by S L Farrell
“Why, indeed?” Another voice intruded before Niente could answer. Citlali had turned to the two of them. “I have two nahualli who are reputed to be the strongest since Mahri at far-sight, yet neither of you gave me any hint of this. I don’t grieve for the loss-our warriors died the good death, in battle, as they should. But you, Atl, told me that the Easterners wouldn’t engage us fully again until we reached the great city.” His red-eyed gaze turned to Niente. “And you said you could see very little at all. Why? Has Axat abandoned us?”
Both Niente and Atl shook their heads simultaneously. “Something has changed,” Niente said. “I’ve told you many times before, Tecuhtli, that Axat shows what can be, not what will be. Something has changed with the Easterners.”
Citlali sniffed derisively. “That’s clear enough,” he said, waving his hand at the smoke and bodies around them. “Find out what, and what it means to us. Find out now.”
The sun was a golden bowl dying in the west, and the mist of the future rose green around their faces. The nahualli watched them, silent; Tecuhtli Citlali watched as well, with the High Warriors grouped around him.
In the scrying bowl, the present split and tore, and the shreds of the future twisted and curled away. Niente chased after them with his mind; alongside him, Atl was doing the same. The chase was as exhausting as any physical one. So close to the moment, the threads of possibilities were snarled and interwoven. Images kept rising from the mist and it was difficult to see them long enough to understand their meanings.
There: the face of a king, or so Niente assumed it was from the golden band around his head, waved a sword with a host behind him dressed in black and silver, rather than the blue-and-gold livery of the army of the great city. Niente remembered those colors-the colors of the army that had come to the succor of the city after Tecuhtli Zolin had taken it. Niente trembled, seeing that…
But the mist rolled over the king, and he saw a queen sitting on a glowing throne with red fire all around her. A young woman lifted a knife that glittered in the fire’s glow, and a man stood near the throne as well, and the furious blaze within the room seemed to issue from his uplifted hands…
Cold mist extinguished the fire and bore it away. Now Niente stared down at ranks of people, but these were not soldiers in glittering armor, but plain-clothed folks, and they pointed odd devices toward Niente, not unlike the eagle claws that the nahualli used for sacrifice. The devices spat smoke and fire, and black bumblebees came spitting from them, rushing toward Niente…
But the mist took them, too.
A wind blew through the mist, and there before him, for an enticing moment, he glimpsed again the Long Path. It had changed since the last time Niente had seen it. This future was still strewn with the fallen banners of the Tehuantin. Far down the path, he saw the banners of the Tehuantin flying alongside the blue-and-gold banners of the Easterners, and two men underneath, one with the red eagle tattoo of the Tecuhtli and a woman wearing the clothing of the Easterners with a golden scepter in her hand. The two stood together, and they smiled at each other, and there was no animosity between them at all. They stood on a hill, and to one side were the odd, domed buildings of the Easterner and to the other stepped pyramids like those of Tlaxcala, and people were passing back and forth between them.
The mist hid the middle ground of the Long Path, but close to Niente, the mists now rolled away, and he saw Citlali there, dead, and a nahualli alongside him. Niente bent closer to the bowl. On the nahualli’s youthful, muscular arm, gold sparkled: the band of the Nahual. Standing over them, as if responsible for their deaths, he glimpsed the back of another nahualli: an old man’s bald skull, a wisp of hair, and-as the nahualli turned-a crumpled and scarred visage with a blind left eye.
Niente recoiled with a gasp…
“No…” Niente whispered, and the breath of his denial shifted the mists so that the Long Path vanished, only to reveal yet another Long Path. At the end of this one, he could see Tlaxcala, but the floating city burned in the center of the lake and the great pyramids were broken and tumbled. As with the previous vision of the Long Path, the middle ground again was obscured, but images flickered closer to him. There, Tecuhtli Citlali sat on a glowing throne under a domed roof, with the blue-and-gold banner on the tiled floor before him, and several Easterners prostrate before him as if ready to be sacrificed to Axat and Sakal so that the rest of their people might live.
