by S L Farrell
He wanted to see again the fate that awaited him there, the fate that would affect both Tehuantin and Easterner, that might shape the world with his own mold.
There… There was the great city, its strange, majestic buildings rebuilt, so unlike the stepped pyramids of Tlaxcala. But the mists around this future were heavier than they had ever been before, and the visions came too fast, too fleeting. There was his son’s face, and he was shouting at Niente, his face full of anger and fury. There was the glowing throne of the great city, but the shape sitting on it was uncertain: one moment it was a woman, then a man, then another, and there was a young man standing alongside it, wearing green robes, and from his hands boiled more mist that obscured Niente’s sight. For a moment Niente felt a stirring in the mists: was this a glimpse of the Sun Presence?
Where was the Long Path? Had it vanished? No, there it was again, but now faint, so faint, and overlaid with a dozen other possible futures when before it had been clear and certain. There was Atl again, and he walked yet another future. There was a paper, with strange writing on it, and the scroll was in flames, the words going to gray ash. There was a young woman with a pale-colored stone in one hand and a dagger in the other, and she governed yet another path. Faces wafted up toward him from the mist and vanished again: a man of middle years with a crown on his head, an old man with a metal nose, an old woman from whose hands sparks flew like a fire-rock striking metal, and again the young, green-robed man from whose mouth fire emerged, as if he were a dragon.
Niente had never seen these figures before-or at least not so clearly-but now they rose up in opposition to him, confusing Axat’s sight and seeming to bar him from the path he’d chosen. He sought to find it again, staring into the mists of the bowl and searching for a way past these specters. There… He saw it again, at last, but this time he also saw Atl laying still on the ground before the path, his head bloodied, and he recoiled in fear. No, Axat! he prayed. You can’t demand that of me… But the vision remained, and it was only beyond Atl’s corpse that the future he’d wanted lay…
The Long Path.
It still led to his own death as well, but he welcomed that. It would be a release from eternal pain. He welcomed the thought of falling into Axat’s embrace at last, of leaving behind the shriveled, tormented, and pained shell of his physical body. That would be no great sacrifice. He’d lived long decades, and he had been Axat’s devoted servant, and he had been both rewarded and punished for that. No, to find his own death would be sweet and he could embrace the Great Winged Serpent without fear, if beyond his death there was still the vision She had granted him. If his death sealed the Long Path.
In his visions atop the Teocalli Axat, Niente had glimpsed a world at peace for a time, a world where East and West respected their individual boundaries, where trade between them was open and free, where the best of both cultures merged into a new whole, where even the worlds of the gods seemed to come together. Yes, there were still battles and strife in this world, but the conflicts were smaller and more easily resolved. People being what they were, it wasn’t possible to find a path where there wasn’t bloodshed and conflict. But down that Long Path, the world as a whole was more benign, more accepting.
Now, Niente looked for that future. It was still there, but the vision was murky and disordered, and he was no longer certain he could find the way to it in reality.
“Taat?”
He heard Atl’s voice, and with the interruption, the green mist dissolved and he was merely staring at his own ugly, shimmering reflection in the water of the bowl. A droplet-like rain-hit the surface of the bowl, rings radiating out from it, touching the edges and rebounding in complex patterns, and Niente realized that he was weeping. He brushed at his eyes with his gnarled, clawed hands. “What?” he asked, blinking and raising his head. The back of his neck was stiff; how long had he been gazing into the bowl?
Atl was staring at him, and Niente wondered how long his son had been there. Perhaps he’d been muttering to the visions in the scrying bowl, as he sometimes did-what might Atl have heard? “What, my son?” Niente asked again, trying to soften his voice.
“The fleet is approaching the next large city, and Tecuhtli Citlali would like to speak to you regarding the vision you have had for this battle.”
