Ualíztli emerged from the hut, looking rather perplexed himself, and I asked him, "What could they possibly have been feeding her, to make her so grossly fat? In this Yaki land, I have never seen a woman more than meagerly fed."
"She has not grown fat, Tenamáxtzin," he said. "She is swollen with putrid fluids."
I exclaimed, "A simple spider bite could have done that?"
He gave me a sidelong look. "She says it was you, my lord, who bit her."
"What?!"
"She is in excruciating agony. And much as we all have loathed the woman, I am sure you would wish to be a little merciful. If you will tell me what kind of poison you applied to your teeth, I might be able to give her a more easeful death."
"By all the gods!" I raged. "I have long known that G'nda Ké is criminally insane, but are you?"
He quailed away from me, stammering, "Th-there is a horribly gaping and suppurating sore on her ankle..."
Through gritted teeth I said, "I grant you, I have often contemplated how I might most ingeniously slay G'nda Ké, when she was of no more use to me. But bite her to death? In your wildest imaginings, man, can you credit that I would put my mouth to that reptile? If ever I did that, I would be the one poisoned and suffering and suppurating and dying! It was a spider that bit her. While she was gathering wood. Ask any of the drabs who first attended her."
I started to reach for the Mayo woman who had fetched us, and who was goggling at us in fright. But I desisted, realizing that she could neither comprehend nor answer a question. I simply flailed my arms in futile disgust, while Ualíztli said placatively:
"Yes, yes, Tenamáxtzin. A spider. I believe you. I should have known that the witch-woman would lie most atrociously, even on her deathbed."
I took several deep breaths to calm myself, then said, "She doubtless hopes that the accusation will reach the ears of the yo'otuí. Worthless though they hold every woman, this one is a Mayo. If they give heed to her perjury, they might vengefully refuse me the support they have promised. Let her die."
"Best she die quickly, too," he said, and went again into the hut. I suppressed several different kinds of repulsion, and followed him inside, only to be further repulsed by the sight of her and—I noticed now—the rotting-meat stench of her.
Ualíztli knelt beside the pallet and asked, "The spider that bit you—was it one of the huge, hairy sort?"
She shook her fat and mottled head, pointed a fat finger at me, and croaked, "Him." Even the Mayo tícitl's wooden mask wagged skeptically at that.
"Then tell me where you hurt," said Ualíztli.
"All of G'nda Ké," she mumbled.
"And where do you hurt worst?"
"Belly," she mumbled and, just then, a spasm of pain must have stricken her there. She grimaced, shrieked, flung herself onto her side and doubled over—or as far as she could, her distended stomach folding into fat rolls.
Ualíztli waited until the spasm passed, then said, "This is very important, my lady. Do the soles of your feet hurt?"
She had not recovered sufficiently to speak, but her bulbous head nodded most emphatically.
"Ah," said Ualíztli with satisfaction, and stood up.
I said, marveling, "That told you something? The soles of her feet?"
"Yes. That pain is the distinctive sign diagnostic of the bite of one particular spider. We seldom encounter the creature in our lands to the south. We are more familiar with the big, hairy one that looks more fearsome than it really is. But in these northerly climes there is found a truly lethal spider that is not large and does not look especially dangerous. It is black, with a red mark on its underside."
"Your breadth of knowledge astounds me, Ualíztli."
"One tries to keep well informed in one's trade," he said modestly, "by exchanging bits of lore with other tíciltin. I am told that the venom of this black northern spider actually melts the flesh of its prey, to make it the more easily eaten. Hence that ghastly open sore on the woman's leg. But, in this case, the process has spread within her whole body. She is literally liquefying inside. Curious. I would not have expected such extensive putrefaction except in an infant or a person old and infirm."
"And what will you do about it?"
"Hasten the process," Ualíztli murmured, so that only I might hear.
G'nda Ké's eyes, from between their puffed lids, were anxiously asking also: What is to be done for me? So Ualíztli said aloud, "I shall bring special medicaments," and left the hut.
I stood gazing down at the woman, not pityingly. She had regained breath enough to speak, but her words were disjointed, her voice only croaks and rasps:
"G'nda Ké must not... die here."
"Here as well as anywhere," I said coldly. "It appears that your tonáli has brought you to the end of your roads and your days, right here. The gods are far more inventive than I could possibly be, in devising the proper disposal of one who has lived ever evilly, and already lived too long."
She said again, but stressing one word, "G'nda Ké must not... die here. Among these louts."
I shrugged. "They are your own louts. This is your own land. It was a spider native to this land that poisoned you. I think it fitting that you should have been felled not by an angry human's hand, but by one of the tiniest creatures inhabiting the earth."
"G'nda Ké must not... die here," she said yet again, though it seemed she spoke more to herself than to me. "G'nda Ké will not... be remembered here. G'nda Ké was meant... to be remembered. G'nda Ké was meant... somewhere... to be royalty. With the -tzin to her name..."
"You are mistaken. You forget that I have known women who deserved the -tzin. But you—to the very last, you have striven to make your mark on the world only by doing harm. And for all your grandiose ideas of your own importance, for all your lies and duplicities and iniquities, you were destined by your tonáli to be nothing more than what you were and what you are now. As venomous as the spider and, inside, just as small."
Ualíztli returned then, and knelt to sprinkle plain picíetl into her leg's open sore. "This will numb the local pain, my lady. And here, drink this." He held a gourd dipper to her protuberant lips. "It will stop your feeling the other pains within."
When he rose again to stand beside me, I growled, "I did not give you permission to relieve her agony. She inflicted enough on other people."
"I did not ask your permission, Tenamáxtzin, and I will not ask your pardon. I am a tícitl. My allegiance to my calling takes precedence even over my loyalty to your lordship. No tícitl can prevent death, but he can refuse to prolong it. The woman will sleep and, sleeping, die."
So I held my tongue, and we watched as G'nda Ké's swollen eyelids closed. What happened next I know surprised Ualíztli as much as it did myself and the other tícitl.
From the hole in G'nda Ké's leg began to trickle a liquid—not blood—a liquid as clear and thin as water. Then came fluids more viscous but still colorless, as malodorous as the sore. The trickle became a flow, ever more fetid, and those same noxious substances started issuing from her mouth, too; and from her ears and from the orifices between her legs.
The bloat of her body slowly but visibly diminished, and as the taut-stretched skin subsided, so did the jaguar spots of it shrink to a profusion of ordinary freckles. Then even they commenced to disappear as the skin slackened into furrows and creases and puckers. The flow of fluids increased to a gush, some of it soaking into the earthen floor, some of it remaining as a thick slime from which we three watchers stepped warily well away.