The foyer was empty when he pushed aside the curtain, and she followed him up the stairs. The sound of talking grew louder, until she could make out individual voices in the mix. The stairs entered out onto a balcony that circled the floor below, lit brightly by the same cold light that had been in the globe downstairs. “Here, Ana,” Karl said. He was standing at the railing to the balcony, behind a scrim of thin, dark fabric. “Those below can’t see you if you stand behind this, but you’ll be able to see them well enough.” As she started forward, he raised a hand. “You understand the trust I’m showing you, Ana? You’ll see the faces of the Numetodo who live in Nessantico, and that’s knowledge that the Archigos, A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca, and Commandant ca’Rudka would find extremely interesting. You will literally hold these people’s lives in your hands. I must have your promise now that you won’t reveal what you see here.”
“How do you know my promise is good?”
A momentary smile. “That’s the same objection Mika gave me. I’ll tell you what I told him: I look at you, and I know. Swear it,” he said.
“Swear it on Cenzi’s name.”
“I thought Numetodo didn’t believe in Cenzi.”
“I don’t,” he answered. “But you do.”
He nodded. He beckoned her forward.
The room below was large and open. There were perhaps thirty people below, most of them seated before a small raised dais where Mika stood. She recognized none of them. “So few?” Ana whispered.
“You’d think from the threat that A’Teni ca’Cellibrecca says we are that there would be hundreds of us, wouldn’t you?” Karl answered. “I wish that were the case. There are others who couldn’t be here tonight, but not many. Not in Nessantico herself. Watch, though, and you’ll see what the Numetodo can do.”
“. . tonight will be her first time,” Mika was saying. “Her name within the group is Varina. Please make her feel welcome.” There was a smattering of applause as a young woman came up on the stage. “Be kind, now,” Mika said to the others as the girl stood there. “Go on, Varina. Demonstrate what you’ve learned to do.”
Varina nodded. She took a long breath, closing her eyes. She began to chant: a phrase that wasn’t in the Ilmodo language Ana had been taught, though it had affinities-the same cadences and guttural vowels, and she thought she recognized a word or two pronounced strangely.
Still, these weren’t the calls to Cenzi that were a part of every chant she’d been taught. Varina’s hands moved with the chant, and Ana saw the beginnings of light forming around them. As Varina continued her chant, the glow strengthened until it was a fitful, small ball of light resting now on the upturned palm of her left hand. She ended the chant with a deep sigh. The ball of light sputtered and failed.
There was applause again from the onlookers. Varina nodded, then her eyes rolled backward in her head and she collapsed to the floor of the dais. She tried to stand again and failed. Mika gestured and two of the Numetodo came forward; they helped her to a chair. Another brought her water. Someone placed a dampened cloth over her forehead.
“You don’t seem impressed, Ana,” Karl said as Mika took the stage again.
“How long did it take her to learn that?” Ana asked.
“Mika started working with her around the time of the first winter snow,” Karl answered. “It takes time.”
“I could do that, and better, the first day U’Teni Dosteau began teaching us,” Ana said. “So could nearly everyone in my class. Even in the Toustour there are stories of witches and sorcerers who could use the Ilmodo, however badly. The Moitidi, they are always trying to taunt Cenzi, to defy Him, and they allow the Ilmodo to be tainted despite Cenzi’s wishes.”
Karl was shaking his head. “Varina called on neither Cenzi, nor any of the Moitidi,” he responded. “There are no gods or demigods involved at all. Only a certain set of words and hand motions: something anyone could be taught. But you’re right-you teni do learn to shape the Ilmodo faster than us, and Varina has little skill as yet. But watch. Watch.”
Mika was speaking again. “It’s important that we understand the Scath Cumhacht and how to contain and shape it,” he was saying. “But as I’ve been telling you, it’s also vital to learn how to store the power of the Scath Cumhacht so it can be used quickly. That’s where those of Concenzia are lacking.” He glanced quickly at the scrim along the balcony, then back to the audience. “Look there,” he said, pointing to an unlit lamp set on a table at the end of the room.
He spoke a single word and thrust his hand in the direction of the lamp. The word was concussive, as if someone had struck a great, invisible drum. Ana nearly jumped backward with the sound. No human voice alone could have made that sound. At the same moment, the lamp flared-as bright as that of the teni-lamps, though the color was greenish. The watchers applauded, but Mika raised his hand to quiet them. He spoke another drumbeat word and gestured again. The lamp flared once more, but this time not with light but enormous heat, as if a roaring furnace gaped there. The heat was intense, so much so that Ana brought an arm up to shield her face. She thought that in another moment, the walls and curtains around the room would erupt into flame. Mika spoke a final word, and the heat and light both vanished as if they had never been there.
There was no applause this time. There was only a relieved silence.
“That,” Mika said, “is what you need to learn. That is what we will teach you when you’re ready.”
Ana’s hands were white-knuckled on the railing of the balcony.
“He gave no chant, made no hand patterns, just a single word and gesture. .” She looked down again at Mika. He was smiling and walking about the dais; the shaping of what he called the Scath Cumhacht seemed to have affected him not at all. Ana looked back at Karl. “He’s not tired from the spell-casting?”
“He performed the incantations hours beforehand, and then rested from his exertions.” Karl told her, as if guessing her thoughts. “We’re doing nothing different than what you teni do, Ana-handling the Ilmodo is a great effort and it costs the person who does it. But Mika made his payment several turns of the glass ago. He needed to speak only a release word for the energy he was holding. They don’t teach you that in your classes, do they?”
“
Karl nodded. “I was one of those who taught Mika.” He paused, tilting his head. “And I could teach you. Or does your Faith insist that such a thing can’t be done?”
Ana stared down at the gathering, where Mika was talking to several of the Numetodo. The spells Mika had formed-they were nothing that she hadn’t seen U’Teni Dosteau show the acolytes, that she couldn’t do herself. She could do more, in fact-as she knew from her confrontation with her vatarh or the illusion she’d cast for the Kraljica- and the war-teni devised enormously destructive spells. But they all required time and effort; they all required the chants and the patterns of the hands; they all had to be cast immediately afterward, and they cost the shaper in weariness and pain. U’Teni Dosteau had been amazed by Ana’s quickness at shaping the Ilmodo, the rapid casting of power that had protected the Archigos.
But this. . A single word, a single gesture. .
“You teni shape the Ilmodo with your Faith,” Karl was saying, but she had trouble concentrating on what he said. “I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that you of the Concenzia, especially the war-teni, can create spells more powerful than any Numetodo, but you’ve had long centuries to learn the ways of the Ilmodo. We learn more with each passing year. But I want you to think beyond just the shaping of the Ilmodo to the implications, Ana.”
He glanced down at the shell around her neck, and Ana put her hand over the ridged shape. “You explain the shapes of shells and fish in the stones in terms of the Toustour,” Karl continued, “but we look for other explanations-explanations that can be proved or disproved through examination. I don’t know for certain yet, but I suspect that we’ll learn that the shells of the mountains were once indeed shells within the sea. The explanation makes at least as much sense as the creation story of the Toustour, and it doesn’t require gods, only natural forces within the earth. And if the Scath Cumhacht, your Ilmodo, can be reached and shaped by those without faith, if we Numetodo can even learn to do things that the teni can’t do, then perhaps the Scath Cumhacht also has nothing to do with faith and belief at all. You have to at least acknowledge the possibility, Ana. You’ve seen it here tonight with your own eyes.”
Her hand tightened around the shell until she felt the edges press into her flesh. She shook her head in mute
