A Magic of Nightfall

Karl ca’Vliomani

Varina handed Karl the glass ball as Mika watched. Varina’s touch lingered on Karl’s hand for a moment before she released him, and she gave him a smile that was tinged with sadness. Her face seemed more heavily lined than he remembered, as if she’d aged suddenly in the last month.

They were in the meeting hall of the Numetodo House, where once a week the various Numetodo would give reports on their research. There were empty chairs set neatly in rows in front of the small dais on which they stood.

Karl hadn’t mentioned to Mika his visit to the Firenzcian Ambassador the other day; evidently Varina hadn’t either, since Mika hadn’t commented on it.

“It’s just a ball, right?” Mika asked as Karl hefted the globe in his palm. “Though a fairly well-crafted one.” It was heavy and well-cast-Karl could see no air bubbles or defects in the glass: the lens of the sphere gave him a distorted, warped view of the hall. “Do you find it unusual or notable in any other way?”

Karl shrugged. “No. It’s a true glasswright’s work, or an apprentice’s proof-work, but otherwise…”

Mike grinned. “Indeed. What I want you to do, Karl, is speak the word ‘open’ in Paeti and then toss the ball to me.”

Karl hefted the glass again. “Oscail,” he said, and underhanded the small globe in Mika’s direction. What happened next astonished him.

When the glass ball touched Mika’s hand, a coruscation of blue-white flared, sending black shadows dancing around the Numetodo hall, painting momentary crazed black shadows on the back wall and causing Karl to shade his eyes belatedly. He heard Varina’s quick laugh and a handclap of delight. Karl blinked, trying to see through the globules of fading afterimages that haunted his vision. “By all the Moitidi… You two have been working, I see.”

“Not me,” Mika answered. “It’s been Varina alone.” He handed the globe back to Karl-it was simply glass again. “If the Westlanders were able to enchant objects with the Scath Cumhacht, the way you and Ana said Mahri did, then we knew it was possible. And not only that-Mahri gave Ana an enchanted object that she could control by speaking the right word. Anyone could use the magic as long as they know the release word.”

Varina was still smiling. She was rubbing at a long, scabbed wound on her forearm. “We knew it was possible; the rest was simply a matter of figuring out the formula to do it.”

“Varina’s finally managed to puzzle out the sequence,” Mika added. “She swore me to secrecy; said she wanted to surprise you. The spell’s complicated, and takes more time and more energy than you might think. Compared to our own spells, something like this is expensive and far more of a drain on the body than anyone expected, but…” He nodded happily. “It’s reproducible. Finally. Varina says she could teach us, and either of us could do the same.”

Karl glanced at Varina, who nodded without saying anything. She held his gaze almost defiantly. He tossed the ball up in the air. “That’s impressive, Varina. It truly is. But a flash of light is hardly a weapon.”

“Theoretically, any spell within the arcana could be stored in any object: offensive, defensive, whatever,” Varina answered. There was heat in her words. “Theoretically. Practically, well, not yet. I used the light spell because it’s the first and simplest thing we teach an initiate, so it seemed best.” She shook her head. There were white strands in her brown hair that Karl didn’t remember from even a week ago-had they been there all along? “Look, it’s a matter of binding the spell to the object and creating a trigger to activate it-covering the object in the energy of the Scath Cumhacht the way you’d wrap a mistfruit in paper. After that, it’s as if the object is an extension of the spellcaster, though the object itself has to be of good quality or it can’t survive the strain. It took me a while to understand that. But…” She sighed, spreading her hands wide. “Just putting that simple spell in an object was incredibly exhausting, Karl. You won’t be able to imagine just how exhausting until you try it yourself. The process took me three full turns of the glass, and afterward I had to rest for another day to recover. Even now, I still feel the drain on my energy, and I wonder what else it might have cost.” She bit her lower lip, brushed stray wisps of whitened hair behind her ears. “You said that Archigos Ana claimed that old Mad Mahri gave her an enchantment that could literally stop time?”

Karl nodded. “That’s what she told me-it was how she snatched Allesandra from her vatarh. And Mahri was able to switch his body for mine, when I was in the Bastida. His magic…”

“… was utterly beyond ours, then,” she finished for him. “I know. The reports from the war in the Hellins hint at the same. The nahualli of the Westlanders can do more than we can, but… I’ve just proved that their X’in Ka is no more god-driven than the Ilmodo, no matter what they claim or believe.” She pointed to the glass ball. “If I can do this, then my bet is that we can also learn to do the same with more potent spells. It’s just a matter of learning the right formulae to bind the Scath Cumhacht to the physical object. It can be done. We can do it.”

Karl remembered Mahri, who had befriended him and Ana when they thought they were lost, and who had turned out to be not ally, but enemy. Mahri’s ravaged, one-eyed, and furrowed face swam before him as he gazed at Varina. He lifted the glass ball again. “So anyone could have done this spell…” His voice trailed off. The explosion.. . the great flash of terrible light… Ana’s torn body… Magic without hearing or seeing anyone casting the spell… Maybe you’ve been wrong; maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong direction… “Could what happened to Ana have been…?” Karl couldn’t finish the question. It remained lodged in his throat, heavy and solid.

But both Varina and Mika nodded in answer.

“Yes,” Mika told him. “That’s the rest of what we wanted to talk about. Varina and I have already had the same thought. Westlander involvement can’t be ruled out in Ana’s death, and frankly, what happened there makes it seem likely to me. But why, Karl? Why not assassinate the Kraljiki or the Regent, who are directly responsible for the war? Why kill Ana, of all people?”

Because it would be revenge for Mahri. Revenge. That, he could understand. “Right now, I don’t know,” Karl hedged. “But someone here in Nessantico does, I’m certain, and I’m going to find that person.” He took a long breath. They were both staring at him, and he hated the pity he saw in Mika’s eyes, and the deep empathy in Varina’s. “But that’s for later,” he told them. “For now, I want you to teach me this nahualli trick. Let me see how it works.”

Varina seemed to start to say something, then closed her mouth. Mika glanced at her, at Karl. “I think I’ll leave that to the two of you,” he said. “Alia wanted me to bring some lamb home for dinner, and the butcher will be closing his shop soon.” He made his farewells quickly and left them.

For too long after the door shut, neither of them spoke. When they did speak, it was together.

“I’m really sorry about the other day…”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said…”

They laughed, a little uneasily, at the collision of apologies. “You first,” Karl told her, but she shook her head. “All right,” he said. “I’ll start then. You said that my… affection for Ana had blinded me. I’ve been thinking about that, and-”

“Stop, Karl” she said. “Don’t say anything. I was angry and I said things that I had no right to say. I’d… I’d like you to forget them.”

“Even if they were true?”

Her cheeks reddened. “You loved Ana. I know that. Whatever relationship the two of you had…” She shrugged. “It’s not my concern.” She stepped forward, in front of him, close enough that he could see the flecks of color in her pupils and the fine lines at their corners. She reached down and closed his fingers around the glass ball he was still holding, both her hands cupping his. “I can show you how to enchant this. You just have to be patient because-”

“Varina.” She stopped and looked up at him. “You shouldn’t be putting so much of yourself into this.”

Her lips tightened as if she wanted to say something. Then her hands pressed against his again and she looked down. “… because it’s difficult, and you have to think differently about the whole process. But once you make the shift, it all makes sense,” she said. “You have to imagine the ball as an extension of yourself…”