They saw the men when they were close to reaching Elmesak; they rode two by two and all six of them were decked in crimson.

Yalxi set the bedroll and the pack with their supplies down by the side of the road. She leaned on a gnarled walking stick, then drank from a hollowed gourd. She wore an old, gray cape, a white shirt, dark skirt, a wide green cloth belt around her waist. No jewels, except for the single pearl ring on her left hand. Her nahual, which had adopted the shape of a snowy white parakeet that day, perched on her shoulder, preening its feathers.

They’d seldom met other travelers since they’d begun their climb up the mountains. The shrublands and scattered grasses had given way to the shadow of pine trees and the kiss of the mist upon their skin in the mornings.

I hope those are not bandits, the bird told her as she sat on a rock.

“All dressed in the same color? I’d think it more likely they’re servants to a lord, though I know of no great houses in these parts.”

With our luck they are well-attired robbers, the nahual said. It really is quite foolish to be traveling on foot. We ought to procure ourselves a horse.

She’d never trusted horses. She’d grown by the great lake of Pechacuitze, chasing salamanders and watching the garter snakes as they nested on floating reed beds. There’d been no need for horses there, nor in the watery altepetl of Izcoacan, crisscrossed by canals, where she’d once been Mistress of the Sorcerers’ Guild. Besides, a horse would have been costly. In the Archipelagos they raised such beasts, but most of the Mainlanders were not fond of them, nor did they need them, seeing as their territory was marshy, governed by waterways. It was only when one headed north, beyond the boundaries of the land governed by the Five Great Altepemeh, that the terrain changed, first there were the stony, arid lowlands and then the mountain range. Minor cities dotted these steep peaks, and there were horses to be found in the mountains, along with donkeys and goats, but she was no farmer that she might have use for them.

I don’t even understand why we must head this far north.

“We must speak to Kabé.”

Really, Yalxi. The crack in the pearl is nothing. Only a tiny dent, you can hardly see it. And I’m feeling fine now.

Yalxi stared at the ring upon her index finger. The nahual was correct. The crack that marred the surface of the pearl was minuscule, just a delicate brown line that crossed its creamy white surface. But when the physical container of a nahual was damaged, the nahual was damaged too. And this in turn affected the wearer of the jewel. So far, the effects of the crack had been limited to a listlessness on the part of the nahual, and the need, for her, at times, to lean on the walking stick.

“Don’t you want to find ourselves a nice jewel for you to curl up in there?”

No. It’s quite uncomfortable when you leave one home for another.

“Then you remember your previous home?” she asked, surprised by the nahual’s words.

Of course not. You don’t remember being born, do you? Yet I’m sure you know it was painful and wouldn’t want to repeat the experience.

The riders were a few paces from them. Yalxi wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and pushed herself to her feet using the walking stick for leverage. When she was young, an itinerant sorceress on her way to the great city, she’d traveled in the shadow of the merchant caravans. It was much safer to move with the pochteca and their hired bodyguards, even if one had to spare a handful of coins for this privilege. But now it was her and the nahual only, both watching the riders curiously.

When they reined in their mounts and stopped in front of her. Something about them was unsettling.

“This road leads to the Temple of Azak-Klah and is under the supervision of the High-Priest Jiacim. Do you bring tribute to the temple?” one of the riders asked. Aside from being decked in red, he carried a short bronze sword with a garnet on the hilt. The other riders were armed with spears.

“I must have been misinformed, I thought this road led to Elmesak,” she said.

“Elmesak is under the temple’s protection and so are its roads. If you follow us, we’ll take you to the temple where you may pay tribute to Azak-Klah, receive a blessing, and proceed to Elmesak.”

She had not heard of Azak-Klah, but, unlike the Archipelagos where the cult of Zar dominated the islands, there were a myriad of gods and temples in the Mainland; some of them were even particular to specific towns. But these did not look like the priests she knew.

Their eyes made Yalxi wary. There was something alien and remote in them, an evasive quality that prickled her skin, repulsed her even. Those eyes were hollow.

“I am but a weary traveler with little to offer the gods. I must continue my journey to Elmesak without visiting your temple for I am unworthy of any blessings.”

“Even if your possessions may be meager, Azak-Klah is generous. Come, you shall be cared for at temple,” the man said, impatient.

Yalxi understood that this was no longer an invitation, but a demand. Yet she shook her head and smiled at the riders. “I have nothing to offer your god,” she said, as she gripped the walking stick with both hands.

“You must follow us.”

“Very well,” she replied.

She nodded meekly, as if she intended to walk behind the riders without complaint, but instead she tossed the walking stick at them, dashing away from the road and into the woods. The riders gave chase. She had some advantage, darting behind the trees to keep them at bay, but she knew the terrain would change soon enough allowing the men to catch up with her.

Behind her came shouts and the clatter of hooves. Her body protested, but she pressed on. The nahual flew above her head in its parakeet shape.

Move to the left! the nahual yelled.

Yalxi heard the loud snort of a horse behind her and threw herself to the ground, rolling to the left, and narrowly avoided a spear through the shoulder. She gasped and looked up to see a crimson rider reining in his horse to a halt and attempting to toss a net atop her.

Her left hand traced a hasty glyph in the air and the net went up in flames before the rider’s startled eyes. The horse neighed and reared up in such terror that the man tumbled off the horse with a violent thud. He let out a piercing scream that sent a shiver down her spine as he hit the ground. Then he scrabbled at the dirt while the horse thundered away.

She was out of breath, the quick dash through the trees straining her body, but more than that she felt that same ache she’d felt for weeks now, the ache which made her trek into the mountains in search of Kabé. No matter what the nahual said, the crack in the pearl was affecting its powers and in turn diminishing her own stamina.

The man still lay on the ground, feebly attempting to find his footing while Yalxi closed her left hand into a fist and called forth the nahual into the ring. She felt a jolt of power; the pearl was warm against her skin.

Three more riders stopped in front of Yalxi, their spears raised and ready to sink into her flesh. She took a clumsy step back and raised her hand, ready to trace a second glyph and unleash another spell.

All of a sudden, she sensed a bubbling and dispelling of power. It was like the violent cutting of a cord. The rider who’d fallen off his horse stood up and coughed. From his mouth rose a tendril of smoke. Then he snapped his eyes open, staring at the three men on horseback in utter fear.

“Where am I? What is happening?” he asked.

He looked to Yalxi, as though she might furnish him with an answer, then back at the men. Then a look of pure, blind terror spread across his face, rendering him almost speechless, so that his voice was a guttural sound.

“No,” he muttered. “No, no—”

The rider with the short sword turned to his companions. “Seize him,” he ordered.

The man who’d fallen off his horse ran, sobbing, looking half-mad, and the riders went after him. Yalxi took advantage of this distraction to stumble through the woods and in the opposite direction of the pursuit. Later, she carefully made her way back to the spot where she’d abandoned her walking stick and supplies. The riders were nowhere in sight.

Well, that was unpleasant, the nahual muttered as it settled on her shoulder again. Do you still want to head to Elmesak?

“We must. But we should avoid the main road,” she said.

Trudge through the forest, you mean.

“Yes.”

There might be more bandits in the forest.

“I don’t think those were bandits,” she muttered.

Bandits, kidnappers, evil minions. Who cares? It means trouble.

She brushed a strand of gray hair away from her eyes and contemplated the lonely road, wondering where the riders had come from and what they’d wanted. There was something sorcerous and anomalous about them, but they were not magic wielders.

“Come on,” she said as she picked up her walking stick.

Elmesak was a market town, austere and quiet, its houses huddled together as if attempting to repel the wind and the rain that characterized this region. The lodging house was made of wood and bark, its roof was curved in the style of the mountainfolk, and the entrance was covered with deer hides. It was small and gray, nothing like the great lodging houses of the Marshlands, like the communal house made of stone where she had grown up, bordered by an estuary that gleamed like silver.

Yalxi walked in, drenched and shivering, and saw corn husks braided together hanging from the rafters, as well as strings of onions and other food stuffs. There was a great roaring fire and three long tables, and she supposed on other occasions the lodging house might have been filled with customers and the smell of cooked food. It was sparsely occupied that evening.

Three men sat at one of the tables drinking forlornly. Behind a counter stood a gnarled woman with her white hair in a braid, and a young woman, also with a long braid down her back, tended to the fire.

Yalxi left a dripping trail of water as she walked to the counter and leaned tiredly against it.

“I need a bunk for the night,” she said, for in these parts they clung to the old ways, and rather than renting rooms travelers slept at the back of the communal hall, on raised platforms beds, with a space atop to stash their belongings.

“You can have your pick,” the old woman said and glanced in the direction of the beds. “There’s goat stew if you’ll have it.”

“The baths are open?”

“Yes. Will you go there first?”

“I’ll eat now,” she said even though it was not polite to proceed like this. Normally she might have cleansed herself from the grime of the road, but she could smell the stew and felt famished.

She went towards the beds. They were covered with wool blankets. She set her supplies and her staff down and hurried back to the area with the tables. She’d gnawed on chunks of dry meat for several days with nothing more than rainwater to wash them down, and the spellcasting had also ignited her appetite. Later she must feed the nahual, too.

A teenage boy, no more than fifteen years of age, set a bowl of stew and a clay cup filled with water before her. Yalxi eagerly began to eat. The boy lingered by her table, looking curiously at her. She supposed a dirty, boorish traveler who couldn’t be bothered to soak in hot water for a few minutes and scrub her body with bundles of grass was not an uncommon sight in a small town, but the boy kept staring at her.

“Yes?”

“Uh. Nothing. Would you like anything else?” he asked.

“I’m looking for the merchant Kabé. If you’ll point me in the direction of his house, I’ll be most thankful.”

The boy seemed startled by her words and scurried towards the white-haired woman. “She’s looking for Kabé!” he exclaimed.

The three men at the table turned their heads in her direction. The woman who was tending to the fire brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead with the back of her hand and stared at Yalxi. The white-haired woman stepped out from behind the counter, lips pursed. The teenage boy had retreated to a corner, as if shielding himself from a foe.

“Kabé is not here,” the old woman said.

“Where might he have gone?”

The old woman did not reply. The three men kept staring at her rather unkindly.

“Where do you come from?” one of the men asked. He was a burly young man with deep set eyes.

“East,” she said.

“What town?”

“I have no home.”

“You’re not mountainfolk. You cannot stay here.”

“It’s a lodging house, is it not?” she replied.

“Get out. Sleep in Kabé’s house if you want a bed.”

She smiled. “Have we set aside the accepted courtesies?”

“She’s probably one of them,” a man muttered.

“Yes, she probably is,” muttered the burly young man in return.

The woman who had been tending to the fire sprang to her feet. “Let her be,” she said. “She does not wear the red vestments.”

The young woman wiped her hands with a rag and shook her head. Then she sat at Yalxi’s table. “You must forgive them; we are all nervous.”

“I can’t blame them. I’ve met your red priests and they’re not too kind,” she said.

“You’ve met Azak-Klah’s priests?”

“I escaped them, to be more precise.”

The woman looked at her in astonishment. “Then you must be very quick and very clever.”

“Not much, these days, but I survive. Tell me then, who are they? I’d never heard of Azak-Klah or his High-Priest Jiacim before this morning.”

“Be thankful for that.” The woman shook her head and motioned to the boy. He returned to their table with a jug and two cups, then retreated.

“My name is Zhaida,” the young woman said as she poured a drink of fermented corn into one of the cups and offered it to Yalxi, who took it with both hands and raised it to her lips with a courteous inclination of the head. “Those are my grandmother and my little brother. We’ve run the lodging house for many years. People mine for obsidian in these mountains; they hunt, they tend to their goats, and when they come during the market days they stay here.

“They come from tiny hamlets perched at the side of the mountain, and the places that cannot even be called hamlets because they’re so small. Jamak is one of those hamlets. There was a young man from Jamak named Tiago who came to trade here occasionally. He’d bring bits of obsidian or deer skins. Bandits once roamed with impunity in this region, targeting the main road that takes you across the mountains, and their caches of treasure and supplies can still be found in caves. Most of it is useless, but the young man sometimes found knives or pottery that could be sold.”

Hear that? I was right to be wary of bandits, the nahual whispered smugly. If it had been corporeal, she might have smacked it.

“One day, he came to town with a curious story,” Zhaida said, and now she filled her own drinking cup and took a sip. “He’d stumbled onto a cave and inside that cave he’d found a statue, probably part of the booty of one of those bandits that plagued the mountains many years ago. The statue was smooth and finely made, and in the dark it seemed to glow a little. It was too heavy for the young man to drag with him, so he left it where he found it and spoke to the priest at the temple about his discovery. He assumed the statue might be worth a little money if they could haul it out of the cave, but its glow frightened him. He thought a priest’s blessing might be needed to ensure it was not cursed.

