Out of the Darkness

Seventeen

After Ilmarinen got down from his carriage, he gave the blockhouse in the.Naantali district a salute half affectionate, half ironic. “Congratulations,” he told Pekka and Fernao, who alighted just after him. “You never did quite manage to kill yourselves here, or to blast this place off the face of the earth.”

Fernao’s smile showed fangs. “You were the one who came closest to that, you know, when you told Linna goodbye and came out here with your miscalculations.”

Ilmarinen scowled; he didn’t like being reminded of that. “I still say there’s more to that side of the equation than you’re willing to admit. You don’t want to see the possibilities.”

“You don’t want to see the paradoxes,” Fernao retorted. “You ignored such a big one when you came out here, you could have taken half the district with you.”

That was also true, and Ilmarinen liked it no better. Before he could snap back at Fernao again, Pekka said, “It’s so good to have you back, Master. The bickering got dull after you went away.”

“Did it?” Ilmarinen’s smile was sour. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Raahe and Alkio and Piilis got out of their carriages. So did the secondary sorcerers, who would transmit the spell to the animals that would power it: an enormous bank of cages, larger than any Ilmarinen had seen. No one approached the blockhouse with any great eagerness. Except for Ilmarinen, all the mages here had already seen that this spell worked as advertised, so they weren’t out to discover anything new. That might have accounted for part of their reluctance. The rest. .

“You remind me of so many hangmen on execution day,” Ilmarinen said.

“That’s about what I feel like,” Pekka said. “We’ve tried everything we could to make the Gongs heed us, but they wouldn’t. If they had, we wouldn’t need to do this. I wish we didn’t.”

“They’re proud and they’re brave and they still don’t believe they’re overmatched,” Ilmarinen said. “When you run into someone like that, you usually have to hit him in the face to get his attention.”

“We are. I understand the need,” Pekka said. Ilmarinen found himself nodding. When he first got to know her, he’d made the mistake of thinking her soft; he’d had to change his mind about that in short order. She went on, “I understand it, but I still don’t like it.”

“It will end the war,” Fernao said. “It had better end the war.”

“Aye. It had better.” Pekka’s tone was bleak. “If it doesn’t… I don’t want to think about doing this twice, or more than twice, not to cities.”

“That’s one of the reasons we have some hope of getting away with this and keeping our spirits clean,” Ilmarinen said. “Believe me, if the Algarvians had known what we do, they wouldn’t have thought twice about using it. The deeper in trouble they got, the nastier the wizardry they tried and the less they counted the cost. They deserved having the Unkerlanters overrun them, and if that’s not a judgment I don’t know what is.”

“Let’s go do what needs doing,” Pekka said. “We have a crystal in the blockhouse-I ordered one moved there. If the Gyongyosians decide to be sensible at the last moment, we can abort the spell.”

She’s grasping at straws, Ilmarinen thought. She has to know she’s grasping- at straws, but she’s doing it anyhow. Can’t blame her for that. Blame? Powers above, I admire her for it. But it won’t do any good. If the Gongs were going to quit, they’d have quit by now. Beating them on the field hasn’t been enough to make them change their minds. Maybe this will be. If it is, it’ll be worthwhile.

One after another, the mages marched into the blockhouse. It was as cramped as Ilmarinen remembered. With his bad leg, Fernao was the last one through the door. He slammed it shut and let the heavy bar fall into place. The blockhouse might have been sealed away from the rest of the world.

“No need for that, not anymore,” Ilmarinen said.

“Maybe not,” Fernao said, “but by now it’s become part of our ritual.” Ilmarinen nodded. Routine did have a way of crystallizing into ritual. And Fernao was a good deal more fluent in Kuusaman these days than he had been before Ilmarinen left the Naantali district. The Lagoan wizard hardly ever needed to fall back into classical Kaunian now. His south-coast accent was also stronger than it had been. Ilmarinen glanced toward Pekka. He had no doubt where Fernao had picked up his style of speaking.

Pekka might have felt his eye on her. If she had, she didn’t know why he’d looked her way, for she said, “Master Ilmarinen, are you sure you’re comfortable here? In spite of your work, you’re a latecomer to this sorcery.”

“I’ll pull my weight,” Ilmarinen answered. “This is the end, the very end. I want to be a part of that.”

“All right.” She nodded. “You’re entitled to it. So much of the work we’ve done is based on your calculations. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here today. I will say, though, I hope you don’t plan on standing on your head, the way you did in the hallway outside my office.”

“No,” Ilmarinen said. “What we’re here for today is standing Gyongyos on its head. That’s a different business.”

Piilis said, “So it is, Master, but one day you must tell us why you chose to stand on your head in the hallway outside Mistress Pekka’s office.”

“I was demonstrating an inverse relationship,” Ilmarinen replied. Piilis blinked but didn’t smile. He was bright enough-more than bright enough- but had only a vestigial sense of humor. He might have gone further had he had more. Or he might not have, too. Ilmarinen had his own opinion about such things, but recognized it was no more than an opinion.

“Are we ready?” Pekka asked. No one denied it. She took a deep breath and intoned, “Before the Kaunians came, we of Kuusamo were here. Before the Lagoans came, we of Kuusamo were here. After the Kaunians departed, we of Kuusamo were here. We of Kuusamo are here. After the Lagoans depart, we of Kuusamo shall be here.”

Ilmarinen repeated the ritual words with her. So did the rest of the Kuusaman mages crowding the blockhouse. And so, he noted, did Fernao. That was interesting. Before Ilmarinen left, the Lagoan mage had always hung back from the stylized phrases with which Kuusamans began any sorcerous endeavor.

No more, though. Was he starting to think of himself as a Kuusaman, then?

Even if Fernao did think of himself as belonging to the land of the Seven Princes, Ilmarinen didn’t and wouldn’t. And neither would the Lagoan, if he weren‘t sleeping with a Kuusaman woman, the master mage thought. But then he shrugged. Plenty of men-and women, too-had changed their allegiance over the years for reasons like that.

“I ask you once more, Master,” Pekka said: “Are you ready to take your place in this spell along with the rest of us?”

“And I tell you once more: I am,” Ilmarinen replied. “I think I can keep up with you. Do you doubt it?”

He found himself flattered by how quickly she shook her head. “By no means,” she told him, and looked to the other mages. “Are we all ready?” When no one denied it, Pekka took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Pursuant to the orders conveyed to me by the Seven Princes of Kuusamo, I begin.”

Whenever she incanted up till now, it was always just, “I begin,” Ilmarinen thought. Does she want to have it on the record that she’s following orders? A lot of Algarvians tried to do that. Or is her conscience bothering her a little, so she wants to lay the blame on the Seven and not on herself?

He had little time to wonder about such things. His own spell along these lines would have required only one operator: he’d designed it for himself. The charm the mages here had come up with was a good deal more complex. And when did you ever know a committee to do anything that wasn’t clumsy and cumbersome? Ilmarinen asked himself.

But that wasn’t altogether fair, and he was honest enough to admit it to himself. His spell was a bare-bones affair. A good sorcerer needed arrogance, and he had it in full measure. He’d simply assumed nothing would go wrong as he loosed the cantrip on the world. If anything did go wrong-if, by some mischance, he made a mistake-the spell would ruin him in short order.

