Out of the Darkness

I don’t intend to stumble, he thought, as Pekka pointed to him and he took up the chant. The passes he used were a good deal more elegant-and more difficult- than those the mages here had worked out. He accepted the revised words they’d come up with. Safety for elegance was a reasonable trade. But he thought their passes ugly. He felt sure he could manage these, and so he used them.

No mage intends to stumble, went through his mind. By then, though, he’d finished that portion of the spell. He pointed to Fernao and poised himself to deflect any trouble if the Lagoan slipped. Fernao still irked Ilmarinen, but no denying he’d come a long way in a short time.

He got through his portion of the spell without difficulty, even if Ilmarinen reckoned his passes graceless. Then Pekka took over once more, and brought the charm up to its first plateau. Ilmarinen could feel the power already gathered, and could also sense the shape and size of the power still to be drawn. As he sensed it, awe washed over him. Could I have managed this by myself? I thought I could, but maybe I was wrong. Arrogance brings down as many mages as clumsiness.

Pekka pointed to him. He nodded, stopped thinking, and started incanting once more. They’d given him the task of getting the cantrip past that first plateau, up to the point where the power, the sorcerous energy, having all been gathered, could be launched against any target the mages chose.

Ilmarinen felt as if he were pushing a boulder up a hill. For a bad moment, he wondered if the boulder would roll down over him and crush him. Then, without any fuss, he felt added strength from Pekka and from Fernao. The Lagoan mage nodded to him, as if to say, We can do it. And, with his help, they could. That boulder of power went up the metaphorical hill again-and, somehow, began to move up it faster and faster, which just proved metaphor was not only slippery but also dangerous.

“Now!” Ilmarinen grunted hoarsely. Pekka pointed to Raahe, Alkio, and Piilis, Fernao to the secondary sorcerers. The power didn’t belong here. It needed to be on the far side of the world, where a new day would soon be dawning.

With the other mages in the blockhouse, Ilmarinen felt the sorcerous energy fly east. They cried out in triumph. And then, some tiny fraction of a heartbeat later, Ilmarinen and the others felt it strike home against Gyorvar.

He cried out again, almost before the echoes of his first shout had faded. But what he felt this time was a long way from triumph.

When Istvan went back to Gyongyos, he hadn’t expected merely to exchange one captives’ camp for another. By now, though, he’d concluded he wouldn’t be getting out of this center near Gyorvar any time soon. All the guards spoke his language. The food was what he was used to. But for those details, he might as well have been back on Obuda.

“You have a simple way to go free,” Balazs told him. The interrogator spoke in calm, reasonable tones: “All you need do, Sergeant, is say you are convinced the accursed Kuusamans, may the stars never shine on them, tried to trick and terrorize you with their show on Becsehely.”

“All I have to do is lie, you mean,” Istvan said sourly. “All I have to do is turn my back on the stars.”

“Your attitude is most uncooperative,” Balazs said.

“I am trying to tell you the truth,” Istvan said in something not far from despair. “If you don’t listen, what will happen to Gyongyos?”

“Nothing much, I expect,” the interrogator answered. “Nothing much has happened to our stars-beloved land up till now. Why should that change?”

“Because the slanteyes have given us a little time to make up our minds,” Istvan said. “Pretty soon, they’ll go ahead and do this to us.”

“If they can, which I do not believe-which everyone with a dram of sense, from Ekrekek Arpad on down, does not believe,” Balazs said. “Most of your comrades have also seen sense and been released. You know what you have to do to join them. Why make an avalanche of a snowflake?”

“You would say the same thing if you were trying to talk me into eating goat,” Istvan said. The scar on his left hand throbbed. He ignored it. And, where nothing else had, that remark succeeded in insulting Balazs. He stalked away, his nose in the air, and bothered neither Istvan nor Captain Petofi the rest of the day.

Petofi noticed the interrogator’s absence. At supper, he asked why Balazs had gone missing. Istvan explained. The officer, normally a dour man, laughed out loud. But then he sobered. “He probably went into Gyorvar to denounce you,” he warned. “You may have got satisfaction now, but for how long will you keep it?”

Istvan shrugged. “They already have me in what might as well be another captives’ camp. What can they do to me that’s so much worse?”