Through the Darkness d-3

by Harry Turtledove

  The slim little volume in her hands now wasn’t a romance at all. It was called You Too Can Be a Mage. In the preface, the author-who didn’t say what rank of magecraft he held, or if he was a ranked mage at all-didn’t come right out and promise that anyone who finished the book would end up a first-rank mage, but he certainly implied it.

  “A likely story,” Vanai muttered. If magecraft were so easy, everybody would have been a mage. But using sorcery and performing it on your own were two very different things.

  Despite her doubts, she kept reading. The author had a sprightly style, and seemed convinced he was telling the truth, regardless of how improbable Vanai found that. You can unleash the power within yourself, he insisted.

  Back in Oyngestun, she’d tried magic-a cantrip lifted from a text belonging to her grandfather that dated back to the Kaunian Empire-to try to get Major Spinello to leave her alone. A little later, Spinello got posted to Unkerlant. Vanai still didn’t know whether the spell and his departure had anything to do with each other. She didn’t know… but she hoped.

  She wondered what had happened to Spinello after he got to Unkerlant. Nothing good was her dearest wish. Many, many Algarvians had met their ends in battle against King Swemmel’s men. Was one more too much to ask?

  She doubted she would ever learn Spinello’s fate. She hoped with all her soul she would never see him again. If she didn’t, who would bring word of him to her? No one, if she had any luck at all.

  With a deliberate effort of will, she pushed Major Spinello out of her mind and went back to You Too Can Be a Mage. The author concentrated on spells that might bring in money and on those that might lure someone good-looking of the opposite sex, neither of which areas inclined Vanai to trust him very far. But, he insisted, using these same principles can get you anything-aye, anything! — your heart desires.

  “What does my heart desire?” Vanai asked, rolling over and looking up toward the poorly plastered ceiling. She’d never had a lot of money, and had got very used to doing without it. She wasn’t looking for anyone but Ealstan. What did she want, then?

  If only every Algarvian would vanish off the continent of Derlavai! Now there was a nice, round wish. Regretfully, Vanai laughed at herself. It was also a wish far beyond anything she could learn in You Too Can Be a Mage. It was a wish far beyond the powers of all the non-Algarvian mages in the world put together. She knew that all too well, too.

  What could she wish for that she might actually be able to get? “The chance to go out on the streets of Eoforwic if I need to?” she suggested to herself. That wouldn’t be so bad. That, in fact, would be splendid. Ealstan had brought her a Forthwegian-style long tunic. If only she looked like a Forthwegian, now.

  She flipped through the pages of the book. Sure enough, there was a section called Improving Your Appearance. Vanai didn’t think looking like a Forthwegian constituted an improvement, but she was willing to settle for a change.

  She studied a couple of the suggested spells. One, by its phrasing, was pretty plainly a translation from the Kaunian. She didn’t recall ever running across the original. No doubt her grandfather could have cited exactly the text from which the Forthwegian had filched it, and no doubt Brivibas would have had some pungent things to say about Forthwegians meddling with their betters’ works.

  But whatever Brivibas had to say these days, he was saying it to someone else-and, if he was trying to publish it, he was saying it in Forthwegian. He wasn’t Vanai’s worry any more. She hoped the Algarvians hadn’t thrown him into a ley-line caravan and sent him west. Past that, she refused to worry about him.

  Still, she intended to try the translated spell, not the other one. Maybe that was because she was a Kaunian herself. And maybe, in some measure, it was because she was her grandfather’s granddaughter.

  Whichever was true, she couldn’t even think about trying the spell before Ealstan got home. Even if she’d had all it would need, she wouldn’t be able to see the change if she did it before then, neither on herself nor in a mirror. And if she turned herself into a crone, she wouldn’t want to go out on the streets, either.

  When Ealstan gave his coded knock, Vanai threw the door open and let him in. “Ethelhelm and his band are back in town,” he said after he’d hugged her and kissed her. “He’s got more stories to tell than you can shake a stick at.”

  “That’s nice.” Normally, Vanai would have been bubbling with eagerness to hear news of the outside world. Now, hoping to see some of it for herself, she cared much less. “Listen, Ealstan, to what I want to do….”

