S Farrell - A Magic of Dawn

The Sun Throne. The massive chair sculpted from a single massive crystal towered more than two men high, a mottled, semitransparent white. It loomed over Jan and Brie. As he stared at the throne, he twisted the signet ring on his hand, the gold and silver of the ring cold and smooth on his flesh. “This is what you were meant for, my husband,” Brie whispered to him. He glanced over to her, saw that she was looking at his hands. “You know that,” she said. “Your matarh did, too.”

“She had a strange way of showing it.”

“She was meant for it also. That was the problem.” She gestured toward the throne. “There it is,” she said. “It’s yours, my love.”

Jan glanced toward Talbot. He nodded. Behind a door at the far rear of the hall, just behind the throne, two light-teni were chanting. Talbot had told him how in the last century, the Sun Throne barely reacted to the signet ring, that it was instead the work of especially trusted and skilled light-teni who ensured that the proper response came when a Kralji sat on the crystal.

Jan had laughed at that revelation-another sham, another show.

Jan ascended the dais, A’Teni ca’Beranger giving him the sign of Cenzi as he passed. On reaching the throne, he turned to face the crowd. They were watching him, all of them.

He sat. The crystal around him erupted with brilliant yellow light, seeming to emerge from the hidden depths of the throne. Kraljiki Jan sat, bathed in that light, as the audience rose in thunderous applause.

“I’ll always wonder what the Holdings might have been had you lived,” Sergei said to the portrait of Kraljica Marguerite. “I’d love to know what you think of things now.”

The wine he’d had was making his head spin a bit. Downstairs, in the palais, the celebration for the new Kraljiki was still going on while, outside, the embers of Allesandra’s pyre glowed red in the night. Sergei had slipped away from the festivities via the servants’ corridors to come up here-to the chambers that had been Allesandra’s and which were now Jan’s. A goblet of wine still in his hand, he raised it to Marguerite’s portrait as he lounged in a chair. A small fire-set to take away the evening chill-crackled in the hearth below the portrait, the fire and the candles lit to either side giving a wavering illumination that lent animation to Marguerite’s painted, stern face. He could imagine her stirring, opening her mouth to talk to him…

It was an unnerving sensation, bringing back memories of Audric and his madness.

Sergei took a long sip of the wine and, with his free hand, reached into a pocket of his bashta. He retrieved a smooth, pale pebble. He rubbed its polished surface between his fingers. Wine sloshed over the rim of his glass with the motion and threw bloody droplets on his bashta. He didn’t care.

“Marguerite, we both loved this city and this empire so much that we were willing to do anything for her. Anything at all. I wonder.. . Did she love us back for our passion and our faith? Did she care? Did you sometimes regret your life the way I do? Hmm… Somehow, knowing you, I doubt it. You were always so sure of yourself.” He lifted the goblet to her in salute, then brought it to his mouth and tilted it, draining the wine in a long gulp. He set the goblet down on the table next to him and reached for his new cane, lifting himself from the chair with a grunt and a moan. “You’ll have a new relative to stare at tonight,” he told Marguerite. “Let’s hope he’s a good one, as strong as you were.”

He realized he was still holding the stone. He held it up to his ear. “I don’t hear anyone,” he said. He tapped the stone on his nose, listening to the ring of stone on metal. He laughed, weaving slightly as he stood there, and placed the stone back in his pocket. “What becomes of us when we’re gone?” he asked the painting. “Does Cenzi really wait there to judge us? I’d appreciate a sign, Marguerite. I really would.”

The painting stared at him in the firelight. Marguerite’s painted gaze refused to let him go. Finally, Sergei rubbed at his nose and sniffed. “No answer, eh?” he said. “You always did keep your secrets. Well, I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.”

He bowed to the painting, nearly falling as he did so. He patted the stone in his pocket. He left the room, leaving the goblet on the table, and, stumbling, made his way down the back stairs again. As he reached the servants’ corridor nearest the Hall of the Sun Throne, he could hear the noise of the revelers, still chattering. He went in the other direction, making his way out into the garden. The cool night air seemed to clear his mind. He could smell the odor of ash and woodfire-far out in the gardens, servants were raking and spreading the coals of the pyre. He shook his head, rubbed at his stubbled cheeks. He walked around the side of the palais toward the Avi a’Parete, still crowded with pedestrians and carriages even this late. Across the Pontica a’Brezi Veste, he could see the tower and walls of the Bastida.

He took a long breath. The tower was dark against the moonlit clouds, and a small light glistened in one of the upper windows, seeming to beckon to him. Sergei’s hand, in the pocket of his bashta, touched again the pebble of the White Stone.

He sighed, and he began walking the other way.

A NOTHER KRALJIKI SAT on the Sun Throne, bathed in its golden light-yet another relative of the great Kraljica Marguerite. The Holdings were unified once again, with the new Kraljiki also holding the title of Hirzg of Firenzcia. A new Archigos sat on the throne in the Archigos’ Temple, where Archigi had sat for centuries, but this was an altered Faith and a weakened Faith, and many who walked Nessantico’s streets were no longer believers.

In the far west, across the Strettosei, there was a new Tecuhtli, with a young Nahual beside him.

A child who had become a powerful young man had become little more than a child again. And the White Stone had vanished once more, perhaps to return or perhaps gone to oblivion entirely.

Nessantico-the city, the woman-didn’t care. Such movements didn’t trouble her. The story was not done. There would be more strife, more conflicts. Thrones would pass. Victory and defeat, the rival twins of war, would contend against each other with new players.

She didn’t care. The story was not done because the story never ends. It could not.

The people moving in her streets had been born and would die to be replaced by others. The Sun Throne would feel the weight of dozens of future Kralji yet unborn, and they would be good leaders or bad, but in time they would all-no matter how good, no matter how bad-eventually pass from the long, endless tale.

But she never would. She had been in the tale from the beginning. The tale was hers, and it would not end until she ended, and she…

She was deathless.

Her fortunes had risen again. From a shattered kingdom, a new and stronger one would arise. The face that the A’Sele reflected back to her would change. Perhaps even one day the line of the Kralji itself would vanish. Perhaps.

But not her. Never her.

She would continue. Nessantico would stride into that long future: living, breathing, eternal, the central character of the land’s story. Her face would be rewritten, her old lines stripped away to be replaced by new ones. She would age; she would be renewed, again and again.

The tale would not end.

That tale could not end until she herself was gone.

And that, she told herself, could never happen.

(alphabetical order by rank, then family name):

Varina ca’Pallo [Vah-REE-nah Kah-PAHL-low] A’Morce (Head) of the Numetodo, and member of the Council of Ca‘. Wife of Karl ca’Pallo.