Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Well, all right, then, your Majesty,” Rathar said. King Swemmel had a point. Had the Algarvians not chosen to grapple with Unkerlant to the death, they could have worked far more mischief in the east than they had. Were King Vitor of Lagoas and Kuusamo’s Seven Princes grateful for the burden Unkerlant had so unwillingly assumed? So far as Rathar could see, only in the sense of being glad they hadn’t had to shoulder it themselves.

  The servitor came back from the kitchen with a large iron pot, the lid still on. He had cloths wrapped around the handles so he wouldn’t burn his fingers. Setting the pot down on a trivet in the middle of the table, he bowed to the king. “Supper, your Majesty,” he announced unnecessarily.

  Or perhaps not so unnecessarily; Swemmel started as if he’d forgotten all about food. Once reminded, he nodded and said, “As a mark of our favor, you may serve Marshal Rathar first.”

  “As you say, Your Majesty.” The servitor took the lid off the pot. A great cloud of savory steam rose from it.

  “You do me too much honor, your Majesty,” Rathar said, and not for politeness’ sake alone. When the king sobered up tomorrow, would he remember what he’d done, remember and regret it? He might. If I let Rathar eat before I did, he might think, my cursed marshal might decide he deserves first place in the kingdom all the time. Other men, famous in their day, had vanished when such thoughts occurred to King Swemmel.

  But Swemmel seemed unconcerned now. As the servitor spooned meat from the pot, the king said, “We give you what you have earned, Marshal.”

  When the first whiff of that savory steam reached Rathar’s redoubtable nose, he recoiled in something worse than mere horror. When Raniero went into the stewpot in Herborn, Rathar had smelled this precise odor of cooked flesh. He was sure of it. Swemmel wouldn’t, couldn’t, serve him … The servitor set the plate in front of him. Just as he was about to push it away and flee the table, heedless of what the king might think, the man murmured, “I hope the stewed pork pleases you, lord Marshal.”

  “Stewed … pork,” Rathar said slowly. He looked down the length of the table to his sovereign.

  Swemmel rarely laughed. He was laughing now, laughing till tears gleamed in his eyes and slid down his hollow cheeks. “Well, Marshal?” he said, dabbing at his face with a snowy linen napkin. “Well? Did you think we were serving you up a ragout of boiled traitor?” More laughter shook him. It hit him hard, as spirits smote a man who seldom drank.

  “Your Majesty, I must say it crossed my mind,” Rathar replied. Most courtiers would have denied the very idea. Rather had found the king could— sometimes—take more truth than most people thought.

  Swemmel shook his head. “It may be that we shall eat of Mezentio’s roasted heart, but we would not share that dish with any subject. It is ours.’“ Was he still joking? Or did he mean every word of it? For the life of him, Rathar couldn’t tell. Swemmel wagged a forefinger at him. “Before that day comes, though, we needs must drive the redheaded robbers from all our land, not merely from the south. How do you propose doing what we require?”

  Rathar sighed with relief at dealing with a purely military matter. “I have some thoughts along those lines, Your Majesty,” he replied, and took a bit of pork. He hoped it was pork, anyhow.

  At the isolated hostel in the rustic Naantali district of southeastern Kuusamo, Fernao felt like a pine in a forest of poplars. He was the only Lagoan mage— the only Lagoan at all—there. The rest of the theoretical sorcerers, all the secondary sorcerers, and all the servitors were Kuusamans: short, golden-skinned, black-haired, flat-featured, slant-eyed. As a tall, fair, straight-nosed, ponytailed redhead, he could hardly have stood out more.

  No, that isn ‘t quite true, he thought, and nodded to himself. My eyes are set on a slant, too, even if they’re green, not black. Lagoans were of mostly Algarvic stock, descendants of the invaders who’d settled in the northwest of the large island off the Derlavaian mainland after the Kaunian Empire collapsed. But they’d intermarried with the folk they found there, and a fair-sized minority showed some Kuusaman features. Similarly, some few who lived under the Seven Princes, especially in lands near the Lagoan border, had the inches or the nose or the bright hair that spoke of foreign stock grafted onto the roots of their family tree.

