Niente
THE WATERS OF AXAT BETRAYED HIM.
He could see little of the Long Path in the mist. Even the events
just before them were clouded. There were too many conflicting
signs, too many possibilities, too many powers in opposition.
Everything was in flux, everyone was in movement. He could no
longer see his Long Path at all. It was gone, as if Axat had
withdrawn Her favor from him, as if She were angry with him for his
failures.
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.