Rulers of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Another big Algarvian victory near Durrwangen!” a news-sheet vendor shouted to Vanai. “Unkerlanters falling back in disorder!” He waved the sheet, doing his best to tempt her.

  “No,” she said, and hurried past him toward her block of flats. She had to hurry. She’d been out longer than she’d planned to be. Somehow, time had got away from her. She didn’t know how long she would go on looking like a Forthwegian.

  Worse, she wouldn’t know when she stopped looking like a Forthwegian. She couldn’t see the spell that kept her safe. It was for others, not for herself.

  She was almost running now. She kept waiting for the cry of, “Kaunian!” to ring out behind her. Oh, her hair was dyed black, but that wouldn’t save her once her features shifted.

  Only a few more blocks to go—a few more crowded blocks, a few more blocks full of Forthwegians, full of people all too many of whom hated Kaunians. If the Forthwegians hadn’t hated Kaunians, how could the Algarvians have done what they’d done to Vanai’s people? They couldn’t. She knew it only too well.

  She imagined she felt the enchantment slipping away. Of course it was imagination; she couldn’t feel the enchantment at all, any more than she could see it. But she could feel the fright welling up inside her. If she couldn’t renew the spell—if she couldn’t renew it now—she thought she would go mad. Wait till she got to the flat? It might be too late. Powers above, it might be too late!

  And then she let out what was almost a sob of relief. Not the block of flats—not even her street, not yet—but the next best thing: the Forthwegian apothecary’s shop whose proprietor had given her medicine for Ealstan even though, in those days, she’d not only been a Kaunian but looked like one, and who’d passed her spell on to the other Kaunians in Eoforwic.

  She had a length of yellow yarn and a length of dark brown in her handbag. She always kept them there against emergencies—but she hadn’t thought today would turn out to be an emergency, not when she went outside she hadn’t. If the apothecary would let her use a back room for a few minutes, she’d be safe again for hours on end.

  When she walked in, he was molding pills in a little metal press. “Good day,” he said from behind the high counter. “And how may I help you?”

  “Could I please go into some quiet little room?” she asked. “When I come out again, I’ll feel much better, much … safer.” She was pretty sure he already knew she was a Kaunian—who else but a Kaunian would have given him such a spell? Even so, fear made her stop short of coming out and saying it.

  But he only smiled and nodded and said, “Of course. Come around behind here and right on into my storeroom. Take as much time as you need. I’m sure you’ll look the same when you come out as you do now.”

  The spell hadn’t slipped yet, then. “Powers above bless you!” Vanai exclaimed, and hurried into the room. The apothecary shut the door behind her and, she supposed, went back to grinding pills.

  Only a small, dim lamp lit the room. It was full of jars and vials and pots that crowded shelves and one little table set into a back comer. Vanai breathed in a heady mixture of poppy juice and mint and licorice and laurel and camphor and at least half a dozen other odors she couldn’t name right away. She took a couple of long, deep breaths and smiled. If she had anything wrong with her lungs, she wouldn’t when she came out.

  She fished through her handbag—far less convenient than a belt pouch, but Forthwegian women didn’t belt their tunics, using them to conceal their figures—till she found the lengths of yarn. She set them on the table, twisting them together, and began her chant.

  Because it was in classical Kaunian, a forbidden language in Forthweg these days, she kept her voice very low: she didn’t want to endanger the apothecary who’d done so much for her and for Kaunians all over the kingdom. She would have been amazed if he were able to hear her through the door.

  Just as she was finishing the cantrip, she distinctly heard him say, “Good day. And how may I help you gentlemen?” Maybe he spoke a little louder than usual to warn her someone else had come into the shop; maybe the wood of the door just wasn’t very thick. Either way, she was glad she’d incanted quietly. She waited in the little storeroom, sure the apothecary would let her know when it was safe to come out

  And then one of the newcomers said, “You are someone who knows of the filthy magics the Kaunian scum make to disguise themselves.” He spoke fluent Forthwegian, but with a trilling Algarvian accent.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the apothecary answered calmly. “Can I interest you in a horehound-and-honey cough elixir? You sound stuffy, and I’ve just mixed up a new batch.”

