Out of the Darkness

Even if I did think you were wrong, you and the rest of the Seven would go right on down the ley line you’ve chosen. Pekka knew that perfectly well. But, in fact, she agreed with the prince. “No, your Highness. If this lets us win the war quickly, then we should do it. I hope the Gongs give up before we loose the magic on them, though.”

“Well, so do I-but if not, not,” Juhainen said. “Is there anything else, Mistress Pekka?” When Pekka shook her head, the prince gestured to his crystallomancer, who broke the etheric connection. Light flared in the crystal in front of Pekka, and then it went dark and inert.

She walked back to her chamber. Fernao sat at the desk there, filling leaves of foolscap with calculations. He set down the pen and levered himself upright with the help of his cane. “Hello,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Pekka said, smiling. It was true. Things being as they were, she didn’t even have to feel guilty when she said it. But that thought by itself was enough to raise guilt in her. When Fernao held out his arms to hug her, she slipped into his embrace as if it could shield her from all the complications of the world. She wished it were so. Unfortunately, she knew better.

After kissing her, Fernao asked, “What did the prince say?”

That brought another piece of the outside world into the chamber-not that it hadn’t already been there on the leaves of foolscap. “About what we thought,” Pekka said. “The Gongs don’t seem to believe that we can do this to them, in spite of the demonstration at Becsehely.”

“They’re fools,” Fernao said.

“They’re a stubborn folk. They always have been,” Pekka said. “If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have been able to keep so much of their own way of life while they added on modern, eastern Derlavaian-style sorcerous techniques. They’re strange and they’re hard, and we’re going to have to break them.”

“Right now, I’d do almost anything to end the Derlavaian War.” Fernao pointed to the papers on Pekka’s desk. “We can do this. Gyorvar’s farther away than that Becsehely place, but not enough to change the spell much. There’s no sign the Gyongyosians have any counterspells in place.”

“I’m not sure there are any counterspells for this magecraft,” Pekka said.

“I’m not sure there are, either, but we’re just starting to explore it, so there may be,” Fernao said. Pekka nodded; he had a point. He went on, “Whether there are or not, there certainly aren’t any up for Gyorvar. If we want to …” He snapped his fingers. “We can.”

“I know.” Pekka clicked her tongue between her teeth. “I don’t like to think about being able to wreck a city from halfway around the world.”

“Neither do I,” Fernao said. “But I’ll tell you this: I’d rather be able to do it than to know someone else could do it to me and I couldn’t answer back.”

Pekka thought about that, too, then slowly nodded. “If we have to do this to Gyorvar, I wonder how King Swemmel will take it,” she said. “Actually, I don’t wonder. I’ve got a pretty good idea: Swemmel will have fawns.”

“ ‘Have kittens,’ we’d say in Lagoan,” Fernao told her. “Amounts to about the same thing either way, I suppose. I wonder how long the Unkerlanters will take to figure out what we’ve done and how we’ve done it.”

“Years,” Pekka said confidently. “They’re brave and they’re very tough and they’re very big, but they’re very backward, too.”

“I wonder. I really do,” Fernao said. “The Algarvians thought the same thing about them, I suppose, and look at the surprise they got.”

“They deserved the surprise they got,” Pekka said. “They should have got more and worse, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Fernao wagged a finger at her in an Algarvic gesture. “What’s more, you know it’s not what I meant. Unkerlanter mages turned out to know their business pretty well. If they matched what Mezentio’s men did, why shouldn’t they match us, too?”

“It doesn’t seem likely to me,” Pekka said. “What will Swemmel do to push them forward? Kill the sorcerers who tell him it can’t be done as fast as he wants?”

She’d meant it for a joke, but Fernao nodded. “He might. Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of being boiled alive in the morning.”

Pekka made a horrible face. “That’s disgusting.”

“I know,” Fernao answered. “That doesn’t mean it won’t work.”

“There are times I wish I’d never performed my experiments,” Pekka said.

“If you hadn’t, someone else would have,” Fernao said. “It might have been an Algarvian or an Unkerlanter. If anyone can do this, better Kuusamo and Lagoas than most other places I could name.”

“I think you’re right,” she said. “If you were to ask an Algarvian or an Unkerlanter, though, he would tell you different.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Fernao agreed. “That doesn’t mean they’d know what they were talking about, though.” He laughed. “After all, what are they but a bunch of ignorant foreigners?”