  Listen Ealstan did. He had patience. And, as she went on, his own enthusiasm built. “That would be wonderful, sweetheart,” he said. “Do you really think you can do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Vanai admitted. “But, by the powers above, I hope so. I’m so sick of being stuck here, you can’t imagine.”

  She waited to hear whether Ealstan would claim he could imagine it, even if he didn’t feel it himself. To her relief, he only nodded and asked, “What will you need for the spell?”

  Vanai had been pondering that herself. You Too Can Be a Mage didn’t go into a lot of detail. “Yellow yarn,” she answered. “Black yarn-dark brown would be even better. Vinegar. Honey. A lot of luck.”

  Ealstan laughed. “I can bring you back everything but the luck.”

  “We’ve got honey and vinegar,” Vanai answered. “All you have to buy is the yarn. And you’ve already brought me luck.”

  “Have I?” His tone went bleak. “Is this luck, being trapped in this little flat day after day?”

  “For a Kaunian in Forthweg, this is luck,” Vanai said. “I came this close”- she snapped her fingers-”to getting sent west, remember. I’m lucky to be alive, and I know it.” Maybe you should be content with that, part of her said. Maybe you shouldn‘t want any more. But she did. She couldn’t help it.

  And because she couldn’t, the next day seemed to crawl past. The walls of the flat felt as if they were closing in on her. When Ealstan came home after what seemed like forever, she threw the door open and snatched from his hand the little paper-wrapped parcels he was carrying. He laughed at her. “Nice to know you’re glad to see me.”

  “Oh, I am,” she said, and he laughed again. She tore the parcels open. One held pale yellow yarn, a pretty good match for the color of her own hair. The skein of yarn in the other package was dark brown. She nodded to Ealstan. “These are perfect.”

  “Hope so,” he said. “Will the spell wait till after supper? I’m starved.” He gave his belly a theatrical pat.

  Even though Vanai didn’t want to wait any more, she did. And then, at last, there wasn’t anything left to wait for. She got the honey and the vinegar. She got lengths of each color yarn. And she got You Too Can Be a Mage. After studying the spell it gave as carefully as if she were a first-rank theoretical sorcerer essaying some conjuration that had never been tried before, she nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “Good,” Ealstan said. “You don’t mind if I watch?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “Just don’t jog my elbow.”

  Ealstan didn’t say a word. He pulled up a chair and waited to see what would happen next. Vanai began to chant. She felt strange incanting in Forthwegian rather than classical Kaunian, though the tongue in which a spell was cast had nothing to do with how effective it was. A lot of history had proved that.

  As she chanted, she dipped the yellow yarn first into the vinegar, then into the honey. She laid it on top of the length of dark brown yarn. She frowned a little while she was doing that. The phrasing for the spell there seemed particularly murky, as if the translator, whoever he was, had had trouble following the Kaunian original. She hurried on. A last word of command and the spell was done.

  “You don’t look any different,” Ealstan remarked.

  He’d stayed quiet all the time Vanai was working. She’d almost forgotten he was there. Now, sweat streaming down her face from the effort she’d just put forth, she lo
oked up-and froze in horrified dismay. No wonder she didn’t look any different. The spell hadn’t worked on her; it had worked on Ealstan. He made a very handsome Kaunian, but that wasn’t what she’d had in mind.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. He couldn’t see the effects on himself, any more than Vanai would have been able to on herself.

  With a curse, she flung You Too Can Be a Mage across the room. The translator hadn‘t known what he was doing-and he’d landed her and Ealstan in a dreadful fix. How was Ealstan supposed to go out if he looked like a blond? Her heart in her shoes, Vanai told him what had happened.

  “Well, that’s not so good,” he said, easier-going than she could have been. “Try it again-the exact same spell, I mean-except this time put brown on yellow. With a little luck, that’ll get us back where we started.”

  She envied him his calm. Forthwegians were supposed to have terrible tempers, to fly off the handle at any excuse or none. Here, though, she was furious while Ealstan took things in stride. And he’d come up with what sounded like a good idea. She went over and picked up You Too Can Be a Mage. The cover was bent. She wished she could bend the author, too.

