A Magic of Dawn

Niente

The first time the Tehuantin had taken Karnor, the main city of the island Karnmor, they had entered the harbor with their ships hidden in a magical fog. This time there were far more ships in their fleet, and Niente had the nahualli call up a spell-storm as soon as they glimpsed the volcanic cone of the island rising on the horizon. The storm drove just ahead of their vanguard of warships, a blackness of pelting rain and violent lightning that shielded them from being sighted too quickly by the Holdings navy, a storm intended to entice the enemy into anchoring their vessels in the safety of the harbor.

Which, when the nahualli dispelled the storm, would suddenly no longer be so safe, for a trio of the largest of the Tehuantin warships lurked at the harbor mouth, preventing any of the Holdings ships from escaping to warn the mainland. At the same time, the majority of the fleet broke away and sailed north, then east around the curve of the island, all but one of the ships-the Yaoyotl on which Niente and Tecuhtli Citlali sailed-staying well away from the shore.

The Yaoyotl anchored just offshore on the north side of the island at dusk, several miles from Karnor, while the rest of the fleet sailed on. Niente, with Atl and several more of the nahualli, as well as a large contingent of warriors, disembarked from their ship in rowboats laden with leather packs. They climbed the flanks of Mt. Karnmor, the volcano on whose slopes the city was built.

Niente had spent days peering into the scrying bowl. He had seen this scene several times, and it felt strange to actually live it now. As they ascended in the early night, from the far side of the mountain they could see flashes of light: the nahualli aboard the ships guarding Karnor Harbor were lobbing black sand fireballs toward the enemy fleet, as if preparing for a frontal assault on the city. All of that was a feint and a diversion-to keep the Easterners’ attention on the harbor and not the mountain behind their city. If what the scrying bowl had told Niente was at all correct, the city would be destroyed, but there would be no assault on it.

The land itself would destroy the city.

Niente comforted himself with the thought that the descent would be far easier than the climb. He was exhausted quickly during the ascent, even though he himself carried nothing but his spell-staff, while the others bore the leather packs. His legs and his hips ached, and his sandals were torn and frayed. The rocks left long scratches on his legs and arms from his occasional missteps, the blood now scabbed and dark. It was an effort simply to put one foot in front of the other, and he was wishing that Axat had never shown him this path. His son stayed close to him, helping him occasionally, but he tried not to rely on Atl-it was not good for the Nahual to show weakness. If the other nahualli sensed that he was vulnerable, one of them might challenge him for the title, and he could not risk that now or everything he had gambled would be lost.

He forced himself to keep moving, to stifle the groans that threatened to escape his lips.

“We’re almost there,” Niente said to Atl finally, exertion breaking the words into separate breaths. “Just there, around the shoulder of the mountain.” Where Niente pointed, a plume of smoke marred the moonlit sky. He knew what he would see there, when they rounded the ridge to the southern side of the mountain: a steaming, hissing fumarole belching its sulfuric, yellow breath from the earth. There were several such vents in this area, well above and directly overlooking the city-and that was their destination.

“Good.” Even Atl seemed out of breath. He looked back down the slope, at the line of nahualli and tattooed warriors following them. In the far distance, glimmering in the moon-shimmered water, the Yaoyotl awaited their return, sails for the moment furled. “The Tecuhtli didn’t seem entirely happy with you,” Atl commented.

“Tecuhtli Citlali would rather we assaulted the city,” Niente answered. “Like all warriors, he prefers the clash of steel, the smell of blood, and the cries of those who fall before him. What we’re doing seems unfair to him.” Niente paused, resting a moment and allowing himself to lean against Atl. “I promised him that Axat has shown me that there will be ample opportunity to display his skills as warrior.”

They could not only see the flashes of light from the black sand bombardment of the Holdings ships; they could hear, strangely disconnected and belated, the thunder of their explosions. Niente climbed around and over a rock shelf, and he could see the lights of Karnor well below them, spreading along several shelves from the lower slopes to the water.

There were no Holdings troops here guarding the city, as Axat had promised in Her visions. In the distance, the shimmering waters of the harbor were lit by the fires of burning ships. As Niente watched, another fireball arced from the harbor’s mouth toward the cluster of Holdings warships there, and exploded in their midst. The sound came to them a full two breaths later, a low rumble that he could almost feel in his chest.

“Hurry!” he told the others, who were coming around the ledge. They stood on a slight incline where Mt. Karnmor seemed to swell outward, a landscape dominated by steam-holes that hissed and burbled. Niente, with Atl’s help, directed the nahualli to place spell-staffs, that had been made just for this purpose and prepared with potent earth-shaping spells, in a large circle around the area of the vents. The packs filled with black sand, carried by the warriors, were set in a single large pile: a man high and two men across. Atl, alongside him, shook his head. “So much black sand,” he said. “We could bring down the Teocalli Axat with that.”