“The priest could not be bothered to make the trek, so one of the acolytes, Jiacim, set forth towards the cave. He surmised that the statue had once been placed in a niche and might have been one of the many mountain spirits the bandits venerated for good fortune. He decided to bring it back to their temple to take a better look at it and to properly bless it. The people of the town, curious about the find, took a peek at it, since Jiacim had placed it in the main reception chamber, with the other statues of gods.”

The burly young man who’d seemed so hostile to Yalxi kept looking in her direction, as if he wished to discover what they were conversing about. But he was too far away to hear any of the words spoken.

“Quickly Jiacim began to behave differently. He placed offerings of fruits and honey before the statue and encouraged the townspeople to join him in prayer to this new god which he called Azak-Klah. Many of them acquiesced. The young man from Jamak watched in shock as one morning Jiacim—with the assistance of the old temple priest, and the other acolytes—took out the idols of the gods from the temple and smashed them, leaving only the statue of Azak-Klah inside. It was then that he rushed into our town seeking assistance, for he thought that statue must indeed be cursed, and the acolytes had been driven mad.”

“And did your townspeople in turn rush to Jamak with hammers and mallets, ready to smash the statue to pieces?” Yalxi asked as she took another sip of her drink.

“Of course not. We had no idea what to think. Kabé and the village priest and his two acolytes went to Jamak to see if anything was amiss.”

“Why Kabé?”

“He has traded in witch-jewels and such items, and he’s well-learned.”

Yalxi nodded, one finger brushing against the ring with the pearl. “Well, then, what did they find?”

“They were invited into the temple of Azak-Klah and spoke to Jiacim and the acolytes of this new god, who praised the good-fortune Azak-Klah had brought them. Kabé and his companions returned to our town. It is not a crime to worship a mountain god, as I said, many a bandit or miner has made a shrine to the deities of a spring or a cave. The old priest who had presided over the temple was still around, assisting Jiacim, who had assumed duties as chief priest. It was a strange occurrence, but not without precedent.

“Yet soon the strangeness increased. People in nearby hamlets disappeared. One morning, our town priest and our acolytes vanished from their temple. We were in the midst of arranging for a search party when the priest and acolytes returned to Elmesak, clad in scarlet robes and riding atop horses. They’d joined the Temple of Azak-Klah and invited us to do the same.

“Many settlements now lay abandoned; its people have gone to join the cultists of Azak-Klah. For a time, our town was spared any further trouble, but recently several of our inhabitants have gone missing too. My mother…she vanished.”

Well, that was a tale, the nahual muttered. Ask for a second bowl of stew and we can forget all about it. Then you can feed me, and we’ll have a nice rest.

The young woman glanced down and took another sip of her drink. Something about the girl’s posture, her expression, reminded her of Itzyul, who had cared for Master Teotah’s doves. There was a certain frailty there, but also a strength she recognized.

Thinking of ghosts and past things again? You’re becoming nostalgic in your old age.

“And Kabé? Is he among the missing?” Yalxi asked, ignoring her companion who was snug inside the pearl ring.

The woman nodded. The three men had begun to play dice, and even though the burly young fellow still threw Yalxi a cautious look, they seemed content to seek distractions. Yalxi stretched her legs and rubbed the back of her head.

“You haven’t thought about going to Azak-Klah’s temple to see what is happening there?”

“A couple of people went and came back. They said there was much building happening in town. Jamak is near a quarry, and they’d been hauling large blocks of stone. But two days after our scouts returned, they disappeared. There have also been strange sights. A washerwoman said she saw one of the red priests floating atop a tree one evening, a hunter had a dream of a floating head that sprouted flames from its mouth, and others…they’ve dreamt strange dreams too. All of this must be a sign of witchcraft and we dare not anger these red priests.”

Yalxi drummed her fingers against the table. “You are content, perhaps, with letting them lure away unwary travelers.”

“Who might we summon for aid? It was the same when bandits governed these mountains, we stayed out of their way and survived. But Azak-Klah’s followers are more insidious than the robbers of old, and do not seem to respect any covenants. Kabé tried to understand who they were better than the rest of us, consulting his scrolls and books, yet he’s gone now.”

Gone, you heard? As should we, come morning, the nahual said.

“Will you take me to Kabé’s house?” Yalxi asked.

“If you’ll tell me who you are.”

“Yalxi,” she said simply.

“That’s a name, not a who.”

“We’ll see if you deserve a who after I see the house,” she said and pushed her chair back.

The young woman frowned, uncertain.

“Well?”

The clatter of the dice against the table seemed to propel Zhaida to her feet. The nahual hissed in Yalxi’s ear, irritated as they stepped out and away from the warmth of the lodging house.

Kabé’s house had an actual door, not a pelt covering an opening, though it was unlocked and gave way to them without protest. Inside, it was dark and Yalxi lit a couple of candles that she found upon a table and looked around the crammed quarters. Shelves that went from floor to ceiling were filled with bottles, vials, and random objects, and there were multiple chests and boxes littering every room, hallway, and corner. The house smelled of dried herbs and dampness.

“Kabé is very trusting to leave his house open like this,” she said.

“We all know each other. There are no mountain bandits anymore, and the folk from neighboring towns, when they visit, wouldn’t incur in discourtesies.”

Yalxi leaned over a desk that was covered with scrolls, pieces of paper, and moth-ravaged books. She found a folded page with a drawing showing a carving of a head and scribblings all around it.

“When Kabé went missing we tried looking at his notes to understand what he’d discovered, but we can’t read that,” Zhaida said. “We don’t even know what language it is.”

“It’s one of the two notation systems commonly used by guild sorcerers,” Yalxi said, bending over the paper. “Before becoming a merchant, Kabé trained in this art; he was a guild sorcerer. Although, he said he made a better merchant than an apprentice.”

“That is why we asked him to investigate this matter.”

Maybe that’s why they don’t steal from him. They’re afraid they’ll trigger a terrible booby trap and unleash a hungry wraith, the nahual said inside her head. Best be careful.

She’d sensed no dangerous wards, no special locks, but she nodded. The drawing had been made using a mixture of Kabé’s blood and a special ink, but this was done in an effort to curry luck or good fortune, not as a snare to capture the unwary. Her eyes scanned the paper carefully, dissecting each of the characters that had been written down.

“Can you read it?”

“Yes.”

“But that must mean…you are a sorceress?”

“Yes,” Yalxi said again.

“You don’t look it.”

“What do sorcerers look like?”

“They wear fine clothes and live in the Great Altepemeh and serve their lords,” Zhaida said confidently. Judging by her skeptical expression, Yalxi was far from the picture of refinement and power she expected.

Yalxi thought of the altepetl where she’d served as Mistress of the Guild of Sorcerers, atop a pyramid. She had dined on delicacies and commanded apprentices, met in the private chambers of her tlatoani where only the wisest and most venerable of advisors were allowed, and was swathed in fine silks and jewels. But such time had passed. It had been many years since she’d abandoned that existence, and knew she’d never experience such luxury and privilege again.

“Sometimes sorcerers travel the roads,” she said, as she finished examining Kabé’s sketch. “This is a drawing from Kabé’s memory of the statue that was found in the cave and taken to the temple. It’s just a head; the body of the statue was missing when it was found. Hold that candle, please.”

Yalxi opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out more papers while Zhaida held the candle up. Yalxi unrolled a scroll, then another.

“What are you looking for?”

“He consulted a few tomes. I’m trying to find one of them.”

At last, she uncovered a small book with a green leather cover and turned to a marked page. The writing in the book was a brown ink that had faded with age, making it hard to discern against the yellowing pages. Yalxi read the page carefully, then spoke up.

“There is an old story recorded here about a stone that fell to earth one night. Upon seeing it, a nobleman was compelled to make a statue out of it and ordered a team of carvers to complete this task. The statue was taken to the lord’s house where he spent all his days and nights gazing and praying at it, then commanded his staff to join him in this strange vigil. All manner of ills befell the community; farmers and common folk went missing, and corpses began littering the rivers. Evil had been unleashed upon the land.

“In despair at this state of events, nearby villagers managed to summon a magistrate who, with some assistance, arrested the lord and destroyed the statue, thus, restoring order to the lands.”

“Clearly they didn’t destroy it.”

“Jiacim found a head and no body, which means the mountainfolk tried to rid themselves of it, or perhaps they thought they had succeeded and somehow this…entity has persisted. ‘Deep beneath the evil was subdued,’” she said, reading from the book. “Deep beneath…the magistrate buried it, I think. One of these characters seems to represent ‘earth.’ Deep beneath the earth, perhaps. Since it was found in a cave, that might make sense. At least the part that survived was buried in an attempt to exorcise the entity; the body was perhaps destroyed.”

She pressed a finger against her mouth, pondering the book and its faded markings.

“What is the nature of this entity, then? How might it be vanquished for once and for all?”

Yalxi picked up the scroll with the drawing and looked at it again.

“Kabé was working on two theories. One was that the head they found was made of a stone that was accursed and inhabited by an evil spirit, a mikatetl. But I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because that ‘stone’ that fell from the sky was made of iron.”

Yalxi opened the green book again and pointed to a character. “This, it’s an older script, and Kabé misunderstood the meaning. They call it ‘stone,’ but the core of such stones is iron. Such an evil spirit would not be able to wrap itself around such substance. Iron repels them, just as it negates several types of Mainlander spell work. That is why, when the tlaca nepapantin arrived upon the shores of the Archipelagos they cut a swathe through their defenses.”

They might have cut a swathe through the Mainland, too, if the Five Great Altepemeh hadn’t allied themselves and formed the Confederation. Together they’d pushed back against the invaders and their exotic magic and weapons, their iron and glass.

“What was Kabé’s other theory, then?” Zhaida asked.

“That it is indeed a god,” she muttered. “He was beginning to get some funny notions in his head.”

She clasped the book shut and slid it back into the drawer. Then she grabbed the piece of paper with the drawing and folded it, pocketing it. The young woman looked at Yalxi and frowned.

“What will you do about it?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I’m guessing Kabé summoned you here, so you might help us.”

“Kabé sold me an object when I was a girl, and I need to know its provenance. I had no inkling of your woes until today.”

She looked around. She required the provenance documents for the pearl ring. But Kabé’s house contained so many papers and scrolls and drawers and boxes that she could search through it for a year and never find what she was looking for. Besides, Kabé might have hidden or protected such information. Spirit jewels were quite valuable. Just because his papers were not warded didn’t mean there were no secret caches around this abode.

“Well…now you know. You must assist us, of course,” the young woman said, with a certainty that made Yalxi smirk.

They stepped outside. The young woman followed her. She had the eagerness of a lap dog and the energy of a puppy. “We have no other hope, no other solution. You might not be a great guild sorcerer, but perhaps there’s something you can do,” she said, practically jumping up and down.

“I can sleep. That is what I can do. I need my rest.”

Back at the lodging house Yalxi ate more of the stew and drank the fermented corn drink before taking her bath. After she had scrubbed the dust and grime of the road, she washed her clothes, combed her hair, and changed into clean garments. Then she lay back on one of the low beds and slipped under the wool blankets. The large dormitory somewhat reminded her of the communal house where she’d lived as a child, though that had been made of stone, nestled on a small island that embraced the estuary, and it had brimmed with life and noise. The young men had left, and she was the single customer spending the night. Her only companion was a spider knitting its web in a corner, the only noise was the soft patter of the rain. She would have not enjoyed such privacy and silence growing up.

The nahual became a pale snake that wrapped itself around her arm and bit into her armpit. She let it suckle her blood and closed her eyes, her weary body felt rather light and insubstantial.

“What do you think might be haunting that statue?” she asked the nahual, after it had its meal and rested by her side, only an eye peeking out from under the blanket.

Why should we care about it? Kabé is not here so we should simply depart come morning, the nahual said lazily.

“Not without knowing your provenance.”

Who cares?

“I can’t place you inside a new ring unless we return to the place where you hail from. Like certain fish, you need to go back to your spawning grounds. You know this, you stubborn creature.”

The crack in the pearl is tiny, and it has hardly affected me. I spent over a decade locked away in that wall where you bricked me without the slightest ache. And you think a tiny crack would damage me in a terrible and unforeseen way? Such silliness. I’m fine, and if you are feeling ill, it’s because you’ve been bumping around the roads during the rainy season. No wonder. You’ve probably caught a chill.

The nahual was lying, and they both knew it, but there was no sense in arguing with it when it was in one of its moods. She slid a hand behind her head. “Fine, fine, but I’d still like to find Kabé and discover what is the matter with that statue. It can’t be a mikatetl, like he thought. He made a mistake when doing his research.”

Kabé was not the studious type, so why should his research be any good? I found him terribly dull. You were much more interesting.

