S. Farrell - A Magic of Twilight

“We’ll take you. .”

Ana walked with Kenne, the e’offizer, and his squad through the quiet lines, where most of the Garde Civile were sleeping on the ground or packed into small tents, getting what rest they could before the sun and inevitable battle came. The Avi itself was blocked by a barrier of quickly-felled trees, but there was nothing but field, trees, and the occasional abandoned farmhouse between the two forces on either side of the road. The e’offizier led them to one side of the Avi, to a small stand of apple trees. She could see a few lookouts stationed along the line, but otherwise there was no one near them. “This is as far as we should go,” the e’offizier said. “Any farther out from cover and it would be too dangerous.” Yellow flames blinked like distant fireflies in a rough line ahead of her, flickering through the swaying foliage of trees and brush.

She stared out into the dark.

“You saved us earlier, Archigos,” the e’offizier said behind her. “I want you to know that we appreciate that, all of us.”

She nodded. “Thank you, E’Offizier. Now, if you would leave us alone for a bit, please,” she said. “To pray. .”

He gave her the sign of Cenzi once more. He gestured to the squad and they strode away, leaving Ana and Kenne standing alone in the little grove. She pulled out Mahri’s gift. She cupped it in her hand. “Archigos?” Kenne said, looking at the ruddy fire in her hand.

“I need you to hide me, Kenne,” she told him. “A shielding spell so no one sees or hears me moving in the night. I need to get as close as I can.”

She thought she saw Kenne’s eyebrows lift in the moonlight, but he nodded. He began to chant, his hands swaying in the moonlight.

The air shimmered around her-she was not invisible, but unless one looked carefully they might mistake her form for a tree’s shadow or a cloud over the moon.

It was the best she could hope for.

Ana took a long breath, then stepped forward from the sheltering

trees and into the open field. She waited, half expecting to hear the hiss of arrows or a call of alarm. Yett she heard nothing but Kenne’s chanting behind her. She continued to walk: a step, another, with each step fighting the temptation to run.

She was nearly across to the line of trees and the campfire among them when the shimmering of air began to lessen: Kenne was tiring. She lifted the glass ball in her hand.

Speak my name, he’d said. “Mahri,” she whispered, and she felt the power within the glass well up. In her mind, it spread around her and she saw the shape of the spell that contained it in the pattern of the Ilmodo. She marveled at the spell’s complexity, wondering if she could have crafted something like this herself. But she had little time-she remembered how Mahri had said that the spell was difficult to hold, and she could already feel the wildness of it in her mind.

She looked about. In the sky, the fast-moving clouds had stopped.

There was no sound but the roaring of the power in her mind. A night swallow hovered high above her, captured in mid-turn, its wings locked in mid-beat.

Ana began to walk as quickly as she could toward the campfires- but now she found movement difficult and slow. She felt as if she were wading through deep water. As she reached the enemy lines, her heart pounded, seeing a man staring directly at her as he stood beside the nearest tree. She gathered herself-to run or to ready a spell-but then she realized that he was as unresponsive as a sculpture, and that the flames of the campfire against whose light he was outlined appeared painted on the air.

She hurried past the soldier, feeling a chill as he stood there, still staring outward. Kill the head and the snake dies. .

It was easy to locate the Hirzg’s tent, with his banner caught in mid-flutter above. She walked unchallenged through the encampment and past the gardai outside. She lifted the flap-the canvas as stiff and unyielding as if it were frozen-and stepped inside.

She stopped, breathing heavily with the exertion of simply walking in this gelid air. The interior of the tent was ornate: a thick rug covered the ground, a wooden field desk stood on its stand to one side, a brazier trailed an unmoving wisp of incense, and teni-lights had been lit to brighten the room. There were several people in the tent, gathered around a table set with food: ca’Cellibrecca she recognized instantly, his hand lifting a fork-ful of meat toward his gaping mouth. There was another man in black and silver with the insignia of the starkkapitan on his sleeves; a thin man who was seated at the middle of the table; a green-robed teni with the slashes of an u’teni-that could only be cu’Kohnle.

The Hirzg sat at the head of the table. . and on his lap, unexpectedly, was a young girl. The sight puzzled Ana for a moment, then she realized: it was the Hirzg’s daughter Allesandra. It had to be her; she could see the similarity in their faces.

They were all statues crafted by a flawless artist. The power snarling in her head, she went to the Hirzg. She pulled the knife from its scabbard.

So easy. . Draw it hard and deep, and he will die, and then do the same to ca’Cellibrecca and cu’Kohnle, and the starkkapitan as well. .

But she stood there, staring at the tableau, the power within Mahri’s spell buzzing insistently in her ears. Allesandra was gazing up at her vatarh, her mouth half-open, and there was such deep love and affection in her gaze that it stopped Ana’s hand.

Once it was that way for me, before Matarh became sick. Vatarh loved me, and I loved him in return, and he would hold me on his knees and play with me and I never, never wanted to leave. .

She almost heard the girl’s chuckle. She saw the Hirzg’s hand, ready to brush away an errant curl from her forehead, and in his eyes was the same affection, the same love.

Ana’s hand trembled. The tip of the knife wavered just above the Hirzg’s flesh. The Ilmodo seethed and crackled around her, as if Cenzi Himself were laughing.

You don’t have time. Mahri told you. Kill him. Leave. . She imagined the aftermath and how it would be for the girl: one moment laughing with her father, then a breath, a waver, and the blood would be pouring from him and her vatarh would collapse on her, dead in an instant.

Impossibly taken.

A breath, a waver. . A brief instant of disorientation and reality dissolving around her. As Ana had felt when Mahri came to her with the glass ball. “It’s just my finger. It might as easily have been a knife. .”

The brief instant of disorientation. .

The dissolution of reality. .

So familiar. .

Ana gasped.

She knew. All in that instant, she knew. This was what Mahri needed. Not what she needed.

She glimpsed another way. A better way, she hoped.

There was little time left. The Ilmodo screamed in her mind, a rising wail, and she could not hold the spell together for much longer. She slid the knife back in its scabbard and went to the field desk, spreading out a piece of thick paper that seemed to fight her hand, taking a quill and dipping the end into the inkwell.

Even writing was a struggle, as if the ink itself were fighting her.

She wrote a brief, scrawling note and signed it. Returning to the table, she tugged the Hirzg’s arms away from Allesandra-they moved reluctantly, as if he were loath to allow this. She tucked the note in his hand and closed his fist around it.

Finally, she took the unaware girl in her arms.

Hoping she could make her way from the encampment before she could no longer hold the spell together, she fled. Carrying the stiff body of Allesandra, it was as if Ana were fighting her way upstream against a rushing, white-watered current. She stumbled from the encampment with the burden of the young girl, past the campfire and beyond the line of guards, and out into the open field between the two armies, pausing a few times to rest and recover her breath.