Out of the Darkness

because he admired her character. He didn’t. He’d been going to bed with her because she was tall and shapely, somewhere between very pretty and outrageously beautiful, and as ferociously talented while horizontal as anyone looking at her vertical could have hoped. With a small sigh, he said, “I want to go back to Kajaani and start over, too.”

“Kajaani.” Xavega sniffed. “What is a Kuusaman provincial town, when set beside Setubal, the greatest city the world has ever known?”

The capital of Lagoas was indeed a marvel. Leino had gone there a couple of times for sorcerers’ convocations, and had always been amazed. So much to see, so much to do … Even Yliharma, Kuusamo’s capital, couldn’t really compare. But Leino had an answer with which even short-tempered Xavega couldn’t quarrel: “What is Kajaani? Kajaani is home.”

He missed Pekka. He missed Uto, their son. He missed their house, up a hill from the ley-line terminal stop. He missed the practical magecraft he’d been doing at Kajaani City College.

Would he miss Xavega if the chances of war swept them apart? He chuckled under his breath. Some specific part of him would miss her; he could hardly deny that. But the rest? He ruefully shook his head. Xavega didn’t even like Kuusamans, not as a general working rule. That she made an exception for him was almost as embarrassing as it was enjoyable.

And how would he explain her to his wife? If the powers above were kind, he’d never have to. If they weren’t? I’d been away from you for a long, long time, sweetheart, was about as good as he could come up with. Would Pekka stand for that? She might; Kuusamans did recognize that men and women had their flaws and foibles. But she wouldn’t be very happy, and Leino didn’t see how he could blame her.

He almost wished she were carrying on an affair of her own-nothing serious, just enough so that she couldn’t beat him about the head and shoulders with tales of glistening, untrammeled virtue. He didn’t find that likely; he didn’t really think his wife was the sort to do such things. And he didn’t really wish she were that sort. Just. . almost.

Oat of tl)e Darkness

Kuusaman dragons, eggs slung under their bellies, flew by heading east to pound the Algarvian positions in front of the Bratanu Mountains. Aye, Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons ruled the skies over Jelgava. The Algarvians had a lot of heavy sticks on the ground, but those didn’t help them nearly so much as dragons of their own would have done.

Painted sky blue and sea green, the Kuusaman dragons were hard to spot. Kuusamans had never believed in unnecessary display. Kuusamans often didn’t believe even in necessary display, Algarvic peoples, with their love for swagger and opulence, had a different way of looking at things. Algarvian dragons were painted green, red, and white; the colors of Sibiu were red, yellow, and blue; and those of Lagoas red and gold. Algarvian soldiers had gone into the Six Years’ War in gorgeous, gaudy, impractical uniforms. The slaughter in the early days of that fight, though, had forced pragmatism on them in a hurry.

Before long, the muted roar of eggs bursting in the distance came back to Leino’s ears. In an abstract way, he pitied the-Algarvian soldiers who had to take such punishment without being able to give it back. But, as a practical mage, he knew abstraction went only so far. He much preferred dishing out misery to taking it.

When he said that aloud, Xavega nodded. “Against the combined might of Lagoas and Kuusamo, they are all but powerless to resist,” she replied.

The combined might of Lagoas and Kuusamo here in Jelgava was two or three parts Kuusaman to one part Lagoan. The Kuusamans were also fighting, and winning, a considerable war against Gyongyos across the islands of the Both-nian Ocean. Xavega didn’t like to think, didn’t like to admit, that the short, swarthy, slant-eyed folk she looked down on both metaphorically and literally were a good deal more powerful than her own countrymen. Few Lagoans did. And, because Lagoas looked west and north across the Strait of Valmiera toward Derlavai while the Kuusamans concentrated on shipping and trade, they didn’t often have to. Leino smiled. Often was different from always.

But then his smile slipped. “The Algarvians cannot match us in men or beasts, no. But in magecraft. .” By the time he finished, he looked thoroughly grim.

