Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  The other peasant stared, scratched his head, and at last decided it was a joke and laughed. Then he nodded. “So you know him, do you? He’s some of the riffraff that’s been coming through here ever since the war stirred things up.” That he’d just, in effect, called Garivald and Obilot riffraff, too, never entered his mind. Garivald gave a mental shrug. He’d been called worse than that.

  He said, “So Dagulf drinks up his money, does he? Would I find him in the tavern?”

  “It’s a good bet.” The man from Linnich flicked his ox’s back with a long springy branch and started it down the furrow. He’d done all the talking he intended to do.

  “This Dagulf is from your village?” Obilot asked as she and Garivald started off toward Linnich itself.

  “That’s right. He’s a friend of mine.” Garivald checked himself. “He used to be a friend of mine, anyway.”

  Obilot thought about that, then nodded. “Do you want him to know you’re still alive? Is it safe for him to know you’re still alive?”

  “Before the war, it would have been,” Garivald answered. “Before the war, though, he wouldn’t have spent all his time in the tavern.” But he kept walking toward the village. For one thing, any Unkerlanter man was likely to spend a good deal of time in a tavern. For another …

  “It he’s from your village, he’ll know what happened to your family, won’t he?” Obilot said.

  “Maybe.” That thought had been uppermost in Garivald’s mind, too. Almost apologetically, he went on, “I do want to find out, you know.”

  “Do you? Are you sure?” Obilot’s voice was harsh, her eyes bleak and far away. “Sometimes you’re better off not knowing. Believe me, you are.”

  That was as much as she ever said about what had happened to her before she joined Munderic’s band of irregulars. “I want to find out,” Garivald repeated. Obilot only shrugged, as if to say she’d done her best to warn him. By then, they were walking into Linnich. Eyes bright with suspicion, women looked up at them from their vegetable plots. Dogs barked. Garivald stooped and picked up a stone, ready to throw it in case any of the dogs did more than bark. None did. The whole scene achingly reminded him of Zossen; only the faces were different.

  He had no trouble finding the tavern. It stood by the village square, and was one of the two biggest buildings in Linnich, the other being the smithy across the square from it. The drunk passed out a few feet from the entrance was another strong clue. Garivald could have seen men drunk into a stupor in Zossen, too.

  “Do you want me to go in and try to get the mule?” Obilot asked once more. “That way, he wouldn’t have to see your face.”

  Garivald shook his head. “No. It will be all right.” Obilot looked at him, then shrugged and let him walk into the tavern ahead of her.

  His eyes needed a moment to adjust to the gloom and to the smoky air— not all the smoke from the hearth went up the chimney. Four or five men and a couple of women looked up from their mugs to give him and Obilot a onceover. Sure enough, one of them was Dagulf.

  Garivald walked up to him, hand outstretched. “You recall your old friend Fariulf, don’t you?” He bore down heavily on the false name he was using; he didn’t want his real one blurted out for everybody to hear.

  Dagulf had never been a fool. His eyes narrowed now, but then he smiled and nodded. “Fariulf, by the powers above!” he exclaimed. “It’s been awhile. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.” He pointed to Obilot. “Who’s your friend?”

  She answered for herself: “I’m Bringane.”

  “Bringane,” he repeated. Waving to the fellow behind the bar, he called, “Spirits for my friends here.” The tapman nodded and waved back. Dagulf eyed Garivald. “I really thought you were dead. What do you want?”

  As he sank down onto a stool by Dagulf, Garivald answered, “Somebody told me you’ve got a mule you hire out or that you might sell. I could use one.”

  “Could you?” Dagulf said. “Ever since I got out of Zossen, that mule’s helped keep me alive. You have a plow?” He took it for granted that Garivald was working an abandoned farm somewhere.

  “No, but I can slap something together,” Garivald answered. “I’ve got enough iron to hammer something into a plowshare, or I could have the smith here do a better job for me. The woodwork is just woodwork; I can handle that. But I can’t plant enough ground to get a decent crop without a mule or an ox.”

