"It wasn't about carnal lust," Neutemoc snapped.
I walked to face him, words I couldn't hold any more welling up in me. "Wasn't it? You had everything, Neutemoc. It's not my fault if you tried to throw it all away."
"You can't understand."
"No," I said. "You're right. I can't even start to fathom it." I knelt on the ground, and gently traced the outline of the glyph for "water" on the stone: the mouth of a jug, out of which issued the serpentine shape of waves.
"What are you doing?" Neutemoc asked.
I shrugged. "You'll see." I retrieved the owl's cage from the altar, set it in the centre of the room, and withdrew the cloth that was covering it. A deafening, angry screech came from the bird in the cage.
"You're going to do magic here?" Neutemoc said.
I didn't answer.
"Acatl!" he said.
I raised my eyes briefly. "Yes," I said. "And I'm going to need you here, watching out."
"What for?"
I went back to the altar, and picked the jade plate and the spider carving. "I'm going to enter the World Beyond. To speak to Eleuia."
"Can't I come?" Neutemoc asked.
Gods, could the man think of nothing else but his would-be mistress?
"No," I said, curtly. That would be risking two lives instead of one. "You stay here."
I withdrew the owl from its cage and slit its chest. Blood spurted out in a rush of quiescent magic, its pungent animal smell mingling with the bittersweet odour of decomposition from Eleuia's body. I retrieved the owl's heart, and set it on the jade plate, above the First Level.
"Every year Your banners are unfolded in every direction
Every year you turn again to the place of abundant blood
Coming forth from the place of clouds
From the verdant house, from the water's edge…"
Magic blazed, closing the water-glyph pattern. It was if a veil had been thrown over the room, hiding Neutemoc and the altar, and the stone walls. The ground under my feet shifted, started to become mud.
"Coming forth from the beautiful place
From the misty house, from the verdant house
From the bliss of Tlalocan…"
Beyond the water-glyph, meadows were coalescing into existence, covered with the whiteness of maize flowers, lit by the warm afternoon sun. Somewhere, children were laughing, with such careless innocence that my heart ached.
"Coming forth from the water's edge
From the verdant house, from the bliss…"
Something pushed at me: two cold, dripping hands laid upon my shoulders. Startled, I lost my balance within the water-glyph and set one hand outside of the line of blood.
The meadows wavered, and were lost. The children's laughter slowly faded into insignificance. The golden light lost its warmth and colour, turning instead into a harsh, white radiance that out lined the bones under my skin. No. No. There was nothing left now; nothing of innocence, nothing of comfort. I could have wept.
The veil across the water-glyph hadn't returned either. Puzzled, I looked around me. I'd expected to return to the temple if my spell failed; but this was clearly no Fifth World place. Under my feet, the earth was black, and utterly dry. In fact, it wasn't earth. It was dust.
"Acatl," a voice said, behind me. "What a surprise."
Trying hard to contain the frantic beat of my heart, I rose and turned.
The harsh, white radiance came from a dais made of bones: skulls, arms and legs, ribcages poking out at odd angles. And on the dais… Mictlantecuhtli, Lord Death, and His wife, Mictecacihuatl, watching me as one might watch an unworthy insect.
I wasn't in the Fifth World at all. Somehow, I'd found my way into the deepest level of Mictlan.
Because there was nothing else I could do, I bowed. "My lord. My lady. I wasn't expecting to be here either."
Lord Death smiled: an eerie expression, stretching across His sunken cheeks. "Understandable. But one place leads to another."
"Tlalocan?" I asked.
Mictlantecuhtli crossed both arms over His skeletal ribcage. "The dead all take the same path. It's only the end of it that differs."
"That still doesn't explain why someone pushed me out of Tlalocan."
He smiled again. "You seem to have lost the Storm Lord's favour, if you ever had it."
There was an obvious reason. "I annoyed His High Priest recently," I said.
Mictlantecuhtli shook His head. "By the look of it, I would say it's an older offence."
"I don't see which one," I said, finally. But it was a lie. I knew why. I knew the only vigil I hadn't undertaken; I still remembered Father's drowned body, lying in the emptiness of the temple for the Dead – and of how I'd run away, unable to face the reproach still etched in every one of his features. Some things I just could not find the courage for.
Lord Death said nothing. He wasn't a god who judged, after all. He just received all the dead no other god had claimed. He wasn't fussy.
"There is no way in, then?" I asked.
"Not into Tlaloc's dominions," Mictlantecuhtli said. "If you've lost His favour, it's likely you've also lost Chalchiutlicue's."
I'd never been a worshipper of the Goddess of Lakes and Streams, and She wouldn't forgive my unfulfilled vigil. Father, after all, also belonged to Her.
"I was trying to find a priestess. Eleuia," I said, finally. Mictlantecuhtli, after all, was my patron. He would perhaps be inclined to offer hints. "Something is going on."
"In the Fifth World?" He asked. "Something is always going on. But it doesn't concern Us."
"It concerns the other gods."
"The Old Ones?" Mictlantecuhtli said. "And the newer ones – the upstart?"
"Huitzilpochtli."
Mictlantecuhtli ran His bone-thin fingers on the fibulae and femurs that made His throne. "Yes. The Imperial upstart and Tonatiuh, His incarnation as the Sun-God." He sighed, an uncannily human sound, although not a feature of His death-head's face moved. "My dominion is here. My power is here. Why should I look elsewhere? Let the others squabble over the Fifth World. I see no need to."
"So you don't know?"
"No," Mictlantecuhtli said. "I don't know what Eleuia would have known, or why she died. I presume that's what you want."
"Yes," I said. "But–"
He smiled again. "All I can offer is My knives, and some advice. Be careful of what you meddle in, Acatl. Cornered animals have a way of turning on you."
"I don't see what this has to do with anything," I said slowly, not daring to question him further, not in His dominion.