Xavega scowled, too. “Aye, they are murderers. Aye, they are filthy. But that is why we are here, you and I. The magecraft we learned can make their own wickedness come down on their heads, not on those against whom they aim it.”

“Indeed.” Leino had to work to hold irony from his voice. It wasn’t that Xavega hadn’t told the truth. It was just that, as she had a way of doing, she turned things so they looked best to her. The sorcery she was talking about came from Kuusamo, not Lagoas. If fact, unless Leino was entirely wrong, Pekka had had a lot to do with devising it. She hadn’t said so-but then, she hadn’t been able to talk about what she was doing for quite some time. The few hints Leino had picked up all pointed in that direction.

Before his thoughts could glide much further down that ley line, a crystallo-mancer burst out of a nearby tent and came running toward him and Xavega. “Master mages! Master mages!” the fellow cried. “One of our dragonfliers reports that the Algarvians are stirring at their special camp near the mountains.”

“Are they?” Leino breathed. Mezentio’s men called the camps where they kept Kaunians before killing them by an innocuous name, not least, Leino suspected, so they wouldn’t have to think about what they did. Names had power, as any mage knew. And the Algarvians’ enemies had adopted this euphemism, too, not least so they wouldn’t have to think about what the Algarvians were doing, either.

“What is he saying?” demanded Xavega, who’d stubbornly refused to learn any Kuusaman. There were days when Leino found himself surprised she’d ever learned classical Kaunian.

He explained, adding, “You would think they would have learned their lesson.”

“Algarvians are arrogant,” Xavega said. By all the signs she gave, she’d never noticed her own arrogance. She went on, “Besides, their murderous sorcery is the strongest weapon Mezentio’s men have. If they use it when no mages are in position to strike back at them, they can work no small harm. Here, I would say, they judge the risk to be worth it.”

“I would say you are right,” Leino answered. “I would also say we are going to teach them they have miscalculated.”

The crystallomancer seemed to follow classical Kaunian only haltingly. He spoke to Leino in the Kuusaman that was their common birthspeech: “Shall I tell the men at the front that they will have sorcerous protection?”

“Aye, you can tell them that,” Leino answered, also in Kuusaman. The crystallomancer saluted and dashed back to his tent. Leino fell back into classical Kaunian: “This time, at least, we have some little warning. That must have been a sharp dragonflier. Usually, we have to start the counterspells when we feel the jolt as the Algarvians start killing.”

Xavega nodded. She put her arms around Leino and gave him a long, thorough kiss. When at last they broke apart, she murmured, “Use my strength as your own when we give them what they deserve.”

Heart pounding, Leino nodded, too. On the cot and in matters magical, Xavega gave of herself without reserve. Everywhere else, she was as spoiled a creature as had ever been born. Leino knew that. He could hardly help knowing it. But it didn’t make any difference to what he would do now. Here, he almost had to lead, for the spells were in Kuusaman; no one had yet had the leisure to render them into classical Kaunian or Lagoan. Xavega had learned the rituals well enough to support him, and she did that very well.

“Before the Kaunians came, we of Kuusamo were here,” he murmured in his own tongue, a ritual as old as organized magecraft in his land. “Before the Lagoans came, we of Kuusamo were here. After the Kaunians departed, we of Kuusamo were here. We of Kuusamo are here. After the Lagoans depart, we of Kuusamo shall be here.” He’d used the traditional phrases whenever he incanted in Jelgava, even though they weren’t strictly true here, as they were back in his homeland.

Once they’d passed his lips, he went through all the preliminary phases of the spell he would hurl at Mezentio’s sorcerers. Xavega nodded approval. “Good,” she said. “Very good indeed. As soon as they start killing, as soon as they reveal their direction and distance, we shall drop on them like a pair of constables seizing a band of robbers.”

“They are robbers, by the powers above,” Leino said. “And what they steal cannot be made good, for who can give back a life once lost?”

A few minutes later, he sensed the disturbance in the world’s energy grid as the Algarvians began killing