by S L Farrell
“How do you know my promise is good?”
A momentary smile. “That’s the same objection Mika gave me. I’ll tell you what I told him: I look at you, and I know. Swear it,” he said.
“Swear it on Cenzi’s name.”
“I thought Numetodo didn’t believe in Cenzi.”
“I don’t,” he answered. “But you do.”
You came here because you wanted to know. The knowledge is there, waiting. “I’ll say nothing of what I see here,” she told him. “On Cenzi’s name, I give you my word.”
He nodded. He beckoned her forward.
The room below was large and open. There were perhaps thirty people below, most of them seated before a small raised dais where Mika stood. She recognized none of them. “So few?” Ana whispered.
“You’d think from the threat that A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca says we are that there would be hundreds of us, wouldn’t you?” Karl answered. “I wish that were the case. There are others who couldn’t be here tonight, but not many. Not in Nessantico herself. Watch, though, and you’ll see what the Numetodo can do.”
“. . tonight will be her first time,” Mika was saying. “Her name within the group is Varina. Please make her feel welcome.” There was a smattering of applause as a young woman came up on the stage. “Be kind, now,” Mika said to the others as the girl stood there. “Go on, Varina. Demonstrate what you’ve learned to do.”
Varina nodded. She took a long breath, closing her eyes. She began to chant: a phrase that wasn’t in the Ilmodo language Ana had been taught, though it had affinities-the same cadences and guttural vowels, and she thought she recognized a word or two pronounced strangely.
Still, these weren’t the calls to Cenzi that were a part of every chant she’d been taught. Varina’s hands moved with the chant, and Ana saw the beginnings of light forming around them. As Varina continued her chant, the glow strengthened until it was a fitful, small ball of light resting now on the upturned palm of her left hand. She ended the chant with a deep sigh. The ball of light sputtered and failed.
There was applause again from the onlookers. Varina nodded, then her eyes rolled backward in her head and she collapsed to the floor of the dais. She tried to stand again and failed. Mika gestured and two of the Numetodo came forward; they helped her to a chair. Another brought her water. Someone placed a dampened cloth over her forehead.
“You don’t seem impressed, Ana,” Karl said as Mika took the stage again.
“How long did it take her to learn that?” Ana asked.
“Mika started working with her around the time of the first winter snow,” Karl answered. “It takes time.”
“I could do that, and better, the first day U’Teni Dosteau began teaching us,” Ana said. “So could nearly everyone in my class. Even in the Toustour there are stories of witches and sorcerers who could use the Ilmodo, however badly. The Moitidi, they are always trying to taunt Cenzi, to defy Him, and they allow the Ilmodo to be tainted despite Cenzi’s wishes.”
Karl was shaking his head. “Varina called on neither Cenzi, nor any of the Moitidi,” he responded. “There are no gods or demigods involved at all. Only a certain set of words and hand motions: something anyone could be taught. But you’re right-you teni do learn to shape the Ilmodo faster than us, and Varina has little skill as yet. But watch. Watch.”
Mika was speaking again. “It’s important that we understand the Scath Cumhacht and how to contain and shape it,” he was saying. “But as I’ve been telling you, it’s also vital to learn how to store the power of the Scath Cumhacht so it can be used quickly. That’s where those of Concenzia are lacking.” He glanced quickly at the scrim along the balcony, then back to the audience. “Look there,” he said, pointing to an unlit lamp set on a table at the end of the room.
He spoke a single word and thrust his hand in the direction of the lamp. The word was concussive, as if someone had struck a great, invisible drum. Ana nearly jumped backward with the sound. No human voice alone could have made that sound. At the same moment, the lamp flared-as bright as that of the teni-lamps, though the color was greenish. The watchers applauded, but Mika raised his hand to quiet them. He spoke another drumbeat word and gestured again. The lamp flared once more, but this time not with light but enormous heat, as if a roaring furnace gaped there. The heat was intense, so much so that Ana brought an arm up to shield her face. She thought that in another moment, the walls and curtains around the room would erupt into flame. Mika spoke a final word, and the heat and light both vanished as if they had never been there.
