A Magic of Dawn by S. L. Farrell Page A

rest. Unimportant. The carriage lurched, one of the horses snorting, and they began to move. She could hear the steel-rimmed wheels clattering on the uneven paving stones of Old Temple Court. She sat silently, neither looking at Sergei nor at the view outside, but inside her own head, where Karl’s face still lived. She wondered if she would begin to forget the familiar lines, the crinkled smile, and his eyes. She wondered if he would fade, and one day when she tried to conjure up his face she’d be unable to do so.
    She heard voices outside the carriage, but she paid them no attention. Sergei, however, had straightened in his seat across from her and moved the curtains aside with a hand, his silver nose pressed against the wavy glass there. Past him, she could see the lines of onlookers beyond the gardai, and beyond them . . .
    A huge person had appeared: a giant dressed in green, his head larger than the carriage in which they rode and his shoulders as wide as three men abreast, clad in an imitation of téni-robes and his eyes glowing with a red fire that sent shadows racing out toward the carriage from the people between them. The chanting voices seemed to come from that direction, and she realized that it wasn’t a person but some sort of gigantic puppet, manipulated from below by poles. It bobbed and weaved over the heads of the onlookers, who were turning now toward it rather than the funeral procession.
    She realized who it must represent in that moment: Cénzi. She had seen images of the god done that way, with his eyes glowing as he cast fire at the Moitidi who opposed him. The puppet-god wasn’t staring at Varina, however, but at the space before her carriage—the space where Karl’s bier moved.
    “Sergei?”
    Sergei had opened the carriage window and called to one of the gardai on the line, who ran over to him. “Who is doing this?” he asked.
    “The Morellis,” the garda answered. “They assembled behind the crowd, and when the bier approached, all of a sudden that thing went up.”
    “Well, get it down before—” That was as far as Sergei got.
    The puppet-god roared.
    The sound and heat of its call washed over her. It lifted the carriage—she heard horses and people alike screaming even as she felt herself rising—and sent Sergei tumbling backward into her. He struck her hard, and then the carriage, lifted in the wind of the puppet-god’s scream, fell back to earth hard.
    There must have been more screams and more sound, but she could hear nothing. She was screaming herself; she knew it, felt it in the rawness of her throat, but she heard no sound at all. She could taste blood in her mouth and Sergei was thrashing his limbs as he tried to untangle himself from her, and he was shouting, too. She could see his lips mouthing her name—“Varina! ”—but all she heard was the remnant of the puppet-god’s roar, echoing and echoing.
    Then she remembered. “Karl!” she shouted silently, pushing at Sergei and trying to rise from the wreckage of the carriage. She could see the street and horses on their sides, still in their harnesses and thrashing wildly at the ground, and bodies of people here and there.
    Especially around the bier.
    Which burned and fumed and smoked in the middle of the courtyard.

     

Niente
     
    T HE ISLAND CITY TLAXCALA gleamed like white bone on the saphhire waters of Lake Ixtapatl, but Niente didn’t see it. All his attention was on the bronze bowl before him and the water shimmering there.
    The scrying bowl. The bowl that held all the possible futures. They swam before his eyes, blotting out reality. He saw war and death. He saw a smoking mountain exploding. He saw a queen on a glowing throne, and a man on another throne. He saw armies crawling over the land, one with banners of blue and gold and the other of black and silver. He saw an army of warriors and nahualli coming against them. Yet beyond that war, down a long, long path, there was hope. There was peace. There