“Was I, then?”

Oh, yes. Willful, interesting, and at times terribly annoying.

She smiled, thinking back about years long gone by, when she’d been barely out of girlhood and learning her craft, when the ring had been fresh upon her hand. Those had been rough, difficult years, but there had been a simplicity and a sweetness to them. She closed her eyes, letting the sleep wash over her, the snake curling by her side.

Something drifted and searched in the darkness, slipping through shadows, stretching out and attempting to touch her. Yalxi recoiled from the presence. It was formless, yet it somewhat resembled a red, burning eye which was fixed upon her, unblinking.

I see you, it whispered.

She heard the batting of great wings, felt a foul wind caressing her face. The entity beseeched her to look at it, and when she closed her eyes, she could still sense it nearby, like a flame in the dark, its radiance too bright to be blotted out.

See me.

But Yalxi knew that to gaze at the eye would be to be annihilated, and she pressed a hand before her face, willing herself away from it, turning in its opposite direction.

See me, the eye roared.

“No,” she responded, and now she pressed her forearm against her eyes, stubbornly shielding herself from the entity as the darkness around her bubbled, singed by the heat of its awful gaze. The red of the eye leaked towards her, eroding her defenses.

Yalxi, wake up, the nahual said.

She blinked her eyes open and was motionless for a second, her body numb, as if all feeling had drifted from it. Then she sat up in bed, her heart beating fast in her chest, and she drew in a sharp breath. She lifted a hand and brushed the hair away from her face as sensation returned to her limbs.

The nahual curled around her shoulders, protective and nervous, and she felt its smooth, cool scales against her skin. “What is it?”

Above us.

At first, she heard only the patter of the rain, but then came a creaking and a shuffling from the roof, as if someone was walking there. She stared at the beam running above their heads.

“There’s someone there,” she muttered and shoved the blankets aside.

Where are you going?

“To investigate.”

Yalxi, the snake hissed.

She slipped out of the lodging house, crouching low, and looked up. The rain made it difficult to see, but she glimpsed three figures in red walking atop the building. Then she caught sight of a fourth one who seemed to be hovering above the others, suspended in the air.

“Azak-Klah’s priests,” she said and was almost grateful for their presence. They were not that great, awful entity she’d felt in dreams, that eye that burnt the retina like a hot iron and beseeched her. These were merely men of flesh and bone just like her. The eye was made of a different substance, one she feared to comprehend.

She shivered, remembering the dream, and steeled herself. Fear would sour magic, weaken her. She could not let fear gnaw at her heart.

What do we do? the nahual asked.

“Place a ward, and hope they let us be,” Yalxi whispered, sliding back inside.

She took out her obsidian knife and made a cut on her arm, then drew a symbol by the entrance on the floor with her blood. She whispered a word and stepped back. The snake eyed the symbol wearily.

That’ll hardly be enough.

“Imbue it.”

Yalxi, it’ll tire me.

“It’ll tire me too; it is what must be. Tomorrow I’ll find a rabbit or something else for you to devour and you may drink again from me.”

I hardly had a nibble tonight.

“You’re greedy. Now, do as I say; imbue it.”

The nahual grumbled but uncoiled from her arm and pressed its tongue against the symbol she’d traced. The symbol glowed golden for a second and smoke rose from it, dissipating in the air. This would not work as a long-term ward. Yalxi would need more blood, and to sacrifice a mountain lion or another large animal. Its bones, buried in the foundations of a building, would ensure it was thoroughly protected. Though, of course, some more zealous sorcerers, like Yalxi’s old master, might say only human bones could provide sufficient fortification.

Well, it would have to do, at least for a night. There were, after all, four red priests, who might prove difficult to deal with. If she could keep them at bay, at least for now, she might have a few more hours of sleep, and a much-needed rest.

“Back to bed,” she told the nahual.

There was something with us in the room, before they arrived, the nahual said. Something far more dangerous.

“I know,” she muttered, remembering the presence that had hunted her in the dark. She did not comprehend its nature, but she sensed its power.

I do not like this, Yalxi. It bodes badly for us.

“It’ll bode even worse if we do not rest.”

The nahual hissed and the bone-white snake once again slipped around her arm and then settled around her shoulders, flicking its tongue in distaste. She rubbed its head with her fingertips, soothing it.

By the morning, the rain had abated. She stumbled into the common room, her long hair falling freely down her back, and sat down for breakfast. The old woman brought her a bowl of broth while Zhaida swept the floor. Her nahual was resting inside its pearl, cozy and content. After she filled her belly, Yalxi would be sure to feed it a decent meal.

She was about to put a spoonful of thin vegetable broth in her mouth when the men she’d seen playing dice stomped into the lodging house and glared at her. The boy who’d served her table the previous evening walked in behind them.

“I told you she was still here,” the boy said, pointing at her.

Yalxi ignored the men and concentrated on the bowl in front of her, but they came to stand by her table, arms crossed, glaring at her. At last, she raised her head and gave them a dismissive glance.

“Good morning to you,” she said.

“It’s not a good morning,” the burly young man said. “One of the villagers has gone missing. There is witchery in this place, and the likes of you are to blame for it.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Last night those red priests were here, lurking around this spot. You arrived yesterday. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“I know nothing of the priests’ business and intent,” Yalxi said.

“I saw her feeding a snake from her breast, like witches do,” the boy piped up.

Yalxi rolled her eyes. “From my armpit, you fool. It’s not uncommon with nahuales.”

“See! It’s true! She’s a witch,” the boy said proudly.

“Sorceress,” Yalxi corrected him.

“We want you out of here,” the burly man said. “Out you go.”

Yalxi put her spoon down and stared at the men. She drummed her fingers against the table. It was her mangled hand, four fingers, tapping slowly, and her gaze was sharp. It gave them pause. The men looked at each other, growing nervous.

“Perhaps we ought to leave,” one of them told the others.

“It’s my sister who’s disappeared. Witches like her are to blame for our misery,” the youngest man said. “You, get up!”

Zhaida dropped her broom and rushed to Yalxi’s table. “Stop it. She’s Kabé’s friend,” she said.

She grabbed the man who had spoken by the arm and attempted to pull him aside. But he would not be deterred. He ignored Zhaida, his eyes focusing on Yalxi, as if she were the only person in the room while the young woman babbled about stepping outside. Then he lunged at Yalxi.

Yalxi jumped up to her feet and stepped back, avoiding what would have been a nasty blow to the head if she had not anticipated such a move. Thwarted, the young man attempted to attack her again and she shifted aside quickly, dodging another blow. By then, the other two men ceased to be content with watching from the sidelines and both of them hurled themselves at Yalxi. Zhaida yelled at them, to no avail.

The burly one was fast and managed to shove Yalxi back with an open-handed blow that almost knocked her against the table. She was not used to strenuous physical activity, sorcery was her domain, but as an apprentice she’d braved a few brawls. Xellah, her longtime lover, had been at times a tad too impulsive and fond of seeking trouble, and she’d learnt a thing or two from his youthful confrontations. She might be able to handle this situation without the use of magic, which could be the best choice, seeing as her nahual was still tired.

I’m not tired, and you’ll never land a punch, the nahual said, snide inside its pearl.

“Who said anything about punching?” Yalxi replied, and she swiped the earthen bowl from the table and smashed it across the head of the burly man, who reeled back with a pitiful moan.

Not bad, the nahual commended her.

“Thanks,” she said, jumping on the table. The man she’d dodged initially now tried to grab a hold of her leg and pull her down onto the floor, but she kicked him in the face instead and sent him reeling away.

She climbed off the table, and the third man jumped forward, arms ready to seize her; she nimbly avoided his embrace, only to find herself standing before the very angry burly man, whose head was soaked in vegetable broth. With one heavy blow to the face, he knocked her half-way across the room. She lay still upon the floor and winced.

“I might need you after all,” she told the nahual, swishing blood inside her mouth.

Say please.

Yalxi stood up and spit on the floor; a tendril of red stained her chin. As he stepped towards her, the burly man looked as if he might attempt to crush her skull between his large hands, but she did not flinch, nor did she attempt to dodge this attack. Instead, she stood squarely before him and held up her splayed-open left hand.

The nahual leapt out of the ring in its serpent form and wrapped itself around the man’s arm, digging its fangs into his flesh. The man yelled in terror and began waving his arm in the air while his two friends tried to pull the snake off him.

Yalxi drew a symbol in the air and the three men were sent rolling back onto the ground. The snake uncoiled itself from the burly man’s arm as Yalxi stepped forward, her hand resting on the knife at her waist.

“Stop! Do not hurt them!” Zhaida exclaimed and ran to position herself between the men and Yalxi.

The three men lay on the floor, moaning in pain, while the boy ran to hide behind his sister, staring at Yalxi wide-eyed.

“Fools. I have no quarrel with your people,” Yalxi said and extended a hand, motioning to the snake. The nahual became mist and drifted back into the ring. “Let me be.”

She headed back to the bed where her supplies lay piled up. Zhaida followed her.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

Yalxi rubbed her jaw and shook her head. “To find Kabé so I can get off this damn mountain. I have no desire to sample more of your town’s hospitality.”

“You must forgive them. They’re afraid. We all are.”

“I don’t care. I must be going. Kabé has knowledge I require, and if he is in the hands of this cult, I will rescue him quickly and be done with this place.”

“I did not realize you were a true sorceress, with a spirit jewel. If I had known—”

“You might have told your brother not to set his friends on me?” Yalxi asked, as she pulled a leather strap tight and stared at the young woman.

“I didn’t know he’d do that! I told you: they’re afraid. Besides, you’re unharmed. Well…practically unharmed.”

“Yes, that makes it better.”

Zhaida observed Yalxi as she put on her cloak and tied her hair into a knot at her nape. “I can guide you to Jamak. I can even get us mounts. It’s a half-day’s ride if we take horses.”

“I’ll have no horses and I don’t need a guide. Simply point me to the town on a map.”

“But it will be faster if we have horses.”

“Horses mean following roads, and they watch the roads, as I found out when I was trying to get here. If I walk, I have more chance of going undetected,” Yalxi said, and she adjusted the tumpline across her forehead.

“Fine. We can walk. There are narrow trails that we can follow which will get us there. I must find my mother and you could use a guide.”

We’ll tumble down a ravine by ourselves, the nahual whispered.

“I can find my own way,” Yalxi said, to both the young woman and to the nahual, which objected with a quiet curse word.

Yalxi took a step forward, but the young woman blocked her way.

“Maybe you could use supplies, then?” she asked. “I have dry fish and dry meat and salt and apples. Good quality blankets and warm clothes that’ll keep the water off your shoulders, too. If you’ll be walking up the mountain for a whole day, you’ll need to be prepared. It’ll rain all afternoon today and you’ll be chilled to the bone. You don’t even have a proper hat, nor coat, like the mountain folk wear.”

Yalxi frowned. But their supplies had run laughably low, and the girl was correct that the incessant rain seemed to chill her to her very core. She looked at the young woman carefully and gripped her staff tight.

“You must stay out of my way when we reach the town,” she warned her. “I won’t be responsible for your well-being.”

“I will. I’ll fetch supplies,” Zhaida said. “I’ll be quick, I promise.”

Ask her for sweets, too, the nahual whispered and Yalxi chortled at its gluttony.

The clothing Zhaida secured for her consisted of a tightly woven hat and long coat made from the bark of the black spruce that grew in cool upland soils, bordering streams. It repelled the water, and together with a wool undershirt, warmed her as they made the trek up the mountain. Her limbs, though tired, soon found a rhythm and they proceeded at a decent pace, though the rain dampened Yalxi’s spirits. Near nightfall they made camp at a cave Zhaida was familiar with. It was dry and had an old firepit by its entrance.

“Goat herders rest here sometimes, when the weather is foul,” Zhaida told her.

“Fouler than this?”

“Yes. It’s not freezing rain falling from the sky.”

“It’s still foul,” Yalxi said. She was used to canoes and barges and canals. Even the swamps offered more comfort than this bitterly chilly mountain.

Zhaida handed her a handful of tiny, dried fish, and in turn Yalxi tossed a couple of fish to the nahual, which had morphed into the shape of a white cat.

“Do you really feed it blood?”

“Yes. I feed it blood and it gives me power in return. It’s the bargain each nahual inside a spirit jewel makes.”

Zhaida watched her as she stroked the cat’s fur. “It’s like a leech, then?”

The cat pressed its ears against its skull and hissed, offended by the remark. Yalxi laughed. “It would be an expensive leech. Spirit jewels can be quite coveted. Mine is not particularly remarkable, yet it’s probably worth a fair number of coins.”

