Darkness Descending (52 page)

She had to tell herself not to look at either of the cages while she was incanting. If something did happen, she wouldn’t see it while she was shaping the spell, only afterwards. The old rat scrambled about in his cage, which sat on the table that had held the disappearing acorn. The young rat peered out through the bars of his cage, which sat on the table that had held the acorn that sprouted at preternatural speed.

Don’t make a mistake,
she told herself again and again. How many discoveries had been delayed because of chance errors in spells? On and on she went, watching herself perform as if she were an outsider. Everything was going as it should. Her tongue hadn’t stumbled. She wouldn’t let it stumble.
I
won’t,
she thought.
No matter what, I won’t.

“So may it be!” she exclaimed at the very end, and slumped forward, utterly spent. Performing magic was much harder work than considering how it might be performed. She wiped sweat from her forehead, though the laboratory was cool and the ground outside covered with snow.

So may it be,
she thought, wondering what would be, what had become. Now she could examine the cages, and the rats inside them.
Make sure you see what’s really there,
she thought.
Don’t see what you wish were there.

The first thing she saw was that both cages still held rats. That was a relief; she didn’t know what she would have done if one of the little beasts had vanished, as one acorn had during her earlier experiment. She supposed she’d have gone back, weakened her spell some more, and tried again.

She examined the older rat first. The changes in him, if there were any, would be easier to spot than those in his grandson. He looked up at her, his little black eyes shining, his whiskers quivering. His muzzle, which had been flecked with gray, was as dark as that of any rat for which a housewife had ever set a trap.

Heart pounding, Pekka noted the changes in appearance she saw. Then she went to the cage that housed the other rat. He’d had a sort of awkward gangliness about him, a sense of being not quite comfortable in a full-sized body about him. Adolescent rats and people were similar, at least in that. Now.. .

Now he looked like a mature rat, a rat of about the same apparent age as his grandfather. “Powers above,” Pekka said softly. “That
is
what it does.” She checked herself. “I think that’s what it does.” But had the spell rejuvenated the older rat at the expense of the younger one, or had it sent both of them traveling through time in opposite directions? Ilmarinen’s work suggested the first, but didn’t rule out the second.

Pekka had a way to find out. She’d built one into the experiment. She took the grandfather rat out of his cage and took him over to the maze. If he had trouble running it, she would know he’d been carried back through time to a point in his personal lifeline before he’d learned which route led to the food. If he didn’t, he would show he was essentially the same rat with a newer body.

“Tell me,” she whispered. “Come on, rat, tell me.” She set him down in the maze and waited to see what he would do.

For a moment, he did nothing at all. He sat there at the beginning of the path, his little black nose twitching, his tail wiggling. Had Pekka found him in her kitchen, she would have tried to land him with a frying pan. As things were, she gave him an indignant look. His indecision was liable to make her have to repeat the experiment.

She wondered if poking him to get him started would distort her results. As if the rat sensed what she was thinking, he started to move. He went through the maze with as much assurance as he had before she subjected him to magecraft. Pekka had forgotten to refill the grain cup that served as his reward. Now he looked indignantly at her. “I’m sorry,” she said, and gave him what he wanted, and another honey drop to boot.

After he’d eaten, she picked him up and returned him to his cage. He was, at the moment, the most valuable rat in the world, though of course he didn’t know it. She and her colleagues would have to repeat the experiment a good many times, but if the results held. . . .
If they hold, we’re going somewhere at last,
Pekka thought. Where that might be, she didn’t know, but the research, whatever else one said about it, was stalled no more.

She went back to her office, carrying her notebooks with her. There she activated her crystal and attuned it to that of one of the men waiting to hear what she had done. A moment later, Siuntio’s image, tiny but perfect, appeared in the depths of the sphere.
“Ah,”
he said, smiling as he recognized her in his crystal. “What have you got to tell me?”

“Master, the famous Lagoan navigator has just landed on the tropical continent,” she answered. Should some mage be tapping their emanations, that would confuse him.

Fortunately, it didn’t confuse Siuntio. His smile got broader. “Is that so? Were the natives friendly?”

“Everyone landed safe and happy.” Pekka cast about for a way to continue the improvised code, and found one: “He seems to have discovered the bigger part of the continent, not the smaller one.” That would tell Siuntio Ilmarinen’s more probable set of results looked to be true, not the less probable grouping.

