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universe is running down. The old gods are starting to get hungry again. The wheels and
axles of the universe are greased with blood, and the tremendous stockpile of blood the
Aztecs built up with their hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices is dwindling. He
says that if we don’t start up the old ways again, the universe is going to grind to a halt,
the stars will stand still in their orbits, and everyone and everything will suffer and die.
It seems pretty far-fetched to me, but it’s not impossible that he’s right, if those are the
parameters the programmer of this simulation set down, you know? Maybe everything
in this universe really does run on an engine of blood.”
Marla found Mutex’s philosophy marginally more believable than Dalton’s, but that
was mostly because of Dalton’s smug assurance that he was right—he was, in a way,
something of a religious fundamentalist himself. She had no doubt that Mutex’s gods
had once been real, perhaps sustained by the belief of their worshippers. The notion that
gods were kept alive by their believers was a popular theory of theology in her circles,
since it explained why exorcisms, Voudon, Kabalistic magic, and other mutually
incompatible magical systems all more or less worked. Or, maybe, there had been
powerful people or creatures or other sorts of beings that chose to be worshipped as
gods by Mutex’s forebears, or just fell into the godly gig as a matter of luck and
stumble. At any rate, she thought his theory about the universe grinding to a halt for
want of blood sacrifice was probably bullshit, and she’d continue to think that unless
and until he converted a whole lot of people to his way of thinking, in which case she’d
start to worry about it becoming true. But Mutex believed it. She said as much aloud:
“Mutex thinks he’s a hero. He’s the only one who can save the universe. By
doing…what, exactly?”
Dalton spread his hands. “I’m not sure. He wanted access to the Cornerstone—which he
got, from what you’ve told me. He told the other sorcerers he met with that he wanted to
use the Cornerstone to awaken the sleeping gods and give them their due in blood. That
doesn’t sound good, but as for what it means, specifically, I couldn’t tell you.”
She thought of the dead frog in her bag, and of the stolen statue of Tlaltecuhtli, the
primordial froglike earth-monster. It wasn’t a big leap to imagine that Mutex was
planning to awaken the sleeping spirit of Tlaltecuhtli. What would such a ritual require,
apart from the Cornerstone?
“Anyway,” Dalton said, “whatever he’s planning, he wants to use the heart’s blood of
dead sorcerers to do it.”
“What?” she said, suddenly interested again.
“I’m not Finch’s direct successor,” Dalton said. “The strega Umbaldo was. She was
found a couple of hours ago, surrounded by poison dart frogs, with her heart cut out.
After her death, the mantle passed to me. My mirror-selves investigated her body—frog
poison doesn’t do shit to them, of course—and they found flecks of obsidian in the
wound. Mutex is taking hearts. I don’t know if the heart’s blood of a sorcerer is more
potent, or if he’s just killing us because he’s pissed at us, or—”
“He’s killing you because you’re dangerous, probably,” Marla said. “The sorcerers are
the only ones who can possibly stop him, after all.”