There was no applause this time. There was only a relieved silence.
“That,” Mika said, “is what you need to learn. That is what we will teach you when you’re ready.”
Ana’s hands were white-knuckled on the railing of the balcony.
“He gave no chant, made no hand patterns, just a single word and gesture. .” She looked down again at Mika. He was smiling and walking about the dais; the shaping of what he called the Scath Cumhacht seemed to have affected him not at all. Ana looked back at Karl. “He’s not tired from the spell-casting?”
“He performed the incantations hours beforehand, and then rested from his exertions.” Karl told her, as if guessing her thoughts. “We’re doing nothing different than what you teni do, Ana-handling the Ilmodo is a great effort and it costs the person who does it. But Mika made his payment several turns of the glass ago. He needed to speak only a release word for the energy he was holding. They don’t teach you that in your classes, do they?”
“You can do that?”
Karl nodded. “I was one of those who taught Mika.” He paused, tilting his head. “And I could teach you. Or does your Faith insist that such a thing can’t be done?”
Ana stared down at the gathering, where Mika was talking to several of the Numetodo. The spells Mika had formed-they were nothing that she hadn’t seen U’Teni Dosteau show the acolytes, that she couldn’t do herself. She could do more, in fact-as she knew from her confrontation with her vatarh or the illusion she’d cast for the Kraljica-and the war-teni devised enormously destructive spells. But they all required time and effort; they all required the chants and the patterns of the hands; they all had to be cast immediately afterward, and they cost the shaper in weariness and pain. U’Teni Dosteau had been amazed by Ana’s quickness at shaping the Ilmodo, the rapid casting of power that had protected the Archigos.
But this. . A single word, a single gesture. .
Not even the a’teni can do that, nor the war-teni. And if I did it, they would say it is the work of the Moitidi. They would take my hands and my tongue. .
“You teni shape the Ilmodo with your Faith,” Karl was saying, but she had trouble concentrating on what he said. “I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that you of the Concenzia, especially the war-teni, can create spells more powerful than any Numetodo, but you’ve had long centuries to learn the ways of the Ilmodo. We learn more with each passing year. But I want you to think beyond just the shaping of the Ilmodo to the implications, Ana.”
He glanced down at the shell around her neck, and Ana put her hand over the ridged shape. “You explain the shapes of shells and fish in the stones in terms of the Toustour,” Karl continued, “but we look for other explanations-explanations that can be proved or disproved through examination. I don’t know for certain yet, but I suspect that we’ll learn that the shells of the mountains were once indeed shells within the sea. The explanation makes at least as much sense as the creation story of the Toustour, and it doesn’t require gods, only natural forces within the earth. And if the Scath Cumhacht, your Ilmodo, can be reached and shaped by those without faith, if we Numetodo can even learn to do things that the teni can’t do, then perhaps the Scath Cumhacht also has nothing to do with faith and belief at all. You have to at least acknowledge the possibility, Ana. You’ve seen it here tonight with your own eyes.”
Her hand tightened around the shell until she felt the edges press into her fle
sh. She shook her head in mute denial, but his words crashed and thundered inside her. Not true, not true. . The denial shattered and re-formed.
“Ana?”
She could barely breathe. The atmosphere seemed thick and heavy.
“I have to leave,” she said. “I have to go now.”
His lips tightened. His face was grim. “Your promise, Ana?”
“I gave you my word, Envoy. I won’t break it,” she told him. “Now, please, I want to leave.”
He nodded. “I’ll escort you back to Oldtown Center,” he said.
Endings
Jan ca’Vorl
“Allesandra,” Jan called. “Come here to your vatarh.”
The girl pulled away from the servant holding her hand and the knot of women around the Hirzgin as they emerged from the Hirzg’s tent-palace. Her feet raised pouts of dust from the torn ground as she came up to Jan. Starkkapitan ca’Staunton, U’Teni cu’Kohnle, and Jan’s aide Markell were standing with Jan in the slanted, foggy rays of early morning. They all smiled politely as the girl hugged him around the waist. “Good morning, Vatarh,” she said. “It’s a good day to move the army, I think.”
