Niente
THE TOWN BURNED and the flames reflected in the
scrying bowl. They vanished as Zolin slapped the scrying bowl
aside, splashing the water over Niente. The bowl clattered away,
bronze ringing against the tiles like a wild bell until it clanged
up against the far wall, where a tile mosaic of some ancient battle
glittered. Outlined in glass, horses reared as soldiers with pikes
marched across a field with a snow-topped mountain looming in the
background.
“No!” the Tecuhtli
roared. “I won’t have you tell me this!”
“It is what I saw,”
Niente answered with a calmness he didn’t feel. The dead warrior, the nahualli sprawled next to him, only
this time he saw one of their faces. Zolin’s face . . . And he was
too afraid to ask Axat to let him see the nahualli’s features . .
. “Tecuhtli, we have accomplished so much here. We have
shown these Easterners the pain that they inflicted on us and our
cousins. We have taken land and cities from them as they were taken
from us. We have given them the lesson you wanted to give them. To
go on . . .” Niente lifted his hands. The
great city in flames and the tehuantin fleeing, their ships with
broken masts canted on their sides on the river . . . “The
visions show me only death.”
“No!” Zolin spat.
“I’ve sent word back that we’ll stay here, that they are to send
more warriors. We will keep what we have taken. We will strike at
their heart—this great city of theirs that is so close.” He turned,
his heavy and muscular arms swinging close to Niente’s face.
Zolin’s thick fingers stabbed toward Niente’s eyes. “Are you
blind, Nahual? Didn’t you see how
easily we took this city of theirs? Didn’t you watch them run from
us like a pack of whipped dogs?”
“We have little of
the materials left to make more black sand,” Niente told the
Tecuhtli. “I have lost a third of my nahualli in the fighting; you
have lost as many of the warriors. We have come a long way without
the resources to hold the land behind us. We are in a foreign
country surrounded by enemies, with the only supplies those we can
forage and plunder. If we take to our ships and leave now, we will
leave behind a legend that will strike fear in the Easterners for
decades. The name of Tecuhtli Zolin will be a whisper in the night
to scare generations of Easterner children.”
“Bah!” Zolin spat
again, the expectoration close to Niente’s feet, marring the
polished floor of the estate house he’d taken in Villembouchure.
Looking down, Niente saw that the tiles all bore the glazed image
of the same mountain as the mosaic on the wall. Zolin’s spittle
formed a lake on the mountain’s flank. “You’re a frightened child
yourself, Nahual. I’m not afraid of what you see in your bowl. I’m
not afraid of these futures you say Axat sends you. They’re not
the future, only possibilities.” His
finger prodded Niente’s chest. “I tell you now, Nahual, you must
make your choice.” Each of the last three words was another prod.
The Tecuhtli’s dark eyes, wrapped in the swirl of the great eagle’s
wings, glared at him like those of the great cats that prowled the
forests of home. “No more words from you. No more prophecy, no more
warnings. I want only your obedience and your magic. If you can’t
give me that, then I am done with you. I will go on, whether you
are Nahual or not. Decide now, Niente. As we stand
here.”
Niente’s hand
trembled near the haft of his spell-stick, dangling from his belt.
He could pluck it up, touch Zolin with it before the warrior could
fully draw his sword. The released spell would char the Tecuhtli’s
body, send him flying across the room until he crumpled against the
wall under the mosaic in a smoking heap. Niente could see that
result, as clearly as a vision in the scrying bowl.
That would also end
this. He ached to do it.
But he could not.
That was not a vision that Axat had granted him. That path would
lead to one of the blind futures, one he couldn’t guess—a future
that might be far worse for the Tehuantin than those he had
glimpsed in the bowl. He realized that knowing the possible futures
was a trap as much as a benefit; he wondered whether that was
something Mahri, too, had discovered. In a blind future, Citlali or
Mazatl might continue to follow the steps of Zolin and fare worse.
They might all die here, and no one from home would know their
fate. In a blind future, certainly Niente would never see his
family again.
He felt the smooth,
polished wood of the spell-stick, but his fingertips only grazed
it. They would not close around it.
“I will obey you,
Tecuhtli,” Niente said, the words slow and quiet. “And I will
follow you to the future you bring us.”