This version, if more complicated, was also a good deal safer. Raahe and Alkio and Piilis not only helped draw and aim the sorcerous energy: they also stood ready to turn it aside in case Pekka or Fernao or Ilmarinen himself stumbled.

I don’t intend to stumble, he thought, as Pekka pointed to him and he took up the chant. The passes he used were a good deal more elegant-and more difficult- than those the mages here had worked out. He accepted the revised words they’d come up with. Safety for elegance was a reasonable trade. But he thought their passes ugly. He felt sure he could manage these, and so he used them.

No mage intends to stumble, went through his mind. By then, though, he’d finished that portion of the spell. He pointed to Fernao and poised himself to deflect any trouble if the Lagoan slipped. Fernao still irked Ilmarinen, but no denying he’d come a long way in a short time.

He got through his portion of the spell without difficulty, even if Ilmarinen reckoned his passes graceless. Then Pekka took over once more, and brought the charm up to its first plateau. Ilmarinen could feel the power already gathered, and could also sense the shape and size of the power still to be drawn. As he sensed it, awe washed over him. Could I have managed this by myself? I thought I could, but maybe I was wrong. Arrogance brings down as many mages as clumsiness.

Pekka pointed to him. He nodded, stopped thinking, and started incanting once more. They’d given him the task of getting the cantrip past that first plateau, up to the point where the power, the sorcerous energy, having all been gathered, could be launched against any target the mages chose.

Ilmarinen felt as if he were pushing a boulder up a hill. For a bad moment, he wondered if the boulder would roll down over him and crush him. Then, without any fuss, he felt added strength from Pekka and from Fernao. The Lagoan mage nodded to him, as if to say, We can do it. And, with his help, they could. That boulder of power went up the metaphorical hill again-and, somehow, began to move up it faster and faster, which just proved metaphor was not only slippery but also dangerous.

“Now!” Ilmarinen grunted hoarsely. Pekka pointed to Raahe, Alkio, and Piilis, Fernao to the secondary sorcerers. The power didn’t belong here. It needed to be on the far side of the world, where a new day would soon be dawning.

With the other mages in the blockhouse, Ilmarinen felt the sorcerous energy fly east. They cried out in triumph. And then, some tiny fraction of a heartbeat later, Ilmarinen and the others felt it strike home against Gyorvar.

He cried out again, almost before the echoes of his first shout had faded. But what he felt this time was a long way from triumph.

When Istvan went back to Gyongyos, he hadn’t expected merely to exchange one captives’ camp for another. By now, though, he’d concluded he wouldn’t be getting out of this center near Gyorvar any time soon. All the guards spoke his language. The food was what he was used to. But for those details, he might as well have been back on Obuda.

“You have a simple way to go free,” Balazs told him. The interrogator spoke in calm, reasonable tones: “All you need do, Sergeant, is say you are convinced the accursed Kuusamans, may the stars never shine on them, tried to trick and terrorize you with their show on Becsehely.”

“All I have to do is lie, you mean,” Istvan said sourly. “All I have to do is turn my back on the stars.”

“Your attitude is most uncooperative,” Balazs said.

“I am trying to tell you the truth,” Istvan said in something not far from despair. “If you don’t listen, what will happen to Gyongyos?”

“Nothing much, I expect,” the interrogator answered. “Nothing much has happened to our stars-beloved land up till now. Why should that change?”

“Because the slanteyes have given us a little time to make up our minds,” Istvan said. “Pretty soon, they’ll go ahead and do this to us.”

“If they can, which I do not believe-which everyone with a dram of sense, from Ekrekek Arpad on down, does not believe,” Balazs said. “Most of your comrades have also seen sense and been released. You know what you have to do to join them. Why make an avalanche of a snowflake?”

“You would say the same thing if you were trying to talk me into eating goat,” Istvan said. The scar on his left hand throbbed. He ignored it. And, where nothing else had, that remark succeeded in insulting Balazs. He stalked away, his nose in the air, and bothered neither Istvan nor Captain Petofi the rest of the day.

Petofi noticed the interrogator’s absence. At supper, he asked why Balazs had gone missing. Istvan explained. The officer, normally a dour man, laughed out loud. But then he sobered. “He probably went into Gyorvar to denounce you,” he warned. “You may have got satisfaction now, but for how long will you keep it?”

Istvan shrugged. “They already have me in what might as well be another captives’ camp. What can they do to me that’s so much worse?”

“Those are the sorts of questions you would do better not to ask,” Petofi replied. “All too often, they turn out to have answers, and you generally end up wishing they didn’t.”

“Too late to worry about it now, sir,” Istvan said with another shrug. “I already opened my big mouth. Today was mine, and I’ll enjoy it. If he makes me sorry after he gets back here from Gyorvar, then he does, that’s all, and I’ll have to see if I can find some other way to get my own back.”

Sadly, the captain shook his head. “Those whoresons are armored against attack by virtue of their office. Being the ekrekek’s Eyes and Ears, they think they can do as they please, and they are commonly right.”

“Balazs isn’t Arpad’s Eye and Ear,” Istvan said. “He’s the ekrekek’s..” He named an altogether different portion of his sovereign’s anatomy, one as necessary as an eye or an ear but much less highly esteemed.

“No doubt you’re right,” Petofi said, this time favoring him with no more than a wintry smile. “Being right, of course, will get you what being right usually does: the blame, and nothing else.”

On that cheerful note, the captain nodded to Istvan almost as if they were equals and then left the dining hall for his own private room-he was an officer, after all. Istvan didn’t linger long himself. He felt oppressed, and he didn’t think it was at the prospect of Balazs’ coming revenge. The very air felt heavy with menace. He tried to tell himself it was his imagination. Sometimes he succeeded for several minutes at a stretch.

Balazs had told one truth, anyhow: the barracks hall where Istvan slept held only a handful of other stubborn underofficers besides himself. He didn’t care much, save that he missed Corporal Kun. Kun must have thought telling a few lies a small enough price for going home to Gyorvar. Istvan hardly blamed him. He knew mulishness was all that kept him here.

With Kun gone, he was in no mood for company anyhow. Lamps-out came as more than a little relief. Gyorvar’s distant lights came in through the south-facing windows, casting a pale, grayish illumination on the northern wall of the barracks. It was less than moonlight, more than starlight-not enough to disturb Istvan in the least when he fell asleep.

Having fallen asleep, he promptly began to wish he’d stayed awake. He kept starting up from a series of the ghastliest nightmares he’d ever had the misfortune to suffer. In one of them, Captain Tivadar cut his throat instead of his hand on finding out he’d eaten goat. That was one of the gentler dreams, too. Most of the others were worse, far worse: full of red slaughter. He couldn’t always remember the details when he woke, but his pounding heart and the terrified gasps with which he breathed told him more than he wanted to know.

And then, some time toward morning, he woke to bright sunlight streaming in through the window. But it wasn’t morning, not yet, and the window didn’t face east. And the light into the barracks might have been as bright as sunlight, but it wasn’t sunlight. It rippled and shifted like waves-or flames.

