A Magic of Nightfall nc-2

by S L Farrell

  One of the Council of Ca’ stood at his left hand: an older woman with obviously-dyed black hair who stared at him with the predatory eyes of a hawk, though Eneas didn’t recognize her. A portrait of Kraljica Marguerite was set at Audric’s right hand. The impact of the painting was stunning: Eneas had never seen anything so lifelike and solid-more of a presence than the woman on the other side of the throne. Eneas could imagine the Kraljica staring at him as he came near, and the feeling was not a pleasant one. It made him want to cradle the pouch he carried; it made him want to turn and flee.

  You cannot. I will not let you. Cenzi roared in his head, and Eneas shook his head like a dog trying to rid himself of fleas.

  The Kraljiki cleared his throat as Eneas approached, a liquid sound. He coughed once, and Eneas heard phlegm rattling in the boy’s lungs. His mouth hung half-open, and he clutched a lace cloth spotted with blood in his right hand. “O’Offizier cu’Kinnear,” the Kraljiki said as Eneas came to the dais and bowed. “I understand from Archigos Kenne that you have come from the war in the Hellins with news for us.” The Kraljiki spoke haltingly and slowly, pausing often for breath and occasionally stifling a cough with the handkerchief. “We have heard of your fine record in the Garde Civile, and we salute you for your service to the throne. And I am happy to tell you that I have signed your Lettre a’Chevaritt, effective immediately.”

  Eneas bowed again. “Kraljiki, I am humbled, and I praise Cenzi, who makes all things possible.”

  “Yes,” the Kraljiki answered. “We have also heard of your great devotion to the Faith, and that you once considered a career as a teni. The Holdings are pleased that you chose a martial career instead.”

  “I continue to serve Cenzi, either way,” Eneas told him, inclining his head.

  The Kraljiki, looking bored, seemingly listening to someone else. He glanced over at the painting of Marguerite and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I would think so.” Eneas wasn’t certain whether Audric had addressed him or not. He hesitated, and Audric’s attention came back to him. “Your news, O’Offizier? What of the Hellins? We’ve heard nothing for over a month now.”

  “I have brought you something,” Eneas told the Krlajiki. He patted the leather case: gently, almost a caress. He took the strap from around his head and held the pouch out toward Audric. “If I may approach…?”

  Audric nodded, and Eneas stepped up onto the platform of the Sun Throne. Closer now, he noticed the smell of sickness lingering around the Kraljiki: the odor of corruption, a foulness of breath. He pretended not to notice, handing the pouch to Audric, who put it on his lap. The Kraljiki peered inside, putting his hand inside to feel what was there. “Bricks of sand?” he asked, his forehead creased with puzzlement. His nose wrinkled at the smell. “Dark earth?”

  “No,” Eneas told him softly. “Let me show you…”

  With the voice of Cenzi calling in his head, he began the chant: quickly, his hands darting. From the corner of his vision, he saw the woman at the Kraljiki’s left startle, then step away from the throne. He heard someone behind him in the audience shout. Audric’s mouth opened as if he were about to speak.

  Fierce fire bloomed between Eneas’ hands. He leaned forward, held it over the open lips of the pouch, and let it fall.

  Cenzi roared His pleasure. The world exploded into eternal light and sound.

  The White Stone

  She watched Talis over the next few days.

  She found that she couldn’t simply return Nico to the man and let the boy go. The voices from the stone taunted her for her concern. Fynn especially was derisive and bitter. “You want a family? So now the assassin is going to care about others? The murderer has found love now that she has a bastardo in her womb?” He cackled merrily. “You’ve become a fool, woman. Look at what my family has done to me! The child you carry will happily betray you the same way one day. Family!” He laughed again, the others joining in with him, a mocking chorus.

  “Shut up!” she told them all, causing people on the street around her to glance at her. She scowled back at them. She hugged her stomach protectively, startled-as she always was-by the swelling curve in what had once been an athletic, flat abdomen. Already, she sensed the fluttering of movement there: Jan’s child. Her child. “You don’t know. You can’t know.”