  Fernao waved to one of the serving women in the refectory. She came over to him and asked, “What is it you want?”

  She spoke Kuusaman. Fernao answered in the same tongue: “An omelette of smoked salmon and eggs and cheese, and bread and honey, and a mug of tea, Linna.” When he first came to Kuusamo, he’d known not a word of the local language. But he’d always had a good ear, and now he was getting close to fluent.

  Linna nodded. “Aye, sir mage,” she said. “I’ll bring them to you as soon as they’re done.” She hurried off toward the kitchens.

  “Thank you,” Fernao called after her.

  A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up in surprise. “What are you thanking her for?” Ilmarinen demanded in coldly precise classical Kaunian.

  “My breakfast,” Fernao answered, also in the international language of magecraft and other scholarship.

  “Is that all?” Ilmarinen said suspiciously. By his wrinkles and white, wispy little chin beard, the Kuusaman master mage carried twice Fernao’s years, but he sounded like an angry young buck. He’d been chasing Linna ever since this hostel in the wilderness went up, and he’d been annoying doing it. Not long before, she’d finally let him catch her. He’d been much more annoying since.

  With what patience Fernao could muster, he nodded. “As sure as I am of my own name. If you care to, you may sit down beside me and watch me eat it. And if you care to”—he paused, as if about to make a radical suggestion— “you may even get one for yourself.”

  “I think I’ll do just that,” Ilmarinen said, and slid into a chair.

  “How are you this morning?” Fernao asked.

  “Why, my usual sweet, charming self, of course,” the older mage replied. Like most educated folk, Fernao had no trouble using classical Kaunian to communicate—at first, he’d used it all the time after coming to Kuusamo, since it was the only tongue he’d had in common with the locals. But, again like most educated folk, he spoke it with a certain stiffness. Not so Ilmarinen. He was so fluent in the ancient language, it might almost have been his birth-speech.

  Fernao eyed him. “I must say, you did not seem particularly sweet and charming.” Ilmarinen reveled in irony and crosstalk, but he hadn’t seemed ironic, either. What he’d seemed like was a jealous lover of the most foolish and irksome sort.

  Perhaps he even knew as much, for the smile he gave Fernao was more sheepish than otherwise. “But did I seem my usual self?” he asked.

  “If you mean your usual self lately, aye,” Fernao answered, not intending it as a compliment.

  Before Ilmarinen could say anything, Linna came out again. She waved to the master mage, then walked over and ruffled his hair. Ilmarinen beamed. As long as she was happy with him, all seemed right with his world. Fernao wondered what would happen if—no, when—she tired of him. For the sake of the work on which so many mages were engaged, he hoped he wouldn’t have to find out any time soon.

  Ilmarinen asked for smoked salmon, too, and sliced onions to go with it. Linna’s nose wrinkled. “Poo!” she said. “See if I kiss you.”

  Ilmarinen looked devastated—but not so devastated as to change his order. Fernao took that for a good sign. Sniffing, Linna headed back to the kitchens.

  And then Fernao stopped worrying about Ilmarinen’s infatuation, for Pekka walked into the refectory and he had to start worrying about his own. Like most Lagoan men, he’d always reckoned Kuusaman women on the small and scrawny side. By Lagoan standards, Pekka was on the small and scrawny side. Somehow, that mattered very little once Fernao had come to know her.

  She sat down at the table with him and Ilmarinen. “I hope the two of you were talking about our next experiment,” she said in classical Kaunian.


  Since she was not only a woman in whom he was interested but also the theoretical sorcerer heading the project for which he’d come to Kuusamo, Fernao didn’t want to lie to her. On the other hand, the prospect of telling her the truth didn’t fill him with delight, either. It didn’t bother Ilmarinen one bit. “Well, now that you mention it, no,” he said breezily.

  Pekka gave him a severe look. It rolled off him the way water rolled off greasy wool. She said, “What were you talking about?”

  “Oh, I just wanted to let this Lagoan lecher know that, if I ever caught him sniffing around my Linna, I’d cut out his liver and eat it without salt,” Ilmarinen replied.

