The Demon of the Air Read Free Page A

suggestion of the dancer he must once have been in his spindly arms and legs and even though the chalk hid the marks on his skin he had one obvious physical blemish. His ears stuck out of his head at a ludicrous angle, like wings.
    I watched him closely as we took our places in the procession. He shuffled along, making no response to the chatter of the woman walking beside him, with his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
    At Coatlan, he mutely accepted his bird arrow when it was pressed into his hands but made no use of it. That was not surprising: sometimes the sacred wine made the victims fight like wounded jaguars, but you never could tell what they would do. What struck me, as Handy and I led him back to his master with our ears still full of the warrior captives’ jeers, was the merchant’s indifference to losing his ransom. There had been enough cloth there to keep me for two years.
    Peynal’s arrival at the head of a crowd of panting followers stopped the fight and began the victims’ journey to the foot of the Great Pyramid, where the Emperor sat before a great crowd to watch the war-god receive his due.
    Our slave acted his part with the others as they ran or staggered four times around the pyramid’s base before lining up at the bottom of the steps. He watched in silence while Peynal’s bearer ran to the top, and the paper, cloth and feather image of the Fire-Serpent was brought down and burned. He said nothing as the war-god’s image was shown to the victims, and nothing as he was led to the foot of the Pyramid.
    It was only on the way up that things began to go awry.
    Shining Light, the victim and his bather mounted the steps side by side, with Handy and me behind them. I could not take my eyes off those absurd ears. The bather had fallen silent at last, but the merchant kept up a cheerful banter.
    â€œNot long now. How I envy you! The Flowery Death! To dance attendance on the Sun and be reborn as a hummingbird, a butterfly!
I spend my days scratching around like a turkey after corn, and when I die I will go to the Land of the Dead like every other wretched soul, but you …”
    â€œCan’t see it, myself,” Handy mumbled. “You could count to twenty on his backbone. He looks all in to me. I thought the merchants were choosier … Look out! There he goes!”
    The slave fooled us. Instead of running down the steps, and so blundering straight into us, or racing up them, where there was no escape and one of us would have caught him immediately, he broke sideways to dart across the face of the pyramid. He had gone ten paces before Handy and I were after him.
    The young merchant kept climbing, seemingly enjoying himself so much that he failed to notice that his offering had escaped. The bather just stared after her charge.
    â€œCome back here, you … !” Handy roared as he dashed after the sacrifice.
    We raced along the narrow steps with a hopping gait, each foot on a different level. The gods must have been laughing. It took an agonizingly long time for our quarry to run out of space and find himself looking out over the side of the pyramid from between two of the stone banner holders that lined the stairway. I knew he was going to jump.
    â€œListen to me, all of you!” he cried, as though the whole vast teeming city beneath him could hear. “It’s the boat—the big boat! Look for the big boat!”
    â€œWait!” I said, desperately. What could I tell a man who was about to die, no matter what he or I did? I tried to make out his expression, but against the evening sky and the lake shining in the sunset he was just a shadow with large ears.
    â€œYou mustn’t jump. You’re destined for the war-god—you heard your master, you’re going to join the morning Sun …”
    The Bathed Slave turned toward me then, twisting and stepping backward at the same time, so that he was poised on the edge of the