Through the Darkness d-3

by Harry Turtledove

  “I doubt it,” Siuntio said. “And even if we should manage it, running around after that scamp of an Uto should unspoil you pretty soon.”

  “Hard to be spoiled when you’re exhausted,” Pekka agreed. She gave the senior mage a sidelong glance. “We both have to run around after that scamp of an Ilmarinen, don’t we?”

  Siuntio wheezed laughter. “I’ve been running around after Ilmarinen longer than you’ve been alive. I take a certain amount of pride in noting that I’ve made him run around after me a few times, too.” He waved to a horse-drawn cab. The driver descended from his perch and held the door open. “The Principality,” Siuntio said as he handed Pekka up into the cab.

  “Aye, sir,” the driver said respectfully. Pekka didn’t think he knew who Siuntio was, but anyone who wanted to go to the fancy hostel had to be a person of more than a little consequence.

  The hostel lay only a few blocks from the depot. That was true of most newer hostels, which were sensibly close to the greatest source of travelers. Older ones stood near the hill on which the palace stood and along the road west to Lagoas.

  Almost as if they were so many Algarvians, the servitors at the Principality bowed and scraped and fussed over Pekka when she came into the lobby. It wasn’t because she had Siuntio walking by her side, either. To her mind, that would have been reason enough to bow and scrape and fuss. But the folk who worked at the hostel neither knew nor cared who Siuntio was. They fussed over Pekka for no better reason than that she had money. Had she been a trollop rich enough to afford the Principality, they would have treated her the same way. The idea made Pekka angry.

  “Money shouldn’t count for more than quality,” she said to Siuntio.

  He took her ire in stride. As best she could tell, he took everything-except occasionally Ilmarinen-in stride. “Money is easier to measure,” he replied- and what else was a working theoretical sorcerer likely to say?

  Pekka stuck out her chin and looked stubborn. “Sometimes the easy measurement isn’t the important one.” She was a working theoretical sorcerer, too.

  Instead of answering right away, Siuntio leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She spluttered in surprise. The old mage’s smile was saucy. “Go on upstairs. Order yourself a fancy supper the Seven Princes are paying for. Enjoy the steam room and then sluice yourself down with cold water. Some people used to think being a sorcerer meant depriving yourself of everything that made life worth living. Do you still?”

  “You know better,” she answered.

  “Aye, I do, for I’ve seen your home,” Siuntio said. “You have no home in Yliharma, so you’re doomed to enjoy yourself here. I’ll see you in the morning.” He turned and went out to the waiting cab. Pekka stared after him with mingled exasperation and affection. Then, seeing no other good choice, she went on upstairs and did exactly what Siuntio had suggested.

  The mattress in her little suite was wider and sorter and altogether more inviting than the one she used at home. Even so, she didn’t sleep well. For one thing, she didn’t have Leino lying there beside her stealing the coverlets and doing his best to make sure she froze. For another, no matter how inviting the bed was, it was also unfamiliar. Pekka tossed and turned and laughed at herself. I’m too comfortable to doze off, she thought. However absurd it sounded, it was true. Eventually, she did fall asleep.

  After an extravagant breakfast of smoked salmon and delicate onions on rye bread, she went downstairs. Siuntio and Ilmarinen waited for her in the lobby. Siuntio looked not much different from the way he had the night before. When she saw Ilmarinen, though, her first thought was that he’d had too much to drink and was suffering on account of it.

  “So you’re here to join the vultures’ feast, eh?” he said, and she realized it was fury, not a hangover, that reddened his eyes and made the wrinkles in his cheeks and on his forehead seem deeper and more eroded-looking than she’d ever seen them.

  “I’m here, aye,” she said. “As for feasts, I don’t know about any except the one I just finished in my room.”

  Ilmarinen rounded on Siuntio. “Powers above, you quack, didn’t you tell her?”

  Siuntio shook his head. “No. I wanted her to approach the question with an open mind-which she will do now.” But, despite plainly doing his best to sound assured, he also sounded a little embarrassed.

  “What didn’t you tell me, Master Siuntio?” Pekka asked sharply. “Whatever it was, I wish I’d known about it.”

