Through the Darkness

From flat on his back, he glared up at the earnest young woman. “I’d rather have stayed whole in the first place,” he growled. She shrank away, fright on her face. The war, or Lagoas’ part of it, was still new. Not many wounded men had come back to Setubal to remind the folk who stayed home of what fighting really meant.

Get used to it, he thought. You’d better get used to it. You’ll see--you’ll hear--worse than me.

The next day--he thought it was the next day, anyhow, but the distillations sometimes made time waver, too--he got a visitor he hadn’t expected to see. The Lagoan officer still seemed absurdly young to be wearing a colonel’s rank badges. “Peixoto!” Fernao said. “Planning to send me back to the austral continent again?’

“If you’re well enough, and if the kingdom needs you, I’ll do it in a heartbeat,” the young colonel answered. “Or I’ll go myself, or I’ll send a fisherman, or I’ll do whatever I think needs doing or my superiors tell me to do. That’s my job. But I did want to say I’m sorry you were hurt, and I’m glad you’re on the mend.”

He meant it. Fernao could see as much. That obvious sincerity helped some--but only some. “I’m sorry I was hurt, too,” the mage answered, “and the mending ...” He stopped. Peixoto hadn’t gone through it. How could he understand?

“I know,” Peixoto said sympathetically. Fernao didn’t rise from the bed to brain him, but only because he couldn’t. What did Peixoto know? What could he know? Then the officer undid the top few buttons of his tunic, enough to let Fernao see the edges of some nasty scars. Fernao’s rage eased. He couldn’t guess how Peixoto had picked up those wounds, but the soldier did know something about pain.

“I hope you can keep me out of the land of the Ice People when I’m on my feet again,” Fernao said. On his feet again! How far away that seemed. “I have something else in mind, something where I might serve the kingdom better.”

“Ah?” Colonel Peixoto raised an eyebrow, almost as elegantly as if he were an Algarvian. “And that is?”

By his tone, he didn’t think it could be important, whatever it was. He was itching to ship Fernao back to the austral continent; the mage could see as much. But Fernao said, “The Kuusamans know something about theoretical sorcery that we don’t. I’m not sure what it is--one reason I’m not sure is that they’ve done such a good job of keeping it a secret. They wouldn’t be doing that if it weren’t important.”

Peixoto pursed his lips, then slowly nodded. “Aye,” he said at last. “I know somewhat of that, though not the details, which are none of my business. Well, if the Guild Grandmaster agrees you should be doing this, I doubt anyone from his Majesty’s army will quarrel with him.”

Grandmaster Pinhiero had already visited Fernao a couple of times. The mage made up his mind to make sure the grandmaster knew what he wanted. Pinhiero thought it was important, too; he wouldn’t have sent Fernao to Kuusamo to try to learn about it if he hadn’t. And hadn’t Pinhiero said he’d gone himself? Fernao thought, so, but he’d been too dazed and drugged to trust his memory. If he could escape eating roasted camel’s flesh ever again ... he wouldn’t shed a tear.

Thoughtfully, Peixoto went on, “And you may be needed here to help ward Setubal against the Algarvians’ magic. We blocked one of their assaults when we broke up that captives’ camp near Dukstas. You know about that?”

“I’ve heard a thing or two, the times I’ve been fully among those present,” Fernao answered.

“It could have been very bad. They might have served Setubal as they served Yliharma this past winter,” Peixoto said. “This time, we got wind of it and stopped them before they could get well started. But who knows if we’ll have good luck or bad the next time?”

Fernao knew all about bad luck, knew more than he’d ever wanted to learn about it. Before he could answer Peixoto, a physician in a white tunic and kilt came into the chamber. “Time for your next procedure,” he said cheerfully, gesturing for the colonel to leave. Peixoto did, waving to Fernao as he went. The mage hardly noticed. He was scowling at the physician. Why shouldn’t the whoreson sound cheerful? It wasn’t as if anything were going to happen to him.

Two attendants moved Fernao from his bed to a stretcher. They were well practiced and gentle; he cried out only once. That tied his record; he’d never yet been shifted without at least one howl of anguish. Down the hall he went, and into a clean, white room with a piece of sorcerous apparatus resembling nothing so much as a large rest crate. The spell powering it wasn’t identical to the one that kept mutton chops fresh in his flat, but it wasn’t far removed, either.

Both the attendants and the physician draped themselves with elbow-length rubber gloves covered in silver foil to insulate themselves from the effects of the spell. Then the men who’d borne him here lifted him once more and set him in the crate.