A Magic of Nightfall nc-2

by S L Farrell

  But there was no time to rest. Another soldier came at him, and again the stave, packed with the spells Niente had prepared, took the man down. One of the mounted soldiers they called chevarittai charged toward him, and Niente flung himself to the side as the warhorse’s spiked and armored hooves tore the earth where he’d just been standing, plunging on past.

  For Niente, this battle-like every battle-became a series of disconnected encounters, a maelstrom of confusion and mayhem, a disorganized landscape in which he continued to push forward. The noise was so tremendous that it became an unheard roar all around him. He sidestepped swords, thrust his stave at anything clad in the colors of blue and gold. A blade caught his arm, slicing open his forearm, another his calf. Niente shouted, his throat raw, the stave hot in his right hand, the energy blazing from it fast, almost gone now.

  And…

  He realized that he was standing not in a field, but amongst houses and other buildings, that the battle was now raging in the streets of the city, and the blue-and-gold-clad soldiers were turning now as horns blared, retreating deeper into the depths of the great city.

  He was still alive, and so was Zolin.

  The Battle Begun: Sigourney ca’Ludovici

  Commandant Aleron ca’Gerodi stood before Sigourney and the rest of the Council of Ca’ in armor spattered with blood, his helm dented by a sword strike, his face coated with mud, soot, and gore. “I’m sorry, Kraljica, Councillors,” he said. His voice was as exhausted as his stance. “We could not hold them…”

  Ca’Mazzak hissed like a steam kettle too long over the fire. Sigourney closed her eye. She took a long breath, full of soot and ash, and coughed. Her lungs were full of the stench. She opened her eye again. Through the haze of smoke, she could see the ruins of the palais, parts of it still actively burning. She and the Council had taken refuge in the Old Temple, which despite the shattered dome, was still largely intact. The main nave was packed with the treasures of the palais: paintings (including the charred one of Kraljica Marguerite), gold-and-silver place settings, the ceremonial clothes, the staffs and crowns worn by a hundred Kralji-they were all here, though much-too much-had been lost in the blaze. Sigourney sat on the Sun Throne at the entrance to the dome chamber, though if the throne were alight, it was not apparent in the brightness of the sun through the great hole torn in the dome. The sun mocked her, shining bright in a cloudless sky.

  One of the attendants handed her a goblet of the cuore della volpe to ease the coughing and the pain. She sipped at the cool liquid, though it was brown and cloudy in the golden cup.

  “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “We managed to halt their advance finally,” ca’Gerodi told her. “They didn’t reach the Avi a’Parete, but they have most of the streets to the west of it on the North Bank. They have the village of Viaux. There was a fierce battle near the River Market and for a time they held it, but we pushed them back. I’ve moved a battalion to protect the Pontica Kralji, but that’s left the Nortegate area more open than I would like.”

  The councillors muttered to themselves. “This is unacceptable,” ca’Mazzak said, more loudly.

  “Then perhaps you should have left Commandant cu’Ulcai alive,” Sigourney told the man. “Or would you care to take up the sword yourself?” Ca’Mazzak grumbled and subsided. Ca’Gerodi seemed to waver on his feet, and Sigourney motioned to one of the servants to bring a chair; the man sank gratefully onto the cushioned seat, uncaring of the filth he smeared on the brocade. “What are you telling me, Commandant?” Sigourney asked him. “That tonight they will set the rest of the city on fire, that tomorrow they will overrun us entirely? You said that you had more than enough men. You said that-”

  “I know what I said,” he interrupted, then-as Sigourney snapped her mouth shut at his rudeness-seemed to realize what he’d done and shook his head. “Pardon me, Kraljica; I haven’t slept since the night before last. But yes, that’s exactly what I fear: that tonight will bring more of the Westlanders’ awful fire, and that when they attack tomorrow…” He brought his head up, gazing at her with eyes sagging and brown. “I will give my life to protect Nessantico, if that is what is required.”

  “Aleron…” Sigourney started to push up from the Sun Throne, forgetting for a moment her injuries, then fell back. The movement caused her to cough again. The councillors watched her. She knew now what she must do, and the realization burned at her, as painful as her wounded body. “Go. Get what rest you can, and we will deal with whatever tonight and tomorrow bring. Go on. Sleep while you can…”

  Ca’Gerodi rose and saluted her. Limping, he left the room. When he’d gone, Sigourney gestured to one of the servants. “Bring me a scribe,” she told him. “And I will also need a rider-the best we have-to take a message east to the Hirzg.”

