Simon Levack: The Demon of the Air

Two of his elders spoke at once. One raised an arm, but Peynal’s bearer stepped sharply round the altar to restrain him. One of the men from the neighboring temple had fallen over and was slapping the stuccoed floor in a display of mirth. One of the war-god’s priests shook a fist at the rain-god’s temple, roaring “Shut up, you!” in a voice they could have heard on the far shore of the lake. His colleagues stared at him.

The embarrassed silence was broken by a cough. Every member of the procession on the steps behind us, one way or another, was impatientfor his moment of glory. I heard a female voice whisper that if these idiots did not get a move on there would not be much of a feast. There would scarcely be time to get their slave’s remains home, let alone cook him, and no way was she eating him raw.

Peynal scowled, distorting the bars and stars on his face still further. He was sweating. A moment longer and his paint would start to run. His mouth twitched dangerously.

“He didn’t try to run away,” I protested desperately. “He slipped. It was an accident. It was our fault. We are clumsy and stupid. He was too strong for us, truly worthy of the god.”

The priests looked unconvinced. They seemed more interested in their neighbors’ antics.

“Those bastards are laughing at us. One of these days …”

“Please,” I begged, “we’ve brought the war-god an offering. It’s not much but it’s all we have. He will have his fill of hearts this evening. Can’t you accept this one, even if it isn’t beating?”

Peynal seemed to come to a decision. He gestured sharply at the Fire Priest. “Get on with it and get them out of here!”

Then everything happened very fast.

The priests pulled the corpse from our grasp and stretched it over the sacrificial stone with one holding each arm and leg and the chest arching toward the sky. The Fire Priest stood over it for a moment, his lips moving swiftly through the words of a hymn. He brandished his blade high over his head and brought it down with both hands. It crunched into the chest and the body bucked in the hands of the other priests as if in a death throe. They were used to the real thing, though-to men who fought for life to the end or whose bodies fought on for them afterward-and they clung on while the knife rose and fell again.

There was no fountain of blood when the heart came out, just an inert lump of raw meat that the Fire Priest tossed disdainfully into the Eagle Vessel without sparing it a glance.

They dragged the body off the stone, took it to the edge of the steps-the great, broad flight that we had toiled up-and threw it away with an easy swing, before turning silently back in our direction.

The silence endured.

The six priests stared at Handy and me. Their chief’s eyes werenarrow with disgust. The Fire Priest shook his flint knife, to flick some of the blood off it, and some of the warm fluid splashed my face.

I was suddenly aware of the space between the priests and us. Now that the dead man’s cored body had been cast so contemptuously aside, there was nothing in that space but the rapidly chilling evening air and the ugly angular bloodstained hump of the sacrificial stone.

Handy and I looked at each other uncertainly.

Peynal’s bearer glanced at the steps his acolytes had thrown the body down before turning back to us.

“You’re going the same way he did,” he spat.

Without looking at each other, Handy and I stepped backward. I found myself on the very edge of the temple platform with a void beneath my heels. One of the priests started toward me. He stopped to look back at his chief, and that gave us our chance.

The big commoner darted sideways and leaped down the pyramid steps. I followed him, my feet slithering on fresh blood, until I found myself staggering at the top of the World’s most terrifying staircase. The vast expanse of the sacred precinct we called the Heart of the World wheeled sickeningly below me, and when I looked up the setting Sun’s bloody glare swamped my vision.

I hurled myself blindly down the face of the pyramid.

Handy and I ran, bounding down the steep narrow steps and sliding through the slick of blood that covered them.

We caught up with the remains of our sacrifice two-thirds of the way down. We were too badly winded to run any further by then, and our panic was subsiding. In its place came anger and resentment and as there was no one else about we took them out on the corpse,kicking it the rest of the way to the base of the pyramid, where the butchers were waiting for it.

As the bodies came bumping down to the bottom of the steps they were promptly hauled to one side and dismembered by old men wielding knives of flint and obsidian. At times like this, when there were many victims, the butchers had to work rapidly to keep up with the priests at the pyramid’s summit. They hacked off the head, to be flayed and mounted on the skull rack. They took more care over the left arm, stretching it out and severing it as neatly as they could, as it was going to the palace to feed the Emperor and his guests. They discarded the trunk, as a man’s entrails and offal were thought fit only for the beasts in the Emperor’s zoo. The remaining limbs were placed in a neat pile, ready for the victim’s owner to take them home, where they would be cooked up into a stew with maize and beans and eaten at a ritual banquet.

Handy and I expected to find the affable young man there, waiting to collect his offering, but there was no sign of him.

“Have you seen Ocotl, the merchant?” I asked one of the butchers.

“Are these his, then?” Blood dripped from the man’s fingers as he gestured toward a pair of legs and an arm lying next to him. “You’d better take them quick, before they get mixed up with someone else’s!”

“No, you don’t understand, I’m looking for …”

Behind me, a series of soft thumps announced the next victim’s arrival at the foot of the stairway. I stepped aside as the butcher made as if to push me out of the way. “Take your meat and get out of here, will you? We’ve got work to do!”

I caught Handy’s eye and we carried the limbs to a quieter spot. We waited for the merchant there, but still he failed to appear.

“The young fool will miss his supper,” Handy observed. “Not that there was much eating on this one anyway.”

We both looked dispassionately at the arm and legs. It was hard to associate them with the living, breathing person we had seen die just a little while earlier, but I knew that was part of the process, the victim’s dismemberment, the final step in his obliteration as a human being.

It occurred to me that there was something not quite right aboutour offering. His arms and legs looked too skinny for a dancer’s, and the skin, exposed now, with most of the chalk dust that had been used to give it a corpselike pallor knocked or rubbed off, was covered in wounds: scratches, punctures, bruises and burns.

“It doesn’t look very appetizing,” I mumbled. Not all the marks could have been made by the fall and some must be a few days old at least, as they looked half healed. How could that be, I wondered, if the merchants insisted on physical perfection when they selected their victims?

“Never acquired the taste, myself,” Handy said. “I know it’s polite to have a mouthful, if someone from your parish brings home a captive, but give me a slice of dog any day.” He started rummaging in a cloth bag he had brought with him. “I could do with something to eat now, though. I’ve a tortilla left over from lunch. We’ll split it, and you can tell me what that was all about.”

I glanced doubtfully up at the pyramid. The blue and red of the temples at its summit still gleamed vividly in the sunshine, but the line of shadow creeping up the bloodstained steps told me it was not long before nightfall.