by S L Farrell
He bent down to her. “Sergei,” she said. “It hurts . . .”
“I know,” he told her. A few gardai had gathered around—bloody and battered and appearing dazed. They stared at the Kraljica, at the shattered body of the spellcaster.
“Help me,” Sergei told them. “Help me get her back to the palais . . .”
Jan, with the chevarittai and a few of the war-téni, fought a rear action to protect their retreat, engaging the mounted warriors and keeping the Westlander foot troops away from the the stragglers. In his role in command of the Firenzcian army, Jan had rarely needed to coordinate a full-scale retreat, but he’d been on the other side of one many times, and he knew a retreat was often the most dangerous time for the troops as the advancing force could pick off the stragglers, sending arrows and spells to decimate and even obliterate the rearmost companies. Too often, the advancing army could often overtake their demoralized and exhausted foe and inflict terrible casualties.
Retreat might allow the commander to fight another day, but it also might lead to a total and ignominious defeat. They were not even falling back to fortifications, but to an open and unprotected city.
The Westlander spellcasters hurled spells at them that their war-téni had little time and little energy to deflect. Their archers barbed the very sky with arrows. Their mounted troops—thankfully few—dashed toward the back of the running gardai, picking them off. The front ranks of their army pushed forward at a full charge. Jan could glimpse, through the smoke and confusion of the battlefield, the banners of the Tehuantin commander: a winged serpent flying on rippling, bright green cloth. Most of the spells seemed to come from the group around that banner.
Jan was exhausted and in terrible pain. His fingers longed to release the weight of heavy Firenzcian steel, the hilt of his sword already slippery with blood. He swayed in his saddle, nearly falling from the horse as spell-lightning hissed and boomed directly in front of him, causing his warhorse to rear. He settled the animal.
“Hïrzg!” he heard someone call, and a chevaritt to his right pointed to a quartet of mounted warriors about to run down a group of gardai.
Jan sighed. He forced his fingerss to tighten on his sword. He ignored the pain searing his chest. He kicked his horse into a gallop toward the warriors.
You aren’t going to survive this. This is going to be your last battle.
The thought came to him as a certainty. A prophecy. He shivered even as he shouted encouragement to the chevarittai, even as they pounded toward the warriors.
Then. . .
A wave of intense cold washed over him, as if winter had come early; as it passed, even with the fury of their charge, he realized that the constant rain of spells from the Tehuantin forces had stopped. The warriors ahead of them had realized it as well. They’d pulled up their horses, looking back toward their own lines. Jan worried that the spellcasters were preparing another mass spell like the war-storm. But instead, a visible wave rushed across the land from east to west, one that caused Jan to pull back on the reins in amazement. They could all see it: in the shimmering air, in the dust it raised from the ground as it moved. Where the pulse touched the advancing front line of the Westlanders, the warriors were tossed and thrown back even though it left their own people untouched. Jan heard screams and wails, then a greater single voice.
“Go! This is Cénzi’s Gift. Go!”
The shout seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Jan felt a sudden faint hope. A war-téni’s fireball went screaming overhead toward the Tehuantin. There was no response to the spell: no deflection, no impotent explosion far above. The fireball shrieked death and plowed into the Westlanders ranks, exploding untouched. Another followed, and another—all of them went through. The hope within him surged, and his injuries no longer mattered. “Turn!” he shouted to the troops, to the offiziers. “Turn! Follow me!”
He raised his sword as the chevarittai took up his shout. He heard it echoing faintly down the the lines, and the retreat halted, then slowly turned. Jan was already riding hard toward the Tehuantin. All along the battlefield, as far to the south as Jan could see, the retreat was turning. Black and silver began to flow westward.
With the chevarittai around him, Jan plowed into the stunned line of the Westlanders, driving toward the banner of the winged snake. The first warriors he passed were strewn on the ground; whether dead or rendered unconscious by the massive unknown spell, he didn’t know. Then he hit resistance, and he pushed through a sea of flashing blades, his pains forgotten in the fury of battle. The chevarittai shouted as they hewed through the Westlanders toward their commander, all of them pushing forward. They could hear the roar of the onrushing gardai behind them.