  Ealstan, still looking like a Kaunian, came over and gave her a kiss. It almost felt as if she were being unfaithful to the real him. But part of her also wished he could stay a Kaunian … except when he had to go outside. “You too can be a mage,” he said, “provided you have more going for you than this fool book.”

  “I’ll try the spell again,” Vanai said. “Then I’ll throw the book away.”

  “Keep it,” Ealstan said. “Read it. Enjoy it. Just don’t use it.”

  Grimly, Vanai set about the spell once more, with the reversal Ealstan had suggested. She wanted to correct the Forthwegian text where she knew it had gone awry, but she didn’t. And when she called out the word of command, Ealstan went back to looking like himself.

  “Did it work?” he asked-he couldn’t tell.

  “Aye.” Vanai heard the relief in her own voice. “You won’t have to go through what I go through for looking like this.”

  “I like the way you look,” Ealstan said. “And I wouldn’t mind looking like a Kaunian, except that I can do a better job of keeping you safe if I don’t.”

  That was no doubt true. Vanai hated it, but couldn’t argue it. She slammed the cover of You Too Can Be a Mage shut. She never intended to open it again.

  Splashing through muck toward yet more trees ahead, Sergeant Istvan said, “I never thought the stars looked down on such a forest.” The big Gyongyosian plucked on his curly, tawny beard; as far as he could tell, the forest in which he was fighting went on forever.

  Corporal Kun said, “Sooner or later, it has to stop. When it does, there’s the rest of Unkerlant ahead.” Kun’s beard grew in lank clumps; he was lean and would have been clever-looking even without spectacles. He’d been a mage’s apprentice before going into the Gyongyosian army, and seldom let anyone forget it.

  “I know,” Istvan answered morosely. “I wonder if any of us’ll be left alive to see it.” He had no great desire to see the rest of Unkerlant. As far as he was concerned, the Unkerlanters were welcome to their kingdom. He wanted nothing to do with it. The mountains that were the borderland between Gyongyos and Unkerlant had been bad. This endless forest, in its own way, was worse. He wouldn’t have bet that whatever lay beyond it made for much of an improvement. But he did want to live to find out.

  More men with tawny yellow hair and beards who wore leggings like Ist-van’s waved his squad and him forward. “All safe enough,” one of them said. “We’ve cleared the Unkerlanters out of the stretch ahead.”

  Istvan didn’t laugh at his countrymen, but keeping quiet wasn’t easy. Brash Kun did speak up: “Nobody knows whether those goat-eaters are cleared out till after they blaze half a dozen men in the back. Some of them will be lurking there, you mark my words.”

  “You have no faith,” said one of the warriors beckoning the squad onward.

  “We have plenty of faith,” Istvan said before Kun could answer. “We have faith there will be some Unkerlanters all our patrols haven’t swept up. There always are.” He didn’t waste any more time with the guides, but tramped east past them, ever deeper into the woods.

  Behind their spectacles, Kun’s eyes were puzzled. “You don’t usually stick up for me like that, Sergeant,” he said.

  “I’ll take you over those know-it-alls any day,” Istvan answered. “They haven’t done any real fighting, or they wouldn’t talk like a pack of idiots. Besides, you’re mine. If anybody rakes you over the coals, it’s me. Let them tend to their own. That’s fair. That’s right.”

  A few minutes later, off to one side, someone let out a shriek. “He’s been blazed!” someone else shouted. Gyongyosian troopers scurried this way and that, trying to flush out the Unkerlanter sniper. They had no luck.

  “No, none of King Swemmel’s men in these parts,” Istvan said. “No chance of that at all.”

  “Goat shit,” Kun said. They both laughed, though it wasn’t really funny. Snipers and holdouts took a constant toll on the Gyongyosians trying to force their way through the vast pine forests of western Unkerlant. Endless ferns and tree trunks to hide behind; endless branches on which to perch; endless foliage with which to conceal. . no, rooting out the enemy was next to impossible. Kun looked now this way, now that. He knew, as the guides had not, that where there was one sniper, there were likely to be more.

