Out of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  Since Skarnu couldn’t very well argue with that, he buried his nose in the news sheet again. Glancing up over the top of it, he saw the triumphant look on Merkela’s face. He let out a silent sigh. His wife despised his sister, and nothing in the world looked like changing that. He’d hoped at first that time might, but thought himself likely to be disappointed there. That might eventually matter very much--but even if it did, he failed to see what he could do about it.

  Instead of bringing it up and starting an argument, he found another story in the news sheet to talk about: “The last little Algarvian army in Siaulia has finally surrendered.”

  That made Merkela raise her eyebrows. “I didn’t even notice,” she said. “What took the whoresons so long?”

  Laughing, Skarnu wagged a finger at her. “That’s not how a marchioness talks.”

  “It’s how I talk,” Merkela said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “They stayed in the field a long time and caused a lot of trouble,” Skarnu said. “Not a lot of real redheads in the army there, of course--most of the soldiers are natives from the Siaulian colonies. And they lost their last crystal a while ago, so nobody here on Derlavai could let them know Algarve’d given up. The Lagoan general up there let the Algarvian brigadier in charge keep his sword.”

  “I know where I’d have let him keep it--right up his . . .” Merkela’s voice trailed off as she realized that wasn’t fitting language for a marchioness, either.

  “By everything the news sheets said, the Algarvians fought a clean war up there,” Skarnu said.

  “I don’t care,” his wife replied. “They’re still Algarvians.” To her, that was the long and short of it.

  Servants cleared away the breakfast dishes. Skarnu went out to the reception hall. “Good morning, your Excellency,” Valmiru said. The butler bowed low.

  “Good morning to you, Valmiru,” Skarnu said. “What’s on the list for today?” The servitor was doing duty for a majordomo, and handling the job well.

  “Let me see, sir,” Valmiru said now, taking a list from a tunic pocket and donning spectacles to read it. “Your first appointment is with a certain Povilu, who accuses one of his neighbors, a certain Zemglu, of complicity with the Algarvians.”

  “Another one of those, eh?” Skarnu said with a sigh.

  “Aye, your Excellency,” Valmiru replied, “although perhaps not quite of the ordinary sort, for Zemglu has also lodged a charge of collaboration against Povilu.”

  “Oh, dear,” Skarnu said. “One of those? How many generations have these two families hated each other?”

  “I don’t precisely know, sir--one of the disadvantages of coming here from the capital,” Valmiru replied. “I had hoped you might be familiar with the gentlemen from your, ah, earlier stay in this part of the kingdom.”

  “No such luck,” Skarnu said. “Are they from over by Adutiskis?” At Valmiru’s nod, he nodded, too. “Merkela’s farm was close to Pavilosta. I know those people better.” He sighed again. “But I’m everybody’s marquis, so I have to get to the bottom of it if I can.”

  He sat in the seat of judgment in the reception hall and looked out at Povilu and Zemglu and their supporters. Povilu was squat and Zemglu was tall and skinny. They’d each brought not only kinsfolk but, by the packed hall, all their friends as well. The two sides plainly despised each other. Skarnu wonder if they would riot.

  Not if I can help it, he thought. “All right, gentlemen. I will hear you,” he said. “Master Povilu, you may speak first.”

  “Thank you, your Excellency,” Povilu rumbled. He was a man of no breeding, but he’d obviously practiced his speech for a long time, and brought it out well. He accused his neighbor of betraying men from the underground to the redheads. Zemglu tried to shout objections.

  “Wait,” Skarnu told him. “You’ll have your turn.”

  At last, Povilu bowed and said, “That proves it, your Excellency.”

  Skarnu waved to the other peasant. “Now, Master Zemglu, say what you will.”

  “Now you’ll hear truth, sir, after this bugger’s lies,” Zemglu said. Povilu howled. Skarnu silenced him. Zemglu went on to accuse his neighbor of having left one daughter behind so he wouldn’t have to show Skarnu her bastard child.

  “That was rape!” Povilu yelled.

  “You say so now,” Zemglu retorted, and went on with his accusations. His followers and those of Povilu pushed and shoved at one another.

