A Magic of Twilight

leave,” she said instead. “This is my home. Matarh is here, the Archigos’ Temple is here, and any hope I have of ever defeating the lies that have been spread about me and Archigos Dhosti. If we run, Karl, everyone will think they were all true, and-” She stopped. Sniffed. “Smoke,” she said, her voice catching. “Something’s burning.” She turned, looking back into the room. She thought she could see a dark mist seeping in the twilight of the room, like a black fog seeping from the floorboards on the other side of the room. There was light as well, a ruddy glow penetrating the cracks between the worn blackwood planks.

“Fire,” Ana breathed. “The tavern. .”

“Come on,” Karl said. He took her arm. “We have to get out of here. Quickly-”

They fled from the rooms and down the outside stairs. Flames were already licking at the shutters of the first floor and smoke boiled from the front of the building. The alarm was beginning to spread, with shouts and cries from the nearby buildings as neighbors alerted each other. “Find the utilino!” someone shouted. “We need the fire- teni or the whole block will go!”

Karl was tugging at Ana’s arm as she stood in the center of the lane and stared at the building, the door of the tavern outlined in fire. “We have to leave. You can’t be here when they come.”

“They won’t come in time,” she protested. “You know that. We can put it out. I know the spell.”

“I don’t,” Karl answered, “and that blaze would take a dozen fireteni, Ana. The building’s gone and so will be all the others around it; we can’t stop this.”

She shook away his hand on her arm. “Ana-”

She closed her eyes to his plea. She began to chant, trying to recall the words that U’Teni cu’Dosteau had taught her. Larger gestures, this time; even bigger than before. . The words came slowly, but then she caught the rhythm of the chant and the words flowed easily, her hands shaping the power that she felt rising around her with the chant.

The form that U’Teni cu’Dosteau had taught them was a truncated one, a small practice spell, but she improvised on it, letting her mind find pathways that expanded it. She thought of nothing, just letting her mind open to the Ilmodo, letting her hands move unconsciously. The power continued to build, an invisible storm of rain and wind around her that only she could feel, thrashing and bucking and fighting her.

When it became so strong that she was afraid that she could not hold it back any longer, she stopped chanting, holding the release word in her mind: again, a word that she did not know, a word that Cenzi must have put in her head.

She opened her eyes and at arm’s length cupped her hands around the tavern. She could see her fingers trembling, glowing with cold blue.

She spoke.

The very air answered her.

The spell rushed outward, an invisible, frigid explosion that sent the tavern doors and the shutters of the windows into splinters. The wind shrieked and howled, a scream that caused the people nearby to clap hands to ears. The smoke roiling from the building increased dramatically, but turned a strange pale white that seemed to glow in the moonlight, overpowering the ruddy flames. A quick fa-WHOOMP reverberated along the street, followed by silence.

The building sat: the first story blackened around the open holes of windows and door, wisps of smoke still trailing upward. But no flames were visible. Ana saw it, but then the weariness of the Ilmodo struck her, as strongly as she’d ever experienced it. Her knees buckled, and she felt Karl’s hands go around her to support her, and she heard the crowd yelling, and a voice close to her saying “Ana, you are more dangerous than anyone thought.” The voice was Mahri’s, and she glimpsed his hooded, scarred face in the narrowed tunnel of her vision.

“Mahri,” she said. “I had to. .”

“No, you didn’t, but I’m not surprised that you thought you did,” he told her. “And now we have to get you out of here.”

She felt herself being lifted-“Karl?”-and she saw the buildings moving around her and heard the people shouting around them. . but it was easier to fall into sleep than to worry about it, and Karl and Mahri were there to keep her safe, so she allowed herself to fall away for a time.

She never quite reached unconsciousness. She was aware of movement, of voices, of being carried into somewhere. She must have slept a bit; she woke smelling warm bread and tea. She opened her eyes to daylight in a room she didn’t recognize.

“It’s about time,” she heard Karl say. He came from the outer room with a plate and mug and set it down on the floor next to her mattress, then sat beside it himself. “Four full turns of the glass, I’d bet, if we had a glass to turn. It’s morning.” He smiled. “I have breakfast. I knew you’d be famished.”

He handed her the bread, with a single thin dab of precious butter on it. The smell alone made her ravenous, and she took one of the slices and tore into it hungrily. “Mahri?” she manage to ask between bites.

“He brought us here, then vanished. Haven’t seen him since around daybreak. The man must not sleep like normal people.” She could feel his gaze on her as she reached for another slice and took a sip from the mug of steaming tea. “That was some impressive display of the Ilmodo,” he said to her. “It almost made me want to believe in Cenzi. I think it impressed Mahri, too. He was mumbling to himself the whole time we were carrying you.”

“The fire would have taken so many houses. All those people. .”

“I know. I know why you didn’t listen to me. I just don’t understand how you did all that.”

“I don’t understand how you do what you do, either,” she told him.

“For a time, that made me doubt everything. Especially myself.”

He smiled again. “Evidently you found yourself again.” His hand stroked her cheek; the feel of it on her skin made her shiver.

“No,” she told him, and he pulled his hand away.

“What’s the matter?”

“What’s her name?” Ana asked him. “The woman in Paeti. Your fiancee.”

She wasn’t certain why she said it; the words slipped out, as they had lurked there in her head, waiting. There was a long silence. Karl stared at her. “How did you know?”

“Does that make a difference?” she asked him. It bothered her that he seemed more irritated than ashamed. “What matters more to me is that you never told me about her. What’s her name?”

She watched him take a breath, then another. “Kaitlin,” he said at last. “Ana, I’ve been gone two years now. I don’t know when I’ll return, or if. Kaitlin and I. . we said we’d be faithful. But I think we both knew that I might find someone else, or that she might. .”

“Has it happened?”

He ducked his head. Nodded. “For me, it has,” he said. “I think you know that.”

“And for her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should know, Karl.”

He said nothing. The tea steamed in the mug in her hands. “Has it happened for you?” he asked finally. “With me?”

“Perhaps,” she answered. “I don’t know. Too much has happened and I’m not sure of anything now. But I don’t know that I’m ready for what you want.”

“Because of Kaitlin.”

Ana couldn’t decide whether that was a statement or a question.

She nodded. “Yes. And. . other things. Karl, I may never be ready.”

Had he left then, had he simply nodded and accepted that, she knew that it would all be over between them. She knew that it would have killed whatever it was that had brought them together. It would have changed things between them forever.

He did not. He knelt in front of her and his hands went around hers as she held the mug.

“Then I can wait,” he told her.

Justi ca’Mazzak

The morning fog had lifted several turns of the glass ago, and the sky was crowded with gray clouds drifting