war
    
    ere
    
                                       olle
                                       a of
    
    ics
    
                      INTo THE DARKNESS          231
    rl-,
      no can trusting nothing no yellowheads telling you."
       - fhat's right," Merwit said. "That's just right, sir."
       "is it?" Cynfrid didn't sound convinced. "You seem none too trust-
      worthy yourself there, soldier." But he failed to follow through, just as
      Forthweglan officers had failed to follow through on their early victories
      over Algarve. "Well, if we've got no trustworthy witnesses, these two
      chips will have to share and share alike. A week's latrine duty each ought
      to tcich theiii to keep their hands to themselves."
       Merwit jerked a thumb toward LeofsIg. "He likes latrine duty. He gets
     to hang around with his Kaunian chums."
       "They're better company than you are," Leofsig retorted. "They smell
     better than you do, too."
     Only the presence of the Algarvian guards kept the fight from flaring
     dgain. "That will be quite enough, both of you," Brigadier Cynfrid said
     sternly. "The order holds - a week's latrine duty for each of you. Any
     further incidents between you two, and we shall see what sort of view the
     Algarvian authorities take of such business."
     "Aye, sir," Merwit and Leofsig said together. Leofsig did not want to
    go before the redheads, not after he'd got a name for sticking up for
    Kaunlians. The Algarvians lorded it over his own people, aye, but their
    feud with folk of Kaunian blood went back into the ancient days of the
    world.
     He hoped Merwit wouldn't be clever enough to see that. Merwit, for-
    tunately, had never struck him as very clever. Merwit had struck him,
    though - struck him with fists like rocks. He knew no small pride at
    having come close to holding his own against the other captive.
     "You hearing the brigadier," the talky Algarvian guard said. "Now
    you coming, you do your cleservings. You do the shovelings of shits,
    aye?" He and his comrades both gestured with their sticks. Leofsig and
    Merwit left. Looking back over his shoulder, Leofsig saw Brigadier
    Cynftid return to the paperwork he'd had interrupted.
     Merwit did as little as he could on latrine duty, or perhaps a bit less.
    Leofsig had expected nothing else; he'd already seen that Merwit was a
    shirker even by the lax standards of the captives' camp. He did his own
    work, not as if he were in a race but steadily nonetheless.
     Late that afternoon, a shout made his head whip around. Somehow,
    Merwit had contrived to fall into a slit trench about due to be covered

    




    232
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    over. When he scrambled out again, he was as magnificently filthy a ma
    as Leofslg had ever seen. He glared at Leofsig, but Leofsig hadn't bee
    anywhere near him.
     At the moment, none of the Kaumans who did most of the lattin
    work was anywhere near him, either. Leofsig hadn't noticed any of then
    hurrying away. Maybe Merwit had been clumsy. Maybe some Kaunia
    had been sneaky. By the way Merwit stared wildly around him, h
    thought some Kaunian had been sneaky.
     The Kaunians ignored him. They didn't even suggest that he pour
    bucket of water over himself because he stank. If they looked please
    with themselves - well, Kaunians often looked pleased with themselves
    that being one of the characteristics that failed to endear them to thei
    neighbors. If they'd been sneaky enough to dump Merwit into the sli
    trench without getting caught: if they'd been that sneaky, Leofslg won
    dered how sneaky they might be in other ways. That might be wort
    finding out one of these days, if he could figure out how.
    
     Down in the farming villages of the Duchy of Grelz, fall gave way t
    winter early. Most of Unkerlant had a harsh climate; that in the south wa
    far worse than the rest. Animals that hibernated went into their burro
    sooner there than anywhere else in the kingdom.
     People in those farming villages went into their burrows sooner tha
    anywhere else in the kingdom, too. Like dormice and badgers and bears
    Garivald and his fellow farmers had stuffed themselves and filled thei
    larders. Now, with the harvest gathered, they had little to do but kee
    themselves and their livestock alive till spring eventually returned.
     Garivald had mixed feelings about the long winters. On the one hand
    he didn't have to work so hard as he did when the weather was better. I
    he felt like pulling out a jug of raw spirits and spending a day - or a coupl
    of days, or more than a couple of days - drunk, he could. It wouldn'
    mean starvation because he hadn't done something that vitally neede
    doing. The worst it would mean was a disastrously thick head when h
    stopped drinking. He was used to those, and sometimes even took a cer
    tain melancholy pleasure in them. They were one more way of helpin
    time go by in winter.
     As far as he was concerned, making time go by was the biggest troubl
    winter offered. Unlike a dormouse or a badger or a bear, he couldn'

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    an
    
    ep
    
    cer-
    
    ping
    
    uble
    Idn't
    
    233
    
    sleep away the whole season. Except when very drunk, he remained
    aware: aware he was cooped up in a none-too-big farmhouse with his
    wife and son and daughter and with a lot of livestock that would other-
    wise have starved or frozen.
     Annore, his wife, liked it even less than he did. "Can't you keep any-
    thing clean?" she shouted when he threw the shell of a hard-boiled egg
    on the floor after scooping out white and yolk with a horn spoon.
     "I don't know what you're fretting about," he answered in what he
    thought were reasonable tones. "There's cow shit over there" - he
    pointed - "and pig shit over there" - he pointed again - "and the hens
    shit all over everywhere, so why are you shouting at me over an
    eggshell?" Trying to be helpful, he ground it into the dirt floor with the
    sole of his boot.
     Annore put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes, so maybe he
    hadn't been so helpful after all. "Can I make the cows do their business
    where I tell them to? Can I do that for the pigs? Can I do that for the mis-
    erable, stinking chickens? They won't listen to me. Maybe you will."
     Garivald didn't feel like listening. He'd been drunk up until the day
    before, and was still feeling the effects. He'd beaten Annore only a couple
    of times, which made him a prodigy, as husbands in the village of Zossen
    went. That was only partly because he had a milder temper than most of
    the other village men. The other side of the coin was that Annore had a
    fiercer temper than most of the other village women. If he beat her too
    hard or too often, she was liable to cut his throat or break his head while
    he lay in a drunken stupor. Almost every winter, someone in Zossen met
    an untimely demise.
    
     Garivald's son Syrivald grunted like a pig. He was looking at Garivald
     as he did it, mischief on his face. Garivald grunted, too, and got to his
     feet. The mischief vanished from Syrivald's face; alarin replaced it.
     Garivald caught him and thumped him a couple of times. "Don't call me
     a hog - have you got that?" he demanded.
       "Aye, Father," Syrivald blubbered. Had he been rash enough to say
     anything else, his father would have made him regret it.
       As things were, Garivald found a different way to make him regret
     getting out of line: "Since you haven't got anything better to do with
     yourself, you can clean up after the animals. And while you're at it, you
     can pick up my eggshell, too."
    
    i

    




    234
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
     Synivald got to work, not with any enormous enthusiasm but wit
    very plain sense that he'd be sorry if he didn't go at it fast enough to
    his father. In that, he was absolutely right. Garivald kept a sharp eye
    him till he was almost done, then turned to Annore and said, "There.
    you happier now?"
     "I'd be really happy if this house didn't turn into a sty every wint
    she said. She wasn't looking at the pigs. She was looking at Ganivald.
     Her words could have held any of several meanings. Having been
    ned to her a good many years, Ganivald knew which one was likeliest.
    also knew he would be foolish to acknowledge that one. He said, "0
    way I can think of to keep a house clean through winter is by magic.'
     "I believe that," Annore said, a reply not calculated to warm his he
    Before she could elaborate on it, Leuba woke from her nap and starte
    cry. Annore took care of the baby, whose soiled linen added to the w
    ter atmosphere of the farmhouse. But, after Annore put her daughte
    her breast, she resumed: "How much magic can anyone work here?'
     "I don't know," Garivald answered grouchily. "Enough, maybe."
     Annore shook her head. Leuba, following the motion, found it v
    funny. "Not likely," Annore said. "This far from a power point, this
    from a ley line, you'd need a first-rank mage. Where would we get
    silver to pay a first-rank mage?" Her bitter laugh said she knew t
    question had no answer even as she asked it.
     Garivald said, "I like living without much magic fine, thanks. If
    had power points and ley lines coming out of our ears, this place wo
    be just like Cottbus, you know that? We'd have inspectors and impres
    peering at us every rminute we weren't squatting on the pot, and half
    time we were, too.
     Synivald wrinkled up his nose at that idea. So did Ganivald. In a cou
    of sentences, he'd summed up everything he knew about the capital
    Unkerlant: that it was full of magic and full of people who spied on ot
    people for King Swemmel. He had no notion that that wasn't a fiiu
    complete portrait of Cottbus. How could he? He'd never seen a city,
    had been to the market town nearest his village only a couple of ti
    That didn't make his opinions any less certain - on the contrary.
     "Hurry up there, Syrivald," he snapped, also having definite opini
    on how much work his son ought to be doing. Syrivald's occasio
    failure to meet his standards made him add, "Of course, if we offe

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    sacrifice, we don't need a power point, let alone a first-rank mage.
     "Stop that!" Annore said at Synivald's homified stare. Garivald laughed;
    he'd succeeded in getting his son's attention. "It isn't funny," his wife
    told him.
     "Oh, I think it is," Ganivald said. "Look - I've worked a magic of my
    own, and the farmhouse is getting clean. If you think you can get better
    sorcery around these parts, you'd better to talk to Waddo or to Herka."
      I don't want to talk to the firstman or his wife, thank you," Annore
    said tartly. "They wouldn't be able to help me, anyhow. If they knew
    anything about getting real magic out here, don't you think they'd have
    a crystal in their own house?"
     "Maybe they don't want one." But Garivald shook his head before
    Annore could correct him. "No, you're right; never mind. Waddo and
    Herka always want things. If they didn't, would they have built that
    second floor on to their house?" He chuckled. "I bet Waddo has fun get-
    ting up there these days, on his bad ankle."
     But that second floor let the firstman and his family live above the live-
    stock during the winter, not with it, as everyone else in the village did.
    Building a second floor on to his own home would have let Ganivald
    satisfy Annore's longing for a clean house, or at least part of a clean house,
    without magic and without threatening to make Syrivald a blood
    sacrifice. But he and Annore both thought Waddo's addition a piece of
    big-city pretentiousness. Doing anything like it had never crossed his
    inind, nor his wife's, either.
     Annore sighed and said, "It's no use. I know it's no use. But I couldn't
    help wishing sometimes. . . " She sighed again. "I might as well wish you
    were a baron."
     "That would be something, wouldn't it?" Garivald got off the stool on
    which he was sitting and puffed out his chest. "Baron Garivald the
    Splendid," he boomed in a deep voice bearing little resemblance to the
    one he usually used.
     Syrivald snickered. Annore laughed out loud. Leuba didn't understand
    why her mother was laughing, but she laughed, too. So did Garivald. The
    idea of him as a baron was even funnier than the idea of a faniihouse that
    stayed clean through the winter. It would need a stronger magic, too.
     "Maybe I'd better be happy with things the way they are now,
    Annorc said.
    
