Simon Levack: The Demon of the Air

We were in a small, bare room. The flickering torchlight lit up no details except for the thing Lion had evidently brought me here to see: a large wooden box in the middle of the floor.

“What’s this?” I asked suspiciously.

“Open it.”

The lid was heavier than those of the wicker chests I was used to. At first sight there was not much underneath it: a few old pieces of cloth and one or two other things I did not recognize.

“Clothes?” I said. “What, the Emperor wants me to do his laundry as well?”

“Pick it up,” he said sourly. “Touch it. Then you’ll see.”

At the top of the heap was something like a woman’s blouse, but with long sleeves and an opening in the front like the jackets that priests and imperial envoys wore on special occasions. It had been white, with a simple but unfamiliar pattern embroidered on it, although even in the torchlight I could see it was now badly discolored. It was not the design or the pattern, though, that made me catch my breath. The cloth had a texture like nothing I had ever felt: it slipped through my fingers, slithering between them so smoothly I thought I would drop it, but when I dared to tug at it I realized it was also stronger than any cloth I had handled.

“What do you think?”

“This is better than cotton.” Awed, I replaced it reverentially and let the lid of the box fall shut. “Better than cotton!”

“This box was washed up on the eastern shore of the Divine Sea, a few years ago. Montezuma gave most of the things in it away to the kings of Tetzcoco and Tlacopan, but he kept these.”

I forced my mind back to the conversation with Montezuma, while my fingers tingled with the memory of how that cloth had felt. “The Emperor mentioned strangers from islands on the Divine Sea, pale men with beards-did they have things like this?” I was beginning to see what had so disturbed the Emperor. There was something unearthly about this material.

“Yes-and other things besides. Look.” The lid of the box opened again with a creak, shatteringly loud in the silent, empty space around us, and Lion pulled something out of it. It was long and narrow and glinted in the torchlight.

“A weapon,” he breathed. As he held it up I saw that it was like a sword, except that the blade, instead of being a flat shaft of fire-hardened wood with obsidian slivers set in its edges, was a single piece of metal, a little like silver but duller and somehow more solid looking.

“This is harder than bronze,” my brother said. “You remember what the Tarascans did to our army, a few years ago, with their bronze swords and spear points? Imagine what our warriors could achieve, armed with this metal instead of wood, flint and obsidian!”

“And what our merchants would do in their wake, with cloth like that to trade,” I added, gesturing at the open box. “Is that what the Emperor thinks?”

“He thinks whoever possesses things like this must be like a god,” my brother said soberly, lowering the sword but not replacing it, “and you do not trifle with gods. According to the reports I’ve heard, the strangers came across the Divine Sea in canoes the size of palaces, and they fought the Mayans with swords like this one, and a weapon that made a sound like thunder and produced fire and smoke and threw stones hard enough to kill.”

A tremor had crept into his voice. Lion had always been devout, even for an Aztec, and this talk of gods was making him nervous.

“I gathered that he had the missing sorcerers rounded up,” I said, “so they could tell him who these strangers were and what to do about them.”

“It’s more than that. Montezuma thinks one of these pale-faced strangers might be Quetzalcoatl, come back to reclaim his kingdom!”

Now I saw the real source of the Emperor’s anxiety to have the sorcerers back, and the fear I had detected in him even through his wooden screens.

Many bundles of years before, all the lands that were now in Montezuma’s realm had been ruled by the Toltecs. They had been a marvelous race, and all the fine things we Aztecs had, the arts of painting and poetry and feather-work and casting precious metals, had been learned from them. Their blood ran in the veins of our rulers, even though their last king, Quetzalcoatl-a man who bore the same name as our god, the Feathered Serpent-had ended his reign fleeing into exile in the East, across the Divine Sea toward the land of the Mayans. It had always been rumored that he might return, however, to claim his kingdom back from his descendant, the Emperor of Mexico.

If that was what Montezuma believed, then he was not just concerned to find out what some unknown savages from across the sea were up to. He was terrified that his ancestor was going to come to him, call him to account for his reign, and destroy him if he was found wanting. What he had wanted the sorcerers to tell him was nothing less than his own fate.

“Now, do you see?” my brother went on. “Montezuma thinks his very life is at stake. He was jittery enough before, which is why he had the sorcerers thrown in the prison. That was nothing compared to the state he’s in now it seems they were able to fly out of their cages!” He spoke with feeling, and I wondered how afraid he was for his own position, knowing what the Emperor was capable of. “If it turns out they were able to use magic to escape …”

“I’m not so sure,” I said thoughtfully. “There are men who can turn themselves into birds or animals at will, of course there are, but they’re pretty rare. Most sorcerers are fakes. They just use a lot of cheap tricks to fool gullible people. You know that way of curing a sick man by sucking a stone out of his body? Chances are the curer’s got a stone in his mouth ready and he bites his cheek so it’s all bloody when the patient sees it. Most magic’s done that way. So maybe these men flew away, but until I see feathers lying around on the floor of the prison, I’d sooner believe they got out on their feet.”

“But how? And where did they go?”

“If I could answer that …” I paused, remembering that the moment I could answer his questions was the moment my troubles would really begin. “I have to get out of this, somehow,” I added, half to myself.

My brother stared at me as if I had just sprouted a third ear. “What do you mean, ‘get out of this?’”

“Don’t be simple, Lion.” I tried to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “What if the Emperor’s right and old Black Feathers knows more about these sorcerers than he’s letting on-what then? If I were to find anything out, which I won’t, do you think he’s just going to let me go running to the palace? He’d have me impaled first! I’m a dead man whatever happens!”

“So just do your duty,” my brother said coldly.

“I’m a slave-my duty is to my master, no one else.”

The metal sword shook and flashed in the torchlight as Lion fought with his temper. “You selfish worm!” he cried. “Who cares about your miserable life? How do you think it’s been for your father, your brothers, watching what’s become of you? How do you think it’s been, trying to make a career, trying to practice a craft, tryingto keep up a reputation, when all people keep saying to you is, ‘Oh, yes, I know you, you had that brother, the drunkard-how did he escape getting his head broken, anyway?’”

“I might have known you’d bring that up …”

“You’ve done your best to drag the family name through the dust over the years-one thing after another. Now, just when you have a chance to repair some of the damage, all you can think of is how to make it even worse …”

“Next you’ll be telling me I owe you my life.”

“You do.”

My retort died in my throat, because he was right. A sudden recollection of the pain and the crowd’s laughter made my eyes sting and I turned sharply away, to hide my anguish.