by S L Farrell
Karl hoped he was right. He watched Mika splash from the river and run back toward the houses along the South Bank.
Karl and Varina didn’t use the oars for fear that the splashing would alert one of the roaming utilino or some curious walkers above them. Instead, they allowed the A’Sele’s slow current to take them downstream. They were dressed in dark clothing, their faces obscured with soot and ash though the rain quickly washed them clean. As soon as they passed the Pontica a’Brezi Veste and the grim, cheerless towers of the Bastida, they glimpsed wavering candlelight high up in the tower where ca’Rudka was kept-the sign that he was still there.
Karl steered the boat quietly to the shore. He and Varina stepped out into the muck and wet, ignoring the smell of dead fish and foul water, and slipped quickly into the shadow of the Bastida.
Karl found the door where Sergei had said it would be: where the grassy mound of the river wall-which Kraljica Maria IV had ordered built a century and a half ago to keep the A’Sele’s annual spring floods from inundating the South Bank-met the flanks of the Bastida’s western tower. The door was covered by sod where the flood bank swept over the stony feet of the Bastida, but the sod was but a few fingers’ thickness, the barest covering, and Karl’s hands quickly found the iron ring underneath. He tugged on it, carefully. The door yielded grudgingly, rain-clotted dirt falling away from it, but the sound of protesting hinges was largely covered by the hiss of rain on the river. Karl held the door open as Varina slipped inside, then he stepped inside himself, letting the door close behind him.
He heard Varina speak a spell-word, and light bloomed inside the hooded lantern they’d brought: the cold yellow light of the Scath Cumhacht. The glare seemed impossibly bright in the blackness. Karl could see moss-slick stones and broken flags, the walls festooned with strange fungal growths and decorated with curtains of tattered spiderwebs. The brown, sinister shapes of rats slid away from the light, squeaking in protest.
“Lovely,” Varina muttered, the whisper seeming to echo impossibly loudly. She kicked at a rat that scuttled too close to her feet, and it chattered angrily before fleeing.
“Better rats than gardai,” Karl told her. “Come on-Sergei said this should lead into the base of the main tower. Keep that lantern well-hooded, just in case.”
The walk through the abandoned corridor seemed to take a full turn of the glass, though Karl knew it couldn’t have been more than a few hundred strides. The air was chill, and Karl shivered in his soaked clothing. They came to another door, this one obviously long-shut, and Karl put a single finger to his lips: beyond here, Sergei had said, they would be in the lowest levels of the Bastida, where there might be guards or prisoners locked in half-forgotten cells. Varina took a jar of cooking grease from her tashta; opening it, she slathered the foul stuff on the hinges of the door and around the edges. Then, stepping away, she pulled tentatively on the door’s handle; it didn’t move. She pulled harder. Nothing. She braced her foot on the wall. The door rattled once in its frame but otherwise there was no response. Locked -Varina mouthed the word.
Varina placed her right eye to the keyhole, peering through. She shook her head, then hunkered next to the doorframe. She spoke a single spell-word, gesturing with her hands at the same time: wood shivered into sawdust around the keyhole, the work of a thousand wood-ants performed in an instant, and the metal mechanism slipped down in the ragged, new hole with a dull plonk. Varina caught the bolt and wriggled it slowly and carefully loose, then pulled on the door once more. This time it gave way reluctantly but silently, and they slipped through and onto damp, well-used pavestones, poorly illuminated by torches set in ring sconces at long intervals along the walls-at least a third of them having already guttered out, streaks of black soot staining the low ceilings above them. The corridor reeked of oil and smoke and urine.
Karl pulled the door closed again behind them and studied it quickly. A casual passerby might not notice the spell-bored gouge in the dimness; it would have to do. Silently, he pointed to their right and they began padding quickly along the corridor.
All the passages will lead off to the left. Count two, and take the third. That’s what Sergei had told him; now he watched carefully as they hurried. One opening, down which they could hear the sound of someone screaming: a long, thin, and plaintive mewling that didn’t sound human-Karl felt Varina shudder alongside him. Two: a brightly-lit passageway, and the sound of distant, rough voices laughing at some private joke and calling out.