  In the little storeroom, Vanai shivered with terror. She hadn’t wanted to bring the man danger by casting her spell too loudly, but she’d brought him worse danger, deadly danger, by asking him to pass it on to her fellow Kaunians. And now the redheads were here, and one jump away from her.

  She wanted to jump out from the storeroom and attack them, as if she were the heroine of one of the trashy Forthwegian romances of which she’d read so many while cooped up in the flat. Common sense told her that would only ruin her along with the apothecary. She stayed where she was, hating herself for it.

  “You are a whorehound, and a son of a whorehound besides,” the Algarvian said. He and his comrade both laughed loudly at his wit. “You are also a lying son of a whorehound, and you are going to pay for it. Come with us right now, and we shall have the truth from you.”

  “I have given you the truth,” the apothecary said.

  “You have given us dung, and told us it is perfume,” the Algarvian retorted. “Now you come with us, or we blaze you where you stand. Here! Hold! What are you doing?”

  “Taking a pill,” the apothecary said, his voice easy and relaxed. “I’ve been getting over the grippe. Let me swallow it down, and I am yours.”

  “You are ours, all right. Now we have you in our grip.” Mezentio’s man, along with his other depravities, fancied himself a punster.

  “I go with you under protest, for you are seizing an innocent man,” the apothecary said.

  That sent both Algarvians into gales of laughter. Vanai leaned forward and ever so cautiously pressed her ear to the door. Receding footsteps told her of the redheads’ departure with their captive. She didn’t hear the front door slam behind them. The Algarvians wouldn’t care who plundered the shop, while the apothecary, bless him, was giving her a way to slip off without drawing notice to herself.

  She waited. Then she opened the door the tiniest crack and peered out. Not seeing anyone, she darted out from behind the counter and into the front part of the shop, as if she were an ordinary customer. Then, as casually as she could, she left the place and strode out onto the street.

  Nobody asked her what she was doing coming out of the shop bare minutes after a couple of Algarvians had hauled away the proprietor. Nobody paid her any heed at all, in fact. A good-sized crowd had gathered down at the end of the block.

  Confident now that she would keep on looking Forthwegian, Vanai hurried over to find out what was going on. She saw two redheads in the middle of the crowd: they overtopped the Forthwegians around them by several inches. One of them said, “We did not touch him, by the powers above! He just fell over.”

  She’d heard that voice in the apothecary’s shop. The Algarvian wasn’t punning now. His partner bent down, disappearing from Vanai’s view. A moment later, he spoke in his own language: “He’s dead.”

  The day was cool and gloomy, but sunshine burst in Vanai. She didn’t know, but she would have bet her life what the apothecary had taken had nothing to do with the grippe. The Algarvians reached the same conclusion a heartbeat later. They both started cursing in their own language. “He cheated us, the stinking bugger!” cried the one who’d done all the talking in Forthwegian.

  “If he weren’t already dead, I’d kill him for that,” the other one answered.

  The one who did the talking in Forthwegian started
waving his arms. That got him attention, not least because he held a short, deadly looking stick in his right hand. “Go away!” he shouted. “This criminal, this dog who hid Kaunians, has escaped our justice, but the fight against the menace of the blonds goes on.”

  Vanai wondered how many in the crowd were sorcerously disguised Kaunians like herself. Because the Forthwegian majority left without a word of protest, she couldn’t stay. She had to act as it she were a person who despised her own kind. It left her sick inside, even as she realized she had no choice.

  She had to walk past the apothecary’s shop on the way back to her block of flats. People were already going in and starting to clean the place out. Vanai wanted to scream at them, but would good would that do? Again, none at all. It would only draw the Algarvians’ notice, the one thing she couldn’t afford, the thing the apothecary had kept from happening.

  “He’s dead because of what I did,” she said to Ealstan when he came home that evening. “How do I live with that?”

  “He’d want you to,” Ealstan answered. “He killed himself so Mezentio’s men couldn’t pry anything about you out of him—and so they couldn’t torment him, of course.”