  “I might hire him to you,” Dagulf said. “I won’t sell him. I make more letting him out for a few days at a time.”

  He slid silver across the table to the taverner when the man brought mugs for Garivald and Obilot. “Thanks,” Garivald said, and Obilot nodded. After sipping the fiery stuff, Garivald asked, “What did happen in Zossen?”

  He phrased it no more directly than that, but Dagulf understood what he meant. “The redheads dug in, that’s what. They had a few behemoths and maybe a company’s worth of men, and they made a stand. I was lucky: I was out chopping wood when our heroes hit ‘em.” He sounded patriotic, not sarcastic—that was the safe way to sound. “I had the mule along to haul the wood back, but I got the blazes out of there instead. From what I hear, nothing’s left of the old village.”

  “That’s true. I’ve seen it.” Garivald gulped his spirits and then slammed a fist down on the table. Obilot set a hand on his shoulder. He wanted to shake her off, but he didn’t. Scowling at Dagulf, he said, “Curse it, I was hoping you knew more.”

  “Sorry, Gar—Fanuli,” Dagulf said. “I don’t think the news is good, though.” Garivald scowled again, both at the slip and because he didn’t think the news was good, either. Unperturbed, Dagulf went on, “Now, do you want to hire the mule or not?”

  They haggled for a while. Garivald let Obilot take most of the burden. She was better at dickering than he was, anyhow. And his heart wasn’t in the haggle. To have his hopes of learning what had happened to his wife and children raised, raised and then not fulfilled … it was very hard indeed. Obilot got a bargain with Dagulf. Garivald knew he should have been pleased, but all he wanted to do was drink himself blind.

  But that is not possible!” the Kuusaman mage said in classical Kaunian rather less fluent than Fernao’s. Plainly, he wasn’t so used to speaking the international language of sorcery and scholarship. A practical mage out in the provinces wouldn’t have to use it very often. Gathering himself—and perhaps also gathering the vocabulary he needed—he went on, “It violates every known law of magecraft.”

  Six or eight other Kuusaman wizards in the class of twenty nodded in solemn agreement. Most of the rest looked as if they agreed, too, even if they were too polite to say so. A class full of Lagoan mages hearing similar things would have been an argument. A class full of Algarvian mages hearing similar things would have been a riot.

  Fernao was glad, then—mostly glad, at any rate—to be teaching stolid Kuusamans. Smiling, he said, “Some of the laws now known are not the ones you learned when you were training.” Since gray streaked the Kuusaman’s hair, he might well have trained back before the Six Years’ War.

  He looked indignant nonetheless. “If what you say is true, why has none of this been published? It is too important to be kept a secret.”

  “No, sir.” Fernao shook his head. “It is too important to be published. What would the Algarvians have done, had they got their hands on a couple of journal articles?”

  To his astonishment, the Kuusaman got to his feet and bowed. “You are correct. I was mistaken. Please go on.” He sat down again.

  I would never have heard that from Lagoans, Fernao thought. No one has heard that from Algarvians since the beginning of the world. They’re always right. If you don’t believe it, just ask them.

  He brought himself back to the business at hand. “Gentlemen, ladies”— not quite half the sorcerers in the class were women—”you do not need to learn much of the theory behind what you will be doing. In fact, if would be better if you did not, because what you do not know, you c
annot tell the enemy if captured. You will need to know how to cast the spells as given to you, how to protect yourself from the things likeliest to go wrong, and how to teach these same things to classes of your own. You are the first cadre. Many more will come after you.”

  Some of the mages dutifully wrote that in their notebooks. The notebooks stayed in the lecture hall—a part of the hostel of whose existence Fernao had been ignorant till the classes began, and one that showed good planning on the Kuusamans’ part. No one took anything in writing out of that hall.

  “We shall try small demonstrations today,” Fernao continued. “Even the smallest will show the large amounts of sorcerous energy that can be liberated by exploiting the inverse relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion.”

  He went through the chant and passes in the demonstration, working slowly and carefully to show the students how the spell operated and also to make sure he didn’t slip up. Even with this toned-down spell, a mistake could be dangerous.

