A Magic of Nightfall nc-2

by S L Farrell

  “That was just a sprinkle of it,” Talis was saying. “I would say you could imagine what a large amount of black sand could do, but I don’t really think you can.”

  “ I can,” Karl said. He’d been examining the bowl; the way it was tilted, Nico could see that the bottom of the bowl was blackened as if it had been scorched. Karl’s face was grim as he set the bowl down. “I was there when Ana died.”

  Talis pressed his lips together.

  Varina pushed the bowl away. She lifted her head, seeeming to hear the fading sound of Audric’s funeral procession for the first time. “The Kraljiki.” Her eyes widened. “The rumors…”

  “… are quite possibly true, from what I’ve heard,” Talis finished for her. “But that also wasn’t my doing.” He gestured at Nico. “The boy can tell you that. I was with him when it happened. We heard the wind-horns calling. Didn’t we, Nico?”

  Nico nodded.

  “Westlander magic…” Karl breathed. He’d picked up the bowl again, staring at the sooty interior as if answers were written there. “We’re just starting to understand it, and I can tell you, Talis, that it doesn’t come from your gods any more than teni magic comes from Cenzi.”

  “Then you still don’t understand,” Talis said. “This isn’t magic. At least not the black sand itself. It’s no more magic than making bread, if you know the recipe for making it.”

  “You said you know who’s responsible,” Karl said. “Give me a name.”

  Talis took a long breath. “His name is Uly. He has a stall at the River Market. He’s a Westlander, sent here at the same time I was. He’s a warrior. His job was to report back to the Tecuhtli-the Tecuhtli is what your Kraljiki might be if he were also the Commandant of the Garde Civile. I was here for the Nahual, the head of my order, to help Uly and also to find out what happened to Mahri. And…” Talis took another breath. “I made a mistake. It was we nahualli-the spellcasters-who discovered how to create black sand; it’s a secret we’ve kept-and yes, if others thought it was magic, we didn’t correct their misconception. But Uly… we were here so long and he was the only person I knew who spoke my language, and until I met Sera-” he glanced at Nico’s matarh and smiled, “-he was the only person who seemed to care about me. I did what I shouldn’t have done. I had him help me make black sand. I tried to keep the details from him, but.. .” Talis took the bowl from the table and placed it back in his pouch. “Uly wasn’t stupid. He could have easily seen enough to reproduce the process. His job was to provide me the ingredients, after all.”

  “You’re saying this Uly assassinated Ana?” Karl asked. “That’s what you want us to believe now?”

  Talis lifted a shoulder. “I’m saying it’s possible. Probable. I know it wasn’t me. And it was definitely bosh luum that did it. Not Westlander magic. Not Numetodo magic either.”

  Karl’s hands were clenched on the tabletop. “Where’s this Uly?”

  “I haven’t seen him since after you attacked me,” Talis answered. “I told Uly about it and said that I was going to disappear for awhile, and haven’t heard from him since. I suppose the best place to start to find him would be River Market, but…” Talis began, but Nico squirmed in his matarh’s arms.

  “He’s not there,” Nico said. They were all looking at him now, and his matarh’s arms loosened as she looked down at him on her lap.

  “Nico?”

  “It’s true, Matarh,” he said. “Uly’s not there. After I left Tantzia Alisa’s and walked here, I thought Uly could tell me where Talis was,” Nico said. “But when I went to the River Market, Uly’s stall was empty and the pepper-seller lady said he was gone.”

  Talis was nodding. “I thought that would be the case. I don’t know where he is,” Talis said. “Still in the city, probably, but where.. .”

  “The pepper lady said that he might be in Oldtown Market,” Nico told them.

  Karl was already standing. Now Talis rose also. “I don’t know that Uly did it, Ambassador,” he said. “You don’t know it either.”

  “I intend to find out.”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “Why?” Karl asked. “To stop him if he tells me that it was actually you, or that he hasn’t the faintest clue how to make this black sand of yours?”