  “But they wouldn’t have had anything to torment him about if it weren’t for me,” Vanai said.

  “And if it weren’t for you and it weren’t for him, how many Kaunians who are still alive would be dead now?” her husband returned.

  It was a good question. It had no good answer. No matter how obvious its truth, Vanai still felt terrible. And she had an argument of her own: “He shouldn’t have died for what he did. He should be a hero. He is a hero.”

  “Not to the Algarvians,” Ealstan said.

  “A pestilence take the Algarvians!” Vanai glared at him, starting to get really angry. “They’re evil, nothing else.”

  “They would say the same about Kaunians. A lot of Forthwegians would say the same about Kaunians,” Ealstan replied. “They really believe it. I used to think they knew they were doing wrong. I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better,” Vanai snapped. “If anything, that makes it worse. If they can’t tell the difference between right and wrong …”

  “It makes it more complicated,” Ealstan said. “The more I look at things, the more complicated they get.” His mouth twisted. “I wonder if your magic would work on Ethelhelm.”

  “If it did, maybe he wouldn’t have to sell himself to the Algarvians any more.” Vanai drummed her fingers on the table. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s complicated, too.”

  “I sometimes have some sympathy for him,” Ealstan answered. “He tried to make a little bargain with the redheads, and—”

  Vanai pounced. “And he found out you can’t make a little bargain with evil.”

  Ealstan thought about that. Slowly, he nodded. “Maybe you’re right. Ethelhelm would say you were.”

  “I should hope so,” Vanai said. “When you’re a mouse, there’s nothing complicated about a hawk.” She stared a challenge at Ealstan. He didn’t argue with her, which was one of the wiser things he’d done, or hadn’t done, since they were married.

  Cornelu thought no one could possibly hate the Algarvians more than he did. They’d invaded and occupied his kingdom. Powers above, they’d invaded and occupied his wife. But the two men who met him at the leviathan pen in Setubal harbor gave him pause.

  They stared at him out of chilly, gray-blue eyes. “You look too much like one of Mezentio’s men,” one of them said in Lagoan spoken with a rather mushy Valmieran accent.

  He drew himself up with all the dignity he had. “I am of Sibiu,” he replied. “This for Mezentio’s men.” He spat on the timbers of the pier.

  “Some Sibians fight side by side with Algarve,” the other Valmieran said. “Some Sibians …” He spoke too rapidly for Cornelu to follow.

  Whatever it was, the tone made him bristle. Switching to classical Kaunian, he said, “Perhaps you will explain yourself, sir, in a language with which I am more familiar than that of this kingdom. Or perhaps you will apologize for what certainly sounded as if it might be a slur against my own homeland.”

  “I apologize for nothing,” the second Valmieran said in the language of his imperial ancestors. “I spoke nothing but the truth: some of your countrymen, in Algarvian service, go forward because some of my fellow Kaunians were murdered to make magic against the Unkerlanters.”

  Cornelu started to let his temper slip. But then he checked himself. Sibiu was occupied, aye. The kingdom was sad and hungry and grim. He’d seen it for himself after his leviathan was killed off his home island of Tirgoviste, seen it till he could escape again. He had no doubt that a good many Sibians known to be unfriendly to King Mezentio no longer remained among the living. But the Valmieran was right: Mezentio’s minions hadn’t started massacring Sibians, as they had Kaunians from Forthweg.

  He bowed and spoke one word: “Algarve.” Then he spat again.

  The Valmierans looked at each other. Grudgingly, the one who’d accused Cornelu of looking too much like one of Mezentio’s men said, “It could be that even men with red hair can hate Algarve.”

  Lagoas was a land of mostly redhaired folk. Somehow, the Valmieran exiles seemed not to have noticed that. Still speaking classical Kaunian—his Lagoan remained bad, and Sibian, being so close to Algarvian, would have set their teeth on edge if they understood it—Cornelu said, “I shall take you across the Strait of Valmiera. Help your countrymen resist.”

