Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Losing is harder than winning. I would be the last to deny it,” Lurcanio said. “But you can yield, or you can endure.”

  Krasta thought of her brother again. He was doing more than enduring: he still resisted the Algarvians. And she . . . she’d yielded. Every time she let Lurcanio into her bed—indeed, every time she let him take her to a reception like this one—she yielded again. But, having yielded once, she didn’t know what else she could do now. If she’d been wrong about Algarve when she yielded in the first place, how could she make amends now? Admit to herself she’d been selling herself and living a lie for the past two years? She couldn’t and wouldn’t imagine such a retreat.

  “If I want to get drunk, I will get drunk,” she told Lurcanio. That measured the defiance she had in her: so much, but no more.

  The Algarvian officer studied her, then shrugged one of his kingdom’s expressive shrugs. “Have it your way,” he said. “If you will not see you are behaving like a fool and a child, I cannot show you.” Krasta strode back to the bar and demanded a fresh glass of spiked brandy. She’d won her tiny victory, which was more than Valmiera could say against Algarve.

  Pekka and Fernao rode a cab to Siuntio’s home together. One of Fernao’s crutches fell over and bumped her knee. She handed it back to him. “Here you are,” she said—her spoken classical Kaunian was getting better by the day, because she had to use it so much with the mage from Lagoas.

  “My apologies,” he said: he also used the tongue more freely than he had when he first came to Yliharma. “I am a nuisance, a crowd all by myself.”

  “You are a man who was badly hurt,” she said patiently. “You ought to thank the powers above that you have regained so much of your health.”

  “I do,” he said, and then corrected himself: “Now I do. At the time, and for some time afterwards, I would have thanked them more had they let me die.”

  “I can understand that,” Pekka said. “Your wounds were very painful.”

  Fernao’s grin had a skeletal quality to it. “You might say so,” he replied. “In saying so, you would discover that words are not always adequate to describe the world around us.”

  In classical Kaunian, the sentiment sounded noble and philosophic. Pekka wondered how much torment it concealed. A good deal, surely: Fernao did not strike her as the sort of man who would exaggerate suffering for sympathy. If anything, he used a dry wit to hold sympathy at bay most of the time.

  “That is true not only of things pertaining to the body,” Pekka observed. “It is also why we have the mathematics of magecraft.”

  “Oh, no doubt,” Fernao said. “You are right, though—I was not thinking in mathematical terms.”

  They might have gone on with the philosophical discussion, but the cab stopped then. The hackman said, “We’re here, folks. That’ll be three in silver.”

  Hearing plain, ordinary Kuusaman startled Pekka. She paid the driver, collected a receipt so she’d be reimbursed, and helped Fernao out of the cab. He stared at the cottage in which Siuntio lived, at the ivy that was all but naked because of the fall chill, at the yellowing grass in front of the home. “The greatest theoretical sorcerer of the day deserves better,” he said.

  “I thought the same the first time I came here,” Pekka answered. “I thought he deserved a palace grander than the Prince of Yliharma’s. But this place suits him, not least because it has room enough for all his books. As long as they are where he can get at them when he needs one or wants one in particular, he cares little about anything else.” Pekka understood that feeling; she had a large measure of it herself.

  Fernao said, “I wish I could be that way. But I am too much a part of the world not to wish I had more of what it can give along with more books and more time to read them.” He smiled that dry smile once more. “What I want is more of everything, I suppose.”

  Before Pekka could answer, the front door opened. Siuntio waved to Fernao and her. “Come in, come in. Welcome, welcome. Very glad you could drop by this morning,” he said, once more making classical Kaunian sound more like a living language than one maintained by scholars. “You had better hurry up. Ilmarinen got here half an hour ago, and I cannot promise how long the brandy will hold out.”

  He smiled as he spoke, but Pekka wondered if he were joking. Ilmarinen liked his drink, no doubt about it. Like Fernao, he didn’t pull back from life. On the contrary—he grabbed with both hands. Pekka supposed she ought to count herself lucky that he hadn’t tried to grab her with both hands.