  He was on the small and scrawny side, too, to say nothing of being an old man. That didn’t keep a small twinge of icy dread, like a detached bit of the savage winter outside, from sliding up Fernao’s back. However small and scrawny and old Ilmarinen was, he was also, with Master Siuntio dead at Algarvian hands, the leading theoretical sorcerer of his generation, and a formidable practical mage as well. He wouldn’t have to use a knife to make unfortunate things happen to Fernao’s liver.

  Fernao said, “For about the fourth time, I was not sniffing around her.”

  When he brought out a phrase like that in classical Kaunian, he sounded both pompous and preposterous. Ilmarinen, now, Ilmarinen sounded menacing.

  Pekka snorted. “I have never seen Fernao behave at all strangely around Linna,” she said, “which is rather more than I can say for certain other people of my acquaintance.” Linna came back with Fernao’s omelette and Ilmarinen’s smoked salmon and onions before the elderly theoretical sorcerer could make any more snide comments. He might well not have let that stop him; the serving girl didn’t speak much classical Kaunian, and couldn’t have followed whatever he said. But Pekka asked her for a plate of bacon and eggs and sent her off again.

  Ilmarinen let out a cackle, the laugh of an old man who made trouble and had fun doing it. “Which women have you seen Fernao behaving strangely around, then?” he asked, and cackled again.

  Without the least hesitation, Fernao kicked him in the ankle. And that wasn’t the only small, dull thud from under the table. Pekka must have kicked him from the other side.

  “Aii!” Ilmarinen said. That wasn’t a cackle—more like a yelp. “Between the two of you, you can carry me out of here. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk.”

  “If you keep on being rude and obnoxious, someone will carry you out, sure enough: someone will carry you out feet first,” Pekka said. Her voice was quite mild. As far as Fernao was concerned, that made her more intimidating, not less.

  Ilmarinen attacked his food with single-minded determination. Unlike the other theoretical sorcerers, it wouldn’t talk back—unless the onions did. He left an odorous trail behind as he got up and hurried out of the refectory.

  “Both his ankles seem in good working order,” Pekka remarked.

  “Aye,” Fernao said, and then, “Maybe I should have kicked him harder.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Pekka said. “He will be difficult just for the sake of being difficult.” Linna brought her the bacon and eggs; she dropped back into Kuusaman to say, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” the serving girl answered. She picked up Ilmarinen’s plate. “He got out of here in a hurry, didn’t he? Did you scare him away?”

  Fernao understood every word of that, where he wouldn’t have understood any of it when new to the land of the Seven Princes. He spoke in Kuusaman, too: “We did our best.” That made Linna laugh as she went off, though he hadn’t been joking.

  Pekka also stuck to her own language, saying, “You’re getting quite fluent. The only time we really need to use classical Kaunian these days is when we talk about the fine points of sorcery.”

  “Thank you.” Fernao kept on using Kuusaman, not least because he plainly pleased Pekka by doing so. “You probably praise me too much, but thank you.”

  “Not at all,” Pekka said seriously, which made Fernao glad he’d always had a good ear for languages. Then she dug into her breakfast, pausing only to tell him, “You should eat.” She might have been speaking to a little boy, not to a fellow theoretical sorcerer.

  She has a little boy, Fernao reminded himself; Pekka would sometimes talk about Uto. She has a husband, too, a mage in his own right. When Fernao was newly come to Kuusamo, Pekka had talked a lot about Leino, too. She didn’t do that so much now. Fernao wondered why. Part of him hoped he knew the answer.

  “Eat,” Pekka said again, this time in peremptory tones. Aye, she might have been talking to her son.

  “I’m sorry,” Fernao answered, as contritely as if he were a boy. “I’m— how do you say, going slowly without any particular reason?” He used classical Kaunian where he lacked the Kuusaman word.

  Pekka supplied it: “Dawdling.” She took a big bite of bacon. “Don’t dawdle. We have no time for it. There’s no excuse for it. If we don’t get to the bottom of this sorcery, if we don’t get to the point where we can use it against the Algarvians, we’ll be in a world of trouble no matter how the Derlavaian War ends up. Am I right or am I wrong?”

