Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  Muhassin stroked his camel with what was obviously the genuine article. “Don’t listen to him, Sunbeam,” he crooned. “Everyone knows you’re not mangy.” The camel rewarded that limited endorsement by twisting around and trying to bite his knee. He smacked it in the nose. It let out a noise like a bagpipe being horribly murdered. Hajjaj threw back his head and laughed. Muhassin gave him a wounded look.

  A column of glum-looking Unkerlanters came toward them. Naked Zuwayzi soldiers herded the men in rock-gray along. The Zuwayzin were in high spirits, singing and joking about the victories they’d won. They also made comments their captives were lucky they could not understand.

  “Stop them for a moment, Colonel, if you’d be so kind,” Hajjaj murmured to Muhassin. The officer called orders. The captives’ guards shouted in broken Unkerlanter. The light-skinned men halted. In Algarvian, Hajjaj asked, “Does anyone speak this language?”

  “I do, sir,” an Unkerlanter said, stepping forward.

  “Don’t you wish your kingdom would have let mine alone?” Hajjaj asked him.

  “I don’t know anything about that, sir,” the captive said, bowing low as he would have to one of his own nobles. “All I know is, they told me to come up here and do my best, and that’s what I tried to do. Only trouble is, it didn’t turn out to be good enough.” He looked warily at Hajjaj. “You won’t eat me, will you, sir?”

  “Is that what they tell you Zuwayzin are like?” Hajjaj asked, and the Unkerlanter nodded. Hajjaj sighed sadly. “You don’t look very appetizing, so I think I’ll be able to do without.” He turned to Muhassin. “Did you follow that?”

  “Aye, I did,” Muhassin answered in Zuwayzi. “He’s no fool. He speaks Algarvian well--a better accent than I have myself, as a matter of fact. But he doesn’t know anything about us.” He chuckled in grim anticipation. “Well, he’ll have his chance to find out.”

  “So he will. There’s always work to be done in the mines.” Hajjaj gestured to the column of captives. “They may go on now.”

  Muhassin spoke to the guards. The guards shouted at the captives. The captives shambled forward again. Muhassin turned back to Hajjaj. “And now, your Excellency, shall we go on toward the old frontier, the frontier we are restoring?”

  “By all means, Colonel,” the foreign minister said. His camel wasn’t so interested in going on, but he managed to persuade it.

  “Here and there, we’re already in position to cross the old frontier,” Muhassin said. As if to underscore his words, a squadron of dragons flew by overhead, going south. Muhassin pointed to them. “We couldn’t have come so far so fast without help from the Algarvians. Unkerlant hasn’t got but a few dragons up here in the north country.”

  “Cross the old frontier?” Hajjaj frowned. “Has King Shazli authorized the army to invade Unkerlant itself? I had not heard of any such order.” He wondered if Shazli had given the order but not told him for fear of angering or alarming him. That would have been courteous of the king--courteous, aye, but also, in Hajjaj’s view, deadly dangerous.

  To his vast relief, Muhassin shook his head. “No, your Excellency: as yet, we have received no such orders. I merely meant to inform you that we have the ability, should the orders come. A fair number of folk south of the old frontier--and east of it, too--have dark skins.” He ran a dark finger along his own arm.

  “That is so,” the foreign minister agreed. “Still, if a small kingdom can take back what rightfully belongs to it, it should count itself lucky, the more so in these days when great kingdoms are so mighty. We would need something of a miracle to come away with more than we had at the beginning.”

  “It is with feuds among kingdoms as it is with feuds among clans,” Muhassin replied. “A small clan with strong friends may come out on top of a large one whose neighbors all hate it.”

  “What you say is true, but the small clan often ends up becoming the client of the clan that befriended it,” Hajjaj said. “I do not want us to become Algarve’s clients, any more than I wanted us to be Unkerlant’s clients back in the days before the Six Years’ War, when Zuwayza was ruled from Cottbus.”

  “No man loves this kingdom more than you, your Excellency, and no one has served her better,” Colonel Muhassin said, by which flowery introduction Hajjaj knew the colonel was about to contradict him. Sure enough, Muhassin went on, “We have had the accursed Unkerlanters on our southern border for centuries. Our frontier does not march with Algarve, and so we have less to fear from King Mezentio than from King Swemmel. Is this not your own view as well?”

