Out of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “If ever there is, you know you have only to ask,” the prince said.

  “Thank you, your Highness,” Pekka said. Prince Juhainen’s image vanished from the crystal as his crystallomancer cut the etheric connection. Pekka got to her feet, vaguely surprised her legs obeyed her will.

  “Are you all right, Mistress Pekka?” asked the crystallomancer who’d brought her to this chamber.

  “No,” Pekka answered, and walked past her. She would have walked through her if the crystallomancer hadn’t scurried out of her way.

  The next thing Pekka knew, she was standing in from of the door to her own room. She went inside and barred the door behind her. She hadn’t run into anyone on the way--or if she had, she didn’t remember it. She threw herself down on the bed and started to weep. All the tears she’d held back or been too numb to shed came flooding out.

  Fernao will wonder where I am, wonder what’s happened, she thought. That only brought on a fresh torrent of tears--these, tears of shame. Powers above, if the knock on the door had come a few minutes earlier, we’d have been making love. Wouldn‘t that have been a perfect way to find out Leino was dead?

  “It was only because you weren’t here,” she said aloud, as if her husband stood beside her listening. But Leino didn’t. He wouldn’t, not ever again. That finally started to strike home. Pekka wept harder than ever.

  After a while, she got up and splashed cold water on her face. It did no good at all; looking at herself in the mirror above the sink, she saw how puffy and red her eyes were, and how much she looked like someone who’d just staggered out of a ley-line caravan car after some horrible mishap. Even as she dried her face, tears started streaming down her cheeks once more. She threw herself down on the bed again and gave way to them.

  She never knew how long the knocking on the door went on before she noticed it. Quite a while, she suspected: by the time she did realize it was there, it had a slow, patient rhythm to it that suggested whoever stood out there in the hallway would keep on till she gave heed.

  Another splash of cold water did even less than the first one had. Grimly, Pekka unbarred and opened the door anyhow. It might be something important, something she had to deal with. Dealing with anything but herself and her own pain right now would be a relief. Or, she thought, it might be Fernao.

  And it was. The smile melted off his face when he saw her. “Powers above,” he whispered. “What happened, sweetheart?”

  “Don’t call me that,” Pekka snapped, and he recoiled as if she’d struck him. “What happened?” she repeated. “Leino. In Jelgava. The Algarvians.” She tried to gather herself, but had no great luck. The tears came whether she wanted them or not.

  “Oh,” Fernao said softly. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”

  Are you? she wondered. Or are you just as well pleased? Why shouldn’t you be? Your rival is out of the way. How convenient. Nothing she’d ever seen from Fernao, nothing he’d ever said, made her believe he would think, did think, like that. But she wasn’t thinking very clearly herself right then. Sometimes, she did think clearly enough to understand that.

  Fernao started to come into the room. Pekka stood in the doorway, blocking his path. He nodded jerkily, then bowed, almost as if he were an Algarvian. “All right,” he said, though she hadn’t said anything aloud. “I’ll do anything you want me to do. You know that. Tell me what it is, and I’ll do it. Only . . . don’t shut me away. Please.”

  “I don’t want to have to think about that right now,” Pekka said. “I don’t want to have to think about anything right now.” But she couldn’t help it; what ran through her mind was, Oh, powers above--I’m going to have to let Uto know his father isn‘t coming home from the war. That was another jolt, almost as bad as hearing the dreadful news from Juhainen. “For now, can you just. . . leave me be?”

  “All right,” he said, but the look in his eyes--so like a Kuusaman’s eyes in shape, set in an otherwise purely Lagoan face--showed she’d hurt him. “Whatever you want me to do, or don’t want me to do, tell me. You know I’ll do it... or not do it.”

  “Thank you,” Pekka said raggedly. “I don’t know what the etiquette is for the wife’s lover when the husband dies.” Spoken in a different tone of voice, that might have been a joke. She meant it as a statement of fact, no more.

  Fortunately, Fernao took it that way. “Neither do I,” he admitted, “at least not when--” Several words too late, he broke off. At least not when the lover has nothing to do with the husband’s demise, he’d been about to say: that or something like it. Lagoans weren’t quite so touchy or so much in the habit of taking other men’s wives for lovers as Algarvians, but some of the romances Pekka had read suggested they did have their rules for such situations.