  Ilmarinen started to answer. Siuntio held up a hand. For a wonder, that made Ilmarinen hesitate. To Pekka, Siuntio said, “Nothing you won’t find out now: that I promise you. If you come along with this excitable fellow and me, you’ll see as much for yourself.”

  He led her toward one of the meeting chambers off the main lobby. Quietly, she said, “Don’t ever keep things from me again, if you please.”

  “I did what I judged best,” Siuntio answered.

  “And she’s worth three of you because of it, you old fraud,” Ilmarinen growled. He wasn’t enjoying Siuntio’s discomfiture, as he would have most of the time. He was too angry for that. Pekka wondered what could have caused the rift between them, and how she’d somehow landed in the middle of it.

  Siuntio opened an ornately carven door. When Pekka saw people already at the table, she expected they’d been Raahe and Alkio and Piilis, the other theoretical sorcerers on the track of the relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion. She and Siuntio and Ilmarinen had outdistanced them, but they weren’t far behind.

  Instead, though, two tall men rose from their chairs and bowed to her.

  Siuntio said, “Mistress Pekka, I present to you Grandmaster Pinhiero of the Lagoan Guild of Mages and his secretary, Brinco.”

  “Good day, Mistress,” Pinhiero said in good, almost unaccented Kuusaman. He was in his late middle years, his hair more gray than red. Brinco, younger and plumper, contented himself with bowing again.

  “Good day,” Pekka replied, automatically polite. But then she began to wonder why she and her colleagues were meeting with two of Lagoas’ leading mages. She didn’t wonder for long; the answer seemed only too obvious. Nodding to Pinhiero and Brinco, she said, “I hope you gentlemen will excuse us for a moment. We have something that wants discussing.” She stepped out of the meeting chamber. Ilmarinen seemed glad to go with her, Siuntio rather less so.

  “You see?” Ilmarinen said-to Siuntio, not to her, for he went on, “She wants no part of this, either. Letting the Lagoans share what we’ve found. . It’s madness, nothing but madness.”

  “Is it?” Siuntio shrugged and then shook his head. “They’re at war with Algarve no less than we are. They have skilled mages, too, and-”

  Ilmarinen’s snort cut him off. “Those two? I know their work, such as it is. They’re skilled politicos, but that’s about all. And aye, Lagoas is at war with Algarve-now. What happens when Lagoas is at war with us again, as it’s liable to be one day? The Guild of Mages will use what we teach ‘em and beat us over the head with it.”

  “If we do this,” Siuntio said patiently, “we shall do it with precautions. Just as we show the Lagoans what we’ve learned, so shall they be bound to share with us whatever they may discover.”

  Ilmarinen threw back his head and laughed so loud, a waiter carrying a tray of smoked whitefish into another chamber stopped and stared. “Did you ever stop to think the Lagoans might cheat? If I were in their boots, I would.”

  Pekka wondered if that thought had crossed Siuntio’s mind. He was such a good man himself, he might well reckon others better than they really were. But no, not this time, for he replied, “Aye, they may cheat. So may we. They may be dangerous to us in time to come. The Algarvians are dangerous to us now. Which of these carries the greater weight?”

  “You know my answer,” Ilmarinen said. “Were it up to me, I’d tell Pinhiero and Brinco to go chase themselves. Remember that other mage they sent to spy on us, that Fernao? He went away with a flea in his ear, thanks
to me.”

  “I remember Fernao,” Pekka said. “He wrote to me, trying to find out what I was up to. I didn’t tell him anything.”

  “Well, then, let’s send these buggers home, too,” Ilmarinen said. “It’s two to one against you, Siuntio. You can’t go on dickering with them by yourself- or you’d bloody well better not, anyhow.”

  “I would not,” Siuntio said. “The choice of whether or not we proceed lies with Mistress Pekka, as you say. But she has not yet stated it, so you may be speaking too soon. I also note that you have not answered the question I set you: which is more important, more dangerous-what Algarve is doing now or what Lagoas may do later?”

  He looked toward Pekka. So did Ilmarinen. To Siuntio, she said, “You would have had a better chance of getting me to do what you wanted if you’d talked with me about it first.”

  “I suppose so,” he answered. “But then Ilmarinen would be screaming I’d seduced you. However pleasing that prospect may be, it’s not what I had in mind. Do what you think is right. You have an instinct for it. I rely on that.”

