Darkness Descending

named Pekka.

My dear colleague, she wrote, I thank you for your interest in my work and your inquiries into my research. Unfortunately, I must tell you that much of my recent silence in the journals has sprung from nothing other than the demands on my time my son takes. I do eventually hope to publish more, but when that may be I cannot say. Meanwhile, my life is busy in many different ways. Hoping this finds you well and your own work flourishing, I remain--Pekka, Professor of Theoretical Sorcery.

Fernao’s excitement dissolved like a little ink in a lot of water, leaving his mood duller and darker than it had been before. He had to fight to keep from crumpling the letter and tossing it over with the rest of the mail he’d received. He’d got similar bland missives from other Kuusaman theoretical sorcerers to whom he’d written. Had the letters been identical and not merely similar, he would have known for a fact that the mages were acting in concert. As things were, he had to infer it, but it wasn’t the subtlest inference he’d ever drawn.

“They know something, all right,” he muttered. “They don’t want anyone to know they know it, either. That means it’s big, whatever it is.” So much had been obvious since his meeting with Ilmarinen, the meeting that should have been with Siuntio. It was even more obvious now.

He wondered what the Kuusamans had found. Something that had to do with the relationship between the laws of contagion and similarity, plainly. But what? Lagoan mages, more often than not of a more practical bent than their Kuusaman counterparts, hadn’t explored the question in depth.

“Maybe we should have,” Fernao muttered under his breath. If the Guild of Lagoan Mages were to try to catch up with the Kuusamans, to discover whatever they were hiding, how best to go about it? The only answer that occurred to Fernao was getting some talented sorcerers together and having them proceed from the point where Siuntio and Pekka and the rest of the Kuusamans had, for whatever reason, fallen silent.

He laughed an unhappy laugh. Even Grandmaster Pinhiero would have a hard time getting a group of Lagoan mages to work on a project he proposed rather than on whatever they felt like doing themselves. Fernao was about to throw the notion into his mental trash bin when he suddenly stiffened. He wondered if, in Trapani or some other Algarvian town, another group of mages was already hard at work going down that same path. If so, how could Lagoas afford to ignore it?

He glanced at Pekka’s note again. Maybe, just maybe, she was telling the truth and he’d been starting at shadows all along. With the note in his hand, he could--or maybe he could--make a fair stab at finding out. He set the note on the table and went to the cabinet of sorcerous gear that stood next to the stove in the kitchen. Had he been a better cook, he would have had a cabinet full of spices there instead. From the cabinet, he took a lens mounted in a polished brass ring and a dried lapwing’s head: the lapwing, being a sharp-eyed bird, was to a mage a sovereign remedy against deception.

Holding the lapwing’s head between a lamp and the lens that focused its power on the note, he chanted a cantrip in classical Kaunian. If the writing on the note was true, he would see the black ink as bright blue. If the writing was false, he would see it as burning red.

But he continued to see it simply as black. Frowning, he wondered if he’d somehow botched the charm. He didn’t think so, but ran through it again, this time with special care. The ink continued to seem black to his eyes. It shouldn’t have, not after that spell, not unless. . . .

“Why, the tricksy minx!” Fernao exclaimed. “If she hasn’t magicked the note against this very sorcery, I’m an addled apprentice.”

Shaking his head at Pekka’s forethought, he put away the lens and the bird’s head. Now he couldn’t be sure whether the Kuusaman theoretical sorcerer had been lying or telling the truth, not by any objective means. But he could still draw inferences. That Pekka hadn’t wanted him to know whether or not she was telling the truth strongly suggested she wasn’t. If she wasn’t, the Kunsamans were indeed likely to be hiding something important.

He’d already believed that. “One more bit of evidence,” he murmured, and then kicked at the carpet. Evidence of what? Something. That was as much as he knew. He wondered if some dapper, clever young mage in Trapani, a fellow with waxed mustachios and a hat worn at a jaunty angle, knew more.

For his sake, for his kingdom’s sake, he hoped not. But when he looked north and west, toward the Algarvian capital, he knew he had fear in his eyes.

East of Cottbus, a half ring of dowsers did their best to detect Algarvian dragons so they could give the capital of Unkerlant some warning against attack from the air. Marshal Rathar swung off his horse at one such post, a crude hut in the middle of a forest of birch trees. Letting soldiers see him, letting them see he was still in the fight and still thought Unkerlant could win, was one reason he went out to the field as often as he could. Another reason was learning as much as he could about all aspects of the war.

Still another was escaping King Swemmel for a while. Soon enough, he’d have to go back to the palace and see what sort of advice the king would give. Sometimes, Rathar was convinced, Swemmel saw