The cat chewed on the fish, giving Yalxi a lofty look. You were not particularly remarkable when we met, my little urchin, it muttered. Yalxi threw it another fish as a balm to sooth its pride. Then she bit into a piece of bread, savoring its softness. The food was good, definitely better than what she would have scrounged on her own.

“What makes a spirit jewel remarkable?” Zhaida asked.

“Its provenance. If it was owned by a renowned sorcerer, it’ll be worth more money. You see, the relationship between a nahual and a sorcerer is symbiotic. Through time, a bit of the sorcerer’s spirit leaks into the jewel; it leaves traces behind. Jewels that have been worn by powerful sorcerers become more powerful for that reason.”

“You said you were in town to see Kabé about the provenance of an item you acquired as a girl. You meant the spirit jewel.”

Yalxi nodded. “Yes,” she said, tapping a finger against the smooth coolness of the little pearl. “I bought it from Kabé, when we were both following the same merchant caravan to Izcoacan.”

Back when she was about to become an apprentice at The Yellow House; back when she’d been green and raw. She had bent down to look at all the wooden boxes containing wispy nahuales, rings and bracelets of amethyst and quartz and amber. Necklaces of silver inlaid with jade. And there, almost like an afterthought, in a leather pouch: the circle of silver with the pearl. When she’d held it upon her open palm the nahual had stretched inside the ring and yawned and asked if she had a treat it might eat. Yalxi had laughed a girlish laugh, delighted by its cheek.

The nahual smirked, reliving the memory, and bit her finger playfully. Yalxi swatted it away and it rolled into the shadows, gnawing at its dry fish.

“Anyway, this spirit jewel has no great lineage. It had only one owner before me. Their name would be in the rolls, as well as the name of the jewel maker who forged the ring. That is why I need Kabé. Merchants such as him keep that information.”

“But if this jewel is not particularly valuable, why does its provenance matter?”

“Sometimes a spirit jewel is damaged and the nahual needs a new stone. But it can only transfer to a different gem in the place where it was first made. The place it originated from.”

“Kabé will tell you where your friend comes from, then?”

“Yes.”

“But why wouldn’t you know this already? If provenance is so important.”

Yalxi rubbed her hands together, warming them. The fire was small, its heat meager. “Sorcerers may know the name of the magic wielders that owned the jewels before them. But the place where a jewel was forged is secret, and only revealed in rare circumstances. It’s tradition.”

It was more than tradition. It was a safety mechanism. But the crack in the pearl gave her leeway to find her nahual’s home and transfer it to a new abode.

Though I am feeling fine, the nahual reminded her as it gobbled its fish.

“Then you’ve really come only for Kabé and Kabé alone. I was still hoping he might have sent for you; might have sent for help.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

The young woman handed her a gourd that they’d filled with fresh spring water on their walk up the mountain and Yalxi drank from it. She looked towards the mouth of the cave at the steady rain.

“Tell me more about the people who have gone missing,” she said. “Has there been a pattern to it? Only the young? Or the old? Mostly men? Women?”

“No pattern that I can think of. One morning you wake up and they’ve simply vanished. Their bed is empty, and they’ve left without a word. They’re there one day, gone the next.”

“Your mother, tell me about the day she went missing.”

“There was nothing to it. She was working at the lodging house, cleaning tables and tallying our food supplies. Come nightfall we went to bed and in the morning, she was not in her room. I knew what had happened,” Zhaida toyed with one of the small, dried fish, frowning. “She had bad dreams before she disappeared. I’ve had them too.”

“About a great, flaming eye that called to you?”

The woman raised her head in surprise. “Yes. How do you—”

“I dreamt about it, last night.”

“Last night I felt compelled to obey the eye, in my dreams I rose from my bed and meant to walk out of the lodging house. But then something stopped me. The eye was suddenly obscured.”

Perhaps Yalxi’s sigil had deterred the entity, or else it and the priests had found an easier victim. She couldn’t be certain.

“When the priests come into your town, how do they behave?”

“They don’t come to town often, though people see them on the roads outside of Elmesak occasionally. They’re always in their robes, speaking of their god and its might. We do our best to avoid them. They frighten us greatly.”

“They can fly, can’t they?”

Again, the woman looked at Yalxi in astonishment. She nodded. “I’ve never seen them myself, but others have spoken of such things. My mother said she saw them one night, perched atop the juniper tree that grows by the stables. Perched like birds upon it, and their eyes glowed red in the dark. But she’d been so tired, and she’d had such strange dreams.…I thought it was a nightmare. I suppose I wanted it to be one.”

Zhaida clenched her fists closed. “She’s been gone for a fortnight. Sometimes the ones who go missing, they reappear, decked in red robes, preaching about Azak-Klah,” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s all my fault, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“The young man from Jamak who came to trade here occasionally, who found the statue and summoned the priest…he was my sweetheart. When Tiago saw the statue, he was frightened because it glowed and he told me he never wanted to look at it again, but we don’t have much money and if it was worth a few coins that meant we might be able to hasten our wedding.”

The old trick of cursed treasure, the nahual said smugly. Greedy robbers often end up stirring ghosts in cobweb-covered chests, and then they have the gall to complain about it.

Yalxi shushed the nahual with a motion of the hand. She appreciated its prattle, for the most part, but he could be quite distracting. Quite needy, too. Always wanting attention, wanting eyes fixed on it, ears wide open to listen to its thoughts. But she needed to listen to what Zhaida had to say, even if the cat gave her one of its indignant looks and began pacing back and forth around the small cave.

“So, you told him to return to the cave with Jiacim.”

“I thought Jiacim would bless the statue and Kabé might be able to find a buyer for it and we’d share the money. It was my folly,” the young woman said earnestly. “Tiago’s gone now, and so is my mother.”

“Then he went missing first.”

Zhaida nodded. Her nervous eyes darted towards the cave’s opening and the pouring rain. Around her shoulders she adjusted a woolen blanket, clutching it tight.

“I thought I saw him once, wearing those red robes. He was riding with two other priests, and I hid between the trees. But it might not have been him. He might be dead. My mother might be dead, too.”

“They could be unharmed,” Yalxi said, and remembered the rider she’d pulled from the horse and the feeling of dispelling power that had accompanied his fall. He’d been thoroughly confused afterwards. The other villagers might be in a similar state. Whole, though under a spell.

She did not dare to offer any more comfort than that to the girl and when the young woman cried, Yalxi stirred the fire with a stick, listening to its crackle, waiting for her tears to dry out. She’d never been one for kindness. Itzyul had been kind; even Xellah could summon sweeter feelings. Yalxi endured. That was her greatest virtue. Eventually, Zhaida sniffled and stared at the sorceress.

“Have you faced anything like this before?”

“I don’t truly know what I’m facing. Not yet,” Yalxi said. “But we’ll soon find out and see what evil ails your mountain.”

“Kabé said he once knew a girl who became a great sorceress. Mistress of a Guild. In a beautiful altepetl, beyond the Marshlands. In Izcoacan. Are you that sorceress?”

“I owe no allegiance to a guild,” Yalxi said simply. Izcoacan was far behind her, and she had little interest in waxing nostalgic about it. There was nothing sadder than an old sorceress talking about her days of faded glory. Though she was not quite old, not yet. She was forty-four, and still had a few years ahead of her, even if the lives of sorcerers burned bright and fast. Yes, she still had a future ahead if she could transfer her nahual to a new ring.

The past was dust, the future remained.

She motioned to the nahual. At first it was reticent, still bristling at her. But then it yawned and walked back towards Yalxi, with the sleek, moody indifference of a cat, one moment peeved, the next purring. She grabbed her obsidian knife and made a small cut on her arm without flinching. She carried many scars across her body, some faint, shallow cuts, and others deep. But the deepest ones could not be seen with the naked eye.

Zhaida winced. “What are you doing?”

“It’s a special blade, for spell crafting. Obsidian works best, but I also have a bronze knife. I must draw a sigil to protect us during the night.”

As she spoke, she traced a symbol at the cave’s entrance, then whispered the proper word. The cat rubbed its head against Yalxi’s open palm, then pressed its tongue against the marking and it glowed as hot as a coal, smoke coiling up in the gloomy cave.

“It’ll keep the red priests at bay?” Zhaida asked, amazed by the display.

“I think it will, though we should take turns keeping lookout. If you don’t mind, I would like to rest first,” Yalxi said.

“I don’t mind,” the girl said quickly.

“I thank you,” she said, and she meant it. She must marshal her strength. It might soon be needed.

I still say I do not like this, Yalxi. We should leave this mountain and its people, the nahual whispered.

“I must find Kabé,” Yalxi whispered back.

But what will that cost us?

She had no answer, but her apprehensions regarding Azak-Klah did not compare to her agonized fear that she’d be left without the power of her nahual. She would not survive, not on her own. Yalxi unrolled her woven mat and lay down. She thought of the great pyramid where she’d been a mighty sorceress, of her faithless lover who had betrayed her, and the roads she’d traveled since then. The memory of the diamond pectoral also surfaced, and for a moment she felt the pull of nostalgia and want, remembering its power. But she’d rid herself of the diamond, and now all that remained was her nahual in the pearl. She could not lose this too.

The nahual snuggled by her side and they both stared at the fire.

The rain had stopped by the morning. Zhaida did not think it would rain again until late in the evening and Yalxi was grateful for this small reprieve. They trudged through a muddy trail that was barely a trail, wild and untamed. The branches above their heads were cloaked in moss, and more moss carpeted the ground. Tree trunks and rocks were encrusted with lichen. The foggy air seemed to breed all manner of mushrooms. They proliferated on fallen logs, or by the roots of trees, ranging in colors from a ghostly white to a deep crimson. The Uplands were alien to her, their quiet jewel-green beauty made her pause and stare in admiration.

Then, after winding down that narrow, forgotten back trail they suddenly stood with a view of a large clearing below, and in that clearing a village, which resembled Elmesak in its wooden structures, streets, and general layout. Except for a most astonishing sight: a giant, pale stone head that floated in midair.

The head was enormous. It was the width of five, perhaps six houses, and several stories tall. It levitated above a wooden platform, with ladders and staircases that seemed to offer access to its interior.

This would have been enough to amaze any onlooker, but the head was even more astonishing due to the fine detail of its construction. The stone used to craft it was of a creamy white, which suggested the smoothness of mother-of-pearl, ethereal, almost iridescent, and yet at the same time Yalxi had the disturbing feeling that the edifice absorbed the light around it.

Although it must have been rather heavy, this temple—and she had no doubt it was a temple—floated as airily as a bubble of soap upon the village. It did not give the impression it was a cumbersome burden, nor that the material it was made of was ordinary stone, or even wood.

The head was bald and carved with such exquisite care that it gave the semblance of life. Its ears were finely shaped, the lobes pierced in the manner of great lords. The lips were half open, as if about to draw breath or issue a command. Perhaps the latter, for it had an arrogant, powerful expression that urged the onlooker to bend the knee.

But the eyes! The eyes were the most astonishing sight. If the head was life-like, then the eyes were intolerably alive. Something about the lids, the way the eyebrows were sculpted—perhaps the suggestion of pupils, of irises, the way they caught the light and glowed—burnished the eyes with an eerie power.

There was a third eye, too, upon the smooth brow. This eye was closed, the lid firmly shut, yet it unsettled Yalxi more than any other element of the majestic construction, an involuntary jolt of nervousness rippling across her body. Her nahual was also uneasy. Perched upon her shoulder in its monkey shape, it hid its head against her nape.

“By the gods! How is such witchcraft possible?” Zhaida asked, her voice brittle with fear and wonder.

“We’re about to find the answer. Come along,” Yalxi said, leaning on her walking stick. “Help me take this off, we’ll have to leave our supplies here. There’s no sense in lugging a blanket and dry fish with us.”

She thought the girl might protest and offer instead to stay behind to watch their supplies, but Zhaida nodded and assisted Yalxi, then Yalxi helped the young woman undo the ties on her pack. They hid their belongings by the base of a gnarled tree and surveyed Jamak.

From their vantage point, the town looked quiet. No smoke rose from the buildings, no noises drifted in their direction, no sentries went about. Yet they moved with the utmost care, until it became obvious that it was unnecessary: The town was abandoned.

They poked their heads into houses and buildings, only to find them carpeted with dust. A large stable with many horses seemed the only structure with any living creatures inside. Otherwise, one would have thought the entire population of Jamak had vanished.

“We must find Kabé,” Yalxi said, and she took out the piece of paper with the drawing of the head. “Come, help me locate him.”

You must be joking, the nahual said.

“This belonged to him, you should be able to sniff him out with it.”

Hair, nails, teeth. Those would be useful if attempting to locate the man.

“He drew this with his blood.”

Watered down blood. You know how it goes, Yalxi. If I had more time, perhaps I might be able to trace him, but like this?

