by S L Farrell
The procession moved in stately silence down the staircase: in front the e’téni with lanterns lit by green téni-fire, then Hïrzg Fynn accompanied by Archigos Semini and Francesca, and Allesandra and Jan a few steps behind them, followed by a final group of servants and e’téni. As they approached the intricately-carved entranceway to the tombs, decorated with bas-reliefs of the historical accomplishments of the Hïrzgai, Allesandra could hear whisperings and the rustling of cloth and an occasional cough or sneeze: the ca’-and-cu’ who had been invited to witness the ceremony. These were the elite of Firenzcia, most of them relatives of Fynn and Allesandra: families who were intertwined and intermarried with their own, or those who had served for decades with Hïrzg Jan.
Torchlight and téni light together slid over the coiled bodies of fantastic creatures carved on the walls, the stern features of carved Hïrzgai and the broken bodies of enemies at their feet. The Chevarittai of the Red Lancers came to attention, their lances (the blades masked in scarlet cloth) clashing against polished dress armor. The other ca’-and-cu’ bowed low and the whispers faded to silence as the new Hïrzg entered the large chamber. Allesandra could see their glances slide from Fynn to her, and to Jan as well. Jan noticed the attention; she felt him stiffen at her side with an intake of breath. She nodded to them—the slightest movement of her head, the faintest hint of a smile.
Look at her, as cold as this chamber . . . It was what they would be thinking, some of them. She’s no doubt pleased to see old Jan dead after he left her with the Kraljiki and the false Archigos for so long. She probably wishes Fynn were there with him so she could be the Hïrzgin.
None of them knew her. None of them knew what her true thoughts were. For that matter, she wasn’t entirely certain she knew them herself. She was still reeling from the news about Ana, and if she showed signs of grief, it was for her, not her vatarh.
The casket containing the remains of Hïrzg Jan sat near the entrance to his interment chamber, next to the huge round stone that would seal off the niche. The coffin was draped in a tapestry cloth that depicted his victory over the T’Sha at Lake Cresci. There was nothing celebrating Passe a’Fiume or Jan’s bold, foolish attack on Nessantico a decade before: those days when Allesandra had ridden with him, when she’d watched her vatarh adoringly, when he’d promised to give her the city of Nessantico.
Instead, Nessantico had snatched her from him and given Fynn the place at her vatarh’s right hand.
Fynn saluted the lancers, who relaxed their stances. “I would like to thank everyone for being here,” he said. “I know Vatarh is looking down from the arms of Cénzi, appreciating this tribute to him. And I also know that he would forgive us for not lingering here when warm fires and food await us above.” Fynn received quiet laughter at that, and he smiled. “Archigos, if you would . . .”
Semini moved quickly forward with the téni and gave his blessing over the casket. He motioned Allesandra and Jan forward as the téni began to chant the benediction. They went to the casket, bowed, then placed their hands on the tapestry. “I wish you’d had more chance to know him,” she whispered to Jan as the téni chanted, putting her hand atop his. “He wasn’t always as angry and brusque as he was in his later years.”
“You’ve told me that,” he said. “Several times. But it’s still not the memory of him I’ll take with me, is it?” She glanced at her son; he was frowning down at the casket.
“We’ll talk about it later,” she told him.
“I’ve no doubt about it, Matarh.”
Allesandra suppressed the retort she might have made; she would say nothing here. People were already glancing at them curiously, wondering what secrets they might be whispering and at the sharp edge in her son’s voice. She lifted her hand and stepped back, allowing Fynn to approach.
She wondered what her brother thought as he stood there, his hand on the casket and his head bowed.
After a few minutes, Fynn also stepped away. He nodded to the lancers; four of them came forward to take the casket. Their faces were somber as they lifted the coffin and slid it forward into the niche that awaited it. Stone grated on wood, the sound echoing. The four stepped back, and another quartet put their shoulders to the sealing stone, which groaned and resisted as it turned slowly. The massive wheel of rock advanced along a groove carved in the floor toward the deep cut into which it would settle and rest. The stone was carved with the glyphs of Old Firenzcian, a language spoken only by scholars now, as thick as a man’s arm, and standing half again a man’s height. As the great wheel reached the end of the groove and dropped into the cut where it was supposed to rest, there came a tremendous cracking sound. A fissure shot through its carved face and the top third of the stone toppled. Allesandra knew she must have screamed a warning, but it was over before any of them could move or react. The mass of the stone crushed one of the lancers entirely underneath it and smashed the legs of another as it fell to the ground.
The pinned lancer’s screams were piercing and shrill as thick blood ran from underneath the stone.
This is a sign . . . She couldn’t stop the thought—as the remainder of the lancers rushed forward, as ca’-and-cu’, téni, and servants hurried to help or stared frozen in horror at the rear of the chamber. Jan was among those trying desperately to lift the burial stone, and Fynn was shouting useless orders into the chaos.
Vatarh did this. Somehow he did this. He does not rest easily. . . .
Enéas cu’Kinnear
HE WAS GOING to die here in the Hellins.