  That last was a barb of its own. A lot of Valmierans, nobles and commoners alike, weren’t resisting but acquiescing in Algarvian rule. By the way the two exiles flinched, they knew it too well. Jelgava was the same way; Cornelu had brought home a sorcerously disguised Kuusaman who was stirring up trouble there.

  “Let us be off,” the first Valmieran said. “Enough talk back and forth.”

  “That is well said,” Cornelu answered. It was, as far as he was concerned, the first thing these supercilious blonds had said well. One could see why the Algarvians … He shook his head. He didn’t want his thoughts gliding down that ley line, even in annoyance.

  He slapped the surface of the water in the leviathan pen. That let the beast know who he was and that he was allowed, even required, to be here. Had he got into the water without the slaps, the leviathan might have recognized him; they’d been working together for a while now. Had the arrogant Valmierans got into the water without the recognition signal, their end would have been swift and unpleasant.

  Up to the surface came the leviathan. It pointed its long, toothy snout at Cornelu and let out a surprisingly shrill squeak. He patted the slick, smooth skin, then reached into a bucket on the pier and tossed it a couple of fish. They disappeared as if they had never been, fast enough to make anyone watching glad the leviathan was tame and well trained.

  Smiling an unpleasant smile, Cornelu threw the beast another mackerel. As its great teeth closed on the tidbit, he turned that smile on the Valmierans he was to ferry across the strait and back to their own kingdom. “Shall we go, gentlemen?” he asked as he slid down into the water.

  They looked at each other before answering. At last, one of them said, “Aye,” and they both got in.

  They weren’t leviathan-riders; if Cornelu had to guess, he would have said they’d never done this before, not even once. He had to show them how to secure themselves in harness, and how to lie still along the leviathan’s back and not give the beast even inadvertent signals. “It would be unfortunate if you did that,” he remarked.

  “How unfortunate?” one of the Valmierans asked.

  “That depends,” Cornelu replied. “You might live. On the other hand …” He was exaggerating, but he didn’t want his passengers annoying or confusing the leviathan.

  When he was sure everything was ready, he waved to the Lagoans who handled the nets that formed the pen. They waved back and let down one side; the leviathan swam out of the pen and into the harbor channel tha
t led to the sea.

  Cornelu wasn’t quite so happy as usual to be leaving Setubal. The reason for that was simple: he wasn’t alone with his thoughts, as he so often was on leviathanback, and as he craved to be. He had company, and not the best of company, either.

  They weren’t seamen, despite the rubber suits and spells that kept them from freezing or drowning in the chilly waters of the Strait of Valmiera. And they were Valmieran nobles, which meant that to them even a minor noble of Algarvic blood like Cornelu wasn’t far removed from a savage hunting wild boar in the forest. They kept talking about him in Valmieran. He didn’t speak it, but enough words were recognizably similar to their classical Kaunian ancestors for him to have no trouble figuring out they weren’t paying him compliments.

  By the powers above, Valmiera deserved to have the Algarvians run over it, Cornelu thought. If Mezentio’s men were only a little smarter, they might have slaughtered all the nobles there—and even more so in Jelgava—and won the commoners to them forever. But they hadn’t. They’d worked through the nobles who would work with them and replaced others with men more cooperative but no less nasty. And so both kingdoms still had rebellions simmering against the occupiers.

  Maybe these fellows would help bring the rebellion in Valmiera from simmer to boil. That would be good; it would distract the Algarvians from their even bigger troubles elsewhere. But Cornelu wouldn’t have bet much above a copper on it. He didn’t want anything to do with them. Why would anyone with a dram of sense in their own kingdom think any different?

  He knew nothing but relief when he saw the coast of the Derlavaian mainland crawl up over the horizon. It had been an easy trip across the Strait: no enemy ley-line ships, no leviathans, only a couple of dragons off in the distance—and neither of their dragonfliers had spotted the leviathan.

  “Is this the place where you are to land us?” one of the Valmierans demanded. “Are you sure this is the place where you are to land us?” He sounded as if he didn’t think Cornelu could find his way across the street, let alone across a hundred miles of ocean.