“Yes, I’m sure he would,” Niente said. He sighed. Groaning with the effort of moving, hating how his back was bowed and how he shuffled like an old man, he lifted the scrying bowl and took it to the small window of the tiny room. He opened the shutter that kept out the spray and wind, and tossed the water out into the A’Sele. He wiped the bowl with the hem of his robe and handed it to Atl. “Take the bowl and purify it,” he said to his son as if he were an apprentice. “Tell Tecuhtli Citlali that I’ve just asked Axat to grant me Her visions, and that I’ll come to him as soon as I’ve rested for a stripe of the candle.”
“He won’t like that.”
“Indeed he won’t. And that’s part of why I do it.” Niente attempted a smile; he wondered if it showed on his face at all. “One thing the Nahual must teach the Tecuhtli is that we are equals, despite what the Tecuhtli likes to believe. We won’t reach Villembouchure for another day and more. There’s nothing he can do right now to seal our victory. Therefore, he can wait long enough for me to recover my strength.”
Atl grinned at that. He clutched the bowl to his chest. Niente saw Atl’s fingers close around it, almost possessively, stroking the incised figures of animals around the rim with familiarity. He is going to look into the bowl again, too. The realization came to him as a certainty. “I’ll do as you say, Taat,” Atl said. “I’ll give Tecuhtli Citlali your message.”
Niente nodded. Almost, he started to caution Atl not to use the bowl again so quickly, but he did not. You can’t stop him, any more than you could have stopped yourself. Say it, and you only guarantee that he will use it more.
So he said nothing. The vision of Atl laying dead overlaid his true vision. It was as if a corpse walked from the room, and he found himself weeping again and cursing the gift that Axat had given him.
He could not let his son die. That was not something a Taat who loved his son could do, no matter what the consequences. It didn’t matter if saving Atl destroyed the Long Path.
Please don’t set that before me, he prayed to Axat. Please don’t force me to make that choice.
He thought that he heard a distant chuckle in his head as he prayed.
Sergei ca’Rudka
There was a smell to the lower levels of the Bastida: the stink of human desperation, the stench of pain. The very stones were saturated with the odor. Sergei thought that if the Bastida were torn down, a century later the ruins would still exude that foul reek.
It was a smell that he’d loved, in a strange way, for it was a smell that he’d had no small part in creating over the decades. It had been his hand-many times, too many times-that had sent terrified shrieks echoing here, that had caused men and women to lose control of their bladders and bowels, that had spilled blood upon the flags.
His own spirit, he thought, must smell the same. When the soul shredders finally took him, would they recoil from the odor as their claws ripped his immortality from his flesh? Would their nostrils dilate at the sewage he contained?
He wondered about that more and more. But there was nothing he could do to change it. The sickness was as much a part of him as it was a part of these stones, of the Bastida itself.
His body was a Bastida also, a tower that imprisoned his own soul, shrieking unheard in terror in his depths.
His cane made a persistent, steady beat on the stone stairs as he descended. His hips ached, his back pained him with every step until he reached the level footing of the lowest floor of the tower. The air here was dank and cold. It didn’t matter whether it was summer or winter above; what lurked here was an eternal, dead autumn. The only light was that of two torches guttering in iron rings on a wall. The two gardai on duty saluted him, but Sergei also saw
the knowing glance they gave to the roll of old, soiled leather under Sergei’s arm, and the smirk the two exchanged with each other. “Good evening, Ambassador,” one of them said. “A pleasure to see you, as always. I thought the Kraljica had sent you back to Brezno.”
“I leave tomorrow,” he said. “The Morelli?”
“There.” The other gardai pointed to the nearest cell. “Should I open the door, Ambassador?”
Sergei nodded again, and the garda took a thick steel circle adorned with keys from his belt, and thrust one of them into the lock. It turned with a metallic protest. The hinges made a similar complaint as he pulled the cell door open.
“Do you need one of us to stay, Ambassador?” the garda asked. “I can stay if you like.”
