Clash of Star-Kings (6 page)

He had not, surprisingly, formed any answer to this by the time he reached the pueblo of San Juan Bautista Moxtomí. He was very tired, stumbling with stiff and twitching legs, eyes burning; he needed rest and warmth … and answers … answers … answers. He saw the men posted along the path, answered their hail in The Language, passed by them into the small open area which was the plaza, and there he saw the people of the pueblo sitting in a wide circle with faces of awe and joy and inside the circle burned a fire and the night air was odorous with copal-incense. The Hermit stood beside the fire and spoke in a clear and vigorous voice, but antique language and although he was standing and those whom he addressed were sitting, he and they were on a level of eye to eye. When Luis saw these others, saw their massive bodies and massy limbs, their strong broad noses and strong full lips and their heavy-lidded eyes with pupils of burning gold, he recognized who and what they were. And he fell upon his knees and bowed his brow down into the cool dust of the ground before the Great Old Ones, the demigods of the Toltecs and Moxtomí, who had calmly and benevolently ruled over the land before the coming of the cruelty and incessant bloodletting of the Aztecs.

And who had now returned….

The Hermit (or he-who-had-been-known-till-now-as-The-Hermit) paused in his speaking. And another voice broke the sudden silence, a voice like a great and deep-toned bell of gold and bronze, saying, in the Moxtomi language, “One moment, you who have so long and so faithfully been the Guardian of the Entrusted Thing; one moment only….” The ground shook slightly with the great and measured tread and huge, beautifully proportioned hands took hold of Luis and lifted him to his feet. Dazed, delighted, stricken still with awe, he gazed into the great golden glowing eyes and heard the great golden voice say, “Younger Brother, what is in your heart?”

Luis heard his heart beating, his ears rang, he drew a shuddering breath. “Great Old Ones. Is it you whose lights have been seen on Popo?”

“It is so. And then?”

“I … Ah! There are so many things in my heart to tell you, to ask you … I …”

The lips of the giant figure parted in a faint smile. “Not now, Younger Brother. Not yet. Take this — ” Something was pressed into his hand. He felt a cord of maguey fiber and something metallic, with an embossed surface. “ — take health, take rest, and at another time, Younger Brother, it may be that we may listen … and answer.”

The disappointment was like the falling away of ground beneath Luis. All day long he had sped and toiled from place to place, asking only to be listened to. But Santiago Tuc and Domingo Deuh had been too busy to listen to him, Jacobo Clay had been too busy to listen to him, and now the astonishingly returned Great Old Ones were too busy to listen to him! Anguish ate at him like acid — but for a moment only. And then sleep, of the most delectable sort as is usually felt only when one knows that awakening is imminent, sleep now wrapped its arms around him. The circle of serenely joyful Moxtomí about the (he now recognized) sacred fire, the still all-but-totally-mysterious figure of the Hermit/Guardian, the titanic figures of the sapient and potent and benign Great Old Ones, all began with a swift slowness to dissolve into the golden mists; and Luis smiled and Luis slept.

• • •

The Clays slept, too, in their Krazy Kat style house in the back patio, with barely a straight line let alone two parallel ones in the whole structure, and each room painted in different bursts-of-color tones: restaurant-pea-green, imitation-soda-pop orange, do-not-leave-within-the-reach-of-children-shoe-pol-ish-purple, whorehouse-madam-red, and so on … all, presumably, the work of a previous tenant defined by Señora Mariana only as
El Español
. Why does the roof leak so much, Señora? El Español punctured it vigorously, Señor. Why are the holes in the gas stove burners mostly plugged up, Señora? Because of the unwholesome foods cooked upon it by El Español, Señor. Why does the wall in the third room not meet the ceiling in the corner, thus letting in the wind, Señora? Thus did El Español occupy himself, Señor, — Ai, the malevolent one! But take no concern, Señor, we will make all these reparations, excellently. Ah, good, Señora — and when? Mañana, Señor! Mañana!

It was Sarah who awakened first … from a dream in which she sat bound hand and foot in a barrel of ice-cold water while Lupita, laughing fiendishly, broke greasy plates over her head. She considered telling Jacob of this latest evidence of ill will on the part of that mean girl, but decided against it because he might kick her for waking him up. But by the time she was fully awake she realized that he was, too, and listening.