  When she thought of her child, born and alive, it was always a girl but with some of Nico’s features, too, as if they were strange siblings. “I took the boy in when he needed someone,” she told the voices. “I’m responsible for him now. I made that choice.”

  They snorted derision. They howled.

  She had watched Talis’ rooms since she left Nico there. She’d abandoned the rooms she’d taken, and had rented a room above Talis’ own, though she was careful not to let Nico see her enter or leave the building. She had bored a hole in the floor so she could both watch and listen to them below. And she did so, ready to act if she heard Talis mistreating Nico in any way, ready to appear as the White Stone to take the man’s life, furious and vengeful. But she had heard nothing to make her fear for Nico.

  Not directly, anyway.

  She already knew from Nico that the Numetodo had been hunting Talis. She knew that he was a Westlander and a user of their magic, and the Holdings was at war with the Westlanders in the Hellins. That would be a danger for Nico, all by itself. So she watched.

  On the second Cenzidi of the month, she trailed them when Nico took Talis to her old rooms, watching from the shadows of the alley across the way as they emerged again with Nico shaking his head in confusion, his arms waving as he spoke to Talis. That afternoon, through the borehole, she heard them talking below. “I don’t understand,” Nico said. “That’s where Elle lived, Talis. Really. I was there.”

  “I believe you, Nico,” Talis replied. “But she’s not there now.” She could hear the concern in the man’s voice. She imagined him rubbing at the healing cuts on his neck as he spoke. She heard the unspoken commentary underneath: She’s dangerous. She might have killed me.

  “I liked Elle,” Nico said. “She was nice to me.”

  “I’m glad she was. I’m glad she brought you to me. But…”

  Whatever his objection, he kept it to himself. She smiled at that. “But she’s mad,” the voices said. “And the madness is growing.”

  She clutched at the stone in its pouch as if she could strangle the voices with the white pressure of her fingers.

  She didn’t want to hear any more. She would continue to watch, yes, but for now it seemed that Nico was safe with Talis. She slipped out of her own room quietly, hurrying down the stairs and out the rear door of the building. She moved quickly through the streets of Oldtown, away from the main areas and into its twisted bowels where narrow streets curved and snarled and the buildings were dark, ancient, and small. She listened to her own thoughts, to the voices inside her head, to the conversation around her. “Matarh!” she heard a child’s voice cry, and for a moment she thought it was Nico. She turned with a smile, her arms open to embrace him.

  It wasn’t Nico. It was some other child, nearly the same age. “Matarh,” the boy cried again, and a young woman rushed from the door of a nearby building, gathering up the child in her arms, the boy’s feet dangling as she hugged him.

  She watched the scene, her arms unknowingly hugging herself in sympathy. She wanted to feel pleasure at this scene that must be common enough, but what she felt was the hot flush of jealousy. “Yes, that’s what you’ll never have,” Fynn crowed inside her, and the others joined in. “You can never have that. No one will ever love you that way. Not even the child you carry. Never.”

  “That’s not true,” she told them, feeling tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, it’s not true.”

  “It is. It is.” A chorus of denial. “It is.”

  She turned and fled them, pursued by the voices. She walked hurriedly, not even knowing where she was going, pushing through crowded street markets and along half-deserted avenues, past shops and business
es. She found herself finally on the northern bank of the A’Sele near the Pontica Kralji. There, uncaring of the mud and the foul smell, she sat hugging her knees to herself, trying to ignore the screaming voices in her head as she rocked back and forth. If anyone saw her, they thought her deranged and left her alone. She sat there for a long time, her thoughts frayed and chaotic until pure exhaustion calmed her and the voices receded. She sat panting, rubbing the swelling mound of her belly and imagining the life inside.

  “I will protect you. I will keep you safe,” she whispered to her.

  Somewhere across the A’Sele, on the Isle A’Kralji, almost as if in response, there came the sound of sudden thunder, and she saw black smoke billowing up from somewhere among the crowded buildings of the island. Not long after, the wind-horns of the city began to wail, though it was already past Second Call.