    235
    
 very
     far
   t the
    that
    
   if we
    ould
    ressers
    alf the
    
   couple
    ital of
    n other
    full and
    ity, and
    times.
    
     pinions
    casional
    e offer a
    
    I I

    




    236
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
     Garivald snorted. "You think I'd make a lousy baron." He scratc
    He was probably lousy now. People got that way when winter cl
    down on the land. Nobody bathed often enough to hold the nasty
    pests at bay. Sitting in the steam bath till you couldn't stand being b
    any more and then running out and rolling in the snow felt wonde
    once a week, or once every other week. More often than that, it felt
    death. And that often wasn't enough to kill lice and nits. Gan'
    scratched some more. Can't be helped, he thought.
     Annore didn't answer him, which might have been just as
    Instead, she put Leuba on her shoulder till the baby rewarded her wi
    belch. "There's a good girl," Annore said. "Don't you feel better
    that that's out?" She seemed to feel better now that she'd got her c
    plaints out, too.
     "Winter," Garivald said, more to himself than to anyone else. Her
    was, in the house with his family and his livestock, and he wouldn'
    going anywhere - or nowhere far, and not for long - for quite a wl
    Neither would Annore. No wonder she felt like complaining sometiE
     One of the cows dropped more dung on the floor. The only th
    Annore said was, "Clean that up, Synivald."
     She still held Leuba. Syrivald knew better than to think that meant
    wouldn't get up and wallop him if he didn't hop to it. He'd made
    mistake a couple of times. Fie wouldn't make it any more.
     "Just as well Waddo and Herka don't have a crystal , Garivald
    "We'd get endless yattening about the war against the black people
    the north, and how we'd won another smashing battle." He snorted
    "Don't they know we know the war would be over by now if it we
    really going well? And besides" - he added the clincher - "if they had
    crystal, the inspector and impressers would be able to give them urde
    without bothering to come out here."
     "Powers above!" Annore exclaimed. "We wouldn't want that.
     am happier with things the way they are now."
     "I think I am, too." Ganivald knew perfectly well he was happi~r wi
    things as they were. He couldn't imagine a peasant in Unkerlant who
    wasn't happier with things as they were. The only thing change and fa
    magic got Unkerlanter city folk was going night under King Swenimel's
    
    thumb. Nobody could want that. He was sure of it.

    




    he
    be
    e.
    
    es.
    
    ng
    
    aid.
    
    p in
    
    ain.
    
     ere
    ad a
    rders
    
    hink
    
    with
    who
    fancy
    niel's
    
    Marshal Rathar peered north across the Zuwayzi desert. Had King
    Swernmel let him use the plan his aides had long since developed, he
    might well have been in Bishah by now. So he rerminded the king in
    every despatch he sent him. Maybe King Swernmel would pay attention
    and not start his next war too soon. Rathar sighed. Maybe dragons would
    stand up and start giving speeches, too, but he wasn't going to hold his
    breath waiting for that, either.
     And Rathar might well not have been in Bishah by now. He'd been
    forcibly made aware of that, though not a hint of it got into the letters he
    sent Swernmel. The Zuwayzin had had plans of their own, and they
    might have made them work even against the full weight of the
    Unkerlanter army.
     Unkerlant had not had to fight a desert campaign since bringing
    Zuwayza under the rule of Cottbus. No one was left alive from those
    days, and the art of war had changed a good deal since. The Unkerlanter
    officer corps had not figured out how best to apply all the changes: the
    plan with which Unkerlant had gone to war involved nothing more
    complicated than hammering at Zuwayza till she broke.
     "The black men know us better than we know them," Rathar mut-
    tered discontentedly. That the Zuwayzin should have a good notion of
    what Unkerlant intended made all too much sense. Unkerlanters had
    been overlords in Zuwayza for more than a hundred years. Their
    resent ul subjects had had to learn to know them well. The reverse,
    unfortunately, did not apply. All the Unkerlanters had done in Zuwayza
    was give orders. That hadn't encouraged them to try to understand the
    dusky people on the other end of those orders.
     A messenger came up and stood to attention, awaiting Rathar's notice.
    
    237

    




    238
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    At last, Rathar nodded to him. The fellow said, "My lord, I have th
    honor to report that General Werpin's force is ready for the attack ove
    the Wadi Uqelqa." His tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables, s
    different from those of Unkerlanter.
      Good , Rathar said, nodding. "I shall order the attack tomorrov
    morning, as planned. Go back to the crystals and tell General Werpin t(
    keep a tight watch for camels on his flank."
     "Camels on his flank," the messenger repeated. "Aye, my lord; just a
    you say." He saluted and humed away.
     "Camels," Rathar said, mostly to himself "Who would have imaginec
    camels could cause so much trouble?"
     For more than a generation, the emphasis in most annies - all armie
    that could afford them - had been on great herds of behemoths
    Behemoths could carry men and weapons and armor enough to make
    them invulnerable to a footsoldier's stick. That made them the nearest
    terrestrial equivalent to warships. In the hands of the Algarvians, they'd
    smashed the Forthwegian army to bits. Rathar and his underlings were
    still studying how the redheads had done that.
     Zuwayza, though, was proving less than ideal country for behemoths.
    They ate a lot. They drank even more. That wasn't good, not in a land-
    scape with many more wadis - dry riverbeds - than rivers. Even in
    winter, the allegedly wet season hereabouts, the wadis stayed dry. Winter
    was also allegedly the cool season hereabouts. That didn't keep behe-
    moths from falling over dead, cooked inside their own armor.
    
     Till King Swemmel ordered him to strike at Zuwayza, Rathar hadn't
    paid much attention to camels. Unicorns, aye. Behemoths, aye. Horses,
    aye. Camels? For the life of him, he hadn't seen much use to camels.
     Now he did. In terrain where wadis outnumbered rivers, where
    poisoning wells was a useful stratagem, camels looked a lot less ugly than
    they did anywhere else. Zuwayzi camel dragoons kept appearing out of
    nowhere, almost as if by magecraft. They would strike stinging blows to
    the Unkerlanters' flanks, ravage supply columns, and then vanish, as
    swiftly and unexpectedly as they'd struck. It was maddening.
     For quite a while, Rathar had been too busy responding to Zuwayzi
    raids - some of which reached a startling distance back into Unkerlant -
    to carry on his own campaign in anything like proper fashion. He hoped
    he was turning the corner there. Any minute now, he'd find out.

    




    the
    ver
    ,so
    
    ow
     to
    st as
    ned
    
     es
    ths.
    ake
    
    oths.
    land-
     n in
     inter
     ehe-
    
    adn't
    
    orses,
    
    here
    than
    out of
    ws to
    ish as
    
    wayzi
    rlant -
    hoped
    
    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    239
    
     When, after half an hour, he still hadn't heard from General Droctulf,
    who commanded the eastern prong of the army, he went over to the
    crystallomancers' tent to find out what was going on with that part of the
    force and whether it would be ready to move at the time he had
    appointed. "I will call his headquarters, my lord," said the young special-
    ist to whom he gave his requirements. "I remind you also to speak with
    care. The Zuwayzin are liable to be listening in spite of all our spells to
    keep these talks secret."
     "I understand," Rathar said. "I have reason to understand; they've
    hurt us more than once with what they've stolen. Somehow, we haven't
    had the same luck with them."
     "No, lord," the crystallomancer agreed. "They tell so many lies, it's
    hard for us to sort out the truth. And their masking magic is very good,
    very sneaky. I wish ours were half so effective."
     Rathar sighed. If he had a copper for every time he'd heard some-
    one wish Unkerlant did something or other as well as its neighbors, he
    wouldn't have needed the salary King Swernmel paid him. "We just
    have to learn to be more efficient," he said, and the crystallomancer
    nodded.
     The man did his job well enough; before long, Rathar saw the face of
    one of Droctulf s crystallomancers staring out of the globe in front of him.
    "My superior needs to speak to your superior," Rathar's crystallomancer
    said. If the Zuwayzin were listening, they would have trouble sorting out
    who was who.
     Droctulf s crystal man had trouble sorting out who was who. "Who is
    your superior?" he demanded in haughty tones. Some of that toploftiness
    vanished when Rathar bent low and made his image appear beside his
    crystallomancer's. Gulping, the other crystal man stammered, "I - I -
    shall fetch my superior."
     "Next time, do it without any backtalk," Rathar growled. But
    Droctulf s crystallomancer had already disappeared. By the last expression
    Rathar had seen on his face, he'd wished he could vanish permanently.
     In a gratifyingly short time, Droctulf s own image filled the crystal in

    




    front of Rathar. Droctulf s appearance, however, did not gratify the mar-
    shal. The general looked like a peasant who'd been whiling away the
    winter with a jug of something potent. "A good day to you, my lord,"
    he said in what, even though a crystal, Rathar recognized as a careful