  “It is, and Mezentio is a far more sensible sovereign on his worst day than Swemmel on his best,” Hajjaj said, which made the colonel laugh. But the Zuwayzi foreign minister continued, “If the war goes on as it has been going, would you not say our frontier is liable to march with Algarve’s before long?”

  “Hmm.” Now the corners of Muhassin’s mouth turned down. “Something to that, I shouldn’t wonder. The Algarvians are moving west at a powerful clip, aren’t they? Still and all, they’ll make better neighbors than Unkerlanters ever did. Aye, they wear clothes, but they have some notion of honor.”

  Hajjaj chuckled under his breath. It wasn’t that Muhassin was wrong. It was just that what the Zuwayzin and the Algarvians had in common was a long tradition of fighting their neighbors when those neighbors were weak and fighting among themselves when their neighbors were strong. It wasn’t that the Unkerlanters didn’t fight; they did. Zuwayza would not have been free but for the Unkerlanters’ Twinkings War, when both Swemmel and his brother, Kyot, claimed to be the elder, and so deserving of the throne. But Unkerlanters did not fight for the sport of it, as both Zuwayzin and Algarvians were wont to do.

  “Come on, your Excellency,” Muhassin said. “The encampment is over that rise there.” He pointed and then booted his camel back into motion. The beast’s complaints at having to work once more sounded as if it had been given over to the king of Jelgava’s torturers. Hajjaj also got his camel going again. It too sounded martyred. He had little sympathy for it. Though descended from nomads, he greatly preferred ley-line caravans to obstreperous animals.

  But the Zuwayzin had done their best to sabotage the ley lines as the Unkerlanters drove northward. King Swemmel’s sorcerers had repaired some of the lines, only to sabotage them in turn when the Zuwayzin began pushing south once more. These days, naked black mages worked to undo what Swemmel’s wizards had done. Nobody could sabotage a camel; the powers above had already taken care of that. However revolting the beasts were, though, Hajjaj would rather have gone by camel’s back than by shank’s mare.

  At the encampment, a comfortable tent and a great flagon of date wine awaited him. He drank it down almost in one long draught. In Algarve, he’d learned to appreciate fine vintages. Next to them, this stuff was cloying, sticky-sweet. He didn’t care. He always drank it without complaint whenever it was served to him in Zuwayza, as it often was. It put him in mind of clan gatherings when he was a child. Visiting Algarvians might turn up their noses at the stuff, but he was no visiting Algarvian. To him, it was a taste of home.

  Colonel Muhassin’s superior, General Ikhshid, greeted Hajjaj after he had begun to refresh himself. The general gave him more date wine, and tea fragrant with mint, and little cakes almost as good as he could have had in the royal palace. Hajjaj enjoyed the leisurely rituals of hospitality for the same reason he enjoyed the date wine: lifelong familiarity.

  Ikhshid was not far from Hajjaj’s age, and quite a bit paunchier, but seemed vigorous enough. “We drive them, your Excellency,” he said when small talk was at last set aside. “We drive them. The Algarvians drive them. Down in the south, even the Yaninans drive them, which I would not have reckoned possible. Swemmel heads up a beaten kingdom, and I am not the least bit sorry.”

  “Few in Zuwayza would sorrow to see Unkerlant beaten,” Hajjaj said, and then, meditatively, “I would like our allies better if they ruled less harshly the lands they have conquered. Of course, I
would like the Unkerlanters better if they were less harsh, too.”

  “When you have to choose between whoresons, you choose the ones who’ll give you more of what you want,” Ikhshid said, a comment close in spirit to Muhassin’s.

  “That is indeed what we have done,” Hajjaj said. He looked toward the east, the direction from which the Algarvians were advancing. Then he looked toward the south, the direction in which the Unkerlanters were retreating. He sighed, “The most we can hope for is that we have made the right choice.”

  When the ley-line caravan in which Fernao was traveling reached the border between Lagoas and Kuusamo, it glided to a halt. Kuusaman customs agents swarmed aboard to inspect all the passengers and all their belongings. “What’s this in aid of?” Fernao asked when his turn came, which did not take long.

