Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 28

Luckily, Vatsyunas didn't notice. He inclined his head to Skarnu. "That shall I undertake to do." His preparations seemed simple, almost primitive. They involved the yolks of half a dozen eggs and a cut-gla.s.s bauble of Merkela's that broke sunlight up into rainbows. Seeing Skarnu's curious stare, he condescended to explain: "The yellow of the egg symbolizeth the generacy--nay, the birth, you would say--of the new, whilst, as this pendant here spreadeth the one light into many, so shall my magecraft spread your fair copy here to all these blank leaves." He patted the ream of paper Raunu had brought back from Pavilosta.

"You know your business best," Raunu said, wondering whether Vatsyunas knew it at all.

Then the Kaunian from Forthweg began to chant. He was, Skarnu realized ruefully, more at home in the cla.s.sical tongue than any Valmieran Kaunian, no matter how scholarly, could ever hope to be. For him, it was birthspeech, not a second language drilled in with a schoolmaster's switch. He could make cla.s.sical Kaunian do things Skarnu would never have imagined, because it was his.

And when he cried out, when he laid the palm of his left hand on the ream of blank sheets, Skarnu could feel the power flowing through him. A moment later, the ex-dentist lifted his hand, and the sheets were blank no longer. Skarnu saw his story set forth on the topmost one, line for line, word for word, letter for letter as he had written it. Vatsyunas riffled through the ream. Every sheet was identical to the first, identical to the copy Skarnu had given him.

Skarnu saluted him, as if he were a superior officer. "You did better than I thought you could," he said frankly. "Now we have to get these out where people can see them, and be sneaky enough while we're doing it so they can't be traced back to us."

"This I leave to you." Vatsyunas staggered, yawned, and caught himself by main force of will. "You will, I pray, forgive me. I am spent, fordone." He lay down on the straw and went to sleep, just like that. As he snored, Skarnu saluted him again. The sheets he'd made would hurt the redheads far more than ambushing a nighttime patrol. Skarnu hoped so, anyhow.

All things considered, Fernao would as soon have died down in the land of the Ice People. His comrades had saved him--for what? For more torment was the only answer that came to him in the intervals when he was both awake and undrugged.

He'd never been interested in medical magecraft, which meant he knew less about the various distillations of the poppy than he might have. Some left him more or less clear-headed, but did less than they might have against the pain of his broken bones and other wounds. Others took the pain away, but took him away with it, so that he seemed to be standing outside himself, perceiving his battered body as if it belonged to someone else. Sometimes, he felt ashamed to need such drugs. More often, he welcomed them and even began to crave them.

He got them less often as his body began to mend. He understood the reasons for that and resented them at the same time. "Would you rather stay in so much pain, you need the poppy juice to take you out of it?" a nurse asked him.

From flat on his back, he glared up at the earnest young woman. "I'd rather have stayed whole in the first place," he growled. She shrank away, fright on her face. The war, or Lagoas' part of it, was still new. Not many wounded men had come back to Setubal to remind the folk who stayed home of what fighting really meant.

Get used to it, he thought. You'd better get used to it. You'll see--you'll hear--worse than me.

The next day--he thought it was the next day, anyhow, but the distillations sometimes made time waver, too--he got a visitor he hadn't expected to see. The Lagoan officer still seemed absurdly young to be wearing a colonel's rank badges. "Peixoto!" Fernao said. "Planning to send me back to the austral continent again?'

"If you're well enough, and if the kingdom needs you, I'll do it in a heartbeat," the young colonel answered. "Or I'll go myself, or I'll send a fisherman, or I'll do whatever I think needs doing or my superiors tell me to do. That's my job. But I did want to say I'm sorry you were hurt, and I'm glad you're on the mend."

He meant it. Fernao could see as much. That obvious sincerity helped some--but only some. "I'm sorry I was hurt, too," the mage answered, "and the mending ..." He stopped. Peixoto hadn't gone through it. How could he understand?

"I know," Peixoto said sympathetically. Fernao didn't rise from the bed to brain him, but only because he couldn't. What did Peixoto know? What could he know? Then the officer undid the top few b.u.t.tons of his tunic, enough to let Fernao see the edges of some nasty scars. Fernao's rage eased. He couldn't guess how Peixoto had picked up those wounds, but the soldier did know something about pain.

"I hope you can keep me out of the land of the Ice People when I'm on my feet again," Fernao said. On his feet again! How far away that seemed. "I have something else in mind, something where I might serve the kingdom better."

"Ah?" Colonel Peixoto raised an eyebrow, almost as elegantly as if he were an Algarvian. "And that is?"