“Jacob, are you awake?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s that kind of, well,
singing
, then?”

“Weird, isn’t it?”

“It sounds exciting and interesting.”

“That’s what I said. Weird.”

They sat up and listened. The sound of the song or chant or whatever it was came to them distantly, rising and falling. For a while it seemed to be coming near, then it began to die away as though going in the opposite direction. “Do you think,” Sarah began, “that it sounds like that wonderful little tootsie music we saw in the parade tonight?”

“No. No, it doesn’t. Much more weird. Barbaric. But I see what you mean. Hmmm….”

Sarah’s mind had meanwhile started on another track.
Tootsie
. Evans. Where was cunning little Evans, the tootsie little cat? “Evans?” she called, hopefully, hoping to hear his answering preep and the sudden scamper of paws and then his leap onto the bed and the thrust of his little head against her hand, demanding to be petted and stroked and scratched. “Ev-ans …?”

“What’s
hap-
pened to him?” she asked, her voice faltering.

“I can see it now. There he is, shacked up with the convent cat. And he says, ‘Well, time to split, babe. See you.’ And she — the convent cat — she says, ‘Just one more time, lover-poo?’ And he says, ‘Well, now that you come to mention it, why not?’”

Sarah snuffled and laughed, said that, well, she
hoped
so. But she could not be reassured. Jacob had inclined his head and even twisted it about and cupped his ear so as to catch the odd and vanishing strains of curious sound. But Sarah continued to fret about the missing Evans. He had
never
been away
this
long. The Mexicans didn’t understand about cats. They thought they were just animals. Suppose he were
sick
. Suppose he was lying,
hurt
, somewhere?

“Where are you going? You’re getting dressed? Why?”

In a choked voice she answered, “Evans!” He understood immediately, and swung his legs over the side. “Oh well … one more bunch of nudniks wandering through this town tonight won’t hurt it, I guess. And” — the thought occurred to him in mid-shoe — “maybe while we’re looking and paging, we might trace down the troubadors.”

It was cold outside, and Sarah muffled her head up warm into the reboza which she had bought in the Langunilla market their first day in “Mexico.” A sense of hopelessness came over her, not knowing where to look, and so she simply followed behind Jacob, who was trying to track down the sound of the archaic chanting which continued to rise and fall upon the shifting wind … or so it seemed. And about two or three times in every block she called out, tentatively, distressfully, “
Evans …? Evans
…
?
” But no answering “preep” came, anymore than they ever seemed on a definite track for the music. And then —

A number of blocks away, barely visible in the light of the exceedingly rare street lamps, which was, moreover, a number of blocks
further
away, a figure slipped around a corner and went shuffling rapidly across the road. Sarah clutched Jacob and gestured. He said, “Huh?” She said, “There — there — Lupita — ” and then, recollecting herself and her purpose, raised her voice. “Lupita! Lu-
pi
-ta!” She trotted forward, turned her foot, fell heavily against Jacob. By the time they had recovered their balance, the figure was gone. The street, studded with stones and lined with the usual stone-and-adobe houses with peaked, tiled roofs, some of which (with their massive, though worm-eaten, wooden gates) antedated the original Mexican Revolution, was silent and empty.

“Are you sure it was Lupita? And if so, so what?”

“Yes, yes — Lupita — she knows Evans — find her — find her and ask her!” Ask her precisely what, Sarah was not certain of. Ask her if she’d seen Evans, if she’d heard news of Evans, if she had any idea of where he might have gone….

She and Jacob quickened their pace. They were looking for Lupita; they were looking for Evans; they were looking for the singing and chanting … gradually the town fell away behind them … and all three quests seemed to be leading them in the same direction.

Wherever that was.

The last landmark which they recognized was the tottering archway with its weathered Latin inscription, leaning against the one still-standing and still-sturdy wall of the old ruined convent, and straddling what was once part of the Royal Road … and was now no more than one of the back alleyways of town. The Clays had seen it before, but had never gone under it or passed it. Three hundred years of continual traffic — before the route was shortened and redirected by Santa Anna in a rare act of public benefit — three hundred years of iron-shod mules laden down with silver bars en route from the mines to Madrid — three hundred years of lumbering wagons with iron-rimmed wheels — had worn the road down below the level of the surrounding land until it seemed rather like the dry bed of an abandoned canal.

