A Magic of Nightfall (21 page)

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Authors: S. L. Farrell

BOOK: A Magic of Nightfall
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They laughed, a little uneasily, at the collision of apologies. “You first,” Karl told her, but she shook her head. “All right,” he said. “I’ll start then. You said that my . . . affection for Ana had blinded me. I’ve been thinking about that, and—”
“Stop, Karl” she said. “Don’t say anything. I was angry and I said things that I had no right to say. I’d . . . I’d like you to forget them.”
“Even if they were true?”
Her cheeks reddened. “You loved Ana. I know that. Whatever relationship the two of you had . . .” She shrugged. “It’s not my concern.” She stepped forward, in front of him, close enough that he could see the flecks of color in her pupils and the fine lines at their corners. She reached down and closed his fingers around the glass ball he was still holding, both her hands cupping his. “I can show you how to enchant this. You just have to be patient because—”
“Varina.” She stopped and looked up at him. “You shouldn’t be putting so much of yourself into this.”
Her lips tightened as if she wanted to say something. Then her hands pressed against his again and she looked down. “. . . because it’s difficult, and you have to think differently about the whole process. But once you make the shift, it all makes sense,” she said. “You have to imagine the ball as an extension of yourself. . . .”
Enéas cu’Kinnear
I
T HAD BEEN THREE DAYS since his capture. In that time, the Westlander army had continued marching northeast, and Enéas had walked with them. He remained close to Niente—which he’d learned was indeed the name of the nahualli who had healed him. “No one will restrain you,” Niente said to Enéas at the start of their trek. “But if you are found wandering without me, the warriors will kill you immediately. It’s your choice.”
They were moving in the direction of Munereo. The days were filled with nothing but walking. Enéas stayed close to the nahualli, but he also watched carefully for an opportunity to escape—that was his duty as a soldier. Whatever Niente had done to his leg had healed his injuries completely; his ankle felt stronger than it had ever been. If there was a chance to slip away, well, it wouldn’t be an injury that impeded him.
It wouldn’t be easy. All those of the nahualli caste walked together in the middle of the army, surrounded on all sides by the tattooed and scarred soldiers of the Westlanders, well-protected. That spoke of the value that the Tehuantin placed on the sorcerers. Each of the nahualli carried a walking stick or staff: carved with animal figures and highly polished, most of them showing long use. Once, when they had paused for the midday meal, Enéas reached out to touch Niente’s staff, curious as to what it might feel like. Niente snatched the stick away.
“This is nothing for you, Easterner,” he said—quietly, but with a sharp edge in his voice. “Let me give you a warning: you touch a nahualli’s staff at your peril. Don’t do it again.”
Niente conversed with the other nahualli, but always in the Tehuantin language; if any of them, like Niente, also spoke Enéas’ language, they never displayed the skill. For the most part, the other nahualli ignored his presence at the side of Niente, their gazes sliding past him as if he were no more than a horse or a tent-pack. Twice a day, a low-caste warrior would hand Enéas a bowl of the mashed root-paste that seemed to be the staple food for the army; he ate it quickly and hungrily—it was never quite enough to satisfy the hunger fed by the long marches. Niente had also given him a waterskin, which he filled in the abundant small lakes and streams around the hilly region.
The army moved through the meandering valleys like a solid river, the verdant steep walls of the landscape containing them. And at night, when the army camped . . .
It was the lowest-caste warriors who always erected the nahualli’s tents—the nahualli themselves seemed to do little physical labor. Niente supervised the placement of several dozen casks in his personal tent each night, marked with symbols burned into the wood. There were four symbols that Enéas could discern. Niente didn’t seem overly concerned with most of them, but the ones marked with what looked like a winged dragon he watched carefully as they were placed, grimacing whenever one of the warriors set the cask down too hard, and scolding them when they did so. That first night, Niente opened several of the casks—he didn’t object when Enéas sidled closer to look over the nahualli’s shoulder. One cask was filled with chunks of what looked and smelled like burnt wood, another with a white powder, yet another with bright yellow crystals. Enéas peered most closely into the dragon-marked casks, to see that it was filled with a gray-black thick sand, glistening a bit in the moonlight.