With a cry of horror and despair, Istvan sprang to his feet and rushed to the window. He knew what he would see, and he saw it: the same destruction poured down onto Gyorvar as had descended upon Becsehely. He’d been closer to the disaster in the Kuusaman ley-line cruiser than he was now, but he wasn’t so far away as to have any doubt about what was happening.

Even through the window, even across the miles separating him from the capital of Gyongyos, savage heat beat on his face. For a moment, that was the only thought in his mind. Then he wondered what it was like in Gyorvar itself, and then, sickly, he wished he hadn’t.

Well, he thought, if that accursed Balazs went into the capital, he isn‘t coming back. May the stars not shine on his spirit.

He faced that loss with equanimity. But then one of the other men in the hall whispered, “If Ekrekek Arpad’s there, he couldn’t live through. . that. If his kin are there, they couldn’t, either.”

That was horror of a different sort. The Ekrekek of Gyongyos was the only man alive who communed with the stars as an equal. That was what made him what he was. If he died, if all his kin died in the same searing instant-who would rule Gyongyos then? Istvan had no idea. He doubted anyone had ever imagined such a nightmare could befall the land.

“What do we do?” another soldier-or was he another captive? — moaned. “What can we do?”

The flames pouring out of the sky onto Gyorvar abruptly ceased, though they remained printed on Istvan’s vision when he blinked. Gyorvar without the ekrekek, without the ekrekek’s whole family? Arpad’s house had reigned in Gyongyos since the stars made the world. That was what people said, at any rate.

And so? Istvan wondered. If Arpad had the brains of a carrot, he would have realized’ Kuusamo was trying to warn us, not trying to bluff us. Now he’s paid for being wrong-along with the stars only know how many people who never did anyone any harm. If there’s any justice, the stars will refuse to shine on his spirit.

“Other lands just have kings,” Istvan said. “Maybe we can get along with nothing more than a king, too.”

“But-” Three shocked-sounding men began an automatic protest.

Istvan cut them off with a sharp chopping motion of his right hand. “We’d better be able to get along with nothing more than a king. How much good did Ekrekek Arpad do us? We lost the war, we lost Gyorvar-stars above, we might as well have had a goat-eating savage on the throne.”

Two of the soldiers at the window with him backed away, as if afraid he had some deadly, highly contagious disease. The third one, a corporal, said, “You’re right, by the stars.”

“I wonder what we’ll do now, and who the new Ekrekek or King or whatever he is of Gyongyos will be,” Istvan said, and then, with a shrug, “It probably won’t matter, not to the likes of us.”

“No,” said the underofficer who’d nodded-his name was Diosgyor. “Only thing that matters to us is whether they let us out.”

Captain Petofi strode into the barracks hall in time to hear that. “We’ll need to be very lucky to get away,” he said.

“Why?” Istvan said in dismay. “We were right. Everything we told them was true-and everything we warned them about came true.”

Petofi nodded. “All the more reason for locking us up and losing the key, wouldn’t you say, Sergeant? Few offenses more dangerous than proving right when your superiors say you must be wrong. Of course”-he grimaced-”most of our superiors, or the ones immediately concerned with us, are dead.”

“Uh-of course.” Istvan’s stomach lurched. He hadn’t even tried to think about how many people might have died in Gyorvar. Thinking about the ekrekek and his kinsfolk was bad enough. Add in all the ordinary men and women and children … “By the stars, sir, this wasn’t war. This was murder!”

“You’re half right,” Petofl said. “In a way, looked at from the Kuusaman point of view, this was murder. But the slanteyes did their best not to commit it. They could have loosed this magic on Gyorvar as soon as they found it. Instead, they let us watch when they threw Becsehely on the pyre. They let us watch and take back word of what we’d seen. Arpad wouldn’t hear it, though.” He sighed. “Wouldn’t you say he helped kill himself, and all of Gyorvar with himself?”

Slowly, Istvan nodded. Corporal Diosgyor said, “Can we still go on fighting the war now?”

“By the stars, I hope not!” Istvan and Captain Petofi exclaimed at the same time. It was impossible to say which of them sounded more horrified. And then Istvan let out a different cry of horror and despair.

“What’s wrong?” This time, Petofi and Diosgyor spoke together.

“My comrade, Corporal Kun,” Istvan said. “He gave the Eyes and Ears what they wanted. . and he lives-lived-in Gyorvar. We fought together on Obuda, in the forests of Unkerlant, and on Becsehely. He was the cleverest man I ever knew.” He would never have praised Kun so where the ex-mage’s apprentice could hear him. Now, though, Kun would never hear anything again. “If either of us died, I thought I’d surely be the one.”

“May the stars shine on his spirit forevermore,” Petofi said. “If he was in Gyorvar, that is the most any man can hope for.”

“I know,” Istvan said heavily. He was a warrior from a warrior race. Tears were for women, or so he’d heard from boyhood. He’d never come so close to shedding them as he did now, not since he’d grown out of childish things. “He was … a brother to me, a brother in arms.”

“Many of us have lost brothers,” Petofi said. “With Gyorvar gone, Gyongyos has had its heart torn from it. And what can we do? I have no answers.”

Istvan had no answers, either. No one left alive did. He was sure of that. And the answers Ekrekek Arpad and the other dead had come up with were wrong. He’d been sure of that even before fire enfolded Gyorvar in its dreadful embrace. Now the whole world knew it was true.

Leudast knew he’d passed through the enormous forests of western Unkerlant on his way to fight the Gongs in the Elsung Mountains. He hadn’t imagined how huge they really were. Back in those distant days, that halfhearted border war and Gyongyos’ skirmishes with Kuusamo among the islands of the Bothnian Ocean had been the only flareups in an otherwise peaceful world. The rest of Derlavai had gone through six years of darkness-and the Gongs were still fighting Unkerlant here in the uttermost west and the slanteyes in the Bothnian Ocean.

“Let’s see how much longer the whoresons last,” Leudast muttered under his breath. If it turned out to be much longer, he would own himself surprised. Even as he muttered, Unkerlanter egg-tossers pounded the Gyongyosian positions near the western edge of the woods. He didn’t quite know how his countrymen had managed it, but they’d moved a lot of egg-tossers through the trees till they bore on the lines the Gongs still held.

Hardly any Gyongyosian egg-tossers answered back. The Algarvians had fought hard for as long as they could. Whenever King Swemmel’s men started flinging eggs at them, they’d responded sharply. That remained true up to the day they surrendered. They’d gone down, but they’d gone down swinging.

The Gyongyosians, by contrast, hardly seemed to believe what was hitting them. Things had been quiet here in the distant west for the past couple of years. Unkerlant had thrown as much as possible into the fight against Algarve, while the Gongs had taken their men farther west still to fight the Kuusamans in a watery sort of war Leudast didn’t pretend to understand.

He understood perfectly well the task lying ahead of him. Seizing his shiny bronze officer’s whistle, he blew till the shrill note made his ears ring. “Forward!” he shouted. “Now we take the land away from them!”

Forward his company went-one company among hundreds, more likely thousands. Forward went behemoths, down game tracks and sometimes down no tracks at all. Overhead, dragons dropped more eggs on the Gongs skulking in the forest and swooped low to incinerate whatever they found in clearings. No brightly painted Gyongyosian beasts rose to challenge them. They had the sky to themselves.