The man’s face showed nothing, but Sergei knew what he was thinking. He nodded as the garda placed the keys back on his belt. “Your friend may take his lunch, then,” he said. The two gardai exchanged glances again before the other saluted and left them. Sergei stepped over the threshold of the cell onto a floor strewn with dirty and soiled straw. A man was huddled in chains at the rear of the cell: hands bound tightly together, and a silencer affixed around his head so that he couldn’t speak-a cage of metal helmeting his head, with a cloth-wrapped piece protruding into the man’s mouth so that the tongue was covered and held. Flickering shadows from the torches in the hall outside clawed at the darkness of the cell. The man’s eyes, dark in the hollows of his face, stared at Sergei with desperate hope, which dimmed as the man saw the leather roll. He moaned around the metal piece holding his tongue down. Saliva glistened on the black metal framework.
The stench in the room grew.
“You’re a war-teni?” Sergei asked. He laid the roll, still tied together, at his feet, groaning with the effort of bending over that far-the roll dropped the last few fingers to the straw, and a muffled clink of metal came from it. “A war-teni?” Sergei repeated as the man’s eyes widened. The garda chuckled behind Sergei.
The prisoner nodded.
“Ah,” Sergei replied. He leaned on his cane, peering at the man. “And a Morelli sympathizer, also?”
A hesitation. Then another, smaller, nod.
“You are O’Teni Timos ci’Stani?”
A final nod.
“Good,” Sergei told him. “We should have no lies between us, Timos. May I use your familiar name? You can think of me as Sergei, if you like. You see, Timos, lies always cause pain. Even out there in the world, a lie is eventually a poison that causes violence. But lies are especially volatile here in the Bastida. Here in the donjon, there must only be truth. Do you understand me?”
This time there was only a stare, but Sergei continued. “Good. Now, I would be willing to remove the tongue gag from you if you swear to Cenzi that you will not use the Ilmodo. Do you swear?”
A nod, more desperate this time, accompanied by a strangled, muted “’ethh” from his mouth.
“Fine. I’ll accept that oath, though for safety we’ll keep your hands manacled. Here, let me unlock the silencer from around your head …”
As a war-teni, ci’Stani had power that could leave Sergei a blistered, charred husk. Unless the man had learned to use Numetodo magic, which required only a single word and a limited gesture to cast, there was no real danger in removing the silencer. Teni magic took time, and the few links of chain between the man’s manacles would prevent him from making the necessary gestures to create magic. Carefully, even gently, Sergei removed the device from the prisoner, ci’Stani gagging once as the prong holding his tongue was removed. Sergei felt a thrill pass through his body as he did so. Perhaps the man had learned enough of the Numetodo methods to cast a spell…
The danger was part of the excitement. Part of the thrill.
The man spat dryly, taking in great gulps of the fetid air and working his jaw. “Thank you, Ambassador ca’Rudka,” the man said, giving him the sign of Cenzi awkwardly, the chains holding his hands rattling. “May Cenzi bless you.”
“Let us pray that’s so, Timos,” Sergei answered fervently. “Commandant cu’Ingres tells me that you were captured in Oldtown two nights ago, that there were, strangely, many teni with Morelli sympathies missing from the temples that night. And, strangely, when Commandant ca’Talin left to confront the Tehuantin at Villembouchure the morning after your capture, most of those same war-teni failed to appear, despite A’Teni ca’Paim’s orders.”
“I don’t know about that, Ambassador,” the man told him.
“Then speak for yourself, Timos,” Sergei said. “Why were you in Oldtown? Would you have been one of those missing war-teni, Timos, had we not-” He glanced at the man’s chains. “-otherwise detained you?”
“I…” The man stopped, licked at cracked lips. There were bruises on his face, Sergei noted, and a white-stumped gap in his front teeth from a broken tooth. “I was in Oldtown because I have a lover there. I was returning to the temple after visiting her.”
“You weren’t at a meeting of the Morellis, then? You weren’t with Nico Morel?”
Ci’Stani shook his head vigorously. “No, Ambassador. I was not.”
Sergei nodded. “I want to believe you, Timos,” he said. “I truly do. But you see, my friend, the Commandant captured more than one teni in Oldtown that night, and they have told already him that there was a meeting with Nico Morel that night, and confessed that you were among those in attendance.”