Jan grinned and embraced his daughter tightly, allowing himself an additional taste of satisfaction at the sour look on his wife’s face. He had told Greta the night before that they would not be going to Nessantico for the Jubilee, and her howls of outrage had kept many of the courtiers awake. Markell and cu’Kohnle nodded in satisfaction at seeing daughter and vatarh embrace, but Starkkapitan ca’Staunton’s face mirrored that of the Hirzgin. “You see,” he told ca’Staunton, “my daughter has a fine military mind. All I get from you, Starkkapitan, are excuses. She, at least, isn’t afraid to advance.”
“My Hirzg,” ca’Staunton said, a trace of careful arrogance in his voice, “it’s not fear. Any of the chevarittai, the offiziers, or our soldiers would lay down their lives for you-and many have, for you or for Hirzg Karin before you. But to move toward Nessantico’s borders during the Kraljica’s Jubilee, even as an exercise. .” Shoulders lifted under the sash of his rank. Medals clashed. “We risk misinterpretation. As I’ve said, if we marched instead toward Tennshah, the Kraljica could protest not at all, and the longer march would provide ample opportunities for formation exercises, especially once we reached the eastern plains.”
Jan glanced at the Hirzgin again, who had paused with her entourage carefully out of earshot. He watched her face as she chatted with her attendants, though his attention now drifted toward Mara, standing beside the Hirzgin. He’d spent most of the night with her after the Hirzgin’s outburst had finally faded. Mara’s face was turned slightly toward the Hirzg rather than to the Hirzgin, and she nodded to him.
“Have we not always been the mighty sword in the hand of Nessantico, the spear that the Kralji send against their enemies?” Markell was asking Starkkapitan ca’Staunton. “Don’t we have the need-nay, the obligation-to exercise that arm, lest it become weak and slow? U’Teni cu’Kohnle-” Markell pointed to the war-teni. “-he was instrumental in the success of A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca against the Numetodo in Brezno. He understands what is at stake. I begin to wonder who you serve first, Starkkapitan: the Kraljica or our Hirzg.”
Starkkapitan ca’Staunton glared at Markell. “I serve the Hirzg, of course,” he snapped. “But I still say that moving the army so close to Nessantico’s border is an unnecessary provocation when we could as easily turn east.”
“Starkkapitan,” Allesandra said, “aren’t you the Hirzg’s strong right arm?”
Ca’Staunton appeared startled, though whether it was at the question itself or from being addressed so presumptuously by an adolescent, Jan could not tell. “Indeed, I suppose that is what I-and our army- represent, A’Hirzg Allesandra,” the starkkapitan replied, a bit stiffly and with a glance at Jan, as if looking for his approval.
“If my right arm refused to obey me, I would chop it off myself,”
Allesandra told him. She smiled innocently as she said it. “What good is an arm that thinks it owns the body?”
Jan broke into laughter at that, with Markell and cu’Kohnle following a moment later. The starkkapitan’s face flushed, and his mouth opened silently. “There, you see, Starkkapitan?” Jan said. “We have wisdom from the young A’Hirzg. Maybe I will make her Starkkapitan- what do you think?”
The man’s cheeks were as ruddy as if the winter wind had scrubbed them raw, and his mouth had tightened into a thin line. He bowed his head to Jan. “The Hirzg may certainly do as he wishes,” ca’Staunton answered. His hands were clenched at his sides, and his medals rang with his movement. “I have served you, the late A’Hirzg Ludwig, and your vatarh all my life. If that no longer means anything to you, my Hirzg. .”
“Look at me, Starkkapitan,” Jan interrupted, and ca’Staunton’s eyes came up. “I am grateful for your long service, and you have proven your worth a dozen times over during your career. That is why I have listened to you at all this morning, and that is why I tell you now that we will take the army west.”
