As well they might be, Moctezuma thought. As well they might be. After all, a veritable god walked amongst them, who could order the death of any or all of them with a single, simple word, who could require them to cut their own throats right here, right now, who could command that their children’s brains be dashed out, or wrest their wives or their husbands from them at his whim, without any recourse on their part.
Uggh … His flesh crept at the stinking smell that invaded his nostrils as thickets of filthy hands stretched out towards him, past the guards, grubby fingers clutching his robes, caressing his hands and arms. Others snaked out at ground level in order to reach his feet. And all these unwashed limbs and digits that so urgently sought for him belonged to people – his people! – who fervently believed that this fleeting connection would cure their ills, bring them wealth, make them fertile and fulfil whatever other hopes and dreams sustained them in their short, ugly, meaningless lives.
Moctezuma was now twenty, now thirty, paces into the throng. The guards were having some difficulty keeping the crowd back. Better get on with it! He reached into the basket that Teudile carried, scooped up beans and silver jewels and began to pass them out, now to the left, now to the right, revolted at the massed hands that took them from him like so many hungry, grasping mouths.
That was when, suddenly, in the space the soldiers had opened directly in front of him, and so close that it seemed to emanate from a place no more than a pace away, a woman’s voice spoke up through the silence, very high and very clear in the ringing tones of a proclamation. ‘Behold, Moctezuma,’ the voice trumpeted, ‘the last days of your world are upon you and very soon you will be dead, crushed under the foot of the god Quetzalcoatl, but not before you have been punished for your crimes … ’
There came a massed gasp of shock and horror and whispers began to spread, passing the astounding words that had been spoken from person to person back into the furthest reaches of the crowd where they had not been heard. For his part Moctezuma stopped in his tracks, his jaw hanging open, stunned, surprised beyond measure by this unexpected and unprecedented voice which now continued: ‘Repent, Great Speaker, for the vengeance of the god will be great and mighty upon you; give up your evil ways, make recompense to your people and to all those of other nations who have suffered at your hands.’
Again there was that susurrating whisper of rumour as the words were repeated and passed on, rippling through the crowd at incredible speed while the guards cast about wildly, their macuahuitls drawn, pushing people aside, searching for someone – anyone – to arrest. Several women were grabbed, a man shouted hoarsely and was struck down by a savage blow, and hundreds more soldiers from the security battalion came rushing out, shouting, stamping their feet, striking their macuahuitls against their shields in an attempt to quell the swelling riot. Meanwhile, Moctezuma, Cuitláhuac and Teudile had been encircled by a dozen Cuahchics who hacked indiscriminately at the rabble around them. A head rolled, an arm flew through the air spouting blood and, amid the chaos, that voice again, that terrible haunting voice somehow rose above the sea of sound, incredibly close yet with no obvious source: ‘Oh foolish and cowardly Moctezuma, you are undone; your wickedness has caught you out and the reckoning has come to you sooner than you imagined. Abandon today’s sacrifices! Forswear them or you will pay the price.’
‘Never!’ Moctezuma yelled. It was the charge of cowardice that got to him, and he could not restrain himself from responding even as the bodyguards rushed him, Cuitláhuac and Teudile into a tight group, pushing them through the screaming masses and back behind the cordon of troops protecting the pavilion. At the last moment Moctezuma turned and shook his fist impotently at the throng, only to feel a sudden inexplicable stab of pain. He looked down and saw that a gaping wound from which the royal blood gushed forth like a river had opened between his great and his first toe, slicing up from there towards the arch of his foot. ‘Witchcraft!’ he yelled – for at the moment he was struck, no one had been standing close enough to him to inflict this wound – ‘Witchcraft!’ He staggered and, as Cuitláhuac rushed to support him, he fell in a dead faint.