By his tone, he didn't think it could be important, whatever it was. He was itching to ship Fernao back to the austral continent; the mage could see as much. But Fernao said, "The Kuusamans know something about theoretical sorcery that we don't. I'm not sure what it is--one reason I'm not sure is that they've done such a good job of keeping it a secret. They wouldn't be doing that if it weren't important."

Peixoto pursed his lips, then slowly nodded. "Aye," he said at last. "I know somewhat of that, though not the details, which are none of my business. Well, if the Guild Grandmaster agrees you should be doing this, I doubt anyone from his Majesty's army will quarrel with him."

Grandmaster Pinhiero had already visited Fernao a couple of times. The mage made up his mind to make sure the grandmaster knew what he wanted. Pinhiero thought it was important, too; he wouldn't have sent Fernao to Kuusamo to try to learn about it if he hadn't. And hadn't Pinhiero said he'd gone himself? Fernao thought, so, but he'd been too dazed and drugged to trust his memory. If he could escape eating roasted camel's flesh ever again ... he wouldn't shed a tear.

Thoughtfully, Peixoto went on, "And you may be needed here to help ward Setubal against the Algarvians' magic. We blocked one of their a.s.saults when we broke up that captives' camp near Dukstas. You know about that?"

"I've heard a thing or two, the times I've been fully among those present," Fernao answered.

"It could have been very bad. They might have served Setubal as they served Yliharma this past winter," Peixoto said. "This time, we got wind of it and stopped them before they could get well started. But who knows if we'll have good luck or bad the next time?"

Fernao knew all about bad luck, knew more than he'd ever wanted to learn about it. Before he could answer Peixoto, a physician in a white tunic and kilt came into the chamber. "Time for your next procedure," he said cheerfully, gesturing for the colonel to leave. Peixoto did, waving to Fernao as he went. The mage hardly noticed. He was scowling at the physician. Why shouldn't the wh.o.r.eson sound cheerful? It wasn't as if anything were going to happen to him.

Two attendants moved Fernao from his bed to a stretcher. They were well practiced and gentle; he cried out only once. That tied his record; he'd never yet been shifted without at least one howl of anguish. Down the hall he went, and into a clean, white room with a piece of sorcerous apparatus resembling nothing so much as a large rest crate. The spell powering it wasn't identical to the one that kept mutton chops fresh in his flat, but it wasn't far removed, either.

Both the attendants and the physician draped themselves with elbow-length rubber gloves covered in silver foil to insulate themselves from the effects of the spell. Then the men who'd borne him here lifted him once more and set him in the crate.

The next thing he knew, they were lifting him out of the crate again. He had a new pain in his broken leg, and a new one in his flank, too, with no memory of how he'd got them. He also had no sure way of knowing whether they'd left him in there an hour or a couple of weeks. One of the attendants offered him a little gla.s.s cup filled with a viscous, purplish fluid. He gulped it down. It tasted nasty. He'd expected nothing different. After what seemed forever but couldn't really have been too long, the pain drifted away--or rather, it stayed and he drifted away from it.

He dimly recalled taking the purplish stuff a few more times. Then, instead, a nurse gave him a thinner yellow liquid that didn't taste quite so vile. Some of the pain returned, though without the raw edge it would have had absent the yellow stuff. Some of his wits returned, too.

He didn't notice Grandmaster Pinhiero coming into his room, but did recognize him after realizing he was there. "How are you today?" Pinhiero asked, worry on his wrinkled, clever face.

"Here," Fernao answered. "More or less here, anyhow." He took stock. He needed a little while; he could think clearly under the yellow distillate, but he couldn't think very fast. "Not too bad, all things considered. But there's a good deal to consider, too."

"I believe that," Pinhiero said. "They tell me, though, they won't have to do any more really fancy repairs on you. Now you're truly on the mend."

"They tell you that, do they?" Fernao thought some more, slowly. "They didn't bother telling me. Of course, up till not too long ago I wouldn't have had much notion of what they were talking about, anyhow."

"Well, I'm glad you're back with us, and not too badly off," Pinhiero said, which only proved he hadn't been through what Fernao had. The yellow drug took the edge off Fernao's anger, as it had taken the edge off his pain. The grandmaster went on, "That army colonel and I have had a thing or two to say to each other lately."

"Have you?" That drew Fernao's interest regardless of whether he was drugged. "What kinds of things?"

"Oh, this and that." Pinhiero sometimes delighted in being difficult. Who was the Kuusaman mage who acted even worse? Ilmarinen, that's what his name was. Dredging it up gave Fernao a brief moment of triumph.