  “Enough,” Skarnu shouted, hoping they would listen to him. Eventually, they did. Still at the top of his lungs, he went on, “Now you’ll listen to me.” Povilu and Zemglu both leaned forward, tense anticipation on their faces. Skarnu said, “I doubt either of you has clean hands in this business. I don’t doubt you were enemies before the Algarvians came, and that you’re trying to use the cursed redheads to score points off each other. Will you tell me I’m wrong?”

  Both peasants loudly denied it. Skarnu studied their followers. Those abashed expressions told him he’d hit the mark. He waited for Povilu and Zemglu to fall silent again--it took a while--then held up his hand.

  “Hear my judgment,” he declared, and something close to silence fell. Into it, he said, “I charge the two of you to live at peace with each other for the next year, neither of you to do anything--anything, do you hear me?--by word or deed to trouble the other. If you care to pursue these claims at the end of that time, you may, either to me or to his Majesty the king. But be warned: justice may fall on both of you alike. For now, go back to your lands and think on what happens when you aim sticks at each other from a distance of a yard.”

  Still glaring at each other, the peasants and their followers filed out of the reception hall. Skarnu hoped he’d bought a year. If he hadn’t, he promised himself both sides in the quarrel would regret it.

  Grandmaster Pinhiero looked out of the crystal at Fernao. Fernao had made the etheric connection with the head of the Lagoan Guild of Mages himself; no Kuusaman crystallomancers were in the room with him. Pekka, fortunately, understood he sometimes had to talk with his countrymen without anyone’s overhearing him. “This thing can be done?” Pinhiero said.

  “Aye, sir, it can be done,” Fernao answered. “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

  “And it will be done if the Gongs are too stubborn to see sense?” the grandmaster persisted.

  “I don’t doubt that, either,” Fernao said. He didn’t go into details about just what sort of sorcery might be used. Gyongyosian mages were probably trying to spy on these emanations. So were Unkerlanter mages. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the Valmierans and Jelgavans were doing their best to listen in as well. But if the Gongs were looking for evidence that what their captives had seen at Becsehely was faked, they would be disappointed.

  Pinhiero nodded. “And you know, of course, the workings of the sorcery. You can bring them back to Setubal?”

  “I know the workings,” Fernao agreed. He took a deep breath. “As for the other, though, sir, I’m not so sure. I don’t know if I’ll be coming back to Setubal. The way things look now, I would doubt it.”

  He waited for the storm to burst. He didn’t have to wait long. Rage filled Pinhiero’s foxy face. “You got her drawers off, so now you love her kingdom better than your own, too, eh?” he growled. “I was afraid this would happen, but I thought you had better sense. Shows what I know, doesn’t it?”

  “I have done our kingdom no harm, nor would I ever,” Fernao said stiffly. “But I am allowed to please myself now and again as well.”

  “Is that what you call it?” the grandmaster said. “I’d tell you what I call it, though I don’t suppose you care to hear.”

  “You’re right, sir--I don’t,” Fernao said. “I will send you what I can by courier. I will answer any questions you may have. But I don’t think I’ll come back to Setubal any time soon. I’ll have to arrange to have my books and instruments shipped here.”

  “Kajaani,” Grandmaster Pinhiero said scornfully
. “How well will you love it when the first blizzards roll in? It’s a town with ten months of winter and two months of bad snowshoeing.”

  Shrugging, Fernao answered, “Lagoas didn’t worry about that when I got sent to the land of the Ice People.”

  “You had to go there,” Pinhiero said. “But to want to go to Kajaani? A man would have to be mad.”

  “It’s not that bad--a pleasant little place, really,” Fernao said: about as much praise as he could find it in himself to give. Pointedly, he added, “And I am fond of the company I’d be keeping.”

  “You must be, to think of leaving Setubal behind.” Pinhiero spoke with the automatic certainty that his city was, and had every right to be, the center of the universe. Not so very long before, Fernao had known that same certainty. The grandmaster went on, “What do they have in the theaters there? Do they even have theaters there?”

  “I’m sure they do,” answered Fernao, who didn’t know. But he added, “Since I haven’t gone to the theater since before I left for the austral continent, though, I won’t lose much sleep over it.”

