Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [206]
It was old Iniquill’s voice that rose above the fray, high and fierce and quavering. “Let the ancestors speak!” she cried, pointing. “It is as the great Mamacoya foretold!”
The Quechua fell silent.
Atop the stairs, Cusi lay crumpled and still. Bao stood motionless, the knife yet in his blood-stained hand, his face yet hidden behind the sun god’s mask. Runnels of blood made their way through the carved channels, made their way toward the seated figures of the ancestors. Drop by drop, blood fell to darken their ancient cerements.
Bones creaking, the ancestors stirred.
I stared, as transfixed as everyone, my heart in my throat.
“No,” Raphael muttered frantically. “No, no, no! This is wrong, all wrong.” Pacing, he grabbed Prince Manco’s arm and pointed toward the head of the stairs. “Seize him! Seize the false priest!”
The prince hesitated.
Standing atop the stairs, Bao dropped the bronze knife and removed the high priest’s golden mask. Behind it, his face was streaked with tears, but his voice was steady. “There is no falsehood here save yours, Lord Pachacuti!” he called. “You are no god, only a man misguided. I have bridged the worlds between life and death, and today I pay the price for it.”
In the ancestors’ gallery, eight seated figures slowly began to rise, their brittle, blood-stained cerements crackling. Flowers spilled from their withered laps, desiccated fingers gripped bejeweled weapons. And still the blood continued to fall, drop by drop.
Abandoning Prince Manco, Raphael returned to pluck the Sapa Inca’s crown from the altar, placing it on his own head.
“It is done,” he said wildly. “So be it.” Lightning flared in his eyes as he rounded on me. “It is done! I rule in Tawantinsuyo; I, and I alone! I am worshipped here! Moirin, call your magic! Now!”
Trust me.
There was no time left to think.
Placing my faith in the Maghuin Dhonn Herself, in the words of my lady Jehanne, in the dead and the living and every god I knew, I obeyed.
I summoned the twilight.
“Focalor!” Raphael shouted, flinging his arms wide. “Come to me!”
In the temple, a doorway onto a raging maelstrom opened. The fallen spirit was there in inchoate form, answering the call of the spark of its essence that remained in Raphael de Mereliot. Raphael laughed aloud in triumph, and then stiffened. A thunderclap broke with a sound like boulders splitting and lightning-shot darkness poured through the doorway, poured into him, entering his open mouth. He cried aloud, his body convulsing in agony. Without a true sacrifice in his honor, he was not strong enough to contain it.
Mayhap he never would have been, but of a surety, he wasn’t now. The storm that was Focalor’s essence was consuming him.
And I felt the strength draining from me.
Bedecked with flowers, clad in finery, the ancestors continued their slow descent from the gallery, bony limbs clicking and creaking. The black tide of ants gathered and rallied, swarming them to no avail.
They could not stop the dead.
The tempest raged in the doorway, raged through Raphael’s mortal flesh. Half the folk in the temple cried aloud in fear, pushing their way toward the doorway; half gazed in dumbstruck awe at the awakened ancestors. Ignoring the futile onslaught of ants, the Quechua ancestral dead continued their inexorable assault, ancient faces blank beneath their wrappings, war-clubs raised by crumbling fingers, petals falling all around them.
It rained marigolds, garlands severed and petals shredded by the relentless mandibles of the ants. Yellow and orange and gold and bronze, the latter a deep hue like blood drying, like Cusi’s blood beginning to congeal on the stairway. I had fallen to my knees. Bits of cerement fell, and I caught glimpses of aged bone gleaming beneath tattered wrappings, bones gnawed in vain by Raphael’s unnatural army.
I could not turn back the dead, either. But the storm that held Focalor’s essence was another matter.
Lifting my head, I met Raphael’s eyes.
In our different ways, we had loved and hated in equal measure, Raphael and I. Each other, Jehanne. My magic.