"For instance?" he asked. He knew he had more patience with the drug than he would have without.

"For instance? The business the Kuusamans are playing with. You know what I mean. Is that an interesting enough for-instance for you?" Pinhiero waggled a finger at Fernao. "I know more about it now than I did when I sent you east to Yliharma, too."

"Do you?" Fernao also knew he should have been more excited, but the drug wouldn't let him. "What do you know?"

"I know you were right." Pinhiero swept off his hat and gave Fernao a ceremonious bow. "The Kuusamans have indeed stumbled onto something interesting. More than that I shall not say, not where the walls have ears."

Had Fernao still been taking the purple distillate, he might have seen, or imagined he saw, ears growing out of the walls. With the purple stuff, it wouldn't even have surprised him. Now his wits were working well enough to recognize a figure of speech. Progress, he thought. "Are they talking more than they were?" he asked.

"They are." The grandmaster nodded. "For one thing, we're allies now. They aren't neutral any more. But I think the whack Yliharma took counts for more. That's what showed them they can't do everything all by themselves."

"Sounds sensible," Fernao agreed--but then, Pinhiero was nothing (except possibly devious) if not sensible. After a little more slow thought, the mage added, "When they do finally let me out of here, I want to work on that. I already told Peixoto as much." He touched one of the scars--scars now, not healing scabs or open wounds--on the arm he hadn't broken. "And I've earned the right."

"So you have, lad; so you have. Even more to the point, you know where they took flight, and that'll help you get off the ground."

"Here's hoping," Fernao said. "After dealing with the Ice People for so long, I don't know if I know anything anymore."

"You'll do fine," Pinhiero told him. "You have to do fine. The kingdom needs you." As Peixoto had before, he waved and left. He could leave. Even with the yellow distillate dulling his senses, Fernao knew how jealous he was of that.

Three days later, the attendants heaved him onto his feet for the first time since he'd come to Setubal. They gave him crutches. Getting one under the arm still encased in plaster wasn't easy, but he managed. By then, he was down to a half dose of the yellow drug, so everything hurt. He felt like an old, old man. But he was upright, and managed a few swaying steps without falling on his face. He had to ask the attendants for help in turning him around toward the bed. He made it back there, too. Progress, he thought again.

They weaned him from even the half dose a couple of days after that, and it was . . . not too bad. He found himself craving the drugs, which angered and embarra.s.sed him. When he fell asleep in spite of the pain that wouldn't go away, he felt another small surge of triumph.

Having his head clear was a pleasure in itself. He'd always thought well, and didn't miss the mist the liquids of one color and another had cast over his mind. When Pinhiero came to see him again, the grandmaster nodded in something like approval. "You're starting to look more like yourself," he said.

"I hope so," Fernao answered. "It's been a while. I'm glad I don't know anything about the time in the crate."

Pinhiero thrust some papers at him. "Time for you to get back into it," he said. "Read these. Don't say anything. Just read them. They're from Kuusamo."

Fernao read. By the time he'd got halfway down the first sheet, he had to slow down, because he was staring up at Pinhiero every other line. At last, in spite of the grandmaster's injunction, he did speak: "I've been away much too long. I've got a lot of catching up to do."

Colonel Lurcanio triumphant annoyed Krasta more than he did any other way, even importunate in bed. He waved a news sheet in her face, saying, "We have crushed them, crushed them--do you hear me? Sulingen is bound to fall, and everything beyond it right afterwards. Swemmel is beaten, lost, overthrown, as surely as the Kaunian Empire was long ago."

"If you say so." Krasta had an easier time feigning excitement in the bedchamber when she didn't feel it there. But then she really did brighten. "That would mean the end of the war, wouldn't it?" When she thought of the war ending, she thought of the Algarvians going home.

Lurcanio disabused her of that idea. "No, for we still have the Lagoans and Kuusamans to bring to heel. And then we shall shape all of Derlavai into the land of our hearts' desire." By his expression, the idea made him ecstatic.

Krasta wasn't much given to thinking in large terms. But she remembered the crash as the Kaunian Column of Victory went over, and a chill ran through her. In an unwontedly small voice, she asked, "What will you do with Valmiera?" She almost said, What will you do to Valmiera? She didn't think Lurcanio would like that. On the other hand, he might like it altogether too well.