  Fernao made his slow way toward the door. Pekka walked alongside him, ready to help if he stumbled. He didn’t; he’d had a good deal of practice on his crutches by now. Siuntio said, “Good to see the two of you, both for the work we can do together and”—he lowered his voice—“because the three of us together may have some chance of keeping Ilmarinen under control.” He stepped aside to let Pekka and Fernao move past him and into the house.

  Fernao got to the end of the foyer and stopped. Pekka was behind him in the narrow entry hall, so she had to stop, too. He muttered something in Lagoan that she didn’t understand, then caught himself and went back to classical Kaunian: “Master Siuntio, you had better search me when I leave. Otherwise, I am liable to steal as much of your library as I can carry.”

  Pekka giggled. “I said the same thing the first time I came here. I suspect every mage who comes here for the first time says the same thing.”

  Ilmarinen walked in from the kitchen. Sure enough, he had a glass of brandy in his hand—and a raffish grin on his face. “Not me,” he said. “I kept quiet—and walked out with whatever I happened to need.”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Siuntio said, which made all the mages laugh. Siuntio went on, “When I no longer have any use for these books, they will go to someone who can profit from them. Till then, I intend to hold on to them. On to all of them.” He gave Ilmarinen a severe look. Ilmarinen’s answering gaze was as serene as if he’d never named himself a thief.

  “Shall we get to work?” Pekka said. “Who knows what they are doing right this minute in Algarve?”

  “Murdering people.” Ilmarinen took a good-sized swig of brandy. “Same as they’re doing in Unkerlant. And do you know what’s worst?” He finished the brandy while the other sorcerers shook their heads. “What’s worst is, we don’t always wake up screaming any more when they do it. We’re getting used to it, and if that isn’t a judgment on us, curse me if I know what it is.” He stared from one mage to the next, daring them to disagree with him.

  “I had not thought of it so,” Pekka said slowly, “but you may well be right. When something dreadful happens for the first time, it is a horror that lives in the memory forever. When it happens again and again, the mind grows numb. The mind has to, I think; if it did not grow numb, it would go mad.”

  “We’re all mad.” Ilmarinen’s voice remained harsh.

  “Mistress Pekka is right: we need to work,” Siuntio said. “If you will come with me to my study . . .”

  The hallways were lined with books, too. Pekka asked, “Master, how hard was it to pick up everything after the Algarvians attacked Yliharma?”

  “It was quite difficult and painful, my dear,” Siuntio answered. “Many volumes were damaged, and some destroyed outright. A very sad time.”

  Had he been in his study when the Algarvians attacked, he surely would have died, buried by the books he loved so well. Bookshelves climbed the wall from floor to ceiling; there were even two shelves above the door, and two more above each window. A ladder helped Siuntio get to books he couldn’t have reached without it.

  “Can we all sit down?” Fernao asked. “Is there room enough around that table?”

  “I think so. I hope so.” Siuntio sounded anxious. “I cleared it off as best I could. It’s where I work.” He’d piled the books and papers that had been on the table onto the desk, or so Pekka guessed—some of the piles on the desk looked newer and neater than others. She wondered
how many years (or was it how many decades?) it had been since Siuntio could work at that desk.

  “Here,” she said, doing her best to be brisk and practical. “We shall take these three seats, and leave Master Fernao the one closest to the door.” No one disagreed with her. She didn’t think Fernao could have squeezed his way between the bookshelves and the table to get to any of the other chairs. She had trouble herself, and she was both smaller than the Lagoan mage and unburdened by crutches.

  “Plenty of paper. Plenty of pens. Plenty of ink,” Siuntio said. Like any theoretical sorcerer, he disliked all the jokes about absent-minded mages, and did his best to show they shouldn’t stick to him.

  “Plenty of brandy,” Ilmarinen added, “and plenty of tea. If the one won’t get your wits working, maybe the other will.”

  “Plenty of references, too, in case we need to check anything,” Fernao said. As he had in the front room, he looked around the study with covetous awe.

  But Siuntio shook his head. “Few references for where we are going. What we do here will become the reference work for those who follow us. We are the trailblazers in this work.”

  “We are references for one another, too,” Pekka added. “Master Siuntio and Master Ilmarinen and I have all used one another’s work to advance our own research.”