* * *
Well, thought Tozi, that was a good start. She was grimly pleased with herself, especially because she had managed to stab the Great Speaker – not fatally; she did not want to kill him; she had long ago been persuaded by Huicton’s arguments about the merits of keeping him alive and using his own folly and weakness of character to undermine Mexica power, rather than getting him out of the way and making room for a stronger man to take the throne. To inflict that rather nasty injury on the royal foot, she had of course been obliged to allow her right arm and her hand holding the flint knife to materialise for an instant from the field of invisibility with which she had surrounded herself, a risky manoeuvre because of the possibility of detection; but she had done it so fast she’d got away with it. Now, with cries of ‘witchcraft’ going up all round, Cuitláhuac and Teudile leaping here and there like headless toads, armed guards storming back and forth, Moctezuma flat on his back, unconscious and bleeding from an inexplicable stab wound, and the huge crowd on the verge of a full-scale riot, she had every reason to hope that matters might spiral completely out of control.
In the event, however, and within the hour, Mexica discipline and the judicious use of terror contained the crisis. Not a single member of the crowd was allowed to leave. After recovering from his faint, Moctezuma was patched up – weeping like a baby – by the royal physician. And Teudile announced that the Tecuilhuitl sacrifices would go ahead.
Tozi had eavesdropped the conversation between Moctezuma and Cuitlahuauc that had preceded the announcement. Predictably the craven Speaker had wanted to return at once to Tenochtitlan and to his palace – the only place now, he was convinced, that he could be safe from magical attack.
‘No, sire,’ Cuitláhuac had said with surprising firmness. ‘You cannot even contemplate such a course of action. Whatever mysterious force has afflicted us today you must not be seen to give way to it; to do so, I believe, and before so many witnesses, would prove fatal for your rule.’
‘But I cannot,’ Moctezuma had sobbed. ‘I simply cannot, dear brother. See – ’ he pointed at his foot – ‘I am injured. It was a witch who did this to me, the witch Acopol warned me about. If I stay here she will attack again. In my palace, Acopol’s warding spells protect me.’
‘Nevertheless, my lord, you must strengthen your will. The honour of the throne is at stake. Look … ’ Cuitláhuac signalled through the door of the pavilion at the vast, sullen crowd, still waiting, hemmed in by soldiers. ‘Consider what your people must think – must say! – if you leave Teotihuacan now without performing the sacrifices. You will never be able to command them again.’
Finally, after much more of this, Moctezuma was reluctantly persuaded. ‘I’m sure the witch has gone, brother,’ Cuitláhuac said. ‘She would not dare strike twice in the same place.’
We’ll see about that, thought Tozi.
‘There must be no hint of witchcraft being worked against you, great lord,’ Teudile added, ‘and that word is already being bandied about. While the surgeon stitched and bound your foot, I therefore took the liberty of having a man and a woman seized from the crowd. The man I accused of stabbing you and I found witnesses to swear to it. The woman I accused of throwing her voice and I found witnesses to swear she was indeed the one responsible for those utterances. I suggest a summary trial before the public, a guilty verdict pronounced by yourself and then their immediate execution.’
‘You have done well, Teudile,’ Moctezuma said. ‘We will flay them both alive before we begin with the sacrifices.’
‘We’ll see about that too,’ thought Tozi.
* * *
It was an hour past noon, the first time in the annals of the Mexica that the sacrificial flames of Tecuilhuitl had been kindled late, when Moctezuma, seated on his throne, was carried by sweating slaves to the twin fire-pits between the pavilion a
nd the pyramid of the Sun and cast a burning brand into each of them. Designed to hold a hundred human bodies packed close, each pit was filled with dry logs, which were at once set alight with much cracking, a burst of heat and a great pall of smoke, and soon two giant conflagrations were under way. The two hundred victims sat under guard in twin enclosures nearby. They would not be thrown into the pits until the flames and smoke had died down and a mass of red-hot embers had formed that would roast them slowly, stripping their flesh and melting the fat beneath their skin until they themselves became fuel for their own immolation.
