Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  Still shaking her head in bemusement, Pekka went out and got her trunk. She manhandled it back into the hostel, doing her best not to get in the way of the secondary sorcerers, who were bringing cage after cage in out of the cold. Fernao managed to get his own case inside and said something in Lagoan. “What was that?” Pekka asked.

  “It does not translate into Kaunian, I am afraid,” he replied in the classical tongue. “I said, ‘If I live out of my trunk any longer, I shall turn into an elephant.’ ”

  Pekka scratched her head. “You are right. It does not translate. I do not understand at all.”

  “In Lagoan, the word for a piece of luggage like this and the word for an elephant’s nose sound the same,” Fernao explained. “It is a pun—not a very good one, I fear.”

  “I see.” Pekka sighed. “Any joke where you need an explanation will not be funny afterwards.”

  “A great and profound philosophic truth,” Fernao said. “Do you not feel as if we have fallen back through time to the days of the Kaunian Empire? Here we are, speaking the old language, getting all our light from fire, without even a proper privy to our names.”

  “I do think that,” Pekka said, “till I also think of the sorcery we will be trying before long. They would not have imagined the like in the days of the Empire—and how lucky they were not to have to worry about it.”

  “I feel no power point close by,” Fernao said. “That will make the magic harder to bring off. We shall have to put all the initial energy into it ourselves.”

  “Which may be just as well,” Pekka remarked, “considering how easily it can get out of hand.” Fernao did not argue with her.

  After supper—plain food plainly cooked—Pekka was studying in her own room and making a hard job of it by candlelight, when someone knocked on the door. She opened it. There stood Fernao, by Kuusaman standards almost forbiddingly tall. “I would like to review some of the things we will be undertaking,” he said. “Do you mind?”

  Pekka considered. The Lagoan mage did not look as if he had anything else in mind. She stepped aside. “No. Come in.”

  “I thank you.” He perched on the stool, a gangly, redheaded stork.

  Pekka wished Leino were there instead. Loneliness pierced her like iron, like ice. But her husband, these days, had worries of his own. “Where shall we begin?” she asked.

  “I have found that the beginning is often the best place,” Fernao replied, his voice perfectly serious.

  Leino might have said the very same thing, the only difference being that he would have used Kuusaman, not classical Kaunian. Pekka snorted, as she would have with Leino. Hearing Fernao say something her husband might have made part of her less lonely, part of her more. “Very well,” she said. “From the beginning.”

  Fernao supposed it was possible that the wild southern uplands of Lagoas held districts as barren and deserted as Naantali. But those districts, if they existed, would surely have been much smaller. The journey to the hostel in the middle of nowhere had driven home to him how much larger than his own kingdom Kuusamo was.

  And now he and the Kuusaman mages with whom he was working and the animal handlers and the team of secondary sorcerers in charge of the apparatus were on the move again. He was quite certain no one in Lagoas traveled by reindeer-drawn sleigh these days. But the sleighs slid smoothly over the snow, and the reindeer seemed more nearly tireless than horses would have been.

  Things could be worse, he reminded himself. The Kuusamans could have tamed camels. But the only specimens of those ill-tempered beasts on the island Kuusamo and Lagoas shared dwelt in zoological gardens. Having become more intimately acquainted with camels than he’d ever wanted to down on the austral continent, Fernao missed them not at all.

  Beside him, Pekka said, “If we have not got enough empty land for the experiment here, there is no kingdom save Unkerlant that has got enough.”

  “I think we will be all right,” Fernao answered. That would have been sarcasm, except none of the three Kuusaman mages seemed to think such jokes were funny. They took this conjuration very seriously indeed. If they got the energy release they’d calculated, they had reason to take it seriously, too. If. Fernao was still not altogether convinced they would.

  He shifted in the sleigh, trying to get his healing leg somewhere close to comfortable. The Kuusaman physicians had promised the cast could come off when he got back to Yliharma. He’d stay on crutches for a while after that, though, while the wasted muscles now under plaster got back their strength.

  “Is it troubling you?” Pekka asked.

