Through the Darkness

spotted the irregulars’ campsite, he would in short order.

Sure enough, the circles the dragon was making in the sky suddenly stopped being lazy. They grew smaller, more purposeful. “How long before he starts talking to his pals with his crystal?” Garivald murmured to Obilot.

“With a little luck, Sadoc will bring him down before he can do that.”

Obilot checked herself. “With a lot of luck.” She also spoke quietly. They might-they did-both doubt Sadoc’s ability, but they didn’t want him to hear any words of ill omen while trying to work magic that would benefit them if he could bring it off.

He was giving it everything he had; Garivald couldn’t deny that. He pointed toward the dragon and cried out what sounded like a curse in a voice so loud, Garivald thought the Algarvian on the beast could have heard it. At the word of command, the smoke from the fire started to form into a long, narrow column aimed up toward the dragon. Awe trickled through Garivald-maybe Sadoc really could do what he claimed after all.

But then, instead of rising through the branches of the trees and enveloping the dragon, the column of smoke fell apart as if a mischievous small boy had blown on it. Sadoc cried out again, this time in fury. Garivald and Obilot and the other irregulars cried out, too, in disgust. The smoke stank of rotten eggs and latrines and long-dead corpses and puke and sour milk and rancid butter and every other dreadful smell Garivald had ever know. It filled the camp with its horrible stench.

It filled Garivald’s nose, too. His stomach lurched. An instant later, he was down on his knees, heaving his guts out. Obilot crouched beside him, every bit as sick as he was. “You were right,” she wheezed between spasms. “We should have tried to get away.”

“Who knows-if it-would have helped?” Garivald answered. Tears streamed down his face.

They weren’t the only irregulars bent over and heaving. Hardly anyone stayed on his feet. Munderic kept trying to curse Sadoc, then interrupting himself to vomit again. And Sadoc kept puking in the middle of his explanations.

“See if I ever trust you again!” Munderic shouted before doubling up once more. Garivald tried to say, I told you so, but he kept on puking, too.

And, no more than a quarter of an hour after the sorcery went awry, just when most of the irregulars could stand on their own two feet again, eggs started falling from the sky. They were centered on the fire with which Sadoc had thought to assail the Algarvian dragon. Men and women stumbled into the woods, some of them still vomiting. Garivald found a hole in the ground by falling into it. He lay there, having no strength to look for better shelter. Screams rose from irregulars even less lucky than he.

At last, the Algarvians stopped pounding the encampment. Maybe they ran out of eggs, Garivald thought. He couldn’t think of anything else that would have made them stop. He got to his feet. Obilot was rising from another hole a few feet away. They gave each other shaky smiles, glad to be alive.

“No more magecraft!” Munderic was screaming at Sadoc. “No more, do you hear me?” Garivald couldn’t make out what Sadoc answered. He just wished Munderic had done his screaming sooner.

Vanai’s heart thudded. She hadn’t known such a blend of fear and hope and excitement since that time in the oak woods when she first decided to give herself to Ealstan. She glanced over to him. “You know what to do in case this goes wrong?”

“Aye.” He held up the leaf of paper she’d given him. “I recite this and, if the powers above are in a kindly mood, it cancels the whole spell, including whatever’s gone awry.” He looked anything but sure the counterspell would perform as advertised.

Since Vanai wasn’t sure it would, either, she said, “I hope you won’t have to worry about it.” She took a deep breath. “I begin.”

This time, the spell was in Kaunian. Logically, she knew that didn’t matter; mages who worked in Forthwegian-or Algarvian-could perform as well as any others. But, as soon as the first words fell from her lips, she felt far more confident than she had when reciting the muddy, muddled Forthwegian spell in You Too Can Be a Mage. Here, in this version she’d shaped, was what that spell should have said. Rightness seemed to drip from every word.

She hadn’t changed the passes much, nor the contact between the lengtlis of golden and dark brown yarn. The trouble had lain in the words. She’d known as much when she tried the Forthwegian version. Now she’d fixed those words, or thought she had.

I’ll know soon. She wanted to look at Ealstan, to judge by his expression how things were going. But she didn’t. She made herself concentrate on what she was doing. She was no great mage. She would never make a great mage, and knew as much. But that was all the more reason to concentrate. A great mage might get away with a lackluster bit of sorcery. She never would. She knew that, too.

“Transform!” she said, first in the imperative-a command to the spell-and then in the first person indicative-a statement about herself. And then she did let her eyes go to Ealstan. Either the spell had worked, or it hadn’t.

To her intense relief, Ealstan still looked like his Forthwegian self. She hadn’t given him the seeming of a Kaunian, as she had in her last foray into magecraft. But what, if anything, had she done to herself? She looked down at her hands. They hadn’t changed, not to her eyes. But then, they wouldn’t have. She couldn’t see the effects of a transformation spell on herself, not even in a mirror.

Ealstan’s eyes widened. Something had happened to her, but what? When he didn’t say anything, Vanai asked, “Well? Am I still me, or do I look like a golden grasshopper?”

He shook his head. “No, not a golden grasshopper,” he answered. “As a matter of fact, you look just like Conberge.”

“Your sister? A Forthwegian? Really?” Vanai sprang out of her chair and threw herself into his lap. After she kissed him, she leaped up again. She wanted to bounce off all the walls at once, because the flat would imprison her no more. “A Forthwegian! I’m free!”

“Hang on.” Ealstan did his best to sound resolutely sensible. “You’re not going out into Eoforwic just yet.”

Vanai put her hands on her hips. “And why not?” She did her best to sound dangerous. “I’ve been cooped up here the past year and a half. If you think I’m going to wait one instant longer than I have to, you’d better think again.” She glared at him as fiercely as she could.

Instead of intimidating him, the glare made him laugh. “Now you look the way Conberge does when she’s mad at me. But I don’t care whether you’re mad at me or not. I’m not going to let you go out that door till we find out how long the spell lasts. Wouldn’t do for you to get your own face back in front of a couple of redheaded constables, would it?”

As much as she wanted to stay angry at him, Vanai discovered she couldn’t. He was sensible, and he’d just proved it. “All right,” she said. “I don’t suppose I can quarrel with that. And I don’t suppose”-she sighed- “another little while in here will matter too much. But oh! — I want to get out so much.”

“I believe it,” Ealstan said. “How long do you think the spell will last?”

She could only shrug. “I have no idea. I’ve never done this before-except when I turned you into a Kaunian that one time, I mean. It might be half an hour. It might be three days, or even a week.”

“All right.” Ealstan nodded. “We’ll find out. I’d bet practiced mages can tell right from the beginning how strong a spell they’re making.”

“Probably, but I’m not a practiced mage. I’m just me.” Vanai was still astonished and delighted the spell had worked at all. And delight of one sort made her think of delight of another. She gave Ealstan a saucy smile. “Remember how you were saying it would be like having a different girl if we made love while I looked like a Forthwegian? Well, now you can.”

He usually leaped at any chance to take her to the bedchamber. To her surprise, he hesitated now. “I hadn’t expected you’d look quite so much like my sister,” he said, his face reddening beneath his swarthy skin.

Vanai blushed, too, and wondered if it showed. She said, “What I look like doesn’t matter.” Her whole life and most of Forthweg’s history gave that the lie, but she went on, “I’m not your sister. I’m just me, like I said before.” She stepped forward, into his arms. “Do I feel like a Forthwegian, too?”

He hugged her. His face was the picture of confusion. He said, “When I see you, you feel the way you would if you were a Forthwegian-we’re made a little wider than Kaunians, after all. But when I close my eyes”-he did-”you