Niente breathed again, and the cold green vapors wrapped around his face. He felt his face suddenly wet, and he realized that he had touched the water of the scrying bowl. With the touch, the visions dissolved and he was staring only at a bowl.
He came back to reality slowly, gasping for breath as if from a long run. Tecuhtli Citlali was staring at him grimly, and at his left, Atl had already lifted his head from his own bowl. Several of the lesser nahualli came forward quickly and took away the bowls and tables. “Well?” Citlali said. “What did Axat show you?”
Niente said nothing; from the side of his vision, he saw Atl glance briefly at him. “The vision I saw still shows our victory, Tecuhtli,” he said. “I saw you on the Easterner’s throne.”
Citlali’s gaze had remained on Niente. “And you, Uchben Nahual? Is that what you saw also?”
Niente lifted his head. He could feel his hands shaking, and one of the lesser nahualli came rushing forward to hand him his spell-staff. He took it gratefully, leaning heavily on it. He blinked, trying to clear his head of the visions. The Long Path… Axat has gifted you with two choices… “I saw the same, Tecuhtli,” he said truthfully.
“Hah!” Tecuhtli Citlali rose to his feet, stamping once on the ground as Tototl and the other High Warriors roared their approval. “Then we go forward, and we will take their great city, and we will make widows of their wives and orphans of their children if they resist us.”
RESURRECTIONS
The Gathering Storm
Jan smelled of horse, sweat, smoke, and blood. But then, so did Starkkapitan ca’Damont and Commandant ca’Talin. There’d been no time for them to bathe or change clothes. They’d stripped themselves of their sweaty and battered armor after the engagement with the Westlanders and ridden hard back to Nessantico, leaving the grudging retreat of the Garde Civile to the a’offiziers. Their boots clattered-grimy, mud-splattered, and out of place-on the polished tiles of the Kraljica’s Palais on the Isle; the hall gardai, the servants, and the courtiers milling in the corridors stared at the trio apprehensively, as if trying to gauge from their faces and demeanor the severity of the threat to the city.
If they could read those expressions correctly, they would be frightened.
Allesandra’s aide Talbot met Jan as they passed the outer reception chambers, and escorted them through the private servants’ corridor to the Council of Ca’s chambers. He gestured to the hall gardai to open the doors as they approached. The murmur of conversation within stopped. Allesandra was waiting for them there, with Sergei ca’Rudka and the councillors; a map of the surrounding area already open on the table.
They all looked at Jan expectantly.
“If you’re looking for good news,” he told them without preamble, “I have none.” He stopped. A woman standing alongside Allesandra turned from perusing the map to face him. “Brie? I thought-”
Brie went to him, embracing him as openly as if he wore finery for a ball. He tried to step back, knowing how he looked, but if she felt any revulsion at his smell or appearance, she showed none of it. She kissed his stubbled cheek, then his mouth; it took a moment, but he returned the kiss. “I came with our army, my dear,” she said. “The children are in Brezno, but I felt my place was here, with my husband in the city he will rule one day.”
“You shouldn’t have come, Brie.”
“ Why should I not have?” she asked, her head cocked. The tone of her voice was strange-almost coy and too light. He could sense another question underneath, one she wasn’t asking.
“That’s not obvious?” he answere
d. “It’s dangerous for you to be here.”
“I thought it might be more dangerous for me to not be here,” she responded. He could hear a subtext in her words, but the meaning eluded him. She smiled at him: again with the same strangeness. “I’m here, my husband, and I have brought your army with me. Why, you should be pleased.”
Jan nodded-yes, there was more going on here with Brie than what she was saying on the surface, but there was no time for him to puzzle it out now, and to try to do so would only make him angry with her. He kissed her again, perfunctorily, then looked around at the others in the room.
