“Come now, Ahuitzotl,” Nezahualpilli continued. “No woman is worth all this trouble. In the dark, they are all alike.”
“Is that why you have so many of them?” Tizoc added, bringing on even more laughter.
“At least your Tula Woman is not denied to you,” Ahuitzotl related to Nezahualpilli.
“Pelaxilla is denied to you?”
“She belongs to Tizoc, and he has no inclination to give her to me.”
“What’s this?” Nezahualpilli intuitively recognized that he had stirred up a hornet’s nest. “Tizoc keeps her even though he says she is nothing extraordinary? Does he know you covet her?”
“He does.”
“There’s something unsavory here; you two play a game I want no part of,” Nezahualpilli said. He judiciously avoided additional comments on the subject, having no wish to get embroiled in any personal dispute between Ahuitzotl and Tizoc.
Tizoc was perturbed that Ahuitzotl had taken his denial of Pelaxilla so severely and ruminated if he might not have been unreasonable about it. There always remained the possibility for him to relent, he thought, and it may be wise to do so. His brother’s services were valuable to him and could be easier obtained with more kindness. As he pondered over this, he glanced aside and noticed an irritated look in his minister.
“What! You too are disturbed, Cihuacoatl?” Tizoc remarked.
“This feast is supposed to bestow our gratitude to Tlaloc—a solemn occasion!” Cihuacoatl replied. “Yet none of you have regard for this and engage in merriment.”
“As usual, I have you to remind me of my obligations,” Tizoc said, vexed over the minister’s incessant preoccupation with the monarch’s duty requisites. “You’re quite right of course, and we are properly admonished for it. Don’t worry about displeasing Tlaloc. Tomorrow we shall satisfy him amply when we offer him the Tolucans.”
“Will Zozoltin be among them?” asked Nezahualpilli.
“He shall be the first.”
“So you have not yielded your stand; you will not permit him to fight on the combat stone.”
“No. He is to die on the altar. I shall personally send him on his journey to Paradise. This ought not offend you any—we accord him the highest honors by doing this.”
Nezahualpilli’s objection to having Zozoltin sacrificed was not so much based on it being any less honorable fate as that he felt it undignified for a monarch to be paraded naked before his subjects in the fashion of the offered victims. An exhibition of this sort reflected unfavorably on the kingship in that it debased an office which he believed should reserve a certain sanctity to a commoner’s level. He was mystified why Tizoc, who professed to admire the Tolucan, persisted in this choice of death for him—perhaps he found this a necessary measure in order to put the doomed adversary out of his life.
Nezahualpilli was not the only one thinking of Tizoc; Ahuitzotl likewise had the Revered Speaker on his mind, but with sentiments considerably less favorable towards him. Enjoy this feast, Tizoc, he was thinking; there shall not be many more of them for you. You have scorned me and this love I bear Pelaxilla for the last time. Had you not so basely deprecated my desires for her, things might have gone differently for you, but now it is too late.
Early that following morning, priests probed among the cages of Tolucan prisoners and selected the three hundred who were to be honored this day. These were led into a nearby building for their ceremonial preparation where they were divested of their clothing, bathed, and painted yellow over their entire bodies. Their last sumptuous meal was laced with drugs which numbed the senses, making their movements lethargic and inducing anesthesia to destroy much of the pain felt from the knife. The priests gravely spoke to them, giving them messages they wished carried to Tlaloc, often repeating them until the words were memorized and could be recited back. Sedated, counseled, and otherwise conditioned for their final journey, the Tolucans were next marched to the Temple of Tlaloc in columns of two escorted by sober priests and a few guards.
Crowds had gathered at the base of the structure, standing quietly by as the captives entered the square and listened to repetitive incantations voiced from the numerous votaries accompanying them while a lone drumbeater walked along pounding out a cadence. The occasion was an extremely solemn one, and this was patently evident in the grim countenance of the spectators who viewed the procession with hushed veneration.
Tizoc waited on the temple’s upper tier in front of the techcatl, the altarstone, emplaced directly ahead of Tlaloc’s shrine at the very edge of the steps. On his right was Nezahualpilli and on the opposite side Chimalpopoca—all wore brilliant plumages and colorful attire with the typical copious adornments. Also standing with them were Cihuacoatl and the chief priests of Tlaloc. Gravely, they gazed down on the square to observe the lines of victims approaching them, and when Tizoc noticed the once-proud Zozoltin, tall and naked, heading one of the columns, looking a pitiful spectacle, not at all like the noble king he had been, he blushed, feeling regret that he had not taken Nezahualpilli’s advice.
Soon the Tolucan lines ran up on both sides of the steps and Zozoltin was halted on reaching the uppermost level. He glowered fiercely at Tizoc who avoided looking at him and yet felt his overpowering presence. Next, on taking his cue from the Revered Speaker, the chief priest raised his arms and thereby activated a thunderous roll of the giant panhuehuetl, beaten by many clubs and booming as Tlaloc’s invocation across the square leaving its multitude of spectators awestruck. Then, a short time later, he dropped his hands and, as abruptly as it had begun, the drum was stilled.
The chief priest recited his age-old chants, invoking Tlaloc’s blessings and entreating him into granting abundant rains by which the nation was assured another successful planting season. When he finished and stepped back, his subordinates tossed a powdered substance into the decorated braziers placed at each of the temple’s five tiers which emitted dense clouds of smoke when it struck the fire. Four priests strode up to the techcatl where Tizoc was standing and after they posted themselves, he lifted his hands in the air.
“Oh Tlaloc!” Tizoc shouted out as he peered into a partially clouded sky, “Accept these offerings—warriors honorably taken in battle—we are about to send you! Welcome them into your house and hear their messages from us!”
This completed, he nodded to the four priests and they quickly seized Zozoltin, each grabbing one of his limbs, and dragged him to the altar. He was thrown on his back upon the curved block so that it arched his chest upward, elevating it above the rest of his body, and as each priest tightly held him down, a fifth one stepped up and threw a strap under his chin that forceably yanked his head back. His chest heaved up and down in his heavy breathing and his eyes never left Tizoc’s.
Tizoc raised his flint knife a full arm’s length over his head, holding it there momentarily for all to see, then plunged it with all his power into Zozoltin’s chest. It cut into the flesh directly under the rib cage and was forced in one strong horizontal stroke across the width of the chest, opening it in a broad slash as the blood gushed forth. With his free hand, Tizoc reached into the gory cavity and pushed his fingers ahead until he felt them encircling the pulsating heart. He then violently jerked his hand back, ripping the organ, which for an instant still clung to attached veins, from its snug enclosure. As red blood spurted volumously over the altar, he lifted the heart into the air, then passed it to Cihuacoatl who transferred it on a plate to the arperture of the stone idol within the shrine and dropped it in. Tizoc stood acutely aware of the glassy, sightless eyes of the corpse still fixed on him as it was raised from the block by the four priests and flung over the steps. It rolled down like a heavy log leaving a thin streak of blood to mark its path. At the bottom, the body was taken by more priests who cut off its head, arms, and legs, setting these parts aside for later use—the limbs to be cooked and eaten—while the torso was set on a stretcher and placed away from the temple’s base for eventual removal by boat, either to a burning ground or to the zoo for the animals. Thus did Zozoltin enter paradise.
Without