  “Well, whatever you saw then in Setubal should be coming to Kajaani any day now,” Pinhiero said, soothing and sarcastic at the same time. Fernao glared. The grandmaster added, “Are you sure she didn’t ensorcel you?”

  That did it. Fernao growled, “Just because nobody’s ever been daft enough to fall in love with you, you old serpent, you don’t think it can happen to anyone else, either.”

  “I thought you had better sense,” Pinhiero said. “I thought you’d be sitting in my seat one of these years. I hoped so, in fact.”

  “Me? Grandmaster?” Fernao said in surprise. Pinhiero nodded. The younger mage shook his head. “No, thanks. I like the laboratory too well. I’m not cut out for politics, and I don’t care to be.”

  “That’s why you have someone like Brinco,” Pinhiero said. “What’s a secretary for?”

  “Doing work I don’t feel like doing myself? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Pinhiero nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, my dear young fellow. A chap like Brinco does the work that needs doing, but that you don’t care to do. That gives me time to go out and chat with people, keep myself abreast of what’s on their minds. If you’d sooner spend your odd moments in the laboratory, no one would hold it against you.”

  “Very kind of you.” Fernao meant it. He knew a grandmaster should be a man like Pinhiero, a man who enjoyed backslapping and politicking. Pinhiero had to know it, too. If he was willing to bend the unwritten rules for a theoretical sorcerer like Fernao, he badly wanted him back. Fernao sighed. “You do tempt me, sir. But the point is, I’d sooner spend my odd moments--just about all my moments--in Kajaani.”

  “I’m going to be blunt with you,” Pinhiero said. “Your kingdom needs what you know. It needs every scrap of what you know, for you know more about this business than any other Lagoan mage.” He paused, frowning. “You do still reckon yourself a Lagoan, I trust?”

  That hurt. Fernao didn’t try to pretend otherwise. He said, “You’d better know that I do, or I’d break this etheric connection and walk away from you . . . sir. I’ve already told you, if you want to send a man to me, I will tell him and write down for him everything I know. Lagoas and Kuusamo are allies; I don’t see how the Seven could possibly object to that, and King Vitor would have every right to scream if they did.”

  Pinhiero still looked unhappy. “Better than nothing,” he admitted, “but still less than I’d like. You surely know how the cleanest-seeming written instructions for a spell don’t help a mage as much as having another mage, a knowledgeable fellow, take him through the conjuration.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can.” What Fernao didn’t say was that he feared he wouldn’t be allowed to come back to Kuusamo if he went to Lagoas. As Grandmaster Pinhiero had pointed out, he knew too much.

  “When the time comes, then, I will make the necessary arrangements with you,” Pinhiero said sourly. “I suppose I should congratulate you on finding love. I must say, though, that your timing and your target could have been better.”

  “As for timing, you may possibly be right,” Fernao admitted. “As for whom I fell in love with--for one thing, that’s none of your business, and, for another, you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried for a year. And now I think we’ve said about everything we have to say to each other.”

  Grandmaster Pinhiero bridled. He wasn’t used to having Fernao--he wasn’t used to having anybody--speak to him that way. But he wasn’t King Swemmel. He couldn’t punish Fernao for speaking his mind, especially if Fernao no longer cared about advancing through the Lagoan sorcerous hierarchy. All he could do was glare as he said, “Good day,” and cut the etheric connection.

  The crystal flared, then became no more than a sphere of glass. Fernao let out another sigh, a long, heartfelt one, as he rose from the chair in front of it. Nervous sweat ran from his armpits and made the back of his tunic stick to his skin. Defying the grandmaster--essentially, declaring he was abandoning allegiance to his kingdom--didn’t, couldn’t, come easy.

  When he left the chamber, he found the Kuusaman crystallomancer outside, her nose in a romance. “I’m finished,” he told her in his own language, and then wondered how he’d meant that.

  He walked up to his room. A couple of mosquitoes whined in the stairwell. Outside the hostel, they swarmed in millions, so that going out for long was asking to be eaten alive. When all the ice and snow melted, they made puddles uncountable, as they did in spring and summer on the austral continent. And oh, how the mosquitoes and gnats and flies reveled in those spawning grounds!