  She wondered what had happened.

  ENGAGEMENT

  Audric ca’Dakwi

  Someone was screaming. Over and over and over.

  S When Audric opened his eyes, everything was tinged with red as if the world had been painted with blood. Clots of it swam over his vision. His breath was a rasp, a husk; he could barely draw breath. He seemed to be in his own chambers, in his own bed, but he couldn’t move his body at all. His face itched, and he wanted to bring his hand up to scratch it, but he could not lift either hand or move his feet. He was afraid to lift his head and look down, afraid of what he might see.

  And the pain… There was so much pain, and he wanted to scream but he could only moan, a thin, eternal cry. He could feel hot tears running down his face.

  “You can’t die. You can’t…” Her voice was as torn and ragged, a bare whisper.

  “Great-Matarh?” he asked. “Where are you? Marlon? Seaton? Where is Kraljica Marguerite?”

  His voice came from an impossible distance. His ears were full of a continuous roar, as if the city were falling around him. “Marlon? Seaton?” he called again. The pain surged over him like a great, breaking wave. He tried to scream, but nothing emerged from his open mouth.

  A face loomed over him and he blinked. He thought he recognized Archigos Kenne. Teni-chants mixed in with the roar in his ears. “Archigos?”

  “Yes, Kraljiki. I came as soon as I heard.” He could barely hear the Archigos, the words lost in the roaring in his ears.

  “What happened?” The two words each weighed as much as the great marble blocks of the palais facade. He could barely spit them out. He closed his eyes.

  “We’re still not certain, Kraljiki. O’Offizier cu’Kinnear… he may have been a Numetodo, or…” The Archigos’ voice faded. Audric opened his eyes again; the Archigos’ mouth was working as if he were still speaking, but Audric could hear only the red-tinged roar, and it swelled and with it the pain again, and he tried to scream along with it, but it was only a gasp. “… never know now… Councillor ca’Ludovici terribly injured… Marlon and Seaton dead…” the Archigos was saying, but Audric was no longer listening.

  He had glimpsed the painting of his great-matarh. It leaned against the wall near his bed. The thick frame was shattered along its left side, and there were great rents in the canvas itself, frayed wounds crawling over Marguerite’s face. He moaned again. “No!” he tried to shout, as if the denial could push it all away and change everything.

  He remembered. He wasn’t certain. The o’offizier approaching the Sun Throne, a flash… then nothing until now.

  You can’t die…!

  The pain rushed in once more, and this time he felt his whole body shaking and jerking in response, the middle of his body arching up, and the Archigos was pressing him back down and shouting urgently to someone else in the room. “… whatever you can… the Ilmodo.. . Cenzi will forgive…”

  The pain threatened to tear him in half, to snap him like a winter branch, but suddenly it was gone. Gone. His eyes were open, and he could see Archigos Kenne screaming at the palais healer and the woman teni in her green robes, and there were other people in the room and they were all shouting but he could hear nothing, nothing but the roar growing louder and louder. “You can’t die,” and the pain at least was gone and he wanted to lift his hand toward his great-matarh but his body still would not move and he could not even pull in his breath even though his lungs ached and he tried… and tried… and.. .

  Niente

  He had hoped that the taking of the island of Karnmor would have been enough, that Tecuhtli Zolin would have been satisfied with that demonstration of Tehuantin power and they would take to their ships and return home. But Zolin had looked east instead. “Weto have struck a wound to the body,” he said, “but the head remains, and the body will heal unless we strike. I know what you’d tell me, Nahual, but now is the time to strike. I feel it. Ask Axat. She will tell you.” Niente stared into the scrying bowl, sprinkling the herbs over the water. Maybe it was because the water here was less pure, or maybe it was because the land of his own gods was so distant, or maybe it was that his own ability had waned, but again the images he saw reflected there were too confused and too fleeting, and they left him uneasy.

