A Magic Of Nightfall Part 38

"See if you can find out more about this Gairdi ci'Tomisi that Uly mentioned."

Kenne looked at him bleakly. "I know him. At least I think I do. He's a trader with Writs of Pa.s.sage from both Brezno and Nessantico, and goes back and forth over the border. We-both Ana and I-have used him. We thought . . . we thought he was our man, our spy. He carried messages from us to the teni within the Brezno Temple that we thought we could trust, and brought back their messages to us about Archigos Semini. Now . . ." Kenne looked up at the Numetodo. "If he was actually a dual agent, in the employ of Semini ca'Cellibrecca . . ."

". . . Then it was ca'Cellibrecca who ordered Ana killed," Karl finished for him. His jaw shut audibly.

Kenne felt the remnants of his lunch rise into his throat. He swallowed hard against the bile. Yes, he believed ca'Cellibrecca would be capable of murder-after all, the man had been a war-teni for most of his life. He had no doubt killed hundreds of soldiers with the mage-fire. But he wouldn't have killed Ana without a reason. Kenne was afraid that he knew exactly what the reason might be: that ca'Cellibrecca expected the person placed in Ana's stead would be weak, and that he might exploit that weakness to reunite the Faith again-with ca'Cellibrecca as Archigos in Nessantico as well as Brezno.

Because he knew it would be me. He's probably already speaking to the Kraljica, making his overtures.

"Archigos?" Kenne took a long breath before looking up at Karl. "No Numetodo killed Audric," Karl declared. "No Numetodo killed Ana. That killed them both." Karl gestured at the black sand on Kenne's desk. "That makes me think that the same person is responsible for both murders."

It seemed a reasonable a.s.sumption to Kenne, but he'd been wrong about so much that he no longer trusted his own reasoning. "What . . . what do you want me to do?" Kenne lifted his hands from the desk, a fingertip dark with the powder he'd touched. "How can I help?"

"See what more you can find out," Karl told him. "See if Semini really did this-if he did, I want to make the man pay. But Varin . . ." He stopped. "I mean, Ana wouldn't want me to do anything until I knew, knew for certain. Can you help me with that?" Karl pointed again to the drift of black sand on Kenne's blotter. "You know what that is, don't you?" the Numetodo asked. Kenne could only shake his head.

"That's the ashes of magic, Archigos," Karl said. "That's what magic looks like when it's dead."

Kenne glanced down again. It felt like he was looking at his own remains.

Aubri cu'Ulcai.

COMMANDANT AUBRI CU'ULCAI LOOKED backward and shook his head, wondering how the battle had come to this. It should never have happened. It wasn't possible.

He wondered how the new Kraljica would receive the news, and expected he knew the answer. And the only excuse he had was that the Westlanders refused to fight honorably, as they should.

It had begun only three short days before. . . .

Several chevarittai-as was common-rode out on their destriers to call for individual challenge as the Westlander forces approached Villembouchure. No Westlander warriors rode out to meet their challenge; the front ranks of the army marched forward, unbroken and unfazed even as the chevarittai mocked their honor and their courage. They were ignored or, worse, attacked with cowardly arrows and fire from the Westlander spellcasters. Three chevarittai were killed before Aubri had the horns call "return" and the chevarittai turned their warhorses and galloped back behind the lines of waiting infantry and war-teni.

Aubri and his offiziers huddled; they expected the attack to start as soon as the Westlander army crested the last hill before Villembouchure. After all, it was just before Second Call, and there were still hours of daylight. The Westlanders had come within a double bowshot of the front lines of the Holdings force and halted . . . and remained stopped. The chevarittai and his offiziers had pleaded with Aubri to allow them to advance and engage. He'd refused, regretfully-to do so would mean to abandon the earthworks and bunkers they'd erected in the past few days. The Holdings army was arrayed in a perfect defensive position, and Aubri was loath to move from that.

That had been the first day. He'd gone to sleep that night convinced of eventual victory-the Westlander advance would break against their hardened lines. The Westlander force, as his scouts and all the reports from the field had verified, was substantially smaller than their own: no army of that size, not even the Firenzcians at their best, would have been able to overrun the defenses Aubri had erected. The s.h.i.+ps of the Tehuantin fleet clogged the A'Sele, but were too far from the field of battle to affect the issue; in any case, Aubri knew that a Nessantican naval force was on its way to deal with the enemy s.h.i.+ps. At worst, the walls of Villembouchure would hold them if for some unforeseen reason Aubri could not contain them in the fields outside the city. The Westlander forces were far too small for an effective siege, and Villembouchure was well-provisioned and could withstand a siege from an even larger army for at least a month.