    




    240
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    voice: one Droctulf didn't want to make too loud for fear of hurting his
    own head.
     "Will your men be ready to push across their present line at the
    appointed hour?" Rathar snapped without preamble.
     "I think they will," Droctulf answered. "They ought to be able to."
    He stared owlishly at Rathar's image.
     "General, I relieve you," Rathar said crisply. "You will report here for
    reassignment. Let me speak to General Gurmun, your second-in-
    command."
     "My lord!" Droctulf exclaimed. "Have mercy, my lord! When word
    reaches the king that I was not so efficient as I might have been, what will
    he do to me?"
     "I suggest you should have thought of that before you got drunk,"
    Rathar replied. "If our attack fails because of your inefficiency, what will
    the king have to say of me? You are relieved, General. Get me Gurmun."
     Droctulf disappeared from the crystal. Rathar wondered if he would
    have to send soldiers to enforce his subordinate's relief If he did, he
    thought Droctulf s head would answer for it. King Swemmel did not
    tolerate anything that smacked of rebellion. The marshal sighed again. He
    and Droctulf had fought for Swernmel during the Twinkings War.
    Droctulf had liked his drink then, too. Now, though, this war had already
    gone on too long. Swemmel would not stomach any more delay. Rathar
    could not stomach any more, either.
     General Gurmun appeared in the crystal. "How may I serve you, my
    lord?" He was younger than either Droctulf or Rathar, younger and, in
    some indefinable way, harder. No, not indefinable after all: he looked as
    if he really believed in King Swernmel's efficiency campaign rather than
    giving it polite lip service.
     "You are familiar with the plan of attack?" Rathar asked. Gurmun
    nodded, a single up-and-down motion. "You can be certain your half of
    it goes in at the proper time and at full strength?" Gurmun nodded again.
    So did Rathar. "Very well, General. That half of the army is youts.
    Unkerlant expects nothing but victory from us, and has already been dis-
    appointed too often."
     "I shall serve the kingdom as efficiently as I may," Gurmun said.
     Rathar nodded to his crystallomancer, who broke the link with the
    eastern army. Here in the field, away from King Swernmel, Rathar was

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    his
    
    the
    
    for
    
    in-
    
                                        MY
                                      d, in
                                      ked as
                                      r than
    
    rintin
    half of
    again.
    yours.
    en dis-
    
    the
    
    ar was
    
    241
    
    supreme. Everyone yielded to his will, even a veteran campaigner like
    Droctulf. Droctulf had survived all of Swernmel's massacres during and
    after the Twinkings War. But he could not survive his own inefficiency.
     The next morning, precisely on schedule, both wings of the
    Unkerlanter army attacked. The racket from the thump of bursting eggs
    reached back to Rathar's headquarters. He had a swarm of dragons in the
    air, both to drop still more eggs on the Zuwayzin and to keep an eye out
    for yet another of their assaults against his flanks. On camelback or afoot,
    they ranged through the desert like ghosts.
     Despite the pummeling his egg-tossers gave the enemy, Zuwayzi resis-
    tance remained fierce. He had expected nothing less. Both Werpin and
    Gurmun started screaming for reinforcements. Rathar had expected
    nothing less there, either. He had the reinforcements ready and waiting
    - his logistics had finally caught up with King Swernmel's impetuosity -
    and fed them into the fight.
     The Zuwayzin did everything they could to hold the line of the Wadi
    Uqeiqa. Rathar had been sure they would; if he could secure a lodgement
    north of the dry riverbed, that would set him up to take a long step
    toward the valley in which Bishah lay. As he'd looked for the black men
    to do, they sent out a flanking column of camel riders to hit his re-
    inforcements before the Unkerlanters could reach the front.
     Dragons rose with a thunder of wings. For once, the Zuwayzin
    weren't going to catch him with his drawers down in this desert country.
    He didn't have so many crystals with the troops as he would have liked;
    with more, he could have done a betterjob of coordinating his attacks.
    The Algarvians had shown themselves dangerously good at that.
     This time, though, he had enough. One of the dragonfliers reported
    raking the Zuwayzin with eggs and with the dragons' own fire. The
    blacks pressed the attack anyhow, those who were left. His reinforcing
    column, forewarned, gave them a savage mauling and pressed on toward
    the Wadi Uqeiqa.
     And, while the Zuwayzin threw everything they had into stopping
    Werpin's army, they didn't have enough to stop Gurmun's force at the
    same time. Getting them to that point had taken longer and cost much
    more than Rathar expected, but now it was done. He ordered Gurmun
    to swing his advance to the west and come in behind the Zuwayzin
    who still stalled Werpin. Droctulf might have done brilliantly - or he

    




    242
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    might have botched things altogether. Gurmun handled everything
    with matter-of-fact competence, which, under the circumstances
    Rathar had worked so hard to create, proved more than adequate.
     Studying the maps, Rathar similed a rare smile. "We've broken them,"
    he said.
    
     Ignoring the weight of the heavy pack on his back, Istvan watched in
    fascination as the dowser prowled the west-facing beach on the island of
    Obuda. The dowser, whose name was Borsos, aimed his forked branch
    out toward the sea. "I thought dowsers found water," Istvan said. "Why
    did they bring you out here, into the middle of all the water in the
    world?"
     Borsos threw back his head and laughed; his tawny yellow curls
    bounced in rhythm to his mirth. "A man from the days when the
    Th6k6ly Dynasty ruled Gyongyos might have asked the same question,"
    he said, where a man from the far east of Derlaval would have spoken of
    the days of the Kaunian Empire. "Dowsers are much more than water-
    sniffers nowadays, believe you me."
     "Well, sir, I do understand that," Istvan replied, a trifle testily. "Even in
    my little valley up in the mountains, we had dowsers who'd look for lost
    trinkets, and others who'd point herders after a lost sheep. But if things
    went missing in water or near it, they wouldn't fmd them: the water kept
    them from sensing anything else. Why doesn't that happen to you?"
     "A different question altogether," Borsos said. "A better one, too, if
    you don't mind my saying so. You can understand I can't give you all the
    details, not unless you promise to take off your head and throw it away
    after I'm done. Military sorcery has even more secrets than any other
    kind. "
    
     "Aye, that's plain enough," Istvan said. "Tell me what you can, if
    you'd be so kind. It'll be more than I know now, that's sure." He hadn't
    been so curious before coming to Obuda. But there wasn't much to do
    here, and his underofficers didn't give him much time to do what he
    could. Without quite intending to, he'd picked up a lot of dragon lore.
    Learning about dowsing might be interesting, too.
     Borsos said, "Ever since the early days, the days of stone and bronze,
    dowsing has stood apart from the rest of magecraft. Dowsers have done
    what they could do, and no one thought much about how they did it.

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    ch
    
    rls
    
    of
    
    r-
    
    I if
    the
    
    ay
    er
    
    -1   :M
    
    if
    ~t
    
    do
    he
    
    ore.
    
    That isn't so any more. The past few generations, people have started
    applying the laws of sorcery to dowsing, the same as they have to other
    kinds of magic."
     Istvan scratched his head. "How? If a magic works, aren't you likely
    to ruin it by looking at it too close?"
     Borsos laughed again. "You do come from back in the mountains,
    don't you, soldier? That's old doctrine, outmoded, disproved. It's all in
    the way you look at things, not in the act of looking. And, by turning the
    law of similarity on its head, modem magecraft lets a dowser look for any-
    thing in water but the water itself, if you take my meaning."
     "Maybe," Istvan said. "None of the dowsers in my valley knew any-
    thing about that, though. Water stymied them."
     "It doesn't stymie me," the dowser said. "All of this chatter, though,
    this is liable to be another story."
     He wore the three silver stars of a captain on each side of his collar,
    which meant he could have been much ruder than that. Knowing as
    much, Istvan shut up. Borsos went about his business. He aimed his
    dowsing rod - the straight length wrapped with copper wire, one fork
    with silver, the other with gold - at an Obudan fishing boat out near the
    edge of visibility. The rod quivered in his hand. He grunted, presumably
    in satisfaction.
     "Seems to be performing as it should," he said. "I got rushed out here
    in a hurry, you know, after Algarve jumped on Sibiu with sailing ships.
    Nobody wanted anyone pulling the same trick on us. The ordinary mages
    are good enough to spot ships coming down the ley lines, but those
    galleons slid right past them. They won't get past me."
     "That's good," Istvan answered easily. "Of course, I don't expect a lot
    of Algarvian warships out here in the Bothman Ocean."
     Borsos wheeled on him and started to scorch him for an idiot. Then
    the dowser caught the gleam in his eyes. "Heh," Borsos said. "Heh, heh.
    You're a funny fellow, aren't you? I'll bet all your friends think you're
    the funniest fellow around. What does your sergeant think when you get
    funny?"
     "Last time it happened, sir, he put me to shoveling dragon shit for a
    week," Istvan answered, doing his best not to gulp. He really did have to
    remember to keep his mouth shut. Borsos wasn't merely a sergeant. If he
    so desired, he could make Istvan's life most unpleasant indeed.