The terrain here was as rugged as any in which Leudast had fought on the other side of his kingdom. The woods west of Herborn weren’t a patch on these. They could have been swallowed up as if they never were, in fact. Leudast and his men had to pick their way forward past great tree trunks scattered and tumbled like so many jackstraws.

But the country in which they were fighting did more to hold them back than did the Gyongyosians. Here and there, a few tawny, shaggy-bearded men in leggings did keep blazing at them, but they overran those pockets of resistance like men beating boys. “Nothing’s going to slow us down now!” Leudast shouted exultantly. “It’s not like it was when we were fighting the fornicating Algarvians- it’ll be easy!”

Powers above, am I really saying things like that? he wondered. But he was. Even at the end of the war against the redheads, they’d been dangerous whenever they managed to scrape together enough men and beasts and eggs to make a stand or to counterattack, and they’d always looked for chances to hit back. The Gongs, by contrast, seemed stunned at the attack rolling over them.

For the first couple of days of that attack, Leudast knew it reminded him of something he’d been through before, but couldn’t put his finger on what. Then, encamped for the night in a clearing, he snapped his fingers in sudden realization. “What is it, sir?” one of his men asked.

He still had trouble getting used to being called sir. But that wasn’t the reason he answered, “Oh, nothing important.” All at once, he understood why the Gongs were acting as they were. The Unkerlanter army had behaved exactly the same way when the Algarvians swarmed over the border more than four years earlier. They’d been hit by a force not just stronger than they were but also almost beyond their comprehension. Gyongyos had never expected a blow like this.

Unkerlant, thanks to its vast spaces and dreadful winters, had managed to ride out the Algarvian storm. Leudast didn’t think the Gongs would be able to do the same. They didn’t have so much land to yield, and they did have another war to worry about: the fight on the Bothnian Ocean came closer to the offshore Balaton Islands, closer to Gyorvar itself, every day.

And so, while the Unkerlanters swarmed forward, a lot of Gyongyosian soldiers simply threw up their hands, threw down their sticks, and went off into captivity. Some of them looked relieved, some looked resigned. One, who spoke a little Unkerlanter, asked, “What you do, move here so fast?”

He got no answer. The guards leading him and his countrymen back toward the camps that would house them kept them moving. Even if someone had sat him down and explained exactly what the Unkerlanters were doing, he might not have understood it. Leudast wouldn’t have understood exactly what the redheads were doing just after they started doing it. All he would have known-all he had known at the time-was that something dreadful had happened to his countrymen.

Less than a week after the great attack began, the Unkerlanters burst out of the vast forest and into the more open country that led to the foothills of the Elsung Mountains. Behind them, Leudast knew, pockets of Gongs still held out. So what? he thought. Pockets of Unkerlanters had still held out as the Algarvians swarmed west, too. The redheads had mopped them up at their leisure.

Peering ahead at the mountains, Leudast wondered how close he was to where he’d been when the Derlavaian War-what everybody but Unkerlant reckoned the Derlavaian War-broke out. He shrugged. He couldn’t tell. One set of peaks looked much like another to a man raised on the broad plains of northeastern Unkerlant.

He was settling his company for the night when Captain Dagaric called him and the other company commanders together. Dagaric took them out onto the meadow, well away from the common soldiers’ campfires. “What’s gone wrong, sir?” Leudast asked. Obviously, something had, or Dagaric wouldn’t have acted as he was doing.

He said, “I just got word from the regimental crystallomancer-Gyorvar’s been destroyed. Gone. Vanished. Off the map. Disappeared.” He snapped his fingers to show how thoroughly wrecked the capital of Gyongyos was.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it, sir?” another lieutenant asked. “If we smashed the place up, that’ll hurt the Gongs, won’t it?”

“Oh, the Gongs are hurting, all right,” Dagaric said. “Ekrekek Arpad’s dead, and so is everybody in his clan, as far as anyone can tell. The whoresons who’re left are all running around like chickens after the axe.”

“Then what’s wrong, sir?” the other junior officer repeated. “If we got rid of Gyorvar, of Arpad-”

“That’s what’s wrong,” Dagaric broke in. “We didn’t do it. We didn’t have anything to do with it. The Kuusamans smashed Gyorvar, with some newfangled sorcery they came up with.”

“Powers below eat them,” Leudast said softly. He remembered how lucky he’d been to come through alive after the Algarvians started murdering Kaunians the first autumn of their war with Unkerlant. The only answer his kingdom had found was killing its own people-a solution, he thought, no one but Swemmel would have imagined.

Another company commander, a sergeant, asked, “Can we match this magic?”

Dagaric shook his head. “No. The slanteyes know how to do it, and we don’t.”

“That’s not good.” Leudast thought he was the first to speak, but three or four company commanders said the same thing at more or less the same time.

“Of course it’s not,” Dagaric said. “Those whoresons ’ll hold it over our head like a club, you see if they don’t. But that hasn’t got anything to do with our job here. Our job here is kicking the stuffing out of the Gongs, and it’s more important than ever that we do it up good and proper.”

“How come, sir?” somebody asked.

The regimental commander made an exasperated noise. “The more we grab now, the better off we’ll be. For now, we’re still officially friends with Kuusamo. How long will that last, though? Anybody’s guess. So we grab with both hands while the grabbing’s good.”

“Makes sense,” Leudast said. “And the Gyongyosians were falling to pieces against us even before this happened. Now that it has, they ought to turn to mush.”

“I hope they do,” Dagaric said. “Other chance is that they might decide to make us pay as much as they can from here on out because everything’s lost. I hope they don’t try to do that, but we’ve got to be alert for it. I want you to let your men know it could happen. Don’t tell them about Gyorvar, not yet. I haven’t got any orders on how we’re supposed to present that to them.”

Leudast felt foolish warning his troopers the Gongs might turn desperate without telling them why. Nobody asked questions, though; curiosity was not encouraged in the Unkerlanter army. He did say, “We’ll know better when we see how things go in the morning.”

Lying there wrapped in a blanket, listening to eggs burst not so far away- but almost all of them off to the west, falling amongst the Gyongyosians-he realized that might not be so. Dagaric had ordered him to keep the news of the destruction of Gyorvar from his men. Would officers on the other side also keep it from the shaggy soldiers they led? He wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Forward!” he shouted when first light came. Forward the men went. The Gongs continued to crumble. Their disintegration was so quick and thorough, in fact, that Leudast couldn’t tell whether they knew some dreadful sorcery had claimed their capital. Unkerlant had been hammering their armies before the news came, and went right on hammering them now.

Three days later, Dagaric’s regiment was well up into the foothills of the Elsung Mountains. Looking east, back in the direction from which he’d come, Leudast saw nothing but a sea of dark green, a sea that stretched out to the horizon and far beyond. Ahead towered the mountain peaks. Even in the summertime, they remained shrouded in snow and mist. He didn’t look forward to climbing higher in them. He’d done that once, all those years before, and found mountain warfare harder work for fewer rewards than any other kind he’d met since.

No help for it, though, he thought, and ordered the men forward once more. But then, as the sun set ahead of him, a Gyongyosian with a white flag came out from behind a lichen-covered boulder. He waited to be recognized for what he was, then called out in musically accented Unkerlanter: “It is over. You and the slanteyes have beaten us. We can fight no more. We admit it, and we surrender.”

