Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  Traku’s father glared at him. “If you think I’d do that, you’d better find yourself another tailor. I’m not the only one in Skrunda.” Talsu knew how much Traku needed the business, but Traku said not a word about what he needed. Talsu was proud of him.

  “Let me see your samples,” the Algarvian captain said. Presently, he pointed to one. “This weight and grade, in a forest green. Can you get it?”

  “I think so,” Traku answered. “If I can’t, you get your half-payment back, of course.” He turned to Talsu. “Measure him, son. Then we’ll talk about the kilt”--he muttered something that might have been barbarous garment under his breath--”and then we’ll talk price.”

  The Algarvian inclined his head. Talsu grabbed the tape measure. The redhead stood very still while he measured and took notes. Only after he’d finished did the fellow raise an eyebrow and remark, “I think you would sooner be measuring me for a coffin, is it not so?”

  “I didn’t say that, sir,” Talsu answered, and gave the notes to his father.

  Traku and the redhead talked about the kilt: its length, its drape, its pleating. Traku looked up at the ceiling and mumbled to himself. When he got done calculating, he named a price. The Algarvian screamed as if he’d been scalded--Talsu and Ausra both jumped, while the fur on Dustbunny’s tail puffed up in alarm. Then the Algarvian named a price, too, one less than half as high.

  “Nice talking with you,” Traku said. “Close the door after you go out.”

  They haggled for the best part of an hour. Traku ended up getting what struck Talsu as a good price; despite noisy histrionics, the Algarvian yielded ground more readily than the tailor. The redhead was muttering to himself when he did leave.

  “Forest green,” Traku said. “I think I can get that. I ought to short him on the goods, though, just on account of that crack.”

  He did get the cloth in the right color and the proper weight, then set to work. The tunic was straightforward: it had a higher, tighter collar than Jelgavan fashion favored, but presented no new problems. For the kilt, Traku worked much more carefully. After he’d made the waistband and hemmed the garment, he sewed two pleats by hand. Then, sweating with concentration, he set thread along the kilt where the other pleats would go and used a tailoring spell based on the law of similarity. Talsu watched in fascination as the rest of the pleats formed, duplicating the first two in spacing and stitchery.

  Traku held up the finished kilt with a somber sort of pride. “Ready-to-wear can’t come close to a good tailor’s work,” he said. “The big makers use cheap originals and they stretch the spells too thin, so the clothes they make aren’t even properly similar to the originals.” He sighed. “But they’re cheap, so what can you do?”

  When the Algarvian captain came in to try on his outfit, he kissed his fingertips, he blew a kiss at Ausra, and for a horrid moment Talsu thought he and Traku were going to get kissed, too. But the redhead restrained himself, at least from that. He paid the second half of the price and left the shop a happy man.

  “Good thing he liked it,” Traku said after he’d gone. “If he didn’t, what in blazes would I do with a cursed kilt?”

  “Sell it to another Algarvian,” Talsu said at once.

  His father blinked; maybe that hadn’t occurred to him. “Aye, I suppose so,” he said. “I wouldn’t get as much for it, though.”

  Talsu rang coins on the counter. The music was sweet. “You don’t need to worry. We don’t need to worry.” He checked himself. “We don’t need to worry for a little while, anyhow.”

  Vanai was glad to be out of the house she shared with her grandfather and even gladder to be out of Oyngestun. With so many Kaunians shipped off to the west to labor for the redheads in the war against Unkerlant, the village felt as if it had a hole in it, like a jaw with a newly pulled tooth. She and Brivibas might have been among those taken for labor. Remembering what a few days of work on the roads had done to her grandfather, Vanai knew she was lucky to escape.

  She also remembered, all too well, the price she’d paid to get Brivibas back from the labor gang. She had no great love for the Unkerlanters--they struck her as being even more barbarous than their Forthwegian cousins--but she hoped with all her heart that they gave Major Spinello a thin time of it.

  Meanwhile, she had mushrooms to find. With rain coming a little early this year, she thought the crop would be fine. And, at last, she’d persuaded her grandfather to let her search by herself. That had proved easier than she’d thought it would. He didn’t cling to her as he had before she gave Spinello what he wanted.

