…"
"Ghosts can't cast spells," Ichtaca pointed out.
"I know. But they can give the instructions, if you ask them the right questions." Oh gods. The living were quite enough to deal with; I didn't want to have to contend with the dead as well.
"Can you look into this?" I asked Ichtaca. "I need to know what exactly is wrong with the boundaries."
"You've stated it." He looked genuinely startled.
"I could be wrong." And I dared not, not on something this large. "I want to be sure."
He grimaced. "I know it's important, but–"
"There are other things, I know. You have to spread out the priests. I know you can do that."
"As you wish." He rose. "I was planning to direct the examinations of the bodies."
Ah, yes. The bodies. Finally, we had some time to examine them quietly, and to get a better idea of the nature of the sickness. "They're on an island in the Floating Gardens, if I remember correctly? I'll come with you," I said.
Ichtaca nodded, as if he hadn't expected anything less of me. It was a balm to my heart, in a time when my confidence was severely shaken.
Before we left, I took a moment to seek out the storehouse, and to help myself to a simple grey cloak, the one customarily worn by priests for the Dead as they walked through the streets of the city. I didn't look like a High Priest anymore, but at least I had lost the resemblance to a beggar mauled by a jaguar.
Ichtaca, of course, insisted I take the huge barge of the High Priest, with its highly-recognisable spider-and-owl design of Mitclantecuhtli, while he and the other priests sat in smaller reed crafts.
The priest with me was Ezamahual, the dour-faced peasants' son who always walked as if unbelievably blessed. He didn't speak as I carefully wedged myself into position within the barge – much harder than I'd thought possible, with my legs shaking.
He rowed in great, smooth gestures – a familiar rhythm for someone who had grown up at the river's edge – lulling me into a sleep that was almost restful… until I saw the first hints of ghosts trailing over the water.
The drowned, too, were rising up. This was more serious than a mere summoning from the underworld. Something was deeply wrong, and the gods knew it, from Mictlantecuhtli to Tlaloc.
And all, I suspected, because of us. It had to be – what else would cause such a massive disruption?
At the time, we'd thought it the lesser of two evils. The death of Tizoc-tzin, our newly designated Revered Speaker, had opened the gates wide to star-demons and their depredations. To name another Revered Speaker would have taken weeks – time we didn't have. Far better to seek the Southern Hummingbird's favour, and bring back Tizoc-tzin's body and soul from the heartland.
Except, it seemed, that it had solved nothing – merely sowed the seeds for further blood and fire in the Fifth World.
At this early hour, it made more sense to take one of the largest western canals, swinging under the Tlacopan causeway and continuing due south around Tenochtitlan. The houses of adobe became mud and wattle – with coloured roofs at first. Then even those went away, and the crowds heading to the marketplace thinned out, until we reached the Floating Gardens: a network of artificial islands used as fields for the planting of anything from maize to squashes. The farmers were up already, consolidating the ditches for irrigation and making sure the earth was well-watered in preparation for the planting of maize.
The island that hosted the bodies was visible from afar, if only for the whiffs of Mictlan's magic emanating from it, as dry and as stretched as desiccated corpses.
The boat touched the ground between two willow trees: we all disembarked, and waited for Ichtaca to lead the way.
He looked at me enquiringly – unwilling to break the rules. I suppressed a sigh and went towards the centre of the island, towards the greater concentration of Mictlan's magic. The bodies lay side by side in the hollow of a maize field, naked and bloated. The smell that wafted up to me nestled in the hollow of my stomach, strong enough to make me feel nauseous again. I might be used to handling corpses, but I'd never examined so many at the same time – and not in such a state. Thank the Duality it was the dry season now, and nowhere near as hot or as humid as it could get.
"If you'd do the honours…" Ichtaca said.
I didn't much feel like it, quite aside from my current weakness, but it would mean something to all of them, and especially to Ichtaca. With a sigh, I walked towards the bodies – cane in one hand, knife in the other.
The bodies lay on their backs in the mud of the Floating Garden, the willows at the edge of the island casting long, twisted shadows across their skins – and death, too, casting its own twisted shadows, in the form of blotches and bloated skins, all the signs of rot that we knew all too well.
Eptli's body was the worst: bloated and blue, barely recognisable as human. The others – the prisoner Zoquitl, Chipahua and his household – were not as bad. Chipahua and his companions in particular had the characteristic rigidity of the newly-dead, but their skins were dark rather than livid blue.
Before starting, I cast a quick spell of protection, calling on the power of the underworld to shield me. The noises of oars in the water receded, the peasants' tilling and digging became far away, and the sky itself became as grey as dust.
"Only here on earth, in the Fifth World
Shall the flowers last, shall the songs be bliss
Though it be feathers, though it be jade
It too must go to the region of the fleshless."
I crouched by Eptli's body – the most important for us – and considered. I had already examined it; I could cut into the flesh, releasing the noxious air contained within, but it was likely I wouldn't get anything more out of it, not without magic. It had decayed too much.
So, instead, I moved to Chipahua's body – setting the cane aside in the mud of the Floating Garden. He lay against the radiant blue of the sky, his eyes wide open, seeing nothing of the Fifth World, his scar crowded by the raised blisters on his entire face. They formed a faint pattern that would have been vaguely reminiscent of a mosaic, save that most of them had burst through the skin, bleeding into the body. His entire skin had turned dark and the whites of his eyes were now the red of blood. Blood had also pooled below the other orifices – nose and mouth and ears, eager to leave the body by whatever holes there might be.
The same pattern of burst blisters had also spread to his limbs, though they were more dense on the hands and feet than closer to the torso. Using the knife, I slashed at his tunic to reveal the body underneath: more burst blisters, and faint red spots covering the entire skin. I moved to the groin area, lifting the penis to have a better look – and its skin came away in clumps, as neatly as that of a flayed man, disintegrating like worn paper.