Out of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  Winter nights came early in southern Algarve, as they did in the south of Unkerlant. It was cold here, too, though southern Unkerlant got colder. Rathar felt a certain gloomy pride in that. Unkerlant’s appalling fall and winter weather had played no small part in helping to hold the redheads out of Cottbus.

  The marshal had just gone up to bed--again, without a redheaded girl to keep him company--when the eastern horizon lit up. The glare was so bright, he wondered for a moment if the sun hadn’t hurried round behind the world to rise again much sooner than it should have. He’d seen the night sky brightened by bursting eggs more times than he could count. This wasn’t like that. That was a flicker, a ripple, of light along a whole great stretch of the horizon. Here, all the light came from one place, and it really did seem almost bright enough for a sunrise.

  It lasted about five minutes. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it winked out. A sharp bellow of noise, as of an egg bursting not far away, rattled the window. Darkness and relative quiet returned.

  For a moment. Someone dashed up the stairs and pounded on Rathar’s door. “Lord Marshal, it’s Brigadier Magneric, up by the Scamandro,” a crystallomancer said.

  “I’ll come,” Rathar answered, and did. When he sat down before the crystal, he asked the brigadier, “What in blazes was that just now?”

  “In blazes is right, sir.” Magneric, a solid officer, sounded like a man shaken to the core. “That was ... a stick, I guess you’d call it. An Algarvian stick. But it was to the heaviest stick a floating fortress carries as the floating fortress’ stick would be to a footsoldier’s. A superstick, you might say. It blazed down, it blazed through, every fornicating thing it could reach. Men, behemoths, fieldworks--it went through them like a sword through a pat of lard. It was a sword, a sword of light. How can you fight something like that, lord Marshal?”

  “I don’t know. There’s bound to be a way.” Rathar sounded more confident than he felt. Then he said, “It stopped, you know.”

  “So it did, sir. Something must’ve gone wrong with it. But when will it start up again, and how bad will it be then?”

  “I don’t know.” Rathar didn’t relish admitting that, but he wouldn’t lie to Brigadier Magneric. “Powers below eat the redheads. I hope they ate a good many of them just now.” What I really hope is that we can beat them before they get all their fancy new magecraft working the way it’s supposed to. What if they’d started trying to do something like this two years sooner? He shivered. Then a new thought occurred to him, a really horrible one. If we ever fight another war after this, will anyone at all be left alive by the time it’s done? He had his doubts.

  Marchioness Krasta got out of her pyjamas and stood naked in front of the mirror, examining herself. She shook her head in dismay. She’d always prided herself on her figure, and the way men responded to it told her she had every reason to do so (although she likely would have prided herself on it any which way, simply because it was hers). But now . . .

  “I’m built like a tuber,” she muttered. “Just like a fornicating tuber.” She laughed, though it wasn’t exactly funny. If not for fornicating, she wouldn’t have been built this way.

  Inside her belly, the baby kicked. She could see her skin stretch. Every so often, a hard, round protuberance would surface, as it were. That had to be the baby’s head. She thought she’d identified knees and elbows, too.

  Looking at herself in the reflecting glass, she saw something she hadn’t noticed before. It had to have happened in the night, while she was sleeping—not that sleep came easy these days, not with the baby pressing half her insides down onto the saw blade of her spine.

  “My navel!” she exclaimed in dismay. She’d always been vain about it. It was small and round and neat, as if someone with good taste and very nice fingers had poked one into the middle of her belly. No--it had been small and round and neat. Now. . . Now it stuck out, as if it were the stem of the tuber she seemed to be turning into.

  She poked it with her own finger. While she held it, it went back to the way it had been, or something close to that. But when she let go, it popped right back out again. She tried several times, always with the same result.

  “Bauska!” she shouted. “Where in blazes are you, Bauska?”

  The maidservant came into the bedchamber at a run. “What is it, milady?” The question had started while she was still out in the hallway. When she saw Krasta, she let out a startled squeak: “Milady!”

  Krasta took her own nudity in stride. Bauska was only a servant, after all. How could one be embarrassed in front of one’s social inferiors? “Took you long enough to get here,” Krasta grumbled, not bothering to put an arm in front of her breasts or her bush.