Moctezuma was deeply uneasy and his wounded foot was causing him a great deal of discomfort – indeed, he thought, the worst pain he had ever suffered in his life. His every instinct was to flee Teotihuacan at once, but he accepted that he would lose face if he failed to see the ceremonies through. Only another hour needed to pass, two at the most, for his departure to seem normal enough. So he must simply grit his teeth and endure.
And meanwhile there was another piece of theatre to perform.
He had been carried back a hundred paces from the fire-pits, and now with Teudile and Cuitláhuac positioned in front of him, and representatives of the noblest families of Tenochtitlan all around him, he raised a finger to signal that the accused should be brought into his presence.
The man, in his middle years, was thickset and bald, the woman was young and heavily pregnant and both were gratifyingly terrified.
‘I did nothing, great lord!’ the man protested as the guards dragged him forward.
‘In the name of the gods,’ shrieked the woman, ‘I caused Your Majesty no harm.’
‘Mercy!’ sobbed the man.
‘Mercy!’ wailed the woman. ‘I am with child.’
Moctezuma gave them his stony face. There would be no mercy here. At his signal, both were forced to their knees as Teudile read the charges. The man, Ohtli, was an assassin; he had been seen to strike the Great Speaker with a knife, injuring the royal foot. Witnesses were called and gave mumbled confirmation that this was so. The woman, Tlaco, was a witch. She had thrown her voice and uttered treasonous statements; again witnesses confirmed the truth of the charge. With eyes lowered, trembling, choked with fear, the defendants continued to protest their innocence until, at a word from Teudile, they were beaten into silence. All that remained now was for Moctezuma to pronounce the verdict. Leaning on Cuitláhuac, whom he used as a crutch to avoid putting weight on his injured foot, he stood with all the solemnity he could muster and then …
And then …
A sudden bolt of terror struck him. Fear that was at once hotter than the fiercest fire and colder than ice drilled into his brain like an augur, causing him first to gasp and then to scream uncontrollably in insufferable pain. He raised his hands to his head, clasped his temples, lost his grip on Cuitláhuac, stumbled and fell forward before anyone could catch him. He barely noticed the renewed agony in his foot, for it was as nothing compared with this ripping, grinding horror within his skull, as though his brains were being diced and pulped and pumped out of his ears and nose. For some moments he remained fully conscious, seeing everything, aware that he was writhing, biting his tongue until blood poured from it, tearing with his fingers at the skin of his own face, vomiting bile as Cuitláhuac and Teudile stooped over him and lifted him bodily upright again. Worse still, even as they did so, he knew that all of this was unfolding before the silent, awestruck witness of a vast multitude of his people. He saw their startled, staring faces, their wide eyes. So shaming! So humiliating! But worst of all – unendurable, unbearable – was the terror that afflicted him. Oh, gods, the terror, the dread, the unstoppable galloping panic that seized him by the throat, by the guts, by the bowels, and that now caused him to void himself in a hot wet, explosive, rumbling evacuation that soaked his robes and ran down his legs and splattered onto the ground for all to see. His consciousness began to dim. He heard shouts, hoarse cries, the thud of many footsteps as guards closed around him – too late! – cutting him off from public view. Then blackness, darker than the darkest night, closed over him, and for a very great while he knew no more.
* * *
Tozi watched the wreck of Moctezuma that her magic had set in motion with deep satisfaction. Since Hummingbird had reached out to her on the summit of the great pyramid of Tenochtitlan on the night she was to be sacrificed; since he had, for unknown reasons, multiplied her powers, she had known she could send fear to those she chose to punish. But it was not until now, until this very moment, as the Great Speaker slumped before her on the arms of Teudile and Cuitláhuac, that she fully understood how powerful a weapon the war god had placed in her hands.