The nahual was correct, but Yalxi was not ready to admit it. They’d once found her old Master using a chipped off fragment from a jewel, but a jewel is different than teeth or bones, and paper with dried blood is far from either.

“You simply want to avoid going in there.”

Obviously!

“What is happening?” Zhaida asked, looking in confusion at her.

“My nahual is a coward, that is what is happening,” Yalxi said.

Let me have it, the white monkey said and snatched the paper from her hands. It showed her its teeth, irritated at her words.

It pressed the drawing against its mouth. After a minute passed, the monkey handed it back to Yalxi, moved towards the wooden platform, and began climbing it.

Well? Are you coming? the nahual asked mockingly.

Yalxi turned to Zhaida. “It bids us follow it. It’ll take us to Kabé.”

The monkey had an easy time climbing the stairs, but Yalxi struggled. Not only did she have to keep hold of her staff, but the entire structure seemed rickety and liable to collapse under her weight. She wondered why it was even there if the priests could fly up and down into the temple. She guessed that it had been used during the construction of the building. Or else, they couldn’t fly that high or that far. Like chickens or peacocks, they lacked such endurance. Maybe they hopped from tree to tree when they traveled between villages at night. That they kept horses and roamed the roads on them bolstered this theory.

Magic, after all, had a price. No sorcerer would wield it every moment of the day, nor employ it for mundane errands. It must be like this for the red priests: They reserved their energy for important tasks.

Up they went, with Yalxi leaning heavily on the wooden banister, until they reached a circular opening. Narrow notches had been cut on the sides of this passageway, enough to rest hands and feet upon them, and the monkey climbed up with a mocking ease while Yalxi caught her breath. It was pitch black up the opening, and Zhaida hesitated.

“We don’t know where it leads,” she said.

“We won’t find out by standing here.” Yalxi took a leather strap from around her waist and tied the staff to her back to allow her to climb up, then she looked up at the opening. “Can we have light, please?”

Are you afraid of the dark now? the nahual asked, still miffed at her, but it turned into a firefly all the same. Its glow was brighter than that of an ordinary insect, as bright as a torch.

“Cloak us,” Yalxi ordered.

As my lady commands, it said and their clothing glowed, making the girl gasp.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Yalxi said. “It’ll conceal us from sentries.”

“They won’t know we’re here?”

“You don’t always know at first when you’re falling ill, do you? Though eventually you might develop a fever.”

“That’s not entirely reassuring.”

The glow died away, the protective spell now binding them, and Yalxi shrugged.

The firefly flew above their heads, tracing lazy circles as they climbed the shaft. Soon they reached another passageway, one that was walkable.

The walls were smooth, made from that pale stone that resembled alabaster or mother-of-pearl, and as the firefly went forth, its light created strange sparks of color, traced wispy shadows and iridescent points that seemed terribly unnatural. For, even though there was light, this light was not truly reflected at them and instead was swallowed, obliterated, by the stones on the walls.

At one point she rested against the wall and recoiled. The stone was cold, almost freezing under her fingers, but more than that she had the sensation that she was standing in a tunnel that had not been carved by human hands but instead smoothed by some other process the same way the burrow of an earthworm or a spider is hollowed out, movement eroding and shaping its walls. And even as her hand rested lightly upon the stone, only for a second, she had a horrible feeling that she was traversing the belly of a beast, moving through its limbs and arteries.

In addition to this, the tunnel was awfully narrow, and the walls seemed to press upon them with vicious delight. The smoothness of the flagstones under their feet made their steps almost soundless, granting their trek an even eerier quality as all sounds were muffled. On and on the tunnel they followed extended, turning right and then left, but never ceasing. They ought to have arrived at an opening, an exit, yet this was not the case. She had a thought that they were traveling in circles, or that the passageway kept rearranging itself. Zhaida must have thought the same, for she rested her back against the tunnel and shook her head.

“It’s useless,” Zhaida said. “We’re in a labyrinth.”

“Every labyrinth has an entrance and an exit.”

“But this one is made with magic.”

“There’s still an exit. What is the matter?” she asked the nahual, which flew up and down, glowing bright.

Everything, it muttered, irritated.

“Does something bar the way?”

Not quite. No. And yet it’s dreadfully difficult to get a sense of Kabé. I warned you about this.

“Shouldn’t we turn around?” Zhaida asked.

“Never. Are you too cowardly to see this through? You ought to have said so when we were in town, now it’s too late. I can’t take you back outside.”

“I’m not too cowardly,” the girl said, and she pressed away from the wall, her anger emboldening her. “But it does us no good to keep walking in circles. If you know about mazes, then you ought to know a way to cheat your way out of one. You and your nahual are supposed to wield magic. Show me some of it.”

“You shall see,” she said, and something in her rabid certainty amused the nahual, who laughed at her. “Shush. Cloak and hide us.”

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, in case you hadn’t noticed, it muttered irritably.

Yalxi undid the straps tying her walking stick to her back. She slammed the stick down with her left hand and closed her eyes, muttering an incantation. She felt the edges of power, like sensing an obstacle in the dark, and pressed her staff down harder, making the tiles groan under her punishing blow. Then she opened her eyes and the firefly alighted itself upon her ring. The spangled reflection of the firefly’s glow was like a knife rending an invisible veil.

And still whatever safeguards and spells protected the halls of the temple held true, held hard, as her magic cut through them like cutting through flesh. She slammed the walking stick down again, the sound echoing around the passageway. The firefly glowed so brightly it seemed like the spark from a pyre.

Even though the walls of the tunnel did not truly reflect its luminescence, even though they seemed to absorb light, they wavered like wax beneath the onslaught of a flame. She struck the floor a third time and spoke a word and traced a sigil with her free hand. When her walking stick struck a smooth, polished tile, a chunk of it broke off.

There, the nahual said. Over there.

It zoomed forward and they followed quickly. At last, the tunnel seemed to change, giving way to a spiral staircase and then to another passageway, though this one was wider, and although it was made of white pearlescent stone, it did not have the oppressive, disorienting quality of the tunnel they’d come through. At one point they walked across a walkway, and she saw above them a tall cupola held together by what looked like the ribs of an enormous creature and below a myriad of intricately carved ivory columns, as pale as bone.

Once again, they reached a flight of stairs and descended them. She almost lost her footing and Zhaida helped her regain her balance. She looked worriedly at Yalxi.

“Do you need to rest?” Zhaida asked.

She was practically breathless, and there was a punishing pain in her chest. In truth, she’d exerted herself. She’d bled herself twice in a short period of time and feasted only on dry fish and water. This, plus the trek through the tunnel, might not have been enough to render her so feeble and faint, but the temple seemed to be having a rather noxious effect on her. She suspected that even though she’d managed to hack her way through the maze, whatever sorcery imbued the stones in this temple was affecting her in a most disquieting way. She still had that pernicious feeling that she was moving through the body of a living creature, traversing an atlas of muscle and bone.

“I think we’re close,” she muttered, and pressed on.

Just a few paces later they stumbled onto it: the door to the dungeons.

They walked by narrow cells with bars made of silver. The people standing inside them were dressed in red shrouds, similar to the garments of the priests, though much simpler in their construction. The prisoners stood still, staring blankly ahead. A few seemed more aware of their surroundings and tiredly raised their heads but couldn’t muster much energy to do anything except look up and down at the floor again.

The firefly flew ahead of the duo, glowing bright, and finally stopped in front of a cell. Kabé sat inside it. She had not seen him in many years, and for a moment she did not recognize the man she was looking at, with an unkempt beard, gray hair, and deep wrinkles upon his forehead. Then he glanced up, and his eyes remained much the same.

“Kabé,” she said and to the nahual she also spoke. “Uncloak us before our friend but keep us hidden from prying eyes.”

With pleasure, the nahual said, though it sounded tired.

Kabé had been sitting idly, like the other prisoners, staring at a wall, but at the sound of her voice he sprung to his feet. He turned as the nahual revealed their presence and those dark eyes of his widened in surprise.

“Yalxi! Of all the people in the world, Yalxi!”

“Kabé the Quick,” she said, a note of warmth in the nickname.

“Not as quick anymore, I’m afraid,” he said. “And I’m rather in a dire predicament. No, don’t get closer. I think you’ll find the bars of the cell are bewitched, touch them and you’ll be hurt.” Kabé noticed her companion and smiled. “Zhaida! The gods are good; I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“The gods are good indeed. Where are the others from the village? My mother? Tiago?”

Kabé shook his head. “It’s difficult to explain.”

Yalxi looked at the silver bars of the cell, and the walls of it, which were made of the same white material as the rest of the temple. Lines of power danced before her eyes. Applying any of the usual sleight of hand and picking the lock would be futile.

“Your mother is a red priestess now. She has looked at Azak-Klah, into the all-seeing eye and been burnt by it.”

Yalxi paused her inspection and stared at Kabé while the firefly rested upon her ring, upon the pearl. “What is the all-seeing eye?”

“I cannot say what it is, Yalxi, for I scarcely could begin to understand its nature. When the priests lure or capture their victims, they bring them before the statue of Azak-Klah and the statue opens its third eye and looks at them. The visions it imparts are horrifying, and even more horrifying is that a part of you seems to be burnt away as you look at it. As if a piece of your soul was caught in its retina.”

Kabé shook his head, pausing to look down at his hands. “No one can resist the eye for long. I’ve stood thrice before it. Perhaps my knowledge of spells has shielded me from its gaze, or else something in my innate constitution managed to repel it a little…physical pain seems to offer some degree of protection against it, muffling its power. But I know if I am placed before it a fourth time, that I will be lost.”

Yalxi recalled her dream and the awful vision of the eye and that sensation that to look at it would be annihilation.

Well, then, perhaps we ought to get going, the nahual said. They’ll know we’re here soon enough.

“We’ll get you out, Kabé,” she said, while the firefly buzzed nervously in her ear. She swatted it away. The lines of power were as firm and unbreakable as before, but Yalxi cocked her head. Around Kabé’s neck there was a thin chain and from that dangled a pendant with a stone. It was his spirit jewel.

She pointed at it. “You can still cast spells, then? They haven’t shackled you in some way?”

“I cast only the most basic spells, Yalxi. These days I’m a merchant and somewhat of an amateur scholar, not a true sorcerer. If I’d had access to a clever spell, I would have used it.”

“I don’t need a clever spell, simply a protective safeguard. Can you armor yourself against fire?”

“Well…yes, I suppose I can. Briefly.”

“Then do so,” she said, and she turned to the young woman. “Step back.”

She drew a symbol with her left hand while the nahual perched itself on her shoulder. Then she whispered words of power, words for fire and for brimstone. Kabé, understanding what she was after, pressed himself against the far end of the cell and began muttering incantations of his own.

The bars of the cell began to glow, white hot. Then sparks flew in the air, one here, another there, burning and extinguishing themselves in a second. The glow became more intense, and the sparks accumulated. Even though they were shielded from the might of the spell, and even though this was no normal metal that you’d find melting in a crucible, still there was danger and heat.

Gently, the bars began to bend. The silver trickled down to the floor, forming rivulets and puddles, which extinguished themselves immediately. In another minute, all that was left of the door that had barred Kabé’s cell was a faint black line upon the floor.

Yalxi clutched her walking stick, feeling lightheaded. The cells were quiet; the prisoners still huddled in their spots, indifferent to the magic that had taken place, if they had even noticed it.

Kabé hurried out of the cell and clapped her shoulder excitedly. “My, you’re formidable! Quick, we must find our way out of here before those priests come looking for us!”

“What about my mother? And the others?” Zhaida asked.

Something is stirring, the nahual warned her. I can’t cloak you forever.

“We’ll discuss how to assist them once we are out of this temple, but we won’t be able to do anything if we are caught in these cells,” Yalxi said.

“We can’t just leave them!”

Yalxi grabbed the woman by the arm, her fingernails dug unkindly into her flesh and the girl gasped. “I told you not to get in my way. You can come with Kabé and me, or you can stay behind. It’s your choice, make it quick.”

Zhaida pulled away from Yalxi and rubbed her arm. She felt sorry for the girl, for the pain she’d endured and the disappearance of her family and friends, but they must move and quickly.

Zhaida clapped her mouth shut and nodded.

They went back the way they’d came. Once again, Yalxi had the sensation that they were caught inside the body of an animal, rushing through its arteries. This time the feeling was more intense. The walls weighed heavily around them, oppressing their heart, and even the little nahual, in its lithe firefly form, was overwhelmed for a moment.

It’s trying to find us, the nahual said. I can’t—

“I know,” Yalxi whispered. “Come on, we’ll best it.”

They kept going, moving as fast as they could. The hallways continued to shift and change, as they’d done before, but there now was a frenetic energy to their reconfiguration. The temple was aware of their intruders and sought to stop them. Yet she sensed they had almost reached an exit, an escape.