  The servant’s eyes widened momentarily, then he bowed and hurried away.

  “Kraljica,” ca’Mazzak said. “You can’t-”

  “We have no choice,” she told him, told all of them. “No choice. This is no longer about us.”

  Sigourney leaned back against the cushioned seat of the Sun Throne; it smelled of woodsmoke. It smelled of defeat.

  RESOLUTIONS

  Allesandra ca’Vorl

  Jan read the missive carefully, his pale eyes scanning the words there. Allesandra already knew what it said-Starkkapitan ca’Damont’s soldiers had intercepted the rider pounding eastward along the Avi a’Firenczia with a white banner fluttering over him in the moonlight, and had brought the sealed scroll to Allesandra, insisting to her attendants that she be awakened. Allesandra had broken the seal and scanned the letter, then she’d quickly dressed and gone to Jan.

  If her son noticed or cared that the seal hung broken on the thick paper, or that the Kraljica had addressed the missive to Allesandra and not himself, he’d said nothing. He moved the candle aside that he’d been using for light; its holder scraped along the table that had been hastily set up in the field tent next to the Hirzg’s private tent.

  “This is genuine?” Jan asked. A blanket was draped around his shoulders, his eye sockets were baggy and tired. He yawned and rubbed at his eyes. “We’re certain?”

  “The rider said that it was handed to him by Kraljica Sigourney herself,” Starkkapitan ca’Damont answered.

  Jan nodded. He handed the scroll to Semini, who read it, pursed his lips, then passed it to ca’Rudka. Jan seemed to be waiting, and Allesandra, seated next to him at the small table in the field tent, tapped her fingertips on the scarred surface. “We are wasting time, my son,” she said. “The message is clear. The Kraljica is willing to abdicate the Sun Throne if we bring the army there immediately to stop the Westlanders. Rouse the men now, and if we march our forces at double-time, we can reach the city gates by early morning.”

  Jan didn’t seem to hear her. He was looking at Sergei. “Regent?” he asked. “Your thoughts?”

  Ca’Rudka, maddeningly to Allesandra, rubbed at his nose for a long time, staring at the parchment. She could see the candlelight flickering on sculpted nostrils. “The Kraljica wouldn’t consider abdication when it was offered it to her at the parley, Hirzg Jan, or at least ca’Mazzak would not,” he said finally. “The councillor seemed entirely confident that the Garde Civile could defeat the Westlanders. Now the Kraljica’s suddenly been afflicted with altruism? But as I told you, Hirzg, I wish what’s best for Nessantico. I wouldn’t care to see the city destroyed. But this must be your decision.”

  “There, Jan, you see?” Allesandra said. She stood. “Starkkapitan, you will-”

  But Jan had laid his hand on her arm. “I’m not finished yet, Matarh,” he said. “Archigos Semini, what do you think of this offer?”

  Allesandra started to protest, but Jan’s hand tightened around her arm. They were all watching her. Pressing her lips together, she sat again. Semini especially stared at her, his umber eyes expressionless. He knew, she realized then. He knew that she had been ready to offer him up in exchange for the Sun Thro
ne. Sergei… could Sergei have told him? Or…

  Jan?

  “I notice that the Kraljica’s offer says nothing about the Faith,” Semini answered, still staring at her. “That’s not acceptable to me. I’m reluctant to commit the war-teni to an alliance with Nessantico unless Archigos Kenne is also willing to abdicate in favor of me.” Semini turned from her then, and inclined his head to Jan. “Unless, of course, that is what the Hirzg requests of me.”

  “Jan,” Allesandra persisted, ignoring Semini. “This is what we wanted from the start. We have it in our grasp; we’ve but to reach out and take it.”

  “Oh, I disagree, Matarh,” Jan snapped back at her. “It’s what you’ve always wanted. It seems your whole life has been about what you wanted: your ambitions, your aspirations, your desires. Even as a girl, from what I’ve been told: you wanted Nessantico in the first place, so Great-Vatarh forced his army to march faster than it should have and lost-yes, Fynn told me that tale, which he said Great-Vatarh told him.”

