S. Farrell - A Magic of Twilight

I’m finally gone, Vatarh, and you can’t touch me anymore. .

She came out from behind the screen, holding her yellow tashta folded in her arms. Sala, beaming, hurried forward to take it from her.

Her vatarh nodded his approval, tears glistening unashamedly in his eyes-she wondered whether he was truly proud of her, or only sad-dened by what was being taken from him. Her matarh stared blankly ahead, as if transfixed by candle glints from the gold-threaded robes of the Archigos.

“Ah. .” the Archigos breathed. “Now you look the proper teni.

Vajiki cu’Seranta, I wonder if you would allow me a few minutes alone with your daughter. My clerk, as I said, is waiting outside to take care of the fund transfer while you wait. Your servants should go with you, but I would like Vajica cu’Seranta to remain.”

Anna’s vatarh looked startled, but he brought his hands to his forehead and motioned to Sala and the other servants. The Archigos waited, silent, until the chapel doors had closed again behind them.

Then he turned to Ana.

“I deliberately brought you here, to this chapel and without any of the a’teni about. Your matarh, her illness is grave. The Southern Fever, isn’t it? She was incredibly fortunate to survive at all. I’ve only rarely heard of anyone recovering who has been affected that badly. I remember all the funerals years ago when the Fever was at its height here in the city.”

He was staring at her, as was O’Teni ci’Fionta. “It was Cenzi’s Will that Matarh lived, Archigos,” she said, and the lie felt like pins stabbing her throat.

“No doubt,” the Archigos said. “And your will, also.”

“Archigos?” Ana started.

Faintly, the dwarf smiled. “There’s no one here but the four of us, Ana. No a’teni listening, no ears here that shouldn’t hear what you might say, no prying eyes watching.” Ana couldn’t stop her gaze from going to the young o’teni. The Archigos’ smiled widened slightly.

“Kenne ci’Fionta is someone I trust implicitly, so you must also.” He paused. “You no doubt prayed for your matarh’s life.”

“Of course, Archigos. Every day.”

“And Cenzi answered your prayers? Or was it something else?” the Archigos prompted, and Ana’s face colored helplessly. “You lie badly, O’Teni,” the Archigos said. He stepped from the dais and put his hand on her matarh’s arm. At the touch, the woman stirred, turning her head slightly but still staring off vacantly. “Your innocence and naivete is very fetching, Ana, but we’ll need to work on that. Tell me the rest, and tell me the truth now. Did you use the Gift of Cenzi to thwart Cenizi’s Will for your matarh? Did you do what you knew was forbidden for the teni by the Divolonte? Tell me the truth, here where you can.”

Ana saw the joyous evening and her triumph beginning to collapse around her. She wondered how she would be able to tell Vatarh how it had gone so badly so quickly. She could imagine his face going slack, his shoulders slumping and his will shattering inside him.. and the foul anger and abuse that would follow. “Matarh was dying.

Archigos,” Ana said, looking down at her matarh unmoving in her carry-chair. “That would have killed Vatarh, too, after all that had happened to us. So I. . I. . Just the smallest help. . Just enough that. .” She couldn’t finish, her voice choking. Her hands lifted. Fell back to her sides.

“You know the punishment for this sin? You know the Divolonte?”

Ana clasped her hands behind her back. She could barely speak.

“Yes, Archigos.” Cenzi has given me His own punishment to bear for what I did. If I’d let her die, then Vatarh might have married someone else, and he might have left me alone.

“Look at me. Quote the Divolonte for me; you’ve certainly heard it often enough in your studies.”

She forced herself to look down into his face: stern now, the wrinkles holding his ancient eyes drawn harshly in his skin. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “ ‘The sinner has abused Cenzi’s Gift and shown that she no longer trusts in Cenzi’s judgment; therefore-’ ” She stopped.

“Finish it,” the Archigos told her.

“ ‘Therefore, strike her hands from her body and her tongue from her mouth so that she may never use the Gift again.”’ Ana took a long breath.

“You put yourself above Cenzi?” the Archigos asked.

“No, Archigos,” Ana protested. “I truly don’t. But I watched her suffering, watched my vatarh suffer with her. . ”

“Does your vatarh know what you did? Does anyone?”

“No, Archigos. At least, I don’t think so. I was always alone with her when I tried. I made certain of that.”

The Archigos nodded. His hand was still on her matarh’s arm. “You didn’t do all you could for her, did you?”

Ana shook her head. “I was afraid. I knew Cenzi would be angry,and I was also afraid that everyone would notice-”

“Do it now,” the Archigos said, interrupting her. At her look of shock, his stern face relaxed. “The gift of healing is the rarest tendency, the most easily abused, and the most dangerous to the person using it, which is why it’s proscribed. It’s also why I made certain that the only other person here tonight was someone I could trust. Your hands and tongue are safe for now, Ana. Show me. Show me Cenzi’s Gift. Use it as you wanted to use it. Go on,” he said as she hesitated.

Ana took a long breath. She could feel the Archigos staring at her as she closed her eyes and brought her hands together. As she been taught, she reached deep into her inner self as she prayed to Cenzi to show her the way, and again the path to the Ilmodo opened up before her, sparking purple and red in her mind. Her hands were moving, not in the patterns that U’Teni cu’Dosteau had laboriously taught the acolytes but in her own unconscious manner, the way she knew they must go to shape this particular Gift. She could feel it now, a warmth between her still-moving hands, a glow that penetrated her eyelids and sent blood-tinted, pulsing streaks chasing themselves before her.

Before, she’d stopped at this point, just as the energy began to be felt, and applied it to her matarh. This time she allowed it to continue to flow around her, gathering it. She chanted: words she didn’t know, in a language that wasn’t hers. A calmness filled Ana as her hands stopped moving, as she cupped Cenzi’s Gift in her hands.

She opened her eyes. Her matarh was staring at the brilliance she held between them. “This is for you, Matarh,” Ana whispered. “Cenzi has sent it to you.” With that, she bent forward and placed her hands on her matarh’s shoulder. The brilliance darted out, striking her matarh and seeming to sink into her.

As Ana touched her matarh, she felt again the wild, black heat in the older woman: patches of it in her head, around her heart, in her lungs. It paled where the Ilmodo touched it, and this time, this time Ana let the power flow freely, let it cover the illness. She could feel it through her hands: as if Ana herself had the Fever, as if it could crawl out from her matarh into herself. She pushed it back, back into the maelstrom of the Ilmodo, and the heat rose so intensely that she thought her hands would be burned.

She lifted her hands away from her matarh, unable to hold the power any longer.

Abini jerked in her seat, a shuddering intake of breath as if she were a drowning person gasping for air. Her eyes went wide, and she gave a long, low wail that held no words at all. She sank back, her eyes closing. . and when they opened again, her pupils were clear, and she looked at the Archigos and O’Teni Kenne alongside him, then at Ana in her green robes.