That was a lie-there was no other captive. An utilino on patrol had found O’Teni ci’Stani in Oldtown and knew the war-teni should have been asleep in the temple. Ci’Stani had fled when the utilino had tried to detain him, and the utilino had used a spell to subdue him. Ci’Stani had given the utilino the same tale he’d given to Sergei about a lover in Oldtown, but the utilino had been suspicious and summoned the Garde Kralji rather than the temple staff.
Following Sergei’s orders, the Garde Kralji hadn’t yet notified A’Teni ca’Paim that they’d captured one of her missing war-teni. That could come later, when Sergei knew what the man knew.
Sergei watched the teni closely. Despite the chill, beads of sweat had formed along ci’Stani’s hairline. Grimacing at the pain in his knees, Sergei crouched down by the leather roll. He started to untie the strings holding it. “You see my quandary, I’m sure,” he told the teni. “Someone is lying. And as I said earlier-lies create pain.”
With that, he flicked open the roll of leather, displaying the well-used instruments there in their loops: the pincers, the drills, the tongs, the punches, the keen-edged knives. The teni stared at them. He heard the garda let out a breath. Sergei opened a pocket in the roll, bringing out a thick brass bar with a hole drilled in the middle of it. The end of the bar was slightly flattened and scratched, as if it had seen significant use. He plucked a length of tapered wood from the same pocket, thrusting it into the hole in the middle of bar and tamping it down. He held up the crude hammer, turning it in the dim light coming through the cell doorway.
He told himself that he did it only to frighten the man, and he knew it for the lie it was.
Lies always cause pain.
Ci’Stani stared at the brass hammer. “Please, Ambassador… Yes, yes I was with Nico Morel. I confess it freely. I was with him in Oldtown. I could tell you where, but he won’t be there now-the Absolute moves constantly, and none of us know where he is now.” Ci’Stani licked his lips again, the words tumbling out almost too fast for him to keep up with them. “I would take you to him if I could, but I can’t, Ambassador, and that’s Cenzi’s truth. I swear it. He spends a night here, a night there. One never knows. There will be a notice of where to meet, but he gives us only a bare few turns of the glass notice…”
Sergei hefted the bar, then slammed the end of the brass onto the floor. The impact jolted his muscles through to the shoulder, but he showed nothing of that to ci’Stani. Even through the muffling straw, the sound was terrible. “Oh, please, Ambassador. I’ve told you the truth,” ci’Stani said, his voice brea
king with a sob.
Sergei nodded. “I’m certain you have, Timos,” he said softly, almost as if he were crooning to a lover. “Though you haven’t said why Nico Morel wanted you there, or what he said to you.”
The man visibly blanched, the color leeching from his skin. “Please, Ambassador. I swore an oath to Cenzi that I wouldn’t reveal that, that I wouldn’t betray the Absolute or the Morellis…”
“You swore also that you would obey the Archigos and a’teni, and you’ve already-by your own admission-violated that oath. I have A’Teni ca’Paim’s permission to do whatever I find necessary to gain the truth from you.” That was also a lie. The man would be returned to ca’Paim after his interrogation was complete. Sergei was certain that ca’Paim would not be pleased with his condition, nor with what he had to say. “So-which of your oaths do you wish to keep, Timos? Choose carefully.”
The man’s head dropped down, as if he been struck. His eyes were closed, his mouth moving. Sergei thought he might be praying.
“Tell me, Timos,” Sergei said. Softly. Almost a whisper. A plea. “Tell me.”
The head came up. Ci’Stani’s eyes were wet and defeated. “All right,” he said. He began to speak then, and what he said startled Sergei so much that he did nothing but listen. When the man had finished, Sergei could only shake his head in mingled anger and sorrow. He would need to speak to the Kraljica again, and to A’Teni ca’Paim as well. Very soon.
But now now. He could feel the old urge taking him again, his breath coming faster as he thought of it, as he tried to fight it. Now. You have everything you need. You know he’s told you the truth. So let this be the time that you turn and leave. This is the moment you can change.
But he could not. His legs trembled as he remained crouched in the straw before ci’Stani, but they would not move. They forced him to remain there.