Rulers of the Darkness Read online

  “I understand that.” Like the painter, Skarnu kept his voice low. “But are they after underground folk in Ventspils, or me in particular?”

  “Why would they be after you in particular?” the other man asked. Then he paused and thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I keep forgetting you’re not just Pavilosta. You’re the chap with a sister in the wrong bed.”

  “That’s one way to put it, aye,” Skarnu said. It was, in fact, a gentler way to put it than he would have used. It also avoided mentioning his noble blood—common women could and did sleep with the redheaded occupiers, too.

  After a pull on his own mug of ale, the painter said, “She knew where you were down in Pavilosta—she did, or else the Algarvian she’s laying did. But how would she know you’ve come to Ventspils? How would the redheads know, either?”

  “Obvious answer is, they’re squeezing somebody between Pavilosta and here,” Skarnu said. “I had a narrow escape getting out of there; they might have stumbled onto somebody who helped me.” He named no names. What the other fellow didn’t know, King Mezentio’s men and their Valmieran stooges couldn’t squeeze out of him. Skarnu wouldn’t have been so careful about security even during his duty in the regular Valmieran army.

  “If they’ve got hold of a link in the chain between here and there, that could be … unpleasant,” the painter said. “Every time we take in a new man, we have to wonder if he’s the fellow who’s going to sell the lot of us to the Algarvians—and one fine day, one of them will do it.”

  Someone Skarnu had seen once or twice before strolled into the Lion and the Mouse. Instead of ordering ale or spirits, he spoke in casual tones: “Redheads and their dogs are heading toward this place. Some people might not want to hang around and wait for them.” He didn’t even look toward the corner where Skarnu and the painter sat.

  Skarnu’s first impulse was to leap and run. Then he realized how stupid that was: it would make him stand out, which was the last thing he wanted. And even if it didn’t, where would he go? Ventspils wasn’t his town; aside from the men of the underground, he had no friends and hardly any acquaintances here.

  After a last quick swig, the painter set down his empty mug. “Maybe we’d better not hang around and wait for them,” he said, with which conclusion Skarnu could hardly disagree.

  Skarnu didn’t bother finishing his ale. He left the mug on the table and followed the other man out. “Where do we go now?” he asked.

  “There are places,” the painter said, an answer that wasn’t an answer. After a moment, Skarnu realized the underground leader had security concerns of his own. Sure enough, the man went on, “I don’t think we’ll have to blindfold you.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it.” Skarnu had intended the words to be sarcastic. They didn’t come out that way. The Unkerlanters might have the Algarvians on the run in the distant west, but here in Valmiera the redheads could still make their handful of foes dance to their tune.

  Fernao was studying his Kuusaman. That was, he understood, a curious thing for a Lagoan mage to do. Though Lagoas and Kuusamo shared the large island off the southeastern coast of Derlavai, his countrymen were in the habit of looking in the direction of the mainland and not toward their eastern neighbors, whom they usually regarded as little more than amusing rustics.

  That was true even though a lot of Lagoans had some Kuusaman blood. Fernao’s height and his red hair proved him of mainly Algarvic stock, but his narrow, slanted eyes showed it wasn’t pure. Lagoans also did their best not to notice that Kuusamo outweighed their kingdom about three to one.

  Outside, a storm that had blown up from the south did its best to turn this stretch of Kuusamo into the land of the Ice People. The wind howled. Snow drifted around the hostel the soldiers of the Seven Princes had run up here in the middle of nowhere. The district of Naantali lay so far south, the sun rose above the horizon for only a little while each day.

  Down on the austral continent, of course, it wouldn’t have risen at all for a while on either side of the winter solstice. Having seen the land of the Ice People in midwinter, Fernao knew that all too well. Here, he had a coal-burning stove, not the brazier he’d fed lumps of dried camel dung.

  “I shall shovel snow,” he murmured: a particularly apt paradigm. “You will shovel snow. He, she, it will shovel snow. We shall shovel snow. You-plural will shovel snow. They—”

  Someone knocked on the door. “One moment!” Fernao called, not in Kuusaman but in classical Kaunian, the language he really did share with his Kuusaman colleagues. Just getting to the door took rather more than a moment. He had to lever himself up from his stool with the help of a cane, grab the crutch that leaned by the chair, and use both of them to cross the room and reach the doorway.