  An instinct for rightness? Pekka wanted to laugh in the senior theoretical sorcerer’s face. If she had such a gift, why weren’t the experiments going better? She glared at him and at Ilmarinen. They were both older and wiser than she; why were they leaving the choice in her hands?

  Because, with all their age and wisdom, they can’t agree. The answer came back as clearly as if she’d shouted the question. She shook her head. But if I’m wrong. . oh, if I’m wrong! And they were waiting for her, waiting with impatience that grew as she looked from one of them to the other. A snap decision-her snap decision-might turn out to be crucial to the way the war turned out, and to the fate of Kuusamo for generations to come.

  She almost hated them for putting that burden on her shoulders. But there it lay, and she had to bear it. Slowly, hesitantly, she said, “They are our allies. If they can help us do this thing, they had better know what we know.”

  Ilmarinen scowled. Siuntio beamed. Pekka angrily turned away from both of them. They’d forced this choice on her. Now, whether she was right or wrong, she-and everybody else-would have to live with it.

  Istvan trudged east along a forest path. He didn’t know what had made the path. Whatever it was, he didn’t think it was a man. The path wandered and doubled back on itself more than a man-made track would have. It hadn’t been improved as a man-made track would have, either. Istvan’s leggings were muddy all the way up to mid-thigh in proof of that.

  “Accursed be the Unkerlanters,” he growled as his boots went into yet more mud. Each one made a wet, sucking sound as he pulled it free. “This stinking forest is bigger than most kingdoms, and harder to get through, too.”

  “My guess is, they keep it this way on purpose,” Kun said. “With the mountains in front of it, it shields everything beyond from us.”

  Szonyi grunted. “May the stars never shine on me again if I’ve seen even a single piece of Unkerlant worth having. What do you want to bet the rest of the kingdom is just as worthless?”

  “Wouldn’t touch it,” Istvan said at once.

  “I would,” Kun said. “Somewhere in Unkerlant, there’s country that grows pretty good soldiers. They’ve been using them against us, and they’ve been using them against the Algarvians, too. Those goat-eaters have to come from somewhere.”

  As far as Istvan was concerned, the Unkerlanters might have come out from under flat rocks, like any other worms and grubs. They certainly seemed to come out from under flat rocks in the forest, striking the Gyongyosians and then slipping away again. Every few miles, they would form a line and fight-either that or, when the wind was with them, they would start a forest fire and let Istvan and his countrymen worry about that instead of any merely human foes.

  Something moved in the woods off to Istvan’s left. His head whipped around toward it. “What was that?” he said sharply, raising his hand to keep his squad from moving forward into what might be an ambush.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Szonyi said, almost stepping on his boot heels.

  “Neither did I.” That was Kun. Though he’d gained corporal’s rank, he still thought enough like a common soldier to enjoy the chance to tell someone superior to him that he was wrong.

  But Istvan didn’t think he was wrong, not this time. “Use your little magic,” he told Kun. “You’ll know when someone’s moving toward us, not so?”

  “Aye,” Kun said, a little sulkily. “But I won’t be able to tell if he’s friend or foe. You know about that.”

  “I’d better,” Istvan said. “You almost blazed me for a Kuusaman when we were out on that island in the Bothnian Ocean instead of stuck here in these accursed woods.”

  “All right, then,” Kun said, and worked the small, quick spell-one of the sort a mage’s apprentice might learn even if his master wasn’t inclined to teach him much. After a moment, he let out a soft grunt of surprise and glanced over to Istvan. “It is a man, Sergeant-not a beast and not a bit of fluff from your imagination.”

  “I wish it had been,” Istvan said unhappily. “Now we’re going to have to hunt the bugger down and find out who he is.” He waved to his squad. “Into the woods, boys. No help for it.”

  Some of the troopers cursed, not at him but at their luck. Kun said, “I hope it’s one of our officers, some popinjay of a captain or even a colonel.” By his tone, he didn’t hope that because he feared to fight an Unkerlanter. No, he hoped to get a chance to give an officer a hard time without fear of punishment.