  Fernao swatted one of the buzzing bugs when it lit on the back of his wrist. The other--if there was only one other--didn’t land on him, which meant it survived. He heard more buzzes in the hall. Something there bit him. He slapped at it, but didn’t think he got it.

  He was muttering to himself when he went into his chamber. Pekka sat studying a grimoire there, as engrossed as the crystallomancer had been in her book. She looked up from it with a smile, which faded when she saw how grim Fernao looked. “You didn’t have a happy time with your grandmaster, did you?” she said.

  “Worse than I thought I would,” Fernao answered. “I told him he could send someone to learn what I know once I get settled in Kajaani. I think I would be foolish to go back to Setubal any time soon. For all practical purposes, I’ve walked away from my kingdom.”

  Pekka put down the sorcerous text without bothering to mark her page. “You had better be quite sure you want to do that.”

  He limped over to her and let his free hand, the one without the cane, rest on her shoulder. She set her hand on top of his. “I’m sure,” he answered. “It follows everything else that’s been on this ley line we’ve traveled.”

  “Will it be all right? Truly?” she asked. “Can you live in Kajaani after Setubal?”

  “The company’s better,” he said, which made her smile. He went on, “Besides, once Pinhiero’s man squeezes everything I know about this business out of me, the Lagoan Guild of Mages will forget I was ever born. You wait and see whether I’m right. You won’t do any such thing.”

  “I should hope not!” Pekka squeezed his hand.

  Fernao hoped not, too. He was betting his happiness on it. “In the end,” he said, “people matter more than kingdoms do. The kings who would say different aren’t the sort of rulers I care to live under.” He thought of Mezentio, of Swemmel, of Ekrekek Arpad, and shook his head. “We have one more job to do--if we must do it--and then two of them won’t trouble us anymore.”

  Pekka nodded. “And one will hold more of Derlavai in his sway than any one sovereign ever did before.”

  “So he will,” Fernao agreed. “But he’ll be more afraid of us than we are of him, and he’ll have reason to be, too.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted.

  “When this war’s finally over, spending some quiet years in Kajaani will
look very good to me,” Fernao said. “Very, very good.” Pekka squeezed his hand again.

  Fifteen

  Garivald’s company stood at attention in the town square of Torgavi, not far from the Albi River, the river dividing the part of Algarve occupied by Unkerlant from the part the Kuusamans had overrun. Lieutenant Andelot strode along in front of the soldiers in their rock-gray tunics. “All men who have volunteered for further service in King Swemmel’s army, one step forward!” he commanded.

  About half the soldiers took that step. Here, for once, they were genuine volunteers. Along with the rest of the men who wanted nothing more than to go home, Garivald stayed where he was. Andelot dismissed the men who wanted to go on soldiering. He dismissed the common soldiers who’d chosen to leave the army. He talked briefly to one corporal who also wanted to leave, then sent him away, too. That left him alone in the square with Garivald.

  “At ease, Sergeant Fariulf,” he said, and Garivald relaxed from the stiff brace he’d been holding. Andelot eyed him. “I wish I could talk you into changing your mind.”

  “Sir, I’ve done enough,” Garivald answered. “I’ve done more than enough. Only thing I want is to get back to my farm and get back to my woman.” Obilot would have clouted him in the ear for talking about her like that, but she was far, far away, which was such a big part of what was wrong.

  “You can’t possibly hope to match a sergeant’s pay and prospects with some little plot of ground down in the Duchy of Grelz,” Andelot said.

  “Maybe not, sir,” Garivald said, “but it’s my little plot of ground.” And that was true, now. Whoever had owned that farmhouse before Garivald and Obilot took it for their own was most unlikely to come back after it. The house that had been his own--the village that had been his own--no longer existed.

  “I ought to order you to stay in,” Andelot said. “You’re far and away the best underofficer I’ve ever had.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Garivald said. “If you gave me an order like that, though, I probably wouldn’t stay the best underofficer you ever had for long.”