The Seven Serpents Trilogy by Scott O'Dell

Author:Scott O'Dell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 1979-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

AT MIDMORNING OF THE NEXT DAY, THE NOBLE ESCORT CHALCO HAD promised me arrived at our door and introduced himself as Lord Tzapotlan, a nephew of the Revered Speaker, Moctezuma.

In the company of attendants carrying umbrellas—gray skies promised rain—a phalanx of palace attendants with spears, and a pretty girl clutching a basket of flowers, handfuls of which she gave to both Cantú and me, we set forth for the temple of the war god, Uitzilopochtli.

The two guards who had slept all night outside our window followed us at a distance.

An army of cleaners were washing off the temple stairs. An army of painters moved along behind them, coating everything with lime and mica that glittered even on this sunless day.

We climbed to the summit of the pyramid—a long, steep climb, some twenty steps higher than the Temple of Kukulcán.

Two small god houses faced each other and between them stood the sacrificial stone, which the cleaners had not yet washed. The stone and the two broad gutters that led from it to the stairs, thence down the face of the pyramid, were thick with blood from the latest ceremony. A cluster of priests whose hair and gowns were also caked with blood stared at us from the doorway of one of the god houses.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to let any evil exist.

“I have heard,” the dwarf said to the young lord, “that the emperor has sacrificed as many as twenty thousand prisoners in a single day.”

Lord Tzapotlan laughed. “Twenty thousand in a year, perhaps. In a day the most he ever sacrificed was two thousand. That was when he celebrated the victory over Quaunáhuac.”

“I noticed as we came here that painters were at work,” the dwarf said. “You must be making ready to celebrate something important.”

“Of special importance,” Lord Tzapotlan said. “It’s the ceremony held every nineteen days in honor of the war god.”

Cantú glanced at me, a wordless message that I did not miss.

“I am sorry that we’ll not be here for the ceremony,” I said.

For a moment a half smile played around the mouth of Lord Tzapotlan, but he said nothing in reply. He made a sweeping gesture and said haughtily, “Tenochtitlán!”

And there it was in all its grandeur!

The clouds had burned away. Below me stretched the city, its three encircling lakes and ring of vassal cities.

“It reminds me of Venice, pearl of the Adriatic,” said the dwarf, who had visited everywhere in the world, or so he boasted. “It’s like something you might see in a dream.”

And it was a city from a dream—shimmering in the sun, floating on the green waters like a beautiful white flower.

Overcome with unchristian envy, I thought, “And how different from our ruined city!”

Lord Tzapotlan led us down into the pyramid to show me the emperor’s storehouse of skulls, which was many times the size of the one at home. I saw rooms filled with strange gifts from vassal cities, nooks where fanged gods

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