Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  Spring came early, up in Bishah. The only real mark of it was that the rain that came occasionally during fall and winter stopped altogether. The weather would have done for high summer in more southerly lands. But the breezes that blew down off the hills and onto the capital of Zuwayza promised far more heat ahead. Hajjaj knew the promise would be kept, too.

  He had, at the moment, other sorts of heat with which to contend. He had eaten sweet cakes with King Shazli, drunk date wine, and sipped delicately fragrant tea. That meant that, by Zuwayzi custom old as time, the king could at last begin talking business. And Shazli did, demanding, “What are we to do now?”

  The Zuwayzi foreign minister wished his sovereign would have chosen almost any other question. But Shazli was still a young man--only about half Hajjaj’s age--and sought certainty where his minister had long since abandoned it. With a sigh, Hajjaj answered, “Your Majesty, our safest course still appears to be the one we are following.”

  King Shazli reached up and tugged at the golden circlet he wore to mark his rank. It was his only mark of rank; it was, but for some other jewelry and his sandals, his only apparel. Shifting among the cushions on which he lolled, he said, “This leaves us still shackled to Algarve.”

  “Aye, your Majesty, it does.” Hajjaj’s mouth twisted; he liked that no better than did the king. “But our only other choice is to be shackled to Unkerlant, and King Mezentio’s chains are longer and looser than the ones King Swemmel would have us wear.”

  “Curse it, we are Zuwayzin--free men!” Shazli burst out. “Our ancestors did not suffer themselves to be tied to other kingdoms. Why must we?”

  That was the heroic version of Zuwayzi history. Hajjaj too had grown up hearing minstrels and bards sing of it... but, when he had grown up, Zuwayza was a province--a disaffected province, aye, but a province nonetheless--of Unkerlant. Later, he’d gone to an excellent university in Trapani and had got a different view of how and why things had gone as they had for his people.

  “Your Majesty, our clan chiefs love freedom so well, even now they grudge bending the knee to you,” he said. “They would sooner fight among themselves than listen to anyone who tells them they must not. That, of course, is how Unkerlant was able to conquer us: when one clan’s holdings fell, the other chiefs did not join together against the foe but often laughed and cheered to see their neighbor and old enemy beaten.”

  “I am not sure I see your point,” Shazli said.

  “It is very simple, your Majesty,” the foreign minister said. “By trying to hold on to too much freedom, our ancestors lost all they had. They were so free, they ended up enslaved. We, now, have less freedom than we might like, but less freedom than we might like is better than no freedom at all.”

  “Ah.” The king smiled. “You are at your most dangerous, I think, when you speak in paradoxes.”

  “Am I?” Hajjaj shrugged. “We are still free enough to make choices about who our friends should be. Things could indeed be worse, as you say; we might have no choices left to call our own. And we have taken back all the land the Unkerlanters stole from us when they conveniently forgot about the Treaty of Bludenz--and more besides, to make the revenge sweeter still.”

  “Aye, for the time being we are victorious.” Shazli stretched out a long, slim forefinger to point at his foreign minister. “But if you were so proud of our victories as all that, would you have tried to pull us out of the war?”

  “Our victories depend on Algarve’s victory,” Hajjaj replied. “True, Algarve makes us a better ally than Unkerlant--we’re farther from Trapani than we are from Cottbus, after all. If I had a choice, though, I would sooner not be bound to a pack of murderers. That is why I tried to escape.”

  Shazli’s laugh was bitter as the beans Zuwayzin sometimes chewed to stay awake. “We’ve picked the wrong war for principle, haven’t we? King Mezentio slaughters his neighbors; King Swemmel slaughters his own. Hardly a pretty choice facing us, is it?”

  “No, and I rejoice that you understand as much, your Majesty,” Hajjaj said, respectfully inclining his head toward his sovereign. “Since principle is dead--since principle was murdered to power magecraft--all we can do is look out for ourselves. That we have done, as well as we are able.”

  King Shazli nodded. “The kingdom is in your debt, your Excellency. Without your diplomacy, Unkerlant would still be occupying much that is ours--and would have taken more in the fighting.”

