Slaughtered like animals. Sacrificed.
To a god, or by a god?
There would be no outrage. There could be no war. All those who might have raised a voice, or a spear, lay dead.
Their remains disposed of without thought or honor.
Such savagery.
And yet, such efficiency.
Such genius.
A dozen soldiers strode through the wreckage, swords in hand. They were tidying up, tying loose ends. Killing the almost dead. Feeding the fire. Their faces betrayed nothing; they might as well have been digging ditches, or splitting logs. They had followed orders; that was what they had been trained to do from birth. An enemy was an enemy. It did not matter if he had once been a guest, a benefactor, a brother.
Izel flattened himself against the tunnel wall, his body melting into the shadows. There was no reason to believe he was safe.
There was no reason to believe anything.
The smoke burning my eyes . That is my family .
Iâve got to get out of here .
But he couldnât bring himself to move. Some force held himâit was physical, magnetic; it compelled him to look upon the face of the man who had wrought this.
If anything of that man remained.
Izel inched forward, sought an angle, a sight line on the temple steps. Cualli was there; Izel could feel him. He summoned all his courage, leaned forward the final inch.
And there he was, inches from where he had wed mere hours before, presiding over the mangled bodies of everyone heâd ever known, ever cared about.
Almost everyone.
Izel watched, transfixed, as the entity that had once been his fellow priest raised its arms, inch by inch, until their span seemed to encompass all the world.
His body glowed from within, as if lit by some internal sun, and the blackness of his eyes was absolute. It was impossible to say what he saw, whether his vision took in what was before him or transcended material reality entirely, bored through matter and peered into some other realm.
The power that radiated from him was like a gust of wind, a sonic boom. Like some perversion of a sunbeam.
He raised his head to the sky and opened his mouth. The sound that emanated from it seemed to exist in every register at onceâto fill the air, silence the birds, blot out the sun. It was not Cualliâs voice, but Cualliâs voice was contained within its multitudes.
He spoke the tongue of the gods. The language Tezcatlipoca had taught the Line of Priests, the language in which they had transcribed his dictates with their own blood.
To speak it was forbidden to man; its sound was entirely unknown.
And yet, Izel understood perfectly.
I will never give this back .
With all the strength that remained in him, Izel turned away and backed into the tunnel.
The darkness.
It was time to disappear.
CHAPTER 12
N ichols kept Sherry on the phone until his battery ticked down to its last 10 percent; he didnât want her sitting out there alone with the shock and grief, the goddamn boomeranging PTSDâand besides, he was hoping that if she calmed down enough, she might remember something about where the hell she was. Sherry hadnât been paying attention to the drive, just the driver. Didnât know which highway theyâd been on, whether it led north or east or west.
Nichols ran through a mental list of scenic overviews and make-out spots he remembered from high school, matched them against the size of the town Sherry said she was staring down at, the amount of time she guessed it had taken to get there. And for once in his life, Nichols was smart enough to get lucky, or lucky enough to look smart: he found Sherry in the first place he looked, pulled on to the scene a mere thirty-three minutes after his phone rang.
Larry Birdâs jersey number. Or Jesusâs life span, if you preferred. Nichols did not.
This was gonna be a shit show, he thought as the cruiser powered upthe final incline. He shouldnât even be hereâthis was a textbook recuse-yourself situation if there
To a god, or by a god?
There would be no outrage. There could be no war. All those who might have raised a voice, or a spear, lay dead.
Their remains disposed of without thought or honor.
Such savagery.
And yet, such efficiency.
Such genius.
A dozen soldiers strode through the wreckage, swords in hand. They were tidying up, tying loose ends. Killing the almost dead. Feeding the fire. Their faces betrayed nothing; they might as well have been digging ditches, or splitting logs. They had followed orders; that was what they had been trained to do from birth. An enemy was an enemy. It did not matter if he had once been a guest, a benefactor, a brother.
Izel flattened himself against the tunnel wall, his body melting into the shadows. There was no reason to believe he was safe.
There was no reason to believe anything.
The smoke burning my eyes . That is my family .
Iâve got to get out of here .
But he couldnât bring himself to move. Some force held himâit was physical, magnetic; it compelled him to look upon the face of the man who had wrought this.
If anything of that man remained.
Izel inched forward, sought an angle, a sight line on the temple steps. Cualli was there; Izel could feel him. He summoned all his courage, leaned forward the final inch.
And there he was, inches from where he had wed mere hours before, presiding over the mangled bodies of everyone heâd ever known, ever cared about.
Almost everyone.
Izel watched, transfixed, as the entity that had once been his fellow priest raised its arms, inch by inch, until their span seemed to encompass all the world.
His body glowed from within, as if lit by some internal sun, and the blackness of his eyes was absolute. It was impossible to say what he saw, whether his vision took in what was before him or transcended material reality entirely, bored through matter and peered into some other realm.
The power that radiated from him was like a gust of wind, a sonic boom. Like some perversion of a sunbeam.
He raised his head to the sky and opened his mouth. The sound that emanated from it seemed to exist in every register at onceâto fill the air, silence the birds, blot out the sun. It was not Cualliâs voice, but Cualliâs voice was contained within its multitudes.
He spoke the tongue of the gods. The language Tezcatlipoca had taught the Line of Priests, the language in which they had transcribed his dictates with their own blood.
To speak it was forbidden to man; its sound was entirely unknown.
And yet, Izel understood perfectly.
I will never give this back .
With all the strength that remained in him, Izel turned away and backed into the tunnel.
The darkness.
It was time to disappear.
CHAPTER 12
N ichols kept Sherry on the phone until his battery ticked down to its last 10 percent; he didnât want her sitting out there alone with the shock and grief, the goddamn boomeranging PTSDâand besides, he was hoping that if she calmed down enough, she might remember something about where the hell she was. Sherry hadnât been paying attention to the drive, just the driver. Didnât know which highway theyâd been on, whether it led north or east or west.
Nichols ran through a mental list of scenic overviews and make-out spots he remembered from high school, matched them against the size of the town Sherry said she was staring down at, the amount of time she guessed it had taken to get there. And for once in his life, Nichols was smart enough to get lucky, or lucky enough to look smart: he found Sherry in the first place he looked, pulled on to the scene a mere thirty-three minutes after his phone rang.
Larry Birdâs jersey number. Or Jesusâs life span, if you preferred. Nichols did not.
This was gonna be a shit show, he thought as the cruiser powered upthe final incline. He shouldnât even be hereâthis was a textbook recuse-yourself situation if there
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