Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

I thought I was in a room filled with birds. Their wings darkened the space around me and their beat filled my ears until it drowned out my own heartbeat. Their feathers seemed to fill my nose and mouth, making me sneeze and gag.

Then I found myself in a world peopled by gods.

A single, brilliant light shimmered through my tears. It seemed to pulse in time with the throbbing at the back of my head. Was this what the Sun looked like, I wondered, when seen from the Thirteen Heavens, above the sky and the clouds? Or had night fallen and the Sun dropped below the western horizon, parting from the souls of dead mothers who formed his guard of honour before making his return journey through the land underneath the Earth? I felt a chill come over me as I realized that I might be in one of the nine regions of Mictlan, the Land of the Dead.

I wanted to move then, to run away or beat my fists on the ground or curl up into a ball around my terror and the pain and the sick feeling in my stomach, but something held me flat on the ground, at the mercy of any creature or demon that might come for me.

At that moment I knew I must be dead or dying, because I heard a woman’s voice.

It seemed to me that I had heard it not long before but had not known it for what it was, but now there was no mistaking it. It had no words for me, but that did not matter. Rackedwith bitter sobs, each one torn out of a throat tormented by pain and hunger and reproach and regret and flung at me through the icy darkness of Hell, it could only belong to Cihuacoatl, Snake Woman, the goddess whose cries were the most terrifying sound an Aztec could hear, foretelling utter disaster, death and the ruin of the city.

‘No,’ I wanted to cry out, but all I could manage was a husky whisper between dry lips.

A large, irregular shadow filled my vision. Its shape was strange, but familiar. As it dawned on me what I was looking at, I felt all my fear renewed and redoubled.

I had seen every detail of the figure before. From the long, graceful plumes that towered over his head and flowed down his back to the sheen of obsidian on his sandals and, more than anything else, the blank, terrifying, gaping face of his serpent mask, I could not fail to recognize the god. I was in the presence of Quetzalcoatl: the Feathered Serpent himself.

I dared not make a noise. I lay, paralysed with fear, watching him as he knelt over me.

The black pits that served him for eyes seemed to roam speculatively over my helpless, bound body. I squirmed, my buttocks clenching as my bowels threatened to turn into water.

Then the god advanced upon me, with a small, glittering object in his hand. I could not help a squeal of fright as I recognized a copper knife: an implement fine enough to prise feathers apart, or peel a man’s skin away in layers. I was a gripped by a fear of something worse than death: if I truly was in Hell, could the god go on torturing me for ever?

‘No …’

The god stood over me. He raised his free hand, extended his finger, and held it up in front of his mouth. He was motioning me to silence.

As he knelt over me, reaching towards me with the knife, Icould not have found my voice even if I had wanted to. I merely lay trembling silently as he tugged at the ropes that bound me, slicing them cleanly one by one until I was free.

He straightened, but put his empty hand on my chest, pressing gently but firmly in a gesture that meant I must not get up. He might have spared himself the trouble: my limbs were too numb and leaden to move.

Against the light there was less expression than ever in the serpent mask, but something told me that the mind behind it was troubled and perplexed, as though he had come across something unexpected and could not decide what to do about it.

In the end he mumbled: ‘Why are you here?’

His voice sounded as though it were coming from the bottom of a clay pot. It also sounded young, but then I supposed gods were ageless.

I felt compelled to answer. ‘I …’

‘Quietly!’ he hissed. ‘She’ll hear you!’

His warning had come too late.

Something stirred at the far end of the room. A sound like a yawn came to us, and then her shape appeared, uncurling itself from where she had lain, rising and stretching as naturally and gracefully as a jaguar waking from its midday nap, while the shadow cast by the wavering torchlight on the wall behind her danced suggestively.

Quetzalcoatl was on his feet in an instant, turning with a rustle of feathers and a tiny grating noise from the heels of his sandals.

‘You’re back at last!’ Hearing her speak was like having my ears stroked with down. Her voice was soft and seductive, but there was something about it, some quality or feeling or memory it evoked, which made me shiver. She walked towards the god with her arms outstretched, and in the instantwhen the light fell directly across her body I saw that she was naked.

‘Come here,’ she said huskily.

In the instant he saw the woman Quetzalcoatl had seemed rooted to the floor. As her fingers stretched towards him, their tips brushing the hard skin of his jewelled mask, he seemed to waken. With a muffled cry he threw his arms out in front of him as if to push her away. He stepped back. The sole of one sandal trampled my ankle. I howled in pain and the god nearly fell over me. He stumbled, caught himself in time and backed towards the doorway.

‘What’s the matter?’ cried the woman. ‘Don’t you want to … Come back!’

He blundered into the edge of the doorway. For a moment he seemed a blind, billowing confusion of cloth and feathers and sparkling jewels, and then he was gone, his inarticulate cries echoing around the courtyard.

‘Wait!’ she screamed. Still naked, she ran after him. ‘Don’t go! Tell me what’s wrong!’

I forced myself to raise my head so that my ears could track her voice through the courtyard, and beyond it. I heard it dip as she ran through the other room and rise again as she reached the street outside, and I marvelled at how shrill and ugly it sounded, and how desperate she must have been to have run clear out of the house without anything on.

My head started to spin. I forced myself to concentrate, thinking I had to stay awake, I had to get up and get away before the woman came back, but the pain and the sick feeling were too strong for me, and I blacked out.

Iwoke to an angry buzzing. It came from one side of my head and then the other, as though its source were moving in circles around my head, and it was only when it settled on my nose and made me sneeze that I realized that I was being inspected by a fly.

My eyes snapped open.

It took me a moment to recall where I was. My head was still full of the sights and sounds of the night, and the strange, disjointed dreams that had come upon me while I slept. I shook my head briskly, dislodging the fly and creating a spasm of pain at the back of my skull.

What had happened to me, and what had I seen? Vague images of the god Quetzalcoatl and a beautiful woman filled my head.

I remembered a tale of Topilztin, the infinitely wise and good last king of the Toltecs. He shared the attributes of Quetzalcoatl, the god whose high priest he was and whose name he bore. He had fallen prey to the malice of Tezcatlipoca, his divine patron’s enemy. Tezcatlipoca had visited him in the guise of an old woman, a healer, and urged sacred wine upon him, saying it was for the good of his soul. Try just a drop on the tip of your tongue, the old woman had wheedled. He had refused; he knew that the taste would lead to a drink, and a drink to another, and so on until his soul was drowned in the stuff and lost for good.

At last he had assented to having a drop of it placed on his forehead, and from that moment he was lost.