She wondered what had happened.
ENGAGEMENT
Audric ca’Dakwi
Someone was screaming. Over and over and over.
S When Audric opened his eyes, everything was tinged with red as if the world had been painted with blood. Clots of it swam over his vision. His breath was a rasp, a husk; he could barely draw breath. He seemed to be in his own chambers, in his own bed, but he couldn’t move his body at all. His face itched, and he wanted to bring his hand up to scratch it, but he could not lift either hand or move his feet. He was afraid to lift his head and look down, afraid of what he might see.
And the pain… There was so much pain, and he wanted to scream but he could only moan, a thin, eternal cry. He could feel hot tears running down his face.
“You can’t die. You can’t…” Her voice was as torn and ragged, a bare whisper.
“Great-Matarh?” he asked. “Where are you? Marlon? Seaton? Where is Kraljica Marguerite?”
His voice came from an impossible distance. His ears were full of a continuous roar, as if the city were falling around him. “Marlon? Seaton?” he called again. The pain surged over him like a great, breaking wave. He tried to scream, but nothing emerged from his open mouth.
A face loomed over him and he blinked. He thought he recognized Archigos Kenne. Teni-chants mixed in with the roar in his ears. “Archigos?”
“Yes, Kraljiki. I came as soon as I heard.” He could barely hear the Archigos, the words lost in the roaring in his ears.
“What happened?” The two words each weighed as much as the great marble blocks of the palais facade. He could barely spit them out. He closed his eyes.
“We’re still not certain, Kraljiki. O’Offizier cu’Kinnear… he may have been a Numetodo, or…” The Archigos’ voice faded. Audric opened his eyes again; the Archigos’ mouth was working as if he were still speaking, but Audric could hear only the red-tinged roar, and it swelled and with it the pain again, and he tried to scream along with it, but it was only a gasp. “… never know now… Councillor ca’Ludovici terribly injured… Marlon and Seaton dead…” the Archigos was saying, but Audric was no longer listening.
He had glimpsed the painting of his great-matarh. It leaned against the wall near his bed. The thick frame was shattered along its left side, and there were great rents in the canvas itself, frayed wounds crawling over Marguerite’s face. He moaned again. “No!” he tried to shout, as if the denial could push it all away and change everything.
He remembered. He wasn’t certain. The o’offizier approaching the Sun Throne, a flash… then nothing until now.
You can’t die…!
The pain rushed in once more, and this time he felt his whole body shaking and jerking in response, the middle of his body arching up, and the Archigos was pressing him back down and shouting urgently to someone else in the room. “… whatever you can… the Ilmodo.. . Cenzi will forgive…”
The pain threatened to tear him in half, to snap him like a winter branch, but suddenly it was gone. Gone. His eyes were open, and he could see Archigos Kenne screaming at the palais healer and the woman teni in her green robes, and there were other people in the room and they were all shouting but he could hear nothing, nothing but the roar growing louder and louder. “You can’t die,” and the pain at least was gone and he wanted to lift his hand toward his great-matarh but his body still would not move and he could not even pull in his breath even though his lungs ached and he tried… and tried… and.. .
Niente
He had hoped that the taking of the island of Karnmor would have been enough, that Tecuhtli Zolin would have been satisfied with that demonstration of Tehuantin power and they would take to their ships and return home. But Zolin had looked east instead. “Weto have struck a wound to the body,” he said, “but the head remains, and the body will heal unless we strike. I know what you’d tell me, Nahual, but now is the time to strike. I feel it. Ask Axat. She will tell you.” Niente stared into the scrying bowl, sprinkling the herbs over the water. Maybe it was because the water here was less pure, or maybe it was because the land of his own gods was so distant, or maybe it was that his own ability had waned, but again the images he saw reflected there were too confused and too fleeting, and they left him uneasy.
… A boy on a glowing throne, but his face was a fleshless skull, and there: was that the Easterner he had ensorcelled? A woman lurked in the background, hard to see… But the water swirled and when it cleared again Niente saw another boy on another throne, and a woman behind him also, with a green-robed, dark-haired teni beside her
… Armies crawled over a broken land with banners swaying, marching over ground strewn with bodies… Fire and a temple, and ranks of people in green robes praying… A great city with a river running through its midst, and smoke rising from its great buildings… A Tehuantin warrior on the ground, a spear through him, and the body of a nahualli alongside with a broken spell-staff, but the water was murky now and he could not see the faces that lay there to know who they were, though a queasy roiling churned in his gut, and he suddenly didn’t want to see…
“Well?” Tecuhtli Zolin asked, and Niente glanced up from the bowl. The Techutli had entered his tent and was watching him. The eagle of his rank spread red-feathered wings down his cheeks as the beak opened in a fierce cry on his forehead.
They were encamped on the edge of a great, wide river that one of the Easterners they’d captured had called the A’Sele. Far up the river, they were told, was Nessantico, the capital of the Holdings. The Tehuantin fleet was anchored close by, near where the mouth of the A’Sele emptied into the Middle Sea, their hulls low in the water with the plunder of Karnmor.
They had left the city of Karnor in ruins a hand of days ago. The city had been raped and plundered but not held; the rest of the great island had been left entirely untouched. Instead, Zolin had taken the army back on the ships, sailing out from Karnor Harbor and around Karnmor to the mouth of the A’Sele, where the army had taken to land once more. They had met little resistance. The people of the Holdings had melted away before them like spring snow, retreating and vanishing into the forests and back roads of the land, abandoning the villages with their strangely-shaped houses and buildings. This was land that had been tamed for generations: with rich farms and fields, with wide roads, paved with cobbles inside the villages and lined with stone fences outside. This was a domesticated land, not wild like the slopes of the Shield Mountains, but more like the farmlands of the great cities around the shore of the Inland Sea, or the canals of Tlaxcala, the capital built out in the sea itself.
“Nahual Niente?”
He started, realizing that he was still staring into the bowl though it was only his own uncertain and spell-ravaged reflection that he saw there, his clouded left eye frighteningly white. A drop of sweat fell from his brow into the water, shivering the image of his face. He lifted his head.
“I saw battle,” he told Zolin. “And a boy king on the throne. His face was a skull.”
“Ah, then perhaps your Easterner has fulfilled his task?”
Niente shrugged.
“The battle-who won?”
“I don’t know. I saw… I saw a dead warrior, and a dead nahualli.”
Zolin scoffed. “Warriors always die,” he said. “Nahualli, too. It is the way of things.” Then, he stopped and his eyes narrowed, swaying the wings of the eagle. “Was it me you saw?”
Niente shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered, but elaborated no further.
“Did you see us sailing home?” the Tecuhtli asked.
“No.” Another single word, and Zolin nodded.
“You don’t want to be here, do you? You think I’m making a mistake.”
Niente tossed aside the water in the scrying bowl. He wiped the bowl dry with the hem of his shirt, wondering how bluntly he should answer Zolin. He had never been less than honest with Necalli, but Necalli didn’t have Zolin’s dangerous temperament. “We’re a long way from home, in a strange land.”