  “Oh, you’re right. Without a doubt, you’re right.” Fernao dutifully attacked his omelette. After a bit, though, he said, “It’s only that …” When he paused again, it wasn’t because he’d run out of words in Kuusaman.

  “Only that what?” Pekka asked sharply. Fernao didn’t answer. He looked down at his plate, then glanced back up to her. Despite her golden skin, she’d flushed. “Never mind,” she said, and rose, and hurried away.

  It’s only that, if I dawdle, I can sit here and be with you. He would have said that, or something like it. She had to understand it even if he hadn’t said it. And it had to be on her mind, too, or she would have joked about it.

  Fernao sighed. He finished breakfast, then got to his feet and reached for his cane. He couldn’t hurry away, not after a bursting egg almost killed him and did ruin his leg down in the land of the Ice People. And he and Pekka had to go on working side by side as if they felt nothing toward each other but professional respect. He sighed again. It wasn’t easy, and got harder all the time.

  Three

  Back before the war, Garivald had visited Tolk only a handful of times, though the market town lay less than a day’s walk from Zossen, his home village. After King Swemmel’s armies drove the Algarvians out of the western portion of the Duchy of Grelz, he’d left the band of irregulars he’d led before Unkerlanter regulars and inspectors could reward him for his fight against the redheads by making something unfortunate happen to him.

  And so he’d gone back to Zossen, only to find the war there before him. The village, his wife, his son, his little daughter … all gone as if they’d never been. He’d trudged on to Tolk, farther west still, not least because he had no idea what else to do.

  Tolk survived. The Algarvians and their Grelzer puppets hadn’t made a stand there, as they must have at Zossen. Buildings were smashed. Only burnt-out rubble remained of a few whole blocks. But Tolk survived.

  Sitting by the fire in a tavern there, Garivald turned to Obilot and said, “Powers above only know what we would have done if this place was gone, too.”

  Like him, she had a thick earthenware mug of spirits in front of her. She shrugged as she took a swallow from it. “Gone somewhere else, that’s all. What difference does it make where we are? We haven’t got anything left but each other.”

  Garivald still didn’t know exactly what the Algarvians had done to her, and to whatever family she’d had, to make her flee to the irregulars. She’d fought Mezentio’s men longer and harder than he had; she’d been in the band when Munderic, who’d led it before Garivald, rescued him before the redheads could take him to Herborn and boil him alive for making patriotic songs.

  He said, “We might have starved before we got anywhere else.” Late winter was the hard time, the empty time, of the year in peasant villages in Grelz, as it doubtless was in peasant vil
lages all over Unkerlant.

  Obilot shook her head. She had to bring up a hand to brush dark curls back from her face. She wasn’t pretty, not in any conventional sense of the word: she was too thin, too fierce looking, for anything approaching beauty. But the energy that crackled through her made every other woman Garivald had known, including Annore who’d borne him two children, pallid in comparison. She said, “Two desperate characters with sticks in their hands don’t starve.”

  “Well, maybe not,” Garivald said, and drank from his own mug of spirits. In most winters, he’d have stayed drunk much of the time from harvest till planting. How else to while away the long winter with so much time in it and so little to fill that time? As an irregular, he’d found other ways. As a refugee, he was finding other ways still. But, when he put the mug down again, he said, “I don’t feel like a desperate character.”

  “No?” Obilot’s laugh held little mirth. “What else are you? What else is anybody in Grelz?” She lowered her voice: “What will you be if the inspectors catch up with you?”

  “Dead,” Garivald answered, and drained the mug. He waved it in the air to show the tapman he wanted it refilled. Obilot’s mug was empty, too.

  “Let’s see some silver,” the fellow said when he brought a jar of spirits over to their table.

  Garivald dug a coin from his belt pouch and set it down on the scarred pine board. “Here. Fill us both up again.”

  The tapman scooped it up, looked at it, and made it disappear. He filled both mugs. But then he said, “If you haven’t got the brains to be careful passing money with King Raniero’s face—Raniero the traitor’s face, I mean— you’ll land in more trouble than popskull can ever get you out of. You’re just lucky I know a jeweler who’ll give me weight for weight—well, almost—in silver. He’ll be able to melt it down and make earrings or something out of it.”