The Big Meow

“That’s right,” Helen said. “He’s a cognate of the one that Western tradition calls the Michael Power, and the One’s Champion – though as usual the correspondence isn’t exact. There are legends all through the Mesoamerican lands of how he lived for a while in one or another of the civilizations, teaching the ehhif the arts of peace. But he attracted the Lone Power’s enmity under one of Its many names – Texcatlipoca maybe is the best known. So rather than enter into a battle that would destroy the surrounding civilizations, the Serpent moved on and made his home elsewhere. That was how he came to the Mayans, the story says, after leaving the Toltec lands.” She shook her head. “In the old stories, the Serpent never stays long — just for enough time to bring his gifts to mortals and make sure they’ve mastered them. After that he’s always on the move, always eager to get back to the homeland of the Gods. He doesn’t fight unless he’s forced to it, because in this particular manifestation he’s too powerful. An all-out battle could have destroyed everything he was trying to save.”

“Well, he has another name in our time,” Rhiow said. “And I have a feeling we may need to introduce you. But that’ll wait for the moment. The Serpent’s enemy– That’s one of our bigger cousins, surely.”

“A jaguar,” Helen said, looking more closely at the rubbing. “Normally there would be spots in the drawing, but there aren’t, which can mean a couple of things.” She sounded uneasy. “But the headdress makes the identification easier. It’s a god called Tepeyollotl.”

Suddenly everyone was exchanging glances. “There’s a name we’ve heard recently…” Rhiow said.

“From the Lady in Black?” Helen said. “Yes. I remember the epithets she was attaching to the name. The Devourer of Worlds…” She shook her head. “But they’re not the usual descriptions attached to the Black Leopard. Originally Tepeyollotl was the personification of the Dark at the Heart of the Mountains. He ruled caves and deep places, and the Mayan eighth hour of night, when they felt that darkness had completely fallen.” Helen paused, swallowed. “But most importantly, he was the lord of echoes and earthquakes.”

That last word brought everyone’s heads up. “Earthquakes…” Aufwi said.

“Yes,” Rhiow said, her fur rising again at the memory of that awful moment in the tree. “There do seem to be a lot of those going around, don’t there…”

“What’s the problem with the lack of spots?” Urruah said.

“It suggests that this image wasn’t of the everyday version of Tepeyollotl,” Helen said. “Earthquakes have their place in the natural order, and the ancient peoples knew that. But they also understood that it wasn’t past the abilities of the Lone Power to cause them when It had reason. The dark pelt would mean that this is also an avatar of Tezcatlipoca, of the Mesoamerican version of the Lone Power: the Lord of the Smoking Mirror.” She rubbed her face. “But he has other names that were supposed to belong to a power even above him: an older one. Ilhuicahua Tlalticpaque, the One who wants to own Heaven and Earth: and Chalchihuihtotolin, the Master of the Sorceries from Outside.”

“Meaning outside our universe,” said Rhiow, feeling as distressed as the Whisperer had earlier sounded.

Once again here was the issue that Hwaith had originally brought to them – slightly better defined, but with no sense of where they were supposed to look for a solution. For a wizard on the One’s and the Powers’ business, there was a tendency to consider Them the rulers or managers of pretty much everything in the known universe-bundle, and the Lone Power the main source of trouble. But it was rare for one’s business to require a wizard to deal with issues that reached outside the Powers’ sheaf of universes, or were sourced outside them.

“Arhu,” Helen said, “were there any more pages in that folder?”

“That’s all I saw,” he said.

“All right,” Rhiow said. “Let the Eye go for now…”

The room came back.

“So first we have the poor soulsplit Lady in Black,” said Urruah after a moment, “with her talk of her friend the Devourer shredding up whole universes, ours very much included. And now a concrete connection between her and the group that’s meeting and doing Iau knows what at Dagenham’s… but something that’s helping her nasty universe-devouring friend: very likely at the very least a string of serial killings. Those are bad enough, but what they’re up to is going to destroy their entire world. Are these vhai’d ehhif completely out of their minds??”

It was almost a yowl. Everyone froze in place for a second, and Rhiow threw a glance at the Silent Man’s bedroom door, half expecting him to emerge and demand to know what the problem was. But nothing happened.

“Sorry,” Urruah said then, and tucked himself down against the floor. His tail was still twice its normal thickness. “I don’t know about everybody else, but I am finding this… disturbing.”