  “And you have pulled a long way ahead of everyone else because of it,” Fernao said. “I have been studying hard since I came to Yliharma, but I know I am still a long way behind.”

  “You were useful in the laboratory,” Pekka said, which was true, “and you have more practical experience than any of us.” Thinking of mages with practical experience reminded her of how much she missed her husband. But Leino was liable to get practical experience of a much nastier sort. Pekka pulled her thoughts back to the business at hand, adding, “And that makes you likely to see things we may have missed.”

  Ilmarinen sniffed; he was the one who saw what others missed, and took pride in doing so. Pulling a sheet of foolscap off the pile Siuntio had set in the center of the table, he inked a pen and got to work. After a couple of ostentatious calculations, he looked up and said, “I aim to nail down the possibilities that spring from the divergent series: the ones having to do with the younger subjects, I mean.”

  Siuntio coughed. “Be practical instead, if you possibly can. As Mistress Pekka implied, we need as much practicality as we can muster.”

  “That is practical, if only you would see it.” Ilmarinen started calculating again, more ostentatiously than ever. Pekka wondered if he was right. Fernao seemed to think so, or at least that there was some chance of it. Lamplight glittered from the gold frames of Ilmarinen’s reading glasses as he scribbled; they were almost the only concession he made to age.

  Pekka quickly lost herself in her own work. She was used to being alone when she calculated, but the presence of her colleagues didn’t disturb her. She asked Siuntio a couple of questions. He knew everything that was in the reference books. Why not? He’d written a good many of them.

  She started when Fernao shoved his paper across the table to her. “Your pardon,” he said. She blinked and smiled, suddenly recalled to the real world. Fernao pointed to the last four or five lines he’d written. “I want to find out if you think this expression forbidden in the context in which I am using it.”

  “Let me see.” Pekka had to go back up the page to get her bearings. As she worked her way down again, her eyebrows rose. “My compliments,” she said, passing the leaf of paper back to Fernao. “I never would have thought of attacking the problem from this angle. And aye, I think the expression is permitted here. If you expand it, see what you have.” She wrote two quick lines under his work.

  He leaned forward to see what she’d done. His face lit up. “Oh, that is pretty,” he said. “I would have done it with parallels instead, and would have missed what the expansion shows. This is better—and you will be able to test it in the laboratory.”

  Pekka shook her head, for two reasons. “I would not try it in a laboratory—we need open space, I think, to make sure we can do it without wrecking ourselves and our surroundings. And we will not test it.” She gestured at herself and her Kuusaman colleagues. “We will.” This time, her gesture included Fernao. His smile got wider. Pekka smiled, too, and told him, “With this, you have earned your place among us.”

  Ilmarinen sniffed again. Pekka stuck out her tongue at him.

  Every so often, Ealstan made a point of walking by the edge of the Kaunian quarter in Eoforwic. Looking at the blonds reminded him that however much he’d done by keeping Vanai safe, it was only a drop in the ocean. Too many, far too many, people went on suffering.

  The Algarvian constables were jumpier than they had been before Vanai’s cantrip got into the Kaunian quarter. Almost every time Ealstan went near it, they clipped a lock from his hair. That didn’t worry him; he really was a Forthwegian, after all. That any of his people could like the Kaunians and wish them well seemed a notion alien to the redheads.

  They certainly didn’t want Forthwegians wishing Kaunians well. New broadsheets went up every few days. THIS IS A KAUNIAN WAR! one shouted, showing Kaunian hands reaching into Algarve from all directions. Another cried, BRING DOWN THE NEW KAUNIAN EMPIRE! It showed ancient Algarvic warriors striding through the burning ruins of a Kaunian town.

  But Kaunians weren’t the only ones the broadsheets savaged. UNKERLANT IS FORTHWEO’S FOE, TOO, one of them told passersby. Another was more sweeping: UNKERLANT IS DERLAVAI’S ENEMY. That one showed all the continent east of Unkerlant served up on a platter before a wild-eyed King Swemmel, who was about to devour it with a mouth full of pointed fangs.

  Another broadsheet showed Algarvian soldiers and men from Plegmund’s Brigade marching side by side above the legend, WE ARE THE SHIELD OF DERLAVAI. When Ealstan saw one of those on a quiet street where nobody was paying him any attention, he spat on it.