  And so, while Brivibas went south, Vanai headed east, in the direction of Gromheort. When they separated, her grandfather coughed a couple of times, as if to say he knew why she was going in that direction. She almost walloped him with the mushroom basket she was carrying. Before she swung it, though, she noticed it was the one that belonged to Ealstan, the Forthwegian from Gromheort. Brivibas would surely have noticed, too, and would have taken a certain satisfaction in being proved right in his suspicions.

  “But he’s not right,” Vanai said--most emphatically, as if someone were about to contradict her. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He never knows what he’s talking about.”

  A troop of Algarvians on unicorns came trotting up the road from Gromheort toward Oyngestun. The redheaded riders leered at Vanai. They whooped as they passed her and called out lewd suggestions, some of which she understood because of Spinello. She breathed a silent sigh of relief when they kept on riding. Had they decided to ravish her one after another and then cut her throat, who could have stopped them? She knew the answer to that: no one. They were the occupiers, the conquerors. They did as they pleased.

  Along with sighing in relief, Vanai cut across fields instead of staying close by the road. The going was harder that way, and her shoes soon got wet and muddy. She didn’t care. The next Algarvians who came along the highway--three crews mounted on their behemoths--could have seen her as nothing more than a blond-headed speck in the distance. Not one of them waved or called out to her. That suited her fine.

  She came across a nice patch of meadow mushrooms, and put some in her basket--Ealstan’s basket, actually--to make sure she wouldn’t go back to Oyngestun empty-handed. A little later, she clapped her hands in glee when she found some chanterelles, yellow and vermilion growing together. She like the yellow ones better--vermilion chanterelles tasted acrid to her--but gathered some of each.

  And then, at the edge of an almond grove, she almost stepped on some bright orange imperial mushrooms. They were still small, but unmistakable because of their color. As she plucked them from the ground, she recited a snatch of ancient poetry: they’d been favorites back in the days of the Kaunian Empire.

  But her pleasure at picking them evaporated a moment later. The mushrooms remained, but the Kaunian Empire was only rubble. Even the Kaunian kingdoms of the east had fallen into the Algarvians’ hands these days, and as for Forthweg .. . The Forthwegian majority despised the Kaunians still living among them, and the Algarvians delighted in showing the Forthwegians the Kaunians were even worse off than they.

  After Vanai discovered the imperial mushrooms, she had no luck for quite a while. She saw three or four Forthwegian men down on their hands and knees in the middle of a field, but did not go over to them. They were unlikely to be willing to share whatever they’d found, and not so unlikely to try to make sport with her as the Algarvians might have done. She put some bushes between herself and them and went on her way.

  The sun was nearing its high point in the north when she came into the oak wood where she and Ealstan had accidentally exchanged baskets--and where they’d met the year before that, too. With her grandfather miles away, she could at last admit to herself that she hadn’t come there altogether by accident. For one thing, she did want to give him his basket if she saw him again. And, for another, he’d been a sympathetic ear, and she hadn’t had many of those lately.

  She wa
lked among the trees. Her muddy shoes scuffed through leaves and acorns. Some of the oaks’ gnarled roots lay close to the surface. She wondered if she ought to try digging for truffles. In the days of the Kaunian Empire, rich nobles had trained swine to hunt the precious fungi by scent. Without such aid, though, finding them was a matter of blind luck. She shook her head--she didn’t have time to waste, and not much in the way of luck had come her way lately.

  She wandered through the wood, finding a couple of puffballs, which she picked, and quite a few stinkhorns, which she avoided with wrinkled nose. She saw no sign of Ealstan. She wondered if he was out hunting mushrooms at all. For all she knew, he could have been back in Gromheort or out searching in a different direction. It wasn’t as if she could make him step out from behind a tree by wishing.

  No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than Ealstan stepped out from behind a tree--not the one she’d been looking at, but a tree nonetheless. Her eyes widened. Had she turned into a mage after all?

