A Magic of Nightfall

Niente

The town burned and the flames reflected in the scrying bowl. They vanished as Zolin slapped the scrying bowl aside, splashing the water over Niente. The bowl clattered away, bronze ringing against the tiles like a wild bell until it clanged up against the far wall, where a tile mosaic of some ancient battle glittered. Outlined in glass, horses reared as soldiers with pikes marched across a field with a snow-topped mountain looming in the background.

“No!” the Tecuhtli roared. “I won’t have you tell me this!”

“It is what I saw,” Niente answered with a calmness he didn’t feel. The dead warrior, the nahualli sprawled next to him, only this time he saw one of their faces. Zolin’s face… And he was too afraid to ask Axat to let him see the nahualli’s features… “Tecuhtli, we have accomplished so much here. We have shown these Easterners the pain that they inflicted on us and our cousins. We have taken land and cities from them as they were taken from us. We have given them the lesson you wanted to give them. To go on…” Niente lifted his hands. The great city in flames and the tehuantin fleeing, their ships with broken masts canted on their sides on the river… “The visions show me only death.”

“No!” Zolin spat. “I’ve sent word back that we’ll stay here, that they are to send more warriors. We will keep what we have taken. We will strike at their heart-this great city of theirs that is so close.” He turned, his heavy and muscular arms swinging close to Niente’s face. Zolin’s thick fingers stabbed toward Niente’s eyes. “Are you blind, Nahual? Didn’t you see how easily we took this city of theirs? Didn’t you watch them run from us like a pack of whipped dogs?”

“We have little of the materials left to make more black sand,” Niente told the Tecuhtli. “I have lost a third of my nahualli in the fighting; you have lost as many of the warriors. We have come a long way without the resources to hold the land behind us. We are in a foreign country surrounded by enemies, with the only supplies those we can forage and plunder. If we take to our ships and leave now, we will leave behind a legend that will strike fear in the Easterners for decades. The name of Tecuhtli Zolin will be a whisper in the night to scare generations of Easterner children.”

“Bah!” Zolin spat again, the expectoration close to Niente’s feet, marring the polished floor of the estate house he’d taken in Villembouchure. Looking down, Niente saw that the tiles all bore the glazed image of the same mountain as the mosaic on the wall. Zolin’s spittle formed a lake on the mountain’s flank. “You’re a frightened child yourself, Nahual. I’m not afraid of what you see in your bowl. I’m not afraid of these futures you say Axat sends you. They’re not the future, only possibilities.” His finger prodded Niente’s chest. “I tell you now, Nahual, you must make your choice.” Each of the last three words was another prod. The Tecuhtli’s dark eyes, wrapped in the swirl of the great eagle’s wings, glared at him like those of the great cats that prowled the forests of home. “No more words from you. No more prophecy, no more warnings. I want only your obedience and your magic. If you can’t give me that, then I am done with you. I will go on, whether you are Nahual or not. Decide now, Niente. As we stand here.”

Niente’s hand trembled near the haft of his spell-stick, dangling from his belt. He could pluck it up, touch Zolin with it before the warrior could fully draw his sword. The released spell would char the Tecuhtli’s body, send him flying across the room until he crumpled against the wall under the mosaic in a smoking heap. Niente could see that result, as clearly as a vision in the scrying bowl.

That would also end this. He ached to do it.

But he could not. That was not a vision that Axat had granted him. That path would lead to one of the blind futures, one he couldn’t guess-a future that might be far worse for the Tehuantin than those he had glimpsed in the bowl. He realized that knowing the possible futures was a trap as much as a benefit; he wondered whether that was something Mahri, too, had discovered. In a blind future, Citlali or Mazatl might continue to follow the steps of Zolin and fare worse. They might all die here, and no one from home would know their fate. In a blind future, certainly Niente would never see his family again.

He felt the smooth, polished wood of the spell-stick, but his fingertips only grazed it. They would not close around it.

“I will obey you, Tecuhtli,” Niente said, the words slow and quiet. “And I will follow you to the future you bring us.”