  “That’s not true,” Allesandra objected. It was Vatarh who wanted Nessantico so badly. Not me. I told him to wait and be patient. I did

  … but Jan wasn’t listening, continuing to talk.

  “You decided you didn’t want to help Vatarh after he finally brought you back, so your marriage was a sham when it could have been a strong alliance. You didn’t want me to be involved with Elissa, so you sent her away. You didn’t want to be Hirzg, so you campaigned for me to have the title. What you’ve always wanted is to be Kraljica, and now you want us to take this offer so you can have it now, whether that’s best for Firenzcia or not. It’s always been you, Matarh. You. Not Vatarh, not Great-Vatarh, not me, not the Archigos, not anyone. You. Well, you made me Hirzg, and by Cenzi I will be Hirzg, and I will do what’s best for Firenzcia and the Coalition, not what’s best for you. I love you, Matarh-” strangely, to Allesandra, he glanced at Sergei when he said that, “-but I am Hirzg, and this is what I say: We will move on to Nessantico, but we will do so in our own time. Nessantico cries out for help from us? Well, let her cry. Let her fight the battle she has brought on herself. Starkkapitan, we will break camp in the morning as planned, and we will proceed at normal pace until we are within sight of Nessantico, and there we will wait until we know more or until the Kraljica herself comes out and bends her knee to me. I won’t send a single Firenzcian life to be lost defending Nessantico from her own folly.”

  “Jan-” Allesandra began, but he cut her off with a snap of his arm.

  “No, Matarh. We’re not discussing this any further. You wanted me to be Hirzg? Well, here I am, and that is my wish. We won’t talk of it further. Starkkapitan-you have your orders.”

  Ca’Damont bowed, and with a glance at Allesandra, left the tent. Semini yawned and stretched like a bear waking from hibernation. He gave Jan the sign of Cenzi and followed after the starkkapitan, avoiding Allesandra’s gaze entirely. Sergei watched the two men leave, then stood himself. “Should you need my counsel, Hirzg, you know where to find me,” he said. “A’Hirzg, a good evening to you.”

  Allesandra gave him the barest inclination of her head. For several breaths, she and Jan sat there, silent. “You don’t want me to be Kraljica?” she said, when the silence had stretched on for too long.

  “Just as Sergei wants what’s best for Nessantico, I want what’s best for Firenzcia,” he answered. Then, before she could form a response: “All I ever wanted from you was your love, Matarh.”

  His words stung like a slap across the face, so hard that it started tears in her eyes. “I do love you, Jan,” she told him. “More than you can understand.”

  He glared at her: a stranger’s face. No, his namesake’s face, as she imagined it all during her captivity in Nessantico, when he refused to pay the ransom for her. “Shut up, Matarh. You’ve taught me well. You’ve shown me that aspirations and drive are more important than love. I talked to Archigos Semini. I told him how you’d been willing to sacrifice him to be Kraljica. He told me something in return: that he had plotted to assassinate Fynn. For you, Matarh. All for you. He told me that you knew, that day I saved Fynn, that the attack would come. You used him-your lover-to make me a hero, to make me the Hirzg. The rest, I can figure out myself. I wonder, Matarh, who hired the White Stone-but I have an excellent guess.” She felt her face coloring, and she looked away. “Then that oh-so-noble gesture of yours,” he continued, “stepping down in favor of me: you never wanted to be Hirzg. You always wanted more. You didn’t want what was best for me, but what was best for you. I was your second child, the lesser one, Matarh. Ambition was always your firstborn.”

  The breath left her. She sat there, tears damp on her cheeks, as Jan pushed away from the table and stood. “Jan…” she said, lifting her arms to him, but he shook his head. He looked down on her and for a moment she thought she saw his face soften.

  But he turned and walked away into the night.