  She didn’t want to think about that now, either. In the romances, the wife was often glad when her husband met his end. She wasn’t glad. She felt as if a ley-line caravan had just appeared out of nowhere, run her down, and then vanished. Leino had been one of the anchors of her world. Now she was adrift, lost, at sea.. . .

  Had Fernao chosen that moment to try to embrace her, in sympathy either real or something less than real, she would have hit him. Maybe he sensed as much, for he only nodded, said, “I’ll be here when you need me,” and went down the hall, the rubber tip of his cane tapping softly on the carpet at every stride.

  Pekka had never imagined she would have to compare a dead husband and a live lover. She found she couldn’t do it, not now. She dissolved in tears again. Tomorrow--perhaps even later today--she would start doing everything that needed doing. For the time being, grief had its way with her.

  Colonel Sabrino had been at war more than five years. In all that time, he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of leaves he’d got. The ley-line caravan glided to a stop. “Trapani!” the conductor called as he came through the cars. “All out for Trapani!”

  Grabbing his duffel bag and slinging it over his shoulder, Sabrino left the caravan car. No one waited for him on the platform: no one here knew he was coming. I’ll surprise Gismonda, he thought, and hoped he wouldn’t surprise his wife in the arms of another man. That would prove embarrassing and complicated for all concerned. One thing--he wouldn’t surprise his mistress in the arms of another man. That would have proved even more embarrassing and complicated, but Fronesia had left him for an officer of footsoldiers who she’d thought would prove more generous. Absently, Sabrino wondered if he had.

  The depot had seen its share of war. Planks stretched across sawhorses warned people away from a hole in the platform. Boards patched holes in the roof, too, and kept most of the cold rain off the debarking passengers and the people waiting for them.. The sight saddened Sabrino without surprising him. All the way back from eastern Yanina, he’d seen wreckage. Some of it came from Unkerlanter eggs; more, by what people said, from those dropped by Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons. Now that the islanders were flying off the much closer islands of Sibiu, they could pound southern Algarve almost at will.

  Our dragonfliers are as good as theirs, Sabrino thought bitterly. A lot of our dragonfliers are better than any of theirs. Anyone who s stayed alive since the beginning has more experience than a Kuusaman or a Lagoon could hope to match. But we haven’t got enough dragons, and we haven’t got enough dragonfliers.

  Stretched too thin. The words tolled like a mournful bell inside Sabrino’s mind. Algarvian dragons had to be divided among the west--where King Swemmel’s men swarmed forward yet again--Valmiera, Jelgava, and the defense of the south against the air pirates flying out of Sibiu. How was one kingdom supposed to do all those jobs at the same time? It was impossible.

  If we don’t do all those jobs, we’ll lose the war.

  That was another painfully obvious truth. It had been obvious to soldiers since the battles of the Durrwangen bulge, perhaps since the fall of Sulingen. Any civilian with eyes to see would surely have noted the same thing after Kuusamo and Lagoas gained their foothold on the mainland of Derlavai
in Jelgava. Now armies came at Algarve from the west and from the east. On which front will we lose ground faster?

  Outside the depot, cabs waited in neat ranks, as in the old days. Sabrino waved to one. The cabby waved back. He hurried toward the cab. The driver descended, opened the door for him to get in, and asked, “Where to?”

  Sabrino gave his address, or rather half of it, before stopping and staring. The cabby’s black uniform was the one he remembered, from heavy shoes to high-crowned cap with shiny patent-leather brim. But.. . “You’re a woman!” he blurted.

  “Sure am,” the cabby agreed. She was middle-aged and dumpy, but that wasn’t why he’d needed a moment to know her for what she was. Smiling at his confusion, she went on, “You haven’t been home for a while, have you, Colonel?”

  “No,” Sabrino said numbly.

  “Plenty of women doing all kinds of things these days,” the driver told him. “Not enough whole men--or crippled men, come to that--left to do them, and they’ve got to get done. Hop in, pal. I’ll take you where you’re going. You want to tell me again where that is, without choking this time?”