  … A boy on a glowing throne, but his face was a fleshless skull, and there: was that the Easterner he had ensorcelled? A woman lurked in the background, hard to see… But the water swirled and when it cleared again Niente saw another boy on another throne, and a woman behind him also, with a green-robed, dark-haired teni beside her

  … Armies crawled over a broken land with banners swaying, marching over ground strewn with bodies… Fire and a temple, and ranks of people in green robes praying… A great city with a river running through its midst, and smoke rising from its great buildings… A Tehuantin warrior on the ground, a spear through him, and the body of a nahualli alongside with a broken spell-staff, but the water was murky now and he could not see the faces that lay there to know who they were, though a queasy roiling churned in his gut, and he suddenly didn’t want to see…

  “Well?” Tecuhtli Zolin asked, and Niente glanced up from the bowl. The Techutli had entered his tent and was watching him. The eagle of his rank spread red-feathered wings down his cheeks as the beak opened in a fierce cry on his forehead.

  They were encamped on the edge of a great, wide river that one of the Easterners they’d captured had called the A’Sele. Far up the river, they were told, was Nessantico, the capital of the Holdings. The Tehuantin fleet was anchored close by, near where the mouth of the A’Sele emptied into the Middle Sea, their hulls low in the water with the plunder of Karnmor.

  They had left the city of Karnor in ruins a hand of days ago. The city had been raped and plundered but not held; the rest of the great island had been left entirely untouched. Instead, Zolin had taken the army back on the ships, sailing out from Karnor Harbor and around Karnmor to the mouth of the A’Sele, where the army had taken to land once more. They had met little resistance. The people of the Holdings had melted away before them like spring snow, retreating and vanishing into the forests and back roads of the land, abandoning the villages with their strangely-shaped houses and buildings. This was land that had been tamed for generations: with rich farms and fields, with wide roads, paved with cobbles inside the villages and lined with stone fences outside. This was a domesticated land, not wild like the slopes of the Shield Mountains, but more like the farmlands of the great cities around the shore of the Inland Sea, or the canals of Tlaxcala, the capital built out in the sea itself.

  “Nahual Niente?”

  He started, realizing that he was still staring into the bowl though it was only his own uncertain and spell-ravaged reflection that he saw there, his clouded left eye frighteningly white. A drop of sweat fell from his brow into the water, shivering the image of his face. He lifted his head.

  “I saw battle,” he told Zolin. “And a boy king on the throne. His face was a skull.”

  “Ah, then perhaps your Easterner has fulfilled his task?”

  Niente shrugged.

  “The battle-who won?”<
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  “I don’t know. I saw… I saw a dead warrior, and a dead nahualli.”

  Zolin scoffed. “Warriors always die,” he said. “Nahualli, too. It is the way of things.” Then, he stopped and his eyes narrowed, swaying the wings of the eagle. “Was it me you saw?”

  Niente shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered, but elaborated no further.

  “Did you see us sailing home?” the Tecuhtli asked.

  “No.” Another single word, and Zolin nodded.

  “You don’t want to be here, do you? You think I’m making a mistake.”

  Niente tossed aside the water in the scrying bowl. He wiped the bowl dry with the hem of his shirt, wondering how bluntly he should answer Zolin. He had never been less than honest with Necalli, but Necalli didn’t have Zolin’s dangerous temperament. “We’re a long way from home, in a strange land.”

  “A land that has offered almost no resistance,” Zolin said. He swept his arms to the east. “This great city of theirs must know by now that we’re here, but I see no army in front of us.”

  “You will. And we have no reinforcements behind us, no new warriors or nahualli to fill the gaps of the fallen. I have seen their castles and their fortifications in the scrying bowl, Tecuhtli. We had the element of surprise at Karnor; that’s gone now. They will be preparing for us.”

  “And your black sand will tear down their walls and send their towers tumbling into ruin.”

  “I’ve seen the fires of their smithies and the prayers of their war-teni. I have seen their armies and they were large, sprawled over the land like a steel forest. We are but a few thousands here, Tecuhtli, and they have many more. We’re now as they were in our land, far away from our resources. I doubt we will succeed here any better than they did there.”