    




    244
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
     But all he did was grunt again. "Sounds about like what you would
    have deserved," he said. "Were you as clever then as you were with me
    just now?"
     "I'm afraid so, sir," Istvan adrmitted, his voice mournful. One way to
    duck punishment was to sound as if you'd already figured out you'd been
    a cursed fool.
     It didn't always work. This time, it did. Borsos turned away from him
    and aimed the forked staff at another Obudan fishing boat. It quivered
    again. As far as Istvan was concerned, the rod acted the same way for the
    second boat as it had for the first. That was why Borsos was a dowser and
    he wasn't. The newcomer to Obuda pulled out a pen and tablet and
    scribbled some notes.
     "What are you writing, sir?" Istvan reckoned it safe to remind Borsos
    of his existence. And he truly was curious. Unlike a lot of the young men
    from his valley, he could read and write, provided no one expected any-
    thing too hard along those lines from him.
     "I'm beginning to compile a distance and bearing table," the dowser
    replied. "I have to do that every place I go, for the waters are always dif-
    ferent, and I get a different feel in the rod, depending on the waters." He
    raised an eyebrow. "And if you crack wise about the feel your rod gives
    you, soldier, I'll kick your arse off this beach and into the ocean. Have
    you got that?"
     "Aye, sir." Istvan made himself into the picture of innocence - no easy
    feat. "I didn't say a thing, sir. I wasn't going to say a thing, sir, and you
    can't prove I was."
     "And a good thing for you I can't, too." Borsos pointed to the pack
    on Istvan's back. "Turn around, if you please. I want to get something
    out of there."
     "Aye, sir," Istvan repeated, and turned his back on the dowser. He sus-
    pected Sergeant Jokai had assigned him as Borsos's beast of burden to
    make his life miserable. There, for once, the sergeant had miscalculated.
    Istvan enjoyed being able to shoot the breeze with the dowser, e'~7en
    being able to pick his brain a little, more than the ordinary routine of
    soldiering. Lugging Borsos's equipment about was the price he paid for
    the privilege.
     Borsos rummaged through the pack till he found whatever he was
    looking for. After the dowser closed up the oiled-leather pack, Istvan

    




    INTo THE DAPKNEss
    
    Istvan
    
    245
    
    turned back around to see what he'd taken. Borsos was stripping the
    bright copper wire from most of its length of his dowsing rod. He
    replaced it with wire with a green patina.
     Seeing Istvan's eye upon him, he condescended to explain: "I think
    the greened wire here will give me better accuracy for a couple of
    reasons. For one, its color, like that of the sea, enhances the effects - both
    positive and negative - of the law of similarity. And, for another, it got
    that color by being soaked in seawater. That also gives it a greater affinity
    for the ocean here."
     "I see," Istvan said, which was more or less true. "If all that's so,
    though, sir, why didn't you have the sea-soaked wire on the rod from the
    start? "
     Borsos's eyes were green as the wire he'd wrapped around the rod.
    They widened slightly now. "You're not a fool, are you?" the dowser said
    in some surprise. "I didn't have that wire on the rod because I've been
    doing lake work, and because, as I said before, they rushed me out here in
    a tearing hurry. I didn't have the chance to adjust everything perfectly."
    
     And, unless I miss my guess, you were hoping the regular wire would do well
    enough. But Istvan didn't say that out loud. He'd already tried Borsos's
    patience once. He might not get by with it twice.
     The dowser aimed the forked staff at the Obudan fishing boats once
    more. He nodded, as if he'd proved himself right. Then he scrawled more
    notes on the pad. "I did think so," he said, more to himself than to Istvan.
    "The correction factor makes enough difference to be worth taking into
    account. "
     "I'm glad you did it, then, sir," Istvan said.
     His speaking recalled him to the dowser's rmind. "Magecraft isn't like
    carpentry, soldier," Borsos said. "If you don't vary your methods depend-
    ing on where you are, you won't get the results you should. My own view
    is, the laws of magecraft change a little, too, from one place to another."
     "How could that be?" Istvan asked. "A law is a law, isn't it?"
     Borsos was aiming the dowsing rod at yet another little fishing boat,
    and didn't answer right away. At last, he said, "Carpentry just deals with
    things. Magecraft deals with forces, and some forces have minds of their
    own. If you don't keep that in your own mind, you may start out to be
    a mage, but you won't last long in the craft. Everyone will tell your
    widow and your clan head how sad it was you had an accident
    
   in
    d
    
    CIS
    
   ves
    ave
    
   easy
    you
    
    pack
    
    hing
    
    sus-
    n to
    ated.
    even
    ne of
    d for
    
    e was

    




    246
    
    Harty Turtledove
    
     "I see," Istvan said again. What he thought he saw was the mage ma
    ing his work out to be harder and more dangerous than it really was.
    carpenter might do something like that, or a blacksmith. Soldiers wou
    do it, too, especially when they were bragging in front of civilians. Istv
    knew how deadly dull most of a soldier's life really was.
    
     Fariners, now, farmers never made their work out to be harder than
    was. Istvan understood why, too, having grown up on a farm. No ma
    ter what a farmer said about his work, he couldn't make it seem hard
    than it was.
     Borsos pointed the rod due west. Seeing no fishing boats in that dire
    tion, Istvan asked, "Are you searching out past the horizon, sit?"
     "That's right." The dowser's head bobbed up and down, very mu
    as his rod was doing in his hand. "I can feel boats out there - out farth
    than I can see, I mean - but they all move like the fishing boats I can se
    so I don't have to worry about them much. If I felt them heading stral
    toward this island from out of the west, I'd be shouting my head off."
     Istvan pointed to a dragon wheeling high overhead. "They're o
    watch up there, too," he remarked. His stints with dragons had given hi
    a certain sympathy with - and for - the men who flew them. He wo
    dered whether Borsos had been sent out to Obuda because he w
    valuable or because some officer back on the mainland had had a brai
    storm.
     "They're watching up there, too," the dowser agreed. "They ha
    their uses, but I also have mine. They can't see at night, but I can st
    sense danger then. When winter weather closes down, they won't be ab
    to see so well by daylight, either. I don't need good weather."
    
     "Ah," Istvan said, one syllable that meant, Maybe he'll be worth havi
    here after all. Borsos laughed out loud, which embarrassed Istvan, for I
    hadn't wanted the translation of that one syllable to be so obvious. Tryin
    to make amends, he remarked, "There's a place up in Sorong - the vi
    lage, I mean, not the mountain - where the girls are friendly. I'll take yo
    there, if you like."
     "Duty first," Borsos said, stem as if he were a true Gyongyosian wa
    nor and not a dowser wearing the stars of rank to give him authority ov
    ordinary soldiers like Istvan. "Duty first. But then . . ."
    
    Pekka scribbled a calculation. With the inexorable logic of mathematic

    




    the next step was plain before she wrote it down. She didn't write it down,
    not then. Instead, she looked out the window at the snow dancing in the
    wind. In her mind's eye, she saw not the next step, but where the whole
    sequence was leading.
     "It does all fit together," she breathed. "When you get to the bottom
    of it, the very very bottom of it, all of magic everywhere has the same
    essence.
    
    ch
    
    er
    
    on
    
    im
    
    on-
    
    was
    
    am-
    
    avi ng
     r he
    
    rying
    e vil-
    e Vou
     I
    
    war-
    over
    
    atics,
    
    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    247
    
     She couldn't prove that, not yet. She didn't know if she would ever
    be able to prove it. Seeing where the mathematics led and getting there
    were two different things. Even if she did get there, she didn't know for
    certain what she might do with the knowledge. Leino's magecraft was
    concrete, definite, practical; if her husband and his colleagues discovered
    something new, they could quickly apply it.
     But Pekka couldn't escape the feeling that, if she ever got down to
    the bottom of her theoretical sorcery, the yield would be a lot bigger
    than improved armor for behemoths. Her mouth twisted wryly. She
    couldn't prove that, either, and everything about it depended on proof.
     She abruptly realized her teeth were chattering. That proved some-
    thing, all right: it proved she was a fool. She'd been so far off in the world
    of theory, she hadn't noticed she was starting to freeze. She got up,
    scooped coal out of the scuttle, and fed the stove in the corner of her
    office.
    
     The room was just getting back to tolerable warmth when someone
    knocked on the door. Pekka thumped her forehead with the heel of her
    hand, again recalled to the real world. "Leino's going to clout me!" she
    said as she leaped to her feet.
     Sure enough, it was her husband standing there in the hall. He didn't
    clout her; that sort of behavior was for Unkerlanters and Algarvians
    (though Algarvians were likely to slip on a glove before hitting a woman).
    He did give her a severe look, which, among Kuusamans, more than suf-
    ficed. "Have you forgotten the reception at your sister's tonight?" he
    demanded.
     "I had, aye," Pekka answered, hoping she sounded as embarrassed as
    she felt. "I hate acting out a cliche: the absent-minded mage. But since
    you remembered, I'm sure we'll be there in good time. Here, let me get
    my cloak."
      Mollified, Leino grumbled only a little more as they crossed the

    





    




    248
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    Kajaam City College campus and took the ley-line caravan to the stop
    nearest their house. Not enough snow lay on the ground to give the
    caravan any trouble. The real storms hadn't started roaring in out of the
    south. Dn*fts sometimes got as high as the top of a floating caravan car,
    not the base.
     Slogging up the hill to take Uto back from Elimaki, Pekka didn't want
    to think about snowdrifts. "Powers above be praised, you're here!"
    Elimaki exclaimed when she and Leino got to the door.
     Leino laughed. "I don't need to be a mage to divine that you felt lik
    stuffing our son and heir into the rest crate today, do l?"
     "Well, no," Pekka's sister said, adding defensively, "It is hard to clea
    house with a small boy underfoot."
     "It's not hard - it's impossible," Pekka said. "Come on, Uto. Let's get
    you out of here." Elimaki let out a small, involuntary sigh of relief Pekka
    rounded on her son. "What have you been doing today?"
     "Nothing." Uto, as usual, was the picture of innocence. Pekka, as
    usual, found him unconvincing. So did Leino, but his obvious amuse-
    ment didn't help instill discipline in the boy.
    
     They took Uto next door, fed him salty venison sausage - one of his
    favorites - and put him to bed. When he did sleep, he slept like a log. He
    was a risk to do a great many appalling things, but getting up in the
    imiddle of the night and making trouble wasn't one of them. With sor-
    cerous wards in and around the house - commercial ones, Leino's, and
    her own - and with her husband and herself only a door away, Pekka
    didn't feel nervous about leaving Uto asleep by himself. If anything went
    wrong, she and Leino would know, and would be back in seconds. But
    she didn't expect anything to go wrong. Kuusamans were, on the whole,
    an orderly, law-abiding folk.
     Pekka changed out of the long, drab wool tunic she'd worn to Kajaani
    City College while Leino was taking off his own shorter tunic and
    trousers. Being of neither Algarvic nor Kaunian stock, Kuusamans wore
    what they pleased and what pleased them, and did not turn tunics'and
    kilts and trousers into politics. Pekka put on a long skirt of sueded deer-
    hide and a high-necked white wool tunic heavily embroidered with
    bright, colorful fantastic animals: a costume out of Kuusamo's past.
    Leino's nearly matched it, save that his skirt was knee-length and he wore
    woolen leggings beneath it. They both wore sensible modern boots.

