Through the Darkness

“I know,” Vanai said, “but if only I were free to move around in Eoforwic--well, after things calm down again, anyhow. Earlier today, I was thinking that being caged up here wasn’t so bad. I haven’t thought anything like that for a long time. I don’t think I ever thought anything like that before.”

Ealstan nodded. “I don’t blame you. It’s .. . pretty bad out there. Some of the fighting came right up to Ethelhelm’s block of flats, and that sort of thing doesn’t usually go on in the fancy parts of town.”

“What did your singer friend have to say?” Vanai asked. “Was he cheering the rioters on? Anybody with Kaunian blood ought to be.”

“I don’t quite know.” Ealstan sighed. “He doesn’t like the redheads-- we’ve seen that--but he doesn’t want to lose what he’s got, either. To hang on to it, he has to play along with them, at least some. And when he plays along with them, he starts ...” He groped for a phrase.

Vanai suggested one: “Forgiving things?”

“No, that goes too far.” Ealstan shook his head. “Not seeing things, maybe.” He held up a hand before Vanai could say anything. “Aye, I know that’s just about as bad. Maybe not quite, though.”

“Maybe.” Vanai didn’t believe it, but didn’t feel like starting an argument.

Again, Ealstan seemed to want to change the subject: “If you can get the magic to work, that would be wonderful. It would mean we’d be safe moving out of this flat, since . . .” He shook his head. “We could move out.”

What hadn’t he said there? Not since you wouldn’t look like a Kaunian anymore. If he’d meant that, he would have said it. What then? Another possibility sprang into Vanai’s mind: since Ethelhelm knows where we live and might blab to the Algarvians. Ealstan wouldn’t want to say that out loud. He probably didn’t even want to think it. But maybe he hadn’t changed the subject after all.

He cocked his head to one side. “I wonder what you’d look like as a Forthwegian. Would you feel different, too?” He used his hands to sketch figures in the air, contrasting her slimness to his own more solid build, which was typical of Forthwegians.

“I don’t know,” Vanai answered. “I’m not really a mage, remember.” Her grandfather would have been able to say. She was sure of that. Brivibas knew a lot about magecraft, especially the history of magecraft. He’d used sorcery in his own historical research. She wondered how much else he might use if he wanted to. A good deal, she suspected. But would he ever think to do so? That was another question altogether.

Ealstan’s thoughts had been running along another, and a distinctively masculine, ley line. With a small chuckle, he said, “If you look different and feel different, too, it would almost be like making love to somebody else.”

“Would it?” Vanai eyed him from under lowered brows. “And do you want to be making love to somebody else?”

He was bright enough to recognize the danger in that one, and hastily shook his head. “Of course not,” he answered, and Vanai had to hide a smile at how emphatic he sounded. But he didn’t quite back away from everything he’d said: “It would just be like choosing a different posture, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Vanai said. Ealstan was fonder of different postures than she was, for Major Spinello had forced them on her. But Ealstan didn’t know about Spinello, for which Vanai was heartily glad. She gave her lover the benefit of the doubt. “All right, sweetheart.”

And then, while Ealstan worked on columns of figures (“Powers above only know when I’ll be able to get these to my clients,” he said, but kept working anyhow), Vanai went back to picking the Forthwegian spell to pieces and rebuilding it in classical Kaunian. When she noticed her new version had a partial rhyme scheme, her hopes lifted: the original surely would have rhymed, to make memorizing it easier. She tried alternative words to give more rhymes. Some she discarded; others fit as well as a snug pair of trousers.

“I have it, I think,” she told Ealstan. “Shall I try it?”

“If you want to,” he answered, “and if you think you can reverse anything that goes wrong.”

Vanai studied her new text. She wasn’t sure of that, and Ealstan, she had to admit, showed good sense in asking her to be. She sighed. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and then, “Can you bring me some books on magecraft?”

“Tomorrow? No,” Ealstan said. “When things settle down? Of course.” Vanai sighed again, but then she nodded.

Cornelu didn’t like walking through the streets of Setubal. For one thing, he still had trouble reading Lagoan, which reminded him how much a stranger he was in the capital of Lagoas and how much a stranger he’d remain. He had never wanted to be a Lagoan; what he wanted was to be a free Sibian in a free Sibiu.