PART ONE
Golden Gate
September 29, 1520
Templo Mayor
The lord of deception and fate stared out at Sokojotsin from the invaders’ eyes. He recognized the great deceiver by how he had cloaked himself in that blackness, the color of the north, the color of death. He had lured the stinking, filthy dogs over the great waters and across the marshes and maize fields to surround the twin jewels in the center of the world. The serpent wall had not kept them out; nor had all the warriors of the House of Eagles.
They had not, for Sokojotsin had himself opened the city to them. He had welcomed them, these foul creatures, and demonstrated his superiority by bestowing many gifts on them, and permitted them to dwell among the people so that he might know them as he had known the others who had come before them. But their priests had deceived him, and he soon discovered that none of them had ever walked the path of the beautiful death. In his anger Sokojotsin had released the thousand blades to kill many of them, and drive out the rest.
That rage had been his greatest mistake of all.
The dogs had run away in fear, but their greed soon overcame their cowardice. So they made treaty with and gathered his enemies, and with them marched on the city, and conquered it in the name of their faceless God. For all of seventeen days they had drenched that indifferent altar with the blood of those they had butchered. The rest they imprisoned so that they could be questioned . . . and questioned they had been, until they died of it.
Sokojotsin was one of the last left alive. Soon they would come for him, he knew. They would come and pierce him with their ugly blades, or separate his head from his neck. His heart would die in his chest. His death would have no meaning.
He had railed at them through their smiling, cringing priests, roaring of his magnificence, of his splendor. He who had been bathed every fourth hour, who had never donned the same garment again, who had never fucked the same woman twice in a year, the sun god, the ruler of the universe, son of the silent death, the warlord and the rain, beloved of highest clouds and coldest air, the light of war, the skinner of souls.
No more. The dark metal of the gods had cast him down cruelly before the invaders, and he was undone. Now there would be no coming forth of flowers for him, no dances in his memory, no offerings of jade and serpentine. He would be tossed into one of their pits and left to rot among the peasants, without so much as a few grains of maize placed on his tongue.
He glanced at the pile of bread sitting beside the gap in the bars through which they pushed it each day. Green-gray mold covered it now. Dust and dead insects floated on the untouched water in the pail. They did not understand why he would not eat or drink, but they would not enter the cell to force it on him. Cowards, all of them.
“Sinner.”
Although the scribe was one of the few dogs that spoke his tongue, Sokojotsin did not look upon his squat, robed figure hovering outside the bars. He would not pollute his eyes with the scribe’s meekness.
“Sinner, I have been sent by the captain to ask you one last time,” the scribe said in his pompous fashion. “Give me the secret of the thousand blades, and your death will be quick and merciful.”
Sokojotsin caught one of the beetles burrowing happily into the heap of moldy bread and held the squirming bug between two of his broken fingers. “That I could be as you, little glutton, crawling the stones and cowering in shadows so that I might eat of the shit of these dogs.” He crushed the beetle and tossed it to the scribe, who scuttled away.
“You have transgressed against the one and only God,” the scribe ranted. “You are cursed for all eternity. This is your last chance to save your soul.”
Sokojotsin closed his eyes against the burning light streaming into his cell and waited. They would next bring one of his nineteen children before him, or perhaps one of his wives. His beloved ones would not beg, but the dogs would threaten to rape the women before his eyes or cut the throats of his sons unless he confessed. That was their way.
“Majesty.”
The deep, soothing voice of his ambassador seemed to come from within Sokojotsin’s dreaming, and he smiled a little until he smelled his blood. He opened his eyes to see his most trusted one standing on the other side of the bars.
Beads of blood welled on Tendile’s cracked lips as he spoke. “I am brought to beg you, Majesty; do as they will of you. Could I bite the tongue from my mouth, I would, but . . .” He smiled, showing his torn, empty gums. “This kindness I would show myself, they have taken from me.”
With some difficulty Sokojotsin rose and hobbled over to the bars. He could no longer stand straight, but neither could Tendile; nor would his most trusted one meet his gaze. “Look upon me, pipiltin.”
His ambassador’s bloodshot, pain-clouded eyes shifted with such reluctance that compassion filled Sokojotsin’s heart. “Sire, I am the rot of the temple before you.”
“Not so, my child.” Sokojotsin fit his hand through the bars and graced his most trusted one with a touch to his swollen face. “It is I who sent you, and I who have failed you. You and all my people.”
Tears trembled on the other man’s lashes. “Majesty, we have brought this disgrace. In our shamed eyes you are as the sun.”
“Your strong heart could never fail me,” he assured him. “So I would see you end as beautiful as it is.”
Too overcome to speak, Tendile nodded.