  “A precaution,” the flat-faced little inspector answered, which was more polite than None of your cursed business but no more informative. “Please open all your bags.” That, too, was more polite than a barked order, but left the Lagoan sorcerer no more room to disobey. When the Kuusaman customs agent came upon the letter of introduction from Grandmaster Pinhiero to Siuntio, he stiffened.

  “Something wrong?” Fernao asked with an inward groan; he’d hoped the letter would save him trouble, not cause it.

  “I don’t know,” the Kuusaman answered. He raised his voice: “Over here, Louhikko! I’ve got a mage.”

  Louhikko proved to be a mage himself: probably, if Fernao was any judge, of the second rank. The spells he used to examine Fernao’s baggage, though, had been devised by sorcerers more potent than he. He spoke to the inspector in their own language, then nodded to Fernao and left.

  “He says you have nothing untoward,” the customs agent told Fernao. He sounded reluctant to admit it and demanded, “Why do you come to see one of our mages? Answer at once; don’t pause to make up lies.”

  Fernao stared at him. “Is this Kuusamo or Unkerlant?” he asked, not altogether in jest: such sharp questions were most unlike the usually easygoing Kuusamans. “I’ve come to consult with your illustrious mage on matters of professional interest to both of us.”

  “There is a war on,” the Kuusaman snapped.

  “True, but Kuusamo and Lagoas are not enemies,” Fernao said.

  “Neither are we allies,” the customs agent said, which was also true. He glowered at Fernao, who made a point of staying in his seat: a lot of Kuusamans did not care to be reminded that they ran half a head shorter than Lagoans. Muttering something in his own language under his breath, the Kuusaman went on to search the belongings of the woman in the seat behind Fernao.

  The inspection held up the caravan for three hours. One luckless fellow in Fernao’s car got thrown off. The Kuusamans paid no attention to his howls of protest. Only after they got him out of the car and onto the ground did one of them say, “Be thankful we didn’t take you on to Yliharma. You’d like that a lot less, believe me.” The ousted man shut up with a snap.

  At last, the ley-line caravan got moving again. It glided across the snow-covered landscape. The forests and hills and fields of Kuusamo were very little different from those of Lagoas. Nor should they have been, not when the kingdom and the land of the Seven Princes shared the same island. The towns in which the caravan stopped might for the most part have been Lagoan towns as readily as Kuusaman. For the past hundred years and more, public buildings and places of business had looked much alike in the two realms.

  But when the caravan slid past villages and most of all when it slid past farms, Fernao was conscious of no longer traveling through his own kingdom. Even the haystacks were different. The Kuusamans topped theirs with cloths they sometimes embroidered, so the stacks looked like old, stooped grannies with scarves on their heads.

  And the farmhouses, or some of them, struck Fernao as odd. Before the soldiers and settlers of the Kaunian Empire crossed the Strait of Valmiera, the Kuusamans had been nomads, herders. They’d learned farming fast, but to this day, more than fifteen hundred years later, some of their buildings, though made from wood and stone, were still in the shape of the tents in which they had once dwelt.

  The day was dying when the ley-line caravan pulled into the capital of Kuusamo. As Fernao used a little wooden staircase to descend from the floating car to the floor of the Yliharma depot, he looked around in the hope that Siuntio would meet him and greet him; he’d written ahead to let the famous theoretical sorcerer know he was coming. But he did not see Siuntio. After a moment, though, he did spot another mage he recognized from sorcerous conclaves on the island and in the east of Derlavai.

  He waved. “Master Ilmarinen!” he called.

  Ilmarinen, he knew, spoke fluent and frequently profane Lagoan. Here this evening, though, the theoretical sorcerer chose to address him in classical Kaunian, the language of magecraft and scholarship: “You have come a long way to accomplish little, Master Fernao.” He did not sound sorry to say that. He sounded wryly amused.

  Ignoring his tone, Fernao asked, “And why is that?” If Ilmarinen told him the reason he was bound to fail, perhaps he wouldn’t.

  But Ilmarinen did no such thing. He came up and waggled a forefinger under Fernao’s nose. “Because you will not find anyone here who knows anything, or who will tell you if he does. And so, you may as well turn around and go back to Setubal.” He waved a mocking good-bye.

  “Can’t I eat supper first?” Fernao asked mildly. “I’d gladly have you as my guest in whatever eatery you choose.”

