Aztec Blood by Gary Jennings

Author:Gary Jennings [Jennings, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
Published: 2010-11-15T23:00:00+00:00

The Healer lay on the ground on his back. His shirt was bloody. I knelt beside him with a heavy heart. "I will go for help," I said, but I knew it was useless.

"No, my son, stay with me. It is too late. This morning I heard the call of the uactli, the bird of death."

"No—"

"I will go now to the place where my ancestors have gone. I am old and tired and it is a long trip." He slowly faded, his breath leaving him as I held him in my arms and cried.

He had once told me that he had come from the stars. I believed that. There had been an otherworldliness to him. I had no doubt that he had journeyed to earth from the stars, and it would be to the stars that he returned.

Like the fray, he had been a father to me. As his son, it was my duty to prepare him for his journey.

I had to leave him to get help to move his body to a proper place for the burial I would give him. When I returned to the camp, both Don Julio and Mateo were there.

"I received a message from an indio," Don Julio said. "He had been sent by the Healer a couple of days ago. The message was that the naualli had died trying to attack you. I got here and found out Mateo knew nothing of it."

"That's because it just happened," I said. I told them about the fight with the naualli, and the feather that had "killed" the magician.

"How could the old man know about the fight before it ever happened?" Mateo asked.

I shrugged and smiled with sadness. "The birds told him."

The Healer would not go to Mictlán, the Dark Place of the underworld. He had died in battle as a warrior. He would go to the paradise of the Eastern Heaven.

With the help of the dream diviner, I prepared the Healer's body, dressing him in his finest clothes, his cape of rare feathers and his wondrous headpiece. I built a high pile of wood and laid the Healer's body atop the pile. Alongside the body, I placed a supply of maize, beans, and cocoa beans to sustain him on his journey to the Eastern Heaven.

His yellow dog had never left his side during all of the preparations. I killed the dog as gently as I could and laid him at the Healer's feet so the dog could guide him.

When the preparations were done, I lit the wood. I stood by as the pyre roared. The fire burned and the smoke raised into the night. I stayed until the last wisp of smoke, the last essence of the Healer, had risen to the stars.

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