  And Istvan chuckled and said, “Aye,” hoping for the same chance himself. But he stopped chuckling the instant he stepped off the track. If the man he’d spotted was an Unkerlanter, as seemed more likely, he’d have to hunt the fellow down. He would almost have sooner gone unarmed after a tiger. In this trackless forest, the Unkerlanters were better at moving unseen and unheard than most Gyongyosians.

  If that was an Unkerlanter there, why had he let Istvan see him? Had he made a mistake? Swemmel’s men seldom made that kind of mistake. If it wasn’t a mistake, what was the Unkerlanter trying to lure him into?

  The first thing he found himself lured into was mud up to his knees once more. Cursing wearily, he dragged himself out. After a considerable search, he and his comrades found nothing. “Are you sure your magic knows what it’s talking about?” he asked Kun.

  “Aye,” the sorcerer’s apprentice answered. “Someone was moving around here, Sergeant, but I don’t know who and I don’t know where.”

  “Oh, huzzah,” Istvan said sourly. “The son of a whore could be sitting somewhere close by gnawing on a big chunk of goat meat, and we’d never know the difference, eh?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Kun said. “I can cast the spell again, if you like. If he’s still moving toward us, I’ll know. But I don’t think it’s very likely.”

  Istvan didn’t think it was very likely, either. But, since he couldn’t think of anything better to do, he said, “Go ahead.”

  Kun went ahead. After a couple of minutes, he spread his hands. “Nothing. Nothing I can find, anyhow.”

  “Huzzah,” Istvan repeated. “So he’s past us, is he?”

  “Either that or he’s sitting tight and not moving toward us,” Kun answered. He slapped at a fly that landed on the back of his hand, then asked, “What now?”

  It was a good question. Istvan wished he had a good answer for it. He wanted to say, Let’s go back to the path and keep on and forget about it. Then this whoreson, if he is an Unkerlanter, will be someone else’s worry. He wanted to say that, but discovered he couldn’t. He had a stubborn streak that refused to let the words pass his lips. What came out instead was, “We keep looking.”

  Kun nodded. A chance streak of sunlight glittered off the gold frames of his spectacles. “All right, Sergeant, we keep looking.” That wasn’t perfect submission, as it would have been in a different tone of voice. As things were, Kun couldn’t have been more emphatic about callin
g Istvan an idiot if he’d held up a sign.

  Istvan knew he was probably wasting his time, and his squad’s as well. What with all the ferns and brambles and thorn bushes on the ground, the Unkerlanter had so many places to hide that the only way to find him would be to stumble over him.

  That thought had hardly crossed his mind before one of his troopers gave a shout that abruptly turned into a cry of pain. “Come on!” Istvan said, and scrambled toward the soldier.

  The Gyongyosian was down on the ground, but not badly hurt. “That way!” he said, and pointed east. Istvan heard someone running through the woods. He blazed in the direction of the noise. It kept on, so he must have missed. The wounded soldier said, “I never would have known the goat-bugger was there, but I tripped over his foot.”

  “Luck,” Istvan muttered. It hadn’t been good luck for the soldier, but it had been for the Gyongyosians as a group. Istvan raised his voice: “After him! Keep him running and we’ll run him down!”

  Either that or we’ll run straight into trouble, he thought. But the Unkerlanter was fleeing, whatever he’d planned disrupted. And so Istvan and his comrades pounded after him.

  A beam hissed through the forest. Steam spurted from a pine bough not too far above Istvan’s head. He threw himself flat-and landed on his belly in a bramble bush. “There!” Szonyi shouted from off to his left. “I saw where he blazed from.”

  “Well, blaze him, then,” Istvan shouted back. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he crawled through the brambles and briars as fast as he could go. If the Unkerlanter blazed at the sound of his voice, he wanted the fellow blazing in the wrong place.

  Again, he wondered if the enemy soldier was leading his comrades and him into a trap. He’d seen no signs of it, but he wouldn’t, not if the Unkerlanter knew what he was doing. In an odd way, it didn’t matter. With the chase on, he and his men could hardly abandon it.

  He scuttled over to a tree, ignoring the scratches on his face and arms and the burrs clinging to his tunic and leggings. Cautiously, he peered out from behind the trunk-only for an instant before jerking his head back. He wasn’t so foolish as to peer twice from the same place; that was asking for a beam right between the eyes. Instead, he crawled over to another tree and took a look from behind that one.