  And all of that, he thought as he opened the door, was progress. He’d almost died when an Algarvian egg burst too close to him down in the land of the Ice People. His leg had been shattered. Only in the past few days had the Kuusaman healers released what was left of it from its immobilizing plaster prison.

  Pekka stood in the hall outside. “Hello,” she said, also in classical Kaunian, the widespread language of scholarship. “I hope I did not interrupt any important calculations. I hate it when people do that to me.”

  “No.” Fernao smiled down at her. Like most of her countrymen—the exceptions being those who had some Lagoan blood—she was short and slim and dark, with a wide face, high cheekbones, and eyes slanted like his own. He switched to her language to show what he had been doing: “We shall shovel snow. You-plural will shovel snow. They will shovel snow.”

  She laughed. Against her golden skin, her teeth seemed even whiter than they were. A moment later, she sobered and nodded. “Your accent is quite good,” she said, first in Kaunian, then in her own tongue.

  “Thanks,” Fernao said in Kuusaman. Then he returned to the classical tongue: “I have always had a knack for learning languages, but yours is different from any other I have tried to pick up.” Awkwardly, he stepped aside. “Please come in. Sit down. Make yourself at home.”

  “I wish I were at home,” Pekka said. “I wish my husband were at home, too. I miss my family.” Her husband, Fernao knew, was no less a sorcerer than she, but one of a more practical bent. As Pekka walked past, she asked, “Were you using the stool or the bed? I do not want to disturb you.”

  “The stool,” Fernao answered. Pekka had already sat down on the bed by the time he closed the door, hobbled back across the chamber, and carefully lowered himself onto the stool. He propped the crutch where he could easily reach it before saying, “And what can I do for you this morning?”

  He knew what he wouldn’t have minded doing, not for her but with her. He’d always reckoned Kuusaman women too small and skinny to be very interesting, but was changing his mind about Pekka. That was probably because, working alongside her, he’d come to think of her as colleague and friend, to admire her wits as well as her body. Whatever the reason, his interest was real.

  He kept quiet about it. By the way she spoke about Leino, her husband, and Uto, her son, she wasn’t interested in him or in anyone but them. Making advances would have been worse than rude—it would have been futile. Though a good theoretical sorcerer, Fernao was a practical man in other ways. Stretching out his legs in front of him, he waited to hear what Pekka had to say.

  She hesitated, something she seldom did. At last, she answered, “Have you done any more work on Ilmarinen’s contention?”

  “Which contention do you mean?” he said, as innocently as he could. “He has so many of them.”

  That got him another smile from Pekka. Like the first, it didn’t last long. “You know which one,” she said. “No matter how many strange ideas Ilmarinen comes up with, only one really matters to us now.”

  And that was also true. Fernao sighed. He didn’t like admitting, even to himself, how true it was. Here, though, he had no choice. Pointing out the window—the double-glazed window that helped hold winter at
bay—in the direction of the latest release of sorcerous energy the Kuusaman experimental team had touched off, he said, “That was fresh grass, summer grass, he pulled up from the middle of the crater.”

  “I know,” Pekka said softly. “Fresh grass in the middle of—this.” She pointed out the window, too, at the snow swirling past in the grip of the whistling wind. More softly still, she added, “It can mean just one thing.”

  Fernao sighed again. “The calculations suggested it all along. So did the other experimental results. No wonder Ilmarinen got angry at us when we didn’t want to face what that meant.”

  Pekka’s laugh was more rueful than anything else. “If Ilmarinen had not got angry over that, he would have got angry over something else,” she said. “Getting angry, and getting other people angry, is what he enjoys more than anything else these days. But …” She stopped; she didn’t want to say what followed logically from Ilmarinen’s grass, either. In the end, she did: “We really do seem to be drawing our energy in these experiments by twisting time itself.”