Focus…
“Kraljica, Ambassador, Councillors-the Westlanders have a force significantly larger than ours, even with the Firenzcian addition,” he told them. He went to the map, sweeping a hand across the inked features. “They are advancing along a front that would have them entering Nessantico all along the western edge on the north side of the A’Sele, from the banks of the A’Sele to above the Avi a’Nostrosei or even to the Avi a’Nortegate. That’s bad enough, but our scouts tell us that they’ve sent another force across the river to attack the city from the south. At the moment, we have no more than twenty war-teni, all from Nessantico; we’ll need at least a few hundred to even try to match the Westlanders in that respect. And judging from what they did at Villembouchure, they also have adequate supplies of black sand, which means that none of the buildings here are safe if they come close. As for what they did at Karnmor, well, we can only hope that they have no way to repeat that horror. If they can, then there’s no hope at all.”
“You make it sound as if we have already lost and should be emptying the city,” his matarh said, and Jan shook his head.
“No, Matarh,” he said. “That’s not what I’m saying. Nessantico isn’t lost, but it is in grave and immediate danger and we can’t underestimate that. I’ve seen the Westlanders, and we’ve engaged with them to test them. That’s told us that we’ll need all the forces we can muster: all the war-teni, every able-bodied citizen, every possible resource. Even with all that, we’ll also need the grace of Cenzi, or we’ll once again see Nessantico burning.”
The silence after he spoke stretched long. “That’s not what any of us want. Here’s what the Starkkapitan, Commandant, and I propose,” he said finally, pointing to the map. “The A’Sele curves north just after Pre a’Fleuve; that will necessarily compress their forces. I intend to station our troops just beyond the River Infante from the village of Certendi and south. We’ll hold there as long as we can, then destroy the bridges if we need to retreat to the other side. I want earthworks to be built from the Avi a’Certendi to the A’Sele along the eastern side of the Infante. Commandant ca’Tali, Starkkapitan ca’Damont, and I will make the Westlanders fight for every stride of land between the Infante and Nessantico, and hopefully keep them from the city entirely on the North Bank. As for the South…”
He looked at Allesandra and Sergei. “I will leave that in your hands.”
“… there’s a Long Path, Atl. A way that leads to a better place for us even though it won’t seem so at first, and Citlali would never believe me. But you must believe me. Victory here isn’t victory; it will mean eventual defeat for us. Tlaxcala itself might fall.”
Atl was shaking his head all through Niente’s explanation. “I know you keep saying that, Taat, but that’s not what I see. Even if I wanted to believe you…” He waved a hand in exasperation, accompanied by a sigh. “I see nothing of this Long Path at all.”
“You’re not looking far enough ahead. It’s not something you’re capable of yet.”
That was a mistake. He could see it in the way the firelight in the tent found the hard lines of Atl’s face. “I can see Axat’s paths, Taat. I think I may see them better than you do. You just don’t want to admit that. I’m going to my own tent. Fill your spell-staff, then get some sleep, Taat. I’m going to do the same.”
He nodded to Niente and started to leave, but Niente clutched at his son, his fingers around the gold band of the Nahual that had once been around his own forearm. “Atl, this is terribly important. I saw the Long Path; I saw it ever so clearly back in Tlaxcala and even here for a time. I haven’t glimpsed it since-there are so many elements fouling the mists, as you know yourself. But it’s there-it must be. Between the two of us, we may be able to find it again. If we glimpse it just once more, if we can see how we must respond…”
Niente rummaged in his pack. He pulled out two small wooden birds, crudely carved and painted a bright red, the lines of their bodies rough and simple. He handed one to Atl. “I made these earlier this evening. I’ve put a spell inside them, so that if we’re separated in the battle, we can still give each other a message. If one of us sees the way, then we can tell the other that the Long Path is open.”
Atl looked at the bird. He started to hand it back. “I don’t need-”
Niente closed his son’s fingers around the sculpture. “Please,” he said to Atl. “Please take it.”
Atl sighed: as he had sighed as a child when his parents had insisted that he do something he didn’t want to do. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll keep it. But, Taat, there’s no Long Path. I don’t know where this war will lead us-none of us can know that-but I do know that we can have victory here. I’ve seen it, and I intend to lead Tecuhtli Citlali to that point.” He looked down at Niente, the firelight reflecting in his dark eyes. “Fill your spell-staff,” he told him, as if addressing one of the lesser nahualli. “You’ll need it soon. I need to use the scrying bowl myself tonight.” He went to the tent flap and opened it. Outside, the moon shone over his shoulder. “There won’t be a Long Path there, Taat. I know this,” he said. “You’re seeing what you want to see, not what Axat is willing to give us.”