In the crystal, Siuntio nodded. “And does the man who made the compass know what the navigator did with it?”

“Not yet,” Pekka said. “I wanted to tell you first.”

“You flatter me, but he should be the one to hear this news,” Siuntio said. With a wave of farewell, he broke the attunement between their crystals.

Pekka did call Ilmarinen then. She used the same phrases to get the news across to him as she had with Siuntio. He also understood them; she’d expected nothing less. But where Siuntio had seemed pleased with the news, Ilmarinen’s mobile features twisted into a scowl. “We’re so cursed good at finding answers these days,” he said morosely. “If only we could find the questions to go with them.”

“I don’t follow you, Master,” Pekka said.

Ilmarinen’s scowl got deeper. “Suppose I’m your grandfather,” he said, and put on a quavery old man’s voice nothing like his real one as he pointed to her: “Sweetheart, I’m running out of years. Can I take five from you? You won’t miss ‘em; you’ve got plenty left.” He resumed his natural tones to add, “We can do that now, you know. You’ve just shown us how. And will the rich start buying—or going out and stealing—years from the poor?”

Pekka stared in horror. All at once, she felt like burning her notebooks. But it was too late for that. What had been found once would be found again, sure as the sun would—briefly—rise tomorrow.

In the crystal, Ilmarinen pointed at her. “And I assume your spell used all convergent elements. It would have, with the setup you’d want to check things with your mice.” Before Pekka could correct him about the animals, he went on, “Try it with a divergent series—but calculate some of the possible energy releases before you start incanting. Powers above keep you safe.” He waved. His image disappeared from the crystal. Pekka began to wonder why she’d ever thirsted after abstract knowledge.

Cornelu was splitting lumber with an axe when he saw the Algarvian patrol trudging up the road from Tirgoviste town and its harbor. His grip tightened on the axe handle. What were King Mezentio’s men doing, coming up into the hilly heart of Tirgoviste island? Till now, they’d mostly been content to hold the harbor and let the rest of the island take care of itself.

He wasn’t the only one to have spotted them, either. “Algarvians!” Giurgiu called, and the rest of the woodcutters took up the warning.

“What do they want?” Cornelu demanded. “They can’t be looking for rebels.” He’d been looking for rebels ever since he splashed back up onto his home island. He’d found plenty of people who despised the Algarvian occupiers, but almost no one who despised them enough to want to pick up a stick and blaze at them.

King Mezentio’s soldiers seemed to feel the same way about that as he did. They tramped along in easy open order. Had irregulars been lurking in the woods, the Algarvians wouldn’t have lasted a heartbeat, but they had nothing to fear from woodcutters.

Their leader, a young lieutenant with mustaches waxed to sharp spikes, waved to Giurgiu. The big, burly lumberman took no notice of him. Cornelu snickered. Giurgiu didn’t love Algarvians; Cornelu knew that.

“You, there!” the lieutenant called. Giurgiu pretended to be deaf as well as blind. That was a dangerous game; Algarvians were famous for their short tempers. The lieutenant went on, “Aye, you, you great ugly lout!”

“Better answer him,” Cornelu said softly. “He’ll use that stick if you push him too far.”

Giurgiu looked up from his work. It was as if he were seeing and hearing the Algarvian officer for the first time. He made a better actor than Cornelu had thought he could. When he did answer, it was in upcountry dialect: “What you want, eh?” Even Cornelu, who’d grown up on Tirgoviste, had trouble following him. To the lieutenant, his words were likely gibberish, though most Algarvians and Sibians could understand one another with a little work.

“We’re looking for somebody,” the lieutenant said, speaking slowly and clearly.

“What say?” Giurgiu kept right on acting like a moron—an outsize and possibly dangerous moron, for he leaned on the handle of an axe bigger and heavier than those of the other woodcutters.

“We’re looking for someone,” the Algarvian repeated. He sounded as if his patience was wearing thin. Staring from one woodcutter to another, he asked, “Does anybody here speak Algarvian or even a civilized dialect of Sibian?”

No one admitted to that. Under other circumstances, Cornelu might have, but not now. He wondered which man in particular Mezentio’s soldiers were looking for. He didn’t think the Algarvians knew he was here, but. ..

“What say?” Giurgiu repeated, in dialect even broader than before. He didn’t crack a smile. He didn’t even come close. Cornelu admired his straight face.