  “You are gracious to me beyond my deserts,” Hajjaj said, modest as any sensible man would be at praise from his king.

  ‘And you, Hajjaj, you are one of the largest pillows lying beneath the monarchy,” Shazli said. “I know it, as my father knew it before me.”

  Other Derlavaians would have spoken of pillars, not pillows. Hajjaj, far more cosmopolitan than most of his countrymen, understood as much. His years at the university in Algarve and his travels since sometimes made him look on Zuwayza’s customs as an outsider. He could see foibles other Zuwayzin took for granted. But so what? he thought. It wasn’t as if foreigners had no foibles of their own.

  Shazli said, “We continue, then, and hope Algarve triumphs so that our own advances are not written on sand?”

  An Algarvian or a man from the Kaunian kingdoms--likely an Unkerlanter, too--would have said written on water. But water, in Zuwayza, was scarce and precious, while the sun-blasted desert kingdom had an enormous superabundance of sand.

  Hajjaj shook his head. He was woolgathering again. He did it more and more as he got older and hated it. Was it the first sign of drifting into senility? He dreaded that more than the physical aches and pains of old age. To be trapped inside a body that would not die, while he forgot himself one piece at a time . . . He shuddered. And he was woolgathering again, this time about woolgathering.

  Vexed, he gave the answer that should have come sooner: “If the powers above were kind, we would watch from the north until the last Algarvian and the last Unkerlanter beat in each other’s heads with clubs.” His shrug was mournful. “Life is seldom so convenient as we would wish.”

  “There, your Excellency, you touch on a great and mysterious truth, one that holds even for kings,” Shazli said. He got to his feet, a sign he had given Hajjaj all the time he intended to spare today.

  Grunting, his knees clicking, the foreign minister also rose and bowed to the king. As kings went these days, Shazli was a good sort: not a sharp-tempered martinet like Mezentio, much less a tyrant fearful of his own shadow like Swemmel. But then, the clan chiefs of Zuwayza ceded fewer powers to their kings than did the Algarvian nobles, while the old Unkerlanter nobility, these days, was largely deceased, replaced by upstarts. Swemmel had so much power because no one around him had any.

  After formal farewells that used up another quarter of an hour, Hajjaj made his way through the corridors of the palace to the foreign ministry. The building was as cool a place as any in Bishah: its thick walls of sun-dried brick could challenge even the Zuwayzi climate.

  “Nothing new to report to you, your Excellency,” Hajjaj’s secretary Qutuz said when the foreign minister poked his head into his office.

  “I thank you,” Hajjaj replied. He eyed Qutuz, a solid professional, with a wariness he hoped he kept covert. He’d trusted the man’s predecessor, who’d proved to be in the pay of Unkerlant. No matter how well his new secretary performed, Hajjaj knew he would be far slower in warming to him, if he ever did. He said, “So long as things are quiet, I think I shall knock off early for the afternoon. Would you be so good as to summon my driver?”

  “Of course, your Excellency,” Qutuz said. Before long, Hajjaj’s carriage was rolling up a narrow, twisting road into the hills above Bishah. Houses perched here were young fortresses, dating back to the days when any clan’s hand was likely to be raised against its neighbor.

  Hajjaj’s home was no exception to the rule. Back in the days before mages learned to liberate great blasts of sorcerous energy, it could have stood siege for months. Even now, his larg
e household included gate guards; no telling when some local lord might try to settle a score that had simmered, unavenged but unforgotten, for half a dozen generations.

  After the guards let the carriage roll through the entranceway, Hajjaj’s major-domo Tewfik came waddling up to meet him. “Hello there, young fellow,” Tewfik said, bowing to Hajjaj. He was the only man alive entitled to greet the foreign minister thus. He had been in the household longer than Hajjaj had been alive. Hajjaj thought he was about eighty-five, but he might have been older. As surely as Hajjaj ran Zuwayza’s foreign affairs, Tewfik ran Hajjaj s domestic ones.

  Returning the majordomo’s bow, Hajjaj asked, “And how are things here?”