  If Ealstan had been conjured up, he didn’t realize it. “Vanai!” he exclaimed, a grin stretching itself across his face. Instead of using Forthwegian, he went on in his slow, careful Kaunian: “I had hoped I would see you here. I am very glad to see you here. And look--I remembered your basket.” He held it up.

  Vanai laughed. She did that so seldom these days, each time stood out as an occasion. “I remembered yours, too,” she said, and showed it to him.

  “Now my family can wonder at me if I bring back my own basket, as they did when I brought back yours last year,” Ealstan said with a chuckle. But the good humor quickly slipped from his face. “I am very glad to see you here again,” he repeated. “The Algarvians took many Kaunians out of Gromheort and sent them west. I was afraid they had done the same in Oyngestun.”

  “They did,” Vanai answered, “but my grandfather and I were not among them.” She remembered how close they’d come to being chosen. “For his sake, I’m glad; he couldn’t have done the work.” She’d seen he couldn’t do it. That made her think of Spinello again, and then wish she hadn’t.

  “In Gromheort, they did not seem to care,” Ealstan said. “They scooped up young and old, men and women, till they had enough to satisfy them. Then they herded them into caravan cars and sent them west with only the clothes on their backs. How can they hope to get any proper work from anyone like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Vanai answered in a small voice. “I’ve asked myself the same question, but I just don’t know.”

  “I think they are lying about what they want. I think they are doing something. ...” Ealstan shook his head. “I do not know what. Something they do not want to talk about. Something that cannot be good.”

  He kept on using Kaunian. Because it was not his birthspeech, he paused every now and then to search for a word or an ending. To Vanai, that deliberation made him sound more impressive, not less. And he sounded more impressive still because he obviously did care about what happened to the Kaunians in Gromheort and Oyngestun.

  Vanai wasn’t used to sympathy from Forthwegians. Vanai, lately, wasn’t used to sympathy from anybody, though her own people were less harsh to her now than when Spinello had been visiting Brivibas rather than her. Tears stung her eyes. She looked away so Ealstan wouldn’t see. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “For what?” he said--she’d startled him into Forthwegian.

  How was she supposed to answer that? “For worrying about my folk when you don’t have to,” she said at last. “Most people these days have all they can do to worry about themselves.”

  “If I do not worry about anyone else, who will worry about me?” Ealstan said, returning to Kaunian.

  “When you speak my language, you sound like a philosopher,” Vanai said; she meant his delivery as much as what he said. Whatever she meant, she made him laugh. She laughed, too, but persisted: “No, you truly do.” To emphasize the point, she reached out with her free hand and took his.

  Only after she’d done it did she realize she’d astonished herself. Since Spinello began taking advantage of her, she hadn’t wanted anyone male, even her grandfather, to touch her. And now she’d touched Ealstan of her own accord.

  His hand closed on hers. That was almost enough to make her pull away--almost, but not quite. Even if she didn’t finish the motion, though she must have begun it, for he let go at once, saying, “You must have enough things to worry about without putting a Forthwegian you scarcely know on the list.”

  Vanai stared at him. They were much of a height, as was often true of Kaunian women and Forthwegian men. Slowly, she said, “You care what I think.” By the way she said it, she might have been announcing some astonishing discovery in magecraft.

  He heard her surprise. “Well, of course I do,” he said, surprised in turn.

  Plainly, he meant it. Having been used and scorned and condescended to so much, Vanai hardly knew what to make of caring. She astonished herself again, this time by leaning forward and brushing her lips across Ealstan’s.

  He wasn’t too swarthy to keep her from watching him flush. Something sparked in his eyes. He wants me, she thought. Seeing that should have disgusted her. It always had with Spinello. Somehow, it didn’t. At first, she thought that was because Ealstan didn’t forthwith try to grope her, as Spinello would have. Then, belatedly, she realized the warmth inside her had nothing to do with the weather, which, was on the chilly side. I want him, she thought, and that was most astonishing of all: she’d been sure Spinello had curdled desire within her forever.

  “Vanai. . .” Ealstan said in a hoarse voice.

