A Magic of Dawn

Niente

Niente had begun to believe that they might come within sight of the great city’s walls uncontested. The Tehuantin army was descending from the hills into a lush valley, green and fragrant with the strange trees of the region, dotted with pockets of farmland and vineyards carved from the forest. It was land that Niente remembered, land that Niente had often recalled in his dreams. The army had split into three arms, as Atl had seen in the bowl-the southern arm crossing the river, a northern arm moving north to the higher road, and the main bulk continuing to follow the road that paralleled the river.

That’s where Tecuhtli Citlali was ensconced; that’s where Atl, as Nahual, and Niente followed.

They knew that the Easterners were pacing them. There had been the occasional strange and brief skirmishes with their horsed warriors, who would come shouting challenge and then plunge madly into their ranks-even the High Warriors were talking about the undoubted bravery of the Easterners, while at the same time shaking their heads at the foolhardy and useless tactics. There were occasional flurries of arrows from the heights as they passed through the winding valleys, but the shields of the warriors took most of them, and the nahualli used their spell-staffs to great effect. Of the Easterner spellcasters, their war-teni, there was no sign at all.

All of the Easterner attempts to impede their progress were little more than the buzzing of flies to the army.

They followed the curve of the river, with the spires of a village just visible over the tops of the trees. They rode through a pastoral landscape, though the ordered fields had been emptied of crops and livestock. That was undoubtedly so that the Tehuantin army would have to forage farther afield to provision themselves, which they did-raiding parties were sent out wide from the arms, taking cattle and other livestock and stripping the fields as bare as if locusts had descended on them, all the food sent back to feed the demanding stomachs of the warriors. The occasional farmhouse or mansion they encountered was abandoned and silent. The sounds of the army drowned out the sounds that Niente imagined they might have heard had they been riding unaccompanied along the road: the calls of the Easterner birds, the wind rustling the leaves, the lowing of cattle.

But even so, this land felt too quiet. Niente began to peer around, uneasy; he noticed Citlali and the High Warriors around him doing the same, and he realized that the vanguard riders, who should have reported back some time ago, were still absent.

There was movement on the low ridges around them: in the afternoon sun, bright stalks of men rose from the ground. “Atl!” he said warningly, grasping for his spell-staff, but the warning was already late.

Fireballs arced in the sky toward them, fuming black smoke trailing behind, and the air was feathered with the shafts of arrows. They fell, hissing, and warriors snapped up shields against them; still, Niente saw several warriors fall even as he sent counter-spells toward the fireballs. The nearest exploded far above them, with a boom that made him want to clap his hands over his ears. Atl was also chanting release words, and another of the fireballs careened wildly to one side, plowing into the meadow and spewing mud and grass and liquid fire where it landed. But another was streaking too fast toward the banners of the Tecuhtli; Niente slammed a counter-spell against it, but it was already too close. He could feel the heat as the war-spell erupted into sticky gouts of flame, and the concussion washed over them. Niente was thrown from his horse as screams came from the closest warriors. For a moment, Niente was pinned under his horse as the beast tried to scramble up again. The grass was afire on either side of the dirt road. Easterner trumpets shrilled a rising sequence of notes, followed by the roar of their soldiers charging and the shouts of the High Warriors as they tried to restore order to the the startled and shattered ranks.

Metal clanged against metal as Niente struggled to rise, using his spell-staff as a cane. A hand took his arm and pulled: Atl, his face sooty and stained.

All around him was chaos. There were scores of dead warriors near the road, where the fireball had struck, but Tecuhtli Citlali and High Warrior Tototl were yet alive, shouting and gesturing to the left, where a full-scale battle was underway between the Easterners and the Tehuantin forces. I have never seen this attack, Niente realized. This is new… Bellowing, his spear out, Citlali was seating himself again on his horse, held by two warriors. “Nahual Atl!” Niente heard Citlali shout. “To me! To me!”

Atl’s hand left Niente’s arm. He leaped astride his own mount. “Nahualli!” Atl called, “to the Tecuhtli!” Citlali and Tototl already galloping toward the front line of the fray, and now Atl yanked at the reins of his horse in pursuit. Niente looked for his own horse, saw the animal standing with head down a few paces away. He went to the creature-limping, feeling muscles pulling angrily all along his side. The horse shied away as he approached, and he saw that its right foreleg was broken; it could put no weight on it. Niente cursed. He began a shuffling run, joining the rush of warriors toward the battle line halfway across the meadow. Ahead, he could see the nahualli casting their own war-spells toward the enemy ranks, and he lifted his own spell-staff to join the barrage even as he ran, shouting the release words.

Fire and lightnings flickered down from sudden, low clouds. They slammed to the ground well up the ridge and in the midst of the charging Easterners. The warriors roared-a war cry to Sakal, calling down the wrath of the sun-god-and surged forward. Niente could see the banners of Citlali flying up the rise with the Easterners already fleeing before him, their front lines broken, their wounded being dragged ignominiously away. The retreat was humiliating and complete. Citlali called a halt to the counterattack as the Easterners melted away into the forest and the strips of wooded area between the fields. Easterner trumpets shrilled a falling sequence. The banner of the Tecuhtli fluttered briefly at the top of the rise-Niente could see Atl alongside him-then Citlali began to canter down the hill toward the road again, Tototl following behind him. Niente couldn’t see his face past the red eagle tattooed on his face and the blood spattered over it. Niente pushed forward through the milling warriors to where Citlali was dismounting. The Tecuhtli’s sword blade was covered in gore.

Now he could see the expression on Citlali’s face: he was furious as he gazed at the dead and injured warriors, as healers scurried forward to care for the living and the priests to give rites to the dead. Citlali bent down to several of them, touching faces that he and Niente had known for years. The smell of burnt flesh was strong, and the grass of the meadow was still afire around some of them.