“By the powers above,” Leudast whispered. “I lived through it.” Those four words seemed to say everything that needed saying.

Krasta looked from the ornate parchment to the Valmieran official who’d given it to her. “What is this?” she asked in distaste; those seals and stamps meant little to her.

“It is what it says it is, milady,” the flunky replied. “It summons you to appear before his Majesty’s court day after tomorrow to testify as to your dealings during the time of occupation with a certain accused Algarvian, namely one Captain Lurcanio.”

“Why on earth would I want to do that?” Krasta demanded. She didn’t want to do it; she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less.

But the official said, “By the laws of the kingdom, your desires here are irrelevant and immaterial. Having been served with this summons, you are required to appear. Failure to do so will-not may, milady, but assuredly will-result in your being fined or imprisoned or both. Good day.”

He turned and strode down the walk, away from Krasta’s mansion. She started to shout an obscenity after him, but ended up whispering it instead. She still hoped for something like a pardon from King Gainibu. Insulting one of his servants wouldn’t help her get it.

She glared down at the summons. She wanted to tear it to pieces. As if it knew what she wanted and were mocking her, a couple of sentences in amongst the legalese leaped out. This document must be presented at your court appearance, she read. It will be counterstamped to document the said appearance. As she’d whispered curses at the man who’d brought the summons, so she aimed more at the document itself.

No help for it, though. She put on the most demure outfit she could find- the trousers were so baggy, they might have done duty for a Forthwegian-style long tunic (or so she imagined, anyhow). Again, her wig was a confection of piled blond curls: it shouted her Kaunianity to the world. The hair underneath that was still growing out shouted something else altogether, but she refused to pay any attention to that.

The last thing she expected when she got to the royal courthouse was a pack of news-sheet scribblers standing outside. They shouted rude questions at her: “How good was the redhead, Marchioness?” “That’s really his baby, isn’t it?” “Will you tell the judges you fell in love with him?”

Nose in the air, she stalked past them as if they didn’t exist. A bailiff led her to the courtroom and had her sit in a row of chairs reserved for witnesses. Lurcanio himself sat not far away. He grinned and blew her a kiss. Her nose went up higher. He laughed, outwardly as brash as ever. To her dismay, more reporters in the courtroom scribbled notes about the byplay.

A panel of judges came in. Two of them wore black tunics and trousers of a cut even baggier than the ones she had on. They were supposed to be dressed as ancient Kaunian judges, she thought. The third was a soldier. His uniform glittered. He had two rows of medals on his chest. He sat in the middle, between the other two.

Everyone rose and bowed when the judges took their places. Krasta was a beat behind most people, because she didn’t know she was supposed to. “Be seated,” the soldier said in a voice that sounded as if he’d used it on the battlefield.

To Krasta’s indignation, she wasn’t the first witness summoned to the box. A weedy little commoner stood there and droned on and on about captured documents. It would have had to be more exciting to rise to dullness. Krasta yawned, buffed her nails, and yawned again. The judges kept on questioning the fellow for what seemed like forever. Then, when they finished, Lurcanio started in on him. She didn’t like that. If he could ask her questions, too. .

At last, the military judge dismissed the boring commoner. “Marchioness Krasta, you will come forward,” he said. “The clerk will administer the oath.”

Forward Krasta came. The clerk took away her summons and stamped it. Then, in a monotone, he said, “Do you swear the testimony you give here today and in any subsequent appearances will be the truth and nothing but the truth, knowing you may be sorcerously monitored and you are subject to the kingdom’s statutes pertaining to perjury?”

“Aye,” Krasta said.

People tittered. One of the judges in old-fashioned black said, “The customary response, milady, is, ‘I do.’“

“I do, then,” Krasta said with a toss of her head.

“Having sworn, the witness may enter the box,” the military judge intoned. When Krasta had taken her place, he went on, “You are the Marchioness Krasta, sister to Marquis Skarnu?”

“That’s right,” she answered.

“And, during the late war, you were mistress to the Colonel Lurcanio, the defendant here?”

However much Krasta wished she could deny it, she had to nod and say, “Aye, I was.” Lurcanio could give her the lie if she did say no, and doubtless would take malicious glee in doing just that. She scowled at him. She’d been so sure Algarve had won the Derlavaian War. Mezentio’s men had beaten Valmiera, hadn’t they? What else was there? Five years ago, she hadn’t thought there was anything else. She’d learned differently since.

After rustling a couple of leaves of paper to find the name, the chief judge asked, “And Colonel Lurcanio is the father of your son, Gainibu?”

If Krasta had wished she could deny the one, she wished even more that she could deny the other. But it wasn’t Lurcanio who would give her the lie if she did: it was her own son’s sandy, all too un-Valmieran hair. As venomously as she could, she said, “Aye,” again.

“I note, milady, you are not on trial here,” the judge said. “We seek information against the Algarvian. Now, to resume: being Lurcanio’s mistress, you yielded yourself to him of your own free will?”

. “Not always,” Krasta exclaimed. “Why, there was this one time when he-”

Lurcanio burst out laughing, a coarse, rude, raucous laugh. “You deserved that, you miserable bitch,” he said. “I caught you rubbing up against Valnu. He must have been tired of boys that day, but I wanted to remind you he liked them at least as well as he liked you.”

All three judges rapped furiously with their gavels. All three of them were red-faced. One of the civilians said, “The recorder will expunge that from the transcript of this proceeding.”

“For the most part,” the military judge resumed, “you did yield yourself of your own free will to Colonel Lurcanio? Is that correct, Marchioness?”

“I suppose so,” Krasta said, most unwillingly.

“Very well, then,” the judge said. “You being his willing mistress, do you believe you were in his confidence? Did he trust you enough to talk to you of his affairs?”

“If he’d had affairs and I found out about them, I wouldn’t have let him touch me, the miserable whoreson.” Krasta tossed her head again. Did they think she had no pride at all?

Several people laughed, which puzzled and angered her. The judges gaveled them to silence. The senior man, the one in uniform, said, “That is not what I meant. What I meant was, did he talk to you about his duties during the occupation?”

“To her!. Powers above, sir, do I look so foolish?” Lurcanio said. “I am affronted that you should ask such a thing.”

His tone told Krasta she should have been angry at him again, but she couldn’t see why. He’d told the truth. “No, he didn’t talk to me about anything like that,” she answered. “Why would he have? I can’t imagine anything more boring.”

The judges put their heads together. Krasta leaned toward them, as she would have tried to eavesdrop on any conversation near which she found herself. Here, she had no luck. One of the civilian judges asked, “Did this Algarvian ever mention to you his work in transporting Kaunians to the south coast of this kingdom for the purpose of slaying them and utilizing their life energy?”

“Oh. That!” Krasta said. If I tell them he talked about it, I can hurt him. She saw that very clearly. “Aye, he told me all about that. He bragged about it, in fact, over and over again.”

“That is not the truth,” said a nondescript little man in the front row.

“Marchioness Krasta, you swore an oath of truthfulness and were informed of the penalties involved in violating the said oath,” the military judge said. “The mage has informed us that response was untruthful. Perhaps your error was accidental. I shall give you one-and only one-chance to revise your testimony, if you care to do so.”

