Out of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Supper soon,” Elfryth told Ealstan, as if he couldn’t have figured it out himself from the savory smell of chicken stewing with onions and mushrooms. His mother smiled at him. “It feels good, having one of our babies back in the house with us for a while.”

  “Babies?” Ealstan said. “Just because I’m toddling around . . .” He could walk, but was glad to have a cane in each hand to help bear his weight. Then he smiled, too. “I wonder if my daughter’s toddling yet.”

  “She’s what? About a year old?” Elfryth asked. Ealstan nodded. His mother sighed. “I wish I could see her. I hope Vanai paid attention to your letter.”

  “You’re not the only one.” Ealstan’s tone of voice made his mother laugh. His ears got hot. “I mean ...”

  “I know what you meant,” Elfryth said. “If anything goes to show you’re not a baby any more, that does. That and your beard.”

  “I was already wearing a beard when I, uh, left,” Ealstan said. Ran away because I was afraid I’d killed Sidroc, was what he’d meant there. He grimaced. I wish I had killed him. Then he wouldn‘t have killed Leofsig, and Leofsig was worth a hundred of him. A thousand.

  Thoughts like those were probably going through his mother’s mind, too. She’d been there when he and Sidroc fought. She’d been there when Sidroc smashed Leofsig with a dining-room chair, too. She’s been through a lot, Ealstan realized--not the sort of idea he was used to having about his mother.

  She said, “It’s a lot thicker now, though. It was a boy’s beard then. It isn’t any more.” She hesitated, then added, “It reminds me a lot of your brother’s, there just before--” She broke off. She’d been thinking of Leofsig, too, then.

  Ealstan limped over to her and leaned one of his canes against his hip so he could set a hand on her shoulder. He’d gone off to Eoforwic and Conberge had got married, but his older brother would never come to the house again. Elfryth smiled up at him, but unshed tears made her eyes brighter than they should have been.

  Someone knocked at the door. “Who’s that?” Ealstan and his mother said together. She went on, “I’ll find out. I can move faster than you can these days. Stir the chicken, if you please.”

  “All right,” he said to Elfryth’s back. She was hurrying toward the entry hall. Ealstan plied the big iron spoon.

  “Aye?” his mother said at the door, in the polite but distant tone she used for commercial travelers and other strangers.

  “Is... is this the house of Hestan the bookkeeper?”

  Chicken utterly forgotten, Ealstan hobbled toward the entry hall at the best speed he could manage. He was halfway there before he realized he was still holding the stirring spoon, not his other cane. That had fallen over. He hadn’t noticed.

  “Aye, it is,” his mother said doubtfully as he rounded the corner. “And you are--?”

  “Vanai!” Ealstan said.

  “Ealstan!”

  Somehow, his mother got out of the way as they rushed to embrace each other. Ealstan couldn’t squeeze her so tight as he wanted; she had Saxburh in a harness in front of her. For a glorious forever that couldn’t have lasted more than a minute and a half in the real world, Ealstan forgot everything but his wife. Then the baby started to cry and his mother said, “Well, I don’t suppose I need an introduction now.”

  “Oh!” Ealstan didn’t want to let go of Vanai; the arm whose hand still held that serving spoon stayed around her shoulder. But he made himself turn back to Elfryth. “Mother, the quiet one is Vanai, and the noisy one is Saxburh. Sweetheart, this is my mother, Elfryth.”

  Before Vanai could say anything, Elfryth did: “Powers above, Ealstan, don’t leave her standing out in the street like a peddler.” She darted forward and took the duffel bag Vanai was carrying away from her. “Come in, my dear, come in. My husband and my son told you you were welcome here, and they both have a habit of meaning what they say. Do come in.”

  “Thank you.” Vanai took Saxburh out of the harness and set her on the ground. The baby stood easily. She hadn’t been able to do that when the Unkerlanters hauled Ealstan into the army. “She wants to run around,” Vanai said. “She didn’t have much of a chance while we were on the caravan car or in the cab.” And, sure enough, Saxburh’s wails stopped. She looked up at Ealstan with big, dark eyes shaped like his own.