  Niente

  They used what little of the black sand they had left to hurl into the city again that night. Otherwise, Niente ordered the nahualli to rest and restore their spell-staffs for the next day’s battle. He had lost ten more of the nahualli during the battle, most of them late in the day as Zolin tried unsuccessfully to take the closest of the bridges over the river. The energy in their spell-staffs had been entirely gone, and there was no time to rest and replenish them. The nahualli-as Niente had ordered-tried to retreat behind the lines as soon as their power was exhausted, but some were cut down by Nessantican swords, unable to defend themselves. Niente didn’t know how many of the warriors had been lost. They’d been cast back by a desperate charge of the chevarittai, and Zolin-at Niente’s insistence, afraid that they would lose still more of the nahualli-had finally called a halt to their advance.

  They were too few… both nahualli and warriors. But Zolin didn’t see that, or didn’t care, or was so caught up in his own vision that it overrode that of his own eyes. “Tomorrow,” he said to Niente, to Citlali and Mazatl. “Tomorrow all of the city will be ours. All of it.” Niente didn’t know if that was to be true or not, and he was too exhausted to care.

  After the last of the fireballs had been catapulted into the city, Niente went to his own tent. There, alone, he held the scrying bowl in his hands: afraid to cast the spell, afraid that he would only see the same vision, afraid of the exhaustion and pain casting the spell would cost him. He tried to remember the faces of his wife, of his children: he could bring them up in his mind, but that only made the longing worse. He wondered how they were, how they’d changed, if they missed him as he missed them.

  He wondered if he would ever know.

  He put the bowl away.

  Sleep that night was fitful and unrestful. Nightmares intruded; he saw his wife dead, saw his children hurt and injured, saw himself fighting, fighting, trying to run but unable to do more than walk while demons draped in blue and gold swarmed around him. He tried to imagine his wife’s face before him, her mouth half-open as he leaned in to kiss her… and her face was blank and featureless, a mask. Unable to escape the dreams, he eventually paced the encampment, listening to the sounds of the warriors resting, gazing at the strange shapes of the buildings around them. As he passed one building, he heard his name called out. “Niente.”

  He recognized the voice. “Citlali.”

  The High Warrior was leaning against the doorway of the building. Behind him, a candle gleamed in the darkness. “You can’t sleep?” Citlali asked.

  Niente shook his head. “I don’t dare. Too many dreams,” he told the man. “You?”

  Citlali’s black-swirled face creased into a smile. “Too few,” he said. “I would like to see our home and my family again, even if in my sleep.”

  “That won’t happen if-” Niente bit off the comment, angry at himself. If he’d been less sleep-addled, he’d have said nothing at all.

  “If Tecuhtli Zolin has his way?” Citlali ventured. “I’ve thought the same, Nahual. You needn’t look so di
stressed.” The smile widened to a grin, and he glanced from side to side, as if looking to see that no one was listening. “And let me answer the other question you won’t ask. No. I won’t challenge the Tecuhtli. Look at how far he’s taken us, Nahual-all the way across the sea to the great home of the Easterners. That is true greatness, Nahual. Greatness. I am proud to have been able to help him.”

  “Even if it means you’ll never see home and family again?”

  His shoulders lifted. “I am a warrior. If that’s Sakal’s will.. .” His shoulders fell again. “I don’t need a scrying bowl, Nahual. I have no interest in the future, only the now. It’s a beautiful evening, I am alive, and I am seeing a place that I never thought I would see and that few Tehuantin have ever glimpsed. How can one not take pleasure in that?”

  Niente could only nod. He bid Citlali a good night and left the warrior to his reverie. For his own part, he returned to his own quarters and performed the rituals to place spells in his stave once more. Then, entirely drained from the effort, he took to his bed and let the nightmares wash over him again.

  And the next day, the nightmares came true.

  At dawn, Tecuhtli Zolin led them deeper into the city, and they fought street by street toward the wide main boulevard. The battle was a mirror of the one the day before: again, the initial push sent the weary Nessanticans retreating backward; by the time Sakat’s eye was well up in the sky, they had reached the boulevard, where Zolin quickly regrouped them and began marching them south.

  There, the Nessanticans had gathered: around the market where they’d finally stopped the Tehuantin advance yesterday, and around the bridge leading to the island. Out in the A’Sele, Zolin had ordered the ships to advance toward the army; the ships of the Nessanticans had moved to stop them, and there was another battle taking place there, one whose outcome Niente could only guess at, though many of the warships of both sides were afire. There was no retreat possible there anymore-there were too few ships left for them all to return home.