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    the
    
    car,
    
    like
    
    lean
    
    s get
    ekka
    
    a, as
     se-
    
     f his
    g. He
    n the
    
     sor-
    s, and
     ekka
     went
    s. But
     hole,
    
 ajaam
     and
    
    wore
    cs and
    deer-
    d with
    Is past.
    e wore
    
    249
    
            "Let's go," Leino said. Pekka nodded. They wouldn't even be late, or
            not very. And no one with any social graces showed up on time for a
            reception.
            Elimaki's husband was a short, burly fellow named Olavin. Being one
            of Kajaani's leading bankers, he earned more by himself than Pekka and
            Lemo did together. He never tried to rub their noses in his gold, though,
            for which Pekka was duly grateful.
            After handclasps and embraces, Olavin said, "I'm very glad you could
            come tonight."
             "We wouldn't miss it," Pekka said loyally.
             "It's not as if we have far to come, either," Leino added with a smile.
            "No, indeed." Olavin laughed. "But I am particularly glad you could
            come tonight. I am not certain, you understand, but I have hopes that
            Prince Joroinen may join us. You should be here for that, if it happens."
            "Husband of my sister, you are right." Pekka's eyes sparkled. "And
            you are truly coming up in the world if you expect one of the Seven
            Princes to visit your home. No wonder Elimaki wanted to wallop Uto."
            Ili don't expect it. I hope for it." In some ways, Olavin was as precise
            as a theoretical sorcerer. "I learned at the bank that he would be in
            Kaj'aani for a few days, and took the chance of tendering the invitation.
            We have met before, he and I, and done some business together, so there
            is some reasonable chance he will accept."
             "I would like to meet him," Pekka said.
            Leino nodded agreement, adding, "I would like to find out which way
            Kuusamo is likely to go now that Lagoas has joined the war against
            Algarve." His chuckle was wry. "Husband of my wife's sister, you need
            not look alarmed. I don't look for an answer on the spot. If the Seven
            Princes argue about where they should meet, they will argue about
            higher things as well."
            "Even so." Olavin laughed again. He worked hard at beingiolly, per-
            haps because bankers had a name for being anything but. "As I say, he

    




            may be here and he may not. Either way, we will have interesting people
            here - besides the two of you, I mean - and there is plenty to eat and
            drink."
            "I am not shy," Pekka declared. "I am not the most outgoing person
            in the world, but I am not shy."
             As if to prove it, she marched past her brother-in-law into the parlor
    
    A~

    




    250
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    of the house he shared with Elimaki. Leino followed in her wake. Pekka
    got herself a mug of hot spiced ale - Kuusamo was not a land where cold
    drinks flourished - and a plate of mushrooms stuffed with crab meat. Her
    husband chose mulled Algarvian wine and seaweed-wrapped boiled
    shrimp in a mustard sauce.
     Some of the people at the reception were kin to Pekka and Elimaki,
    others to Olavin; some were neighbors; some were bankers; some were
    merchants and artisans who dealt with the banking firm Olavin served.
    Talk ranged from raising children to importing wine (Kuusamo's climate
    did not encourage fine vintages, or even rough ones) to the war with
    Gyongyos.
     "If anyone wants to know what I think," one of Olavin's cousins said,
    obviously sure everyone wanted to know what he thought, "I think we
    ought to cut our losses against the Gongs and get ready to pitch into the
    fight on the mainland of Derlaval."
     "On which side?" somebody asked. Pekka thought that a good
    question. With Lagoas in the war, Kuusamo could jump on her island
    neighbor's back and regain land lost centuries before. If she did, though,
    Algarve would likely win the war on the mainland and dominate eastern
    Derlaval. No one had done that since the days of the Kaunian Empire.
    Pekka wondered if anyone should.
     Olavin's cousin had no doubts. Olavin's cousin, apparently, had no
    doubts about anything, including his own wisdom. "Why, King
    Mezentio's, of course," he said. "A man like that doesn't come along
    every day. We could use someone with that kind of energy, with that
    kind of vision, right here at home."
    
     Pekka thought of King Swemmel, and of what he had done with - an
    to - Unkerlant. But before she could mention the efficient monarch,
    Olavin gave his cousin an even more efficient comeuppance, saying, I
    
    have the great honor to announce the presence of Prince joroinen, not
    least among the Seven of Kuusamo." None of the Seven was least noi.
    most. The arrangement, like Kuusamo itself, endured.
     Men bowed from the waist. Like the other women, Pekka we t t
    one knee for a moment. That gesture of respect had an earthy history,
    behind it. Pekka didn't let it offend her. The meaning had changed
    the centuries. No one knew better than a theoretical sorcerer that
    bols were only what people made of them.

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    251
    
     Joroinen said, "Let the thought be taken for the deed for the rest of the
    evening," which made him sound like a theoretical sorcerer himself He
    went on , One of the longstanding traditions of Kuusamo is that we pay
    attention to the longstanding traditions of Kuusamo only when it suits
    us." Pekka blinked, then grinned. Maybe the prince wasn't a theoretical
    sorcerer. Maybe he was an oracle instead.
     Unlike Swernmel or Mezentio or Gainibu, Joroinen did not bother
    with the outward trappings of royalty. He wore an outfit of warm wool
    and leather much like Leino's, if rather finer. He mingled with the crowd
    as if he were a banker or merchant himself After a couple of minutes,
    everyone took his presence for granted.
     He got hot ale and smoked salmon on flatbread from the refreshments
    table, then made Pekka's acquaintance by stepping on her foot. I beg
    your pardon," he said, as if he were a commoner.
     "No harm done, sir," she said, and introduced herself and Leino.
     Joroinen's gaze sharpened. He was in his mid-forties, his black hair
    marked by the first few silver threads. "Ali, Elimaki's sister and her hus-
    band," he said, impressing Pekka. "The mages at the city college," he
    added, impressing her more. Then, instead of impressing her, he aston-
    ished her: "I was hoping to meet the two of you here tonight. You're one
    - or rather, two - of the reasons I accepted Olavin's kind invitation."
     "Sir?" Pekka and Leino said together. Leino sounded as surprised as
    she was.
     "Aye." Prince Joroinen nodded. To Leino, he said, "Everyone is
    pleased and excited at your research. Very good things will come of it, I
    think, and soon. You have served Kuusamo well; we of the Seven shall
    not be ungrateful."
     I thank you, sir," Leino said, sounding as if he'd had several mugs of
    spiced wine, not just one. Pekka set a hand on his arm, proud of what
    he'd achieved.
     Joroinen turned to her, saying, I also know somewhat of your pre-
    sent work, if less than I might like. I bear you a message from others who
    know more than 1, some of them examining related areas." Pekka raised
    an eyebrow, waiting. The prince leaned close to her and spoke in a low
    voice: "For the sake of the safety of the realm, it is strongly suggested that
    you seek to publish no further findings."
      Pekka's other eyebrow flew upwards. "Why ever not?" she
    
    3,
    it i

    




    252
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    demanded. A scholar who could not publish was like a singer forced into
    a vow of silence.
     "For the safety of the realm, I said," Princejoroinen answered. "I shall
    say no more, not here, not now. But of this please let me assure you: I do
    not speak lightly."
    
     Fernao felt trapped in Patras. Fernao was trapped in Patras. With
    Lagoas and Algarve now at war, he would have had trouble leaving
    Yanina even without King Penda. Yanina inclined strongly toward
    Algarve. The only other possible course for King Tsavellas would have
    been to incline strongly toward Unkerlant. He preferred his eastern
    neighbors to those to the west. Fernao was glad he didn't have to make
    such an unpleasant choice himself.
     He had very little else about which to be glad. Since Shelonuith's
    untimely demise, he'd lived with an eye on every copper. No doubt
    Shelornith had had friends in Patras who were helping him get Penda out
    of the palace. But Fernao had met only a couple of them, and Varvakis
    and Cossos were about as eager to aid him as they would have been to
    wash a leper's sores.
     That didn't mean they weren't aiding him. Varvakis fed him delicacies
    from his gourmet emporium, not least because Fernao had hinted he
    would sing a song to Tsavellas's men if the fancy grocer didn't feed him.
    Blackmail was a language Yaninans understood.
     These days, Fernao wore clothes he'd got from Varvakis, too. He con-
    soled himself with the notion that tights were more nearly hose than
    trousers, but found the Yaninan tunics with their puffy sleeves almost
    laughably absurd. Local costume didn't go far as disguise, either. His
    height, his red hair, and his narrow, slanted eyes all made him stand out
    from the Yaninans, who were generally small, swarthy, and big-nosed.
     Nor did he need to be the first-rank mage he was to divine that
    Varvakis was a great deal less than delighted to see him when he walked
    into the fellow's shop. "Good day," Fernao said in Yaninan, of which'
    he'd picked up a fair smattering since getting stuck in these parts.
     "And to you, good day," Varvakis answered grudgingly. Most places,
    from what Femao had seen, learning the local language made the locals
    like you better. His learning Yaninan hadn't ingratiated him to Varvakis,
    who growled, "The day would be even better if you weren't here."