  “A little,” he answered. “It is not too bad, though, not really. Not nearly so bad as it was just after it was broken.” The potions he’d swallowed left his memories of those days blurry, but not blurry enough.

  “I am glad you are healing,” Pekka told him.

  “So am I, now that you mention it,” Fernao said, which made her laugh. He was also glad the two of them traveled in the same sleigh. Ilmarinen still fumed with resentment over his presence, like a volcano warning it might erupt at any time. Siuntio would have been a more congenial companion, but his intellect intimidated Fernao more than he was willing to admit, even to himself.

  He glanced over toward Pekka. He could see hardly anything but her eyes; she had her fur hat pulled down low on her forehead and the fur robe pulled up over her nose. No matter how little he could see of her, though, he knew she was prettier than Siuntio and Ilmarinen put together.

  “I wonder what it would be like,” she said, “to live out your days as a nomad in this kind of country.”

  Fernao had had his fill of nomads, as of camels, down in the land of the Ice People. “Unpleasant,” he said at once. “For one thing, consider how seldom you would have the chance to bathe.”

  Pekka’s nose must have wrinkled; the fur robe stirred a little. “If it is the same to you, I would rather not,” she said.

  Before Fernao could mention any other reasons why he didn’t care for the nomad’s life, the sleighs stopped in the middle of a stretch of snow-covered waste not visibly different from the snow-covered waste over which they’d been traveling for the past couple of hours. “This is the place,” the driver said in Kuusaman. Fernao was beginning to understand the language of Lagoas’ eastern neighbors, though he still made a hash of it when he tried speaking.

  “Now we shall see what we shall see.” Excitement crackled in Pekka’s voice. “Do we have something here, or have we spent a goodly sum of the Seven Princes’ money for nothing?”

  They did not see quite on the instant. The animal handlers set up wooden racks to hold the cages of the beasts that would be involved in this exploration of what lay at the bottom of the way the world worked. As the handlers set the cages on the racks, some of the secondary sorcerers started the spells that would keep the rats and rabbits from freezing to death before the main magecraft began.

  “Over this way,” called the Kuusaman who’d driven Siuntio and Ilmarinen out here. Fernao made his way through the snow, planting his crutches and his broken leg with great care. Pekka paced along beside him. He didn’t know whether she could save him if he started to slip, but she plainly intended to try.

  To his relief, she didn’t have to. Moving slowly and cautiously, he stayed upright for the quarter of a mile or so till he came to what he first thought to be an upswelling of earth under the snow. But it proved rather more than that: it was a low hut with thick walls of stone. The doorway, which one of the drivers shoveled clean, faced away from the animals.

  “This was also readied in advance?” he asked Pekka.

  “Of course,” she answered.

  The secondary sorcerers not involved in keeping the animals alive also came over to the stone . . . blockhouse, Fernao decided was the best name for it. Siuntio said, “They will transmit to the beasts the spell we shape.”

  Fernao hadn’t thought about all the consequences of their sorcery. Now he realized he should have. If this spell released as muc
h energy as the Kuusamans thought it would, not being in the immediate neighborhood of that energy release looked like an excellent idea. Only one drawback occurred to him: “I hope they will not introduce any garbling. That could be . . . unfortunate.”

  “It should not prove a difficulty,” Pekka said. “They are skilled at what they do.”

  “And if they do make a mess of things, it’s liable to end up saving their necks—and ours, too,” Ilmarinen put in.

  “We are going to succeed,” Pekka said. “We are going to succeed, and we are going to be safe while we are succeeding. And if you think differently, Master Ilmarinen, I am sure the sleigh will take you out of all possible danger.”

  “Death is the only thing that will take me out of all possible danger,” Ilmarinen retorted, and stuck out his tongue at Pekka. That was something no one would have seen before a sorcerous experiment in Lagoas. Instead of getting angry—or, at least, instead of letting her anger show—Pekka stuck out her tongue, too, and started to laugh.

  But she didn’t laugh for long. She walked out into the center of the blockhouse and chanted the ritual words with which Kuusamans began any magical operation. Fernao still didn’t believe those claims of Kuusaman antiquity, but he discovered he understood much more of the chant than he had when he first came to the land of the Seven Princes.