  There. It was out Fernao didn’t want to hear it, any more than he’d wanted to say it. But now that Pekka had said it, he could only nod. “Aye. That is what the numbers say, sure enough.” For once, he was glad to be speaking classical Kaunian. It let him sound more detached, more objective—and a lot less frightened—than he really was.

  “I think the numbers also say we can only draw energy from it when we send one set of animals racing forward and the other racing back,” Pekka said. “We cannot do any more meddling than that … can we?” She sounded frightened, too, as if she were pleading for reassurance.

  Fernao gave her what reassurance he could: “I read the calculations the same way. So does Siuntio. And so does Ilmarinen, for all his bluff and bluster.”

  “I know,” Pekka said. “I have had long talks with both of them—talks much more worried than this one.” Maybe she found Kaunian distancing, too. But she added, “What if the Algarvians are also calculating—calculating and coming up with different answers?”

  For effect, Fernao tried a few words of Kuusaman: “Then we’re all in trouble.” Pekka let out a startled laugh, then nodded. Fernao wished he could have gone on in her language, but had to drop back into classical Kaunian: “But most of their mages are busy with their murderous magic, and the rest really should get the same results we have.”

  “Powers above, I hope so!” Pekka exclaimed. “The energy release is dreadful enough as is, but the world could not stand having its past revised and edited.”

  Before Fernao could answer, someone else knocked on the door. Pekka sprang up and opened it before Fernao could start what was for him the long, slow, involved process of rising. “Oh, hello, my dear,” Master Siuntio said in Kuusaman before courteously switching to classical Kaunian so Fernao could follow: “I came to ask if our distinguished Lagoan colleague would care to join me for dinner. Now I ask you the same question as well.”

  “I would be delighted, sir,” Fernao said, and did struggle to his feet.

  “And I,” Pekka agreed. “Things may look brighter once we have some food and drink inside us.”

  A buffet waited in the dining room. Fernao piled Kuusaman smoked salmon—as good as any in the world—on a chewy roll, and added slices of onion and of hard-cooked egg and pickled cucumber. Along with a mug of ale, that made a dinner to keep him going till suppertime. “Would you like me to carry those for you?” Pekka asked.

  “If you would be so kind—the plate, anyhow,” Fernao answered. “I can manage the mug. Now I have two hands, but I would need three.” Till not too long before, he’d had an arm in a cast as well as a leg. Then he’d needed four hands and possessed only one.

  Pekka had built a sandwich almost as formidable as his own. She did some substantial damage to it before asking Siuntio, “Master, do you think you will find any loopholes in the spells we are crafting?”

  Siuntio gently shook his head. He looked more like a kindly grandfather than the leading theoretical sorcerer of his generation. “No,” he said. “We have been over this ground before, you know. I see extravagant energy releases, aye, far more extravagant than we could get from any other source. But I see no way to achieve anything but that. We cannot sneak back through the holes we tear in time—and a good thing we can’t, too.”

  “I agree,” Fernao said, gulping down a large mouthful of salmon to make sure his words came clear. “On both counts, I agree.”

  “I don’t believe even Ilmarinen will disagree on this,” Siuntio said.

  “Disagree on what?” Ilmarinen asked, striding into the dining hall as if naming him could conjure him up. With a wispy white chin beard, wild hair, and gleaming eyes, he might have been Siuntio’s raffish brother. But he, too, was a formidable mage. “Disagree on what?” he repeated.

  “On the possibility of manipulating time along with extracting energy from it,” Siuntio told him.

  “Well, that doesn’t look like it’s in the math,” Ilmarinen said. “On the other hand, you never can tell.” He poured himself a mug of ale and then, for good measure, another. “Now this is a proper dinner,” he declared as he sat down by Fernao.

  “Do you truly think the question remains unanswered?” Fernao asked him.

  “You never can tell,” Ilmarinen said again, probably as much to annoy Fernao as because he really believed it. “We haven’t been looking all that long, and neither have the redheads—excuse me, the Algarvians.” Fernao had red hair, too. Ilmarinen went on: “A good thing the Algarvians are too taken up with killing people to power their magic to look anywhere else. Aye, a very good thing.” He emptied the mugs in quick succession, then went back and filled them again.

