It still led to his own death as well, but he welcomed that. It would be a release from eternal pain. He welcomed the thought of falling into Axat’s embrace at last, of leaving behind the shriveled, tormented, and pained shell of his physical body. That would be no great sacrifice. He’d lived long decades, and he had been Axat’s devoted servant, and he had been both rewarded and punished for that. No, to find his own death would be sweet and he could embrace the Great Winged Serpent without fear, if beyond his death there was still the vision She had granted him. If his death sealed the Long Path.
In his visions atop the Teocalli Axat, Niente had glimpsed a world at peace for a time, a world where East and West respected their individual boundaries, where trade between them was open and free, where the best of both cultures merged into a new whole, where even the worlds of the gods seemed to come together. Yes, there were still battles and strife in this world, but the conflicts were smaller and more easily resolved. People being what they were, it wasn’t possible to find a path where there wasn’t bloodshed and conflict. But down that Long Path, the world as a whole was more benign, more accepting.
Now, Niente looked for that future. It was still there, but the vision was murky and disordered, and he was no longer certain he could find the way to it in reality.
“Taat?”
He heard Atl’s voice, and with the interruption, the green mist dissolved and he was merely staring at his own ugly, shimmering reflection in the water of the bowl. A droplet-like rain-hit the surface of the bowl, rings radiating out from it, touching the edges and rebounding in complex patterns, and Niente realized that he was weeping. He brushed at his eyes with his gnarled, clawed hands. “What?” he asked, blinking and raising his head. The back of his neck was stiff; how long had he been gazing into the bowl?
Atl was staring at him, and Niente wondered how long his son had been there. Perhaps he’d been muttering to the visions in the scrying bowl, as he sometimes did-what might Atl have heard? “What, my son?” Niente asked again, trying to soften his voice.
“The fleet is approaching the next large city, and Tecuhtli Citlali would like to speak to you regarding the vision you have had for this battle.”
“Yes, I’m sure he would,” Niente said. He sighed. Groaning with the effort of moving, hating how his back was bowed and how he shuffled like an old man, he lifted the scrying bowl and took it to the small window of the tiny room. He opened the shutter that kept out the spray and wind, and tossed the water out into the A’Sele. He wiped the bowl with the hem of his robe and handed it to Atl. “Take the bowl and purify it,” he said to his son as if he were an apprentice. “Tell Tecuhtli Citlali that I’ve just asked Axat to grant me Her visions, and that I’ll come to him as soon as I’ve rested for a stripe of the candle.”
“He won’t like that.”
“Indeed he won’t. And that’s part of why I do it.” Niente attempted a smile; he wondered if it showed on his face at all. “One thing the Nahual must teach the Tecuhtli is that we are equals, despite what the Tecuhtli likes to believe. We won’t reach Villembouchure for another day and more. There’s nothing he can do right now to seal our victory. Therefore, he can wait long enough for me to recover my strength.”
Atl grinned at that. He clutched the bowl to his chest. Niente saw Atl’s fingers close around it, almost possessively, stroking the incised figures of animals around the rim with familiarity. He is going to look into the bowl again, too. The realization came to him as a certainty. “I’ll do as you say, Taat,” Atl said. “I’ll give Tecuhtli Citlali your message.”
Niente nodded. Almost, he started to caution Atl not to use the bowl again so quickly, but he did not. You can’t stop him, any more than you could have stopped yourself. Say it, and you only guarantee that he will use it more.
So he said nothing. The vision of Atl laying dead overlaid his true vision. It was as if a corpse walked from the room, and he found himself weeping again and cursing the gift that Axat had given him.
He could not let his son die. That was not something a Taat who loved his son could do, no matter what the consequences. It didn’t matter if saving Atl destroyed the Long Path.
Please don’t set that before me, he prayed to Axat. Please don’t force me to make that choice.
He thought that he heard a distant chuckle in his head as he prayed.
Sergei ca’Rudka
There was a smell to the lower levels of the Bastida: the stink of human desperation, the stench of pain. The very stones were saturated with the odor. Sergei thought that if the Bastida were torn down, a century later the ruins would still exude that foul reek.
It was a smell that he’d loved, in a strange way, for it was a smell that he’d had no small part in creating over the decades. It had been his hand-many times, too many times-that had sent terrified shrieks echoing here, that had caused men and women to lose control of their bladders and bowels, that had spilled blood upon the flags.
His own spirit, he thought, must smell the same. When the soul shredders finally took him, would they recoil from the odor as their claws ripped his immortality from his flesh? Would their nostrils dilate at the sewage he contained?
He wondered about that more and more. But there was nothing he could do to change it. The sickness was as much a part of him as it was a part of these stones, of the Bastida itself.
His body was a Bastida also, a tower that imprisoned his own soul, shrieking unheard in terror in his depths.
His cane made a persistent, steady beat on the stone stairs as he descended. His hips ached, his back pained him with every step until he reached the level footing of the lowest floor of the tower. The air here was dank and cold. It didn’t matter whether it was summer or winter above; what lurked here was an eternal, dead autumn. The only light was that of two torches guttering in iron rings on a wall. The two gardai on duty saluted him, but Sergei also saw the knowing glance they gave to the roll of old, soiled leather under Sergei’s arm, and the smirk the two exchanged with each other. “Good evening, Ambassador,” one of them said. “A pleasure to see you, as always. I thought the Kraljica had sent you back to Brezno.”
“I leave tomorrow,” he said. “The Morelli?”
“There.” The other gardai pointed to the nearest cell. “Should I open the door, Ambassador?”
Sergei nodded again, and the garda took a thick steel circle adorned with keys from his belt, and thrust one of them into the lock. It turned with a metallic protest. The hinges made a similar complaint as he pulled the cell door open.
“Do you need one of us to stay, Ambassador?” the garda asked. “I can stay if you like.”
The man’s face showed nothing, but Sergei knew what he was thinking. He nodded as the garda placed the keys back on his belt. “Your friend may take his lunch, then,” he said. The two gardai exchanged glances again before the other saluted and left them. Sergei stepped over the threshold of the cell onto a floor strewn with dirty and soiled straw. A man was huddled in chains at the rear of the cell: hands bound tightly together, and a silencer affixed around his head so that he couldn’t speak-a cage of metal helmeting his head, with a cloth-wrapped piece protruding into the man’s mouth so that the tongue was covered and held. Flickering shadows from the torches in the hall outside clawed at the darkness of the cell. The man’s eyes, dark in the hollows of his face, stared at Sergei with desperate hope, which dimmed as the man saw the leather roll. He moaned around the metal piece holding his tongue down. Saliva glistened on the black metal framework.
The stench in the room grew.
“You’re a war-teni?” Sergei asked. He laid the roll, still tied together, at his feet, groaning with the effort of bending over that far-the roll dropped the last few fingers to the straw, and a muffled clink of metal came from it. “A war-teni?” Sergei repeated as the man’s eyes widened. The garda chuckled behind Sergei.
The prisoner nodded.
“Ah,” Sergei replied. He leaned on his cane, peering at the man. “And a Morelli sympathizer, also?”
A hesitation. Then another, smaller, nod.
“You are O’Teni Timos ci’Stani?”
A final nod.