  When Pekka finished, she turned to the secondary sorcerers and asked, “Are you ready?” They nodded. She asked the same question of Ilmarinen and Siuntio. Both master mages nodded, too. Pekka turned to Fernao. “And you?”

  “As ready as I can be,” he replied. Because of his limited grasp of Kuusaman, his role in the conjuration could only be trying to stave off disaster once it was already loose. He didn’t think he would be able to do that, and hoped—hoped with all his heart—he wouldn’t have to try.

  “I begin,” Pekka said, this time not just to steady herself but also to warn the secondary sorcerers. The chant and passes were mostly familiar, but this spell was more potent than any they’d tried before. Fernao had suggested some of the improvements. He hoped they would serve.

  Siuntio and Ilmarinen remained alert. They were the first line of defense if Pekka faltered. Fernao studied her. He’d never had much use for theoretical sorcerers when they did step into the laboratory; they too often forgot which hand was their left and which their right. But Pekka had an air of calm that suggested she really did know what she was doing as she incanted—and that she wouldn’t panic if she did make a mistake. The secondary sorcerers also seemed very competent as they relayed Pekka’s magic to where it would be most needed: the rows of animal cages.

  Fernao hoped the other group of secondary sorcerers, the ones who’d been keeping the animals warm, had known when to depart. If they hadn’t, they would be in danger now. He assumed they had; the Kuusamans would be neither so heartless nor so slipshod as to leave them. Had he fallen in among Unkerlanters, now . . .

  Pekka incanted with ever greater urgency. Despite the work of the secondary sorcerers, Fernao felt the energies inside the blockhouse build and build. His hair tried to stand on end. That wasn’t fright; it was sorcerous energy on the loose. The other mages’ hair also started to stand up straight, as if lightning had struck nearby. It hadn’t—not yet. Out in the cages on the snowy plain, though, the rats and rabbits would surely be getting frantic.

  Here it comes, Fernao thought. He wanted to say it out loud—he wanted to scream it—but held back for fear of hurting Pekka’s concentration. She cried out one last word of Kuusaman. Fernao had learned what that final command meant: “Let it be accomplished!”

  And it was accomplished. The thunderous roar from the direction of the racks of cages was astonishing, overwhelming. The ground shook beneath Fernao’s feet. Brilliant white light appeared for a moment between the planks of the roof—planks that had, till then, been thickly covered with snow. Fernao wondered if the blockhouse would come down on the mages’ heads.

  It held. The shaking cease. The light faded. Fernao bowed to the Kuusamans. “It appears your calculations were accurate. I thought you optimistic. I see I was wrong.”

  “We did what we set out to do.” As always in the aftermath of such conjurations, Pekka looked and sounded ghastly. Food and rest would revive her, but for now she was fordone. Fernao wished he could tell her to lean on him, but he probably would have fallen over had she tried.

  “We did it, aye,” Ilmarinen said. “And now half the mages in the world will know we’ve done something large, even if they don’t know what.”

  “We don’t know what,” Siuntio pointed out. “Maybe we had better go see.” He was the first one out the door. The Kuusamans who’d built the blockhouse had known what they were doing when they made that door face away from the racks of experimental animals.

  Fernao made his own slow way out and then stopped in astonishment. No dragon could have carried an egg anywhere near big enough to gouge such a crater in the ground. The burst of energy had flung snow back far past the blockhouse, leaving bare ground behind.

  Ilmarinen ran toward the center itself. “Be careful!” Fernao called after him, but he wasn’t listening. The Kuusaman master mage paused at the edge of the crater, picked something up, and violently waved it about. Fernao had to get closer to see what it was. When at last he did, awe and dread prickled through him. Ilmarinen held a bright green clump of fresh spring grass.

  Handlers fastened loads to the dragons of Sabrino’s wing. The dragons bellowed and hissed at the idea of being made into beasts of burden—or perhaps just from general bad temper. Sabrino had little sympathy for them at the best of times, and none whatsoever now.

  He waved to the chief dragon handler. “Can you make them carry a little more?”