  Somewhere up ahead, eggs were bursting. Istvan wondered who was tossing them at whom. With the breeze blowing from out of the east, bringing the sound toward his ears, he had trouble being sure. He hoped those eggs were landing on the Unkerlanters’ heads.

  “Come on! Come on!” That was Captain Tivadar’s voice. Istvan relaxed a little; if he’d found his company commander, he’d brought the squad somewhere close to where it was supposed to be. Tivadar caught sight of him and waved. “The party’s up ahead.”

  “Aye.” Istvan turned to his men. “Come on, you lugs. Back into the line we go.”

  “Not enough time pulled back, and we didn’t pull back far enough, either,” Szonyi said. Istvan remembered when he’d been new to the game. He wasn’t any more. He picked the same thing to complain about as Istvan would have, or, for that matter, as a fellow who’d been in the army since before Istvan was born would have.

  “They can’t very well give us a proper leave, not when it’s a week’s march back to the nearest ley line that could take us anywhere worth going,” Istvan told him. Istvan had been a sergeant long enough by now to know how to squelch grumblers, too.

  “Then they cursed well ought to bring some whores forward,” Szonyi said. Since Istvan thought that was a good idea, too, he didn’t argue any more.

  Captain Tivadar fell into step beside him. “Swemmel’s boys are up to something,” he said. “Nobody knows what yet, but they haven’t been standing and fighting the past couple of days the way they would before.”

  “Maybe they finally know they’ve been licked.” Istvan threw up a hand. Tivadar sputtered raucous laughter all the same. Istvan went on, “No, I didn’t mean it. They’re tough, no doubt about it.”

  “And they’ve got more lines in these woods than a thief has on his back after he takes his forty lashes,” Tivadar added. “No, if they don’t fight now, it’s because they’re plotting something nasty for later.”

  “Aye, you’re likely right, sir,” Istvan agreed with a sigh.

  More eggs burst, closer now. Istvan looked around for the nearest hole in which he could hide, something he did as automatically as he breathed, and because he wanted to keep breathing. That also made him take more notice of the forest through which he was marching. Tivadar noticed him noticing; the captain didn’t miss much. “You see what I mean?”

  “Aye,” Istvan said again, nodding. “If they’d fought the way they usually do, the woods here would be beaten flat. Instead, most of the trees are still standing.”

  “T
hat’s what I’m talking about,” the company commander agreed. “When they’ve always done one thing and they all of a sudden change to another, anybody with any sense starts wondering why.”

  An egg burst close enough to send branches crashing down only a few strides away. “They haven’t quite given up yet,” Istvan remarked dryly.

  Tivadar chuckled. “No, it doesn’t seem that way, does it? But it’s not the same kind of fight as it has been, and I don’t trust it.”

  The breeze from out of the east blew smoke into Istvan’s face. He coughed a couple of times. A moment later, he smelled something else: the sickly-sweet reek of corruption. Sure enough, a few paces farther on he strode past a bloated corpse in a rock-gray tunic. He jerked a thumb toward it. “Good to see we got one of those sons of goats, anyhow.”

  “Oh, we’ve hurt them,” Tivadar said. “But what they’ve done to us.. ”

  “The whole cursed country is too big and too far from everything to make it easy to fight over,” Istvan said. “We can’t get at it, and the Unkerlanters can’t get very many men into it, either. But as long as they can keep us from getting into country that really is worth something, they’re ahead of the game.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Captain Tivadar agreed. The breeze out of the east picked up, and tried to lift his service cap off his head. He tugged it down over his curly hair. “Sooner or later, we will break out. Then, by the stars, we’ll make them pay. Till then …” He grimaced. “Till then, the debt just keeps getting bigger.”

  Cries echoed through the forest as Istvan’s squad neared the front. He had trouble sorting out Gyongyosians and Unkerlanters. No matter which kingdom wounded men came from, their moans and screams sounded very much alike. Telling how far away the racket came from wasn’t easy, either. Istvan kept expecting attackers to burst out of the bushes at any moment, only to realize a heartbeat later that the noises he’d heard came from a long way off.