Yes, Aubri was confident. Despite the fact that his army had been hastily mustered and most of the infantry was poorly trained, his offiziers and the chevarittai with them were battle-tested by the many skirmishes over the last few decades with Firenzcia and the Coalition nations.

They would prevail here.

The battle began on the second day, but not-as in all of Aubri's experience and the experience of the offiziers who had trained him-at the advent of dawn. No . . . the attack came well before the sun clawed its way into the sky. And it came strangely. The lookouts posted in the foremost bunkers had sent urgent messengers running to the commandant's tent behind the lines, the uproar waking Aubri from a light, dream-troubled sleep.

"A storm walking toward us on legs of lightning," they clamored. "A wall of cloud . . ."

Alarm horns were sounding over the encampment and soldiers were hastily donning armor and grabbing weapons as offiziers screamed orders. In the distance, blue light flickered and danced and thunder boomed, yet above them the sky was clear, p.r.i.c.ked with the crowded and familiar constellations. Aubri mounted the horse his attendants hurriedly brought to him. He galloped quickly toward the front, joined on the way by A'Teni Vallis ca'Ostheim of Villembouchure, who was in charge of the war-teni. "What in the name of Cenzi is going on?" ca'Ostheim roared. His shock of thick white hair seemed to spark in the light of the storm ahead; his belly sagged over the pommel of his horse's saddle. The lashes of his eyes were still clotted with sleep rime. A thick gold necklace with a broken globe hanging from it bounced on his chest as they rode. "I thought you said the attack would come at dawn, Commandant."

"I said that, yes," Aubri replied calmly. "It appears that the Westlanders weren't listening."

At the first line of bunkers, the two men stopped, gazing out over the s.p.a.ce between the two armies. The Westlander encampment, which when Aubri had gone to bed had been twinkling on the far hillside like yellow stars fallen to earth, was no longer visible. Instead, an apparition of nature confronted them: a wall of black, roiling cloud perhaps twelve men high and floating two men above the ground. Like some ominous, supernatural monster, the cloud-creature crawled toward them on hundreds of legs of flickering lightning. The flashes stabbed at the ground below, seeming to pull the clouds forward a few feet with each stroke. Aubri could see the ground tearing wherever the lightning struck, leaving a trail of storm-footprints ripped from the ground. A constant din of thunder and a high, crackling snarl accompanied the vision. All around them, the army of the Holdings stared at the creature with faces illuminated by erratic white-blue. Aubri could feel the panic moving through the ranks, the men falling involuntarily backward a few steps, away from the mounds of low earthworks and fortifications they'd raised. "Hold!" Aubri cried out to them. The horns took up the call along the line: "Hold!", and the men shook themselves as if awakening from a nightmare. They clutched useless spears, gazing at the monster that confronted them. It was nearly across the open ground now and Aubri could glimpse nothing beyond its ferocious border.

"A'Teni ca'Ostheim, this is magic-it's your domain." Aubri had to nearly shout over the increasing din of the storm-creature to ca'Ostheim, the leader of the war-teni. "Can you stop this?"

"I'll try," he answered, dismounting. He began to chant; his hands moved in strange patterns in front of him. Aubri could feel the hair on his arms standing up as ca'Ostheim continued to chant and as the lightning began to touch the edges of the ramparts-he didn't know which it was that caused the reaction. Aubri's steed, though accustomed to the clamor, noise, and sights of war, was stamping worriedly at the ground, half-rearing away from the apparition. Aubri had to lean down and pat the horse's neck to calm it. "A'Teni! Soon, please."

Ca'Ostheim raised his hands; the chanting came to a halt. He gestured toward the storm. A wind shrieked outward from the war-teni, and where it touched the storm-creature, the clouds were torn apart. Soldiers cheered, but to either side, the storm still crawled forward, unabated, and now lighting bolts tore at the ramparts themselves, the forked legs reaching out to where the soldiers of the Holdings stood. Screams rose from either side as the bolts seared and shattered the ranks, sliding inexorably forward. And now the sundered halves of the clouds were coming back together; eager tongues of lightning were beginning to flash in front of Aubri. Ca'Ostheim had sunk to his knees. He shook his head up to Aubri. "Commandant, I can't . . . Not alone. I need to gather the other war-teni . . ."