Three. Down a short corridor, worn stone steps spiraled upward, and they could hear low voices and the sounds of inhabitation. The tower…
Varina’s hand grasped his arm; she leaned close to him, her warmth welcome against his side. “We should wait. Mika…”
“For all we know, he’s already done his part. Or he’s been caught himself. Either way…”
Her hand loosened on his arm. She nodded. He and Varina slipped down the corridor and began to ascend, as quietly as possible. The stairs, Sergei had told them, wound once around the perimeter of the tower for each floor, with a short landing at each, with a door leading to the cells for that floor. There would be gardai assigned to each floor, changing at Third Call. Already, Karl could glimpse the landing for the ground floor. He could hear two people talking-whether two gardai, or perhaps a garda and one of the prisoners, he didn’t know. He started up the stair, hugging the stone wall…
… which was when they felt the tower shake once, accompanied by a low growl and a brief flash of white light that splashed on the damp surface of the stones. Karl and Varina pressed their backs to the wall as voices called out in alarm. They heard the door to the tower open, felt the touch of night air and smelled the rain. “What in the six pits is going on?” a voice called out into the night. “Was that lightning?”
The response was unintelligible and long. They heard the door close, followed by the grating of a key in a lock mechanism. “What’s the ruckus, Dorcas?” someone else called.
“Someone just tried to get in through the main gate-bastard used the Ilmodo. Took down both the doors. They think it might be a Numetodo. The commandant’s locked us down; I’m to tell the others. No one in, no one out while cu’Falla investigates and gets some teni here from the temple. Got it?”
A grunt answered, and Karl heard footsteps on the stairs, fading quickly.
Karl nodded to Varina. They moved.
A triangle of yellow flickered on the stones of the landing; he could see a shadow moving in the pool of light. Karl closed his eyes momentarily, feeling the spells he’d prepared earlier coiling in his head. He stepped out: his hands already moving, the release word already on his lips as Varina slipped past him and darted up the steps toward the next landing. “Hey, what-” the garda said, but Karl had already spoken the word, and lightning flared from Karl’s hand to slam the garda into the wall behind him. The man went down, unconscious, and Karl hurried forward. He started to follow Varina, but voices called to him from the trio of cells there. “Vajiki! What about us! The keys, man, the keys…” Hands reached out from barred windows in stout oaken doors.
He hesitated, and the calls continued, more insistent. “Let us out, Vajiki! You can’t leave us here!”
Karl shook his head. Having the prisoners loose would only complicate things, make the situation more chaotic than it already was and possibly more dangerous: not all the prisoners in the Bastida were political, and not all were innocent.
He followed Varina up the stairs to curses and shouts.
Varina had already repeated the process on the second floor. “I’m about exhausted,” she told him, visibly sagging against the wall. “I’ve only one spell left in me; I’ve been calling the spells up on the fly like a teni.”
He nodded; he felt the same exhaustion, and there was little power left in him. “I’ll take the next one. We need to have enough left when we get to the Regent.” Together, they moved on to the third level, hurrying as quickly as they could. Sergei’s cell, they
knew, was on the fourth level, though as they approached the third level, they heard voices talking. “The commandant says that we’re to bring you to him,” someone-the one called Dorcas-was saying.
“He said he would come himself,” Karl heard Sergei’s voice protesting; the man’s voice sounded alarmed.
“The commandant’s rather busy at the moment.”
“Give me my hands, at least. This stair…”
“Nah. The commandant said you were to be manacled…”
Karl saw a booted foot appear on the curving stair at nearly head level. He felt the roiling of the last remnants of the Scath Cumhacht in his head, and spoke the release word even as he stepped out from the wall; just behind him, he heard Varina do the same. Twin lightnings shot out, and the gardai holding ca’Rudka dropped. Sergei stumbled and went down, falling on the stair and nearly knocking over Karl. The second gardai-Dorcas, Karl assumed-remained standing, however; his sword hissed from the sheath, and he thrust at Varina, who clutched her arm and fell back. Sergei kicked at the man’s knee; he howled and started to fall; Sergei kicked again, and Dorcas tumbled down the stairs headfirst. He didn’t move again, his head bent at a terrible angle.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Sergei said.