He remembered that sand, strewn in circles on the ground.
The thunder, the flash, the pain . . .
Each night, close together in the tent, Niente would sit erect and chant for a few turns of the glass at least, his eyes closed, while Enéas lay near him. Sometimes he would sprinkle one of the ingredients from the casks on the ground between them while he chanted. Enéas could feel the power of the Ilmodo in the air, causing the hair on his neck to rise and prickling his skin, and he prayed to Cénzi while Niente cast his spells, trying to offset with his prayers the heretical use of the Ilmodo. All around them there would be silence: none of the other nahualli were chanting as Niente did, and Enéas wondered at that. He also wondered at how—afterward—he seemed to feel a warmth inside himself, as if the sun’s radiance were filling his own lungs. Whatever spell Niente was casting, Enéas seemed to be affected by it.
He wondered if Niente felt the same warmth and energy, but the nahualli always seemed more exhausted than exhilarated by his efforts, and the man moaned as he slept, as if he were in pain and when he awoke in the morning, there were new lines on his face, like an old apple.
On the third night, after the chanting, rather than falling asleep as he usually did, Niente placed a small bronze bowl near the opening to the tent so that the light of the campfire fell on it. The bowl was decorated around the rim with a frieze of stylized people and animals, many of which Enéas didn’t recognize. As Enéas watched, Niente poured water into the bowl, then sifted a small amount of finely-ground, ruddy powder into his hand from a leather pouch. Niente dusted the surface of the water with the powder, chanting as he did so. The water began to glow, an unnatural, blue-green illumination that made the nahualli’s face appear spectral and dead. The man stared into the bowl, silent, the eerie light playing over his face, shifting and merging. Curiosity made Enéas slide forward to see better. Pushing himself up, he glanced over Niente’s shoulder.
Inside the bowl, in the water, was a cityscape. He recognized it immediately: Nessantico. He could see the Pontica a’Brezi Veste and the vista of the Avi a’Parete leading down to the pillared, marble public entrance to the Kralj’s Palais. He could see the Old Temple, but cu’Brunelli’s magnificent new dome looked as if it had fallen in completely; there was nothing but a blackened hole there where it was to have been placed. People seemed to be walking the streets, but they were few, most with their heads down and hurrying as if afraid to be seen. The streets were trash-filled and dirty, and the palais had a visible crack on its southern wall and the northern wing was a ruin. Across the street, what had been a glorious residence was now a blackened hulk. A pall of smoke seemed to lay over the city. Enéas leaned closer to see better into the water . . .
. . . and Niente’s fingers stirred the water and the vision dissolved, the light going dark. Enéas was staring down only at water, the brass bottom of the bowl flecked with the granules of powder.
“What was that?” Enéas asked Niente, sitting back. The man shrugged.
“Heresy, to you,” he said. “The magic of the wrong god.”
“I saw . . . I thought I saw . . . Nessantico.”
“Perhaps you did,” Niente answered. “Axat grants the visions She wishes.”
“Visions of what?” He remembered the smoke, the fissure in the palais wall, the hurrying, frightened people . . .
Niente didn’t answer Enéas. He cast the water in the bowl outside the tent and wiped the bowl with the hem of his clothes. He placed it in his pack, next to the cotton padding that served as his bed. “How do you feel, Enéas?” he asked.
“I feel fine,” he answered.
“It’s time you returned to your own people.”
“What?” Enéas shook his head, unbelieving. “You said—”
“I said that the soldiers would kill you if you try to escape. And they would. But . . . there will be no moon tonight. Axat hides Her face, and rain is coming. There will be a horse outside our tent when the storm reaches us. When you hear it, go outside to the horse. Ride hard; no one will pursue you until morning. If you’re lucky, if Axat smiles on you, you will come to Munereo a few days before we do.”