There was no answer from the Tehuantin spellcasters. Whatever had happened had stolen their magic. But the Tehuantin warriors—at least those away from the initial pulse, were unaffected. They fought as fiercely as ever, and now that the initial euphoria had passed, the exhaustion and the pain were making themselves felt again. The assault slowed, though now the banners of the winged snake were agonizingly close. Every strike of his sword into the press of warriors sent a shock streaking up Jan’s sword arm. His legs ached, and he could barely hold his seat on the warhorse. His ribs stabbed him with ivory knives at every breath.
He wondered where Brie was. He wondered who would tell his children, and what they would say.
You must at least make the story worth the telling.
Groaning, he brought his sword up to protect his side against a sword thrust, his blade cleaving down past the attack into the warrior’s neck. He saw the man’s mouth open, his eyes go wide. Something stabbed hard at his thigh on the left, and he swung around to face the warrior with a spear, the point embedded in his leg just above the cuisse. Jan yanked the reins hard to the left and the warhorse lifted its hooves, striking the attacker and trampling him as the spear’s tip was torn from Jan’s thigh. He could feel blood soaking the padding under the cuisse.
He was closer. He could hear the snake banner flapping. “To me!” he called the chevarittai, but he heard no reply. He didn’t know where they were, had no time to search for them. Scowling, he plunged forward, letting the horse run over the warriors between. He broke into a small opening:, he could see the Tehuantin leader, his shaved skull adorned with a red eagle that spread its wings over his cheeks. The man was older than Jan, bulky in the Westlander armor and astride his own horse, a magnificent piebald. Next to him was one of the Westlander spellcasters, a young one, with his spell-staff in his hand and a golden band on his arm.
Jan gathered what strength he still had. He raised his sword and shouted challenge. He kicked the warhorse forward.
From her hiding place behind the tapestries along the rear wall, Rochelle watched them carry the Kraljica into the hall. Allesandra’s armor was spattered with red, and there was a hole punched through the chest plate from which blood still flowed. Her face was pale and drawn, her graying hair disheveled and as stiff as straw around her face. “Put me on the throne,” she heard Allesandra husk. The woman’s voice was an exhausted, skeletal croak. The gardai bearing her obeyed, placing the woman on the Sun Throne. Rochelle expected the throne to blaze into light as the Kraljica sat in its crystalline embrace, as all the tales said, but the throne responded with only the palest of glows, barely visible in the sunlight.
She wondered if that was because the Kraljica was close to death.
“Someone find the Kraljica’s healers,” she heard Sergei say. “The rest of you, go to the Hïrzgin for orders; she is in command. Go!”
They scattered. Rochelle watched as Sergei crouched beside the throne. “What can I do for you, Kraljica?” he said.
“Water, Sergei,” she whispered. “I’m so thirsty.”
He limped toward a stand near the servants’ door; he was missing his cane and moved slowly. Rochelle slipped out from behind the tapestry. With a few bounding steps, she was on the dais, the knife in her hand. Sergei he
ard her, and he cried out her name—“Rochelle! ”—but he was too far away and too slow to stop her. The pale stone—laced in its pouch around Rochelle’s neck—seemed to pulse whitehot against her skin.
“You will kill her, and as she dies, you will tell her why so she goes to Cénzi knowing it . . .”
Allesandra looked at Rochelle with confusion in her pained eyes. “Hello, Great-Matarh,” Rochelle said. “I’m Rochelle.”
“Rochelle? Great-Matarh?” The confusion deepened on the woman’s face. She glanced at the knife and her eyes narrowed. “I know that weapon,” she said, licking her dry lips. She coughed, and bubbles of red froth flecked the corners of her mouth. “I killed Mahri with that. Where did you . . . ?”
“From your son,” Rochelle said. “From my vatarh.”
Her eyes widened again. “Your vatarh? Jan?”