The hallway they were following opened onto a large chamber with a high ceiling. Above their heads there were balconies decorated so finely that their carvings seemed made from lace, bone-white, unnatural in their perfection.

There, her nahual said triumphantly, that’ll lead us out of here.

“That way,” Yalxi told her companions and pointed at an archway at the other end of the chamber, also finely decorated with those lace-like patterns.

As they rushed across this chamber Yalxi felt the stirring of a power around the room, running down the tiles beneath their feet, as if the giant beast that they inhabited now stretched out its body: They’d been found.

Four red-clad figures that had been hiding in the recesses of the bone-white balconies descended from above. In the perfect whiteness of the room their red clothing seemed like blood upon snow, and their appearance was even more disquieting than when she’d first met them on the road. Their eyes, as they looked at them, had that revulsive hollowness that had made her flee them, but now that revulsion was augmented, perhaps echoed, by the temple.

One of them spoke in a calm, monotonous voice.

“Jiacim orders that you be brought before Azak-Klah,” the priest said. “Will you respectfully oblige?”

They floated and moved with the sleekness and ease of a shark through water. They carried a spear in one hand and daggers at their waist. Just as before, she was aware that these were not sorcerers, and despite their peculiar capacity to glide upon the air, they could not cast a spell. But their weapons looked mightily sharp and, hovering as they did above them, they had the advantage and might skewer them.

“I think not,” Yalxi muttered.

Thin daggers rained upon them, four blades wheezing through the air. Yalxi raised her walking stick and batted away two of the projectiles. Zhaida dodged the dagger intended for her, and the other dagger nicked Kabé, who let out a wild, outraged yelp.

“Keep moving. Go!” she ordered, and her nahual was a pinprick of light that clung to her shoulder, the little firefly watching the commotion.

One of the priests stared at her and raised an arm, as if to toss his spear at her, but before he could, Yalxi leapt forward and hurled the walking stick at him instead, sheer fury bolstering her arm. The stick hit the priest in the face, and with such violence that he lost his balance and flayed wildly, falling to the floor.

When she’d knocked a red priest off a horse there’d been a dispelling of magic, as if a spell ceased to clutch the red priest in its thrall. Yet on this occasion, the priest simply shook his head and rose again, floating up. It would not be as simple as that.

Kabé, despite clutching his injured arm, had almost reached the archway that led to the outside and Yalxi urged him on. Another priest threw a spear at her, but she’d glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye and made a motion with her left hand. In a second, her nahual became an eagle and plucked the missile with its strong talons, hurling it back at the attacker with a contemptuous glare. The priest, surprised, dodged the spear instinctively, spinning up in the air.

Kabé had already ducked through the archway and Yalxi followed him, pausing as she reached it to look behind her. Zhaida was in the middle of the chamber. She was attempting to outrun one of the red priests, but another one floated down and stood before her, barring the way, and pressed the tip of its spear against her neck, so that she remained in place, not daring to move a muscle. The girl looked at Yalxi in despair.

“Jiacim orders that you be brought before Azak-Klah,” the same priest who had spoken before said. In his hands he carried a net, and he hovered in the air, staring at Yalxi. “Will you respectfully oblige?”

Yalxi’s hand rested upon the archway, and she knew that she could outrun these men, she was too close to the exit to be detained and they were busy surrounding Zhaida. She could leave her behind. She had not made promises to this girl, and Kabé awaited her outside. Kabé was who she had come for. But she remembered another girl she’d known, who cared for doves, and who’d been felled by a sorcerous blow. Yalxi had been selfish in her youth. Yalxi was no longer young.

The girl looked at Yalxi with her wide, scared eyes and Yalxi cursed under her breath.

“Fine. Let us meet your god,” she said and walked back towards the center of the room. A net dropped from above, ensnaring her. She allowed it and bowed her head while her nahual returned to the pearl.

They did not place them in the cells with the other prisoners. Instead, their wrists were restrained with a sturdy rope made of pale fibers, and they were marched into an antechamber where four guards watched them, their hands upon the pommels of their bronze swords. They did not bother removing Yalxi’s obsidian knife—which was cleverly concealed within the folds of her clothing—nor the knife that was easy to discern at her hip. They did not touch the pearl ring upon her finger. Of course, with her hands restrained, palms pressed together, any spell work was practically impossible. Besides, she had the impression that they let her walk around with her weapons and her ring because they were secure in their power. Should she escape, they must wager she would not get far.

Eventually, they were ushered into another room, festooned with white tapestries stitched with geometric designs of silver thread. From the ceiling hung metal lamps that held a phosphorescent substance that illuminated the room, and there were two large receptacles with a burning resin from which curled thin tendrils of white smoke. Like the other rooms and hallways in the temple, despite the bright whiteness all around them, she had the sensation that light was absorbed and never reflected in this place.

Below one of the great lamps, a man sat upon a white chair carved from pale wood, inscribed with symbols Yalxi did not recognize. His robes were that same startling red as those of the other priests, though different in their cut, more lavishly decorated, fringed with jewels. He was quite the magnificently dressed priest, infinitely proud, though young. Very young. Twenty-something, perhaps, and before his glorious rise to power as the head of Azak-Klah’s temple, Yalxi suspected he’d been nothing but a fresh-faced acolyte who spent his mornings scrubbing the flagstones of the temple.

The young man motioned to an attendant priest, and the priest discreetly stepped aside and exited the room through a side door.

The priest raised his eyes and stared at Zhaida. “I am Jiacim, High Priest to Azak-Klah. I welcome you to our temple. Who might you be?” he asked.

He spoke in a soothing manner; no harsh words escaped his mouth. Oh, how temperate he looked. Kind, even. He had the coolness of a lotus resting upon the still surface of a pond, the sleekness of a quetzal in repose.

“Zhaida. I come seeking my mother,” the girl said, and there was a note of rebellious courage in her voice that made Yalxi smirk. “She was kidnapped by your priests.”

“She serves Azak-Klah and therefore has not been kidnapped by anyone. Those who serve Azak-Klah do it willingly.”

“Then why do you keep people in cells? Why are we in restraints?”

“Sometimes people are not ready to receive Azak-Klah’s knowledge. They must see clearly before they are blessed by our god.”

“We don’t want your blessing.”

“From the cold and the dark Azak-Klah came, to bring light and wisdom. Won’t you receive his gift?”

“We wish to leave.”

“Do you, then? Will you abandon the ones you seek? You’ve come searching for two people have you not?”

“How do you—”

A door slid open, and the attendant priest walked in again. Two figures accompanied him, both in long red robes. One was a middle-aged woman and the other a young man. They moved with a smooth quietness, faces blank.

“Mother! Tiago!” Zhaida exclaimed.

Her joyful cry of recognition went unanswered. Both the woman and the young man were branded with the repulsive blankness of Azak-Klah’s followers, eyes on the floor.

“Greet this wayward child,” Jiacim ordered.

The woman and the man raised their heads and looked at Zhaida with all the warmth of marionettes. They might have been corpses animated by a necromancer for all the signs of life they showed, their tongues clicking in their mouths loudly and their faces strained.

“Azak-Klah will bless you, grant you great powers,” the young man said.

“Let Azak-Klah see you and love you, child,” the older woman said.

“Mother!”

“I am a priestess of Azak-Klah.”

“I am a priest of Azak-Klah.”

They spoke in unison, in one horrid, soft voice. Zhaida shook her head, as if attempting to drown the sounds produced by their tongues.

“What have you done to them?” Zhaida asked, and she tried to spring forward, but the guard behind her gripped her tight by the arm and held her in place. Zhaida screamed as her mother and Tiago stepped out of the room. They were indifferent to the girl’s words. Zhaida sobbed, slowly going quiet.

The man fixed his gaze on Yalxi. Instead of the hollow, vacant look of the red priests, Jiacim’s eyes seemed veiled, yet filled with a forbidding power, and his voice echoed that same power, tinged with an element Yalxi did not recognize. His voice…it was older than it should be. Strange and warped.

“This is but a common village girl, clouded with doubts. But you are something else. Sorceress, there is a darkness about you. Azak-Klah can cleanse you, wash away your sins,” he said. His tone was gentle, silk and the softness of a petal.

“I pray to other gods and my sins are mine to keep.”

“No, you pray to none, deluded in your self-sufficiency. Your sins scorch your skin. A girl, she died because of you. The dove keeper,” he said.

“I can claim more than one death. What of it?”

“But some deaths cannot be scrubbed easily. And you’re tired now, perhaps the blood weighs heavier as the body weakens. You look back over your shoulder more often, don’t you? Sorceress of sorcerers.”

The words made Yalxi clutch her hands together tight, but she smirked. “You have the gift of reading minds? It’s no great ability. If that is the extent of your god’s blessing, it’s not a mighty god.”

The priest’s eyes fixed even more intently on the sorceress; a pinprick of red danced in his pupils. “You have your spells, and you have your sorcerous knowledge, but do not imagine for a second that you have true power. Azak-Klah is mighty and beyond the boundaries of your mortal witchery.”

“A broken statue, found in an abandoned brigand’s cave?” Yalxi asked mockingly and she laughed. “A head without a torso, nor arms, nor legs. Nothing better than a shard of pottery.”

Her derision was authentic, wickedly sharp. She let that part of her that had been the mighty Mistress of the Sorcerers’ Guild spring forth. As of late, she’d become a weary traveler, gray and faceless. But her arrogance and her malice remained, leashed, yet not vanished. She showed them now, contemptuous.

Her laughter was like a slap to Jiacim. For a long time, she suspected, no one had dared to laugh at him. He was reduced, for a moment, to the status of an untried acolyte, and his mask of blandness gave way to a spark of choleric emotion. His hands curled upon the arms of his chair, gripping it tight.

“How dare you mock a god.”

“But I pray to no god, you said so yourself. And I put even less stock in gods that come from a hole in the ground, covered in muck,” she said petulantly.

“Azak-Klah comes from afar, Azak-Klah comes from above. Azak-Klah devours the shadows and brings forth the dawn,” he said, and his hands dug so firmly into the chair she thought he might faint, seized as he was with an untold fury.

“But from the dark it came. You said so. And in the dark it lay, in the depths of a cave.”

“Yes, from the dark.”

“Where?”

The red pinpricks in his eyes seemed to spread, like blood pooling into a dish. “Would you like to know, sorceress?” he asked. Now his voice was soft, but it was the softness of a serpent’s hiss, of a dagger wrapped in velvet.

“I would,” she said, with that same slick arrogance that had irritated him exceedingly. “Tell me, where does Azak-Klah come from?”

She was goading him, yes, as a man might be goaded. But there was also a quiet magic to her words. Sorcery is more than gestures and knives. There is intent, and there are double meanings. To know the name of something can be like turning a key in a lock. But to know the origin of a thing also carries its own magic. Which was why she sought Kabé, why she sought the provenance of her nahual. Now she sought the place that had birthed this god, and she did not only ask, she demanded to know, with the murmuring, hidden power of a sorcerer. The power that ensnares spirits and knits illusions.

Her hands were clasped firmly, they ached against the restraints. The space where there ought to have been a finger was a painful, scorching gap, and the ring on her left hand felt warm against her skin.

“From afar,” Jiacim said. “Across the darkness, across the sky, across the night that was ice, there was fire and then a noise like thunder.”

His voice, which was older, which was strange and warped, grew stranger still. The lights in the room went dim, the resin had burnt out and its trail of smoke vanished. As the room darkened his eyes glowed, hot as coals.

Yalxi, careful! Shield your eyes, the nahual whispered.

She’d do no such thing, though, instead she shook her head and she looked into his reddened eyes. Nothing, she saw nothing. Then she glimpsed it for a moment, like a shadow blotting the light of the moon. A wild tangle of images and feelings brushed her mind. Cold, yes. Not the cold snow atop a mountain, nor the frost upon blades of grass on a chilly morning. Colder yet.

Iron and rock and cold, streaking across the moonlit night…and then warmth. Fire. A boiling cauldron that scorched, and the terrible fear that it would not survive…

A rock crashes against the mountain, it falls from the heavens. The impact makes the top of the trees bend, it gouges the earth with its force, and the earth.… It hurts! The composition of it, the very essence of this land brings forth a wave of pain…

“Azak-Klah,” the priest whispered and Yalxi winced, the memory he shared—it shared, for the priest was but a conduit, it was Azak-Klah speaking through this human avatar—was too chaotic to understand and pummeled her like a blow to the head.

Her nose began to bleed. The nahual inside the ring whispered to her. Careful, it said and pulled her away. The connection between her and the priest and the god was swiftly severed.

Yalxi closed her eyes and blinked, patterns of red and black danced before her eyes. She took a mouthful of air, like a diver that rises to the surface, and expelled it with a violent shudder.