  “He won’t talk to you, no matter what you do to him,” Talis said. “He’s a warrior; he’s been trained to die first. He trusts me. You? The first time you ask him something that arouses his suspicions, he’ll kill you and run. Or he’ll happily die in the attempt.”

  “I’ll be with him,” Varina said. She was standing, too, her arm laced with Karl’s. “And we’re stronger than you think.”

  “You’ll need me,” Talis insisted.

  “Fine,” Karl said finally. “But not with that.” He gestured at Talis’ walking stick.

  Talis grimaced. “I can’t leave that here. I won’t.”

  “Then you’ll stay with it.”

  Talis seemed to consider that a moment. “All right,” he said. “I’ll leave it. This one time. I’m going.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Nico said.

  All three of them turned to him, and he could feel his matarh looking down at him as well. “No!” they said, all four of them at the same time.

  Niente

  The vision in the scrying bowl troubled him. He could feel Tecuhtli Zolin studying his face for any sign of what the visions indicated, and he lowered his head even further into the swirling blue mist rising from it.

  A woman sat on a glowing throne, her face twisted by pain and horribly scarred, one eye missing. An army moved through the mist behind her… There, a boy and an older woman, and behind them also an army, though with banners of black and silver, not the blue and gold of the Holdings… A man wearing a necklace of a shell, and with him-could it be?-a nahualli who looked like Talis, though he was embracing a woman and child who were not Tehuantin, but Easterners.. .

  The images were coming too fast, and Niente tried to still them with his mind, trying to force them farther out in time, to show the wisps of the future that might come. He prayed to Axat for clarity, he thought of their own army and the ships riding on the river close by. ..

  The ships swayed in the midst of a storm, but the storm rained fire down from the sky. Armies crawled over the land, and there were the bright explosions of black sand, and smoke hung heavy over trampled fields… But the mist seemed to divide in twain-as sometimes happened when Axat wished to show two possible outcomes. He saw a field littered with the bodies of Tehuantin warriors, and a single ship of their fleet with tattered sails, hurrying away westward into a falling sun as the other ships burned in orange flame to the water… “Westward… home…” He could almost hear the words in the wind…

  But that vision closed, and the other came…

  In the second vision, there was a fierce and bloody battle on the fields before the city, and the army of blue and gold retreated behind the solid walls of a city… The same city now, with broken walls, and through the smoke and the mist of the vision it was difficult to see, but he thought he glimpsed the army of the Tehuantin spilling through the breaches…

  Another city lay beyond it, far greater, and it seemed to beckon. ..

  And there it was again… the image of a dead Tehuantin warrior, with a nahualli lying next to him…

  “What is it you’re trying to show me, Axat?” Niente asked, his voice cracking.

  “Nahual?”

  Niente glanced up; the mist spilled from the scrying bowl and died.

  The Tehuantin encampment was noisy and busy around them as a wan sun tried to penetrate high, thin clouds. Niente found himself missing the fiercer, warmer sun of his own land; this place was colder than he liked, as if it leeched the heat from his blood. Tecuhtli Zolin stared at him, the white of his eyes gleaming against the black lines inscribed around the sockets, the red eagle on his skull seeming to want to take flight. There was eagerness in his face. Flanking him on either side were Citlali
and Mazatl, and their glances were no less eager. “What did the vision tell you?” Zolin asked Niente. “What did it say?”

  “Very little,” he answered, and annoyance showed over the Tecuhtli’s face in a flash of teeth.

  “Very little,” he said, mocking Niente’s tone. “Tecuhtli Necalli used to tell me how your visions in the scrying bowl would give him strategies, guide the way he placed the warriors and moved through the terrain. He said you were Axat’s Nahual, showing us the way to victory. But all you give me is ‘very little.’ ”

  “I give you nothing,” Niente told him, and Zolin scowled in response. “As I gave Tecuhtli Necalli nothing also. I am only Axat’s conduit. I can relay what Axat shows me, but it’s not my vision. It’s Hers. All I have to give is what Axat offers. If you wish to complain about how little that is, talk to Her.”