“What was the question again?” Krasta asked. The judge repeated it. Resentfully, Krasta said, “I suppose I was wrong. I suppose he didn’t talk about it.” The boring little man nodded.

With almost simultaneous sighs, the judges put their heads together again. The man in uniform asked, “Did Colonel Lurcanio ever speak to you about the Algarvian edict called Night and Fog?”

“No,” Krasta said after giving the mage a dirty look.

“Did he ever speak to you about the way Algarve treated captives from the underground it captured?”

“No,” Krasta said. “But he wouldn’t do anything to save the Kaunian Column of Victory when the redheads knocked it over.”

“That is also a crime against Kaunianity,” one of the civilian judges said. “Still, evidence suggests he was not a primary perpetrator.”

“We had hoped the Algarvian might have been more forthcoming with you,” the other judge in black said.

“I was forthcoming in her, not with her,” Lurcanio said with a nasty grin.

“And you weren’t half as good as you think you were, either!” Krasta squealed furiously, while the judges banged their gavels again and again. That little mage in the first row stirred, but Krasta fixed him with such a glare, he kept his mouth shut.

“That will be quite enough of that,” the military judge declared. “Very well, Marchioness Krasta, you may stand down from the witness box. As my colleague said, we hoped you might have more to offer.”

“Oh, I have plenty to offer,” Krasta said. “I hope you blaze him. He has his nerve, dragging my name through the dirt.”

“Marchioness, when you chose to sleep beside him for four years, you dragged your own name through the dirt to a degree greater than anyone else could have done. You are dismissed.”

Outside the courtroom, Krasta expected another swarm of vicious news-sheet scribblers. But they had vanished, as if a wind had risen and blown away a pile of rubbish. Instead, news-sheet hawkers were out in force, all screaming out the identical headline: “Gyongyos surrenders! Derlavaian War ends!”

“Isn’t it splendid, milady?” Krasta’s driver said as he handed her up into the carriage. “The war’s finally over!”

“Aye, splendid,” she said. Part of her really meant it. The rest was irked: the end of the war had forced her out of public notice. True, the notice would have been unflattering. But if no one noticed her at all, how could she be sure she really existed?

Fernao peered down from his perch behind the dragonflier. Once this journey was done, he hoped with all his heart never to travel on dragonback again. He’d set out from Kihlanki in easternmost Kuusamo six days before, and had island-hopped his way east across the Bothnian Ocean. He wasn’t quite saddlesore, but he wasn’t far from it, either. The dragons and dragonfliers had changed several times a day. He lacked that luxury, and remained his weary self.

They’d flown over the Balaton Islands earlier in the day. Now, at last, they passed above the narrow sea separating the Balatons from the Gyongyosian mainland. Gyorvar lay not far ahead.

A Gyongyosian dragon rose to meet the newcomer. Seeing the beast, gaudy in red and yellow and blue and black, relieved Fernao and alarmed him at the same time. The Gongs were supposed to send up a dragon to meet him and guide him to a working dragon farm outside shattered Gyorvar. They were supposed to, aye. But what if this weren’t the appointed beast, but a lone-wolf dragonflier intent on whatever revenge he could get from a Kuusaman dragon and a Lagoan mage? Because the Gyongyosians were a warrior race, such worries went through Fernao’s mind as the other dragon neared. They’d surrendered, but did they really mean it?

Then the Gong on the dragon’s back waved and pointed southeast. Fernao and his dragonflier waved back. The dragonflier whacked his mount with a goad. After a couple of bad-tempered screeches, it followed the Gyongyosian beast.

Tawny-bearded dragon handlers secured the Kuusaman beast to a spike: dragon farms the world around operated on similar principles. Fernao slid down from his perch on the dragon’s back and looked around. The grass under his feet was. . grass. Some of the bushes a little farther away looked unfamiliar to him, but he would have had to be an herbalist to recognize the differences. The buildings on the edge of the dragon farm. .

They had steeply pitched roofs. In that, they resembled buildings in Kuusamo and Lagoas and Unkerlant, which also saw a lot of snow. But they didn’t look like houses or hostels. They looked like gray stone fortresses. They were spaced well apart from one another, too, as if the Gyongyosians didn’t think it safe to have them too close together. When the Gongs weren’t warring with their neighbors, they often fought among themselves. Their architecture showed it, too.

A man emerged from the nearest of those fortresslike buildings and walked toward Fernao. He wore a sheepskin jacket over wool leggings. Gray streaked his beard and hair. “You are the mage from Kuusamo?” he called in slow, oddly accented, but understandable classical Kaunian.

“I am Fernao, a mage of the first rank, aye. Actually, I represent both Lagoas, my own kingdom, and Kuusamo,” Fernao replied. “And you are, sir …?”

“I am called Vorosmarty, a mage of five stars,” the Gyongyosian said. “It is a rank more or less equal to your own. How can you be trusted to represent two kingdoms?”

“I am from Lagoas, as I said. And I am engaged to be married to a Kuusaman mage. Neither kingdom feels I would betray its interests,” Fernao said. That wasn’t strictly true. Grandmaster Pinhiero was less than delighted to have him representing Lagoas. But he was the best bargain Pinhiero could get, and so the grandmaster had had to make the best of it.

Vorosmarty shrugged. “Very well. This is not truly my concern. I am ordered to show you Gyorvar, to show you what your magecraft has done. I obey my orders. Come with me. A carriage waits for us.”

He didn’t, he couldn’t, know that Fernao was one of the mages who’d unleashed that sorcery. His your had to mean your kingdoms’. Fernao didn’t intend to enlighten him, either. He said, “You are ordered? Who gives orders in Gyongyos these days?” With Ekrekek Arpad and his whole family dead, how were the Gyongyosians running their affairs?

“Marshal Szinyei, who ordered our surrender, has announced that the stars commune with his spirit, and has declared himself our new ekrekek.” Vorosmarty’s voice was studiously neutral. Fernao judged he would be unwise to ask the Gyongyosian wizard how he felt about Szinyei’s elevation.

As he got into the carriage, he did ask, “How far to Gyorvar?”

“Perhaps six miles,” Vorosmarty replied. “No dragon farm closer than this one survived in working order.” His gray eyes flicked over to Fernao. “In the name of the stars, what did your wizards do?”

“What we had to,” Fernao said.

“That is no answer,” the Gyongyosian said.

“Did you expect one?” Fernao replied. “Even if I knew how this wizardry was made”-no, he wouldn’t admit it-”I could not tell you.”

Vorosmarty grunted. “I am sorry. I do not know how to act like a defeated man. No such disaster as this has ever befallen my kingdom.”

“Lagoas and Kuusamo tried to warn your sovereign,” Fernao said. “He would not believe the warnings, but we were telling the truth.” Vorosmarty only grunted again. Had he been one of the advisors telling Ekrekek Arpad the islanders couldn’t do as they claimed? If he had, he wouldn’t want to admit that.

Gyongyosian farmhouses also looked like strongpoints, designed as much for defense as for comfort. Since they were of stone, their exteriors showed little damage. But the fence rails were wood. Before the carriage had got even halfway to Gyorvar, Fernao saw that the sides of the rails facing the city were scorched. Vorosmarty noticed his gaze and nodded. “Aye, your spell did that, even this far away.”