"To your horse, then," Aubri told him. He looked to his banner bearers and the messenger horns as the screams of the wounded and dying vied with the thundering. "Retreat!" he shouted. "Back to the next line!"

The banners signaled retreat; the horns sounded the call. The ranks of soldiers broke instantly, those who still could turning to flee the storm. Faintly, in the s.p.a.ce beyond the storm, he could hear new voices: the battle cries of the Westlanders.

Aubri yanked hard on the reins of his mount and followed his men.

That was the morning of the second day. The rest of the day went no better. The war-teni were able to disperse the spell-storm, but the task exhausted them and they had little energy left for other spells. Behind the storm, the ranks of the Westlanders-warriors with scarred and painted faces-surged forward. The hand-to-hand combat was fierce, but the chevarittai and infantry could match sword for sword. However, for the Westlander spellcasters, wielding sticks from which they cast spells, Aubri had no answer-the war-teni were largely depleted from their earlier efforts, and by late afternoon, Aubri called for the army to return to Villembouchure, behind the walls and stout gates. He was convinced that he could have held the outer defenses, but the price in lives would have been enormous. He did what any Commandant in his position would have done: he had the horns blow "disengage."

By evening, they were inside and the portcullises were lowered and locked.

That ended the second day.

In any normal battle, that would have signaled the beginning of a siege that might have lasted weeks or months before being broken, and Aubri knew that the Westlanders didn't have weeks or months-not in a strange land where they were surrounded by enemies. This was why Aubri had found it easy to call for disengagement as soon as it was apparent that victory on the fields before the city would only come at huge cost. Being inside the walls of Villembouchure must lead to eventual victory. Inevitably. And he could wait.

But the siege would last only one day.

Aubri was on the city walls, staring down at the smoldering fires of the main Westlander encampment in the dawn. That was when the arcing b.a.l.l.s of smoke rose suddenly, arrowing toward them: a dozen or more of them, all seeming to target the great Western Gate of the city. The war-teni stationed along the walls reacted instantly, as they should, and-trained in the art of holding their spells in their minds for a time (which none of them would have admitted was a Numetodo trait forced on the war-teni by Archigos Ana)-the response of their dispersal spells was swift. But the fireb.a.l.l.s continued on their flight. The closest war-teni looked at Aubri with wide, stricken eyes. "Commandant, those aren't spells-"

He got no further. The thick walls of the city shook impossibly as the fireb.a.l.l.s slammed into the gate and the surrounding stones. Where they touched, impossible explosions tore into the stones and steel and wood. Aubri, holding onto the battlement to keep his footing, witnessed huge chunks of granite flying away as if they were pebbles tossed by a child. Fire erupted from directly below him, as white-hot as a smithy's blaze; he could feel it was.h.i.+ng over his skin. He heard screams and cries from below.

"The gate is broken! The walls are sundered!"

The Westlanders were already rus.h.i.+ng toward the breach, as archers belatedly cast a rain of arrows down on them. Some of the warriors went down, but many-too many-were still coming, and now Aubri saw more fireb.a.l.l.s arcing from the north and south toward those gates.

He ran down from the battlements into b.l.o.o.d.y, savage chaos.

That was the third day. The day the city was lost. Impossibly.

Now Aubri stared back at Villembouchure from a hilltop along the Avi A'Sele. He gazed at the greasy smoke smearing the sky above the broken walls with the remnants of his army gathered around him and A'Teni ca'Ostheim at his side. Inside the town . . . Inside were the Westlanders.

"This isn't possible," he muttered.

But it was. And now the defense of Nessantico herself must be prepared. Aubri shook his head again at the sight.

He turned his horse and gestured, and he and the army began their limping retreat back toward the capital.

Allesandra ca'Vorl.

SHE REMEMBERED Pa.s.sE a'Fiume all too well. It was there, twenty-five years earlier as her vatarh had besieged the town, that she first learned the hardest lesson of war: that sometimes the ones you love don't survive. She'd had a crush then on a young offizier who'd been killed in the battle. She had thought at the time that she would never be able to love anyone again, her heart was so shattered by the experience, but time had softened the pain. Now, she couldn't recall the young man's face.

The repairs from that decades-old battle were still visible on the city walls, and they brought back the memories and the pain.