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    nto
    
    ith
    
    ng
    ard
    
    ave
    
    tern
    ake
    
    acies
    d he
    
    him.
    
    con-
    than
    most
    His
    d out
    sed.
    that
    alked
    which
    
    W
    
    253
    
     "Aye," Fernao said. He dropped back into Algarvian, which he still
    needed to get complex ideas across: "If you take me to see Cossos one
    more time, maybe I won't be here much longer after that."
     Varvakis glared at him. "Too much to hope for. Better I should take
    you to see King Tsavellas's bodyguards instead.
     Better I should betray you, he meant. Fernao smiled. "Let's go. I'll see
    them, all right. They'll talk with me. I'll talk with them, too." Betray me
    and I betray you. "Mages can be very hard to kill outright, you know." I'll
    make a point of betraying you.
     Could looks have killed, Varvakis would have sorely tested his asser-
    tion. Had the fancy grocer kept a stick in his shop, he might have tested
    it another way. As things were, he snapped, "Ali, very well - once
    more." He waved a sausagelike finger in Ferriao's face. "But only once
    more, you understand me?"
     "I understand you," Fernao said. Varvakis was a great many things, but
    never unclear.
     "You had better," he said now. "Come back tomorrow night. Either
    I take you to him then, or I tell you when I can take you to him."
     "It is good," Fernao said in Yaninan. He wasn't sure whether it was
    good or not. Varvakis might be setting up an ambush. But Varvakis could
    have done that several different times, could have and hadn't. And, by
    now, Fernao had acquired by one means or another some specialized sor-
    cerous gear. He'd lost what he'd brought from Lagoas when Shelimoth
    got killed. Replacing all of it would have been impossible. Replacing
    even a small part of it would have been impossible had the Yaninans who
    sold him this and that realized they were selling him sorcerous parapher-
    nalia. But the art had traveled different roads in Lagoas and Yanina, and
    the Lagoans had traveled rather farther along theirs.
     When Fernao returned to the fancy grocery the next evening, then, he
    was ready for trouble. But Varvakis, despite mutterings and mumblings
    his mustache muffled, led him to the palace. By then, Fernao had given
    up on expecting any Yaninan to do anything without grumbling. As soon
    as Varvakis saw Fernao and Cossos clasp hands, he departed. "I do not
    know what you do here," he said. "I do not wish to know what you do
    here."
     Cossos studied Fernao with no great friendliness. "I do not know that
    we will do anything here," the palace steward said. "I cannot get you in

    





    




    254
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    to see Penda: my own head would answer for it. Things have tightened
    up. And with your kingdom at warwith Algarve..." He shook his head.
    "Why don't you just go away?"
     "But if I went away, think of all the bribes you would lose," Fernao
    answered mildly. Cossos scowled. Bribery was a way of life in Yanina.
    Talking about it, though, was very bad form.
     Fernao did not care. Now he mumbled to himself, at the same time
    clutching a dried dormouse's tail he carried in a tunic pocket. Cossos
    Might have taken the mumble for Lagoan. It wasn't. It was classical
    Kaunian, a tongue less widely studied in Yanina than in many other king-
    doms. The spell was ancient, too: the primitive ancestor of the ones on
    which rest crates and much of modern medicine depended.
     As a dormouse falls asleep for the winter, so Cossos fell asleep now.
    But it was not a natural sleep. He did not breathe. His heart barely beat.
    Had he been battling a soldier of the Kaunian Empire, he would have
    been killed without knowing he was dead. As things were, he merely
    toppled over. Fernao left the chamber where they'd been talking and
    hurried toward the wing of the palace in which King Penda was
    imprisoned.
     He walked quickly, confidently. He had reason for his confidence. The
    servitors and nobles he passed saw him, aye. One or two, those of uncom-
    mon cleverness and strong will, even turned to look after him, perhaps to
    start to speak. Then they, like the rest, forgot about him and went on with
    their business. He snuiled a small, slow simile. Among the Yaminans, as
    among most peoples, wormwood was a flavoring, and easy enough to
    obtain. The Valmierans brewed a nasty brandy with it; Varvakis stocked
    the stuff. But the Yaninans did not use it in sorcery. Lagoans did, not least
    for spells of temporary oblivion.
     Had Fernao passed a mage, the spell would not have sufficed. He
    assumed Penda's quarters were sorcerously as well as physically watched
    and warded. He touched the dormouse tail again. This was a different
    spell, one only a first-rank Lagoan mage was likely to use (althotigh
    Fernao did hope Tsavellas relied on native Yaninan wizards; an expert
    from Algarve might have recognized and countered the sorcery).
     People around him slowed down, as if they were dormice settling in
    for a long winter's nap. That was an illusion, an inversion of the law of
    similarity. In fact, he had sped up. It was not a magic to use without great

    




    I
    
    -JF                   INTo THE DARKNESS         255
    
    e
    
    to
    th
    as
    
    g In
    
    of
    eat
    
    need; under it, he aged twice as fast as usual. But he passed out of the ken
    of those around him.
     He started casting about for Penda like a hound seeking a fox's scent.
    The trail was obscure, even though he moved above and beyond, so to
    speak, the ordinary plane of reality. Maybe Yaninan mages weren't quite
    the bunglers he had come to reckon them.
     But Penda's trace was harder to hide than an ordinary man's would
    have been. Fernao set his thumb on the obverse of a Forthwegian silver
    bit he carried with his other specialized sorcerous gear. The coin bore
    Penda's tough, blunt profile. Both the law of similarity and, at several
    removes, the law of contagion linked it to the Forthwegian king.
     Fernao found him in a bedchamber. He lay asleep beside a Yaninan
    woman; his captivity, evidently, was not of the most onerous. Fernao
    tapped him on the shoulder. At the tap, the Forthwegian king not only
    woke but also sped to Fernao's level of living. He had less time to spare
    than the mage; gray filled his beard. No help for it, though, not now.
     "Your Majesty, I have come to get you away from here," Fernao said
    iii Forthwegian.
     "Whither shall we go?" Penda. did not seem to care what the answer
    was, for he sprang naked from the bed and threw on the first clothes he
    found. "So long as it be not Cottbus or Trapani, I am with you."
      "By no means," Fernao said. "I aim to bring you to Setubal."
     "It is good." Now the king of Forthweg did hesitate. "Or rather, it
    may be good. How do I know I can trust you? I expected to be rescued
    ere this. Whence came the long delay?"
     "How do you know you can trust me? You don't," Fernao replied.
    "if YOU would rather, I will remove this spell from you and you can go
    back to bed. And you might have been rescued sooner, your Majesty, had
    the fellow with whom I came from Lagoas not got himself slightly
    murdered. He had the connections in Patras. I've had to make mine. And
    so - win you come, or will you not come?"
     "I am answered," Penda said. "I am answered, and I shall come." He
    eyed Fernao from under lowered lids. "And I would have known you for
    a Lagoan not by your looks, not by your accent, but by your studied lack
    of respect for those set above you."
     "Your Majesty, you are not set above me; you are set above
    Forthweg," Fernao answered evenly, refraining from pointing out that,

    




    256
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    at the moment, Algarve and Unkerlant were set above Forthweg. "A
    if you will come, you had better come. This spell requires much sorce
    ous energy. Were we not so close to a power point, I could not use
    Even now, it win not hold long, not for two."
     Penda, for a wonder, argued no further. He followed Fernao out
    the bedchamber without a glance back at the woman with whom he
    been sleeping. That told Fernao something he hadn't known but had su
    pected about royalty. It made him a little sad. He wondered if the woma
    would be sad when she woke, sad or just relieved. He knew what
    would guess.
     As soon as King Penda and he were out of the wing of the palace i
    which Penda had been held, he relaxed the spell that seemed to slow th
    rest of the world to the pace of a sleepy dormouse. He sighed with reli
    of his own; had he not let go of that spell, it would soon have let go
    him, with results likely to be unpleasant. The forgetfulness spell with th
    wormwood he retained. It cost him much less wear and tear than th
    other - and, had he dropped it, he and Penda would have been capture
    at once. He was opposed to that.
     More Yaninans looked back over their shoulders at Penda and hi
    than had turned back when he walked the corridors alone; spread t
    cover two men, the magic was a little less effective. But it held. Th
    palace servitors scratched their heads, shrugged shrugs even the melo
    dramatic Algarvians might have envied, and went back to whatever the
    were doing.
     Once out of the palace, Penda peered this way and that, then nodde
    in slow wonder. "I had almost forgotten there were wider vistas tha
    rooms and hallways," he remarked.
     "Well, your Majesty, if you want to keep on enjoying them, you'
    better get moving," Femao said, setting a brisk pace away from the palac
    and into Patras.
     King Penda matched him stride for stride. "Tell me now, sit mage,'
    the fugitive Forthwegian monarch said, "how you purpose spiritir~g me
    out of Yanina and into Lagoas, where I may hope to breathe free even
    in exile.
     Fernao wished Penda had not picked this moment to ask that q
    He gave it the only answer he could: "Your Majesty, right now I
    the faintest idea."