"Rule it," the Algarvian officer answered placidly. "Go on ruling it as we rule it now." He got up from behind his desk, stood in back of Krasta's chair, and began caressing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s through the thin silk of her tunic. She wanted to slap his hands away; he wasn't usually so crude in reminding her that power, not love, made her take him to her bed. But she didn't have the nerve, which proved his point.

After a little while, he seemed to recall himself, and sat back down. When he wasn't touching her, her spirit revived. She said, "Derlavai's too big to fill up with Algarvians, anyhow."

"Do you think so?" Lurcanio laughed, as if she'd said something funny. By the look in his eye, he was going to explain just how and why he found her a fool. He'd done that many times. She always hated it, as she always hated submitting to any judgment save her own. But at the last moment Lurcanio checked himself, and all he said was, "Where shall we go for supper tonight?"

"So many restaurants have gone downhill these days," Krasta said in no small annoyance. "They serve up the most horrible pottages."

"What they would be serving goes to better use." Lurcanio didn't elaborate, but went on, "What do you say to The Suckling Pig? You may rely on its food, for many Algarvian officers visit there."

"All right," Krasta said, not making the connection between her remark and Lurcanio's comment. "Shall we leave here around sunset? I get too hungry to wait long for supper."

Lurcanio bowed in his seat. "Milady, I am putty in your hands." Even Krasta knew that was overblown Algarvian courtesy, for Lurcanio's will prevailed whenever it clashed with hers. He went on, "And now, if you will be so gracious as to excuse me, I must get some small bits of work done to keep my superiors content with me."

Even Krasta knew that was dismissal. She got up and left, not too ill-pleased despite his roaming hands. Now she knew she had something to do with her evening. Life in Priekule wasn't what it had been before the redheads came. And life in Priekule without the Algarvians was duller than it was with them. She sighed. Things would have been ever so much simpler had Valmiera won the war.

She reached the front hall just as the postman brought the afternoon delivery. Normally, she didn't see the mail till the servants had gone through it and got rid of the advertising circulars and anything else that didn't seem interesting. Today, just to be contrary, she took it all herself and carried it upstairs.

As soon as she started going through it, she realized how much trouble the servants saved her. Several pieces went into the wastepaper basket unopened. One ordinary-looking envelope almost joined them there, because she didn't recognize the handwriting in which it was addressed. How likely was it that some stranger vulgar enough to write to her would have anything worth saying?

But then curiosity overcame disdain. With a shrug, she used a letter opener in the shape of a miniature cavalry saber to slit the envelope. When she unfolded the paper inside, she almost threw it out again. It wasn't a letter at all, but some sort of political broadside.

Her lip curled in a sneer; it wasn't even properly printed, but written out by hand and then duplicated by a sorcerer who was none too good at what he did--ink smudged her fingers and blurred the words as she held it. But some of those words seized her attention. The headline--KAUNIANITY IN PERIL--fit too well with the conversation she'd just had with Lurcanio.

Lurcanio, she knew, would have denied every smeary word on the sheet. He had denied that his countrymen were doing such things to Kaunians. Krasta had believed him, too, not least because disbelieving him would have made her look at things she didn't care to face. But the story that unfolded on the broadsheet certainly sounded as if it ought to be true, whether it was or not. The details felt convincing. If they hadn't happened, they seemed as if they could have.

And the sheet was written in a style she found very familiar, though she had trouble putting her finger on why. She'd got about halfway through it when she realized the style wasn't the only familiar thing about it. She recognized the handwriting, too.

She shook her head. "No," she said. "That's impossible. Skarnu's dead."

But if she didn't know her brother's handwriting, who would? She stared down at the sheet, then over toward the west wing, where Lurcanio was busy running Priekule for the conquerors. Slowly and deliberately, she tore the sheet into tiny pieces. Then she used the privy and flushed the pieces away. She washed her hands with great care: as much care as she might have used to get blood off them.

Skarnu's alive, she thought dizzily. Alive. Lurcanio had asked after him not so long before. He'd known, or at least suspected, her brother hadn't perished in the fighting. She'd thought he had. She'd been wrong. For once, she wasn't even sorry to find out she'd been wrong.

Past that dizzy relief, she thought no more about what Skarnu's being alive might mean till Lurcanio handed her up into the carriage for the trip to The Suckling Pig. Then she realized her lover might have been---no, surely had been--asking after her brother so the Algarvians could hunt him down and kill him. For Skarnu had to be one of the brigands and bandits who showed up in news sheets every now and again.

What would she do if Lurcanio started asking questions about Skarnu now? He won't, she thought. He can't. I got rid of everything. He can't know anything.

