head. She knew better. She wasn’t a match for Siuntio as project leader, either. She also knew that. But she was what they had.
Secondary sorcerers hurried into the blockhouse, too. Some spells protected the animals at the heart of the experiment from freezing before they were needed. Others would transfer the spell Pekka and the other theoretical sorcerers had crafted to the animals when the time came. And with the secondary sorcerers came the protective mages. After two Algarvian attacks, Pekka knew how necessary they were.
But they didn‘t beat back Mezentio ‘s mages the last time, she thought. Fernao did that, Fernao and Ilmarinen and I. Three theoretical sorcerers who shouldn‘t be allowed to work magic like practical wizards. She smiled, recognizing the ironic pride in her thoughts.
The blockhouse had been built with theoretical sorcerers and secondary sorcerers in mind. It hadn’t been built to include the protective mages. When the weather got better, perhaps Pekka could prevail upon the Seven Princes to enlarge it. Meanwhile, people shoved and jostled and stepped on one another’s feet and got in one another’s way.
“Are we ready?” Pekka asked at last. But even herat last proved too soon; the mages were nowhere near ready. When she spoke again, it was in some exasperarion: “Sooner or later, we shall have to go into the field. The Algarvians will not wait for us, and neither will the Gyongyosians.”
Ilmarinen snapped his fingers. “That for the Gongs. They’re honest foes, which means we can beat them without folderol, knock ‘em back across the Bothnian Ocean one island at a time. As soon as the Algarvians started killing Kaunians to make their magecraft mightier, they put themselves beyond the pale.”
Privately, Pekka agreed with him. Even so, she said, “Whichever way we aim the magic, we’ll have to be able to do it in our time. The sooner we learn, the better.”
Not even contrary Ilmarinen could quarrel with that. And Raahe said, “She is right. Let no one complain that we women are slow here.” That made people laugh. More of the mages in the blockhouse were men than women, but only a few more. Kuusamans were emphatically aware of the differences between the sexes but, unlike Lagoans and most folk on the mainland of Derlavai, didn’t think those differences applied to what each sex could do well.
When Pekka asked, “Are we ready?” again, she found that her colleagues were. “Before the Kaunians came, we of Kuusamo were here
…” she said, and her fellow mages-all of them but Fernao-recited the ritual phrases, the phrases that moved them toward readiness for conjuration, along with her.
He has to feel very much alone, a foreigner, a stranger, whenever he listens to us, she thought. /know I would if I were in Lagoas, say, and mages, just brusquely started to enchant without preparing first.
But then such small thoughts slipped out of her mind, driven from it when she focused like a burning glass on what lay ahead. She took a deep breath to steady herself, let it out, and said, “I begin.”
Every time she used the spell, it became sharper, more powerful. All the theoretical sorcerers tinkered with it between experiments. One couplet, one sorcerous pass, at a time, it grew closer to what it had to be. Had she seen this version a year before, it would have astounded her. She couldn’t help wondering how much further they had to go.
If we come as far in the next year as we have in this past one, I’ll be able to shatter the world like a dropped egg without even lifting a finger. She knew that was an exaggeration, but maybe it wasn’t an enormous one. By the nature of things, spells that exploited the inverted unity she’d helped discover at the heart of the laws of similarity and contagion had the potential to release far more sorcerous energy than cantrips based on one or the other of the so-called Two Laws.
How close mortal mages could come to tapping that potential was one question. Another, more urgent question was how much attention she could give to such irrelevant quibbles before making a hash of the spell she was casting now and endangering herself and everybody in the blockhouse with her. She didn’t like remembering Fernao had had to save her from the consequences of dropping a line in one of these spells.
Which is why practical mages make jokes about what happens when theoretical sorcerers go into the laboratory, Pekka thought. Too much of their kidding wasn’t kidding at all, but sober truth.
But then even embarrassment and worry fell away as she lost herself in the intricacies of the spell she was casting. Getting the words precisely right; making sure the passes matched and reinforced them; feeling the power build as verse after verse, pass after pass, fell into place… It was almost like feeling pleasure build when she made love. And then she madethat thought fall away, too-not without regret, but she did it.