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    in
    
    he
    
    im
    
    to
    he
    
    10-
    
    hey
    
    ded
    
    han
    
    u'd
    
    ace
    
   tion.
    en't
    
    257
    
     Behind a Zuwayzi soldier carrying a spear point downward in token
    of the truce now in force between his army and that of Unkerlant, Ha~ajj
    advanced across battered, broken ground toward the Unkerlanter lines.
    Both the soldier and he wore wide-brimmed hats and long mantles, not
    just to salve Unkerlanter sensibilities but also to ward off the rain that
    leaked from a dirty-gray sky.
     An Unkerlanter soldier in rock-gray hooded cape and tunic came for-
    ward to meet them. He too carried a spear with its point aimed at the
    ground. To Ha~aj's surprise, the fellow spoke Zuwayzi: "Your
    Excellency, you come with me," he said, his speech slow but clear. "I
    take you to Marshal Rathar."
     He seemed stuck in the present indicative. Haijaj didn't mind. Hearing
    his own language from the Unkerlanter was more courtesy than his king-
    dom had got from King Swernmel's since the war began. "I will come
    with you," HajaJ said.
     Rathar waited less than a blaze behind the forwardmost Unkerlanter
    positions. As his reputation said he would, he looked solid and steady.
    After bows and what were, by Unkerlanter standards, polite, leisurely
    greetings, he spoke in his own tongue: "I am sorry, but I do not know
    Zuwayzi. Do you speak Unkerlanter?"
     "Only a few words," HajaJJ answered in that language. He shifted
    speeches: "I know Algarvian well enough, and I have heard you also do.
    Is this so?"
     "Aye, it is," Rathar answered in Algarvian. He was indeed fluent in
    that speech, continuing, "I wish to congratulate you on the brave resis-
    tance you Zuwayzin have offered to the armies under my command."
     "It was not enough." Hajaj had been sure from the beginning of the
    war that it would not be enough, though the Unkerlanters' blunders had
    raised even his almost unraisable hopes once or twice. "Now, Marshal, I
    have come at the bidding of King Shazli to inquire of you what
    Unkerlant's terms will be for converting this truce into a peace."
     Rathar looked astonished. "Your Excellency, I have no authority to
    treat with you in this matter. It took all the authority I had to create the
    present truce, and even then I had to confirm it with my sovereign. If you
    seek peace, I must send you to Cottbus, for only there will you obtain
    it.,,

    




    258
    
    Harty Turtledove
    
     HajaJ sighed. He had hoped for better, but had not expected it. "I
    must be so, so it must be," he said. "Let me go back to my side of t
    truce line, that I may use a crystal there to let King Shazli know what y
    require. I shall return here, I hope, within an hour's time."
     "Very well," Rathar said. "A cart will be waiting to take you south
    the closest functioning caravan. Efficiency. In aid of which, my co
    pliments to your soldiers on the highly professional way in which th
    sabotaged the local ley lines. They made our campaign much mo
    difficult than we expected."
     "It was not enough," the Zuwayzi foreign minister repeated. Rath
    struck him as being as efficient as King Swemmel wanted to make eve
    one in his kingdom. HajaJ found efficient Unkerlanters even mo
    alarming than the usual sort.
     On returming to his own side of the truce line, he had a crystall
    mancer link him to his sovereign up in Bishah. Shazli's image, tiny a
    perfect and unhappy, stared at him out of the crystal. "Go where y
    must go. Do what you must do. Save what you can," the king said.
    
    war resumes, we can still hurt the Unkerlanters, but, my generals wa
    me, we cannot be certain even of holding them out of Bishah. Therefor
    war must not resume."
     "Even so, your Majesty," H~jjajj said. He remembered the days wh
    Zuwayza was an Unkerlanter province. Shazli, who'd been a child the
    really didn't. He thought an Unkerlanter conquest would be dreadfi.
    HajaJ knew it would.
    
     As Rathar had promised, a carriage was waiting. It fought its way alot
    a muddy track and over a wooden bridge laid across the roaring torre
    now filling the Wadi Uqeiqa. Even with the rain beating down, tI
    stench of death was everywhere. HajaJ recalled it from the Six Yea
    War and the chaos afterwards. He would have been just as well pleased
    better than just as well pleased - not to have his memory jogged. T1
    Zuwayzin had indeed fought hard. Would they end up any better o
    than if they had not fought at all?
     At last, after what seemed forever, the carriage reached the ley-lin
    caravan, and HaJjaJ seemed to return from the distant past to the prese
    
    - or, at least, to the not too distant past, for the caravan cars had plainl
    seen better decades. An Unkerlanter in the lead car spoke to HaJJaJ i
    Algarvian: "I am Zaban, from our foreign ministry. You will be in

    




    INTo THE DAPKNESS
    
    to
    
    in-
    
    ar
    
    ry-
    orc
    
    allo-
     and
     you
     . ,if
    
    warn
    fore,
    
     en
    then,
    adful.
    
     along
    orrent
    n, the
    Years'
    eased -
    d. The
    tter off
    
    ley-line
     present
     plainly
     ajaj in
     c in my
    
    259
    
    charge until you return to Bishah." He did not say to Zuwayza; Zuwayza
    might not be a kingdom on Haijaj's return. Zaban went on, "I see you
    are wearing nothing warm. Fortunately, I can supply your needs.
    Efficiency."
    
     "I thank you, Zaban." Ha~aj spoke crisply, not with the fiowery
    politeness that would have been automatic were he speaking Zuwayzi. In
    their arrogance, Unkerlanters took that politeness as weakness and a sign
    of submi'ssion. He was weak and would have to submit, but he did not
    have to advertise it.
     He climbed up into the wagon. The caravan sat where it was for most
    of another hour before starting to move. "Efficiency," Hajaj remarked
    to Zaban. The official from the foreign ministry gave him a dirty look,
    but said nothing. That suited Hajaj' fine.
     As he traveled south, he found himself moving into winter. The cara-
    van wagon boasted a coal-fired stove. It had been burning even down in
    Zuwayza, which struck Hajaj as a typical piece of Unkerlanter "effi-
    ciency." By the middle of the night, though, he was glad of the warmth.
    Snow had started to dapple the ground before darkness fell. By the time
    day returned, white blanketed the rolling Unkerlanter prairie. The cara-
    van stirred up the snow as it glided above the ground, making an icy wake
    that had Hajaj* thinking wistfully of ships on the warm ocean.
     He had traveled down to Cottbus before, but not in a good many years
    and never in winter. Somehow, the snow only made the plains of
    Unkerlant seem more immense than they did in good weather. Looking
    out the dirty windows of his caravan car, HaJjaj thought he could see to
    the edge of the world, or even a little over the edge.
     Every so often, the caravan would glide past or through a village or
    town. However big the place rmight be, it seemed tiny when set against
    the vastness of the plain. And when it was gone, it was gone as if it had
    never been, as if the flatlands had swallowed it up when Hajaj turned his

    




    head for a moment. Even the woods that grew more frequent as the
    caravan got farther south felt like interlopers on the endless plain.
     The caravan reached Cottbus in the late afternoon, a little irlore than
    a day after leaving Unkerlanter-occuplcd southern Zuwayza. The
    Unkerlanter capital sat at the Junction of Cottbus and Isartal Rivers. Both
    had ice floating on them, which chilled Ha~aj's blood. Zaban took it in
    stride, saying, "The season is early yet. They haven't frozen over from

    




    260
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
 bank to bank." The Zuwayzi foreign minister shivered at the mere idea.
     He had something like a revelation as a carriage took him from the
     caravan station to his lodging. He needed it, too, for cold struck at his
     nose and ears - almost all the flesh he exposed to it - like a viper. "You
     built your roofs so steep here to let the snow slide off them!" he
     exclaimed.
     "Well, of course," Zaban replied, giving him an odd look. But it
    wasn't Of course to Hajaj, any more than making sure you drank plenty of
    water was Of course to Unkerlanters in Bishah.
     King Swernmel chose to put HajaJ up in a hostel near his palace. The
    rooms were large enough to suit him, though by Zuwayzi standards very
    indifferently clean. The bed boasted heavy wool blankets and fur cover-
    lets; a stove sat in a comer of the bedroom. Hajaj heartily approved of all
    that, and of the enormous hot bowl of beef-and-barley soup the servants
    fetched him. He thought - he hoped - he wouldn't freeze to death before
    morning after all.
     Nor did he. Another servant brought in an enormous omelette - eggs
    and ham and sausage and onions and cheese - for his breakfast. Eating
    such a thing down in Bishah, he rMight have keeled over on the spot. In
    Cottbus's ghastly climate, he gobbled up every crumb and wished for
    more.
     As soon as he'd finished eating and robed and caped himself against
    winter, Zaban took him downstairs for the journey to the palace. He
    traveled in an enclosed carriage, for which he was thankful. He peered
    out through foggy windows at Unkerlanters taking the cold in stride.
    Some of them paused to look back at him, and at his carriage. Most went
    about their business. People didn't stop to greet one another and chat, as
    they would have on the streets of Bishah. That had nothing to do with
    the cold, as at first he thought it might. Unkerlanters simply seemed less
    outgoing than his own folk.
     It was decently warin inside the palace. Before he could go in to meet
    with Swernmel, the bodyguards began to feel him up as if he were a ripe
    maiden, not a skinny old man, "Tell them to wait," he said to Zaban, who
    was enduring the same sort of search. Hajai got out of his clothes and stood
    unconcernedly naked while the guards, when they weren't gaping at him,
    went through the garments till they were satisfied. Then he dressed again
    and accompanied Zaban into King Swernmel's audience chamber.

    




    nts
    
    re
    
    ainst
     He
    creci
    tride.
    went
    
    at, as
    with
    ed less
    
    meet
    
                                      a ripe
                                      n, who
                                     d stood
                                     at him,
                                     d again
    
    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    261
    
     Zaban prostrated himself before his sovereign. Haijaj* bowed low, as he
    would have done with King Shazli. King Swemmel spoke in
    Unkerlanter. Haijaj* followed fairly well, but waited to respond tin Zaban
    translated his words into Algarvian: "You are insolent. All Zuwayzin are
    insolent, we think."
     "We have our own opinion of Unkerlanters," Hajjaj' replied. He
    intended to yield as little as he could, here or anywhere else. "Our
    opinion is lower now that Unkerlant has broken the Treaty of Bludenz."
     11Kyot made that treaty," Swemmel said. His eyes bored into Hajaj.
    "Kyot is dead, slowly dead, horribly dead. Less than he deserved. And
    Zuwayza is beaten. Would you be here, were Zuwayza less than beaten?"
     He might well have been mad. Mad or not, he was right. Hajjaj* did
    his best not to acknowledge it, saying, "We have hurt you. If you press
    us too hard, we can hurt you more, much more. Your ultimatum was too
    harsh. If your demands now are too harsh, we win go on fighting. You
    may, perhaps, eventually gain all of what you want, but you will pay an
    enormous price for it. Would you not rather settle for a bit less, know-
    ing you do not have to pay so much?"
     That was sensible, rational, reasonable. Glancing at King Swemmel,
    Ha~aj realized with a shiver that none of those words was apt to apply to
    him. Swemmel's eyes seemed made of obsidian, with the thinnest layer
    of glittering Unkerlanter ice above. The king said. "We do not care what
    we pay. We want what is ours."
     I will not give way to despair, Hajaj thought, and then wondered why.
    He started to form another polite, diplomatic reply. He rejected the
    words before they passed his lips. Whatever Swemmel responded to, it
    was not polite diplomacy. Hajjaj tried a different tack: "Your Majesty, it
    is even so with us of Zuwayza. Were it not, why would we have risen
    against Unkerlant so often, even with little hope of victory?"
     He watched Swernmel carefully. The king's eyes narrowed, then
    widened. The ice, or some of it, melted. The hard, shiny stone beneath
    remained. But Hajjaj* had got through to him, at least to some degree, for
    he said, "Aye, you are a stubborn folk," and said it in the tones of a man
    doling out a grudging compliment. He stabbed out a forefinger at Hajaj.
    14you may be stubborn, but you are beaten. Else you yourself would not
    be here."
    
