Brian D'Amato - The Sacrifice Game

But, incongruously, it had a festive side. Since there was no question of secrecy, Koh had dancers with royal blue-flame myrtle-berry torches swirling in snake-coils ahead and behind her three palanquins, so that from a distance we must have looked like a long trail of glowworms with a single turquoise-tinted chemical mutant in the center. I thought it was silly of her to mark her position. But Koh was surrounding herself more and more with the trappings of divinity in other ways too. She asked for her pledged followers to get special perks and rationing, as opposed to other people we had in our train, and after some hemming and hawing even 14 Wounded said okay. Up and down the line and up and down the social scale she was the main subject of conversation, people repeating themes she’d started herself. She’d used old stories about One Ocelot’s daughter to make herself seem like the fulfillment of a prophecy, the same way that, much later, the nations that Cortez co-opted would spread rumors that he was “fulfilling” a prophecy that hadn’t existed before.

From what I could tell, she played the rest of the Star-Rattler Society pretty well too. Each of the high-ranked members of her order, including the nine-skull epicene adders, of which Koh was one of nine, advised and took care of a troop of dependents, generally lesser clans and villages that had converted, but also some individuals and smaller families. And Koh never made an overt statement against any of them. She cultivated her seniors in the Sorority-only three of whom were with us anyway-and played down her separatism. She had to get a coalition together but also position herself as a new dispensation, a kind of popular outreach. Forty days ago, before the Last Fourth Sun, the majority of the Rattlers’ children hadn’t specifically been Koh’s own followers, or even much aware of her. But now, after the Pumas had attacked all of the Rattlers indiscriminately, Koh made it look like she was in charge of the resistance, and thousands more had come over to our side. Or her side.

Embarrassingly, I still hadn’t learned that much about the Star-Rattler’s children, who were a secretive lot, and even though I was considered adopted into it I hadn’t seen any of its rituals. When they’d appeared on their mul during the vigil it was as spectators of the Jaguar-Scorpions’ procedure, not as participants. But the religion, if you can call it that, really was an improvement on the old ancestor cults. It had a certain glorification of poverty and austerity, and not in the same way as the flesh-piercing tortures of the old ruling class. Although there was still plenty of that. It was more meditative and Theravada-ish, the kind of thing that would become the New Age bullshit I generally love to hate, but as I saw more of it I realized it was just another kind of human technology that drew on people’s fatalism in a different way, maybe even in a needed way. In the old clan hierarchies, someone from a dependent family would kill himself if his greatfathermother said to, because otherwise he and his children would be doomed to nearly everlasting agony. But people under the sign of the Rattler seemed more stoic, happier with the austerities of life and death, I guess because at least they got a smidgeon of respect and a better deal in the afterlives-not pie in the sky yet, but a promise of, at least, some goddamn rest.

Very few of the new lower-lineage converts ever saw Koh personally, but some of their leaders did, and from what I could tell they were impressed. They’d talk about how the Rattler’s Children foresaw things that other people couldn’t, how the great serpent’s venom could wash the cataracts out of their eyes. In order to keep the blood of their lineages alive through coming generations, each of the new apostles had a special charge to follow Lady Koh into the realms of the next suns. Her intimates had become a fanatically loyal core, and no matter how many more she wanted to attract, she followed Lenin’s dictum in advance, that a handful of committed souls is better than an army of unmotivated mercenaries.

And Koh naturally took to statecraft. She sent emissaries to all the main Orb Weaver and Caracara families, to some nonaffiliated clans, and even a few to disaffected cat families. Apparently her literacy had been a big deal in Teotihuacan, and one of her businesses had been having her scribes keep records and accounts for the less literate Teotihuacanob ruling families. She’d even been part of a project that was writing down Teotihuacanob history-which had been kept in picture and textile writing with oral supplementation and whatever-in the Teotihuacanob language written with a system of Chol characters, and she’d hung on to some of the manuscripts. Other rulers had already sent messengers asking for copies, and she had a whole three monkey clans-that is, calligraphers, who, impressively, were able to write with a tiny brush while they were swinging in sedan baskets-and she kept them all busy every day. In fact, since the histories had been rewritten to make Koh look good, I suppose you could even say that she was grinding out paper propaganda.

And maybe it would have an effect, I thought. Maybe things were less desperate than they felt. Maybe enough of the lowland clans would support us that we-except, wait a second, who were we? If “we” meant the leaders of the Rattler’s Children, maybe “we”’d do all right. But if “we” meant the Ball Brethren and the other traveling contingents of the Harpy clan-well, then “we” were going from being Koh’s saviors to being her guests. And around here it was a short step from “guest” to “hostage.” But that would change when we got to Ix, right? Maybe. Anyway, when we did get back, it wouldn’t hurt for me to have some pull with the Muhammadess of Mesoamerica. If we got back. If the Ixian Ocelots didn’t pick us off first. If Koh hadn’t gotten too uppity by then. If the Lord be willing and the cricks don’t rise. If, if, ifffff.

At the birth of the next sun there were still some fights going on ahead and behind the safeish central area reserved for us VIPs and the captive Scorpion-adders, who were trussed up in padded sleds. At least every twenty-score beats or so some gang from some third-rate cat family would rush one of the straggling groups in our train, like a cougar picking the sickest-looking bison out of the herd, and a few of our bloods would have to run forward or back to help drive them off. But we headed south on the main Caracara road, through the later Texcoco along the east edge of the great lake, passing thousands of other refugees, south and up into the highlands, toward what would later be Ciudad Oaxaca and was now called the Citadel of the Valley of Clouds and Steam.

What? Whoa. Off balance. And awake. I was awake.

My bearers were having trouble keeping me level. Rock me gently, for Chrissake, I thought.

I uncovered my eyes and squinted up at the rusty sky. There weren’t any stars or obvious change but somehow you could tell it was near dawn. I sat up. Someone was coming up alongside us. A runner.

“You over me, my elder brother 10 Red Skink Lizard?” my flanking guard asked, using my numbered code name. “Five Score and Two is coming, my elder brother.”

I rolled onto my side, steadying myself on the edge of the wicker pallet, and the guard nearly looked me in the eye and looked down. He wasn’t supposed to stare at VIPs. It was another beige dawn already and the wind was picking up. We were in a wide valley between five-rope-lengths-high mesas, bristling with tall hardwoods all recently killed by the changing water table. When a breeze came through, yellow leaves dropped off their branches as fast as those cards flying up when you’ve solved a hand of Freecell Solitaire.