This time, there was no siege. The Firenzcian army had pa.s.sed through the border town Ville Colhelm without any challenge at all: the Holdings force stationed there had simply abandoned their post and fled from the far greater Firenzcian host. At Allesandra's behest, Jan had sent riders-including Sergei ca'Rudka-well ahead of the main force to negotiate with the Comte of Pa.s.se a'Fiume. With the garrison of the Garde Civile largely depleted due to the Westlander invasion, the comte chose discretion over valor (and a substantial bribe in gold over his vows of office): in exchange for the vow that the town would not be sacked, he would permit the army to cross the River Clario through the city gates to the Avi a'Firenzcia.

Allesandra rode alongside Jan as they crossed the great stone bridge over the waters of the Clario, more rapid and dangerous than the wider and deeper A'Sele, with which the Clario would join before the A'Sele reached Nessantico. The bridge itself seemed to shudder under the thudding of booted soldiers and horses' hooves, the vanguard of the army already through the gates and the remainder trailing down the road as far as one could see in the hill-pocked terrain. Jan gazed around them raptly as they pa.s.sed through the tall arches set with the s.h.i.+elds of the Kralji, and into the city itself. Crowds lined the sides of the main avenue through the town, mostly silent, and the chevarittai of the Garde Hirzg stiffened in their saddles as they scanned the throngs for danger.

"You were here with great-vatarh?" Jan asked again, leaning over toward her, and Allesandra nodded.

"I was just a child, and your great-vatarh was in his prime," she said. "He took Pa.s.se a'Fiume in just three days of siege after the peace negotiations failed, but Kraljiki Justi-who still had two legs then-had already made a cowardly escape back to Nessantico. Your great-vatarh was furious. Sergei ca'Rudka was the commandant for the Nessantican forces; he was . . . brilliant, even though badly outnumbered. Your great-vatarh would have admitted that, however grudgingly."

Jan glanced back over his shoulder to where ca'Rudka rode alongside the Archigos. The Regent's metal nose gleamed in the sun. Like the Garde Hirzg, ca'Rudka seemed edgy and nervous, his lips pressed tightly together and his eyes scanning the crowd to either side. "I like the man, but I don't know that I entirely trust him, Matarh," Jan said, returning his attention to her.

She smiled at that. "You shouldn't," she told him. "His allegiance is to Nessantico, first and foremost. And he is a strange man with strange tastes, if one believes the rumors. That hasn't changed. He'll work with us as long as he feels that our interests converge. As soon as they don't . . ." She shrugged. "Then he will just as happily be our enemy. Your instincts are right, Jan."

"He seems to admire you."

"I knew him when I was Archigos Ana's hostage. He was kind enough to me then. But right now, he's more interested in the fact that I'm Kraljica Marguerite's second cousin and the fact that this relations.h.i.+p gives me as much a claim to the Sun Throne as Sigourney ca'Ludivici. And, for now, we need Sergei and the alliances he may be able to bring us."

Jan nodded. He pressed his lips together as if considering all this as they rode on into the central square of the city. She wondered what he was thinking.

Here, the Temple a'Pa.s.se dominated the architectural landscape. Like many of the structures in the city, it had been heavily damaged in the siege two and a half decades before. Afterward, the town council had made the decision to redesign the main square and the temple complex. Much of the original structure had been demolished. The thin, skeletal lines of scaffolding caged the as-yet unfinished main tower and dome of the revamped temple.

The crowds of townspeople were most dense here as the slow line of the army marched through their city. By now, Allesandra knew, the vanguard would already have pa.s.sed through the western gate and beyond the city walls. By now, she also knew, messengers would be urging their horses to a gallop ahead of the force bringing news to the Kraljica, to the Archigos, and to Nessantico that the Firenzcians were on the march-for all she knew, that word may have already come to Nessantico, as the army first crossed the borders. Soon, now, their advance would be challenged; Kraljica Sigourney couldn't afford to look westward for long.

An army-especially the Firenzcian army; polished, efficient, and renowned-was a large bargaining chip on any table of negotiation, and Sigourney and the Council of Ca' would be all too well aware of that. Allesandra smiled at that thought.