  She nodded and, much later than she should have, set down her basket of mushrooms. “It will be all right,” she said, not pretending she didn’t know what he had in mind. Then she found something better to add: “We’ll make it come out all right.”

  And, in spite of everything, they did. It was, clearly, Ealstan’s first time. Had it been Vanai’s, too, it probably would have ended up a clumsy botch. As things were, what Spinello had made her learn came in handy in ways she hoped the redhead would not have appreciated. She guided Ealstan without being too obvious about it.

  But, after a while, she began to enjoy what they were doing for its own sake. Ealstan didn’t come close to Spinello as far as technique went; maybe he never would. It turned out not to matter too much. The Algarvian’s touch, no matter how knowing--perhaps because it was so knowing--had always made her want to cringe. Ealstan cared for her as Vanai, not as a nicely shaped piece of meat. That made all the difference. How much difference it made she discovered when she gasped and arched her back and squeezed Ealstan tight with arms and legs, Major Spinello utterly forgotten.

  Ealstan stared down into Vanai’s face, only a hand’s breadth below his own. His heart thudded as if he’d just run a long way. Next to the delight that filled him, the pleasure he’d got from touching himself hardly seemed worth remembering.

  He started to lean down to taste the sweetness of her lips again, but she said, “You’re not as light as you think you are. And we’d better get dressed before somebody who’s looking for mushrooms comes along and finds us instead.”

  “Oh!” Ealstan exclaimed. He’d forgotten about that, and was glad Vanai hadn’t. He scrambled to his feet, yanked up his drawers, and threw on his tunic. Vanai’s clothes were more complicated, but she got into them about as fast as he did.

  “Turn around,” she told him, and brushed leaves off him. Then she nodded. “No stains on your tunic. That’s good. Now you take care of me.”

  “Aye,” Ealstan said. Despite what they’d just finished doing, he hardly dared touch her. Warily, he picked bits of dry leaf from her hair. Even more warily, he brushed some from her backside. Instead of slapping him, she smiled thanks over her shoulder. “Your clothes are all right,” he told her.

  “That’s good,” she said again. Slowly, her smile faded. “I didn’t come here . . .expecting to do this.” The expression her face took on alarmed Ealstan. I
t would have alarmed him more had he thought it aimed at him.

  “I did not, either,” he said, which was nothing but the truth. He might have imagined it once or twice, but he’d told himself he was being foolish. He felt foolish now, delightfully foolish, as if he’d had too much wine. Trying not to wear an idiotic grin, he went on, “I did hope I would see you, though.” Speaking Kaunian helped. It made him sound serious, even if he wasn’t.

  Vanai’s face softened. “I know. You brought my basket.” She looked down at the dead leaves on the ground. “And I brought yours.”

  Ealstan felt like cutting capers. Instead, very much his practical father’s son, he said, “Shall we trade some of what we have found?” As long as they were doing that, she wouldn’t go away. He didn’t want her to go away.

  They sat down where they’d lain together, sat down and swapped mushrooms. They sat very close together. Their hands clung as they passed the mushrooms back and forth. Every so often, they paused to kiss. Ealstan discovered how quickly desire revived at his age. But when he reached for one of the toggles on her tunic, she set her hand on his and kept him from undoing it. “We were lucky once,” she said. “I don’t know if we would be again.”

  “All right,” he said. It wasn’t quite, but he would make the best of it. He took his hand away. Vanai’s face showed he’d passed a test. “Shall we take back our old baskets?” he asked, and then answered his own question before Vanai could: “No, we had better not. That would tell people we had met. This way, no one has to know anything--no one except us.”

  “Aye, you’re right: better if we don’t,” Vanai agreed. She studied him. “It’s good you think of things like that.”

  He shrugged, pleased and embarrassed at the same time. “I do my best,” he said, and again had no idea how much he sounded like Hestan. He looked at Vanai. Regardless of what they’d just done, they hardly knew each other. He coughed. “I do want to see you again, though; before next mushroom season.” He hoped that didn’t sound too much like, I want to lie with you again, as soon as I can. He did, but that wasn’t what he meant, or wasn’t all of what he meant, anyhow.