“You’re letting me go? You’d let me warn my people and tell them to be ready for your army?”
Niente smiled. “The army of Tehuantin has nothing to fear from your people. Not here in our own country. Go,” he said. “Axat doesn’t intend for you to die here. You’ve been prepared for another fate—a far better one. You will go to your leader. You will talk to him, and you will give him a message for us.”
“Prepared? By whom—your Axat? I don’t believe in Her,” Enéas told him. “She’s not my god, and She doesn’t control my fate, and I am not a messenger boy for you.”
“Ah.” Niente lay down on his bedding and pulled a blanket over him against the night cold. “Well, then stay here if that’s what you wish. It is your choice.”
“What is this message?” Enéas asked the man.
“You’ll know it when the time comes.”
Niente said nothing more. After a time, Enéas heard the man snoring. He lay there, wondering. He could still feel the residual tingling of Niente’s earlier chant, as if his fingertips and toes had fallen asleep. Prickles crawled his limbs, almost painful but energizing at the same time. The sensation kept him awake for what seemed turns of the glass: while Niente slept, as the sounds of the encampment slowly subsided until he could hear sleeping men all around him and the soft patter of rain began to drum against the fabric of the tent, accompanied by flashes of lightning and the occasional grumbles of thunder.
Close by, a horse nickered.
Enéas slid from under his blanket and crawled to the tent’s opening. Outside, the rain had become steady, pooling in black puddles dancing with spray. A few strides away, a horse stood with its head down, pulling at tufts of wet grass. The creature was bridled and saddled, but the reins hung down as if the animal had pulled away from where it had been placed. A lightning flash illuminated the encampment, freezing for a moment the falling streaks of rain, and thunder snarled close by. The horse stamped nervously at the light and sound, and Enéas thought it might bolt.
It was the duty of the soldier to escape if possible.
It’s time you returned to your own people. You will go to your leader. You will talk to him, and you will give him a message for us.
Enéas glanced around; in the midst of the storm, it was difficult to see, but there seemed to be no one awake. The camp guards had retreated into their tents against the storm. He gathered himself, then stood up outside the tent. The rain slicked his hair and soaked his clothing as he stepped toward the horse, his hand out as he clucked encouragingly to the animal, murmuring soft words. The horse lifted its head but otherwise remained still, looking at him. He took the reins and patted the soaked, muscular neck. “It’s time,” he told the horse.
A few breaths later, he was astride and galloping away.
Jan ca’Vörl
W
HEN HE ENTERED to take breakfast with his matarh, she was standing at the window to the room with the shutters open, and he thought he saw sunlight glinting on her eyes as if, perhaps, she’d been crying recently. If so, he could make a guess as to why. “Vatarh shouldn’t treat you as he does,” he said. “Especially with something this important. I’ve told him how I feel, too.”
She turned to him, taking his hands. The corners of her lips lifted in a smile. “It doesn’t matter, Jan. Not anymore. I’m past him being able to hurt me.” He felt her fingers tighten against his. “Besides, he’s given me all I really want.”
She pulled him toward her and kissed his forehead. “Hungry?” she asked. “I had the kitchen make sweet cheese rétes. I know how much you like them.” She led him to the table, laden with juice and milk, with eggs and bacon, sliced bread and butter, and a plate of delicate pastry strudels oozing white, creamy cheese. “Sit across from me,” she said, “so we can talk.” She handed him the plate of rétes, smiling as he took one.
“You look tired, Matarh.”
“Do I?” She put a hand to her face. “I’ll have to get my handmaid to take care of that. This will be a long day.”
Jan took a bite of the strudel, enjoying the honeyed tartness of the cheese and the delicate hint of sweetnuts in the pastry dough. He could feel his matarh’s gaze on him, watching. “Does it bother you?” he asked impulsively. “Onczio Fynn being Hïrzg, I mean?”
“I’ve thought about it enough,” she answered. Her hand came up to touch her cheek again. “I’ll confess that I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about that . . .” She hesitated, looking down at the tablecloth. “. . . and other things.”

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