soldiers, who had gathered around them. He spoke to them, sharply, in their own language. The lizard-warrior scowled, but he gestured to his men. One pulled the spear from his matarh’s back, and she screamed again. Nico hurled himself at the lizard-warrior, pummeling at the man’s armor with his fist. The man grabbed Nico in one muscular arm and grunted something to Talis. “Nico!” Talis said. “They’re going to help her. Please listen to me. You have to stop fighting them.”
All the energy left him; he went limp in the lizard-warrior’s grasp.
Two of the warriors crouched down; they tore strips from their clothing and bound it around his matarh’s waist, around the wound. Then one of them gathered up his matarh in his arms; she groaned and her eyes rolled back in her head, but Nico could see that she was still breathing. One of her hands dangled; Nico wriggled in the lizard-warrior’s grasp, and the man let him go. He ran and took his matarh’s hand.
He held it, sobbing, as they walked quickly away from the plaza.
Niente
They had the city.
Or, more properly, they held portions of it. Nessantico was too large and their force was too small to actually control the entire city. They had smashed it instead, they had used black sand to set it afire, they had sent the Garde Civile retreating to the north and south.
The city no longer belonged to the Kraljica and her people, but it was not the Tehuantins’ either.
Niente was certain it would never be theirs.
“Well?” Zolin asked as Niente peered into the water of the scrying bowl.
“Patience, Tecuhtli,” he told the man. “Patience.” But he already knew. The vision had already passed and the water was simply water. But by pretending, he could decide what he wanted to say. By pretending, he could recover from the worst of the weariness and exhaustion the spell cost him.
He’d seen-again-in the midst of the great, ruined city, the dead Tecuhtli and the dead nahualli, and he’d felt again that shiver of certainty that he was seeing Zolin and himself. Nothing had changed. Axat still showed him the same future, the same path. Nothing had altered after this victory; Niente felt that nothing could alter it. It was fixed, as inevitable as the sunrise in the morning.
They were standing in the ruins of the temple, and Zolin sat on the throne the Kraljica had used. A spear had been thrust, butt foremost, into a crevice in the shattered tile floor next to the throne. The Kraljica’s head had been set there, her single, glazed eye staring outward, the hair hanging down obscenely-her body was crumpled against the wall behind the throne where it had been tossed. A fire pit had been made in the middle of the room, fed with the wood of the temple’s pews; thin, gray smoke drifted upward toward a sky that was beginning to turn purple. Tables had been erected around the pit, and a banquet was in progress, served by frightened Easterner prisoners. There was no particular need for their fright; Zolin and the other High Warriors would not have permitted any of them to be harmed. Yes, there would be the inevitable rapes and looting and killings, but the incidents would be few, and those who perpetrated them would be severely punished if they were caught. A few high-ranking offiziers would be sacrificed for the glory of Axat and Sakal, but no other prisoners would come to harm.
The Tehuantin were more lenient and kind victors than the Easterners had been when they came to the Hellins.
As the warriors feasted, Niente gazed into the scrying bowl near the pit. The firelight licked at Niente’s skin, but the warmth couldn’t touch the cold he felt within. He picked up the scrying bowl finally and tossed the water into the blazing coals, which hissed and steamed in response.
“So,” Zolin said, “does Axat see me staying here? I think this a fine place. We could build a new city here, one like this land has never seen, one to rival Tlaxcala, and I could be Tecuhtli here, and the Easterners will serve us as they forced our cousins to serve them.”
“I do see you staying here, Tecuhtli,” Niente told him, and that was no more than the truth.
Zolin slapped the crystalline arms of the throne. He roared with delight, and the warriors gathered in the hall laughed with him. “You see!” he shouted to Niente. “All those worries-I told you, Nahual. I told you.”
“You did, Tecuhtli,” Niente told him.
Zolin leaned forward on the throne. “Did you see other battles? Did you see me taking new cities?”
Niente shook his head. “No,” he answered. “And that wouldn’t be wise, Tecuhtli. We have no more black sand at all. If we could replenish the warriors who have fallen, if I could bring more nahualli here…” He spread his hands. “I would tell the Tecuhtli…” he began, but there was a commotion at the end of the hall: the High Warrior Citlali, with a man alongside him-a man carrying a spell-staff. Niente squinted into the firelit gloom of the evening; it was not a nahualli that he recognized, and the man was dressed as one of the Easterners, the front of his clothing stained with blood. Still, that face…
“Talis?” Niente said. “Is that you?” The face-he looked years older than he should, his face as ravaged by Axat’s power as Niente’s was, but Niente remembered the youth in the man’s face.
“Niente?” Talis hurried forward and grasped Niente’s forearm, his eyes searching Niente’s face, no doubt as changed as his own. “By Axat, it’s been a long, long time. You’re the Nahual? Good. Good for you…” He saw Tecuhtli Zolin then and half-turned, bowing his head to Zolin. “Tecuhtli. I see that Necalli has fallen.”
Niente was still looking at Talis. There was pain in the man’s eyes that wasn’t of the X’in Ka. “Are you hurt?” he asked, and Talis shook his head.
“No, it’s…” He stopped, and Niente saw worry and sadness collapse in on the man. “I… I have a wife here, and a son. She’s
… been terribly injured. I need to get back to them…”
“We’ve taken her and the boy to the healing tent, Tecuhtli, Nahual,” Citlali broke in. “They’re doing what they can.”
“Good,” Zolin said. “And you may go to them in a moment, Talis. So you are the one the previous Nahual sent here? I know he told Tecuhtli Necalli that you were nearly as strong as Mahri-that you would have been a fine Nahual.” Zolin glanced once over to Niente. “Perhaps that will end up being your fate. I’ve read your reports over the years; they’ve helped us understand and defeat the Easterners. For that, I’m grateful.”
“Tecuhtli,” Citlali said as Zolin paused, leaning back in his chair. “Talis has information you must know, about an army just to the east of the city. That is why I’ve brought him here.”
Talis nodded, and Niente listened to him with growing dread as he talked about this army of Firenzcia, and the reputation of that country’s military. Niente especially was distressed by the growing look of eagerness on Zolin’s face. “Tecuhtli,” Niente said, “this is what the scrying bowl was saying to me. We have done all that we came here to do. We should take ship now and return home before this army comes on us. We could raise a new army and come again with more ships and more warriors and nahualli the next time, and if you wish to sit on this throne as Tecuhtli of the East, we will place you here with enough resources to make that happen. But not now. We are too few-warriors and nahualli-for another great fight, especially without black sand.”
Niente thought that, finally, he had made his point. Zolin grimaced as he sat on the throne, tapping fingers on the crystalline arm. He nodded, as if thinking.
But Talis then dashed any lingering hope. “There is black sand,” Talis said. “Or rather, there are enough of the ingredients here in the city to make much of it. I know where it is.”
Zolin leaned forward on the throne, his eyes widening so that the wings of the eagle danced on his face. “Where? Take us to it now.”
“Tecuhtli, my wife… I need to go to her.”
Niente knew how Zolin would react to that; he wasn’t surprised. “We all have wives and family,” the Tecuhtli retorted. “Our duty is here and now. Citlali, how is the woman?”
Citlali lifted a shoulder. “She is in the hands of those who know best what to do. There’s nothing else that can be done.”
“There. You see, Talis?” Zolin said. “You have your answer. I’m sorry for your wife’s injuries, and I understand that you want to be with her. But your Tecuhtli has need of you also. Nahual Niente is correct-without more black sand, we will lose what we have gained. The black sand, nahualli, that is what is needed.” Zolin leaned forward, elbows on knees. “The wife of a traitor would receive no help at all,” he said.
