S. Farrell - A Magic of Twilight

No more. War hovered just to the east, a thunderhead on the horizon, lightning crackling under black ramparts. The markets were crowded every day, but the stalls were thinned by the swelled ranks of the city and by all the produce diverted to feed the army, and the haggling was halfhearted and the conversation was not regarding the quality of the vegetables and meats, but what might happen if the Kraljiki’s negotiations failed. On the South Bank, it became even more expensive to eat in the fashionable restaurants as supplies became short and menu prices rose in response. On the North Bank, for the poorer residents, bread prices that had been fixed for decades at a d’folia tripled over-night after the Kraljiki’s departure and continued to rise; there were reports of sawdust mixed in with the flour, or of loaves rather smaller than the required minimum standards-both illegal practices but also unsurprising. Storekeepers opened their shutters each morning but fewer customers entered, and those who did wanted to talk about politics, not the goods on display. Those in the crafts found that the rich patrons who hired them to build or remodel, to plaster and decorate, to play music for their parties or paint their portraits, had few commissions. “The war, you know. .” was always the answer, with a roll of the eyes to the east.

The war. .

The war shadowed Ana as well. The conscription squads raided the tavern below Mahri’s dwelling twice more in the week following the Kraljiki’s departure. The uproar woke her and Karl from sleep late at night, though again the squads never came upstairs to their rooms, a fact that Ana no longer found quite so unusual. The third time they came, it began with the same muffled shouts heard through the floor of their apartment, shouts that disrupted, then banished, the dream she had of herself talking to Archigos Dhosti in the Old Temple. In the dream, the Archigos was telling her to heal her Matarh, but matarh seemed possessed, speaking in voices that were not hers, shouting loudly. .

“Ana?”

“I hear them.” She opened her eyes. She could dimly see Karl in the bit of moonlight trickling from between the slats of the shutters. He was standing at one of the windows, holding the shutter slightly open to see the courtyard below. Mahri was gone. Ana heard the crash of glass below, and more shouts.

“There they go,” Karl said from the window. “Dragging four poor bastards with them who won’t be coming home to wives or family tonight or any time soon. They’ll be down to taking children soon.”

Ana rose from her blankets and went to him. Karl’s proximity felt good, a warmth along her side, and his arm came around her as they watched the conscription squad hauling the men away down the street.

She felt Karl’s arm lift from about her, heard him start to speak in his odd version of the Ilmodo-speech.

“You can’t, Karl,” she told him. “They’d know you were here, they’d take you back to the Bastida.”

His hands stopped moving, his voice stilled. She could see other faces at the windows along the street-people wondering who had been taken this time. A woman came hurtling from one of the door-

ways, screaming and trying to pull one of the men away from the squad; they pushed her away. “Falina, I’ll be back. Take care of Saddasi. I’ll be back. .” they heard the man calling as he was hauled along the street and down the next corner. The woman huddled on the street wailing as neighbors came out to comfort her.

Karl’s arm tightened around Ana’s shoulder. She leaned into the embrace.

“I hate this,” she heard him say. “I hate all of it: the hiding, the constant fear, the way the whole city feels. ”

“I know,” she said. “I’m tired of it also.”

“We should leave,” he said. “Go somewhere else. Back to the Isle, maybe. There are things I would love to show you there, if you’d come with me.”

Like the woman you left there with the promise of your betrothal? She was afraid to say it, afraid that there would be too much bitterness in her voice and too much vulnerability in her heart. “I can’t leave,” she said instead. “This is my home. Matarh is here, the Archigos’ Temple is here, and any hope I have of ever defeating the lies that have been spread about me and Archigos Dhosti. If we run, Karl, everyone will think they were all true, and-” She stopped. Sniffed. “Smoke,” she said, her voice catching. “Something’s burning.” She turned, looking back into the room. She thought she could see a dark mist seeping in the twilight of the room, like a black fog seeping from the floorboards on the other side of the room. There was light as well, a ruddy glow penetrating the cracks between the worn blackwood planks.

“Fire,” Ana breathed. “The tavern. .”

“Come on,” Karl said. He took her arm. “We have to get out of here. Quickly-”

They fled from the rooms and down the outside stairs. Flames were already licking at the shutters of the first floor and smoke boiled from the front of the building. The alarm was beginning to spread, with shouts and cries from the nearby buildings as neighbors alerted each other. “Find the utilino!” someone shouted. “We need the fire-teni or the whole block will go!”

Karl was tugging at Ana’s arm as she stood in the center of the lane and stared at the building, the door of the tavern outlined in fire. “We have to leave. You can’t be here when they come.”

“They won’t come in time,” she protested. “You know that. We can put it out. I know the spell.”

“I don’t,” Karl answered, “and that blaze would take a dozen fireteni, Ana. The building’s gone and so will be all the others around it; we can’t stop this.”

She shook away his hand on her arm. “Ana-”

She closed her eyes to his plea. She began to chant, trying to recall the words that U’Teni cu’Dosteau had taught her. Larger gestures, this time; even bigger than before. . The words came slowly, but then she caught the rhythm of the chant and the words flowed easily, her hands shaping the power that she felt rising around her with the chant.

The form that U’Teni cu’Dosteau had taught them was a truncated one, a small practice spell, but she improvised on it, letting her mind find pathways that expanded it. She thought of nothing, just letting her mind open to the Ilmodo, letting her hands move unconsciously. The power continued to build, an invisible storm of rain and wind around her that only she could feel, thrashing and bucking and fighting her.

When it became so strong that she was afraid that she could not hold it back any longer, she stopped chanting, holding the release word in her mind: again, a word that she did not know, a word that Cenzi must have put in her head.

She opened her eyes and at arm’s length cupped her hands around the tavern. She could see her fingers trembling, glowing with cold blue.

She spoke.

The very air answered her.

The spell rushed outward, an invisible, frigid explosion that sent the tavern doors and the shutters of the windows into splinters. The wind shrieked and howled, a scream that caused the people nearby to clap hands to ears. The smoke roiling from the building increased dramatically, but turned a strange pale white that seemed to glow in the moonlight, overpowering the ruddy flames. A quick fa-WHOOMP reverberated along the street, followed by silence.

The building sat: the first story blackened around the open holes of windows and door, wisps of smoke still trailing upward. But no flames were visible. Ana saw it, but then the weariness of the Ilmodo struck her, as strongly as she’d ever experienced it. Her knees buckled, and she felt Karl’s hands go around her to support her, and she heard the crowd yelling, and a voice close to her saying “Ana, you are more dangerous than anyone thought.” The voice was Mahri’s, and she glimpsed his hooded, scarred face in the narrowed tunnel of her vision.