“Bunch of bumpkins, sir,” one of the Algarvian troopers said. “Bunch of ugly, stupid bumpkins.”

Maybe he was just saying what he thought. Maybe he was trying to make the Sibians angry enough to show they understood Algarvian. Maybe he was doing both at once; Cornelu wouldn’t have put it past him.

Whatever the trooper was doing, the officer shook his head. “No,” he said in tones of cheerful unconcern. “They’re just lying. They can follow me well enough, or some of them can. Well, we’ll pay plenty of silver if they bring us this chap called Cornelu. And if they don’t, we’ll hunt him down sooner or later. Come on, boys.” He gathered up the soldiers by eye and headed up the track past the woodcutters.

We’ll hunt him down sooner or later.
Cornelu fumed at the Algarvian’s arrogance. But the fellow was a pretty good officer. He’d sown the seeds of betrayal. He was probably doing that everywhere he went. Now he would wait to see where they ripened.

The woodcutters returned to work. Cornelu kept on splitting rounds of lumber. He didn’t look up from what he was doing. He seldom did, but now even less than usual. Whenever he straightened and looked around, he found other men’s eyes on him. Cornelu wasn’t the rarest Sibian name, but it was a long way from the most common.

At supper—a big bowl of oatmeal mush with a little salt pork stirred in—Giurgiu strode over and sat down beside him on a fallen pine. “You the fellow Mezentio’s hounds are sniffing after?”

“I don’t know.” Stolidly, Cornelu spooned up some more oatmeal. “I could be, I suppose, but maybe not, too.” He wished he’d given a false name when he joined this gang.

Giurgiu nodded. “Thought I’d ask. Fellow who fights like you likely learned how in the army or navy. Somebody who learned there might be somebody those loudmouthed fools’d want to work over.”

“Aye, that’s so.” Cornelu still didn’t look up from his oatmeal. He didn’t want to meet Giurgiu’s eyes—and he was hungry enough to make such bad manners seem nothing out of the ordinary. All the woodcutters ate like that; the work they did made them eat like that. Between a couple of mouthfuls, Cornelu added, “I’m not the only one who knows those tricks, though. There’s you, for instance.”

“Oh, aye, there’s me, all right.” Giurgiu’s big head bobbed up and down, almost as if he were once more making himself out to be more rustic than he really was. “But that Algarvian didn’t know my name. He knew yours.”

Anger flared in Cornelu. “Turn me in, then. If I’m the one they want, they’ll probably pay you plenty. They’d like us to be sweet. ‘Sibians are an Algarvic folk, too.’ “ With savage sarcasm, he quoted the broadsheet he’d seen down in Tirgoviste town.

“Bugger that with an axe handle,” Giurgiu said. “If they loved us so bloody much, they shouldn’t have invaded us. That’s how I see things, anyway. But there’s liable to be some as see ‘em different.”

“Traitors,” Cornelu said bitterly.

Giurgiu didn’t argue with him. All he said was, “They’re there. You try and pretend they aren’t, it’ll cost you.” He got to his feet, towering over Cornelu. “Try to stay warm tonight. I’ve got a feeling the weather’s going to turn nasty by sunup.”

Cornelu had the same feeling. He wouldn’t have expected it in a man who spent all his life on land. The weather was often bad at this season of the year; Tirgoviste lay far to the south, and they were well up in the hills. Even on rare clear days, the sun hardly seemed to have risen before it set again in the northwest. When clouds covered the sky, murk and night were hardly distinguishable.

Like everyone else, Cornelu had plenty of thick wool blankets. He swaddled himself in them, curling up close to the cookfire. On nights like this, it burned till daybreak, even if that meant throwing on timber the woodcutters might otherwise have sold.

Snow started falling a couple of hours after he fell asleep, borne on the wings of a wind doubtless whipping whitecaps on the seas surrounding Sibiu. Cornelu woke, pulled a length of blanket over his head, and went back to sleep.

When morning came, the world was white. Down in Tirgoviste town, Cornelu knew, it probably wouldn’t be snow. It would be sleet or freezing rain: to his mind, even nastier. He wished he were down there, back in his own house, making love with Costache in front of a crackling fire—a fire made from wood he hadn’t cut himself. As an afterthought, he remembered Brindza. Fitting her into all that, he wished her asleep in a cradle, or wherever toddlers of that size slept.