Out of the Darkness

“Hear my judgment,” he declared, and something close to silence fell. Into it, he said, “I charge the two of you to live at peace with each other for the next year, neither of you to do anything-anything, do you hear me? — by word or deed to trouble the other. If you care to pursue these claims at the end of that time, you may, either to me or to his Majesty the king. But be warned: justice may fall on both of you alike. For now, go back to your lands and think on what happens when you aim sticks at each other from a distance of a yard.”

Still glaring at each other, the peasants and their followers filed out of the reception hall. Skarnu hoped he’d bought a year. If he hadn’t, he promised himself both sides in the quarrel would regret it.

Grandmaster Pinhiero looked out of the crystal at Fernao. Fernao had made the etheric connection with the head of the Lagoan Guild of Mages himself; no Kuusaman crystallomancers were in the room with him. Pekka, fortunately, understood he sometimes had to talk with his countrymen without anyone’s overhearing him. “This thing can be done?” Pinhiero said.

“Aye, sir, it can be done,” Fernao answered. “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

“And it will be done if the Gongs are too stubborn to see sense?” the grandmaster persisted.

“I don’t doubt that, either,” Fernao said. He didn’t go into details about just what sort of sorcery might be used. Gyongyosian mages were probably trying to spy on these emanations. So were Unkerlanter mages. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the Valmierans and Jelgavans were doing their best to listen in as well. But if the Gongs were looking for evidence that what their captives had seen at Becsehely was faked, they would be disappointed.

Pinhiero nodded. “And you know, of course, the workings of the sorcery. You can bring them back to Setubal?”

“I know the workings,” Fernao agreed. He took a deep breath. “As for the other, though, sir, I’m not so sure. I don’t know if I’ll be coming back to Setubal. The way things look now, I would doubt it.”

He waited for the storm to burst. He didn’t have to wait long. Rage filled Pinhiero’s foxy face. “You got her drawers off, so now you love her kingdom better than your own, too, eh?” he growled. “I was afraid this would happen, but I thought you had better sense. Shows what I know, doesn’t it?”

“I have done our kingdom no harm, nor would I ever,” Fernao said stiffly. “But I am allowed to please myself now and again as well.”

“Is that what you call it?” the grandmaster said. “I’d tell you what I call it, though I don’t suppose you care to hear.”

“You’re right, sir-I don’t,” Fernao said. “I will send you what I can by courier. I will answer any questions you may have. But I don’t think I’ll come back to Setubal any time soon. I’ll have to arrange to have my books and instruments shipped here.”

“Kajaani,” Grandmaster Pinhiero said scornfully. “How well will you love it when the first blizzards roll in? It’s a town with ten months of winter and two months of bad snowshoeing.”

Shrugging, Fernao answered, “Lagoas didn’t worry about that when I got sent to the land of the Ice People.”

“You had to go there,” Pinhiero said. “But to want to go to Kajaani? A man would have to be mad.”

“It’s not that bad-a pleasant little place, really,” Fernao said: about as much praise as he could find it in himself to give. Pointedly, he added, “And I am fond of the company I’d be keeping.”

“You must be, to think of leaving Setubal behind.” Pinhiero spoke with the automatic certainty that his city was, and had every right to be, the center of the universe. Not so very long before, Fernao had known that same certainty. The grandmaster went on, “What do they have in the theaters there? Do they even have theaters there?”

“I’m sure they do,” answered Fernao, who didn’t know. But he added, “Since I haven’t gone to the theater since before I left for the austral continent, though, I won’t lose much sleep over it.”

“Well, whatever you saw then in Setubal should be coming to Kajaani any day now,” Pinhiero said, soothing and sarcastic at the same time. Fernao glared. The grandmaster added, “Are you sure she didn’t ensorcel you?”

That did it. Fernao growled, “Just because nobody’s ever been daft enough to fall in love with you, you old serpent, you don’t think it can happen to anyone else, either.”