  “Going to quibble about everything, are you?” Ilmarinen returned. But for the first time, he seemed amused with Fernao rather than amused at him. Stooping, he picked up one of the bags at the Lagoan mage’s feet. “That may possibly be arranged. Suppose you come with me.” And off he went. Fernao grabbed the other bag, slipped its carrying strap over his shoulder, and followed.

  He had to step smartly; Ilmarinen proved a spry old man. For a moment, Fernao wondered if the Kuusaman was trying to lose him and make off with the bag--it was the one in which he’d brought what little sorcerous apparatus he had. He didn’t think Ilmarinen could learn much from the stuff, but Ilmarinen wouldn’t be able to know--he didn’t think Ilmarinen would be able to know--that in advance.

  As they were leaving the large, crowded depot, the Kuusaman theoretical sorcerer looked back, saw Fernao right behind him, and said over his shoulder, “Haven’t managed to make you disappear, eh?” Was he grinning because he was joking or to hide disappointment? Fernao couldn’t tell. He didn’t think Ilmarinen wanted him to be able to tell.

  Fernao looked around. Yliharma wasn’t one of the great cities of the world, as Setubal was, but it stood in the second rank. Buildings towered ten, some even fifteen, stories into the air. People dressed in almost as many different styles as they would have been in Setubal crowded the streets. They hurried into and out of fancy shops, sometimes emerging with packages.

  As most Kuusaman towns did to Fernao, it all looked very homelike--except that he could not read any of the signs. He spoke Sibian and Algarvian, Forthwe-gian and classical Kaunian. He could make a fair stab at Valmieran. The language of the principality next door to his own kingdom, though, remained a closed book.

  “Here,” Ilmarinen said, stilrin. Kaunian, after they’d walked a couple of blocks. “This place isn’t too bad.” The words on the sign hanging above the eatery were unintelligible to Fernao. The picture, though, made him smile: it showed seven reindeer in princely coronets, sitting around a table groaning with food. He followed Ilmarinen inside.

  In Priekule, the capital of Valmiera, the waiter would have fawned on his customers. In Setubal, Fernao’s hometown, he would have been more stiffly servile. Here, he might have been Ilmarinens cousin. He addressed Fernao in singsong Kuusaman, a mistake made all the more natural by Fernao’s narrow, slanted eyes--Lagoans, though primarily of Algarvic stock, had some Kuusaman blood in them, too. Fernao spread his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said in Lagoan. “I don’t speak your
language.”

  “Ah. That makes you easier to gouge,” the waiter answered, also in Lagoan. His grin, like Ilmarinen’s, might have meant he was joking. On the other hand, it might not have, too.

  The menu also turned out to be incomprehensible Kuusaman. “Three specialties here,” Ilmarinen said, now deigning to speak Lagoan himself. “Salmon, mutton, or reindeer. You can’t go too far wrong with any of them.”

  “Salmon will do nicely, thanks,” Fernao answered. “When I was in the land of the Ice People, I ate enough strange things to put me off them for a while.”

  “Reindeer is better than camel, but have it as you will,” Ilmarinen answered. “I’m going for the mutton chop myself. Everyone calls me an old goat, and this is as close to eating my namesake as I can come without horrifying the Gyongyosians.” He waved to the waiter and ordered for both of them in Kuusaman. “Ale suit you?” he asked Fernao, who nodded. Ilmarinen turned back to the waiter, who also nodded and went off.

  Fernao said, “I shouldn’t think offending the Gyongyosians would worry you, not when Kuusamo is fighting them.”

  “Because we’re fighting them; they’re too easy a target,” Ilmarinen replied, which made an odd kind of sense to Fernao. The waiter returned with a large pitcher of ale and two earthenware mugs. He poured each one full, then left again.

  “Good,” Fernao said after a sip. He looked across the table at Ilmarinen. “It struck me as odd that none of the top theoretical sorcerers in Kuusamo has published anything lately. It struck Grandmaster Pinhiero as odd, too, when I pointed it out to him.”

  “I’ve known Pinhiero for forty years,” Ilmarinen said, “and he’s so odd himself, it’s the normal that looks strange to him.” He studied Fernao. “I’m too polite to explain what that says about you.”

  “No, you’re not,” Fernao said, and Ilmarinen laughed out loud. After another sip of ale, Fernao went on, “And I had expected to see Master Siuntio, not you.”