But it had also beaten the surface so hard that even a hundred-odd years of neglect hadn’t destroyed it; so that, while the Clays could not see where they were going they had only to follow their feet in order to go there. And by and by their eyes adjusted to the darkness which, of course, began to appear less dark. When the road eventually “surfaced” it seemed to the two of them that they were moving through a light mist suffusing and diffusing a subdued light the source or nature of which was unknown.

Now and then a line of wall ran parallel to the road or went off at an angle, sometimes a palisade or a grove. The scent of the open night was all about, night-flowering blossoms and the sweet suspiration of the trees, the strong and fresh sweetness of growing corn, and, over everything, the powerful odor of the relaxing soil itself.

From somewhere ahead the sound of chanting began once again, a deeper and faster note. “Where
are
they?” Sarah asked. Turning her head from right to left, she called, “Evans? Ev-ans …?”

“Maybe it’s another procession,” Jacob suggested. “Or — maybe even the same one. Hey? Maybe that’s why we don’t catch up with it … it’s keeping ahead of us. Well … they’ll have to stop sometime. What — ?”

She clutched his arm. “Didn’t you
hear
him?
Evans! Evans!
”

After a moment he said, “I think I did hear a cat…. But I can’t say that I’m sure it’s
that
cat….”

Sarah, however, had no doubts. Of course it was “
that
cat!” Maybe he was following the procession, too! Thinking that it contained his people — trying to catch up with it/them! She quickened her pace, panting, for they were now going uphill. At just what point they left the old main road behind and branched off onto the increasingly narrower path, Jacob did not notice nor Sarah care. Now and then the luminescent mists seemed to part a moment, they could see fires and other lights up ahead, and even once, bathed in the rays of an invisible moon, they saw the incredible heights of Ixtaccihuatl, the serenely sleeping Woman, shrouded forever in her snowy cowl and mantle.

Sarahstopped, breathing heavily. “I … I’m not sure … that I can go much further….”

“The air does seem a lot thinner up here. Well … you want to turn around and go on back?”

Distress and indecision played upon her face. “Well … oh … just a little bit farther. Now, don’t say anything. I … want to be able to hear….” Her sentence faded off into a laboring breath. But he understood: to hear if the cat sounded again. He nodded, they started off again, this time much more slowly. But each wondered, secretly, if the sound of the blood pounding in their ears would not prevent their hearing anything so slight as the plaintive mewing of a distant cat.

Sarah, finally, dragged one foot after another, clutched at Jacob, and leaned against him, her mouth open and her breath now a painful gasping. And with that, the winds drove the mists into their faces, wet and chill and pallid. The winds drove the sound of the strange and eerie singing louder than ever to their ears. The winds parted the mists in front of them: and quite a ways away across the more-or-less level land where they now stood, unable to go on, Jacob and Sarah saw a circle of fires burning … evidently fed with some quickly combustible fuel, the thin dry fallen twigs of the pine or piñole perhaps, for here at one point one would die down to a glow and there at another point one would leap up and flare as some stooping figure replenished it. There were two groups involved, one inside the incomplete circle formed by the individual fires, and one outside. This latter band was nearer to them, more quickly recognizable, but not very much less puzzling for any of that.

The first, hasty, and not a little frightening impression which they had was that those inside were seeking refugue from the coyotes outside the circle…. Coyotes circling around and around and back and forth, coyotes suddenly howling … coyotes…. But even before the matter of distance and perspective adjusted itself they both realized that coyotes would not be doing a to-the-rear-
run
maneuver whereby each turned and reversed direction and all did so at once, now loping clockwise and now of a sudden loping widdershins. And they realized, too, that coyotes do not chant, and certainly do not chant
words
, not even in a totally unfamiliar language….

They were prepared, then, for the moment when the “coyotes” suddenly reared up and revealed themselves to be human figures clad (or partly clad) in coyote skins. Still, it was marvelous — and eerie, frightening — the way that in stooping and even erect there still remained something so sinuous and animal-like in all their movements….