“Rochelle, don’t do this.” That was Sergei. He took a few faltering steps toward the dais, his hand stretching out toward her. She ignored him. A swipe of the blade, and she could be through any of the doors and away before he could do anything to stop her.
“Yes, Jan is my vatarh,” Rochelle told Allesandra. Her free hand clutched at the tiny leather bag that held the flat, nearly white pebble that contained her matarh and all their victims. “And my matarh . . . She was the White Stone. Elissa, you called her at the time, though that wasn’t her real name.”
“Elissa . . .” Allesandra’s eyes closed for a moment. Her breath rattled; the eyes opened again. “Jan . . .”
“She loved him,” Rochelle told Allesandra, leaning close to her. She placed the blade against her great-matarh’s neck. Allesandra put her hand over Rochelle’s, but there was no power in her grasp. Her skin felt like wrinkled parchment.
“Rochelle, the woman’s dead already,” Sergei said. “You don’t need to do this. The White Stone’s dead. Leave her that way.”
Rochelle glanced at him. “Why do you care, Ambassador? Your hands are far bloodier than mine.”
“I said it to you in the carriage: it’s not too late for you, Rochelle. You’re not your matarh. You don’t have to become what she became.”
The knife trembed in her hand. “Promise me . . .”
“Do this,” Sergei said, “and you are forever the White Stone, the hated assassin who murdered the Kraljica. You’ll be hunted for the rest of your short and miserable life. You’ll never feel safe, never feel comfortable. Eventually you’ll make a mistake and be caught, and you’ll be dragged back here in chains and executed. That’s your fate, Rochelle, the only fate you have if you do this.”
“And if I don’t? Aren’t I still the White Stone, who killed Rance and others?”
Sergei shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Your life will be your book to write. If the White Stone vanishes, there’s no one to chase.”
Rochelle’s mind was in torment. The blade pressed into Allesandra’s skin, the keen edge drawing blood. All she had to do was press a little harder. Just lean into the woman slightly; the knife would do the rest. Allesandra’s fingers pressed against her own, almost as if the woman were willing her to do this. “My matarh loved Jan,” Rochelle said to her. Her voice trembled more than her hands.
“I know,” Allesandra said. Her lips were slick with blood, and a long thick line drooled down one side of her mouth. “And Jan loved her. I know that too.” Her breath gurgled, and the smell of it was vile. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Rochelle nearly shouted the word. She almost plunged the knife into her neck with the violence of the word. “You should have said that to her.”
Allesandra gave no answer. Her breathing had gone thin and slow, and her body jerked once spasmodically. She stared at Rochelle, blinking heavily.
“Rochelle . . .”
Rochelle lifted the knife away from Allesandra’s neck and sheathed it. Kill her . . . She heard her matarh’s voice whisper, but the sound was faint, and Rochelle found that she had no will to do it. Not anymore. All the rage had left her, all the certainty.
She didn’t have to do this. She didn’t have to be the White Stone. Matarh had been insane; that didn’t have to be her fate as well.
“I want to watch you die,” she told the Kraljica. She glanced at Sergei. “I need to see it.”
“All right,” Sergei told her. He came ponderously up the steps of the dais to stand next to her. “We’ll watch together.”
Allesandra’s mouth opened, as if she were about to protest, but she said nothing. They heard her breath go out. The Kraljica was looking at Sergei. “Nessantico . . .” Her voice was hardly more than a zephyr. He eyes were fixed somewhere between the two of them, staring blindly. “Sergei, is she safe?”
“Yes,” Sergei told her. “She’s safe.”
There was no reaction from Allesandra. After a time, they realized that she had not taken in another breath. Her eyes were still open. Rochelle took the white stone from the pouch. She placed it over Allesandra’s right eye. “There, Matarh,” she said. “She’s yours . . .”
She started down the dais. “Wait,” Sergei called after her. “The stone . . .”
“Leave it there,” Rochelle told him. “Take it for a memento. Throw it away. I don’t care. I don’t need it.”
She left the hall as the healers—too late—came in.
The wave of cold, then the surge that passed over them harmlessly but slammed into the Westlanders . . .