The crowd pressed close to them, and the foot soldiers to either side of Allesandra and Jan pushed them back with the shafts of pikes and spears. She could see grim, unhappy faces behind the fence of weapons, and from the depths of the crowd came occasional shouted curses and threats, but when they looked that way, there was no one they could pick out of the ma.s.ses. The populace remembered the Firenzcian siege, too: many of them had lost family members in the siege, and the sight of the silver-and-black banners was a mockery waving in their faces.

They pa.s.sed into the shadow of the temple now, the line of the army using the bulwark of the main tower to s.h.i.+eld them from the crowds. The wind-horns on the temple began to sound Second Call as Allesandra and Jan came abreast of the tower. Allesandra's head craned upward toward the noise, squinting into the glare of the sun. Something-a figure, a form-seemed to move above, amongst the corset of scaffolding. She couldn't see it clearly.

Allesandra was suddenly struck from behind, as her ears alerted her to the sound of hooves against cobbles. A heavy weight bore her down hard to the pavement, though the arms that had gone about her turned her so that the body underneath took the brunt of the impact. She heard a loud kr-unk almost in concert with the impact. A horse screamed-a horrible, awful sound-and people shouted. "The Hirzg!" "Move! Move!" "Back! Get back!" "Above! There he is!" She could hear offiziers shouting orders and more screams. There seemed to be a mob huddled around her. She fought against the arms around her, against the folds of her a.s.saulter's cloak and her own riding tashta and cloak. There were hands pulling at her, helping her up.

There was another scream, a human one this time, and another impact somewhere close by.

She blinked, trying to make sense of the scene.

Sergei ca'Rudka was standing near her, his cloak torn, grimacing as he kneaded his arm. The silver of his nose was scuffed and the nose itself was partially pulled back from his face, giving her a glimpse of an uncomfortable hole underneath. Jan was being helped to his feet, a stride in back of Sergei. Allesandra's horse was on its side before her, a ma.s.sive statue of a Moitidi demon in pieces on the ground around it. The animal was thras.h.i.+ng its legs, its eyes wide, and the sounds it was making . . . Sergei moved to the horse quickly, kneeling in the wreckage of the stone carving and stroking the horse's neck as he made soothing noises. She saw him take his knife from its scabbard. "No!" she began, but he'd already made the cut, deep and swift. The horse bucked once, again, and went still.

Allesandra shook her head, trying to clear it. Half the crowd in the plaza seemed to have fled in terror; the Firenzcian soldiers had formed a thick bulwark around them. Sergei moved away from the horse, striding toward a body sprawled in a pool of blood not far from the base of the tower. Soldiers moved to intercept him; he shrugged them away angrily. Allesandra started to move and realized that her body was sore and bruised, and she was bleeding from a cut on the head. She felt Jan come up behind her.

"Matarh?" He was staring at the horse Sergei had killed. She hugged her son, desperately, then held him an arm's length away, examining him-his clothes were torn, as well, and there was a sc.r.a.pe along one cheek that was oozing blood, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. "What happened?" she asked him. "Did you see?"

"The Regent saved us," he said. "He took both of us from our horses just in time." He glanced up at the scaffolding, then back to the body on the ground. Sergei was enclosed in a clot of soldiers, crouched alongside the corpse. "The man . . . he was up there-he would have killed you. Maybe both of us. But Sergei . . ."

Archigos Semini came rus.h.i.+ng up then, his green robes swirling. "Allesan-" he began, then shook his head, making the sign of Cenzi hurriedly. "A'Hirzg! Hirzg Jan! Thank Cenzi you're both safe! I thought-"

But Allesandra was no longer listening to him. She pushed through the crowd to where Sergei was examining the body. "Regent?" she said, and Sergei glanced up at her. He was scowling.

"A'Hirzg. I apologize, but there was no time to give you warning. Are you badly hurt?"

She shook her head. He nodded and stood up, groaning as he did so as if the movement pained him. "I'm too d.a.m.ned old for this," he muttered. He kicked the corpse in front of him, the boot making a soft, ugly sound as the broken torso jiggled in response. Allesandra saw a fair face underneath the blood, a young face, perhaps Jan's age; what she saw of his clothing was suspiciously fine. The body was adorned with the broken shafts of several arrows. "Don't know who he is," Sergei said, "but we'll find out. Ca'-and-cu', though, from the way he's dressed and the way he looks. I saw him up on the scaffolding just before he tossed down the carving. That's when I moved; looks like your archers took care of the rest." He seemed to notice his dangling nose then, and pushed it gingerly back in place, holding it with two fingers. "My pardon, A'Hirzg-the glue . . ."