Before long, fruit trees showed leaves sere and brown, as if autumn had come early. But something worse than autumn had come to Gyorvar. After another half mile or so, even stone farmhouses looked as if they had been through the fire. And the trees weren’t just scorched-they were burnt black on the side facing the Gyongyosian capital, and then, a little later, burnt black altogether.

The air stank of stale smoke. Here and there, smoke still rose from one place or another. A different stench also rode the breeze: the stench of death. “You threw this whole city on a pyre,” Vorosmarty said as they passed a party of workers taking bodies out of a block of flats.

“You would not yield,” Fernao said. “This was the way we saw to make you know you were beaten.”

Vorosmarty shuddered. “When you raise your children, do you spank them with swords?”

“No, but our children are not trying to kill us,” Fernao replied. “When our children grow up to be murderers, we do hang them.” The Gyongyosian mage sent him a resentful look. He pretended not to see.

As they got closer to the heart of Gyorvar, devastation grew worse. Only a few upthrusting charred sticks showed where wooden buildings had stood. Stone structures were more common. They went from looking burnt to looking slagged, as if the stone blocks from which they were built had begun to melt. A little later on, there was no doubt of what had happened to them: they looked like butter sculptures starting to sag on a hot day. The death stink got stronger.

“This was a great city once,” Vorosmarty said. “How long shall we be rebuilding it?” The carriage rattled over something in the middle of the road. Wreckage? A burnt body? Fernao didn’t want to know.

He said, “You should have thought of the risks you were taking when you went into this war. You should have had the sense to yield when you saw yourselves losing it.”

“Risks?” the Gyongyosian rumbled. “War has risks, aye. But this?” He shook his head. His beard seemed to bristle with indignation.

“For the past century and more, the thaumaturgical revolution has made war more horrid at the same time as it has made life better during times of peace,” Fernao said. “You Gyongyosians should have realized that. Yours was the only kingdom not of eastern Derlavai that kept its freedom and learned these arts itself.”

“We never imagined the stars had written. . this for us,” Vorosmarty said. The carriage stopped. Vorosmarty opened the door. “Here we are in the heart of the city. Come out, representative of Kuusamo and Lagoas. Come see what your sorcery has wrought.”

Fernao got out and looked around. He wished he didn’t have to breathe. The smell was so thick, he was sure it would soak into the fabric of his tunic and kilt. Here where the sorcery had been strongest, the flames hottest and thickest, next to nothing remained standing. Buildings had melted and puddled. The sun sparkled off curves of resolidified stone as smooth as glass.

Perhaps a quarter of a mile away, something had been massive enough to stay partly upright despite everything the spell had done. Pointing toward those ruins, Fernao asked, “What was that?”

The look Vorosmarty gave him was so savage, he took an involuntary half step back. “What was that?” the Gyongyosian echoed. “Nothing much, out-lander-no, nothing much. Only the palace of the ekrekeks since time out of mind and the central communing place of the stars.” He scowled again, this time at himself. “This language does not let me say how much that means, or even the thousandth part of it.”

“May I go there?” Fernao asked.

“You are the conqueror. You may go where you please,” Vorosmarty replied. When Fernao started straight toward the ruined palace, though, his guide said, “You would be wise to stay on the streets, as best you can. Some of the melted stone is but a crust. Your foot may go through, as with thin ice, and you would cut yourself badly.”

“Thank you,” Fernao said, and then, “I did not suppose that would make you unhappy.”

“It would not,” Vorosmarty said frankly. “But you might blame me for not having warned you, and, since you are the conqueror, who knows what you might order done to me and to this land?”

Fernao hadn’t thought of that. You don’t make the best conqueror, do you? he thought. He hadn’t had much practice for the role. Picking his way with care, he started toward what remained of the very heart of Gyorvar. When he got to the palace, he found people going in and out through an opening-a doorway, he supposed, though no sign of a door remained-in a wall. Vorosmarty said something in Gyongyosian. One of the men nearby answered back. “What does he say?” Fernao asked.

“This sergeant says he saw what you did to Becsehely,” Vorosmarty replied. “He says he wishes everyone would have heeded the warning.” The sergeant added something else. Again, Vorosmarty translated: “He says it is even worse close up than it was from the Kuusaman ship.”

Fernao ducked into the palace. Though the walls had held out the worst of the sorcerous fire, not much inside remained intact. Maybe the Gongs had already carried out what they could salvage. Maybe there hadn’t been much worth salvaging.

Vorosmarty said, “You did this to us, Lagoan, your folk and the Kuusamans. Now a new starless darkness walks the earth. One day, maybe, it will stop at Setubal.”

“I hope not,” Fernao said. “I hope we are coming out of the darkness of these years just past.” Vorosmarty held his peace, but he did not look convinced. Well, he wouldn‘t, Fernao thought. Somehow, that left him less happy, less secure, than he would have liked after such a triumph.

From the crenelated battlements of his castle, Skarnu looked out over his new marquisate. The castle, on high ground, was admirably sited for defense; the traitorous Simanu and Enkuru’s ancestors had known what they were doing when they built here. Not till egg-tossers came along would anyone have had much chance of taking this place.

Merkela came up beside him and pointed to where fields ended and forest began, a mile or two away. “That was where we settled Simanu,” she said. “Good riddance to him, too.”

“Aye.” Skarnu put his arm around her. “It’s over now. We’ve won. Nobody’s at war with anybody, anywhere in the world.” He shook his head, half in sorrow, half in wonder. “And how long has it been since the last time that was so?”

His wife shrugged. She didn’t worry much about the world at large. Her worries, as usual, lay closer to home. “There are still collaborators loose. We have to smoke them out.”

“Aye,” Skarnu repeated. It did need doing, but fewer people, these days, still shared Merkela’s zeal. A lot of them wanted nothing more than to go back to living their lives as if the Derlavaian War had never happened. As day followed day, Skarnu found it harder and harder to blame them.

Merkela said, “Did you see the news sheet that came yesterday? They put that woman in the witness box against Lurcanio.” She still refused to call Krasta Skarnu’s sister. When she hated, she did a thorough job.

“I saw it,” Skarnu answered with a sigh. “At least the news of peace pushed it to the back pages. Every time I think we’ve had all the embarrassment we’re going to get from that, I turn out to be wrong.”

“It doesn’t look like they’ll summon you,” Merkela said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Skarnu agreed. “I’m not really surprised. The only dealings I ever had with the redhead were the kind the people on opposite sides in a war usually have. He played by the rules then.”

“I hope they call Vatsyunas and Pernavai,” his wife said. “They can tell the judges what the Algarvians did to Kaunians in Forthweg.”

The married couple had been aboard the ley-line caravan Skarnu and Merkela helped sabotage as it went past her farm. If that caravan hadn’t been sabotaged, all the captives aboard it would have been sacrificed for their life energy. As things were, a good many of them had scattered over the Valmieran countryside. Vatsyunas and Pernavai had worked on Merkela’s farm for a while, and had both worked with the underground, too.

