A Magic of Dawn

Nico Morel

The false night lingered into afternoon, and merged with its true cousin.

The citizens of Nessantico tied cloths around their noses and mouths to keep out the ash, coughing in the fetid air. Some of those, the ones who were already having difficulty breathing, labored more than the healthy or even succumbed. A’Teni ca’Paim sent out the light-teni to light the lamps of the Avi a’Parete not long after Second Call, and had to send them out again to renew their glow after Third Call. The denizens of Oldtown slogged through ash almost as deep as the first joint of Nico’s forefinger.

And Nico prayed. He gave thanks to Cenzi for sending this sign, this incontrovertible signal that He was angry at the Faith for their failure to follow the Divolonte and the Toustour, for their tolerance of those who denied Him. They would remember Nico’s words-those who had heard him speak in the park, and those who had been told his prophecy at secondhand-and they would realize the truth that he had spoken.

Cenzi’s truth. The eternal truth.

Death and darkness. Cenzi had wrapped them in both.

“Nico?” He felt Liana come up behind him as he knelt before the altar in his room, felt her hand gently touch his shoulder. He shivered, his open eyes coming back to focus on the room. He coughed, the grit tickling his throat. He had no idea how long he’d been kneeling there-he’d heard the wind-horns sound Third Call, but that could have been turns ago. There seemed to be no time at all in this gloom. “The ash has stopped falling,” she told him. The mask she’d been wearing was looped around her neck. “There are people in the street outside. Lots of them. Ancel said I should come and get you.”

He tried to rise to his feet and found he could not; his legs wouldn’t cooperate. Liana put her hands under his armpits and help him to stagger to the bed, where she rubbed life back into his legs. “You haven’t eaten anything for two hands of turns,” she told him. “I’ve brought some bread, cheese, and wine. Eat a bit first…”

He did as she suggested, the first bite telling him how drawn his stomach was. He cut slices of cheese from the pale yellow block and tore at the loaf. The wine soothed the grittiness in his throat. “Thank you,” he told Liana, “I’m better now. How have you been with all this?” He lifted her from where she knelt in front of him.

She gasped as he did so. “The baby just kicked,” she said. “Here, feel…” She put his hand on the slope of her stomach, and Nico felt the push of hand or foot against his fingers. He was certain that if he’d looked at her stomach, he might have seen the outline of that limb on her own stretched skin. “It won’t be long now, little one,” Liana crooned to the child. “You’ll be coming out to see your vatarh and matarh.”

Nico leaned over to kiss Liana, and she smiled up at him. “You said Ancel…”

She sighed and took his hand. He stood, his legs still tingling from his long sojourn at prayer, and followed her from the room.

Ancel was waiting for them on the stoop of the house they’d taken in the depths of Oldtown. Above, the stars and moon were still masked in cloud and ash, but the ashfall, as Liana had said, had stopped. Still, the railings of the stoop were coated with it, and their feet raised cloudlets as they walked.

And on the street…

There were at least a hundred people there, perhaps more-it was difficult to tell in the darkness, but they filled the narrow street and spread out between the houses on either side. Mixed in among them, Nico saw several green robes, their color muted by darkness and smears of ash. They were of all ages, both men and women. They gazed at the house, silent, but he stayed to the shadows of the stoop as he looked out at them.

“How did they find us?” he asked Ancel, who only shook his head.

“I don’t know, Absolute. They started gathering around Third Call. I watched, afraid that the Garde Kralji would come, but so far…” He shrugged, and ash slid from the folds of his cloak. “I’ve asked them to leave, told them that they’re putting us in danger, but they won’t go. They say they’re waiting to hear from you.”

Nico nodded. “Then let me talk to them,” he said. He stepped to the edge of the stoop, Liana and Ancel just behind him, several other Morellis emerging from the house to stand with them. The crowd called out, seeing him in the glow of the lamps on the supports of the porch. He heard his name shouted, and Cenzi’s, but he raised his hands and the crowd quieted again.

He looked out on the landscape, dark and ominous, interrupted only by the pools of light cast by those carrying lanterns, as if the stars had abandoned the sky for the ground. “If you believe that I am pleased by what has happened, you would be mistaken,” he said-slowly and softly, so that they leaned forward to hear his words. He cleared his throat, coughing once, and felt Cenzi touch his voice, so that it strengthened and swelled. “Yes, I said Cenzi would give a sign to us, and He has done so. He has given us an unmistakable and grim sign. The end times are coming, if the Faithful will not listen! What you see around you is the death of thousands, all of them martyrs so that we of the Faith might see the error of our current path, so we might see what awaits the world if we fail to heed Cenzi. I weep for each of those who have died. I weep because it had to come to this. I weep because you would not listen. I weep because you could not follow Cenzi’s words without His needing to give us this terrible punishment. I weep that we still have so much of His work to do. I weep that even as the ash coats Nessantico, those who rule her still do not see the truth of what we say.”

He paused. In the audience, he could hear them coughing. “I know why you have come here,” he said. “But I tell you that you already know what you must do. It’s here in your hearts.” He touched his own chest, the words a fire in his throat burning away the taste of ash. “It’s in your souls, that Cenzi already holds. All you need to do is listen, and feel, and be open to Him. As Cenzi has been fierce in His sign, so we must be fierce in our response.”

He paused, and his next words shredded the air like black claws. “It is time!” he roared to them. “That is what I have to tell you. It is our time. Now! It will be His time, or He will bring death down upon all of us! Now-go and show them!”

He pointed southward, toward the Isle a’Kralj, toward the Old Temple, toward the Kraljica’s Palais, toward the South Bank with the houses of the ca’-and-cu’. They roared with him. He could feel Cenzi’s touch depart, leaving him weary and his legs again weak. But the clouds parted momentarily, releasing a shaft of blue moonlight that painted the crowd and illuminated their faces. “It’s another sign!” someone cried within the crowd, and they all began shouting. The crowd surged away from the house and away.

Nico leaned against one of the supports of the porch, not caring that the ash stained his face, as he watched them move away. “Should we go with them, Absolute?” Ancel asked. “If that is what Cenzi wants of us…”

“No,” he told them. “We must stay hidden a while yet-but soon. Soon.” He looked up; the clouds had closed once again over the moon and the street seemed darker than before, the shouting of the crowd fading in the distance.

“Tonight, there’s something else we must do.”