Regardless of its origins, it was a weapon she intended to use to bring only good to the suffering people of the One World. Sadly there was nothing she could do for the two hundred young men bound and awaiting sacrifice; even if the festivities today were cancelled, as now seemed inevitable, they would be held for use in some later event. But Tozi was determined, at least, to save bald Ohtli and pregnant Tlaco, falsely accused of acts that she herself had committed, from a most painful and terrible death. They still knelt on the ground where they had been forced down awaiting sentence, but there were no guards around them now and no one was paying them the least bit of attention. Moreover, the soldiers who had been posted at the outer edges of the crowd to keep order after the earlier riot had been called in over the past moments to defend the Great Speaker, and so there was no longer any force to prevent people slipping away. This they were already doing in their hundreds, rapidly growing into thousands, none wanting to stay to face the consequences – quite possibly mass execution – of the extraordinary scenes it had been their misfortune to witness this day.
But there was no time to lose – the situation could change again at any moment – so Tozi moved rapidly, still invisible, to stand between Ohtli and Tlaco. ‘You must run,’ she whispered. ‘Run now! Mingle with the others who are leaving; lose yourselves amongst them and be gone if you want to live!’
Infuriatingly, neither of them moved. They were still so frightened, so dazed after their beating, that this voice from nowhere merely seemed to disorient and panic them further.
Realising she had no other option, Tozi took a deliberate, calculated risk and re-emerged into visibility between them. Ohtli gasped. Tlaco groaned and clutched her swollen belly. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Never mind who I am,’ said Tozi. ‘Get up, both of you! Get up! Get out of here!’ Since they still stayed where they were, quaking fearfully, she took their hands and pulled them to their feet. ‘You have to come with me,’ she said. Then very firmly but quite slowly, not wanting to attract the attention of Teudile or Cuitláhuac by running, she walked with them into the dispersing crowd, walked and walked, gripping their hands tightly until they were far from the pavilion, lost amongst hundreds of others fleeing south along the Way of the Dead.
Only when she judged them to be out of danger did she release their hands. ‘Get as far away from here as you can,’ she told them, ‘as quickly as you can.’ A thought struck her: ‘When they arrested you, how much did you tell them? Do they know where your homes are?’
‘Not me,’ said Ohtli. ‘There wasn’t time. They just took my name.’
‘Me too,’ said Tlaco.
Tozi grinned: ‘Good! Then you can go to your homes. You’ll be safe and they’ll never find you. I doubt if they’ll even look. They’ll have too much else to think about for a while.’
‘But who are you?’ Tlaco asked again. Her face sharpened: ‘Are you the witch everyone’s talking about?’
‘I’m nobody,’ said Tozi. ‘You never saw me and this never happened.’
Then she turned her back on them, faded and was gone.
* * *
For some time Huicton had only been able to track Tozi’s invisible progress from the spectacular chaos she had caused, but when she made herself visible to lead the man and the woman to safety he foll
owed her, using all his tricks of fieldcraft, only to see her vanish again.
He wasn’t behind her but parallel, roughly twenty paces west of her on the broad thoroughfare of the Way of the Dead, and well hidden amidst a hurrying knot of people. He didn’t think there was any danger she would spot him since she’d turned back north, against the flow of the crowd, just before she disappeared. Still, it was an eerie feeling to know she might still be nearby somewhere, seeing everyone – perhaps even him! – while remaining completely unseen herself.
What power the child had. What amazing potential!
Huicton only hoped he’d done enough by hiding in the secret chamber behind the effigy of the plumed serpent in the ruined pyramid of Quetzalcoatl nine days before, when he’d spoken to her as the god himself, giving her the commands that she’d carried out today.
But the question remained – would this strategy, and its stunning outcome, free her from the crippling anxiety and self-doubt that her encounter with that fiend Acopol had caused and thus bring her back to herself? Huicton rather thought it would, for Tozi had acted with incredible courage and shown amazing initiative. She had not only utterly wrecked the midsummer ceremonies with their vile sacrifices, but had also forced Moctezuma into a deeply embarrassing public display. The result could only be a serious weakening of Mexica power and prestige throughout the empire.