  Still astonished, he obeyed. When he got into the passenger compartment, she closed the door behind him, then scrambled up to her seat. The cab began to roll. Sure enough, she could manage a horse.

  Streets were rougher than Sabrino remembered. That wasn’t the cab’s elderly springs; it was poorly repaired holes in the roadway. Some of them hadn’t been repaired at all. Jounces made his teeth click together.

  Everything seemed more soot-stained than Sabrino remembered, too. The reason for that wasn’t hard to find, either. Charred ruins were everywhere, sometimes a house or a shop, sometimes a block, or two, or three. The air stank of stale smoke. Just breathing made Sabrino want to cough.

  There was the jeweler’s shop where Sabrino had had a ring--booty he’d taken in Unkerlant--repaired for his mistress. No, there was the block where the shop had stood, but only wreckage remained. He hoped Dosso had got out. He’d been doing business with the jeweler since just after the Six Years’ War.

  Most of the people on the street were women. Sabrino had seen that on earlier leaves. It stood out even more strongly now. Even some of the constables were women. The rest were graybeards who looked to have been summoned from retirement. Most of the men not in uniform limped or went on crutches or had a sleeve pinned up or wore a patch over one eye or had some other obvious reason for not being at the front. Everyone seemed to be wearing somber clothing--some the dark gray of mourning, others shades of blue or brown hard to tell from it in the sad winter light. Women’s kilts had got longer, too. Sabrino let out a silent sigh.

  The cab rattled to a stop. “Here you go, Colonel,” the driver said. Sabrino got out. The driver descended to hand him his bag. He tipped her more than he would have if she were a man. She curtsied and climbed up again to go look for her next fare. Sabrino went up the walk and used the brass knocker to knock on his own front door.

  When a maidservant opened it, she squeaked in surprise and dropped him a curtsy more polished than the one he’d got from the cabby. “Your Excellency!” she exclaimed. “We had no idea ...”

  “I know, Clarinda,” Sabrino answered. “It’s not always easy to send messages from the front. But I’m here. The Unkerlanters haven’t managed to turn the lady my wife into a widow quite yet. Is Gismonda at home?”

  Clarinda nodded. “Aye, my lord Count. Nobody goes out as much as we did . . . beforehand. Let me go get her.” She hurried away, calling, “Lady Gismonda! Lady Gismonda! Your husband’s home!”

  That brought servants from all over the mansion to clasp Sabrino’s hand and embrace him. The last time he’d had such a greeting, he thought, was when he’d managed to escape the Unkerlanters after they blazed down his dragon.

  “Let me through,” Gismonda said, and the cooks and serving girls parted before her as if she were a first-rank mage casting a powerful spell. Sabrino’s wife gave him a businesslike hug. She was a few years younger than he; she’d been a beauty when they wed, and her bones were still good. She would have hated being called handsome, but the word fit her. After looking Sabrino up and down, she nodded in brisk approval. “You seem better than you did the last time they let you come home.”

  “I was wounded then,” he pointed out. “You look very good, my dear--and you don’t look as if you were about to go to a funeral.” Gismonda’s tunic and kilt were of a bright green that set off her eyes and the auburn hair that, these days, got more than a little help from a dye jar.

  Her lip curled. “I don’t much care for what people call fashion these days, and so I ignore it. Some fools do cluck, but the only place I care about hens is on my supper plate.” She turned to the head cook. “Speaking of hens, have we got a nice one you can do up for the count’s supper tonight?”

  “Not a hen, milady, but a plump capon,” he replied.

  Gismonda looked a question to Sabrino. His stomach answered it by rumbling audibly. As if he’d replied with words, Gismonda nodded to the cook. He went off to get to work. Gismonda asked Sabrino, “And what would you like in the meanwhile?”

  He answered that without hesitation: “A hot bath, a glass of wine, and some clean clothes.”

  “I think all that can probably be arranged,” Gismonda said. By the look she gave the servants, they would answer to her if it weren’t.