"No matter," she told him, waving her hand. "Regent, I owe you my life."

She thought he would respond as most would have, with a lowering of his head and deprecation, a protest of duty and loyalty and obligation. He did not. Instead, he smiled, still holding his silver nose in place.

"Indeed you do, A'Hirzg," he said.

Niente.

THE TOWN BURNED and the flames reflected in the scrying bowl. They vanished as Zolin slapped the scrying bowl aside, splas.h.i.+ng the water over Niente. The bowl clattered away, bronze ringing against the tiles like a wild bell until it clanged up against the far wall, where a tile mosaic of some ancient battle glittered. Outlined in gla.s.s, horses reared as soldiers with pikes marched across a field with a snow-topped mountain looming in the background.

"No!" the Tecuhtli roared. "I won't have you tell me this!"

"It is what I saw," Niente answered with a calmness he didn't feel. The dead warrior, the nahualli sprawled next to him, only this time he saw one of their faces. Zolin's face . . . And he was too afraid to ask Axat to let him see the nahualli's features . . . "Tecuhtli, we have accomplished so much here. We have shown these Easterners the pain that they inflicted on us and our cousins. We have taken land and cities from them as they were taken from us. We have given them the lesson you wanted to give them. To go on . . ." Niente lifted his hands. The great city in flames and the tehuantin fleeing, their s.h.i.+ps with broken masts canted on their sides on the river . . . "The visions show me only death."

"No!" Zolin spat. "I've sent word back that we'll stay here, that they are to send more warriors. We will keep what we have taken. We will strike at their heart-this great city of theirs that is so close." He turned, his heavy and muscular arms swinging close to Niente's face. Zolin's thick fingers stabbed toward Niente's eyes. "Are you blind, Nahual? Didn't you see how easily we took this city of theirs? Didn't you watch them run from us like a pack of whipped dogs?"

"We have little of the materials left to make more black sand," Niente told the Tecuhtli. "I have lost a third of my nahualli in the fighting; you have lost as many of the warriors. We have come a long way without the resources to hold the land behind us. We are in a foreign country surrounded by enemies, with the only supplies those we can forage and plunder. If we take to our s.h.i.+ps and leave now, we will leave behind a legend that will strike fear in the Easterners for decades. The name of Tecuhtli Zolin will be a whisper in the night to scare generations of Easterner children."

"Bah!" Zolin spat again, the expectoration close to Niente's feet, marring the polished floor of the estate house he'd taken in Villembouchure. Looking down, Niente saw that the tiles all bore the glazed image of the same mountain as the mosaic on the wall. Zolin's spittle formed a lake on the mountain's flank. "You're a frightened child yourself, Nahual. I'm not afraid of what you see in your bowl. I'm not afraid of these futures you say Axat sends you. They're not the future, only possibilities." His finger prodded Niente's chest. "I tell you now, Nahual, you must make your choice." Each of the last three words was another prod. The Tecuhtli's dark eyes, wrapped in the swirl of the great eagle's wings, glared at him like those of the great cats that prowled the forests of home. "No more words from you. No more prophecy, no more warnings. I want only your obedience and your magic. If you can't give me that, then I am done with you. I will go on, whether you are Nahual or not. Decide now, Niente. As we stand here."

Niente's hand trembled near the haft of his spell-stick, dangling from his belt. He could pluck it up, touch Zolin with it before the warrior could fully draw his sword. The released spell would char the Tecuhtli's body, send him flying across the room until he crumpled against the wall under the mosaic in a smoking heap. Niente could see that result, as clearly as a vision in the scrying bowl.

That would also end this. He ached to do it.

But he could not. That was not a vision that Axat had granted him. That path would lead to one of the blind futures, one he couldn't guess-a future that might be far worse for the Tehuantin than those he had glimpsed in the bowl. He realized that knowing the possible futures was a trap as much as a benefit; he wondered whether that was something Mahri, too, had discovered. In a blind future, Citlali or Mazatl might continue to follow the steps of Zolin and fare worse. They might all die here, and no one from home would know their fate. In a blind future, certainly Niente would never see his family again.

He felt the smooth, polished wood of the spell-stick, but his fingertips only grazed it. They would not close around it.

"I will obey you, Tecuhtli," Niente said, the words slow and quiet. "And I will follow you to the future you bring us."

Varina ci'Pallo.