She stared at the priest, and she thought Kabé was correct, that whatever Azak-Klah was, she could not begin to understand its nature. It was no spirit she might name, no ghoul nor monster, nor could she divine its place of origin.

But what she did know was why it had been buried, why the statue had been broken and hidden in a cave. Deep beneath the evil was subdued, that was what the book had said, and she understood now. This thing, whatever it was, had not been shaped to withstand the forces of this world. Its soils were poison. This was a creature of the air. When she’d knocked that priest from the horse, he’d fallen to the ground, and that small contact had broken whatever spell held him in thrall.

This god’s power was counteracted by the simple presence of earth. Yet, they were inside a gigantic floating temple, constructed with mighty magic, and far from the ground.

“You begin to understand,” the priest said and grinned at her. The red in his eyes had vanished. He still had that hollow appearance, his voice deadly soft and calm, though now it was close to his true voice; the god had retreated behind its veil. She suspected it could not always show itself, perhaps the effort taxed his host.

Yalxi wiped the blood running down her face with the back of her hand. She did not reply. There was no answer she might give him. Indeed, she had not been searched and stripped of weapons because Azak-Klah did not fear her. How could a god fear a mortal? She was nothing, a speck of flesh against a titanic power. She’d felt it, felt its absolute alienness, and recoiled at it.

“Azak-Klah wishes to bless you. Come, sorceress,” the priest said, rising majestically from his seat.

The guards pushed her in the priest’s direction, weapons at the ready should she resist. Yalxi, reflexively, moved as if to touch the pommel of her obsidian knife, for a second, the force of habit taking over her hands. Yet at once she halted and clutched her fingers instead, frowning. Then she stepped mutely forward.

The temple was grand and awe-inspiring, but the chamber they walked into was more dazzling than anything they’d seen yet. Colossal pillars rose overhead, supporting a dome of pristine whiteness, from which clung a massive censer, dangling from a chain. White smoke drifted up from this vessel. Other smaller censers of white porcelain were placed on the floor, and smoke curled up from them too, perfuming the room.

There were balconies above their heads, encircling the chamber, and in them stood the priests clad in their scarlet robes, observing Yalxi and Zhaida as they made their way across the gleaming white space. But the priests also stood around them, parting like the sea to let them through, all those men and women with their vacant eyes which seemed to see and yet not. They hovered just above the ground, their feet never touching the floor.

The polished tiles beneath Yalxi’s feet were made of that strange, white, polished stone, and when she walked, her feet drew no echoes. Slowly they walked and the red priests moved aside until they reached a dais, and upon it there floated the head of the statue, the head of Azak-Klah.

It was an exact duplicate of the temple, as they’d seen it from the outside, with its astonishing life-like qualities. But while the temple was made of a creamy white stone which seemed, strangely, almost iridescent, the statue was of a red material with veins of glittering black. Yalxi could not say what ore had formed it, or what uncanny process had allowed a sculptor to bend it to a proper shape.

That feeling that the walls around them absorbed the light rather than reflecting it seemed to be twice as true for the statue. It was not as if the room was dim, it was bright, and yet a vital ingredient, an essential property of light, seemed to be missing, as if blotted out by the perfectly molded head.

As Zhaida and Yalxi were made to move closer to the statue’s head, she stumbled, shock making her feet clumsy.

“It lives,” she whispered.

For, now that they stood in front of it, she could see details on the statue’s face that had not been obvious from afar. Its head was sculpted with care, and the eyes were burnished with an eerie quality, just as the temple when seen from the outside. Upon the smooth brow a third eye was reproduced, firmly shut, yet it moved: Under the lid, as if dreaming, the eye twitched.

She knew then, with a clarity that almost smothered her, that this eye would open soon, and she would gaze at the terrible red eye from her dream. In the flesh, it would be even more overwhelming, more ravenous. And she realized that in this place, indeed, light might be absorbed by the statue, and not just light but one’s entire self. As Kabé had said, a piece of one’s soul would be caught in its retina.

Yalxi felt such revulsion that she pressed a hand against her mouth, and she had the irrational desire to scream. Next to her Zhaida was equally startled. Even her nahual recoiled, aghast in the presence of this being.

“We’ve brought you an offering, Azak-Klah: two new pilgrims who seek your wisdom,” Jiacim said, as he stepped forward and held up his arms.

What shall we do? the nahual asked, but Yalxi did not reply.

The red priests all around them bowed their heads and began to chant, repeating the deity’s name. Yalxi rubbed her hands together, feeling the chaffing strength of the rope around her wrists. She still had the knife at her hip, made of bronze, and hidden in the folds of her clothes that other knife of obsidian. But she did not attempt to reach either weapon.

“Who will gaze into Azak-Klah’s eyes first?” Jiacim asked.

The other priests repeated the question and when they spoke the sound seemed to come from a single throat.

“Won’t you join your loved ones? They want you by their side,” Jiacim said, and gestured in the direction of Zhaida’s boyfriend and her mother, who stood nearby, mouths open, eyes dazed.

Zhaida shook her head in horror. “No!”

Jiacim did not seem perturbed by the negative. He turned to Yalxi. “You’re at a disadvantage, sorceress. Your nahual is weakened and your body has grown frail. Azak-Klah can make you stronger than you’ve ever been.”

“Your god will syphon away my willpower, eat me alive, won’t it?”

“No, not at all. You fail to see clearly. But you will understand very soon,” he said, his hand grazing her chin so that she was looking directly into his awful, vacant face. Then he stepped aside and raised his arms. “Who will gaze into Azak-Klah’s eyes?”

Do not under any circumstances volunteer for that, the nahual said.

“That’s exactly what we will do,” Yalxi whispered.

You heard Kabé, it will—

Yalxi turned to Zhaida and embraced the young woman, whispering quickly in her ear. “I shall hand you a knife and when I do so, you must stab Azak-Klah in the eye upon its forehead. Do not look directly at it.”

“But—”

She shoved the young woman away. “Let me go first. I do not fear your god!” she yelled.

Yalxi whirled away and looked at Jiacim. The red priest beckoned her, and she cautiously approached him. When she reached him, he stood behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders.

“Defiance will only prolong your suffering. Let Azak-Klah envelop you,” Jiacim said. “You will be reborn; the strength of a god will surge in your veins.”

She stood still and did not attempt to brush him away, instead she gripped her wrist tightly with one hand.

“Behold the might of Azak-Klah and let him purify you,” the priest said.

The eye flickered, the lid began to rise. Inside its ring, the nahual coiled itself tight. Yalxi held her breath.

The lid lifted and a reddish glow leaked from it, though it was also black. It was red and it was black, and it was neither. It was, perhaps, not even a color. She winced and shifted her head, trying to look away.

But the priest behind her moved his hands from her shoulders to her head, caging her between his palms, forcing her to stare ahead as the monstrous eye opened wide.

“I feared it too, at first,” Jiacim whispered in her ear. “But Azak-Klah has given me true power. You carry a broken stone upon your finger; you’ve grown frail, Yalxi.”

Her name upon this man’s tongue surprised her, even though it should not. This creature could read thoughts after all. But she was a sorceress who could conceal secrets, and she wrapped her mind tight in a veil as strong as iron.

The eye blotted the outline of the room, the whiteness of the floors, the censers and the attendants who bowed their heads in obeyance. She felt a connection to something vast, inhuman, ancient.

It seared her eyes, and she remembered how Kabé said that he’d been able to shield himself from it thrice and wondered at how he’d managed to withstand this relentless wave that crashed again and again against her mind, threatening to drown all coherent thought.

I see you, it said. See me.

The eye showed her snatches of images. The fading light of dim stars as it traveled through the vast reaches of the sky, and the taste of this world, the chaotic descent into this land. But before that, before the long journey, before the burning rock scorched the heavens, before that, much before, she saw the place it had come from. The place it called home.

At the sight of it her mind rebelled, not wanting to know, not wanting to see…for this was a world entirely unlike her own, a protean, colossal vision that defied her every sense; an expanse of gleaming black sea that was not a sea, and in this not-sea a scarlet, teeming mass of life surged to the surface, swaying, bending, shimmering, disappearing and emerging in a cycle of violent hunger. This world was a roaring void and an intolerable, icy darkness, and it was red and black and annihilation.

Her nose was bleeding again; blood dripped down her lip.

Know the joy of oblivion, know the end of pain, Azak-Klah said, even though Azak-Klah was not its name. She did not know what to call it. Its name was the shriek of a bird and the crash of a wave and a hundred sharp notes that she would never be able to speak. It existed in multiple bodies, possessing hundreds of eyes and organs in its home world. Being and seeing and living and absorbing.

It had been an ocean, once. Now it was but a fraction of itself, a coil of living tissue that remained inside the tough metal core of the statue. A shadow of itself, oh, but what a dark shadow it was! For there was joy in this darkness, too, a sense of relief, of letting go, and she knew the priest had spoken the truth. That she’d be stronger than she was now, the frail bonds of her body would know relief and renewed vigor.

Yet this being would destroy her; it would scoop her clean of self and reason and feeling, feeding on her mind and her will. Kabé had resisted it, yes, but she realized that the god had not wanted to devour him so badly, it had let Kabé slip away, left him for another day, like cat that toys with a mouse. Yalxi, it wanted. Yalxi was a delicious prize. She fought it and it fought back, and the battle made it hungrier. One moment more and she would shatter, unable to defy its might.

And in that instant, when it was about to crush her mind and split her open, she made a sharp motion with her hands and broke her wrist.

The pain made her gasp and shiver. Pain, yes, as Kabé had said. Pain could shield her, at least for a few precious moments. She felt the hands of the priest behind her, saw the room and the attendants and the implacable statue. Quickly she snatched the obsidian knife and cut the cord that held her hands together, freeing herself from her restraints, and then with her good hand tossed the weapon in Zhaida’s direction.

“Go!” she yelled and spread her fingers wide.

From her ring sprung a white monkey and it screeched and jumped in the air, landing on the back of the priest who stood behind Zhaida, spear in hand should she attempt to move. The monkey pounded its fists against the priest’s head, blinding it with it punches, and the priest dropped its spear. Zhaida stumbled forward, managing to swipe the knife off the floor. She ran. A second priest attempted to intercept her, but the monkey hurled itself atop it and bit him in the arm, while she dashed towards the statue.

Then all went dark, as Yalxi was plunged back into the field of vision of the eye, the short pang of pain receding, the hands holding her head in place never ceasing to grip her tight, and she heard, dimly, the screech of the monkey and a clatter of metal—shields, perhaps—but the eye was pulling her away, pulling her with it.

See me, the eye demanded.

The taste of her own blood rushed through her overwhelmed senses as the god burrowed into her mind and she tried to elbow Jiacim away. Relentless, the eye spoke again.

You will see me, it said, as she tried to turn her head, and for a brief second she saw the temple room, saw Zhaida and the monkey jumping up the dais, both of them evading a pair of priests who held nets in their hands. Yet the priests did not move with great haste, Zhaida was but a mite, a tiny pest, the real threat was Yalxi, and Azak-Klah focused on her, hardly bothered with the temple room and the annoying but forgettable monkey and that weakling girl.

Hungry. It was mightily hungry and it wished to eat, wished to devour Yalxi. Later it would feast on Zhaida, on the others, on the rest of the world, but for now the eye saw Yalxi, saw her only, wanted her strength and her stubbornness and the sharpness of her mind.

She was plunged back into the eye, into the black and the red, and her lungs felt near to bursting as she tried to claw her way out of the void that was its gaze.

But there was a stubborn pang of pulsing pain from her broken wrist, and it pulled her away for a precious fraction of a second, so she was able to swallow a mouthful of air, like a swimmer who is drowning below the relentless waves. Then it returned, it hammered at her skull. She’d thought Zhaida had something of the strength of her old friend, something of Itzyul’s daring spirit, but perhaps she’d been wrong.

Relent, the eye said.

Yalxi stumbled, fury burning through her lungs, and then, shockingly, there came a feeling like a dam breaking. She was hurled aside and landed on her knees.

For a heartbeat she did not know what had happened. Her eyes were cloudy, unfocused. The throbbing of her hand made her blink and see. She realized why the eye had shoved her away at the moment when it ought to have ripped her apart.

While the god and Yalxi battled against each other, the girl had managed to move close to the statue. Too close.

Yalxi stared up at the floating head. The two priests hovered over Zhaida and dropped their nets, but it was too late. Before they could pull her up, the girl leapt forward and shoved the obsidian knife into the statue’s third eye.

“A blade cannot kill a god,” Jiacim whispered, and his fingers dug into Yalxi’s shoulder.