  Two

  A guard clattered his bludgeon against the iron bars of Talsu’s cell. “Come on, you cursed traitor, get up!” the guard shouted at him. “You think this is a hostel, eh? Do you?”

  “No, sir. I don’t think that, sir,” Talsu replied as he sprang off his cot and stood at attention beside it. He had to give a soft answer, or else the guard and maybe three or four of his comrades would swarm into the cell and use their bludgeons on him instead of on the bars. He’d got one beating for talking back. He didn’t want another one.

  “You’d cursed well better not,” the guard snarled before stamping down the hall to waken the prisoner in the next cell after not enough sleep.

  Talsu was glad when he couldn’t see the ugly lout any more. The prison guard was as much a Jelgavan as he was: a blond man who wore trousers. But he served Mainardo, the younger brother King Mezentio of Algarve had installed on the Jelgavan throne, as readily as he’d ever served King Donalitu. Donalitu had fled when Jelgava fell. His dogs had stayed behind, and wagged their tails for their new masters.

  Another Jelgavan came by a few minutes later. He shoved a bowl into Talsu’s cell. The barley mush in the bowl smelled sour, almost nasty. Talsu spooned it up just the same. If he didn’t eat what the gaolers fed him, he would have do make do on the cockroaches that swarmed across the floor of his cell or, if he was extraordinarily lucky, on the rats that got whatever the roaches missed—and got their share of roaches, too.

  The cell didn’t even boast a chamber pot. He pissed in a corner, hoping he was drowning some roaches as he did it. Then he went back and sat down on his cot. He had to be plainly visible when the guard collected his bowl and spoon. If he wasn’t, the guard would assume he’d used the tin spoon to dig a hole through the stone floor and escape. Then he would suffer, and so would everyone else in this wing of the prison.

  As always, the guard came by with a list and a pen. He scooped up the bowl and the spoon, checked them off on the list, and glared through the bars at Talsu. “Don’t look so bloody innocent,” he growled. “You’re not. If you were, you wouldn’t be here. You hear me?”

  “Aye, sir. I hear you, sir,” Talsu answered. If he didn’t sit there looking innocent, the guards would decide he was insolent. That rated a beating, too. As best
he could tell, he couldn’t win.

  Of course you can’t win, fool, he thought. If you could, you wouldn’t be stuck here. He felt like kicking himself. But how could he have guessed that the silversmith who taught classical Kaunian to would-be patriots in Skrunda was in fact an Algarvian cat’s-paw? As soon as Talsu wanted to do more than learn the old language, as soon as he wanted to strike a blow against the redheads who occupied his kingdom, he’d gone to Kugu. Who was more likely to know how to put one foe of the Algarvians in touch with others? The logic was perfect—or it would have been, if Mezentio’s men hadn’t stayed a jump ahead.

  Algarvians had caught him. They’d said he was in their hands. But they must have decided he wasn’t that important, because they’d given him to their Jelgavan henchmen for disposal. Thanks to the fears of Jelgava’s kings, her dungeons had been notorious even before the redheads overran the kingdom; Talsu doubted they’d improved since.

  After breakfast, the Jelgavan guards retreated to the ends of the corridors. Cautiously, captives began calling back and forth from one cell to another. They were cautious for a couple of good reasons. Talk was against the rules; the gaolers could punish them for it no matter how innocuous their words were. And if their words weren’t so innocuous but did get overheard … Talsu didn’t like to think about what would happen then. For the most part, he kept quiet.

  His corridor’s exercise period came at midmorning. One by one, the guards unlocked the cells. “Come along,” their sergeant said. “Don’t dawdle. Don’t give us any trouble.” No one seemed inclined to give them trouble: they carried sticks now, not truncheons.

  Along with his fellow unfortunates, Talsu shuffled down the corridor and out into the exercise yard. There, under the watchful eyes of the guards, he walked back and forth, back and forth, for an hour. The stone walls were so high, he got not a glimpse of the outside world. He had no idea in what part of Jelgava the prison was. But he could look up and see the sky. After spending the rest of the day locked away from light and air, he found that precious beyond belief.