“I keep my promises,” Karl told him. “Now, let’s get out of here. .. Varina?”
She shook her head. Karl could see blood welling between the fingers she clutched to her arm, and he tore at his own clothing for a bandage. “I’ll slow you down,” she said. “Get going. I’ll follow as fast as I can.”
“I’m not leaving you here.” He bound the wound with strips of cloth, tying them off tightly. Her face was pale, and there was more blood than Karl would have liked soaking her tashta. “I’ve nothing left of the Scath Cumhacht. You?”
She shook her head. As he knotted the bandages tighter, she grimaced.
Sergei was crouching alongside the garda. Karl heard the rattle of steel against steel and the jingle of keys, and Sergei pulled the manacles from his hand and tossed them on the stair. He took a rapier from one of the gardai.
“Take the one from the other garda,” Varina said to Karl. “We might need it.”
Karl shook his head. “Let’s move,” he said. They hurried down the stair, Karl helping Varina. He could feel her sagging, growing heavier in his arms and slower with each flight. The prisoners screamed and shouted as they passed, shaking the bars of their cells, but Karl ignored them. They reached the ground floor, and-more slowly-started down the long curve to the lower level. Karl began to think that they would make it. They were nearly there. Varina shuffling behind him, Sergei ahead, they hurried down the short passage to the main corridor. Two intersections, another turn and a short corridor, and they would be at the door that would lead them to the ancient, unused tunnel and their waiting boat.
“Stay with us, Varina,” he said, glancing back at her. “We’re almost there.”
They managed only a few strides when a group of a half dozen armed gardai rushed into the corridor from the intersection ahead of them. “There! It’s the Regent!” one of the garda called, and their leader-the slashes of his office on his uniform-turned. Karl knew the man, though the man was looking more at Sergei than him.
“I’m sorry, Sergei,” Commandant cu’Falla said, and then his gaze moved to Karl and Varina. “Ambassador, I’m afraid you and your companion have made a very bad mistake here. I’ll see that she gets proper treatment for her wound. Sergei, put down your weapon. It’s over.”
“I might say the same to you, Aris,” Karl said. “After all, you know what a Numetodo can do.”
“And if you had spells left to you, you would already have used them,” cu’Falla answered. “Or have I missed my guess?”
There was movement in the corridor behind the gardai; a figure in the torchlit dimness. Karl managed to smile. He held his hands wide. He could see some of the garda behind cu’Falla flinch, as if expecting the burst of a spell. “No,” he told cu’Falla. “You’ve not missed your guess. Not for me.”
The commandant nodded. “Then I’d suggest we make this easy for all of us,” he said.
“I agree,” Karl said. He looked past cu’Falla and the gardai, and the commandant started to turn his head. The spell hit them then: the air around the gardai flickered and snarled with lightnings. With cries of surprise and pain, they crumpled to the stone flags, the lightnings still crawling over their bodies, snapping and snarling. Behind them, Mika stood with hands extended. His body sagged as his hands dropped. “Regent,” he said. “Pleased to meet you. Now, if you’ll all hurry…”
Varina half-stumbled forward. She picked up cu’Falla’s sword in her good hand and held the point at the commandant’s throat. She looked at Karl. “He knows you,” she said, blood streaking her cheek where she’d brushed her hands across her pale, drawn face. “He spoke your name.”
“No.” The response came from Sergei. He moved as if to take Varina’s wrist, but she shook her head and pressed the sword forward, dimpling the flesh and drawing a point of red. Sergei looked at Karl. “He’s my friend. If you do this, I won’t go with you. I’ll stay here. You’ll have wasted everything.”
Varina was staring at Karl, waiting. He shook his head to Varina, and she shrugged, letting the sword drop with a loud clatter to the flags. She swayed, then caught herself. “We’re wasting time, then,” she said.
Stepping past the prone bodies of the gardai, they ran.