That feeling of an awful destiny washed over Enéas as he stood with the Holdings forces on the crest of a hill not far outside Munereo, as they watched the strangely-shaped banners of the Westlanders approaching from the direction of Lake Malik, as he heard the war-téni begin chanting in preparation for battle. A’Offizier Meric ca’Matin was with him, as well as the other offiziers of the battalion and several pages ready to run messages between the companies. The cornets and flags were set to relay orders. A hundred strides down the slope, the ranks of the Holdings army were arrayed, restless and nervous.
Enéas had been in a half dozen battles and countless skirmishes and confrontations in the last several years. This sense of impending doom was something he’d never felt before. He could feel sweat rolling down his face under the thick iron helmet, and it was not just the sun that caused the perspiration. He wanted to shout denial to the sky, but he could not. Not here. Not in front of his troops. Instead, he bowed his head and he prayed.
Oh, Great Cénzi, why do You send this premonition to me? What are You saying to me?
Enéas was an o’offizier with the Garde Civile of the Holdings. His commander in the field, A’Offizier ca’Matin, had told him only yesterday that he had put in the recommendation that Enéas be made Chevaritt, that the document was already on its way across the Strettosei to Nessantico. His vatarh would be proud—twenty-five years ago, Enéas’ vatarh had served with the Regent ca’Rudka at Passe a’Fiume and been badly burned, losing both an arm and an eye during that horrible siege. The Garde Civile had given him the citation and the pension he was due, and though their family had been raised from ce’Kinnear to ci’Kinnear as a result, his vatarh had always talked about how he could have become one of the chevarittai if he hadn’t been injured, how those aspirations had been taken from him by the Firenzcian téni-fire that had disfigured him and ended his career.
Enéas had never wanted to be either chevaritt or offizier. He would have preferred that his career path was that of a téni in the Concénzia Faith rather than the one he’d found in the Garde Civile. He’d felt the calling of Cénzi ever since he’d been a young boy; indeed, he’d petitioned his parents to send him to the temple as an acolyte. But his vatarh had insisted on the martial road. “We’re just ci’, my son, and barely that,” he’d said. “Our family doesn’t have the solas to send you to the téni. That’s for the ca’-and-cu’ who can afford it. You’ll join the Garde, as I did. You’ll do as I did. . . .�
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Enéas had done better than his vatarh. “Falsoténi,” his men dubbed him for his piousness, for his strict attention to the rules of the Divolonté, for his insistence that the men under his command attend the rites at the Munereo Temple on the proper Days of Observance. But they also claimed that Cénzi Himself protected Enéas—and through Enéas, themselves. In the Battle of the Mounds near Lake Malik, as an e’offizier in his second real battle, he’d been the only surviving offizier of his company as they were ripped apart by a far superior Westlander force. He’d managed to surprise the Westlanders by feigning retreat, then marching the remnants of his troops through marshland to attack the enemy from a flank unprotected by their nahualli—the terrifying spellcasters of the Westlanders, the ones who called the Ilmodo the X’in Ka.
Heretics, they were. False téni worshiping false gods. The thought of the nahualli enraged Enéas.
Enéas had managed to inflict severe losses on the Westlander flank and to hold the ground until reinforcements arrived. As a reward for his actions, he’d been promoted to o’offizier; a few months later, after the Campaign of the Deep Fens, A’Offizer ca’Matin had told him the Gardes a’Liste had raised their family to cu’.
When his tour was over a year from now, after his return to Nessantico, Enéas had promised Cénzi that he would resign from the Garde Civile and offer himself for training as téni, even though he would be much older than the usual acolytes. He was certain that this was what Cénzi wanted of him.
The Hellins War had been good for Enéas, though not for the Holdings.
At least, it had been so until this shadow came. This chill in his spine.
It’s not a premonition. It’s just fear. . . .
He’d felt fear before. Every soldier felt fear unless he were an utter fool, but it had never touched him like this. Fear rattled the bones in your flesh; fear made the blood sing in your ears. Fear turned your bowels to foul brown water. Fear set your weapon to shaking in your hand. But Enéas didn’t tremble, his stomach was settled, and the tip of his sword didn’t waver in his grasp.
This wasn’t fear—or not any kind he’d experienced before. That worried him most of all.
What is that you send me, Cénzi? Tell me, so that I may serve You as you wish. . . .
“O’Offizier cu’Kinnear!” A’Offizier ca’Matin barked, and Enéas shook his head to dispel the thoughts. He saluted his superior offizier, who was already astride his destrier. “I need you to drive your men into their right flank; push them into the valley for the war-téni to handle. We shouldn’t have their nahualli to worry about; the outriders have said they’re still back near the Tecuhtli at Lake Malik. Understood?”
Enéas nodded.
“Good,” ca’Matin said. “Then let’s get this started. Page, tell the horns to call the advance.” The boy he’d addressed ran toward the knoll where the horns and signal flags were clustered as ca’Matin saluted Enéas: the sign of Cénzi, that Enéas returned solemnly and devoutly. “Cénzi’s fortune to you, Enéas,” he said.
“And with all of us,” Enéas returned fervently. Ca’Matin yanked on the reins. He cantered away, the powerful warhorse moving carefully through the tall grass toward the center of the lines where the banners of the Holdings rippled in the afternoon breeze.
