My people persuaded him to send one of his daughters to be honored at the festival by being wed to a G.o.d. Although we were still a small and unimportant tribe, our fighting prowess was known. To bind us to him, he sent his favorite daughter.

To receive the daughter of a great lord was an homage to us Mexicas. To pay our respects to her and her father, we prepared her in our usual custom.

When the lord of Culhuacan came to enjoy our festival, we proudly showed him what we had done to his daughter.

She had been skinned like a deer to remove her outer coating, from her feet to her head. The carca.s.s had been tossed aside and the skin was slipped into by a small-built male priest in tribute to the nature G.o.ddess.

Ayya ouiya! Rather than being pleased at the honor paid his daughter, the lord of Culhuacan went into a rage and called upon his warriors to attack us. We Mexicas were the finest warriors in the One World, but compared to the other tribes, we were still small in number. The Atzcapotazalco attacked us in great numbers. We were masters of the lake with our boats, and we used them to flee the onslaught. On the lake were two small islands, rocky islets, that no one cared about. Because they had no place else to go, my people landed on them.

When my totem was brought ash.o.r.e on one of the islands, I saw an eagle atop a cactus, holding a snake in its beak.

It was a sign, a message from the G.o.ds that we had chosen the right place.

I called the island Tenocht.i.tlan, Place of the High Priest Tenoch.

We could not return to the land that had belonged to us because the Atzcapotazalco had seized it as their own, and half of our people were taken prisoner and enslaved.

But I told my people that they had arrived at the place where their destinies would be fulfilled. I was shocked by the sacrilege of the Atzcapotazalcos. Like the other tribes in the valley, they did not honor their G.o.ds as they should; and they had insulted the Mexica G.o.d. We vowed revenge but knew that it would have to come when we were strong enough to overpower the enemy.

The islands were easy to defend and hard to attack. The lake gave us a bounty in fish, frogs, and fowl that could be traded for maize and beans.

By observing how tiny islets formed from trees in the shallow lake, we learned the chinampa method of farming atop the water. Large reed baskets, each longer and wider than the height of a tall man, were anch.o.r.ed to the bottom of the lake and filled with dirt. Crops grew in the rich dirt. Over time, the chinampas greatly increased the size of the islets themselves.

As Huitzilopochtli, the tribal G.o.d of war, it was my duty to instruct my Mexica people on how to fulfill their destiny now that they had arrived at the place Tenoch had prophesied. We would be a warrior society, with all efforts of our people directed toward creating the finest warriors in the One World.

Women were to be rewarded for becoming pregnant. Women who died in pregnancy were to be rewarded the same as warriors who died on the battlefield: They were to go to the paradise of the Eastern Heaven. From birth, male children would be inducted into warrior cults. They would be given swords and shields while still wet from their mother's blood and would grow up knowing no other life than that of a warrior.

FORTY-EIGHT.

Mounted atop a high temple, I watched as generations were born and died and Tenocht.i.tlan developed into a proud city. Through marriage and military a.s.sistance, my people had grown powerful but were still surrounded by larger empires. And we chaffed under the heel of the Atzcapotazalco Empire, of which we were still a va.s.sal.

The basket farming had increased the size of Tenocht.i.tlan until it was a large city. Through marriage and other inducements, we had also gained some land along the lake.

The warrior society I had ordained had created the finest fighting force in the One World. Despite its small size, the army of the Mexica was faster, had greater endurance, and were better fighters than any other tribe.

The G.o.ds had rewarded us, and we rewarded them. To gain the blood that was needed to appease the G.o.ds, our warriors needed constant warfare. Because that cannot be done with our neighbors, we hired our warriors out as mercenaries.

The Mexica name had become feared as it should. We did not retreat in battle. We would pursue an enemy until they dropped. When our warriors marched beyond the reach of our supplies, they marched prisoners with them and ate them to sustain their strength.

I, too, had learned lessons from the past. When an ambitious prince of Azapotzalco, Maxtla, rose to king by murdering his brother and other contenders, he aggravated other tribes by murdering their leaders and demanding more tribute. I instructed our Revered Speaker that we would need allies to go to war against the powerful empire.

With Texcoco and Tlacopan as our allies, we made war upon the Azapotzalco.

Maxtla believed he was a great warrior and maker of war, but he had never fought the Mexica way. After he discovered the power of our army, he sued for peace. My Revered Speaker held a feast to discuss the ending of the war. During the course of the meal, Maxtla asked what meat it was that he was eating.

"Amba.s.sador stew," my Revered Speaker told him. "We are eating the man you sent with your overture of peace."

The peace negotiations were a failure.

The Azapotzalco were defeated. Maxtla fled the battle even while his warriors were fighting. At the sight of him running, they threw down their weapons and fled. My Mexica warriors found Maxtla hiding in a temazcalli, a mud hut used for steam baths.

