Out of the Darkness

didn’t, how many documents had the Valmierans captured? There’d been no time to destroy them all.

“Last chance, Algarvian; very, very last,” the fellow behind the lamp said. “We know what you did. Who did it with you?”

Lurcanio felt old. He felt tired. He hurt all over. Had they been toying with him up till now, to make this seem harsher when it came? He had no answers, save that he didn’t want to die. That, he knew. “Well,” he said, “to begin with, there was …”

Sixteen

Cottbus had changed. Marshal Rathar hadn’t seen the capital of Unkerlant this gay since. Now that he thought about it, he’d never seen Cottbus so gay. Gaiety and Unkerlanters seldom went together.

He’d seen the capital gray and frightened before the Derlavaian War, when nobody knew whom King Swemmel’s inspectors would seize next, or on what imagined charge. And he’d seen Cottbus past frightened the first autumn of the war against Algarve: he’d seen it on the ragged edge of panic then, with functionaries burning papers and looking to flee west any way they could, expecting the city to fall to the redheads any day. But Cottbus hadn’t fallen, and he’d also seen it grimly determined to do to King Mezentio what he’d come so close to doing here.

With Algarve beaten, the city itself seemed on holiday. People in the streets smiled. They stopped to chat with one another. Before, they would have reckoned that dangerous. Who could say for certain whether a friend was only a friend, or also an informer? No one, and few took the chance.

Unkerlant remained at war with Gyongyos, of course, but who took the Gongs seriously? Aye, they were enemies, no doubt of that, but so what? They were a long way off. They’d never had a chance to get anywhere near Cottbus, no matter how successful they were in the field. They could have been nuisances, but no more. As far as Rathar was concerned, that made them almost the ideal foes.

What made them even more perfect as enemies was the war they were fighting against Kuusamo through the islands of the Bothnian Ocean. They’d been losing that war for some time, and pulling men out of western Unkerlant to try, without much luck, to tip the balance back their way. They’d got away with that, because Unkerlant had been busy elsewhere. Now. .

Now Rathar walked across the great plaza surrounding the palace at the heart of Cottbus. The square was more crowded than he ever remembered seeing it. Women’s long, bright tunics put him in mind of flowers swaying in the breeze. He laughed at himself. You’ll be writing poetry next.

Even inside the palace, courtiers and flunkies went about their business with their heads up. A lot of them were smiling, too. They didn’t look as if they were sneaking from one place to another, as they so often did. “Come with me, lord Marshal,” one of them said, nodding to Rathar. “I know his Majesty will be glad to see you.”

What Rathar knew was that King Swemmel was never glad to see anybody. And when he got to the anteroom outside the king’s private audience chamber, age-old Unkerlanter routine reasserted itself. He unbelted his ceremonial sword and gave it to the guards there. They hung it on the wall, then thoroughly and intimately searched him to make sure he bore no other weapons. Once they were satisfied, they passed him in to the audience chamber.

Routine persisted there, too. Swemmel sat in his high seat. Rathar sank down on his knees and his belly before his sovereign, knocking his forehead against the carpet as he sang the king’s praises. Only when Swemmel said, “We give you leave to rise,” did he get to his feet. Sitting in Swemmel’s presence was unimaginable. The king leaned forward, peering at him. In his high, thin voice, he asked, “Shall we serve Gyongyos as we served Algarve?”

“Well, your Majesty, I doubt our men will march into Gyorvar any time soon,” Rathar replied. “But we ought to be able to drive the Gongs our of our kingdom, and I think we should take a bite out of them, too.”

“Many men hereabouts have told us that Gyongyos will be utterly cast down and overthrown,” the king said. “Why don’t you, who command our armies, promise the like or even more?”

Courtiers, Rathar thought contemptuously. Of course they can promise everything: they don’t have to deliver. But I do. “Your Majesty,” he said, “I can tell you what you want to hear, or else I can tell you the truth. Which would you rather?”

With King Swemmel, the question had no obvious answer. Swemmel had punished plenty of men who’d tried to tell him the truth. Whatever fantasies went on in his mind must often have seemed more real to him than the world as it was. He wasn’t stupid. People who thought he was commonly paid for that mistake in short order. But he was.. strange. He muttered to himself before coming out with something that astonished Rathar: “Well, we don’t want Gyorvar anyhow.”

“Your Majesty?” The marshal wasn’t sure he’d heard straight. Grabbing with both hands had always been Swemmel’s way. To say he wasn’t interested in seizing the capital of Gyongyos was. . more than strange.

But he repeated himself: “We don’t want Gyorvar. There won’t be anything left of the place before long, anyhow.”

“What do you mean, your Majesty?” Rathar asked cautiously. He could usually tell when the king drifted into delusion. He couldn’t do anything about it, of course, but he could tell. Today, King Swemmel was as matter-of-fact as if talking about the weather. He was, if anything, more matter-of-fact than if talking about the weather, for he rarely had anything to do with it. He was a creature of the palace, and came forth from it as seldom as he could. His journey to Herborn to watch false King Raniero of Grelz die had been out of the ordinary, and showed how important he thought that was. If I’d captured Mezentio, he would have come to Trapani, too, Rathar thought.

“We mean what we say,” Swemmel told him. “What else would we mean?”

“Of course, your Majesty. But please forgive me, for I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

King Swemmel made an exasperated noise. “Did we not tell you the cursed islanders, powers below eat them, can keep nothing secret from us, no, not even if they work their mischief in the middle of the Bothnian Ocean?”

Rathar nodded; the king had said something like that in one of their conversations by crystal. But the marshal still failed to see how the pieces fit together. “I’m sorry. What does whatever the Kuusamans and Lagoans may be up to out in the Bothnian Ocean have to do with Gyorvar?”

“They will do it there next,” Swemmel replied, “and when they do. .” He made a fist and brought it down on the gem-encrusted arm of his high seat. “No point to spending Unkerlanter lives on Gyorvar. The Gongs will spend lives, by the powers above. Oh, aye, how they will spend them!” Sudden gloating anticipation filled his voice.

Sudden alarm filled Marshal Rathar. “Your Majesty, do you mean the islanders have some strong new sorcery they can work against Gyorvar?”

“Of course. What did you think we meant?”

“Till now, I didn’t know.” Rathar wished he’d learned a great deal sooner. Swemmel clutched secrets like a miser clutching silver. “If they can do that to Gyorvar, can they also do it to Cottbus?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wondered if he should have kept quiet. Swemmel was sure everyone around him was out to get him and every kingdom around Unkerlant out to destroy it: and that in good times. In bad, the king’s fear could be like a choking cloud. But now Swemmel only nodded grimly. “They can. We know they can. We are not safe, not until we learn how to do the like to them.”

“How long will that be?” Rathar asked. Kuusamo and Lagoas were not enemies to Unkerlant-not now. If they could badly harm this kingdom while Unkerlant couldn’t strike back, that limited how far Swemmel-and Rathar- dared go in antagonizing them.

Swemmel half snorted, half spat in disgust. “That fool of an Addanz does not know. He spent the war chasing after Algarvian mageries, and now, when we ask him-when we order him-to switch ley lines, we find he cannot do it quickly. He calls himself archmage. We call him archidiot.”

Rathar knew a certain amount of sympathy for Addanz. He’d done what he’d needed to do for the kingdom’s survival. Doing much of it had horrified him; he wasn’t a man who took naturally to murder. But he and his fellow wizards had to learn new things. Without a doubt, Swemmel was right about that.

“Has he any idea how long this will take? Any idea at all?” Rathar tried again. He might have to try to head