The man grunted and crouched next to Eneas. He touched Eneas’ leg through his uniform pants, his hands probing. Eneas gave an involuntary yelp as the nahualli manipulated his foot. The man grunted again. He called to someone, and a young man came running over with a large leather pouch that he gave to the spellcaster. The man rummaged inside and brought out a length of white flaxen cloth. He wrapped it around Eneas’ leg, slapping at Eneas’ hand when he tried to stop him. “Lay back,” he said, “if you want to live.”
After wrapping Eneas’ leg completely, the nahualli stood. He made a gesture and spoke a word in his own language. Immediately, Eneas felt the cloth tightening around his leg and he cried out. He clawed at the fabric, but it was no longer soft flax. His leg felt as if it were encased in a vise of unrelenting steel, and a slow fire raged within his limb as he thrashed on the ground, as the Nahual chanted in his own language.
Eneas’ thrashing did no good. The heat flared until he screamed with the pain…
… and the fire abruptly went out. Eneas tore at the cloth again, and it was only cloth and nothing more. He unwrapped his leg while the nahualli watched impassively, expecting to see his flesh blistered and black and crushed. But the bruises that had mottled his leg were gone, and the swelling around his ankle had subsided.
“Now get up,” the nahualli said.
Eneas did. There was no pain and his leg was whole and strong.
Cenzi, what has he done? I’m sorry… “Why did you do this?” Eneas said angrily.
The man looked at Eneas the way one regarded a witless child. “So you could walk.”
“Healing with the Ilmodo is against the Divolonte,” Eneas said angrily. “My recovery was in Cenzi’s hands, not yours. It is His choice to heal me or not. You savages use the Ilmodo wrongly.”
The nahualli scoffed at that. “I used a charm that I could have used on one of my own, O’Offizier. You’re standing, you’re healed, and yet you’re ungrateful. Are all of your people so arrogant and stupid?”
“Cenzi-” Eneas began, but the man cut him off with a gesture.
“Your Cenzi isn’t here. Here, Axat and Sakal rule, and it is the X’in Ka and not your Ilmodo that I’ve used. I’m not one of your teni. Now, you’ll walk with me.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“No place you would know. Walk, or die here if that will make you feel better.”
“You’ll kill me anyway. I saw what you did to the ones you captured.” Eneas gestured toward the devices on the man’s belt. The nahualli touched them, his fingers stroking the curved bone.
“Believe what you will,” he said. “Walk with me, or die here. I don’t care which.”
He began to walk away. Standing, Eneas could see the Westlander encampment being broken around him in a gloomy, rain-threatening morning. Already, many of the Tehuantin troops were marching away to the northeast: their offiziers mounted, the men walking with long spears over their shoulders. Eneas could see the blackened circle that was the remains of the great campfire he’d seen the night before, still smoking and fuming. The unmistakable blackened, spoked arches of a rib cage rose from the embers. He shuddered at that, knowing that the skeleton must be ca’Matin or another of his fellow soldiers.
Eneas saw the nahualli gesture to one of the warriors he passed, pointing back to Eneas. Cenzi, what should I do? What do You want of me?
As if in answer, the clouds parted to the northwest and he saw a shaft of sun paint the emerald hills in the distance before vanishing again.
“Wait,” Eneas said. “I’ll walk with you.”
Audric ca’Dakwi
“ You can’t tell anyone that I speak to you, Audric,” Gremma said. The painted eyes in her portrait glinted in warning, and her varnished face frowned. “You do understand that, don’t you?”
“I could… tell Sergei,” Audric suggested. He stood before the painting, holding a candelabra. He’d dismissed Seaton and Marlon for the night, though he knew that they were sleeping in the chamber beyond and would come if he called. His breathing was labored; he fought for every breath, the words coming out in gasping spasms. He could feel the heat of the fire in the hearth on his front. “He would
… believe me. He would… understand. You trusted… him, didn’t you?”
But the face in the painting shook her head, the motion barely perceptible in the erratic candlelight. “No,” she whispered. “Not even Sergei. That I am speaking to you, that I am advising you must be our secret, Audric. Our secret. And you must start by asserting yourself, Audric: as I did, from the very start.”
“I’m not… sixteen. Sergei is… Regent, and it is… his word that… the Council of Ca’… listens to… Sigourney and the others…” The effort of speaking cost him, and he could not finish. He closed his eyes, listening for her answer.
“The Regent and the Council must understand that you are the Kraljiki, not Sergei,” Marguerite interrupted sharply. “The War in the Hellins… It is not going well. There is danger there.”
Audric nodded, eyes still closed. “Sergei has… suggested withdrawing… our troops, or perhaps…” He paused as another fit of coughing took him. “… even abandoning the cities… we’ve established in… the Hellins until… the Holdings are. .. one again, when we can… give them the resources…”
“No!” The word was nearly a screech, so loud that Audric clapped hands to ears and opened his eyes wide, surprised to see that the mouth in the painting wasn’t open in rage and that Seaton and Marlon didn’t come rushing into the bedroom in panic-but hands over ears could not stop her voice in his head. “Do you know what they called me early in my reign, Audric? Did your lessons maister tell you that?”
“He told me,” he said. “They called you… the ‘Spada Terribile’… the Awful Sword.”
The face in the painting nodded in the candles’ pale gleam. “And I was that,” she said. “The Awful Sword. I brought peace to the Holdings first through the sword of my army, before I ever became the Genera a’Pace. They forget that, those who remember me. You must be strong and firm in the same way, Audric. The Hellins: theirs is a rich land, and it could bring great wealth to the Holdings, if you have the courage to take it and keep it.”
“I will,” he told her fervently. Images of war fluttered in his mind, of himself on the Sun Throne with a thousand people bowing to him, and no Regent by his side.
“Good,” she answered. “Excellent. Listen to me and I will tell you what to do to be the greatest of the Kraljiki. Audric the Great; Audric the Beloved.”
At her smile, he nodded finally. “I will be that,” he said. He took in another gasping breath and coughed. “I will.”
“You will what, Kraljiki?”
Audric spun about with the question, nearly dropping the candelabra with the motion, so violently that two of the candles were snuffed out. The effort sent him into wheezing spasms, and Regent Sergei rushed forward to take the candelabra from his hands and support Audric with an arm around his waist. In the Regent’s burnished and polished nose, Audric glimpsed Archigos Kenne lurking concerned in the shadows near the door with Marlon holding the door open for them. Ca’Rudka helped Audric fall into one of the cushioned chairs in front of the fireplace. Marguerite stared down at him, her expression unreadable. “Here, my Kraljiki, some of the healer’s draught,” ca’Rudka said, pressing a goblet to Audric’s lips as he stared at the painting. Audric shook his head and pushed it away.
She says that the healers won’t help, he wanted to say but did not, and Marguerite’s tight-lipped mouth curved into a slight smile. Audric’s eyelids wanted to close but he forced them open. “No,” he told ca’Rudka.
The Regent frowned but set the goblet down. “I’ve brought the Archigos,” he said. “Let him pray for you…”
Audric glanced up at the painting and saw his great-matarh nod. He echoed it himself, and Archigos Kenne hurried into the bedchamber. As the Archigos busied himself with his chanting and gestures, Audric ignored both of them. He could see only the painting and his great-matarh’s serene gaze. She spoke to him as Kenne touched his chest and the warmth of the Ilmodo lessened the congestion in his lungs.