A Magic of Nightfall (11 page)

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Authors: S. L. Farrell

BOOK: A Magic of Nightfall
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Audric ca’Dakwi
Varina ci’Pallo
Jan ca’Vörl
Enéas cu’Kinnear
Allesandra ca’Vörl
Karl ca’Vliomani
Sergei ca’Rudka
Allesandra ca’Vörl
Nico Morel
The White Stone
Audric ca’Dakwi
T
HIS WAS ONE OF the bad nights.
Every individual breath was a struggle. Audric had to force the old, useless air from his lungs, and his chest ached with every inhalation, yet he was never able to bring in enough air. He sat up in his bed; he felt that if he lay down he might suffocate. The palais healers bustled around him, looks of deep concern on their faces—if only for fear of what might happen to them if he died under their care—but Audric paid them little attention except when they tried to get him to take a sip of a potion or to inhale some sour grasssmoke. His arms were tracked with fresh scabs; the healers had nearly bled him dry and another one of them was making a new cut, but Audric didn’t even flinch. Seaton and Marlon, Audric’s
domestiques de chambre
, rushed in and out of the bedroom, fetching whatever the healers requested of them.
All of Audric’s attention went to his war for breath. His world had shrunk down to the battle of each inhalation, of trying to suck enough air in his lungs to stay conscious. The edges of his vision had darkened; he could only see what was directly in front of him. He felt little but the eternal pain in his chest.
He focused on the portrait of Kraljica Marguerite set over the fireplace mantel at the foot of his bed. His great-matarh stared back at him, her painted face utterly realistic, as if the gilded frame were a window behind which the Kraljica was sitting. He swore he saw her move slightly against the backdrop of the Sun Throne, that the painted Sun Throne itself flickered with the light of the Ilmodo as the real one did whenever he sat on it.
Archigos Ana had never given more than a sour glance at the portrait, which always seemed to snare the gaze of other visitors to Audric’s bedroom. Once, Audric had asked the Archigos why she paid the masterpiece so little attention. She had only shaken her head. “There’s far too much of your great-matarh in that painting,” she said. “It hurts me to see her trapped there.” She frowned then. “But your vatarh loved the picture, for his own reasons.”
Marguerite regarded Audric now with her appraising, piercing stare. He waited for the attack to pass. It would pass; it always had in the past. It
must
pass. He prayed to Cénzi for that, his mouth moving silently: that the invisible giant sitting astride his chest and crushing his lungs would slowly rise and lumber off, and he’d be able to breathe easier again.
It would happen. It
must
happen.
His great-matarh seemed to nod at that, as if she agreed.
Staring at the painting, Audric heard more than saw Regent ca’Rudka push into the room, scattering the healers as he leaned over the bed, waving away the sourgrass smoke drifting from the censers. “Get those out of here,” he snarled. “Archigos Ana said the smoke makes the Kraljiki’s breathing worse, not better. And take yourselves out of here as well.” The healers scattered with mutterings, bloody fingers, and the clinking of vials, leaving the Regent alone with Audric. No, not alone . . . There was someone else with him. Reluctantly, Audric took his gaze from the painting and squinted into the darkness.
The effort made him groan.
“Archigos . . . Kenne . . .” Each word came out in its own separate breath accompanied by a rattling wheeze; he could do no better than that.
“Kraljiki,” the Archigos said. “Please don’t move. I’ve come to pray with you.” Audric saw Archigos Kenne glance concernedly at the Regent. “Archigos Ana had a . . . special relationship with Cénzi that I’m afraid few téni can match, but I will do what I can. Lie back as comfortably as you can. Close your eyes and think of nothing but your breathing. Focus only on that. . . .”
His breath was racing, gasping. He could feel his heart lurching against the confines of his ribs. He could take only the smallest sip of precious air. Audric closed his eyes as the Archigos began to pray. Archigos Ana, when she came to him, would pray also, and she would gently place her hands on his chest. It was as if he could feel her
inside
him. He could hear her voice in his head and feel the power of the Ilmodo burning in his chest, searing away the blockages and allowing him to breathe fully again. She wrapped him in that interior heat, her voice chanting and yet at the same time speaking in his head.
“You’ll be fine, Audric. Cénzi is with you now, and He will make you better again. Just breathe slowly: nice long breaths. Yes, that’s it . . .”
Within a few minutes, he would be breathing naturally and easily once again, an ease that at first lasted months, but more recently only a few weeks.
Now, with Kenne, Audric heard the man’s half-whispered prayers only with his ears. There was nothing inside at all. There was no warmth spreading throughout his chest. These were only the prayers of an old man, outside him and spoken in a quavering voice. There was no sense of the Ilmodo, no tingling of Cénzi’s power—or perhaps there was, but it was so faint that Audric could barely feel it. Maybe there
was
warmth, perhaps the painful bellows of his lungs were moving slightly easier. Audric tried to take a deeper breath, but the effort sent him into spasmodic, dry coughing that made him hunch over on the bed. His eyes opened, and Marguerite frowned in her painting. He saw that fine droplets of blood had sprayed the blanket.
“You must fight this, Audric. If you die, our line dies, and with it our dream of Nessantico and the Holdings. . . .”
He saw Marguerite’s painted lips move, heard the voice that he had always imagined she would have.
“You must fight this. I will help you. . . .
”
Sergei had moved quickly to his side; he felt the Regent’s strong hand on his back, heard him call sharply to Marlon. A cloth dipped in cool water was passed to him. Audric took it gratefully, touching the fabric to his lips. He could taste the sweetness of the water. And yes, he could breathe somewhat better. “Thank you, Regent,” he said. “I’m much . . . better now . . . Archigos.” His own voice sounded distant and dull, as if someone were half-covering his ears. It was Marguerite’s voice that was clearest.