  “Then tell me this very little, Nahual,” he answered. He pointed eastward, to where the outlier scouts had said that an army of the Holdings waited for them, outside the city a half day’s march away. Niente had ridden forward with Tecuhtli Zolin to see the city-far larger than the mostly-abandoned villages through which they had marched in the last several days, though not as elaborate or huge as the city in the scrying bowl, this Nessantico where the Kraljiki lived. Still, the city huddled behind its walls and spilling out beyond them was easily half the size of Tlaxcala or the other great island cities of the Tehuantin empire, and larger than either Munereo or Karnor.

  It seemed that the Kraljiki would permit them to go no farther untested. If Zolin wanted this city, he must fight for it. Niente knew that would bother the Tecuhtli not at all.

  “I glimpsed a battle,” Niente told him. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the scenes flashing past in the scrying bowl. “In Axat’s vision, the army of the Holdings fought, but then fell behind the walls of the city when we came upon them. I saw the walls broken, and Tehuantin entering through…”

  “Xatli Ket!” Niente stopped as Zolin uttered the war cry of his caste-Citlali and Mazatl echoed the Techutli, and the cry was taken up-fainter and fainter-by the other warriors nearby. “Then Axat has shown you our victory,” Zolin said. He slapped at the bamboo-slatted armor covering his chest.

  “Perhaps,” Niente hurried to say. “But she also showed me our army and the fleet destroyed, and a ship hurrying to the west. Tecuhtli, that is also a possible future-a sign. If we return now, if we put our army on the ships and return home, then that’s a future we will never face. The Easterners will fear to ever come to our land again. We have already shown them the consequences; there’s nothing left here to prove.”

  Zolin coughed a derisive laugh. Citlali frowned, and Mazatl looked away as if in disgust. “Retreat, Nahual?”

  “Not retreat,” Niente persisted. “To realize that we have given these Easterners their lesson with the ruins of Munereo and Karnor, and to return home in victory.”

  “Victory?” Zolin spat on the ground between them. “They would think they have won the victory, that we ran as soon as we saw their army.”

  “Tecuhtli, if we fall here, what good does that do our people to lose their Techutli and so many warriors and nahualli?”

  “If we fall-and we will not, Nahual, if you have seen your vision correctly-then our people will find a new Techutli to lead them, and they will train new nahualli in the ways of the X’in Ka, and we will be remembered when Sakal takes us into His fiery eye. That is what will be done, no matter how very little you help. Are you are frightened, Nahual Niente? Does the sight of this Easterner army make the piss run hot down your legs?”

  Citlali and Mazatl laughed.

  “I’m not frightened,” Niente told them, and it was truth. It wasn’t fright that churned his stomach, but a sense of inevitability. Axat was trying to warn him, but She would not make Her message clear enough, or perhaps he was so far from Her that the message was blurred and hard to discern. “Tecuhtli, whatever you ask me to do, I will do. When you ask me to interpret what I see in the scrying bowl, then I also do that.”

  Zolin sniffed. “Then this is what I tell you to do, Nahual. Fill your spell-staff. Prepare the black sand. Make your peace with Axat and Sakal, and you will walk with me into the Easterners’ city-and beyond to the throne of their ruler.”

  Niente heard the words, and bowed his head in acceptance. The single ship, hurrying toward the setting sun… “I will do that, Tecuhtli,” he said, the words heavy in his throat. “I will prepare the nahualli. Give me enough time, and I will do what I believe Axat wishes us to do.”

  Karl Vliomani

  Uly wasn’t at the oldtown market, though he had been. People remembered the scarred, tattooed foreigner, but they told Karl that man had packed his wares and cleaned out his stall only two days ago, the same day Kraljiki Audric had been assassinated. No, none of the owners of the stalls nearby knew where he’d gone, but (they said) there were a few people who had been buying his special fertility potion who might know.

  Karl had hoped to confront this Uly and get to the truth of what had happened to Ana immediately. A new fire burned in his stomach. But the relief and closure wasn’t to be immediate.

  It took days.

