He saw only one thing. He saw himself and Atl, facing each other, and lightning flashed between them, and through the mist, he saw Atl fall…
With an angry shout and a sweep of his arm, Niente sent the scrying bowl flying. The trio of nahualli who had brought him the bowl and the water and were in attendance on him, scrambled to their feet in surprise. “Nahual?”
“Leave me!” he told them. “Go on! Get out!”
They scattered, leaving him alone in the tent.
It’s gone. The future you sought to have has been taken from you. Can you find it again? Is there still time, or has the possibility passed entirely now?
He didn’t know. The uncertainty was a fire in his stomach, a hammer pounding on his skull.
He collapsed to the ground, burying his head in his hands. The bowl sat accusingly upside down on the grass before him, orange-tinted water dewing the green blades. The foreign grass, the foreign soil.. .
He didn’t know how long he sat there when he saw a wavering shadow against the fabric, cast from the great fire in the center of their encampment. “Nahual?” a tentative voice called. “It’s time. The Eye of Axat has risen. Nahual?”
“I’m coming,” he called out. “Be patient.”
The shadow receded. Niente pulled himself up. His spell-staff was still on the table. He took it in his hand, feeling the tingling of the spells caught within the whorled grain. Can you do this? Will you do this?
He went to the flap of the tent, pushed it aside. He stepped out.
The army had encamped along the main road where it descended a long hill. The tents of the Nahual and the Tecuhtli had been placed on the crown of the hill, surrounded by the tents of the High Warriors and nahualli. Below, Niente could see the glimmering of hundreds of campfires; above, the ribbon of the Star River cleaved the sky, dimmed by the brilliance of Axat’s Eye, staring down at them. The High Warriors and the nahualli stood in a ring around the trampled grasses of the meadow. Near the campfire, blazing in the open space between the Nahual’s tent and that of the Tecuhtli, stood Tecuhtli Citlali, Tototl, and Atl. His son was bare to the waist, his skin glistening. He held his spell-staff in one hand, the end tapping nervously on the ground.
“You still want this, Atl?” Niente asked him. “You are so certain of your path?”
Atl shook his head. “Do I want it, Taat? No. I don’t. But I am certain of the path Axat has shown, and I’m confident that the path you want us to take leads to defeat, despite what you believe. You were the one who taught me that even when someone in authority tells you that they’re right, they might still be wrong-and that in order to serve them, you have to persist. You said that was the Nahual’s role to the Tecuhtli, and that of the nahualli to the Nahual.” He took a long, slow breath, tapping his spell-staff on the ground again. “No, I don’t want this. I don’t want to fight you. I hate this. But I don’t see that I have a choice.”
Citlali stepped forward between the two. “Enough talk,” he said. “We’ve wasted enough time on this already-and the city waits for us. Do what you must, so I know who my Nahual is, so I know which of you is seeing the paths correctly.” He looked from Niente to Atl. “Do it,” he said. “Now!”
He stepped back, gesturing to Niente and Atl. Niente knew that Citlali wanted them to raise their spell-staffs, wanted the night to blaze suddenly with lightnings and fire, to see one of the two of them crumple to the ground broken, burned, and dead. He could see it in the eagerness of the man’s face, the ways the red eagle’s wings moved on the sides of his shaved skull. The nahualli, the High Warriors, they all shared that same hunger-they stared and leaned forward, their mouths half-open in anticipation.
No one had seen a Nahual battle a challenger in a generation. They looked forward to the historic scene. Neither Atl nor Niente had moved, though. Niente saw the muscles bunch in his son’s arm, and he knew that Atl would do this. He knew that the vision in the bowl would be kept. At the first lifting of his staff, it would begin-and Atl would die.
“No!” Niente shouted, and he cast his spell-staff to the ground. “I won’t.”
“If you are my Nahual, you will,” Citlali roared, as if disappointed.
“Then I am not the Nahual,” Niente said. “Not any longer. Atl is right. Axat has clouded my vision of the Path. I’m no longer in her favor, and I no longer See true.”
He bowed to his son, as a nahualli to the Nahual. He stripped the golden bracelet from his forearm. His skin felt cold and naked without it. “I yield,” he said. He knelt, and he proffered the bracelet to Atl. “You are the Techutli’s Nahual now,” he told him. “I am simply a nahualli. Your servant.”
He could feel the Long Path fading in his mind. You took it from me, Axat. This is Your fault. If he could no longer see, then he would trade his vision for Atl’s. If there was no Long Path, then he would take victory for the Tehuantin.
He would be satisfied. He wouldn’t live to see the consequences.
FAILINGS
Cenzi
Cenzi had abandoned him, and he could only wonder what he’d done wrong, how he could have misinterpreted things so badly that Cenzi would have allowed this to happen. Nico had spent the time since Sergei had left him on his knees, refusing all food and water. He used the chains binding his hands and legs as flails, to break open again the scabs of the wounds he’d sustained in the battle for the Old Temple, letting the hot blood and the pain take away all thought of the outside world. He accepted the pain; he bathed in it; he gave it up to Cenzi as an offering in hopes that He might speak again to him.
You’ve taken my lover and stolen my child. You’ve allowed the people who followed me to die horribly. You’ve taken my freedom. How did I offend You? What did I fail to see or do for You? How have I misheard Your message? Tell me. If you wish to punish me, then I give myself to You freely, but tell me why I must be punished. Please help me to understand…
That was his prayer. That is what he repeated, over and over: as the wind-horns spoke Third Call over the city, as night came, as the stars wheeled past and the moon rose. He prayed, on his knees, lost inside himself and trying again to find the voice of Cenzi somewhere in his despair.
He couldn’t keep the other thoughts from intruding. His mind drifted, unfocused. He could hear Sergei’s voice, telling him over and over, “It’s Varina who has spared your life, your hands, and your tongue, and thus your gift: a person who doesn’t believe in Cenzi, but who believes in you… It’s Varina who saved your child…” Muffled by the silencer, Nico shouted against that terrible voice, screwing his eyes shut as if he could deny the memory entrance to his mind if he denied himself sight. “I told you about the young woman-I told her that she still had time to change, to find a path that wouldn’t end where I am,” Sergei persisted. “I think that’s what Varina believes of you, Nico. She believes in you, in your gift, and she believes you can do better with it than you’ve done.”
No! If Varina saved me, it was because she was unwittingly being twisted to Your will. It must be. Tell me that it’s so! Give me Your sign…
But what surfaced in his mind was instead the image of Liana’s broken and torn body, of the way her eyes stared blindly toward the dome of the Old Temple, and the way her hands clutched her stomach as if trying to cradle the unborn child inside her. He called upon Cenzi to change this horrible act, to return her to life, to take his own life in her place, but she only stared and her chest did not move and the blood thickened and stopped around her as he tried to rouse her, as he held her, as the gardai tore him away as he screamed…
Cenzi, I know Your gift was given to me-why did You give it to me if not to serve You? What do You ask of me? I will do it. I thought I had done it, but if that’s not true, then show me. Just take this torment from me. Make me understand…