  “Well enough, lord,” Tewfik answered with another creaking bow of his own; his back didn’t bend very far these days. “Peaceful, one might even say, now that that woman is no longer here.”

  That woman, Lalla, had until recently been Hajjaj’s juniormost wife: a pretty amusement with whom to while away some time every now and then. She’d become an increasingly willful and expensive amusement. Finally, to the relief of everyone else in the household, she’d become too expensive and willful for Hajjaj to stand anymore, and he’d sent her back to her own clanfather. Formerly respected for her position, she’d become that woman in the blink of an eye.

  Tewfik said, “The lady Kolthoum will be glad to see you, your Excellency.”

  “And I, of course, am always glad to see my senior wife,” Hajjaj answered. “Why don’t you run along ahead and let her know I will attend her shortly?”

  “Aye.” And off Tewfik went, not running but plenty spry for a man of his years. Hajjaj followed more slowly through the buildings and courtyards and gardens that filled the space within the household’s outer wall. Kolthoum would be irked if he didn’t give her enough time to prepare herself and to ready refreshments for him.

  When he did step into her chamber, she was waiting with tea and wine and cakes, as he’d known she would be. He embraced her and gave her a peck on the lips. They rarely slept together these days, the scrawny diplomat and his large, comfortable wife, but they were unfailingly fond of each other. Kolthoum understood him better than anyone else alive, save possibly Tewfik.

  “Is it well?” she asked him, as usual cutting straight to the heart of things.

  “It is as well as it can be,” he answered.

  His senior wife raised an eyebrow. “And how well is that?”

  Hajjaj considered. “I simply don’t know right now. Ask me again in a few months, and I may have a better notion.”

  “You don’t know?” Kolthoum said. Hajjaj shook his head. Kolthoum raised both eyebrows. “Powers above help us!” This time, Hajjaj nodded.

  Seventeen

  Home?” Vanai shook her head. “This isn’t home, Ealstan. It’s halfway between a trap and a cage.”

  She watched in dismay as Ealstan’s face closed. She was sick and tired of being cooped up, and he was getting sick and tired of listening to her complain about it. He said, “You didn’t have to come with me, you know.”

  “Oh, but I did,” she answered. “My grandfather’s house was a cage. Oyngestun was a trap. I still do feel trapped”--she was too proud to pretend not to have the feelings she had--”but at least the company is better when you’re here with me.”

  That won a smile from her Forthwegian lover. “Only reason I’m not here more is because I’m working all the cursed time,” he answered. “My father would always say the best bookkeepers were mostly here in Eoforwic, because the capital is where the money is. He usually knows what he’s talking about, but I think he was wrong this time. If the bookkeepers here were so fine, there wouldn’t be so many people who wanted to hire me.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Vanai said. “Maybe you’re better than you think.”

  He looked very young then, and very confused, as if he wanted to believe that but didn’t quite dare. “My father is that good,” he said. “Me?” He shrugged and shook his head. “I know how much I don’t know.”

  Vanai laughed at him. “But do you know how much the other bookkeepers in Eoforwic don’t know?”

  She watched him work his way through that. “It would be nice to believe that, but I really don’t,” he said.

  “Then why does Ethelhelm want you to keep his books for him?” Vanai countered, using the singer’s name because Ealstan set such stock in him. She set more stock in Ethelhelm than she’d expected, not because of the Kaunian blood he might have, but for the Forthwegian songs he wrote and sang.

  But her question didn’t have quite the impact for which she’d hoped. “Why? I’ll tell you why,” Ealstan answered. “Because the fellow who used to cast accounts for him walked in front of a ley-line caravan and got himself squashed, that’s why. That’s why Ethelhelm was doing his own bookkeeping for a bit, too, but he just didn’t have the time to keep on.” He got up from the table and stretched; something crackled in his back. “Ahh, that’s better,” he said. “I spend all my time on a stool, bending over ledgers.”

  Vanai was about to offer him the chance to spend some time in an altogether different position when she saw movement down on the street. She went to the window for a better look. “Algarvian constables,” she said over her shoulder to Ealstan.