  A glass beaker of water suddenly began to boil. A couple of the Kuusamans applauded. Fernao felt he ought to bow, as if he were a stage conjurer rather than a real wizard. Instead, he said, “As you see, I produced the desired result with much less effort than I would have had to use with more conventional sorcery. Now each of you will try it. Kaleva, please come forward.”

  As the woman rose and walked up behind the counter, Fernao set up the sorcerous materials she would need, and also put a fresh beaker of water on the stand for her. She went through the spell competently enough, and set the water boiling about as fast as he had. “Very good,” she said. “However strange the theory, it does work.”

  She’d spoken Kuusaman. “So it does,” Fernao agreed in the same tongue. She gave him a surprised look. “I know some of your speech,” he said, “but this teaching needs me to be precise, so I use classical Kaunian—except for the spells themselves, of course. You did very well.” Switching back to the classical tongue, he went on, “Next, please.” He pointed to the man in the chair next to Kaleva’s.

  Everything went well till the seventh mage, another woman, turned the water to ice instead of boiling it. “What did I do wrong?” she asked anxiously.

  “I think it was your pass in the second versicle,” Fernao answered. “The motion needs to be across and then under, and I believe you went over with your left hand. Try again, please.” The woman did, and succeeded. After all had gone through the demonstration, Fernao dismissed them and went looking for Pekka.

  He found her in the refectory, eating a sandwich made of a round, chewy roll, smoked salmon, a sliced gherkin, and onions. She looked tired. She was teaching practical mages, too, as well as doing the administrative work for the project. She nodded to him as he came up. “Hello,” she said. “You have something on your mind. I can see it.”

  “So I do.” Fernao nodded. He looked around. The refectory was crowded with practical mages, a lot of whom he’d never seen before. “When you’re done here, can we go someplace quiet and talk?”

  Pekka hesitated. Fernao winced. She hadn’t come knocking at his door after they’d made love that once. He hadn’t knocked on hers, either, however much he’d wanted to. “About what?” she asked at last.

  “Something important I don’t want to talk about here,” he answered, “but not that, in case you were wondering.”

  “All right. I trust you.” But Pekka’s voice held doubt—she still had to be wondering whether he’d planned to seduce her when he’d invited her to his chamber. She finished the odorous sandwich in a few bites, took a gulp of tea to wash it down, and stood. “Come to my chamber with me, then.”

  When they got there, Pekka sat down on the bed. Fernao would have liked to sit beside her, but didn’t think she would like it if he did. He perched on the stool instead. Even as Pekka raised a questioning eyebrow, he asked, “Why are all the mages we’re training Kuusamans? Why aren’t there any Lagoans?”

  “Ah.” Pekka visibly relaxed. That was important, and it had nothing to do with their going to bed with each other. She ticked off points on her fingers. “Item—the spells are in Kuusaman. Until they get translated into classical Kaunian or Lagoan, my folk will have an advantage. Item—even if that weren’t so, your Guild of Mages hasn’t sent any sorcerers for training. Item— the Algarvians would have an easier time planting a spy among Lagoans, because you are also an Algarvic people. Shall I go on?”

  Those were all good reasons. Fernao wished he could have argued otherwise. He said, “You do understand why I’m worrying? If your mages all learn these spells and my countrymen don’t, who has the advantage if we quarrel after the war?”

  “Aye, I see that,” Pekka answered. “The first two points can and should be addressed. I don’t know how you can help looking like Algarvians, though.” She winked at him.

  He grinned; she hadn’t done anything like that since they became lovers, and the only reason he could think of that she hadn’t was that she didn’t want to encourage him. But the grin didn’t last. He said, “If we had more Lagoan mages here, the problem of translating the spells would be smaller. Your people have not seemed to want to let my countrymen join me, though.”

  With candor that surprised him, she said, “We aren’t very eager, no. You worry about what Kuusamo might do. Here, we worry about what Lagoas might do.”

  “Why?” Fernao asked. “You’re bigger than we are. Nothing we can do will change that.”