  He was lucky in his timing; an Algarvian constable came round the corner a moment after he’d let fly. Seeing him, the redhead asked, “You living here?”

  “No,” Ealstan answered. “Just on my way somewhere.”

  “Getting going, then,” the constable told him, and set a hand on the bludgeon he wore on his belt. Ealstan left in a hurry.

  Inside the Kaunian quarter, life tried to go on as it always had. Blonds bought and sold from one another, although, from the glimpses Ealstan got of the goods they showed for sale, they had little worth having. And even in the Kaunian quarter, all the signs were in Forthwegian or Algarvian. Mezentio’s men had forbidden the Kaunians to write their own language not long after they overran Forthweg.

  Out from the Kaunian distract came a squad of Algarvian constables leading several dozen glum-looking blonds: men, women, children. They headed off toward the ley-line caravan depot in the center of town. Fight! Ealstan wanted to yell at them. Run! Do something!

  But he kept quiet, for fear of what would happen if he shouted. Shame choked him. The Kaunians stolidly marched along. Did they not believe what would happen to them once they got into a caravan car? Ealstan didn’t see how that could be, not after so long. Did they fear what would happen to the blonds still in the quarter if they showed fight? Maybe that made more sense.

  Or maybe nothing made sense any more. Maybe the whole world had gone mad when the war started. Maybe I was the one who went mad, Ealstan thought. Maybe one day I’ll wake up and I’ll be home. Leofsig will be fine. None of this will really have happened.

  How tempting to believe that! But Ealstan knew too well he couldn’t. What he wanted and what was real were—and would stay—two different things. And, if he woke up from a dream, he would wake up without Vanai. Having her at his side made everything else . . . pretty close to bearable.

  He walked on through Eoforwic, into the richer parts of town. Broadsheets were fewer there, as if the Algarvians worried more about offending prosperous folk than the poor of the city. And they probably did. They squeezed more taxes out of t
he rich, and relied on them to help keep the poor quiet. In exchange for being let alone otherwise, well-to-do Forthwegians were all too often willing to work hand in glove with the redheaded occupiers.

  And one broadsheet he saw in the prosperous districts but nowhere else put things as starkly as could be. UNKERLANT WOULD BE WORSE, it read. A lot of Forthwegians—Forthwegians of non-Kaunian blood, of course—probably believed that. But the broadsheet said nothing about a free and independent Forthweg. For Ealstan, that was the only thing worth having.

  The doorman at Ethelhelm’s block of flats still hadn’t resumed his post outside the building. Ealstan supposed the fellow could use the cool, rainy fall weather as an excuse. His own opinion was that the doorman lacked the nerve to show his face on the street after the latest riots. But no one much cared about his opinion. He’d seen that too many times to have any doubts.

  “And a good day to you, sir.” The doorman nodded to him. “Ethelhelm told me I was to expect you, and here you are.” If Ethelhelm said it, it had to be true—so his tone implied.

  “Here I am,” Ealstan agreed in a hollow voice. He wished he weren’t. But Ethelhelm was too good a client to throw over, even if he’d turned out not to be such a good friend. Sighing, Ealstan climbed the stairs to the drummer and bandleader’s flat.

  Ethelhelm swung the door open as soon as he knocked. The musician didn’t seem to notice that Ealstan’s liking for him had cooled. “Good to see you,” he said. “Aye, very good to see you. Come in. Drink some wine, if you care to.”

  “I wouldn’t turn down a cup, thanks,” Ealstan said. Ethelhelm always had something smooth and rich to drink in the flat. Why not? Ealstan couldn’t think of many Forthwegians who could afford it better.

  Today, he poured from a jar of a splendid, tawny vintage. Peering into his glass, he said, “That’s just about the color of a Gyongyosian’s beard, isn’t it?”

  “If you say so, I won’t quarrel with you,” Ealstan answered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Gyongyosian in the flesh.” He paused, thought, and shook his head. “I’m sure I haven’t. Can’t imagine what a Gyongyosian would have been doing in Gromheort.” Ethelhelm already knew where he was from.