  “What are they doing?” he asked, and then, coming up behind her, set a hand on her shoulder and drew her away from the grimy panes of glass. “Let me look--it won’t matter if they see me here.”

  She nodded and stepped back. Ealstan did his best to take care of her. He stood there, his wide back to her, looking down. “Well?” she asked at last.

  “They’re putting up broadsheets,” he said. “I can’t make out what the sheets say, not from up here. Once they’ve gone on, I’ll go downstairs and have a look.”

  “All right.” Vanai nodded. All at once, with the constables passing through, the flat was a refuge once more. “Maybe they’re just more recruiting sheets for Plegmund’s Brigade.” Those, at least, didn’t have anything directly to do with her.

  But Ealstan shook his head. “They don’t look like them,” he said. “The sheets for Plegmund’s Brigade always have pictures on them, so the people who are too stupid to read can figure out what they’re about. These are nothing but words. I can see that much.” He turned away from the window toward her. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Everything will be fine.”

  He didn’t really believe that. She could see as much by the lines, deep past his years, that were carved into the skin by the corners of his mouth. She could also see he didn’t really expect her to believe it, either. But he said it anyhow, in the hope, however forlorn, it would make her feel better. And his caring for her feelings did make her feel better, even if she didn’t think everything would be all right.

  She stepped up and gave him a hug. He hugged her, too, and kissed her. One of his hands closed on her breast. When Major Spinello had done that, all Vanai had wanted to do was tear herself away. Now, though Ealstan was doing the same thing, her heart beat fast and she molded herself against him. It was, if you looked at it the right way, pretty funny.

  Warmth flowed through her. But when she started to go back toward the bedchamber, Ealstan didn’t come along. Instead, he returned to the window. “They’ve gone down the street,” he said. “I can go down and look at the broadsheets without drawing any notice--plenty of people coming out to see what the latest nonsense is.”

  “Go on, then,” Vanai answered. Putting business ahead of pleasure was like Ealstan. Right at the moment, she wasn’t sure she liked that so well.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “And then--” Something sparked in his eyes. He hadn’t forgotten her, not at all. Good ... well, better. She waved toward the door.

  But when he did come back, his face was as grim as Vanai had ever seen it. Any thoughts of making love right then flew out of her head. “What have the Algarvians gone and done?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  “T
hey’re ordering all Kaunians to report to the Kaunian quarter here in Eoforwic,” Ealstan answered. “They’re all supposed to live there and nowhere else in town. Anybody who brings in word of one who hasn’t reported to the Kaunian quarter gets a reward--the broadsheet doesn’t say how much.”

  Vanai’s voice went shrill with alarm: “You know why they’re doing that.”

  “Of course I do,” Ealstan replied. “With all the Kaunians in one place, the redheads won’t have to work so hard to round your people up and ship you west whenever they need some more.”

  “Some more to kill,” Vanai said, and Ealstan nodded. She turned away from him. “What am I going to do?” She wasn’t asking Ealstan. She was asking the world at large, and the world had long since shown that it didn’t care.

  Whether she’d asked him or not, Ealstan answered: “Well, you’re not going into the Kaunian quarter and that’s flat. Out here, you’ve got a chance. In there? Forget it.”

  “A price on my head,” Vanai said wonderingly. She giggled, though it wasn’t funny--perhaps because it wasn’t funny. “What am I, a famous highwayman?”

  “You’re an enemy of the Kingdom of Forthweg,” Ealstan told her. “That’s what the broadsheet says, anyhow.”

  Vanai laughed louder, because that was even less funny than the other. “I’m an enemy of the kingdom?” she exclaimed. “I am? Who beat the Forthwegian army? Last I looked, it was the Algarvians, not us Kaunians.”

  “A lot of Forthwegians will forget all about that, though,” Ealstan said bleakly. “Cousin Sidroc would, I think; maybe Uncle Hengist, too. Kaunians have always been easy to blame.”

  “Of course we are.” Vanai didn’t try to hide her bitterness. She might almost have been speaking to another Kaunian as she went on, “There are ten times as many Forthwegians as there are of us. That makes us pretty easy to blame all by itself.”