  “She’s beautiful,” Elfryth said.

  That made Vanai smile, but only for a moment. “This isn’t her true seeming, you know--or mine, either, for that matter.” She sounded a little--more than a little--anxious about reminding Elfryth she was a Kaunian.

  But Ealstan’s mother only shrugged. “Aye, I know you don’t really look like my daughter--”

  “Ha!” Ealstan broke in, and pointed at Vanai. “I told you so.” She stuck out her tongue at him. They both laughed.

  Gamely, Elfryth went on, “But I’m sure you’re beautiful in your own way, too, and so is your daughter.” She crouched down. “Hello, little one!”

  Saxburh stared at her, and then at Ealstan. Pointing to him, Vanai said, “That’s your dada. We’ve got your dada back.”

  “Dada?” Saxburh didn’t sound as if she believed it. She turned to Vanai and spoke imperiously: “Hat!” Vanai reached into her handbag and took out a little hat Ealstan had never seen before. She set it on Saxburh’s head. Saxburh jammed it down till it almost covered her eyes. “Hat!” she squealed.

  “You’re still standing in the street,” Elfryth told Vanai. “Please come in. You must be tired. I’ll get you some wine and cheese and olives, and supper will be ready pretty soon.” She noticed Ealstan was still holding the serving spoon, took it away from him, and went back into the house.

  “Come on,” Ealstan said.

  “All right.” Vanai looked anxiously at him. “How are you?”

  “I’m getting better,” he answered. “It still hurts, and I still have some trouble getting around--I left my other cane back in the kitchen when I heard you out here--but I’m getting better. And I’m a lot better, seeing you here.”

  “I like your mother.” Vanai sounded relieved. She also did sound tired. “Come on, sweetie--we’re going in there,” she told Saxburh. Holding her hand, the baby walked into the entry hall.

  “She couldn’t do that when the Unkerlanters grabbed me,” Ealstan said.

  “She does all kinds of things she couldn’t do then,” Vanai answered as he closed and barred the door behind them. “A few months don’t matter much to us, but they’re a big part of Saxburh’s life.”

  Ealstan reached out and lightly patted her on the backside. “Who says a few months don’t matter?” he said. She smiled back over her shoulder at him.

  “Come in here,” Elfryth called from the kitchen. “I’ve poured the wine-- and your cane is by the doorway there, Ealstan.”

  “Thanks, Mother,” he said. “I don’t know if I ought to drink any wine. I’m so happy, I feel drunk already.”

  “‘I’m going to,” Vanai declared. “After I’ve come halfway across the kingdom with a baby in tow, I’ve earned some wine, by the powers above! This kitchen is wonderful,” she said to Ealstan’s mother. “It’s three times the size of the one in our flat in Eoforwic. It’s bigger than the one I had back in Oyngestun, too, and laid out better.”

  “I’ll show you around the house in a little while, if you like,” Elfryth said. “First, though, I thought you’d want to relax for a bit.”

  “That would be nice.” Vanai shook her head. “No, that would be more than nice. That would be wonderful!” She picked up a mug of wine. “What shall we drink to?”

  “To being able to drink together!” Ealstan said. Vanai nodded. So did his mother. They all drank.

  “I’ll have to dig out your old high chair and your old cradle,” Elfryth said.

  “You still have them?” Ealstan said in astonishment.

  “Of course we do,” his mother answered. “We knew we would have grandchildren one day, and we thought they would come in handy. They’re down in the
cellar--I remember seeing them when we spent so much time there during the siege.” Seeing the mugs had emptied in a hurry, she poured them full again.

  They drank more slowly the second time through. Ealstan could feel the wine. By the way her expression grew slack, it hit Vanai hard. When the next knock on the door came, they all jumped. “That’ll be Father,” Ealstan said. He was closest to the door. He didn’t move as fast as he had when he heard Vanai’s voice, but he got there soon enough. He threw open the door and announced, “They’re here!”

