Darkness Descending

“Makes sense to me,” scar-faced Dagulf had said: also cautiously, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one, not even his wife, could overhear.

Now Waddo stood in the center of the square, waiting to be noticed. He struck a pose that guaranteed he would be noticed. “My friends,” he said in a loud voice. A couple of people looked his way, but only a couple; he didn’t have a lot of friends in the village. Then he spoke again, even louder: “People of Zossen, I have an important announcement. In one hour’s time, I shall bring our precious crystal from my home to the square here, so that you may listen to an address by our famous, glorious, and illustrious sovereign. His Majesty King Swemmel will speak to you on the state of our war against the barbarous savages of Algarve.”

Off he went, trying to look important. He had a right to look important: through his crystal, the king would speak to the village. Garivald had never imagined such a thing. If he got close enough to the crystal, he might actually see King Swemmel, though the king would not see him.

That was exciting. But, try as Waddo would to walk with the best swagger he could with his bad leg, that nasty, slinking hint of fear stayed in his step. It had nothing to do with the limp, either. Garivald didn’t like it. If Waddo was afraid, he probably had good reason to be afraid. Garivald wondered what the firstman had heard on the crystal and then kept to himself.

Whatever it was, Garivald couldn’t do anything about it. He hurried back to his own house to tell Annore and Syrivald the astonishing news. “The king?” his wife said, her dark eyes going wide. Like Garivald, like most Unkerlanters, she was solid and swarthy, with a proud nose. She repeated herself, as if she couldn’t believe it: “King Swemmel will talk to our village?”

“Powers above,” Syrivald added around a crust of black bread. Leuba, a toddler chewing on another crust, was too little to care whether Swemmel spoke to Zossen or not.

“I think he’s going to be talking to the whole kingdom,” Garivald said, “or to as many places as have crystals, anyhow.”

“Will we go see him?” Syrivald asked.

“Aye, we will,” his father answered. “I want to find out what the truth is about this miserable war we’ve got ourselves into with Algarve.” After he’d spoken, he paused to wonder how much of the truth King Swemmel was likely to tell.

Annore said, “If we’re going to go, we’d better go now, so we can get up close to the crystal.” Suiting action to word, she scooped up Leuba and carried the toddler out of the house. Garivald and Syrivald followed.

They weren’t the only family with the same idea. The square got as crowded as Garivald ever remembered seeing it, and then a little more crowded than that. Not everyone in Zossen had heard Waddo’s announcement, but no one could miss friends and neighbors and relatives heading for the square. People jockeyed for position, stepped on one another’s toes, and loosed a few judicious elbows. Garivald caught one, but he gave it back with interest.

“I don’t know what we’re squabbling about,” somebody said. “Waddo’s not even here with the crystal yet.” That comment produced a brief, embarrassed pause in the pushing and shoving, but they soon resumed.

“Here he comes!” Three people said it at once. Everybody surged toward Waddo, who carried the crystal on a cushion whose cover his wife had embroidered! “Make way!” That was three different people.

Waddo hadn’t had such an eager, enthusiastic reception since . . . Thinking back on it, Garivald couldn’t remember the firstman ever getting such a reception. But, of course, it wasn’t really for him; it was for the crystal he bore.

“Don’t drop it!” someone told him.

“Set it on a stool,” someone else said. “That way, more of us will have a chance to see.”

Waddo took that suggestion, though he ignored the other one. “It won’t be more than a few minutes before his Majesty speaks to us,” he said. “He will set our minds at rest about the many things that trouble us.”

Garivald doubted whether Swemmel would do any such thing. But he shouldered his way through the crowd till he stood in the second row and could peer at the crystal over the shoulders of the people in front of him. Inactive at the moment, the crystal might as well have been an ordinary ball of glass.

Then, abruptly, it... changed. Garivald had heard stories of crystals in use, of course, but he’d never seen one work till now. First, light suffused it. Then, as the brief glow faded, he saw King Swemmel’s long, pale, narrow face looking at him. But the other villagers’ exclamations, they all saw the king looking at them, too, even though they surrounded the crystal. After the magic that made the crystal work, Garivald supposed the one that let it be viewed from any direction was a small thing by comparison. It impressed him just the same.