  Sabrino was soaking in a steaming tub--luxury beyond price in the wilds of Unkerlant or Yanina--when the bathroom door opened. It wasn’t a servant; it was his wife, carrying a tray on which perched two goblets of white wine. She gave Sabrino one, set the other on the edge of the tub, and went out again, returning a moment later with a stool, upon which she perched by the tub. Sabrino held up his goblet in salute. “To my charming lady.”

  “You’re kind,” Gismonda murmured as she drank. Their marriage, like most from their generation and class, had been arranged. They never had fallen in love, but they liked each other well enough. Gismonda sipped again, then asked a sharp, quick question: “Can we win the war?”

  “No.” Sabrino gave the only answer he could see.

  “I didn’t think so,” his wife said bleakly. “It will be even worse than it was after the Six Years’ War, won’t it?”

  “Much worse,” Sabrino told her. He hesitated, then went on, “If you have a chance to get to the east, it might be a good idea.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t want to think about the Unkerlanters’ coming so far, but couldn’t help it. Gismonda’s thoughtful nod told him she understood what he meant.

  Her eyes glinted. “Since you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself in Trapani without a mistress, would you like me to scrub your back for you--or even your front, if you’re so inclined?”

  Before he could answer, bells started ringing all over the Algarvian capital, some nearer, some farther. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Enemy dragons,” Gismonda replied. “The warning for them, I mean. The dowsers are skilled, not that it helps much. Get dressed--quickly--and come down to the cellar. We can worry about other things later.” She sighed. “The capon will have to go out of the oven and into a rest crate. We will get to eat it eventually.”

  The only clothes Sabrino had in the bathroom were his uniform tunic and kilt and a heavy wool robe. Without hesitation, he chose the robe. Even as he tied it shut, eggs began falling on Trapani. He’d delivered attacks and been under attack from the air, but he’d never imagined a pounding so large and sustained as this. And it went on and on, night after night after night? Gismonda did not have to hurry him down the stairs. He marveled that any of Trapani was left standing.

  The cellar hadn’t been made to hold everyone in the mansion. It was cramped and crowded and stuffy. Even down here underground, the thuds and roars of bursting eggs dug deep into Sabrino’s spirit. Everything shook when one came down close by. If one happened to land on the roof, would everyone be entombed here? He wished he hadn’t thought of that.

  A
fter a couple of hours, he asked, “How long does this go on?”

  “All night, most nights,” Clarinda answered. “Some of them fly away, but more come. We knock some down, but. . .” Her voice trailed away.

  All night long? Sabrino thought with something approaching horror. Every night? We never could have done that, not at the height of our strength. The height of Algarve’s strength seemed very far away now, very far away indeed. We are going to lose this war, and then what will become of us? The eggs kept falling. They gave no answer, or none Sabrino wanted to hear.

  For the first time since the middle of summer, Ealstan couldn’t hear any eggs bursting. The fighting had passed east from Eoforwic. Algarvians no longer swaggered through the streets of Forthweg’s capital. Now Unkerlanters stumped along those cratered, rubble-strewn streets. If they’d expected to be welcomed as liberators, they were doomed to disappointment. But they didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  “Just another set of conquerors,” Ealstan said one afternoon, when he got back to the flat he shared with Vanai and Saxburh. “They look down their noses at us as much as the Algarvians ever did.”

  “Powers above be praised that we’re safe and that this building is still standing, so we have a roof over our heads,” his wife replied. “Past that, nothing else really matters.”

  “Well, aye,” Ealstan said reluctantly. “But if we rose up against Swemmel’s men, they’d squash us the same way the Algarvians did. That’s . . . humiliating. Is Forthweg a kingdom, or is it a road for its neighbors to run through any time they choose?” Almost as soon as the question was out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t asked it. Too many times in years gone by, Forthweg had proved to be nothing but a road.

  But Vanai surprised him by answering, “I don’t know. And do you know something else? I don’t care, either. I don’t care at all, if you want to know the truth. The only thing I care about is, the Unkerlanters don’t march through the streets yelling, ‘Kaunians, come forth!’ And if I go outside and my sorcery slips-- or even if I go outside without my sorcery--they won’t drag me off to a camp and cut my throat. They don’t care about Kaunians one way or the other, and you have no idea how good that feels to me.”