“What I remember about Vatsyunas is the way he spoke Valmieran,” Skarnu said. That got a smile and a nod from Merkela. Stern as she was, she couldn’t deny Vatsyunas had sounded pretty funny. His birthspeech, of course, was classical Kaunian. He’d known not a word of Valmieran, one of the old tongue’s daughters, when he found himself here. In learning, he’d seemed like a man stuck in time halfway between the days of the Kaunian Empire and the modern world.

“He’d make himself understood,” Merkela said, “and he would be able to testify from the other side about what the redheads did to folk of Kaunian blood.”

“Aye, but would he be able to testify that Lurcanio had anything to do with the caravan he was on?” Skarnu asked.

“I don’t know,” Merkela replied, “and I don’t much care, either. All I care about is that all the redheads get what’s coming to them. I hope the soldiers in Algarve are taking plenty of hostages, and I hope they’re blazing them, too.”

She’d lost her first husband when Mezentio’s men took him hostage and blazed him. If they hadn’t seized Gedominu (after whom she’d named her son), she wouldn’t be wed to Skarnu now, and wouldn’t be a marchioness. Skarnu wondered if she ever thought about that. After a moment, he also wondered if it was true. He and Merkela had been drawn to each other before the redheads took Gedominu. What would have happened if they hadn’t?

No way to know. Would they have kept on holding back? Or would they have lain together even with Gedominu still there? What would he have done if they had? Looked the other way? Maybe-he’d been twice Merkela’s age. But maybe not, too. He might have come after both of them with a hatchet… or with a stick.

Skarnu shrugged. It hadn’t happened. It belonged in the vague, ghostly forest of might-have-beens, along with such things as Valmiera holding her own against Algarve and magic being impossible. They might be interesting to think about, but they weren’t real and never would be.

Merkela said, “I’m going down to tend to the herb garden.”

“All right,” Skarnu answered, “but don’t you think the cook’s helper could handle the job well enough?”

“Maybe, but maybe not, too,” his wife said. “I’m sure I know at least as much about it as she does, and I don’t care to sit around twiddling my thumbs all day. I was taking care of an herb garden as soon as I was big enough to know how. Why should I stop doing it now?”

Because noblewomen don’t do such things. Because it makes the servitors nervous when they do. Skarnu might have thought that, but he didn’t say it. It made sense to him. He knew it would have made perfect sense to Krasta. But he also knew it would have been meaningless to Merkela. As she’d said, she’d worked since she got big enough to do it. Stopping because her social class had changed was beyond her mental horizon.

Come to that, Skarnu himself had been more useless back in Priekule before the war than he was here and now. He looked out over his domain. Everything he could see, near enough, was his to administer. True, that would have meant more a few centuries earlier, when being a marquis was like being a king in small. King Gainibu held the ultimate authority here these days, and Skarnu was no rebellious vassal.

But he still had low justice in this domain-subject to an appeal to the king’s courts, but such appeals were rare. And he was doing his best to get to the bottom of real cases of collaboration, and to make sure people didn’t launch false accusations to pay back old enemies. He’d fined a couple of people for doing exactly that, and dared hope the rest would get the message.

High overhead, a goshawk called out: “Kye-kye-kye!” The hawk had a better view than Skarnu did, and better eyes, too. In the old days, Skarnu thought, I might have flown a bird like that at game. Falconry, though, was one thing of which he knew nothing. He laughed softly. I have enough trouble keeping Merkela’s feathers unruffled.

That was a joke, but it also held no small amount of truth. His wife was as she was, and nothing he could do would change her very much. He’d taken a while to realize that, but was convinced he’d touched truth there. So far as he could tell, Merkela hadn’t tried very hard to make him over. Maybe that showed good sense. Maybe it just showed she’d been married once before.

He waved up toward the goshawk. The bird, of course, paid him no attention. It rode the breeze that ruffled his hair. The air was its element, as the ground was his. “Good hunting,” he called to it, and he went down the spiral stair to his own proper place.

They made them turn this way so attackers would have the wall hampering their right arms, while defenders could freely swing their swords, he thought. Even in the long-gone days, they worried about tactics.

When he came down into the main hall, Valmiru the butler said, “I’m glad to see you, your Excellency.” His tone implied, I’d have come to get you if you’d stayed up there much longer.

“Are you?” Skarnu asked suspiciously. Any time a servitor used a tone like that, it made him doubt he was glad to see the said servitor. “What’s gone wrong now?”

Valmiru gave him an appreciative nod. “A gentleman-a country gentleman- requests a few moments of your time.” He coughed. “His request was, ah, rather urgent, your Excellency.”

A junior servant piped up: “He said he’d whale the stuffing out of anybody who got in his way. He’s drunk as a lord, he is.” Then, realizing he hadn’t picked the best simile, he gulped. “Begging your pardon, your Excellency.”

“It’s all right.” Skarnu turned to the butler. “And what is this. . country gentleman’s name, and why does he want to see me so badly?”

“He called himself Zemaitu, sir,” Valmiru answered. “He would not tell me precisely what he wants. Whatever it is, though, he is most emphatic in wanting it. And he is indeed somewhat elevated by spirits.”

“Well, I’ll listen to him,” Skarnu said. “If he’s too greatly elevated, we’ll just throw him out.” After his time in the army and the underground, dealing with one drunken peasant didn’t worry him.

But when he saw Zemaitu, he had second thoughts. Here stood a bear of a man, taller than Skarnu and broad as an Unkerlanter through the shoulders. By the aroma that hovered around him, he might have come straight from a distillery. He gave Skarnu a clumsy bow. “You’ve got to help me, your Excellency,” he said. His voice was surprisingly high and light for a man of his bulk.

“I will if I can,” Skarnu answered. “What am I supposed to help you about, though? Till I know that, I don’t know what I can do.”

“I want to marry my sweetheart,” Zemaitu said. “I want to, but her old man won’t let me, even though we made our promises back before the war.” A tear ran down his stubbly cheek; he was very drunk indeed.

“Why won’t he?” Skarnu asked. He thought he could guess the answer: one of them, would-be groom or prospective father-in-law, was accusing the other of getting too cozy with the redheads.

And that turned out to be close, though not quite on the mark. “I was in the army,” Zemaitu said, “and I got captured when Mezentio’s whoresons broke through in the north. I spent a while in a captives’ camp in Algarve, and then they put me to work on a farm there, growing things so their men could go off and fight. And now Draska’s pa, he says I sucked up to the Algarvians, and he don’t want me in the family no more. You got to help me, your Excellency, sir! What in blazes could I have done but work where they told me to?”

“That’s all you did? You worked on a farm?” Skarnu asked sternly.

“By the powers above, sir, I swear it!” Zemaitu said. “You got a mage, sir, he can see for hisself. I ain’t no liar, not me!”

A truth spell was a simple thing. Skarnu set a hand on the peasant’s shoulder. “We’ll do that,” he said. “Not because I don’t believe you, but to convince your sweetheart’s father. When you were in their power, they could set you to work where they pleased. You’re lucky they didn’t do worse to you.”

“I know that, sir,” Zemaitu said. “I know that now.”

“All right, then. I’ll settle it,” Skarnu said. Zemaitu started sniffling again. Skarnu clapped him on the back. Sometimes, his post was worth having.