Nico’s presence and his voice, impossibly loud . . .
The silence that seemed to last several breaths, as they realized that none of the Westlanders were casting spells toward them . . .
What had happened?
Varina could still feel the Scáth Cumhacht within herself. She had felt something—someone?—tug at the spells she had stored in her mind as if it wanted to steal them, but the presence had passed by her untouched. Well to the north, she saw a war-téni’s fireball sizzling across the horizon, streaking toward the enemy, then another and yet another, this one from a téni near her. None of them were touched.
She could hear the offiziers shouting, turning the gardai, facing them westward once more. The tide which had pulled them along slowed, stopped, then began to flow the other way. They stood motionless against the current. Leovic and Niels were still holding her arms, but she could see them watching. “Go,” she told them. “They need you. I’ll follow as best I can.”
“A’Morce,” Niels protested.
“Go,” she repeated.
They left her, running toward one of the chevarittai offiziers. She watched them be gathered up in the rush. Then, far more slowly, limping, she followed. Gardai swarmed past her, shouting. She heard the din of the battle renewed ahead of her, but all the spells seemed to be coming from the Faith’s war-téni and the Numetodo, not from the Westlanders.
She was standing among the bodies of those who had fallen in the retreat, most in blue and gold. It was difficult to ignore them. The worst were the ones who were not dead but too wounded to walk, who reached out toward her for succor as she passed or were still crawling toward the city. To them, she could only say that help would be coming soon to rescue them—and hope that she was telling them the truth.
But she was looking for one person in particular.
She saw a body off to her left and ahead of her—dressed in a green téni’s robes. She thought it might be one of the war-téni, then she saw the face.
Nico’s face.
Ignoring her aching legs, she ran to him, sinking down to her knees alongside him. He seemed unharmed: no blood on his robes, his face dirty and dark with old bruises and cuts, but he looked otherwise untouched. “Nico?” she said, rolling him on his back, looking desperately at the robes for a sign of what had hurt him.
He opened his eyes. He smiled. “Hi, Varina. I guess I was sleeping. Have you seen my matarh?” It was a boy’s voice. A child’s voice. He sat up and glanced around, his eyes widening as he took in the gardai running past shouting and waving their swords; the b
odies lying nearby; the fumes and smoke of the battlefield; the trampled earth that had once been a farmer’s field. He pushed himself to a sitting position. “Varina,” he said, his voice trembling with obvious fear. He clutched at her arms. “I’m scared, Varina. Take me home. Please. I don’t want to be here.”
“Nico, what did you do?”
He looked frightened at the question, shrinking away from her. “I didn’t do nothing, honest. I just want to go home. I want to see Matarh. I want to see Talis.”
Varina hugged him. “Nico, Talis and Serafina are . . . gone.”
“Where did they go?” he asked. In his eyes there was no mockery, only the innocent question.
“Nico . . .” She couldn’t answer him. Varina hugged him again. Whatever Nico had done, however he’d done it, the effort had obviously taken his mind with it. This was no longer the Absolute of the Morellis. This was no longer Nico the great téni. He clung to her like a child to his matarh, and she could feel him shivering with panic and dismay.
Gardai were still flowing past them; the din of battle and the thundering of war-téni spells was deafening. “Nico, come on,” she said. “Let’s get you out of here. It’s not safe. You can come to my house. Would you like that?”
He nodded urgently, clinging to her. She pulled him to his feet.
Together, they stumbled eastward toward the city.
Atl felt naked and unprotected, his spell-staff impossibly emptied in a few breaths by that terrible spell from the east, and now the battle was suddenly renewed when it was supposed to have ended.
In victory. In the victory he’d seen. In the victory he’d told the Tecuhtli would be his. He remembered his taat’s vision, the one Niente claimed to have glimpsed, the path that Atl had been unable to see, the one he’d believed to be his taat’s lie. This was not possible.
Citlali raged at him as fireballs from the Easterner nahualli fell near them. “Stop them!” the Tecuhtli shouted. “Damn you, Nahual! Stop them!”
