Out of the Darkness

And so? Istvan wondered. If Arpad had the brains of a carrot, he would have realized’ Kuusamo was trying to warn us, not trying to bluff us. Now he’s paid for being wrong-along with the stars only know how many people who never did anyone any harm. If there’s any justice, the stars will refuse to shine on his spirit.

“Other lands just have kings,” Istvan said. “Maybe we can get along with nothing more than a king, too.”

“But-” Three shocked-sounding men began an automatic protest.

Istvan cut them off with a sharp chopping motion of his right hand. “We’d better be able to get along with nothing more than a king. How much good did Ekrekek Arpad do us? We lost the war, we lost Gyorvar-stars above, we might as well have had a goat-eating savage on the throne.”

Two of the soldiers at the window with him backed away, as if afraid he had some deadly, highly contagious disease. The third one, a corporal, said, “You’re right, by the stars.”

“I wonder what we’ll do now, and who the new Ekrekek or King or whatever he is of Gyongyos will be,” Istvan said, and then, with a shrug, “It probably won’t matter, not to the likes of us.”

“No,” said the underofficer who’d nodded-his name was Diosgyor. “Only thing that matters to us is whether they let us out.”

Captain Petofi strode into the barracks hall in time to hear that. “We’ll need to be very lucky to get away,” he said.

“Why?” Istvan said in dismay. “We were right. Everything we told them was true-and everything we warned them about came true.”

Petofi nodded. “All the more reason for locking us up and losing the key, wouldn’t you say, Sergeant? Few offenses more dangerous than proving right when your superiors say you must be wrong. Of course”-he grimaced-”most of our superiors, or the ones immediately concerned with us, are dead.”

“Uh-of course.” Istvan’s stomach lurched. He hadn’t even tried to think about how many people might have died in Gyorvar. Thinking about the ekrekek and his kinsfolk was bad enough. Add in all the ordinary men and women and children … “By the stars, sir, this wasn’t war. This was murder!”

“You’re half right,” Petofl said. “In a way, looked at from the Kuusaman point of view, this was murder. But the slanteyes did their best not to commit it. They could have loosed this magic on Gyorvar as soon as they found it. Instead, they let us watch when they threw Becsehely on the pyre. They let us watch and take back word of what we’d seen. Arpad wouldn’t hear it, though.” He sighed. “Wouldn’t you say he helped kill himself, and all of Gyorvar with himself?”

Slowly, Istvan nodded. Corporal Diosgyor said, “Can we still go on fighting the war now?”

“By the stars, I hope not!” Istvan and Captain Petofi exclaimed at the same time. It was impossible to say which of them sounded more horrified. And then Istvan let out a different cry of horror and despair.

“What’s wrong?” This time, Petofi and Diosgyor spoke together.

“My comrade, Corporal Kun,” Istvan said. “He gave the Eyes and Ears what they wanted. . and he lives-lived-in Gyorvar. We fought together on Obuda, in the forests of Unkerlant, and on Becsehely. He was the cleverest man I ever knew.” He would never have praised Kun so where the ex-mage’s apprentice could hear him. Now, though, Kun would never hear anything again. “If either of us died, I thought I’d surely be the one.”

“May the stars shine on his spirit forevermore,” Petofi said. “If he was in Gyorvar, that is the most any man can hope for.”

“I know,” Istvan said heavily. He was a warrior from a warrior race. Tears were for women, or so he’d heard from boyhood. He’d never come so close to shedding them as he did now, not since he’d grown out of childish things. “He was … a brother to me, a brother in arms.”

“Many of us have lost brothers,” Petofi said. “With Gyorvar gone, Gyongyos has had its heart torn from it. And what can we do? I have no answers.”

Istvan had no answers, either. No one left alive did. He was sure of that. And the answers Ekrekek Arpad and the other dead had come up with were wrong. He’d been sure of that even before fire enfolded Gyorvar in its dreadful embrace. Now the whole world knew it was true.

Leudast knew he’d passed through the enormous forests of western Unkerlant on his way to fight the Gongs in the Elsung Mountains. He hadn’t imagined how huge they really were. Back in those distant days, that halfhearted border war and Gyongyos’ skirmishes with Kuusamo among the islands of the Bothnian Ocean had been the only flareups in an otherwise peaceful world. The rest of Derlavai had gone through six years of darkness-and the Gongs were still fighting Unkerlant here in the uttermost west and the slanteyes in the Bothnian Ocean.