  “Who’s here?” Hestan asked, but then he went on, “No--don’t tell me. By the idiot grin on your face, I’ve got a pretty good idea.” He pushed past Ealstan and went into the kitchen, where he spoke in classical Kaunian: “Vanai? I am your father-in-law, and I am very glad to meet you at last.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said in the same language. “I’m very glad to meet you, too. This is your granddaughter.”

  “I suspected as much,” Hestan said gravely. “Who else in this house would be sitting there banging the lid of a pot on the floor? Well, perhaps Ealstan, but he is larger.”

  “Slander,” Ealstan said from behind him.

  Vanai looked from one of them to the other and back again. “Now I understand some things about you that I didn’t before,” she told Ealstan.

  “I come by absurdity honestly,” he agreed.

  “Supper’s just about ready,” his mother said. “I know I can find that high chair.” She did, too, and triumphantly brought it into the dining room. Saxburh ate little bits of torn-up chicken and bread, and drank well-watered wine from a cup whose lid had three little holes. She made a mess. Elfryth smiled at Ealstan in a way that said she remembered him doing the same thing.

  Halfway through supper, the sorcerous disguises Vanai had given herself and the baby wore off. All Hestan said to Ealstan was, “You married a pretty girl either which way.” Ealstan nodded. He hadn’t seen much of Vanai’s true Kaunian features for a long time.

  Vanai couldn’t see her own features change, of course, but she noticed it on Saxburh and understood what Hestan’s comment had to mean. “I can put the spell back on,” she said hastily.

  “Only if you want to,” Ealstan’s father said. “Myself, I don’t think there’s any need to, not when you’re among friends.”

  “Among friends,” Vanai echoed. She shook her head in wonder, her gray-blue eyes wide. “You don’t know how strange that sounds to me. Be thankful you don’t know.”

  Hestan didn’t try to argue. All he said was, “Strange or not, it’s true here.”

  “It certainly is,” Elfryth agreed. Vanai brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand. She didn’t quite cry, but Ealstan thought she came close.

  After supper, Saxburh fell asleep in Vanai’s lap. Maybe the wine helped, but the baby had had a long, hard day, too. Ealstan’s mother brought out the cradle. “It was right by the high chair,” she said. Vanai laid Saxburh in it.

  Before too much longer, Vanai started yawning herself. Ealstan and his father moved a bed from a guestroom into the one he was using. That crowded the chamber, but he didn’t care. Yawning still, Vanai went off to bed.

  “I see what you see in her,” Ealstan’s father said after the door closed.

  “She’s very sweet,” his mother added, nodding. “And I want to eat your daughter up.”

  “We’re all back together again,” Ealstan said. “That counts for more than anything.” His wounded leg twinged. He ignored it. In spite of it, what he’d said remained true.

  He waited till he thought Vanai would surely be asleep, then tiptoed back to the bedroom, careful not to tap with his canes. Opening the door as quietly as he could, he stepped inside, then closed it behind him.

  From the new bed, Vanai whispered, “I thought you’d never get here. If you’d waited much longer, I really would have fallen asleep.” She flipped back the bedclothes. Under them, she was bare. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “Oh, darling,” was all Ealstan answered--with words, anyhow.

  Prince Juhainen’s image stared out of the crystal. “Aye, Mistress Pekka,” he said. “The demonstration was everything we could possibly have wanted it to be. The Gongs who saw it with their own eyes were horrified. The crew aboard the ley-line cruiser all agree on that.”

  “But the Gyongyosians in Gyorvar won’t believe them,” Pekka said. “Is that where the problem lies?”

  “That seems to be it, aye,” the prince answered. “They have made it plain they intend to keep fighting.”

  Pekka scowled. “We could have brought the lash down on Gyorvar straightaway. Don’t they see that? We try to warn them, we try to show them mercy, and they refuse to take it? Are they mad?”

  “Just stubborn, I think,” Juhainen said. “If they insist on paying the price, you can make them pay it?”

  “Aye, your Highness,” Pekka said, “though I don’t like to think about doing that to a place with people in it.”

  “If they’ll heed nothing else, we do have to gain their attention,” Juhainen said.