She relaxed a little. Then--and only then--did another question occur to her: What would she do if Skarnu asked her questions about Lurcanio? What are you doing sleeping with an Algarvian? was the first of those questions to spring to mind.

They won the war. They're stronger than we are. Surely everyone could see that. But if everyone could see it, why was her brother still fighting the Algarvians? She didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to think about anything.

When they got to The Suckling Pig, she ordered spirits instead of ale and with grim determination went about the business of getting drunk. Lurcanio raised an eyebrow. "That time I had you after you drank yourself blind wasn't much fun for either one of us," he said.

"That's what you've told me." Krasta shrugged. "I don't remember anything about it but the headache the next morning." Remembering the headache made her pause before her next sip, but not for long. The end of her nose turned numb. She nodded. She was on the way.

She ordered pork and red cabbage on a bed of noodles. Lurcanio winced. "I wonder that all you Valmierans aren't five feet wide, the way you eat." His own choice was crayfish cooked in a sauce flavored with apple brandy. "This, now, this is real food, not just stuffing your belly full."

A few tables away, Viscount Valnu, in the company of a pretty Valmieran girl and an even prettier Algarvian officer, was demolishing an enormous plate of stewed chicken. Seeing Krasta looking his way, he fluttered his fingers at her. She waved back, then said to Lurcanio, "See how he's eating? And he's skinnier than I am."

"Well, so he is," Lurcanio admitted. "More versatile, too, by all appearances." He rubbed his chin. "I wonder if I made a mistake, letting him take you off that one night. Who knows what he had in mind?"

"Nothing happened," Krasta said quickly, though she'd wanted, intended, something to happen. To keep Lurcanio from seeing that, she added, "We both might have been killed if we hadn't gone out just before that cursed egg burst."

"Aye, I remember thinking so at the time." Lurcanio scratched the scar on his face he'd carried away from that night. "A lucky escape for the two of you. We never have caught the son of a wh.o.r.e who secreted that egg there. When we do..." His handsome features congealed into an expression that reminded Krasta why she feared to cross him.

Hesitantly, she said, "If you Algarvians worked more to make us like you and did less to--"

Lurcanio didn't let her finish. He burst out laughing, so uproariously that people from all over The Suckling Pig turned to stare at him. Ignoring them all, he said, "My dear, my dear, my foolish dear, nothing under the sun will make Kaunians love Algarvians, any more than cats will love dogs. If we do not use the strength we have, your people will despise us."

"Instead, you make them hate you," Krasta said.

"Let them hate, so long as they fear," Lurcanio said. As he had a way of doing, he waggled a finger at her. "And with that, I give you a word of advice: do not believe everything that comes to you in the daily post."

Krasta picked up her gla.s.s of spirits, knocked it back, and signaled for a refill. "I don't know what you're talking about." The liquor had made her nose numb. Fear did the same to her lips. He'd made jokes about knowing what came to her before she got it. What if they weren't jokes at all?

"Very well," he said lightly now. "Have it your way. But you had better go right on not knowing what I'm talking about, or you will be most sorry. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"I think so," Krasta answered. How did he know? How could he know? Did he have a mage monitoring her? Did the servants blab? They hadn't sorted the afternoon post, but some of them might have seen the envelope she'd got. Did Lurcanio sort through everything that went down the commode, by the powers above? Krasta smiled. There were times when she thought he deserved to do just that.

Whatever he knew, he didn't know everything. He didn't know about Skarnu. He'd asked after her brother before, when she didn't know about him, either. Whatever he knew, he hadn't pulled all the pieces together. Krasta hoped he never would.

Ten.

Marshal Rathar wished he were still at the front. Coming back to Cottbus meant coming back to King Swemmel's constant complaints. It meant coming back to subordination, too. Away from the capital, Rathar gave orders and none dared say him nay. In Cottbus, Swemmel gave the orders. Rathar understood that very well.

He also understood why he'd been summoned to the capital. Major Merovec fiddled with the decorations pinned onto Rathar's fanciest dress-uniform tunic. "The ministers--especially the Lagoan--will sneer at you if everything isn't perfect," Merovec said fussily. He sniffed. "I don't care what anybody says: the wh.o.r.eson looks like a stinking Algarvian to me."

"He looks like an Algarvian to me, too," Rathar answered. "There's one difference, though: he's on our side. Now am I pretty enough? If I am, kindly let me take my place beside the king."

Still fussing, Merovec reluctantly stepped aside. Rathar walked from the antechamber out into the throne room. A murmur ran through the courtiers as they spied him. They wished he were at the front, too; his presence meant they had less room for jockeying among themselves.