The priests tugged at the net, dragging Zhaida aside, their faces impassive. The monkey had also been caught and tried to gnaw at a net. The young woman screamed, and the priests chanted the god’s name and for a second Yalxi thought it had all been for naught; there was no way to stop the relentless pull of the god.

A sound like thunder echoed across the chamber. The priests raised their heads nervously, a flicker of emotion scratching their faces. The temple seemed to beat like a heart, one wild ripple of movement that came from the walls, the ceiling, the roof, the columns.

The knife sunk deeper into the eye, as if drawn by quicksand. Its hilt disappeared; it was absorbed. The eye blinked, then closed. The face of the statue remained as it was before, lips parted, vital and strong. Then it contorted, as if in agony, even though it was a statue, carved and sculpted. It screamed, as if scalded, though it had no voice, and instead the priests all around her raised their voices, shrieking the pain of the god.

Then they clapped their mouths shut, silence reigned, and the head crashed against the floor.

“Azak-Klah!” Jiacim exclaimed, still standing behind her, stretching his arms towards the statue.

His voice was drowned by a hideous rumble. The ground began to tremble and then the temple was flung down, tossed against the ground just as the statue’s head had tumbled down. The tiles seemed to roil beneath their feet, such was the force of the impact, and the priests let out terrified screams as bits of stone and plaster fell from the roof. Balconies cracked, small censers were toppled, and the white smoke drifting from the massive censer dispelled.

Yalxi, on her knees, watched as the head of the statue cracked open and out oozed a black liquid. It had the consistency of tar, but there were glimmers of red in it, and as it spread upon the white floor it shivered and moved, trying to lift itself.

It was dying. She felt it, for a second still somehow connected to the god-thing. A blade might not kill a god, but this was no ordinary weapon. The obsidian knife born of the lava of an ancient volcano was replete with the noxious elements of the land that the entity abhorred. It had managed to survive the grueling trek across the sky, then the exile into that cave where it had been covered in dirt and stones, but it would not survive this. The obsidian had plunged directly into its bloodstream, if one might call it a bloodstream; it had poisoned it.

She pulled herself to her feet and moved closer to the liquid, pressing her broken wrist against her stomach while she traced a symbol in the air with her other hand.

Azak-Klah gurgled, pain making the liquid ripple. It tried to snap at her mind, claw its way inside her, but it could not, and it moaned in agony.

Sorceress, you may have destroyed me, but you’ll face your own destruction soon enough. I can glimpse your doom. Your nahual will soon be no more, and you will crumble under the weight of your useless body, the god whispered.

She gazed at the shimmering blackness that was Azak-Klah.

“Fire,” she said, as an answer, and from her hand sprung a coil of flame which struck the liquid and ignited it.

Azak-Klah let out a wild, terrible shriek as the flames rose, and there was a flash like a shooting star, and then there came a silence. Yalxi looked down at the floor where the black liquid had burnt out. There was only smudge of it left, which dissipated.

The priests fell to their knees, and from their mouths rose thin coils of smoke that vanished in the air. A few fainted. Then, they began to stand up on shaky legs, blinking, looking around in confusion, their voices clamoring with a thousand questions. More bits of plaster and stone rained from above, and the walls and floors and columns were still a stark white, but something seemed to have altered their hue. No longer did they shimmer, no longer did they seem to absorb the light.

“Mother!” Zhaida yelled and she rushed towards the startled woman in red, hugging her tight.

Jiacim had collapsed during the commotion, and now the priest shook his head and coughed, looking groggy and befuddled. Yalxi stretched out a hand and helped him up to his feet. The young man stared at her, frowning.

“I had the strangest dream,” he muttered. “And you were in it.”

Then he looked around, mouth open, and she thought he might collapse again, amazed by what he saw.

The monkey jumped on Yalxi’s back and gave her a soft thump on the shoulder.

That was entirely too dangerous, it said.

“You can chide me later, after I’ve had some rest,” Yalxi replied. “Now we should get out of this place.”

For once we agree. The monkey thumped her again on the shoulder and pointed in the direction of an exit.

The stew was delectable. It warmed the body and diminished her aches. What was more, she was able to eat it in the comfort of a bed. Everyone at the lodging house had been solicitous, procuring drink and food and sweets for her. Some townspeople had even brought gifts. Not that Yalxi would be able to carry the bulk of them with her, though the nahual did its very best to devour the unfortunate turkeys or chickens that were offered to the sorceress that had saved the village.

Zhaida placed the bowl filled with fruit at the foot of the bed, the latest offering to arrive that day, and the monkey immediately jumped towards it and snatched an apple. Yalxi sighed. Its manners seemed to deteriorate with every passing day.

“From Tiago,” she said, and then she put a tiny jar next to Yalxi’s hand. “My grandmother has mixed this ointment. It’ll lessen the pain of your wrist.”

Yalxi flexed her bandaged hand. “It’ll heal quick enough with a little help from my nahual. He’s replenishing his energy with great zeal,” she said and glanced at the monkey, which had stuffed a whole apple into its mouth and grinned at her.

If you continue hurting yourself this way, soon you’ll lose an entire limb, the nahual warned her.

Yalxi unwrapped her wrist and rubbed the ointment against her swollen skin. Then she twined the bandage around her hand again. Zhaida helped her secure it at the end, knotting it in place.

“Very good; you’d make an excellent nurse,” Yalxi said.

“It’s no trouble. We’re very grateful, all of us. You’ve rid us of a great evil. My mother is doing very well, Tiago too.”

“And Jiacim?”

“He’s terribly contrite. What happened was not his fault; it was nobody’s fault, but rebuilding the village will be a difficult undertaking. We’ll help as best we can, of course. And you? What will you do now? You’d be welcome to stay. My grandmother’s abode is always open to you.”

“What I will do now is stretch my legs and have some fruit,” Yalxi said and snatched an apple from the monkey’s hand. It frowned at her.

“You’re certain?” Zhaida asked. “You seem a little weak.”

Upon her return from the temple Yalxi had slept. It was the best balm for a sorceress. Then she’d eaten her fill, slept some more, but too much rest wasn’t good either. Her mind raced, too eager to be contained in a sick bed.

“Troubles of the trade. I’ll live,” Yalxi said, as she wrapped her gray cape around herself.

“I’m sorry I doubted you.”

Yalxi raised her head and looked at Zhaida. The young woman hesitated. “When I met you, I didn’t think you were a true sorceress. But you are.”

Yalxi shook her head wryly, with a smirk, and patted the girl’s shoulder. She walked out of the lodging house slowly, leaning on her walking stick. The monkey followed her, grunting and complaining as it moved, for it preferred the warmth of the lodging house and a pillow under its rump. When she reached Kabé’s house she knocked twice, and he opened the door wide.

“Yalxi! You’re up today, I see. How did you like the chicken I left for you yesterday?”

“A glutton ate it whole, didn’t even leave the bones,” Yalxi said. The monkey cried out, offended, and jumped onto her shoulder.

“Come in, I’m sure I can find a treat for your nahual while we speak.”

They crossed his cramped study and Kabé pulled aside a green curtain, pointing to a room with an intricately woven carpet and a low mahogany table. Next to the table there was a wooden chest filled with papers. Kabé winced as he sat down, slowly lowering himself to the ground. He had sprained an ankle during his escape from the temple, but had suffered no other harm, and had the privilege of witnessing the collapse of the whole structure from a safe distance, which he said had pummeled the ground as hard as a fist.

Kabé pushed a dish filled with almonds in the direction of the monkey and the nahual grabbed a fistful and chewed loudly. Kabé pulled the chest closer to him and looked inside it, fiddling with papers and pieces of parchment.

“The good news is I’ve found that provenance document you were looking for,” Kabé said, and he handed her a copper metal cylinder.

“And the bad news?” Yalxi asked. Originally, the cylinder had been sealed with wax, but Kabé had opened the seal to read it and she easily twisted the top open. She unrolled the small piece of parchment inside, reading the carefully scribbled lines.

She looked up at Kabé in surprise. “A pearl from Sayi? But there is nothing there. It’s foul land. This must be ancient. An antique.”

“No. It’s quite new. Only one owner before you. See? Ayara, jewel maker. Manufactured the ring and owned it for a few months before selling it to me. Here is the year.”

Yes, the year was there, showing that the nahual had come to inhabit the pearl when Yalxi was a teenager and had quickly found its way onto her hand. This of course made sense considering the low price of the jewel. It had been no treasure passed through the ages. But Sayi! It had been three hundred years since it had been torn to shreds.

She looked at the white monkey, but it shrugged at her. As it had told her, it could not remember its origins any more than Yalxi would remember her birth.

“It doesn’t make sense. It must be wrong,” she muttered, spinning the ring around her finger and touching the pearl. She looked again at the piece of parchment, but the characters were unequivocal. “I suppose I must head to the Archipelagos, then. Ayara, resident of Seahouse, Gate of Ivory. If the ring truly is of recent manufacture, the jewel maker might even be able to speak in person to me. I would rather not have to beg for any more provenance records from a guild to untangle this error.”

“I do not think it’s an error. It must truly come from Sayi. What is more, it is a bad season to be heading to the Archipelagos.”

“Why?”

Kabé rubbed a hand against his chin and shook his head. “As a merchant, one hears stories. Lately, stories from the Archipelagos are troubling. Travel outside of Seahouse has been greatly restricted.”

“Travel between the Mainland and the Archipelagos is always restricted.”

“Not like this. The Council has forbidden movement of any ships outside of the ports of Seahouse. All commerce is happening through the Gate of Azure, and to a smaller degree the Gate of Ivory.”

“Some council member or another wants to make sure they collect their tariffs.”

He reached into the chest and unrolled a map. “No, Yalxi. Even experienced smugglers are being detained, and that is not a good sign. Whatever levy or tariff, you can always expect a corrupt official to let you pass. But this is an iron-tight net they are weaving. The glass workshops in Blackwell have been expanded, and they are building a workshop at Ironwood.”

Kabé pointed at an island on the map. “What do you see here?”

“Ironwood,” she said, and frowned. “It is close to Sayi. It is behind the line. That is also foul land. Who would want to build anything there?”

“I do not know.”

She stared at the map. “You must help me get secure passage to the Archipelagos. Ships must still be sailing out of Xochical.”

“They are, but no guild sorcerers are allowed to disembark there. It is part of the new restrictions.”

“I’m not a guild member anymore.”

“A technicality won’t save you from a noose if someone becomes nervous.”

“Who is talking about nooses?”

“I do not have a good feeling about this.”

“I did not climb this mountain to be denied by the likes of you.”

“By the gods you are stubborn!” Kabé said, and he slapped a hand against his knee. His sour expression reminded her of the days long past when they had played dice together and traveled with the merchant caravan.

“I believe you owe me a favor or two, Kabé,” she persisted.

He sighed and pressed his palms together. The monkey turned to look at him, then at Yalxi, while it tossed another fistful of almonds in its mouth.

“You’ll get your passage. I hope you do not grow to regret it,” Kabé muttered.

Yalxi stood up and when she did, he touched the hand that lacked a finger. She looked down at him, at his face lined with wrinkles and his weary eyes.

“We’re not the children we were, to be traipsing through the world,” he said. “A merchant’s life is more subdued than that of a sorcerer, but that is not a point against it. Stay a season, the people here are grateful and I have a spare room. I could use help with my business, and I suspect you could use the respite. Stay for a little while, old friend.”

She thought it would not be too terrible to do as he said. To remain, to bask in the admiration of the townspeople and reap the rewards of her deed. The roads had been long and hard, and she missed certain comforts. But the ring had a crack, its power ebbed, and although she might be able to find another spirit jewel amongst Kabé’s many chests and drawers, she wanted to keep this one. She needed it.

Yalxi clasped his hand and smiled. “Find me passage, Kabé,” she said.

She stepped out of the room, brushing aside the green curtain. When they left, it had begun to rain, but it was a light drizzle, and it did her good to feel the water droplets in her hair.

I suspect you are about to drag me to a perfectly horrid hovel where the only things to eat are fish the size of your pinkie, the nahual muttered.

“Perhaps, but at least we’ll be together,” she said.

I don’t like boats. They’re cramped and they smell. The monkey scampered up her back and wrapped its arms around her neck. She felt its tiny heart beating in unison with her own. What if it is truly dangerous?

She remembered what Azak-Klah had said. That soon her nahual would be no more, and she would crumble to pieces. But she did not believe in prophecies, only in her own strength. Stubbornly she shook her head.

“Settle down. You can drink from my blood tonight,” she promised.

The monkey smiled happily, and they made their way back to the lodging house. Soon, they would have to depart on a most important journey, but for now she’d have another bowl of stew.

 

(Editors’ Note: Silvia Moreno-Garcia is interviewed by Caroline M. Yoachim in this issue.)

© 2025 Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Award Honors: Aurora Award Finalist- Best Novelette/Novella