Spots and sparks swam across her vision.
She could burn Four to ash, but doing so she might burn herself. A foolish way to die.
As foolish as being strangled by a person you can’t even see?
Oh.
Yes.
The world contracted to a long thin tunnel. She placed her hand on Four’s arm, and pulled.
The sky bore Caleb’s weight. Scars on his ankles and the soles of his feet woke to grip the air.
He advanced.
Mal pulled, not at Four, but at the Craft that bent light through the air around her. Invisibility required power, and that power came from somewhere. The most likely source was Four herself.
Mal drank deep.
Her vision dwindled to a single gray spot. Too late.
No.
Four’s grip slackened. Her legs loosed. Mal heard her adversary groan.
Air sweet as wine filled her lungs.
She caught the Warden by the arm before she fell.
Four’s jacket smoked in Mal’s grip. Effortlessly, she pulled the Warden up, took her throat in one hand, and bared her teeth. Four struggled, weak. Her flesh burned, seared, smoked. The face beneath her mask was round, with broad eyes—a Quechal face.
Shame.
“Let her go, Mal.”
She looked up, and blinked away a wash of light.
Mal had changed.
Her dusky skin was molten stone, her hair a field of ebon flame. Her eyes were radiant jet. Beside her hovered the leather bag containing Qet Sea-Lord’s heart.
“Let her go.”
She shrugged, and dropped Four.
The Warden tumbled through empty air. Caleb did not move to help her; after a few flailing seconds, her Couatl arrived, grabbed her in its talons, and flew to safety.
He met Mal’s gaze.
“You caught me,” she said at last.
“You look surprised.”
“Surprised, and glad.” The Serpents’ mouths moved in time with hers. He saw faces in the diamonds that lined their throats: Quechal faces, painted, pierced, tattooed, plain, agonized or rapturous or simply watching. “I thought you might be dead.”
“I’m not.”
“I hoped that was true,” she said, and tilted her head to one side. The Serpents echoed her movement. “There’s something different about you. You’ve picked up a halo, and your scars are live.”
“There’s something different about you, too.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “I suppose there is.”
“You don’t have to go through with this.”
“I’m an arrow in flight.”
“Arrows don’t have a choice. People do.”
“What choice?” She smiled, sad, distant. “My choices were made twenty years ago, when my parents died. Or sixty years ago, at Liberation. Or earlier than that. The world’s tossed in bad dreams. Someone has to wake it up.”
“There are other ways.”
“Not for me.” She approached. The Serpents shifted to flank him. Three mouths moved in tandem. Who was the speaker, and who the puppet? “You don’t have to fight me.”
“I do.”
“I’m sorry.” She reached for his face. The heat of her touch seared his cheek, boiled his skin. He should have recoiled, but did not.
He wanted to take her in his arms, to shrivel to ash, to kiss her with melting lips.
“You don’t have a chance. Temoc stopped his sacrifice.”
“I know. I kept him from killing my friend.”
“You’re too sentimental for your own good.” Her eyes were an ocean, luminous. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, either,” he said, and gave her his soul.
The heart is the spirit’s anchor, Temoc had said. Aquel and Achal hungered not for flesh, but for Quechal souls.
When Caleb bet in a poker game, a piece of him flowed into the game, into the goddess. Each player gave her a part of himself, and at game’s end she divided her favor among them according to their victories and defeats.
What if the goddess outlasted the game? What if she stretched through centuries, beyond any purpose she might once have served?
Living, she would grow hungry.
Perhaps the myth was true. Perhaps the Serpents existed before the Hero Twins found them, great beasts that broke the world with their madness. Perhaps not. Perhaps the Quechal threw two sacrifices into the heart of a volcano, and the sacrifices endured, and received sacrifices in turn. They clutched one another in the heat of their dying, and survived.
Caleb gave his soul to Mal, and through her, to the Serpents—his soul, and the souls he bore, so many that they carried him on a flood. There was no bargain, no quid pro quo. He streamed into Aquel and Achal, and became more.
In their diamond mouths, in their gleaming teeth, in their molten hearts, they received him. All were received. All lived. No, not lived—all endured, sleeping through centuries: every sacrifice, every victim, caught and one with the Serpents.
He felt the stone knife plunge into his chest ten thousand times, and ten thousand times his death cry rose over the chants of the priests, in High and Low Quechal and languages older still. The dying souls rose with their hearts, dreaming last dreams of a mother’s smile, of a coyote’s laugh at nighttime, a mug of chocolate, a victory dance, a lover’s embrace. Dreams fell into the Serpents’ mouths, and the Serpents ate them, and became them. Soul, accreted onto soul, accreted onto soul, down millennia.
When the sun died, the Hero Twins gave their hearts to the Serpents, became one with them, to save the world.
The Quechal were the Serpents.
The Serpents were Quechal.
Caleb was a thousand, a hundred thousand. He was the smile of Kopil’s lover on Sansilva Boulevard beside the pyramid of the Sun.
Somewhere, he heard Mal scream.
You can’t sacrifice other people anymore.
You have to sacrifice yourself.
Serpentine thoughts twined and spun around him, minds linking to minds. Aquel and Achal joined with the souls he had borne. Their hunger ebbed. He opened four immense eyes and stared out on a crystal world.
Mal burned within him, around him.
“Stay with me.”
She spoke through his mind, through all their minds. Voices in forgotten tongues cried out at her touch.
“The murderers, the Craftsmen, the rulers of this world, they tempt you with death, satiety and sleep. They will destroy this planet, and all life with it, unless we stand against them.”
She called to him, and he ached to follow her. He burned for her, with her, through her. His heat radiated from her skin, his lightning arced between her teeth.
Three thousand years of Quechal sacrifice lived in the Serpents. Dead generations woke to burn, to melt and mold and reforge. They were the world’s last defense, its guardians. Death bowed to their fangs.
“Fight,” she said. “Do not give in. Do not sleep. Victory is near. See our triumph.”
The Serpents’ rage flowered as she called, and flowed along channels she prepared. They would not sleep. She was too strong.
But Caleb could use her strength.
Months ago, drawing pictures on his skin in her tent, she had told him: battles of Craft are fought on many fronts. The world is an argument, and there are many ways to win or lose.
He could not fight Mal with her hooks caught in his mind. When she pulled, he would follow.
But he could follow in the manner he chose.
See, he echoed her, a whisper in the Serpents’ minds.