  “I suppose so, sir,” Pekka said. “In fact, I know you’re right. But doing something like . . . that to Gyorvar or to one of the Gongs’ other towns still comes hard. I’d sooner have done it to Algarve.”

  “I know you would, and I understand your reasons,” Juhainen said. “In your turn, though, you have to understand those are not reasons of state.”

  “Revenge isn’t the only reason I said that, your Highness,” Pekka replied. “It plays a part; I’d be lying if I told you anything else. Taken all in all, though, the Gongs have fought a pretty clean war. They’re just enemies, people who want the same islands we do and won’t take no for an answer. The few times they’ve used the murderous sorcery the Algarvians came up with, the men they killed to fuel it were all volunteers--real volunteers, by everything we could learn. With what Mezentio’s men did, they deserved being on the receiving end of this more than Gyongyos does.”

  “Very well. I see your point,” Prince Juhainen said. “But if we can’t convince them to give up the fighting any other way, we shall have to hit them over the head with a rock. Better that than all the Kuusaman soldiers’ lives we would have to spend invading their homeland. Or do you think I’m wrong?”

  Even if I did think you were wrong, you and the rest of the Seven would go right on down the ley line you’ve chosen. Pekka knew that perfectly well. But, in fact, she agreed with the prince. “No, your Highness. If this lets us win the war quickly, then we should do it. I hope the Gongs give up before we loose the magic on them, though.”

  “Well, so do I--but if not, not,” Juhainen said. “Is there anything else, Mistress Pekka?” When Pekka shook her head, the prince gestured to his crystallomancer, who broke the etheric connection. Light flared in the crystal in front of Pekka, and then it went dark and inert.

  She walked back to her chamber. Fernao sat at the desk there, filling leaves of foolscap with calculations. He set down the pen and levered himself upright with the help of his cane. “Hello,” he said. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Pekka said, smiling. It was true. Things being as they were, she didn’t even have to feel guilty when she said it. But that thought by itself was enough to raise guilt in her. When Fernao held out his arms to hug her, she slipped into his embrace as if it could shield her from all the complications of the world. She wished it were so. Unfortunately, she knew better.

  After kissing her, Fernao asked, “What did the prince say?”

  That brought another piece of the outside world into the chamber--not that it hadn’t already been there on the leaves of foolscap. “About what we thought,” Pekka said. “The Gongs don’t seem to believe that we can do this to them, in spite of the demonstration at Becsehely.”

  “They’re fools,” Fernao said.

  “They’re a stubborn folk. They always have been,” Pekka said. “If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have been able to keep so much of t
heir own way of life while they added on modern, eastern Derlavaian-style sorcerous techniques. They’re strange and they’re hard, and we’re going to have to break them.”

  “Right now, I’d do almost anything to end the Derlavaian War.” Fernao pointed to the papers on Pekka’s desk. “We can do this. Gyorvar’s farther away than that Becsehely place, but not enough to change the spell much. There’s no sign the Gyongyosians have any counterspells in place.”

  “I’m not sure there are any counterspells for this magecraft,” Pekka said.

  “I’m not sure there are, either, but we’re just starting to explore it, so there may be,” Fernao said. Pekka nodded; he had a point. He went on, “Whether there are or not, there certainly aren’t any up for Gyorvar. If we want to ...” He snapped his fingers. “We can.”

  “I know.” Pekka clicked her tongue between her teeth. “I don’t like to think about being able to wreck a city from halfway around the world.”

  “Neither do I,” Fernao said. “But I’ll tell you this: I’d rather be able to do it than to know someone else could do it to me and I couldn’t answer back.”

  Pekka thought about that, too, then slowly nodded. “If we have to do this to Gyorvar, I wonder how King Swemmel will take it,” she said. “Actually, I don’t wonder. I’ve got a pretty good idea: Swemmel will have fawns.”

  “ ‘Have kittens,’ we’d say in Lagoan,” Fernao told her. “Amounts to about the same thing either way, I suppose. I wonder how long the Unkerlanters will take to figure out what we’ve done and how we’ve done it.”

  “Years,” Pekka said confidently. “They’re brave and they’re very tough and they’re very big, but they’re very backward, too.”