“Listen to me, Audric. I will help you. Listen to your great-matarh. . . .”
Archigos Kenne nodded but Audric could see the doubt in the man’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Kraljiki. Archigos Ana . . . I know she could do much more for you.”
Audric reached out to touch the man’s hand. Kenne’s skin was cool against his own, and dry as old paper. “I will be fine,” he told the man. “I think . . . I have found the way.”
The portrait of Marguerite smiled her lopsided smile at him, and he smiled back.
“There is too much for you to do to die. . . .”
“There is too much for me to do to die,” he said to her, to them. It was both promise and threat.
Varina ci’Pallo
I
N THE DAYS WHEN SHE’D first joined the Numetodo, when she’d been a lowly initiate into their society and first met Mika and Karl, the Numetodo House had been a shabby house in the midst of Oldtown, masked by the squalor and filth of the buildings around it.
Now, the Numetodo House was a fine building on the South Bank, with a garden and burnished grounds out front and gates bordering the Ave a’Parete—a gift from Archigos Ana and (more reluctantly) Kraljiki Justi for their aid in ending the Firenzcian siege of the city in 521. Their more spacious and lush accommodations helped to make the Numetodo more acceptable to the ca’-and-cu’, but it had also made them more visible. In the past, the Numemtodo met in secret, and most members kept their affiliation a secret. No more. Varina had no doubt that all those who entered through the gates were noted by the utilino and Garde Kralji who constantly patrolled the Avi, and that information was funneled to the commandant—and from him to Sergei ca’Rudka, the Council of Ca’, and the Kraljiki.
The Numetodo were known—which was fine as long as their beliefs were tolerated. But with the death of Ana, Varina was no longer certain how long that might be the case. Her fears drove her back to her research. . . .
Despite the paranoid rumors among the conservative Faithful, the bulk of the Numetodo research had nothing to do with magic at all: they were experimenting in physics and biology; they were creating beautiful and elegant mathematical theorems; they were delving into medicine; they were exploring alchemy; they were examining dusty tomes and digging at ancient sites to recreate history. But for Varina, it was magic that fascinated. What especially intrigued her was how the Faith, the Numetodo, and the Westlanders approached casting spells.
The Numetodo had long ago proved—despite the angry and sometimes violent denial of the Faith—that the energy of the Second World didn’t require belief in any god at all. Call it the “Ilmodo” or the “Scáth Cumhacht” or the “X’in Ka.” It didn’t matter. That realization had dissolved whatever remnants of faith Varina had when she first came to the Numetodo.
“Knowledge and understanding can be shaped by reason and logic alone; it’s just not easy or simple. People created gods to explain the world so we didn’t have the responsibility to figure things out ourselves.” She’d heard Karl say that in a lecture he’d given, years ago when she was first considering joining the Numetodo. “Magic is no more a religious manifestation than the fact that an object dropped from your hand is going to fall to the ground.”
Yes, the téni of the Faith and the Westlanders both used chants and hand motions to create the spell’s framework, yet each of them had a different underlying “belief” which allowed them to harness the energy of magic. What the Numetodo realized was that the chants and hand motions used by spellcasters were only a “formula.” A recipe. Nothing more. Speaking
this
sequence of syllables with
that
set of motions would net
this
result.
But the Westlanders . . . Varina hadn’t met Mahri the Mad, but Karl and Ana had, and the tales of the Westlander nahualli from the Hellins had only verified what Karl and Ana had said of Mahri. The nahualli were able to place their spells
within
objects, which could then be triggered later by a word, or a gesture, or an action. Neither the téni nor the Numetodo could do that. The Westlander spellcasters called on their own gods for spells, as the téni did with theirs, but Varina was certain that Westlander gods were as imaginary and unnecessary as Cénzi and his Moitidi.
If she could learn the Westlanders’ methods, if she could find the formula of just the right words and hand movements to place the Scáth Cumhacht inside an inanimate object, then she could begin to duplicate what Mahri had been able to do. She’d been working on that, off and on, for a few years now. Worry drove Varina more than ever now: over what Ana’s death meant to the Numetodo; over Karl’s deep grief, which tore at Varina as much as her own.
If she couldn’t understand why people would do such horrible things to each other, she would at least try to understand this.
She was in a nearly bare room in the lower levels of the House. On the table in front of her was a glass ball she’d purchased from a vendor in the River Market, sitting in a nest of cloth so it wouldn’t roll. The ball had been inexpertly made; a curtain of small air bubbles ran though the center of it, the glass around them discolored and brown, but Varina didn’t care—it had been cheap. Varina chanted, her hands moving: a simple, easy light spell, one of the first tricks taught to a Numetodo initiate. Weaving a light spell was effortless, but pushing it inside the glass—that was far, far more difficult. It was like pushing a hair through a stone wall. She could feel fatigue draining her strength. She ignored it, concentrating on the glass ball in front of her, trying to imagine the power of the Scáth Cumhacht moving into the glass in the same way she would have placed it inside her own mind, visualizing the potential light deposited around those bubbles deep inside the glass, placing the release word there with it as a trigger.
The spell ended; she opened her eyes. Her muscles were trembling, as if she’d run for leagues or been lifting heavy weights for a turn of the glass. She had to force herself to remain standing. The ball was sitting on the table, and Varina allowed herself a small smile. Now, if—

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