  Days which strained his newfound intimacy with Varina. Ana’s ghost hovered between them, resurrected by Talis’ presence and his tale, and Varina retreated from it and he could not push through the specter. She still would take his hand or brush her fingers over his face, but there was sadness now in her touch, as if she were stroking a memory. He would kiss her, but though her lips were soft and warm and he wanted to yield to them, the kiss was too fleeting and distant, as if he kissed her through an unseen veil.

  Days in which he wondered whether to call the Numetodo back to the city, and decided it was still far too dangerous. Mika, hopefully, was with his family in Sforzia; let him stay there; let the rest of the scattered Numetodo remain hidden. Let the Numetodo House remain dark and empty.

  Days in which the news seemed to grow steadily worse: Kraljica Sigourney’s own horrible injuries, the rape and plunder of Karnor, a Westlander army on Nessantico’s soil and their ships on the A’Sele’s waters, the mustering of the Garde Civile, “recruitment squads” roaming the city scooping up men, sometimes (according to the rumors) whether they wished to serve or not. Karl was old enough that they weren’t greatly interested in him, but Talis was not. He was increasingly confined to the house, and had to be careful when he ventured out to avoid the squads. Karl had his own difficulties-his face was certainly known to many of the Garde Civile, the Garde Kralji, and the teni, and he had to be careful to disguise himself before he ventured out, to change his distinctive Paeti accent, and to not let anyone look too closely at his face.

  These were days where Karl found that, grudgingly, he found Talis to be more the person that Serafina claimed he was than the person Karl wanted him to be. He still didn’t trust the man entirely, and he’d slept very little that first night, with Talis, Serafina, and Nico sleeping together in the same room as he and Varina. He’d watched the man carefully, especially the next morning, when the man cleaned the brass bowl in which they’d ignited the black sand, and-as Karl remembered Mahri doing-filled it with clean water and dusted it with another, paler powder. He opened the Second World then with a spell, and the bowl had filled with an emerald fog, light pulsing and shifting over the man’s face as he stared, chanting, into the bowl’s depths.

  In the green light, he could see the fine wrinkles in the man’s face, carving themselves deeper almost as he watched. Talis already appeared to be older than Serafina had said he was; Karl thought he knew why now: the Westlander’s method of magic was costly to the user.

  “Mahri used to say that he saw the future there,” Karl said afterward, as Talis, exhausted and moving like an old man, poured the water into the flowered window box of the room. “He didn’t seem to be very good at it, if he didn’t see his own death.”

  Talis cleaned the bowl carefully with the hem of his bashta, not loo
king at Karl. “What we see in the scrying bowl isn’t the future, but the shadows of possibility. We see likelihoods and maybes. Axat suggests what might occur if we follow a particular path. But there’s never a guarantee.” He placed the bowl back into the pouch he always carried. He gave Karl a quick smile. “We can all change our future, if we’re strong and persistent enough.”

  Karl had sniffed at that. Talis had gone over to Nico then, and the two had tussled, laughing, while Serafina watched with a smile, and the love between the three of them had been palpable. He heard Varina pad barefoot into the room, her eyes dark with sleep. She was watching, too, and he could not tell what he saw in her face. She must have felt his stare, for she turned to him, smiled wanly, then turned her head away again. She folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself and not him.

  Each day, Karl would go out to Oldtown Market, usually with Varina, hoping to find those elusive customers of Uly’s and asking questions. After several fruitless days, it became more routine; they would occasionally take Nico with them, with the promise to Serafina that if they found Uly, they would not confront him.

  It was nearly two weeks later when it happened.

  “Oh, yes, the woman I told you about was just here,” the farmer said as he placed a box of mushrooms in their place. “She’s wearing a yellow tashta embroidered with a dragon down the front. She’s probably still around; said she was looking for fish.” He pointed to his left. “You might check at Ari’s, just down there. He just brought in some trout from the Vaghian.”

  Karl heard Varina draw in her breath, saw her tighten her grasp on Nico. Karl nodded, tossed the man a folia, and pushed his way back into the slow crowds strolling the market’s dirt lanes-almost all of them women or older men. They could smell the fishmonger’s stall before they saw it, and Karl caught a glimpse of a yellow tashta there. “Karl?” Varina said.