  “What... do you need of me, milady?” Bauska asked carefully.

  “Your belly button.” Krasta tried without any luck to poke hers back in again and make it stay. “Once you had your little bastard, did it go back to the way it was supposed to be?”

  “Oh,” Bauska said. “Aye, milady, it did. And yours will, too, once you have yours. And now, if you will excuse me . . .” She strode out of the bedchamber.

  By the time Krasta realized she’d got the glove, she was already dressed. She muttered something sulfurous under her breath. Bauska probably thought she wouldn’t notice, or that she would forget if she did. The first had been a good bet, but one the servant hadn’t won. The second was a miscalculation; Krasta had a long memory for slights.

  She didn’t indulge it on the instant; it wasn’t as if she wouldn’t see Bauska again some time soon. Going down to breakfast seemed more urgent. Now that she wasn’t throwing up any more, she ate like a hog. Not all the weight she’d put on was directly connected to the baby.

  Skarnu and Merkela were already sitting at the table. “Good morning,” Krasta’s brother said.

  “Good morning,” she replied, and sat down herself, well away from the two of them. That didn’t keep Merkela from sending her a look as hot and burning as a beam from a heavy stick. Krasta glared back. Cow, she thought. Sow. Bitch. Hen. Amazing how many names from the farm fit the farm girl.

  But she didn’t say that. Merkela didn’t just argue. Merkela was liable to come around the table and thump her. Nasty peasant slut.

  Breakfast proceeded in poisonous silence. That was how breakfast usually proceeded when Krasta and her brother and his wench sat down together at table. The alternative was a screaming row, and those came along every so often, too.

  The silence ended when Skarnu and Merkela rose after finishing ahead of Krasta. Merkela said, “I don’t care if that is Valnu’s baby. You were still an Algarvian’s whore, and everybody knows it.”

  “Even the way you talk stinks of manure,” Krasta retorted, imitating the country woman’s accent. “And well it might--it’s a wonder your eyes aren’t brown.”

  Merkela started for her. Skarnu grabbed his fiancée. “Enough, the two of you!” he said. “Too much, in fact.” Both women looked daggers at him. He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I think the Algarvians fighting Unkerlant have it easier than I do--they don’t get blazed at from two directions at once.” He managed to get Merkela out of the dining room before she and Krasta lobbed any more eggs at each other.

  My mansion, Krasta thought furiously. What’s the world coming to, when I can’t even live at peace in my own mansion? Peace anywhere around Krasta was contingent on people doing exactly as she said, but that never occurred to her.

  She went into Priekule. If she couldn’t get peace and quiet at home, she would go out and buy something. That always made her feel better. When the carriage stopped on the Boulevard of Horsemen to let her out, she was as cheerful as anyone built like a tuber and resenting it could be.

  Some of the shops along the boulevard had new goods in them, imports from Lagoas and Kuusamo. Krasta window-shopped avidly. Just seeing something new after the dreary sameness of the occupation was a tonic. But a good many places remained closed; on a couple of doors, the scrawl of nig
ht and fog hadn’t yet been painted over. Those shopkeepers would never come back from whatever the Algarvians had done with them.

  She was looking at new jackets and feeling very large indeed when someone said, “Wasting money again, are you, sweetheart?”

  There stood Viscount Valnu, his mocking grin wider than ever. Krasta drew herself up--which, with her bulging belly, made her back ache. “I’m not wasting money--I’m spending it,” she said with dignity. “There’s a difference.”

  “I’m sure there must be.” Still grinning, Valnu came up, leaned forward over that belly, and kissed her on the cheek.

  She was, to her surprise, thoroughly glad to get even that little throwaway kiss. It was the first sign of affection she’d had from anyone for quite a while.

  Tears stung her eyes. She shook her head, angry and embarrassed at showing such emotion. It’s because you’re pregnant, she thought; this wasn’t the first time she’d puddled up for no particular reason.

  Polite as a cat, Valnu affected not to see. His voice still light and cheery, he said, “And what have you been doing lately besides wasting--excuse me, besides spending--money?” Also like a cat, he had claws.