  “Bigger, aye, but with this spell even a small kingdom will be able to wreak havoc on its neighbors. And”—Pekka’s nose wrinkled—”Lagoans are Lagoans, after all. Who can guess what you people will do next?”

  “You’re right, of course.” Fernao slid down off the stool, took two steps forward, gave her a quick kiss, and backed away again while she was still letting out a startled squeak. He was glad his leg had healed enough to let him move fairly fast; she might have hit him had he lingered.

  As things were, she shook her head and said, “Fernao,” in such a way that his name couldn’t mean anything but, I wish you hadn’t done that.

  He didn’t wish he hadn’t done it. He wished he’d done more: “Pekka,” he said, and got that into her name, too.

  She shook her head. She’d heard what he meant, just as he’d heard her. “It’s no good,” she said. “It’s no good at all.”

  “That’s not what you thought then,” Fernao answered. He was in no doubt whatever about that.

  Pekka didn’t try to deny it. Instead, she said, “That makes it worse, not better. I was stupid. Now everybody’s life is more complicated than it would have been.”

  “But—” Fernao struggled for words. He’d never tried dealing with a woman who’d enjoyed going to bed with him but still didn’t want to do it again.

  Pekka shook her head again. “No. It was good, but that isn’t enough.” She held up a hand before he could snort in disbelief or do anything else in like vein. “It isn’t. For you, maybe, but, for one thing, you’re a man, and—”

  “Thank you so much,” he said.

  She talked right through him: “—and, for another, you’re not a married man. Your life isn’t so much more complicated than it was before. Mine is.”

  Fernao started to protest. But what complicated his life, at the moment, was Pekka’s unwillingness to sleep with him again. Somehow, he didn’t think that would impress her.

  She sighed and said, “If I weren’t happy with Leino, that would be something different. But I am. It’s just that we were apart too long. Sometimes your body can make you stupid. I think it happens more easily with men, but it happens to women, too.”

  “I suppose so,” Fernao said dully. He didn’t much care to be reckoned no more than the object of her stupidity.

  Pekka pointed a finger at him. “Maybe we ought to get more Lagoans to the hostel here, after all. I know how Lagoans think about my people. If you had those tall, round Lagoan women here, you wouldn’t look twice at me.”

  But no
w Fernao shook his head. “I started wishing I could meet you back when I was reading your journal articles, before you Kuusamans stopped publishing all of a sudden. It isn’t just that I think you’re beautiful …” He hadn’t quite intended to say that, which didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  Pekka looked down at the floor directly between her feet. In a very small voice, she said, “You’re not making this any easier, you know.”

  “I’m sorry.” Fernao shook his head. He wasn’t sorry. He was about as far from sorry as he could be, and wanted to make things as hard as he could. Most of all, he wanted to bed her again, and again, and again, and let whatever happened afterwards take care of itself.

  That must have been very plain. Pekka said, “I think you’d better go.” She laughed—briefly. “In the romances, I’d throw yourself into your arms now, either because you were here and my husband wasn’t or because you made me so passionate, I couldn’t help myself. But life isn’t always like the romances. You did make me passionate—I’d be lying if I said anything else. It’s not enough, though, and I’m not going to let it be enough. I know where I belong.”

  He heard the finality in that. He wished he were so sure of such things. He didn’t see that he could do anything but what she asked now. She looked relieved when he got up and started for the door. Relieved he was going? Or relieved he wasn’t making her make hard choices? He wished he could believe the latter. Every fiber of him wanted to. Every nerve ending he had told him he’d be wrong if he did.

  If only I hadn’t been after anything but seducing her, he thought as his hand fell on the latch. But if there were two more dismal words than if only in Lagoan—or Kuusaman, or classical Kaunian, or any other language—he was cursed if he knew what they were.

  A band stood on the deck of the Habakkuk, thumping away in the emphatic style the Kaunian kingdoms favored. To Leino, the Jelgavan royal hymn sounded like a lot of raucous noise. Not far away from him, Xavega twisted her face into a sneer. She looked pretty even while sneering, no mean feat. I really have been away from Pekka too long, Leino thought.