Through the Darkness

“Over this way,” called the Kuusaman who’d driven Siuntio and Ilmarinen out here. Fernao made his way through the snow, planting his crutches and his broken leg with great care. Pekka paced along beside him. He didn’t know whether she could save him if he started to slip, but she plainly intended to try.

To his relief, she didn’t have to. Moving slowly and cautiously, he stayed upright for the quarter of a mile or so till he came to what he first thought to be an upswelling of earth under the snow. But it proved rather more than that: it was a low hut with thick walls of stone. The doorway, which one of the drivers shoveled clean, faced away from the animals.

“This was also readied in advance?” he asked Pekka.

“Of course,” she answered.

The secondary sorcerers not involved in keeping the animals alive also came over to the stone … blockhouse, Fernao decided was the best name for it. Siuntio said, “They will transmit to the beasts the spell we shape.”

Fernao hadn’t thought about all the consequences of their sorcery. Now he realized he should have. If this spell released as much energy as the Kuusamans thought it would, not being in the immediate neighborhood of that energy release looked like an excellent idea. Only one drawback occurred to him: “I hope they will not introduce any garbling. That could be … unfortunate.”

“It should not prove a difficulty,” Pekka said. “They are skilled at what they do.”

“And if they do make a mess of things, it’s liable to end up saving their necks-and ours, too,” Ilmarinen put in.

“We are going to succeed,” Pekka said. “We are going to succeed, and we are going to be safe while we are succeeding. And if you think differently, Master Ilmarinen, I am sure the sleigh will take you out of all possible danger.”

“Death is the only thing that will take me out of all possible danger,” Ilmarinen retorted, and stuck out his tongue at Pekka. That was something no one would have seen before a sorcerous experiment in Lagoas. Instead of getting angry-or, at least, instead of letting her anger show-Pekka stuck out her tongue, too, and started to laugh.

But she didn’t laugh for long. She walked out into the center of the blockhouse and chanted the ritual words with which Kuusamans began any magical operation. Fernao still didn’t believe those claims of Kuusaman antiquity, but he discovered he understood much more of the chant than he had when he first came to the land of the Seven Princes.

When Pekka finished, she turned to the secondary sorcerers and asked, “Are you ready?” They nodded. She asked the same question of Ilmarinen and Siuntio. Both master mages nodded, too. Pekka turned to Fernao. “And you?”

“As ready as I can be,” he replied. Because of his limited grasp of Kuusaman, his role in the conjuration could only be trying to stave off disaster once it was already loose. He didn’t think he would be able to do that, and hoped-hoped with all his heart-he wouldn’t have to try.

“I begin,” Pekka said, this time not just to steady herself but also to warn the secondary sorcerers. The chant and passes were mostly familiar, but this spell was more potent than any they’d tried before. Fernao had suggested some of the improvements. He hoped they would serve.

Siuntio and Ilmarinen remained alert. They were the first line of defense if Pekka faltered. Fernao studied her. He’d never had much use for theoretical sorcerers when they did step into the laboratory; they too often forgot which hand was their left and which their right. But Pekka had an air of calm that suggested she really did know what she was doing as she incanted-and that she wouldn’t panic if she did make a mistake. The secondary sorcerers also seemed very competent as they relayed Pekka’s magic to where it would be most needed: the rows of animal cages.

Fernao hoped the other group of secondary sorcerers, the ones who’d been keeping the animals warm, had known when to depart. If they hadn’t, they would be in danger now. He assumed they had; the Kuusamans would be neither so heartless nor so slipshod as to leave them. Had he fallen in among Unkerlanters, now …

Pekka incanted with ever greater urgency. Despite the work of the secondary sorcerers, Fernao felt the energies inside the blockhouse build and build.

His hair tried to stand on end. That wasn’t fright; it was sorcerous energy on the loose. The other mages’ hair also started to stand up straight, as if lightning had struck nearby. It hadn’t-not yet. Out in the cages on the snowy plain, though, the rats and rabbits would surely be getting frantic.

Here it comes, Fernao thought. He wanted to say it out loud-he wanted to scream it-but held back for fear of hurting Pekka’s concentration. She cried out one last word of Kuusaman. Fernao had learned what that final command meant: “Let it be accomplished!”

And it was accomplished. The thunderous roar from the direction of the racks of cages was astonishing, overwhelming. The ground shook beneath Fer-nao’s feet. Brilliant white light appeared for a moment between the planks of the roof-planks that had, till then, been thickly covered with snow. Fernao wondered if the blockhouse would come down on the mages’ heads.

It held. The shaking cease. The light faded. Fernao bowed to the Kuusamans. “It appears your calculations were accurate. I thought you optimistic. I see I was wrong.”

“We did what we set out to do.” As always in the aftermath of such conjurations, Pekka looked and sounded ghastly. Food and rest would revive her, but for now she was fordone. Fernao wished he could tell her to lean on him, but he probably would have fallen over had she tried.

“We did it, aye,” Ilmarinen said. “And now half the mages in the world will know we’ve done something large, even if they don’t know what.”

“We don’t know what,” Siuntio pointed out. “Maybe we had better go see.” He was the first one out the door. The Kuusamans who’d built the blockhouse had known what they were doing when they made that door face away from the racks of experimental animals.

Fernao made his own slow way out and then stopped in astonishment. No dragon could have carried an egg anywhere near big enough to gouge such a crater in the ground. The burst of energy had flung snow back far past the blockhouse, leaving bare ground behind.

Ilmarinen ran toward the center itself. “Be careful!” Fernao called after him, but he wasn’t listening. The Kuusaman master mage paused at the edge of the crater, picked something up, and violently waved it about. Fernao had to get closer to see what it was. When at last he did, awe and dread prickled through him. Ilmarinen held a bright green clump of fresh spring grass.

Handlers fastened loads to the dragons of Sabrino’s wing. The dragons bellowed and hissed at the idea of being made into beasts of burden-or perhaps just from general bad temper. Sabrino had little sympathy for them at the best of times, and none whatsoever now.

He waved to the chief dragon handler. “Can you make them carry a little

more:

To his disappointment, the fellow shook his head. “Colonel, I’d love to, but I don’t dare. You’ll be flying a long way, and the beasts are anything but in the pink of condition. The idea is for them to come back and fly more loads, not to try and do too much all at once and break down.”

Reluctantly, Sabrino nodded. “All right. That makes more sense than I wish it did.” He bowed to the handler, sweeping off his fur cap as he did so. “I am glad enough to own that you know your business.”

“Like I say, I wish I could do what you want,” the handler answered. “I know what our comrades need down there, same as any Algarvian does.”

“Well, we’re going to bring diem as much as we can.” Sabrino raised his voice to a great, full-bodied shout: “To me, you whoresons, to me! We run the gauntlet one more time.”

Out of their tents came the men who weren’t already standing by or mounted on their dragons: not very many, since most of the dragonfliers were as eager to fare south as was their commander. When the handlers finished the job of loading the dragons, they waved. Sabrino, by then atop his own mount, waved back. He whacked the beast with his goad. It screamed in outrage, beat its great wings, and all but hurled itself into the air despite the heavy burden it carried. One after another, the remaining dragons in the wing followed.

Their farm lay close to the fighting front. Before long, they flew south out of the land the Algarvians still held and into the terrain Unkerlanters had seized in this second winter counteroffensive. Footsoldiers on the ground blazed at them. Without a doubt, crystallomancers sent word of them farther south-in the direction of