They piled wood around the hut and baked him inside.

When the war was over, we Mexicas were the most powerful tribe in the One World. We were still in the spring of our bloom, but the rewards of empire were soon pouring into Tenocht.i.tlan.

We had never been numerous people, and we lost many young men in war. We would never be able to control a great empire with a large army as all others before us had done. Instead, we spread out, conquered, and controlled with a reign of terror.

We defeated enemy armies, terrified their people, and then withdrew, leaving behind an administrator with a small force of warriors. The duty of the administrator was little more than collecting the annual tribute we a.s.sessed for the region. The local people were free to follow whatever lifestyle they wished-as long as the tribute was paid. When it was not, or our administrator was harmed or disobeyed, our army quickly subdued the rebellious people and punished them harshly.

Tenocht.i.tlan became the greatest city in the One World. Not only did our armies march, but our merchants became travelers who brought back to the city the finest luxuries to be found in one corner of the One World to the other. If our merchants were hara.s.sed or murdered, the retribution was swift and harsh. When women of another city insulted our merchants by lifting their skirts and displaying their naked b.u.t.tocks, we killed the inhabitants and razed the city.

Ayya, we had fulfilled our destiny. But our strategy was so successful, we found few enemies to fight. As the war G.o.d of my people, I knew that did not bode well for them. We needed a constant supply of war prisoners to sacrifice so we could continue to fulfill the covenant that had brought us food and prosperity.

I found a solution in the Flower Wars. These were friendly wars fought with our own allies. Their finest warriors would meet our finest in battle. Little effort was made to kill. Instead, the goal was to capture warriors so they could be sacrificed and then honored by having their captors cook and eat their remains.

But not even the Flower Wars were always able to satisfy our need for blood. We suffered a burning drought in which the rain G.o.d refused to water our crops, and the sun G.o.d blazed down until the crops shriveled and died. When the Revered Speaker came to meditate for guidance at my temple, I told him he must pour a river of blood to appease the G.o.ds. The G.o.ds had given us an empire, and they wanted their reward.

War had to be waged against even friends to obtain the necessary prisoners, but that year over twenty thousand sacrifices were made. An almost endless line of prisoners went all the way out to the causeways that led across the lake. The priests atop the temple who cut the still-beating hearts out and threw them into Chac-Mool's bowl were soaked in blood from head to foot. A river of blood ran down the temple steps.

The whole Mexica nation feasted on the flesh of the defeated warriors.

The G.o.ds were pleased. The rains came and the sun shined.

All was well with the Mexica people. It had taken us nearly twenty generations, but we had risen to hegemony over the One World.

But there was always one G.o.d who could never be satisfied. Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, would not be satisfied with just blood. When he left Tula and sailed over the Eastern Sea, he had declared that he would be returning to claim his kingdom.

Although my people enjoyed the opulence of the masters of the One World, they always knew that someday Quetzalcoatl would return.

And the kingdom he would claim was the one they possessed.

FORTY-NINE.

We left Teotihuacan, left the dream, and I returned to being a servant boy to a traveling magician. The time I had been with the Healer turned into a year and then into another. After my experience with the potion of the flower weaver, I continued to learn the way of the indios, the dialects, the nuances of walk and talk and even thinking. The day came when the Healer paid me the compliment I had long waited for.

"You no longer smell like a white man," he said.

Besides knowledge of my indio ancestors' history, I gained respect for them. Aztec history was a b.l.o.o.d.y one, but besides war, the indios made astronomical discoveries, perfected a calendar, published innumerable books in the picture writing that resembled the hieroglyphics of the Egypt of the pharaohs, and made amazing discoveries in health and medicine. Tenocht.i.tlan was said to be a clean, fresh-smelling city in which waste was hauled away in boats to be used as fertilizer. The floating gardens that took root and created man-made islands and temples larger than any on earth were marvels of engineering.

It was true that there were aspects of the Aztecs that were not to be admired. Their practice of the blood covenant was cruel and barbaric. But it was not any more brutal than the practices of the largest and most respected European empire in history: the Roman Empire. Not even the great Aztec sacrificial ceremony where twenty thousand people were killed overshadows the savageness and cruelty of the Roman arenas. The arenas were not just places where thousands of gladiators fought to the death, but many thousands of innocent Christians and other dissenters were murdered by professional warriors or torn apart by wild animals-all for the amus.e.m.e.nt of crowds.

The Aztecs were no more hated by the indio states they demanded tribute from than the Romans were hated by the peoples they had subjugated. The fray told me that the Romans crucified ten thousand Jews at one time after they rebelled against Roman tyranny and payment of tribute to Rome. Whole cities were decimated.

Even in my own enlightened time, how many thousands were sacrificed because of some unspoken blood covenant the Inquisition had with G.o.d? Is being burned alive at the stake less barbaric than having a knife plunged into your chest and your heart ripped out?