“I thought you had better sense,” Pinhiero said. “I thought you’d be sitting in my seat one of these years. I hoped so, in fact.”

“Me? Grandmaster?” Fernao said in surprise. Pinhiero nodded. The younger mage shook his head. “No, thanks. I like the laboratory too well. I’m not cut out for politics, and I don’t care to be.”

“That’s why you have someone like Brinco,” Pinhiero said. “What’s a secretary for?”

“Doing work I don’t feel like doing myself? Is that what you’re saying?”

Pinhiero nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, my dear young fellow. A chap like Brinco does the work that needs doing, but that you don’t care to do. That gives me time to go out and chat with people, keep myself abreast of what’s on their minds. If you’d sooner spend your odd moments in the laboratory, no one would hold it against you.”

“Very kind of you.” Fernao meant it. He knew a grandmaster should be a man like Pinhiero, a man who enjoyed backslapping and politicking. Pinhiero had to know it, too. If he was willing to bend the unwritten rules for a theoretical sorcerer like Fernao, he badly wanted him back. Fernao sighed. “You do tempt me, sir. But the point is, I’d sooner spend my odd moments-just about all my moments-in Kajaani.”

“I’m going to be blunt with you,” Pinhiero said. “Your kingdom needs what you know. It needs every scrap of what you know, for you know more about this business than any other Lagoan mage.” He paused, frowning. “You do still reckon yourself a Lagoan, I trust?”

That hurt. Fernao didn’t try to pretend otherwise. He said, “You’d better know that I do, or I’d break this etheric connection and walk away from you. . sir. I’ve already told you, if you want to send a man to me, I will tell him and write down for him everything I know. Lagoas and Kuusamo are allies; I don’t see how the Seven could possibly object to that, and King Vitor would have every right to scream if they did.”

Pinhiero still looked unhappy. “Better than nothing,” he admitted, “but still less than I’d like. You surely know how the cleanest-seeming written instructions for a spell don’t help a mage as much as having another mage, a knowledgeable fellow, take him through the conjuration.”

“I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can.” What Fernao didn’t say was that he feared he wouldn’t be allowed to come back to Kuusamo if he went to Lagoas. As Grandmaster Pinhiero had pointed out, he knew too much.

“When the time comes, then, I will make the necessary arrangements with you,” Pinhiero said sourly. “I suppose I should congratulate you on finding love. I must say, though, that your timing and your target could have been better.”

“As for timing, you may possibly be right,” Fernao admitted. “As for whom I fell in love with-for one thing, that’s none of your business, and, for another, you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried for a year. And now I think we’ve said about everything we have to say to each other.”

Grandmaster Pinhiero bridled. He wasn’t used to having Fernao-he wasn’t used to having anybody-speak to him that way. But he wasn’t King Swemmel. He couldn’t punish Fernao for speaking his mind, especially if Fernao no longer cared about advancing through the Lagoan sorcerous hierarchy. All he could do was glare as he said, “Good day,” and cut the etheric connection.

The crystal flared, then became no more than a sphere of glass. Fernao let out another sigh, a long, heartfelt one, as he rose from the chair in front of it. Nervous sweat ran from his armpits and made the back of his tunic stick to his skin. Defying the grandmaster-essentially, declaring he was abandoning allegiance to his kingdom-didn’t, couldn’t, come easy.

When he left the chamber, he found the Kuusaman crystallomancer outside, her nose in a romance. “I’m finished,” he told her in his own language, and then wondered how he’d meant that.

He walked up to his room. A couple of mosquitoes whined in the stairwell. Outside the hostel, they swarmed in millions, so that going out for long was asking to be eaten alive. When all the ice and snow melted, they made puddles uncountable, as they did in spring and summer on the austral continent. And oh, how the mosquitoes and gnats and flies reveled in those spawning grounds!

Fernao swatted one of the buzzing bugs when it lit on the back of his wrist. The other-if there was only one