S. Farrell - A Magic of Twilight

“That’s something else we’ll have to disagree upon,” Karl answered.

This time, ca’Rudka’s smile seemed almost genuine. He nodded again, deeper this time, and turned. He left the tavern, closing the door behind him. Slowly, as false darkness settled around the patrons once more, the sound of conversations swirled through the smoke-tinged air.

“So the man with the silver nose rather likes you,” Mika said. “How interesting.”

Karl was still staring at the door. He could still feel the tension in his body, a vibration so strong that he wondered it wasn’t audible. Mika rubbed at his wounded throat.

“Shut up, Mika,” Karl said. “Or next time I’ll just let him run you through.”

Edouard ci’Recroix

Edouard sat perched on a rock on the banks of the A’Sele not far downriver from Pre a’Fleuve. Leave Nessantico by the Avi a’Firenzcia, his contact had told him. But then follow the flow of the A’Sele.

I will meet you on the day after Gschnas where we first met, on the river below the chateau, once we know that you’ve done your part.

Edouard had followed the instructions, abandoning his horse at a small village, then stealing a small boat to take him down the River Vaghian to the A’Sele, where he traveled once more through Nessantico, passing under the Pontica Mordei and the Pontica Kralji in the night before leaving the walls behind for the last time.

Now he sat on the bank with his sketchbook open on his lap and a stick of charcoal in his hand. A dove sat on the branch of a willow bending to the water near him, and he quickly sketched the outlines of the bird and the tree. The drawing came easily-and as the charcoal flowed around the shadows of the bird, he closed his eyes, whispering the words that opened that place deep within himself, the place the old teni had shown him. .

“The Numetodo. .” the ancient had told him, his voice blurred by the few teeth still left in his gums and the phlegm in his throat. But that face: Edouard had come across the man in a run-down inn far from any of the cities, and he’d been fascinated by the lines, by the great hooked nose and the complexity of the channels running from the corner of his eyes and his mouth, the strands of white hair wisping from the spotted scalp. There was great beauty in the man’s ugliness, and Edouard was striving to capture it in his painting.

“They almost have it right. I discovered it myself. It’s not faith in Cenzi that controls the Ilmodo. No. .” The man had shaken his head. “I was once an o’teni. Did you know that? I was in the service of the temple in Chivasso, and I found out the truth of things before I’d even heard of the Numetodo.” The man spit on the floor, a huge splotch of mucus that darkened the sawdust on the boards of the floor. He went silent then, for so long that Edouard had wondered whether he was asleep with his eyes open.

“What’s this truth?” he’d asked the old man at last. “What happened?”

“There was a girl there,” he said. “Arial, her name was. Just a ce’, one of the servants there in the Temple. But she had a fair face and a full figure, and we became lovers. It was wrong, but we didn’t care. I learned that her family was from Boail and-like them-she didn’t believe in Cenzi at all. They worshiped some minor Moitidi, who they were convinced was the only god, She would watch me use the Ilmodo-it was my task to light the temple every night-and she’d ask me to show her how I did it. I told her what I’d always been told myself: that it was impossible, that to use the Ilmodo required much training and a deep faith, that it wasn’t something that those not blessed by Cenzi could do, that the sorcerers and witches who claimed to be able to use magic were liars and abominations who had been seduced by the Moitidi who survived Cenzi’s purge. She nodded and said she understood, but she was listening to me and watching me, and one night I saw her. She was using the Chant of Light, and there was cold fire between her hands as she spoke, and I knew then, even as I called for the a’teni, even as I betrayed her, that what I been taught was wrong. There were those who could shape the Ilmodo without believing in Cenzi, and that. . that shook the very foundations of my faith and tore them down.”

He went silent again for a time, then licked his lips and began again.

“They cut off her hands and took out her tongue as the Divolonte requires, so that she could never use the Ilmodo again. I watched as they tortured her, trying to convince myself that I’d done what Cenzi had wanted me to do, but my faith. . my faith was already shaken, already failing. But every night, I could still light the temple, even though the words to Cenzi meant nothing to me, even though I doubted my faith and my beliefs. I told myself that Cenzi was showing His mercy, that He wanted me to come back to Him and that was why I could still shape the Ilmodo, but my faith continued to fail, until I found I didn’t believe at all. I left, finally, because I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy and the lies I spoke every day. I left, and Cenzi has punished me ever since.”

The man’s voice was a bare whisper when he said that, and he glanced at the canvas before Edouard. “You’ve the Gift,” the old man had said. He touched Edouard’s head, then his hands. “You’re using the Ilmodo even though you don’t know it. It flows from you out onto the canvas. Not many can do that.”

“Show me what you showed Arial,” Edouard had said suddenly. “Show me the truth.”

The ancient had protested and argued, but in the end he’d agreed. He’d taught Eduoard how to open the place inside so that he could feel the Ilmodo, and Edouard in turn had learned that his Gift was indeed special. The old teni was dead when Edouard left, but the painting, the old man’s portrait. .

It was the best painting he’d ever done. The face that stared out from the canvas was so genuine, so compelling. .

The old man was dead, but it was not the last time that Edouard would see him or hear him. Oh, no, not the last time at all.

Edouard let the Ilmodo flow uninterrupted: out from his fingers, through the charcoal stick to the paper, and from there radiating out to the bird. He could see the bird in his mind, snared in the radiance of the Ilmodo. He could feel its heart fluttering and its shivering body, and he let that pass through him onto the paper.

He heard the soft fall of the bird onto the grass, and opened his eyes to see its perfect form captured on the paper.

“It’s gorgeous, as I would expect.” He heard the voice from behind him, the man’s approach masked by the sound of the breezes in the willows and the rush of the A’Sele.

“Vajiki,” Edouard said, placing the sketchpad on the grass next to the bird. “I was beginning to wonder if you would come.”

“Exactly as promised,” the man said. Edouard didn’t know his name; he’d first approached Edouard when he was painting a commissioned portrait in a chateau near Prajnoli. Even his face was common and unremarkable, his hair a nondescript brown, though the eyes had irises of the most saturated grass-green. But the money he’d offered had staggered Edouard-enough that Edouard would never have to touch a brush again, not unless it was what he wanted.

Maybe then they’ll leave me alone: the voices of those I’ve taken. .

He hoped it would be true. They haunted him at night-the faces of those he’d painted, those he’d killed. They came in his nightmares, tormenting him. They were still alive, all of them, alive in his head.

He didn’t know who the man worked for, nor how they had discovered the “gift” he bore-though he wondered if it weren’t Chevaritt ca’Nephri, since it was his chateau that overlooked the river nearby.