“With this,” Niente said, “we will bring down their entire city.”

“I hope you’re right, Taat. If this fails…”

“It won’t fail. Axat has promised it. I saw it.”

“I know. But I’ve been looking in the water, as you’ve shown me, and I saw nothing of this.”

Niente clapped his son on the shoulders. “Axat’s visions come slowly and in Her own time,” he told the young man. “Be patient. She’ll speak to you soon enough. You’ll know it when it happens; Her voice is harsh and painful to hear.” And I pray to Her that when the time comes, you won’t see what I’ve seen. You won’t see what I’m doing. That, he did not say.

Atl nodded. Niente, grunting with the effort, wedged the spell-staff he’d carried in the wall of black sand, the knob carefully facing the east. Niente looked over the landscape. He nodded-yes, this was what he had seen.

“We’re done here,” he called out to Atl and the others. His voice shook with weariness. “It’s time to return to the ships.”

Tecuhtli Citlali shook his bald head, the red-and-black tattoo of a fierce eagle clawing at his skull and over his face. His eyes were snared in the bird’s talons, and they glared at Niente. “Nothing has happened,” he spat. “We could have taken the city by now with our ships and warriors. We could be holding the entire island. If you have wasted the black sand…”

“Be patient, Tecuhtli,” Niente told him. “It’s not yet dawn. And what will happen will terrify the Easterners more than any assault.”

The Yaoyotl and the entire fleet, under Citlali’s reluctant direction, had sailed away from Karnmor during the night. The island was an empty blackness against the lingering stars over the lightening western horizon as the Tehuantin fleet-with steady easterly breezes-sailed north into the Strettosei, as Niente had requested, as far away from the island as they could reach. The vision in the scrying bowl had been clear, the possibility for this future nearing certainty as long as Niente followed the path Axat had shown him. The High Warriors gathered around Tecuhtli Citlali, grumbling and scowling. The highest-ranked nahualli, with Atl among them, were also watching, and their gazes were far more appraising, searching as always for any sign of fatal weakness in their Nahual.

He’d give them no such sign; Axat would not allow it. Axat had shown him the weakness of the mountain. She had whispered to him that the mountain was nearly ready to stir to terrible life again on its own, much like the smoking mountains of their own land. With Her help, he could hasten its awakening. Niente looked to the east, where golden bands in the sky heralded the sun’s imminent arrival over the blue-hazed hills of the mainland. The eastern sky was glowing now. Niente shaded his eyes as the rim of the sun hauled itself over the horizon. Golden beams arrowed through the gaps in the clouds, spearing toward Karnmor and the west.

Niente turned to the island. He waited. Axat, don’t abandon me.. .

The tip of Mt. Karnmor was touched with sunlight now, the sunlight sliding downward toward the scarves of white steam cloaking it. Niente could imagine the light touching the knobs of the spell-staffs set there, even though that side of the volcano was now hidden from them. The spell-staffs had been enchanted so that when the sunlight touched them, they would release the spells inside. The bulging earth there would open, a new crater appearing, and the black sand would cascade downward into it, the powdery contents spilling from the pack even as the spell-staff Niente had planted saw the light and spat fire…

The steam-scarves about Mt. Karnmor were ripped asunder, replaced by a gout of darker smoke. There was no sound, not for several long breaths, not even as the black smoke itself was consumed by a far greater explosion of red, orange, and yellow that shot from the side of the mountain. A monstrous fountain of gray smoke began to climb toward the sky, the eastern breezes tearing at its edges even as it lifted.

They heard the sound then: the sharp report of the black sand, and then the godlike wail of the mountain itself in torment. The sound battered them like a fist: as Tecuhtli Citlali joined it in a roar of his own, as the warriors and nahualli cheered, as their cheers were echoed by those in the other ships. Niente could see thick fire sliding down Mt. Karnmor toward where the hidden city lay, and he imagined the lava pouring down on the terrified inhabitants, setting fire to everything in its path. The city would be caught in panic, and after the fire, there would come the thick ashfall…

The ship shuddered as if the sea itself had lifted them up and dropped them again. White-capped waves surged northward. The fleet bobbed in the long waves, their masts dipping and swaying. The great cloud lifted ever higher so that their heads had to crane far back to watch it, blocking out the brightening morning sky and stretching dark, boiling arms toward the east.

This would be a dark day, and hot ash would fall from the sky rather than rain, but they were away from the worst of it.

“Nahual,” Citlali shouted against the continuing roar of the volcano’s eruption. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.” His mouth was open in a wide grin. “You are indeed the greatest of the Nahual, and with you, there can be no doubt of our victory.” The warriors and the nahualli all shouted their agreement, cheering. His son’s face was proud.

He should have felt exultation. Instead, he had to struggle to smile in return.