He let the tent flap fall behind him as he left.
“You will cross the river this morning with Tototl and join the southern force with two hands of nahualli under you.”
That was the order Niente received from Tecuhtli Citlali. Atl and Tototl stood at the warrior’s side as he delivered it. His son’s face was unreadable and troubled, and Niente wondered-after the previous night’s conversation-whether the order had come from Citlali or Atl. He had to admit the sense of it-to have the former Nahual with the Tecuhtli to second-guess the new Nahual could lead to hesitation and contradictions. In the south, Niente would have no rival… and neither would Atl with the main force. In the south, Niente would be a potent resource for the nahualli, and a tested leader. If Niente had still been Nahual, had he been looking for an overwhelming victory here instead of the chimera of his Long Path, he might have suggested something similar, sending Atl with the southern arm.
Citlali gave him no chance to argue. “Uchben Nahual, the boat with the other nahualli is waiting for you on the bank,” he told Niente. “You will leave as soon as you gather your things. Nahual Atl, I wish to discuss our strategy with you…” With that dismissal, Tecuhtli Citlali turned from Niente, gesturing to Atl to follow him. Atl glanced once at Niente.
“Taat,” he said, “I will see you again in the great city. Keep yourself safe.” He nodded, then followed Citlali.
Not long after, Niente found himself in a boat with three others alongside crossing the A’Sele, the brown water churned to momentary white by oars pulled by young warriors. The scent of fresh water touched his nose, though the trees on the far bank were clouded by haze in the poor vision of his one good eye. He could feel the stares of the other nahualli with him, feel their appraisal as he crouched in the stern of the small craft.
Niente looked westward down the river-they had received a message from the captain of their fleet that the river had been cleared and they were bringing the warships upriver to meet them. Niente saw no sails yet, but the river curved away in the near distance, and the fleet might have been only around the bend. The High Warrior Tototl, in one of the other boats, stared only straight ahead to the other shore.
What do I do now? This strategy was not in any
of the paths I glimpsed. He wondered if Atl had seen this, and knew where the path led. He felt lost and adrift in the currents of the present. Can I find the Long Path in this, and if I do, dare I take it? He’d already given up the Long Path once because of the implied cost. That vision had been clear, as if Axat had wanted him to know. Citlali’s death mattered little to Niente; a warrior expected and even welcomed death in battle. But Niente had been dead as well in that glimpse; could he truly do that, if that was what Axat demanded as payment? And if Axat demanded Atl’s life as well as Axat had once hinted…
His hands were shaking, and not from the damp morning chill.
Did Atl see this? Is that why you were sent away?
He wanted desperately to talk to Atl, but that was no longer possible. He felt in his pouch for the carved bird. The touch of it gave him no comfort.
The shore was growing closer; he could nearly make out the individual trees rather than just a green mass, and he glimpsed a half-dozen warriors gathered under the verdant canopy ready to escort them to the road. The prow of the boat squelched into mud on the reed-masked bank, jolting him. The warriors waiting for them hurried down the bank to help them out. He heard Tototl shouting orders. Niente allowed the warriors to pull him up onto dry land. At the top of the bank, he looked across the river once more. Through the cataract-haze, he thought he could see figures moving.
He wondered if one of them was Atl.
“By Cenzi, it’s true, then…” Jan’s hand prowled his beard. His eyes widened, and Brie could swear there was genuine shock in them. Not just feigned surprise. Perhaps she’d guessed wrongly and Jan had actually not sent the girl ahead of them to meet her in the city. “I promise you, Brie, I didn’t know she was here. That’s Cenzi’s own truth. I swear it. I know you must have been thinking that I sent Rhianna here-or Rochelle or whatever her true name is-but I never thought…”
“No, you didn’t,” Brie chided him. She continued to watch his face. The shock on his face had seemed genuine enough when she’d told him Sergei’s news. “She claims she’s your daughter, Jan.”