S Farrell - A Magic of Dawn

Something bright flared in the sky ahead of her, trailing sparks and painting the currents of the A’Sele with its bright reflections. The apparition brightened and swelled, descending rapidly. She saw it fall, felt the impact through the soles of her boots, saw the fire of the explosion. Someone shrieked distantly in pain and alarm and the smell of burning grew stronger, overlaid now with a sulfurous stench. Another fireball shrieked into the southern sky; this one exploded high above the Isle, sending black shadows racing.

A rider appeared from the Isle a’Kralji end of the pontica, galloping over the bridge toward her, his cloak billowing behind. Rochelle shrank back against the bridge supports; the rider hurtled past her without a glance, turning sharply left toward the River Market. She could see the leather pouch around his body: a fast-rider carrying a message.

That meant that the Kraljica was most likely on the Isle. Allesandra. Her great-matarh. Her matarh’s voice seemed to whisper in her ears: “Promise me…”

Another fireball played false sun, this one also slamming to earth somewhere on the Isle. She could hear the wind-horns of the Old Temple growling a low alarm.

Rochelle ran across the pontica, half-expecting someone to shout after her, or perhaps for an arrow to find her. Nothing happened. She was on the Avi a’Parete on the Isle. All about her were the Isle’s grand buildings, dominated here by the Kraljica’s Palais, directly ahead on the left. She slid to her left, following a street dominated by government buildings. Farther south, she could hear activity: horns calling, people shouting, She turned the corner, moving southward again; ahead, she could see people far down the street. She hurried to the wall surrounding the palais. A servants’ door was set there to one side. She knocked on it, waited, knocked again. No one answered. She crouched down and took out her lockpick kit. A few breaths later, she pushed the door open and slipped inside the grounds.

She found herself standing in the gardens of the palais. The scent of flowers was strong, and she could hear a fountain trickling water nearby. There was no one in the gardens at all, and few of the palais windows were lit.

Another fireball lifted its bright head over the far wall of the palais grounds. It seemed to be heading directly toward her and the palais, but at the last moment when it seemed to be about to strike the palais itself, it shattered into a thousand fragments, each hissing and glowing as they fell-a counter-spell must have found it. She wondered how many fires the sparks would set, and whether the fire-teni would come to put them out.

Rochelle ran to the nearest palais door. Locked: again, she took out the picks, manipulating them until she heard the snick of the mechanism opening. She opened the door just enough to slide inside.

She found herself in what must have been the servants’ corridor: a plain narrow hallway with cross-corridors opening off to either side and a large door at the end. If this was like Brezno Palais, as she expected it would be, then most of these doors would be unlocked. The servants needed to have access to all parts of the palais to serve their masters and mistresses, and to do so in the most unobtrusive manner possible. Doubtless, the palais was honeycombed with such passages.

But the back corridors of Brezno Palais had also been a bustle of activity. This one was silent, and Rochelle found that strange. She moved quickly to the main door, easing the door open a crack. She glimpsed one of the main public hallways of the palais; she could also hear voices. There were several people walking hurriedly away from another room just farther down. One of the men she recognized immediately: Sergei ca’Rudka, the silver nose gleaming on his wrinkled, pasty face, his cane tapping an erratic rhythm on the tiles. The woman alongside him was talking, in a hurried and angry voice. “. .. don’t care what you were thinking or what your reasons were. I’m furious with you, Sergei. Absolutely furious. And Talbot; why in Cenzi’s name didn’t you check with me? You knew I’d ordered the ponticas to stay up.”

“I must apologize profusely, Kraljica,” Sergei said, though Rochelle thought he sounded more pleased than apologetic. So that was the Kraljica. Great-matarh, I’m here for you… But not now. Not yet. There were too many people around her: Sergei, the one called Talbot, as well as a quartet of gardai.

“Your ‘accident’-if that’s what it really was-may have jeopardized our chance to assault the Tehuantin on the South Bank. Now there’s only one route over, so…”

Their voices drifted into unintelligibility as they walked down the corridor. Rochelle risked opening the door wider. There were two gardai stationed at the door from where the group had come. Rochelle ducked back into the servants’ corridor. She took the corridor that led off in the direction of the room with the gardai, counting her steps to judge when she’d walked the distance. There was another door a few strides farther down the corridor. She opened that door.

She found herself in the Hall of the Sun Throne. The crystalline mass of the Sun Throne itself dominated the hall on its dais. Fine. This would do: the Kraljica must come back here in time, and Rochelle could fulfill her promise.

She saw a flash of light through the high windows of the hall, and the palais itself shook as thunder grumbled. She could smell woodsmoke and the windows of the palais were alight with a dawn of flame.

Rochelle settled herself in to wait.

Niente dusted the water in the scrying bowl with the orange powder and chanted the spell to open his mind to Axat. The green mist began to rise, and he bent his head over the bowl.

They were encamped in the city itself, with warriors securing the streets and plundering the houses and buildings there-for food and supplies, had been Tototl’s orders, but Niente was certain that many of the warriors were also taking whatever treasures they could carry. Others had been set to building a catapult, and Niente had tasked the nahualli with enchanting the bags of black sand that the catapult would hurl onto the island so that they would explode upon impact. The chanting of the nahualli and the hammering of the warrior engineers filled the wide boulevard outside the fortress prison at the river’s edge. From the gates of the edifice, the skull of a horrible, many-toothed creature leered down at Niente-almost as if it could be the head of the winged serpent that flew on the Tecuhtli’s banner. That, Niente thought, was nearly an irony. Axat’s Eye had risen, and it seemed to watch Niente as he performed the ritual, watched him as intently as did Tototl.

The visions came quickly, rushing toward him almost too fast for him to see, the paths of the future twisting and intertwining. Niente could still see victory along the clearest, closest path, but now it was a victory won at terrible cost. There were changes wrought on the landscape, powers rising that hadn’t been glimpsed before, or that had been hinted at only in wisps of possibilities: the king of black-and-silver; the old woman who smelled of black sand; the young man with the wild, strange power. That last one… He was the most difficult of all for Niente to see, wrapped in mist and mystery. Around him, all the possible paths of the future seemed to be coiled. Niente wanted to stay with this one, but the mists kept pushing him away no matter how hard he tried.

In the mist, Niente could also feel Atl, so close that he almost thought that his son was standing beside him, peering into his bowl at the same time. Here. He tried to cast his thoughts toward Atl. See what I see. Let me find the Long Path, and hope you see it also…

But there was no response. He couldn’t show Atl what he had seen, nor could he see what Atl saw. In the mist, they stayed separate.