The cornets sounded then, harsh and bright. The call floated before them in challenge to the Westlanders, and the sound of weapons clashing against armor rushed after it. Enéas took the reins of his own destrier from a waiting page and mounted. His e’offiziers looked at him expectantly. “Make your peace with Cénzi,” he told them. “It’s time.”
He raised his hand, signaling them toward the right flank and the steep hills there.
A roar answered him, a thousand throats calling out. They began to move, slowly at first, then more rapidly, until they were rushing headlong down toward the spears of the enemy. As they charged, the war-fire of the téni behind them shrieked over their heads, smashing into the front ranks of the Westlander forces and gouging holes in their ragged lines. There didn’t seem to be an answer from the nahualli; Enéas thought that the sour fear would leave him with that, but it didn’t.
Enéas and his men surged into the fuming gaps. The clash of steel on steel echoed from the flanks of the lush hills, as did the screams of the wounded who went down under the hooves of the destriers they rode. Enéas struck at a short spear that thrust toward him, hacking away the barbed tip and chopping down with his saber at the hand that held it. Blood spurted and the savage face below him fell away. His horse pushed forward, and he cut at the Westlanders on either side of him, armored in chest plates of bamboo and heavy cloth sewn with small brass rings, their helmets adorned with the plumes of brightly-colored birds, their ruddy skin painted with orange-and-yellow streaks that made their faces look like skulls or tattooed with black-and-red lines. They were fierce opponents, the Westlanders, and no soldier of the Holdings who had faced them dared to belittle their skill or their bravery. Yet—oddly—they gave way now, retreating back toward the main mass of their army. Enéas saw a darkness under their sandaled feet: the soil directly in front of him was like a circle of sand, but that sand was as black as the charcoal of a burned log.
The unease that had afflicted Enéas before the battle deepened, settling like a deathly chill in his lungs so that he labored to breathe and his sword felt like a leaden weight in his hands. He urged his horse forward onto the sand and as he did so, he shouted: a wordless cry to banish the feeling with noise and rage.
He was answered by a sound he’d never heard before.
The sound . . . it was as if one of the Earth Moitidi—those unworthy children of Cénzi—had screamed an unearthly and deep roar, and the sound pulled Enéas’ head around to the left toward its source. Orange fire and foul, black smoke erupted from the ground. Dirt clods fell around Enéas like a solid rain, spattering him, and with it . . . with it were parts of bodies. A hand, still clutching a broken sword, rebounded from the neck of Enéan’s destrier and fell to the ground. He stared at the gory object. He heard the screams then, belatedly.
“It’s the nahualli! Sorcery!” Enéas screamed in warning to his troops, to the awful hand that had fallen from the sky.
He was answered with a roar that was even louder than the first, a blast that blinded him with its light as the force of it lifted him bodily, tearing him from saddle and horse. A demigod had plucked him up—Enéas seemed to hover for a breath or more: this . . . this is Cénzi’s premonition and warning . . .—and flung him back down to earth as if in disgust.
The earth rose up to meet him.
He remembered nothing else after that.
Karl ca’Vliomani
KARL CLUTCHED A NECKLACE in his hand: a shell of polished gray stone that he had given to Ana, long ago. The necklace had been around her neck when she died; Sergei had given it to him. Flecks of Ana’s blood were caught in the deep ridges. He tightened his fingers hard around the shell, feeling the hard edges press into his palm. The pain didn’t matter; it meant that he could still feel something other than the emptiness that filled him now.
Who did this? Why would they kill Ana?
Karl had lost too many of the people he most cared about over the years. He’d wrapped himself in grief and sorrow and sometimes anger at their passing, he’d awakened at night certain he’d heard their voices or thinking that “Oh, today I should call on him or her . . .” only to remember that the person in his mind was forever, irrevocably, gone.
This . . . this was worse than any of those deaths. This was a knife-blow to his heart, and he could feel himself bleeding inside.
Can I survive this? I’ve lost my best friend, the woman I love. . . .
Karl was seated at the front of the temple, with Regent Sergei and Kraljiki Audric to his left and the newly-installed Archigos Kenne and the a’téni of the Faith to his right. Kenne had been Ana’s friend and ally from the beginning, when they had both been part of Archigos Dhosti’s staff. No
w, looking two decades older than his actual years, his hair white and hands shaking with an eternal palsy, Kenne appeared severely uncomfortable with the responsibility thrust upon him. The Archigos leaned over to Karl and patted his hand. He said something that Karl didn’t hear against the choir’s singing: “Long Lament,” by the composer ce’Miella. Kenne’s actual words didn’t matter: Karl nodded, because he knew it was expected.
In the pew directly behind them, in the midst of the ca’-and-cu’, was Varina and Mika ci’Gilan; like Varina, Mika was also a longtime friend of Karl and Ana. Mika was the local head of the Numetodo faction in Nessantico, directing the research of the sect here. Varina’s hand touched Karl’s shoulder; without looking back, he covered it with his own before letting his hand, like a dead thing, slide into his lap. Her fingers tightened on his shoulder; her hand remained there.