“Then I will inform the a’offiziers,” ca’Staunton said. There was still fury in his gaze, but it was banked now. He bowed again, to Jan, to Markell, and to Allesandra, then turned to leave.
“Starkkapitan,” Jan called to him, and ca’Staunton turned back.
“Prepare them as if we were truly going into battle. I want them as ready as they were when we fought in Tennshah.”
The man’s eyes widened then, and Jan saw the realization there.
“Yes, my Hirzg. They’ll be ready.”
“Good. Then go, and make preparations. I expect us to be on the move by Second Call.”
Another bow, and ca’Staunton strode quickly away. “And I will inform the war-teni,” cu’Kohnle said. His eyes narrowed. “If I may say, my Hirzg, I look forward to this. Cenzi will bless you.” He made his bow and followed ca’Staunton.
“Can I ride with you, too, Vatarh?” Allesandra asked, tugging at his bashta. “I can ride very well now.”
“I’m afraid not,” he told her. “You’ll be going back to Brezno with the Hirzgin.”
“Vatarh!” Allesandra stamped her foot, though the grass rendered the protest silent. “If I’m going to lead the army one day, I need to learn.”
“And you will,” Jan told her, tousling her hair affectionately. “But not today. Not yet. I want you in Brezno, and I want you to write to me every day. Tell me what the Hirzgin is doing and who’s she talking to.
That’s your job.”
“Isn’t that what Mara does for you?” Allesandra asked, and Jan laughed again as Markell grinned.
“I need your eyes there,” he told her, not answering her question.
“Remember, I want to hear from you each and every day. Markell will tell you how to send me private messages before you leave today. Now-
what I need you to do is go back to your matarh. Don’t tell her anything we’ve talked about. Not yet; I will tell her myself in a few minutes, after I finish talking with Markell. Go on now.”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “I want to stay here with you. I want to listen.”
“Allesandra, you are my heart,” Jan said to her. “Just like Stark-kapitan ca’Staunton is my right arm. And I don’t want to have to rip out my own heart because it won’t obey me.”
“That’s not fair, Vatarh.” She pouted dramatically “No, it’s not,” he said, smiling. “But it’s still necessary. Go on, now.
Be the A’Hirzg, not my daughter.”
Allesandra sighed loudly, then finally stood on her toes as Jan bent down to give her a kiss. “I’ll write every day,” she whispered to him, hugging him with her arms around his neck. “And I’ll tell you everything.” With that, she released him and ran back to the knot of women near the tents.
“My Hirzg?” Markell said. “Should I send a message to A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca, to make him aware of your intentions?”
Jan watched Mara bend down to take Allesa
ndra in her arms; she smiled over the little girl’s shoulder to Jan. The Hirzgin’s mouth tightened so that even from this distance, Jan could see the lines folding in her plain, flattened face. “Yes,” Jan said to Markell. “Tell the a’teni that it’s time for him to make his choice: either for me, or for the A’Kralj.
Tell him he can no longer play both sides. He must make his choice now. Tell him that I hear his daughter will be looking for a new husband soon, and that I’ll be looking for a wife.” Jan clapped Markell on the shoulder. “When we reach the border, Markell, the Kraljica will realize that the might of the Holdings is Firenzcia. She will negotiate, as she always has, rather than risk war-and the terms will make me the A’Kralj, not her son. From what I’ve heard, that may even please her.
And if not. .” He shrugged. “Then may Cenzi have mercy on her in the afterlife.”
Ana cu’Seranta
She had expected that the Archigos would be waiting at her apartments when she returned from Oldtown. He was not. There was, in fact, only silence from him the next day, a day in which she performed her duties in the Archigos’ Temple without seeing him, a day in which the Kraljica lingered-according to all the rumors-on the edge of death, a day in which she found that she could not stop thinking of what she had seen. The Numetodo haunted her dreams and skulked like shadows in her waking thoughts.
She’d returned changed, and she knew it. She wondered how everyone else could not see it as well.