Atl was standing not far from Citlali and Tototl. His spell-staff hung from his hand as if it were exhausted. His head was shaking, as if in denial. “I didn’t see this, Taat,” he said to Niente as he approached. “I looked, but this was hidden. Why didn’t I see it?”

“Why, indeed?” Another voice intruded before Niente could answer. Citlali had turned to the two of them. “I have two nahualli who are reputed to be the strongest since Mahri at far-sight, yet neither of you gave me any hint of this. I don’t grieve for the loss-our warriors died the good death, in battle, as they should. But you, Atl, told me that the Easterners wouldn’t engage us fully again until we reached the great city.” His red-eyed gaze turned to Niente. “And you said you could see very little at all. Why? Has Axat abandoned us?”

Both Niente and Atl shook their heads simultaneously. “Something has changed,” Niente said. “I’ve told you many times before, Tecuhtli, that Axat shows what can be, not what will be. Something has changed with the Easterners.”

Citlali sniffed derisively. “That’s clear enough,” he said, waving his hand at the smoke and bodies around them. “Find out what, and what it means to us. Find out now.”

The sun was a golden bowl dying in the west, and the mist of the future rose green around their faces. The nahualli watched them, silent; Tecuhtli Citlali watched as well, with the High Warriors grouped around him.

In the scrying bowl, the present split and tore, and the shreds of the future twisted and curled away. Niente chased after them with his mind; alongside him, Atl was doing the same. The chase was as exhausting as any physical one. So close to the moment, the threads of possibilities were snarled and interwoven. Images kept rising from the mist and it was difficult to see them long enough to understand their meanings.

There: the face of a king, or so Niente assumed it was from the golden band around his head, waved a sword with a host behind him dressed in black and silver, rather than the blue-and-gold livery of the army of the great city. Niente remembered those colors-the colors of the army that had come to the succor of the city after Tecuhtli Zolin had taken it. Niente trembled, seeing that…

But the mist rolled over the king, and he saw a queen sitting on a glowing throne with red fire all around her. A young woman lifted a knife that glittered in the fire’s glow, and a man stood near the throne as well, and the furious blaze within the room seemed to issue from his uplifted hands…

Cold mist extinguished the fire and bore it away. Now Niente stared down at ranks of people, but these were not soldiers in glittering armor, but plain-clothed folks, and they pointed odd devices toward Niente, not unlike the eagle claws that the nahualli used for sacrifice. The devices spat smoke and fire, and black bumblebees came spitting from them, rushing toward Niente…

But the mist took them, too.

A wind blew through the mist, and there before him, for an enticing moment, he glimpsed again the Long Path. It had changed since the last time Niente had seen it. This future was still strewn with the fallen banners of the Tehuantin. Far down the path, he saw the banners of the Tehuantin flying alongside the blue-and-gold banners of the Easterners, and two men underneath, one with the red eagle tattoo of the Tecuhtli and a woman wearing the clothing of the Easterners with a golden scepter in her hand. The two stood together, and they smiled at each other, and there was no animosity between them at all. They stood on a hill, and to one side were the odd, domed buildings of the Easterner and to the other stepped pyramids like those of Tlaxcala, and people were passing back and forth between them.

The mist hid the middle ground of the Long Path, but close to Niente, the mists now rolled away, and he saw Citlali there, dead, and a nahualli alongside him. Niente bent closer to the bowl. On the nahualli’s youthful, muscular arm, gold sparkled: the band of the Nahual. Standing over them, as if responsible for their deaths, he glimpsed the back of another nahualli: an old man’s bald skull, a wisp of hair, and-as the nahualli turned-a crumpled and scarred visage with a blind left eye.

Niente recoiled with a gasp…

“No…” Niente whispered, and the breath of his denial shifted the mists so that the Long Path vanished, only to reveal yet another Long Path. At the end of this one, he could see Tlaxcala, but the floating city burned in the center of the lake and the great pyramids were broken and tumbled. As with the previous vision of the Long Path, the middle ground again was obscured, but images flickered closer to him. There, Tecuhtli Citlali sat on a glowing throne under a domed roof, with the blue-and-gold banner on the tiled floor before him, and several Easterners prostrate before him as if ready to be sacrificed to Axat and Sakal so that the rest of their people might live.

Niente breathed again, and the cold green vapors wrapped around his face. He felt his face suddenly wet, and he realized that he had touched the water of the scrying bowl. With the touch, the visions dissolved and he was staring only at a bowl.

He came back to reality slowly, gasping for breath as if from a long run. Tecuhtli Citlali was staring at him grimly, and at his left, Atl had already lifted his head from his own bowl. Several of the lesser nahualli came forward quickly and took away the bowls and tables. “Well?” Citlali said. “What did Axat show you?”

Niente said nothing; from the side of his vision, he saw Atl glance briefly at him. “The vision I saw still shows our victory, Tecuhtli,” he said. “I saw you on the Easterner’s throne.”

Citlali’s gaze had remained on Niente. “And you, Uchben Nahual? Is that what you saw also?”

Niente lifted his head. He could feel his hands shaking, and one of the lesser nahualli came rushing forward to hand him his spell-staff. He took it gratefully, leaning heavily on it. He blinked, trying to clear his head of the visions. The Long Path… Axat has gifted you with two choices… “I saw the same, Tecuhtli,” he said truthfully.

“Hah!” Tecuhtli Citlali rose to his feet, stamping once on the ground as Tototl and the other High Warriors roared their approval. “Then we go forward, and we will take their great city, and we will make widows of their wives and orphans of their children if they resist us.”