Power built, and built, and built-and then, as she cried, “Let it be released!”, itwas released. She felt the secondary sorcerers take hold of what she’d brought into being, felt them hurl it forth to the banks of animal cages set far from the blockhouse, and felt it kindle there.
And then she needed no occult senses to feel it, for the ground shuddered beneath her feet. A great roar rumbled thought the air. She knew that, when she and the other mages went to examine the site, they would find another huge crater torn in the frozen ground. The Naantali district was starting to look like the moon as seen through a spyglass. Its wide stretches of worthless land were the main reasons experiments had moved here.
“Nicely done,” Fernao said. “Very nicely done. When we measure the crater, we will be able to calculate the actual energy release and see how close it comes to what the sorcerous equations predicted. My guess is, the discrepancies will not be large. It had the right feel to it.”
Pekka nodded-wearily, now that the spell was done. “I think you are right,” she replied, also in classical Kaunian.
Ilmarinen said, “And, when we go out to the crater, we can see how much green grass and other out-of- season bits and pieces we find at the bottom of it.”
Pekka grimaced. So did Fernao. The spells they were working with twisted time, among other things. The equations made that very clear. Ilmarinen, ever the radical, kept insisting the twist could be exploited for itself, not just for the energy it released. The unanimous opinion of the rest of the theoretical sorcerers was that the energy release came first.
As Pekka and Fernao rode out toward the crater, an exhausted little bird-a linnet-came fluttering down out of the sky and landed on their sleigh. When Pekka reached out for it, it flew off again, and was soon lost to sight. She stared at Fernao in no small consternation. She’d never seen a linnet in wintertime. They flew north for the winter, to escape the cold. Maybe this one hadn’t escaped the cold. Maybe it hadn’t escaped the sorcery, either.
And if it hadn’t, what did that mean?
Hajjaj’s carriage rolled up to the dragon farm outside Bishah, the capital of Zuwayza. When the carriage stopped, the Zuwayzi foreign minister descended to the sandy soil: a skinny man with dark brown skin and gray, almost white hair he’d earned by lasting close to seven decades-and also by guiding Zuwayza’s relations with the other kingdoms of the world ever since his homeland regained its freedom from Unkerlant in the chaos following the Six Years’ War.
GeneralIkhshidcame bustling up to greet him. Ikhshid was paunchy, with bushy white eyebrows. He carried almost as many years as Hajjaj; he’d been a captain in the Unkerlanter army during the Six Years’ War, one of the few men of Zuwayzi blood to gain officer’s rank there.
Like Hajjaj, Ikhshid wore sandals and a broad-brimmed hat and nothing in between. In Zuwayza’s fierce desert heat, clothes were nothing but a nuisance, however much Zuwayzi nudity scandalized other Derlavaians. Ikhshid had rank badges on his hat and marked with greasepaint on his upper arms.
He bowed to Hajjaj, wheezing a little as he straightened. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said. “Always a pleasure to see you, believe me.”
“You’re too kind,” Hajjaj murmured, returning the bow. “Believe me, the pleasure is mine.” Aimed at a lot of men, Hajjaj would have meant that as no more than the usual pleasant hypocrisy. With Ikhshid, he meant it. He’d never been convinced Zuwayza’s senior soldier was a great general, though Ikhshid was a good one. But Ikhshid, like Hajjaj himself, commanded the respect of every Zuwayzi clanfather. Hajjaj could think of no other officer of whom that was true.
“You do me too much credit, your Excellency,” Ikhshid said.
“By no means, sir,” Hajjaj protested. Zuwayzi forms of greeting and politeness, if uninterrupted, could go on for a long time.
Here, an interruption arrived in the person of Marquis Balastro, the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza. To Hajjaj’s relief, Balastro was not nude, but wore the usual Algarvian tunic and kilt, with a hat of his own to keep the sun off
