A Magic of Nightfall

Niente

He had hoped that the taking of the island of Karnmor would have been enough, that Tecuhtli Zolin would have been satisfied with that demonstration of Tehuantin power and they would take to their ships and return home. But Zolin had looked east instead. “Weto have struck a wound to the body,” he said, “but the head remains, and the body will heal unless we strike. I know what you’d tell me, Nahual, but now is the time to strike. I feel it. Ask Axat. She will tell you.” Niente stared into the scrying bowl, sprinkling the herbs over the water. Maybe it was because the water here was less pure, or maybe it was because the land of his own gods was so distant, or maybe it was that his own ability had waned, but again the images he saw reflected there were too confused and too fleeting, and they left him uneasy.

… A boy on a glowing throne, but his face was a fleshless skull, and there: was that the Easterner he had ensorcelled? A woman lurked in the background, hard to see… But the water swirled and when it cleared again Niente saw another boy on another throne, and a woman behind him also, with a green-robed, dark-haired teni beside her

… Armies crawled over a broken land with banners swaying, marching over ground strewn with bodies… Fire and a temple, and ranks of people in green robes praying… A great city with a river running through its midst, and smoke rising from its great buildings… A Tehuantin warrior on the ground, a spear through him, and the body of a nahualli alongside with a broken spell-staff, but the water was murky now and he could not see the faces that lay there to know who they were, though a queasy roiling churned in his gut, and he suddenly didn’t want to see…

“Well?” Tecuhtli Zolin asked, and Niente glanced up from the bowl. The Techutli had entered his tent and was watching him. The eagle of his rank spread red-feathered wings down his cheeks as the beak opened in a fierce cry on his forehead.

They were encamped on the edge of a great, wide river that one of the Easterners they’d captured had called the A’Sele. Far up the river, they were told, was Nessantico, the capital of the Holdings. The Tehuantin fleet was anchored close by, near where the mouth of the A’Sele emptied into the Middle Sea, their hulls low in the water with the plunder of Karnmor.

They had left the city of Karnor in ruins a hand of days ago. The city had been raped and plundered but not held; the rest of the great island had been left entirely untouched. Instead, Zolin had taken the army back on the ships, sailing out from Karnor Harbor and around Karnmor to the mouth of the A’Sele, where the army had taken to land once more. They had met little resistance. The people of the Holdings had melted away before them like spring snow, retreating and vanishing into the forests and back roads of the land, abandoning the villages with their strangely-shaped houses and buildings. This was land that had been tamed for generations: with rich farms and fields, with wide roads, paved with cobbles inside the villages and lined with stone fences outside. This was a domesticated land, not wild like the slopes of the Shield Mountains, but more like the farmlands of the great cities around the shore of the Inland Sea, or the canals of Tlaxcala, the capital built out in the sea itself.

“Nahual Niente?”

He started, realizing that he was still staring into the bowl though it was only his own uncertain and spell-ravaged reflection that he saw there, his clouded left eye frighteningly white. A drop of sweat fell from his brow into the water, shivering the image of his face. He lifted his head.

“I saw battle,” he told Zolin. “And a boy king on the throne. His face was a skull.”

“Ah, then perhaps your Easterner has fulfilled his task?”

Niente shrugged.

“The battle-who won?”

“I don’t know. I saw… I saw a dead warrior, and a dead nahualli.”

Zolin scoffed. “Warriors always die,” he said. “Nahualli, too. It is the way of things.” Then, he stopped and his eyes narrowed, swaying the wings of the eagle. “Was it me you saw?”

Niente shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered, but elaborated no further.

“Did you see us sailing home?” the Tecuhtli asked.

“No.” Another single word, and Zolin nodded.

“You don’t want to be here, do you? You think I’m making a mistake.”

Niente tossed aside the water in the scrying bowl. He wiped the bowl dry with the hem of his shirt, wondering how bluntly he should answer Zolin. He had never been less than honest with Necalli, but Necalli didn’t have Zolin’s dangerous temperament. “We’re a long way from home, in a strange land.”

“A land that has offered almost no resistance,” Zolin said. He swept his arms to the east. “This great city of theirs must know by now that we’re here, but I see no army in front of us.”

“You will. And we have no reinforcements behind us, no new warriors or nahualli to fill the gaps of the fallen. I have seen their castles and their fortifications in the scrying bowl, Tecuhtli. We had the element of surprise at Karnor; that’s gone now. They will be preparing for us.”

“And your black sand will tear down their walls and send their towers tumbling into ruin.”

“I’ve seen the fires of their smithies and the prayers of their war-teni. I have seen their armies and they were large, sprawled over the land like a steel forest. We are but a few thousands here, Tecuhtli, and they have many more. We’re now as they were in our land, far away from our resources. I doubt we will succeed here any better than they did there.”

“Is that what Axat shows you?” Zolin pointed at the bowl Niente was holding, scribed with the moon symbols of the god. “Do you see-undeniably-my defeat in the water?”

Niente shook his head.

“Good,” Zolin said. The muscles in his jaws worked, flexing the wings of the eagle. “I know you would rather we return home, Nahual. I understand that, and you’re not alone in that feeling. I hear you, all of you. We all miss home and families, myself no less than anyone. But my duty is to protect us as best I can, and this… this seems to me to best do that. I appreciate that you would not lie and tell me that the gods insist that retreat is the wise course.”

“I tell you what I see, Tecuhtli. Always. Nothing more. Nothing less. I vowed to Axat that I would follow and serve the Tecuhtli, no matter who he is or what he orders us to do.”

Zolin gave a laugh that was more a sniff. He rubbed at his scalp, as if stroking the eagle inked into his flesh. “You made that vow to Necalli, not me. Niente, if you wish to be released from it now…” A shrug. “One of the other nahualli could serve.”

The threat hung there in the humid air. Niente knew what Zolin offered: no Nahual gave up his title and lived; Niente wondered which one of the nahualli was whispering in Zolin’s ear-certainly there were a few who felt they could be Nahual. “If the Tecuhtli feels that another nahualli is better suited to serve him, then he should have him bring his spell-staff here, and we shall see which one of us Axat favors.”

Zolin chuckled, but there was an uneasiness to it that told Niente that the man was tempted. “For now, I will let you serve me, Nahual Niente. And you will see that I am right. I will come to this great city of the Easterners, and I will smash it and leave it burning, as I did Munereo and Karnor. I am a great slow spear, and I will pierce their armor, their flesh, their organs, and burrow through to stab their very heart. The people of the Holdings will understand that their god is weak and wrong. They will leave our cousins’ land and ours forever. They will pay tribute to us, for fear that a Tecuhtli will bring another army here again. That is what I will do, and that is what you will see in your scrying bowl, Nahual. You will see it.”

Niente lowered his head. “As I said, Tecuhtli, I will look and I will tell you all that Axat grants me to see, so that you may know the possible futures for the choices you make. That is all any nahualli can do.”

Zolin sniffed. He gazed confidently at Niente from eyes surrounded by the feathered wings of the eagle. “You will see it,” he said again. “That is what I tell you.”