      "We are beaten." The Zuwayzi foreign minister conceded what he

    




    262
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
    could hardly deny. "We are beaten badly enough to have to yield you
    some of what you demand of us. We are not beaten so badly as to have
    to yield it all."
     "Shall we treat Shazli the pretender as we treated Kyot the usurper?"
    Swenimel asked.
     "Zuwayzi lords know how to die," HajaJ said, as steadily as he could.
    Again, he gave the king the directness Swernmel did not look to get from
    his own subjects: "Unkerlant has given them much practice in the art."
     Zaban looked at him with a face the color of whey. No, no one in
    Cottbus spoke to King Swernmel so. HaJaJJ gestured harshly. The man
    from the Unkerlanter foreign ministry did translate accurately; HajaJ
    knew enough of his language to be sure of that. He waited on Swemmel.
    The Unkerlanter king might want to find out how well he died. That
    violated every law of diplomacy, but King Swernmel was a law unto
    himself.
     Swemmel hunched forward on his high seat, like a hawk about to
    spring into the air from a falconer's wri'st. In a voice harsh as a hawk's, he
    said, "We shall dicker." Ha~ aJ breathed again, but tried not to let the king
    of Unkerlant see him do it.
    
     Krasta was angry. Krasta was frequently angry, but most often at people
    she knew, not at whole kingdoms. Now her outrage stretched far enough
    to encompass all of Valmiera.
     "Will you look at this, Bauska?" She waved the news sheet in the
    serving woman's face. "Win you look at it?"
     "I see it, milady." Bauska kept as much of herself from her voice as she
    could, leaving Krasta next to nothing to seize on.
     But Krasta needed next to nothing. "Unkerlant has won another war,"
    she snarled. "The western barbarians have won two wars now, against
    Forthweg and against this Zuwayza place, wherever it may be. The
    Unkerlanters have won two wars. Has Valmiera won even one war? Has
    it, Bauska?"
     "No, milady," the servant answered. But then, no doubt rashly, she
    added, "Unkerlant hasn't fought the Algarvians, though."
     Krasta tossed her head. A golden curl escaped the pins Bauska had put
    in her hair earlier in the morning and slid under her nose, as if she'd
    suddenly grown a mustache. Sniffing, she brushed it aside. Sniffing in a

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
    263
    
    different way, she said, "The Algarvians are barbarians, too. They should
    have stayed in their forests a long time ago, and not come out to bother
    civilized people." By that, of course, she meant people of Kaunian blood,
    her notion of civilization extending no further.
     "No doubt, milady," Bauska said. Having got away with one addi-
    tional comment, she tried another: "They may be barbarians, but they're
    monstrously good at war."
     "We've beaten them before," Krasta said. "They didn't win the Six
    Years' War, did they? Of course they didn't. Valrmi era won the Six Years'
    War. Oh, we had a little help from jelgava, but we won it." jelgavans
    were of Kaunian stock, too; she acknowledged their existence. Sibian?
    Lagoans? Unkerlanters? They'd fought side by side with Valmiera, too.
    As far as she was concerned, they nuight as well have stayed out of the
    war. How it would have ended had they stayed out never entered her
    mind.
     "Powers above grant we win this war, too, milady," Bauska said. "And
    powers above grant that your brother comes home safe from it."
     "Aye," Krasta said; the ser-ving woman had hit on a way of mollifying
    her, at least for the moment. "As of his last letter, Skarnu was well." She
    paused. She might have let it go there, but she still held the news sheet.
    Seeing it rekindled her anger. "Skarnu is well, but we have not broken
    through into Algarve. How can we hope to win this miserable, inconve-
    nient war if we can't break through?" Her voice rose to a shout once
    more. rhw~
     "Milady, I know not. How can I know? I am a maidservant, not a war-
     nor." Bauska bowed her head. In a barely audible voice, she asked,
     "Have I your leave to go, milady?"
      "Oh, very well," Krasta said in some annoyance; she usually got more
     sport out of baiting her servant. Bauska retreated much faster than the
     Algarvian army had fallen back before Valmiera's foes. But she did not
     retreat fast enough. Krasta snapped her fingers. "No. Wait."
      "Milady?" Bauska froze near the doorway. Her voice might have been
      a fragment of winter wind let loose within the mansion.
      "Come here. I have a question for you," Krasta said. The serving
    
      wornan came much more slowly than she had gone. Krasta went on,
      "I've been meaning to ask you this for some little while now, but it keeps
      slipping my mind-"

    




    264
    
    Harry Turtledove
    
     "What is it, milady?" Bauska still looked alarmed, which was gooc
    and also curious, which was acceptable.
     "When you are with your sweetheart, do you ever pleasure him b,
    taking his member in your mouth?" Krasta asked her question as matter
    of-factly as she would have asked a farmer about stockbreeding. In he
    mind, the differences between livestock and servants were not large.
    
     Bauska's fair skin flushed bright red. She coughed and turned away
    but she did not dare flee the chamber again, not unless Krasta told her sh(
    might. When at last she spoke, it was in a prim near-whisper: "Milady,
    have not got a sweetheart, so I do not know what to say to you."
     Krasta laughed in her face, knowing a servant's evasions when sh(
    heard them. "Curse it, have you ever pleasured a man so?" sh(
    demanded.
     Bauska got even redder. Her eyes down on the floor, she said, "Aye."
    Krasta had to watch the way her lips shaped the word, for she could not
    hear it. Then, more loudly, the servant repeated, "Have I your leave tc
    
    go?"
     "No, not yet." Krasta's voice was sharp. Valnu, curse him - curse him
    horribly - had not lied to her after all. She wanted to go clean her teeth
    yet again. Instead, probing the depths of commoners' iniquity, she asked,
    "And your friends - I suppose servants have friends - do they do like-
    wise?"
     11 Aye, milady, or I know of some who do, or who have," Bauska
    answered, still looking down at the intricate pattern of birds and flowers
    on the thick, handwoven carpet beneath her feet.
     Krasta made an angry noise, back deep in her throat. Like most of her
    class, she'd always assumed commonersjust fornicated, as animals did, and
    that other, related, delights were beyond them. Discovering she'd been
    wrong disgusted her. She wanted to share as little with those below her
    as she could.
     Something else occurred to her. "And your sweethearts - when you
    have them - do they pleasure your secret places with their tongues?"
     "Aye, milady," Bauska answered in a resigned whisper. But then, in
    what seemed a sudden access of spirit, she added, "Not likely we'd do for
    them if they didn't do for us, is it? Fair's fair."
     Fairness was something about which Krasta rarely had to worry, espe-
    
                                         I    in
    cially when dealing with servants. Her elegantly sculpted nostrii s flared i

    




    INTo THE DARKNESS
    
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    265
    
    exasperation. "Go on, get out of here," she said. "What are you doing,
    hanging about like this?"
     Bauska left. Bauska, in fact, all but flew. Krasta hardly noticed; having
    dismissed the serving woman, she forgot about her till she might need her
    again. She thought about going into Priiekule for a tour of the shops, but
    in the end decided not to. Instead, she had her coachman drive her to the
    royal palace. If she was going to complain about the way the war against
    Algarve was going, venting her spleen at a servant would do no good. She
    wanted to talk to a soldier.
     Finding the war ministry took her a while. She couldn't simply bark
    demands in the palace, as she could on her estate; too many of the people
    going through the corridors were nobles, and they were often hard to tell
    from servitors in fancy dress. To avoid giving offense, Krasta had to ask
    polite questions, an art for which she had little inclination and scant
    practice.
     At last, she found herself standing in front of a desk behind which sat
    a rather handsome officer; a placard identified him as Erglyu. "Please sit,
    Milady," he said, waving her to a chair. "Will you drink tea? I regret that
    I am not permitted to offer you anything stronger."
     She let him pour her a cup; she would let anyone serve her at any time,
    reckoning it no less than her due. As she sipped, she asked, "And what is
    your rank?"
     "I am a captain, milady." Some of Erglyu's smiling urbanity slipped.
    "You may read as much on the placard there."
     "No, no, no," Krasta said impatiently, wondering whether the war
    ministry wasn't doing a betterjob against Algarve because it hired idiots.
    "What is your rank, Captain?"
     "Ali." Erglyu's face cleared. Maybe he's not an idiot, Krasta thought with
    what passed for charity from her. Maybe he's only a moron. The captain
    went on, "I have the honor to be a marquis, milady."
     "Then we are well met, for I am a marchioness." Krasta smiled. Erglyu
    might be a moron, but he was of her class.She would give him the same
    courtesy she granted any member of her circle, courtesy a commoner, no
    matter how clever, would never know. With a vivacious gesture, she
    said, "I want to tell you, we are going about this war altogether wrong."
     Captain Erglyu leaned forward, his face the picture of polite, even
    fascinated, interest. " Oh, milady, I do so wish you would show me how!"