  To his disappointment, the fellow shook his head. “Colonel, I’d love to, but I don’t dare. You’ll be flying a long way, and the beasts are anything but in the pink of condition. The idea is for them to come back and fly more loads, not to try and do too much all at once and break down.”

  Reluctantly, Sabrino nodded. “All right. That makes more sense than I wish it did.” He bowed to the handler, sweeping off his fur cap as he did so. “I am glad enough to own that you know your business.”

  “Like I say, I wish I could do what you want,” the handler answered. “I know what our comrades need down there, same as any Algarvian does.”

  “Well, we’re going to bring them as much as we can.” Sabrino raised his voice to a great, full-bodied shout: “To me, you whoresons, to me! We run the gauntlet one more time.”

  Out of their tents came the men who weren’t already standing by or mounted on their dragons: not very many, since most of the dragonfliers were as eager to fare south as was their commander. When the handlers finished the job of loading the dragons, they waved. Sabrino, by then atop his own mount, waved back. He whacked the beast with his goad. It screamed in outrage, beat its great wings, and all but hurled itself into the air despite the heavy burden it carried. One after another, the remaining dragons in the wing followed.

  Their farm lay close to the fighting front. Before long, they flew south out of the land the Algarvians still held and into the terrain Unkerlanters had seized in this second winter counteroffensive. Footsoldiers on the ground blazed at them. Without a doubt, crystallomancers sent word of them farther south—in the direction of Sulingen.

  Sabrino let out a glum, weary curse. He had to fly a nearly straight path to the besieged city. Had it been much farther from his dragon farm, the dragons wouldn’t have been able to get there at all, not if they carried anything worthwhile.

  Clouds scudded through the air, getting thicker as the dragons flew farther south. Sabrino spoke into his crystal: “Let’s use those to hide in. The less Swemmel’s whoresons see of us, the less chance they’ll have to try to blaze us down.”

  Dragons didn’t care about clouds one way or the other. Sabrino was glad these were intermittent; otherwise, he would have had a hard time making sure he wa
s flying south. As things were, he got glimpses of the terrain below every so often. He didn’t need more than glimpses. He’d flown this route a great many times.

  And so it was, when he passed over the Presseck River, that he warned the men of his wing: “Don’t fly too straight and smooth and stupid around these parts. The Unkerlanters have a lot of heavy sticks waiting down there. Give ’em a good target and you’ll pay for it.”

  His own dragon didn’t take kindly to dodging now this way, now that, to speeding up and slowing down, or, indeed, to much of anything else. He didn’t care whether the beast took kindly to it or not. So long as the dragon obeyed, that sufficed.

  Sure enough, beams came to life below the wing. He watched the flashes with respectful attention. None came particularly close to him. None brought down a dragon. He knew better than to rejoice too soon. The Unkerlanters would have another blaze at the wing on the way back. His dragons would be unladen then, but they would also be very worn.

  Somewhere up ahead, Unkerlanter dragons, fresh ones, would be flying back and forth across the route he and his comrades would have to take. Sometimes they found the Algarvians, sometimes they didn’t. Sabrino doubted that was the most efficient way to use dragons, but King Swemmel hadn’t asked for his advice.

  This time, he and his countrymen were lucky. If the Unkerlanters had spotted them, it would have meant a running fight in the air all the way down to Sulingen. As things were, the Algarvian dragons flew on undisturbed toward the stillburning pyre of the much-battered city.

  Unkerlanter footsoldiers—the men besieging the Algarvians trapped in the wreckage of Sulingen—started blazing at the dragons. That didn’t worry Sabrino much. Footsoldiers brought down dragons only by the strangest of chances. But Swemmel’s army would have heavy sticks, too, and those were truly dangerous.

  As he did on every trip into Sulingen, Sabrino marveled that anything there was left to burn. His countrymen had fought their way into the place in late summer, had fought their way through it as summer gave way to autumn, and had been trapped inside it since the middle of autumn, since not long after snow began to fall down here. Now, one block at a time, the Unkerlanters were taking back what they’d previously lost the same way.