A Magic of Dawn
S.L. Farrell
The Holdings Year 563
Nessantico City Year 563
Prelude: Nessantico
If a city can have a gender, Nessantico was female…
She had experienced the flowering of all her promise and her beauty during the long reign of Kraljica Marguerite. In that magnificent half century, Nessantico’s long childhood and even longer adolescence culminated in mingled elegance and power, unmatched anywhere in the known world. For fifty years, she brooked no peer. For fifty years, she believed that this glorious present would be eternal, that her ascent would-no, must -continue.
Her superiority was ordained. It was destined. It would last forever.
It would not.
Kraljica Marguerite, like all those who ruled within Nessantico’s confines, was human and mortal; Marguerite’s son Justi and then Justi’s son Audric, both of whom inherited the Sun Throne, didn’t possess Marguerite’s gifts. Without Marguerite’s strong guidance, without her guile and her wisdom, Nessantico’s flowering was sadly short-lived. The blossom of Marguerite’s promise withered and died in far less time than it had taken it to bloom.
Worse, rivals rose to challenge Nessantico. Firenzcia betrayed her: Firenzcia, the brother city who had always envied her; Firenzcia, who had always been her companion, her strength, her shield, and her sword. Firenzcia left her to form its own empire.
And from the unknown west strode a new, harsher challenge: an alien, unguessed empire as strong as Nessantico herself. Stronger, perhaps; for the Tehuantin-as they were called-not only ripped away Nessantico’s hold on their shores, but sent an army over the sea to plunder and rape and destroy the cities of the Holdings and to shatter the walls of Nessantico herself.
The assault left Nessantico shaken and afraid. She was stained by the soot of magical fire and twice trampled by the boots of foreign soldiers: first the Tehuantin, then the Firenzcians. The architectural beauty of her buildings morphed into toppled columns, broken domes, and roofless husks. The A’Sele was clogged with bodies and refuse.
Nessantico… she was a woman exhausted by her struggles, worn by her cares, and clothed in the shredded tatters of her old supremacy. Her sense of security and inevitability was lost, perhaps-she feared-forever. The smell still lingered in her streets: a malodorous stench of rotting flesh, blood, and ash.
A lesser entity would have collapsed. A lesser entity might have looked at her sad reflection in the fouled waters of the River A’Sele and seen a skeletal death mask staring back. A lesser entity would have given up and ceded her supremacy to Firenzcia or to the unglimpsed cities of the Tehuantin.
Not her.
Not Nessantico.
She gathered the tatters around herself. She drew herself up and cleansed herself as best she could. She cloaked herself in pride and memories and belief, and vowed that one day, one day, the rest of the world would again bow to her.
One day…
But not yet today.
LAMENTATIONS
Allesandra ca’Vorl
Gschnas-the false world ball-swirled below Allesandra in the Grand Hall of the Kraljica’s Palais. The hall was still partially under construction, but that only lent depth to the ambience.
After all, the False World Ball was where reality was turned on its head. Costumes-the stranger and more creative, the better-were required of all attendees. The cracks in the walls had been filled with sculptures of demons or miniature pastoral landscapes, as if the foundations of reality itself had broken, the cracks providing glimpses of entire new worlds set at odd angles to their own. A flock of flightless birds had been brought in from Far Namarro: as tall as a man, with tufts of grandly colored plumage rising from their rumps. They wandered among the revelers. Several teni from the A’Teni’s Temple had been set to keeping a river of crystalline water flowing in a sweeping curve above the dancers’ heads, with large goldfish swimming placidly in the magic-driven currents. The musicians sat on chairs perched within a huge gilded frame hung on the wall at one end of the room, their backdrop a beautifully-painted landscape, so it appeared that a painting of musicians had magically sprung to life.
Gschnas: a fantasy created for the entertainment of the ca’-and-cu’-the wealthy and important people of the city and of the greater Holdings. They had come bearing the Kraljica’s gilded invitations: they packed the floor below Allesandra bedecked in their glittering costumes: A’Teni ca’Paim, the highest ranking teni of the city; Commandant Telo cu’Ingres of the Garde Kralji; Commandant Eleric ca’Talin of the Garde Civile; Sergei ca’Rudka, once Regent and now Ambassador to Firenzcia; all of the members of the Council of Ca’ except the Numetodo Varina ca’Pallo, who was home with her desperately ill husband…
“Kraljica, you look stunning.” Talbot ci’Noel, her aide, came up alongside her as she peered over the balcony at the gathering. He was dressed as a monkey, an ironic costume for a man who was always exceedingly proper and elegant, and who ruled the palais staff with a fist of iron and a voice of fire. Behind the furred snout of the mask, his lips smiled. “Are you ready for your entrance?” Already, the dozen or so teni had begun their chanting. Talbot tested-for what seemed the hundredth time-the ropes attached to the harness concealed in Allesandra’s gown: a flowing, billowing fantasy of chiffon and lace ribbons, so that when she moved, trails of shimmering color rippled in vain pursuit.
“I’m ready,” she told Talbot. Two servants came forward, each with a glass ball enchanted with Numetodo spells-Talbot was a Numetodo himself, and Varina, the A’Morce of the Numetodo, had herself placed the spells in the glass balls. Allesandra took one in each hand. Talbot gestured to another of the servants on the floor below, who in turn signaled the musicians. The gavotte they had been playing abruptly ended, followed by an ominous, low roll of the drums like thunder. The chanting of the teni increased, and the ceiling of the palais was suddenly obscured by dark, roiling clouds from which lightning hissed and arced. Allesandra spoke the spell-word Varina had given her, and the globes in Allesandra’s hands blossomed with pure, white light-so bright that Allesandra, wearing glasses with smoked lenses as protection, could barely see for the coruscating brilliance. Anyone looking up at these sudden twin suns was momentarily blinded. Allesandra felt the ropes pull and lift her: she was gliding up and over the balcony rail, then descending slowly toward the floor. The glass globes were cold in her hand with the Numetodo magic, and the globes now flared brilliant trails of sparks, as if two slow meteors were descending from the heavens to earth, a human figure trapped in their intense radiance. Allesandra heard the applause and cheers welling up to greet her. Her feet touched the marble floor (she was certain she could almost hear Talbot’s sigh of relief), and the light within the globes blossomed-an iridescent and almost painful blue, followed by pure, aching gold: the colors of the Holdings. At the same time, servants hurried from the sides of the hall to remove the ropes from the harness catches and take her glasses. The ropes were hastily pulled up as the globes maintained their brilliance, then finally went dark.
And there, as eyesight slowly returned to the onlookers, was the Kraljica, her crown on her head. The ovation was pleasingly deafening. “Thank you all,” she said as they bowed and cheered. “Thank you. Now, please-enjoy the ball!” She gestured, and the music began once more, and the couples on the dance floor bowed to each other and resumed the dance. The ca’-and-cu’ pressed around her in their costumes, bowing and murmuring their appreciation, and she smiled to them as she passed among them.
She saw Sergei and gestured for him to join her. He bowed-awkwardly, his arthritic body no longer as supple and flexible as it had been when she’d first known him-and he came over to her, leaning heavily on his cane. He smiled at her, the reflective silver paint on his face cracking slightly as he did so. Sergei’s silver nose-the false one he always wore to replace the one of flesh he’d lost in his youth-seemed almost to be part of him tonight. A patchwork of small mirrors covered the bashta he wore. Crazed, broken reflections of herself and the dancers and crowd behind her moved madly around him. The lights of the hall flared and shimmered in the tiny mirrors, dancing from the nearest walls.