Niente
Necalli had been the Tecuhtli since before Niente had been born. He knew the names of previous Tecuhtli, but only because his parents had spoken of them. It had been Necalli whose name was always roared at the Solstice ceremonies in the Sun Temples; it was Necalli who had sent the famous Mahri to the East after his visions had foretold the rise of the Easterners of the Holdings. It was Necalli who had responded to their cousins’ pleas for help after the commandant of the Easterners had begun reprisals against those who lived beyond the coastal mountains. It was Necalli who had raised Niente up to become the new Nahual above all the other spellcasters, many of whom were older than Niente and were jealous of his quick rise. It was Necalli who had agreed to allow Niente to use the deep enchantments of the X’in Ka to snare the Holdings offizier’s mind and send him back to the Easterners’ great city as a weapon.
That spell had cost Niente more than he had anticipated, wasting his muscles so that he still could not stand for long without needing to sit again. The effort had drained him so that the face that looked back at him from the water of his scrying bowl was lined and drawn like that of a person years older than him. He had paid the cost, as Mahri had many times in his days, but Niente would hate to see that sacrifice wasted.
Now he was wondering what the sacrifice had been for. “Strike the head from the beast, and it can no longer hurt you,” Necalli had said. It was what Necalli had sent Mahri to do, but it seemed that the beast had instead consumed Mahri. Niente worried that this might be his own fate as well.
Most importantly, it was Necalli who had been the center of the Tehuantin world in the lifetime of most of those here. Niente could not imagine his world without Tecuhtli Necalli. All warriors must die, and the Tecuhtli not least among them. Yet Necalli had outlived all the sporadic challenges to his reign. Niente wished he could imagine him outliving this one as well.
But he had little hope.
Niente stood in the crowd lining the flanks of the Amalian Valley’s green bowl, the easternmost of the sacred places of Sakal and Axat, his back against one of the carved stone plinths of the ball court and his hands folded over the knob of his spell-staff. He stared down into the shadowed courtyard itself. Below them, Tecuhtli Necalli stood in his armor, a gleaming sword curving sunward from his aged but untrembling hand as he faced Zolin, a High Warrior of the Tehuantin forces and the son of Necalli’s dead brother. Tecuhtli Necalli’s face was dark with the tattoos of his rank, swirling around the features of his face as an eternal, fierce mas
k, but he was an old man now, his back bent forward, his hair stringy and white. Zolin, in contrast, was a chiseled, perfect image of a warrior.
The challenge had surprised everyone. Citlali, a High Warrior himself, was standing near Niente, and he snorted at the sight below them, as Necalli and Zolin began to slowly circle each other, as the warriors gathered around the court began to chant rhythmically, pounding the butts of their spears on the stones in time. The sound was like the hammer blows of Sakal when He carved the world from the shell of the Great Turtle. “Necalli goes back to the gods today,” Citlali said. “May they be ready to receive the old buzzard.”
“Why?” Niente asked. “Why did Zolin challenge his uncle? Tecuhtli Necalli hasn’t lost a battle to the Easterners; rather, he’s pushed them back toward the Inner Sea. The Garde Civile of the Holdings hasn’t penetrated our own borders yet at all. The Tecuhtli might be old, but he’s still a master of strategy.”
“Zolin says the Tecuhtli has become timid in his dotage,” Citlali answered. His own face was swirled with black lines dotted with searing blue circles. “He dances with the Easterners, but he hesitates to destroy them. He’s become cautious and too careful. Zolin has no fear. Zolin will sweep the Easterners from our cousins’ land entirely. He’ll attack rather than merely defend.”
“If he wins the challenge,” Niente said.
“No one’s stronger than Zolin. Certainly not Necalli-look, his muscles sag like an old woman’s.”
“Must strength always defeat experience?” Niente asked him, and Citlali laughed.
“You’re the Nahual,” Citlali said. “One day one of your nahualli will come to you and demand challenge, and maybe you’ll learn the answer to that yourself. Tell me, Niente, are you afraid that because you were Necalli’s Nahual that your status will change when Zolin becomes Tecuhtli?”