  “Not much.” Krasta set a hand on her belly as a partial explanation for that. But it was only a partial explanation, as she knew. She didn’t try--it never would have occurred to her to try--to hide her bitterness: “I don’t get invited out much anymore.”

  “Ah.” Valnu nodded. “I am sorry about that, my sweet. I truly am. I’ve done my best to get people to be reasonable, but it doesn’t seem to be a very reasonable time right now.”

  Those tears came back. To Krasta’s dismay, one of them ran down her face. “It certainly isn’t,” she said. “Just because you didn’t pretend the Algarvians had never come to Priekule, everyone who was so tiresomely virtuous during the occupation--or can pretend he was--gets up on his high horse and acts like you did all sorts of dreadful things.” A woman with her hair just starting to grow back after a shaving walked down the other side of the street. Krasta did her best to convince herself she hadn’t seen her.

  “I said as much to your brother and his lady friend not so long ago,” Valnu said.

  “When was this?” Krasta asked sharply; he hadn’t been by the mansion for some time. “Where was this?”

  “At some boring party or other,” he answered. “It was, in fact, one of the most boring parties I’ve ever had the bad luck to attend.”

  It was, in fact, one more party to which Krasta hadn’t been invited. “It’s not fair!” she wailed, and really did burst into tears.

  Valnu put his arm around her. “There, there, my dear,” he said, and kissed her again, this time without a trace of the smiling malice that was usually as inseparable from him as his skin. “Come on--I’ll buy you some ale or some brandy or whatever you like, and you’ll feel better.”

  Sniffling, trying to keep from blubbering, Krasta doubted she would ever feel better. But she let Valnu lead her to a tavern a few doors down. She didn’t know anyone in there, for which she was duly grateful. She hadn’t had much taste for spirits since she started carrying her child, any more than she’d had a taste for tea. But she’d been able to drink more tea lately. And, sure enough, a brandy not only felt good going down but also put up a thin glass wall between her and some of her misery.

  “Thank you,” she told Valnu, and her voice held none of the whine that so often filled it. If he’d shown any interest in taking her to bed just then, she would have given herself to him without the slightest hesitation, just from gratitude for his treating her like a human being. But he didn’t. She looked down at her swollen front. Resentment returned. Who would want to go to bed with somebody built like a tuber?

  “You don’t look happy enough yet,” Valnu said, and waved at the barmaid for another brandy for Krasta and another mug of ale for himself.

  “I shouldn’t,” Krasta said, but she did. The glass wall got thicker. That felt good. She tried on a smile. It fit her face surprisingly well.

  And then, when she was happier than she’d been in longer than she could remember without some thought, Valnu threw a rock through that glass wall and effortlessly smashed it: “Your brother threatened to send me an invitation to his wedding, and he finally went and made good on the threat.”

  “Wedding?” Krasta sat bolt upright, even if it did hurt her back. Skarnu had said he would marry the peasant wench who’d borne him a son, but it hadn’t seemed real to Krasta. Now she couldn’t avoid it. “When? Where?” she asked angrily. “He hasn’t said a word to me about it.”

  “At the mansion,” Valnu answered, and named the date.

  “That’s when, or just about when, the baby will come,” she said in dudgeon very high indeed.

  Valnu shrugged. “Even if it weren’t, would you go?”

  “Maybe to annoy them,” Krasta said, but then she shook her head. “To see that nasty weed grafted on to my family tree? No. I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Well, then,” Valnu said.

  Logically, that made perfect sense. Logic, though, had nothing to do with anything here. Krasta burst into tears all over again.

  A straining team of unicorns hauled a dead dragon down the street in front of the block of flats where Talsu and his family were staying these days. The dragon was painted in Algarve’s all too familiar green, red, and white. Looking down at the great dead beast slowly sliding by, Talsu remarked, “First time we’ve seen those cursed colors in Skrunda for a while.”

  “May it be the last,” Traku said from the next window over. “I’m just glad it came down in the middle of the market square and didn’t smash any more buildings when it hit.” His father hawked, but in the end didn’t spit down on the dragon.

