Out of the Darkness

“Did he ever speak to you about the way Algarve treated captives from the underground it captured?”

“No,” Krasta said. “But he wouldn’t do anything to save the Kaunian Column of Victory when the redheads knocked it over.”

“That is also a crime against Kaunianity,” one of the civilian judges said. “Still, evidence suggests he was not a primary perpetrator.”

“We had hoped the Algarvian might have been more forthcoming with you,” the other judge in black said.

“I was forthcoming in her, not with her,” Lurcanio said with a nasty grin.

“And you weren’t half as good as you think you were, either!” Krasta squealed furiously, while the judges banged their gavels again and again. That little mage in the first row stirred, but Krasta fixed him with such a glare, he kept his mouth shut.

“That will be quite enough of that,” the military judge declared. “Very well, Marchioness Krasta, you may stand down from the witness box. As my colleague said, we hoped you might have more to offer.”

“Oh, I have plenty to offer,” Krasta said. “I hope you blaze him. He has his nerve, dragging my name through the dirt.”

“Marchioness, when you chose to sleep beside him for four years, you dragged your own name through the dirt to a degree greater than anyone else could have done. You are dismissed.”

Outside the courtroom, Krasta expected another swarm of vicious news-sheet scribblers. But they had vanished, as if a wind had risen and blown away a pile of rubbish. Instead, news-sheet hawkers were out in force, all screaming out the identical headline: “Gyongyos surrenders! Derlavaian War ends!”

“Isn’t it splendid, milady?” Krasta’s driver said as he handed her up into the carriage. “The war’s finally over!”

“Aye, splendid,” she said. Part of her really meant it. The rest was irked: the end of the war had forced her out of public notice. True, the notice would have been unflattering. But if no one noticed her at all, how could she be sure she really existed?

Fernao peered down from his perch behind the dragonflier. Once this journey was done, he hoped with all his heart never to travel on dragonback again. He’d set out from Kihlanki in easternmost Kuusamo six days before, and had island-hopped his way east across the Bothnian Ocean. He wasn’t quite saddlesore, but he wasn’t far from it, either. The dragons and dragonfliers had changed several times a day. He lacked that luxury, and remained his weary self.

They’d flown over the Balaton Islands earlier in the day. Now, at last, they passed above the narrow sea separating the Balatons from the Gyongyosian mainland. Gyorvar lay not far ahead.

A Gyongyosian dragon rose to meet the newcomer. Seeing the beast, gaudy in red and yellow and blue and black, relieved Fernao and alarmed him at the same time. The Gongs were supposed to send up a dragon to meet him and guide him to a working dragon farm outside shattered Gyorvar. They were supposed to, aye. But what if this weren’t the appointed beast, but a lone-wolf dragonflier intent on whatever revenge he could get from a Kuusaman dragon and a Lagoan mage? Because the Gyongyosians were a warrior race, such worries went through Fernao’s mind as the other dragon neared. They’d surrendered, but did they really mean it?

Then the Gong on the dragon’s back waved and pointed southeast. Fernao and his dragonflier waved back. The dragonflier whacked his mount with a goad. After a couple of bad-tempered screeches, it followed the Gyongyosian beast.

Tawny-bearded dragon handlers secured the Kuusaman beast to a spike: dragon farms the world around operated on similar principles. Fernao slid down from his perch on the dragon’s back and looked around. The grass under his feet was. . grass. Some of the bushes a little farther away looked unfamiliar to him, but he would have had to be an herbalist to recognize the differences. The buildings on the edge of the dragon farm. .

They had steeply pitched roofs. In that, they resembled buildings in Kuusamo and Lagoas and Unkerlant, which also saw a lot of snow. But they didn’t look like houses or hostels. They looked like gray stone fortresses. They were spaced well apart from one another, too, as if the Gyongyosians didn’t think it safe to have them too close together. When the Gongs weren’t warring with their neighbors, they often fought among themselves. Their architecture showed it, too.

A man emerged from the nearest of those fortresslike buildings and walked toward Fernao. He wore a sheepskin jacket over wool leggings. Gray streaked his beard and hair. “You are the mage from Kuusamo?” he called in slow, oddly accented, but understandable classical Kaunian.

“I am Fernao, a mage of the first rank, aye. Actually, I represent both Lagoas, my own kingdom, and Kuusamo,” Fernao replied. “And you are, sir …?”

“I am called Vorosmarty, a mage of five stars,” the Gyongyosian said. “It is a rank more or less equal to your own. How can you be trusted to represent two kingdoms?”