  The Jelgavans in the street showed less restraint. Small boys--and some men and women--ran out from the sidewalk to kick the dragon and pound on it with their fists. Some of them did spit, not so much on the dragon as on Algarve itself.

  As the dragon went past, Talsu started to laugh. “Will you look at that?” he said, pointing. “Will you just look at that?” Behind the team of muscular unicorns dragging the dragon came a single donkey dragging the dead Algarvian dragonflier. People rushed forward to abuse his corpse, too. It already looked much the worse for wear.

  Talsu’s father said something incendiary about Algarvians in general and the dragonflier in particular. From the kitchen, Talsu’s mother spoke in reproving tones: “That’s no way to talk, dear.”

  “I’m sorry, Laitsina,” Traku said at once. He turned to Talsu and went on more quietly: “I’m sorry it didn’t happen to all the fornicating buggers, not just this one. They bloody well deserve it.”

  He wasn’t quite quiet enough. “Traku!” Laitsina said.

  “Aye. Aye. Aye.” Talsu’s father made a sour face and turned away from the window. “I may as well get back to work. Doesn’t seem like I’m going to be allowed to do anything else around here.”

  “I heard that, too,” Laitsina said indignantly. “If you can’t say something without making the air around you smell like a latrine, you really should find a better way to express yourself.”

  “Express myself!” Traku’s eyebrows pretty plainly said what he thought of his wife’s opinion, but he didn’t go against it, not out loud he didn’t.

  Instead, he sat down in front of a pair of trousers he’d been working on. All the pieces were cut out. He’d set thread along all the seams and done some small part of the sewing by hand. Now he muttered a charm taking advantage of the law of similarity. The thread he’d set out writhed as if it had suddenly come to life, becoming similar to the identical thread he’d already sewn by hand. In the wink of an eye, all the stitching on the trousers was done.

  Traku held them up and inspected them. Talsu nodded approval. “That’s very nice work, Father.”

  “Not bad, not bad.” Traku looked pleased with himself. He was never sorry to hear himself praised.

  And then, perhaps
rashly, Talsu asked, “Wasn’t the spell you used the one you got from that Algarvian officer? It’s a lot easier on handwork than the ones we had before.”

  “As a matter of fact, it was.” Traku paused, another expressive expression on his face. “All right, curse it. The redheads are smart bastards. I never said they weren’t. It doesn’t mean they’re any less bastards, though.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Talsu agreed.

  Traku went on with his methodical, painstaking examination of the trousers. At last, he grudgingly nodded his satisfaction. “I suppose those will do.” Having supposed, he tossed the trousers at Talsu. “They go to Krogzmu the olive-oil dealer, on the south side of town. He paid twenty down, and he still owes us twenty more. Don’t let him keep the goods before you get the silver--in coins of King Donalitu, mind you.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday, or even day before yesterday.” Talsu neatly folded the trousers his father had thrown at him. “You don’t have to treat me like I was three years old.”

  “No, eh?” Traku chuckled. “Since when?”

  Talsu didn’t dignify that with an answer. After he’d done such a nice job of folding them, he stuck the trousers under his arm, careless of the wrinkles he might cause--though they were wool, which didn’t wrinkle easily. He strode-- almost stormed--out of the flat. His father chuckled again just before he shut-- almost slammed--the door. Had that chuckle come a beat sooner, he would have slammed it. As things were, he went downstairs and out onto the street with his nose in the air.

  He went away from the dead dragon and dragonflier, not after them. He wouldn’t have minded taking a kick at the Algarvian’s corpse, but he was set on getting the trousers to Krogzmu, getting the money, and getting back to the flat as fast as he could. I’ll show him I know what I’m doing, he thought. That something like that might have been what Traku had in mind never occurred to him, which was probably just as well.

  Good intentions got sidetracked, as good intentions have a way of doing. A column of Kuusamans was tramping west through Skrunda. Till they passed, Talsu, like everybody else, had to wait. People took waiting no better than they usually did. Someone behind him in the crowd complained, “We might as well still be occupied by the Algarvians.”