Darkness Descending (23 page)

“Aye.” Pekka knew she sounded dazed. The two finest theoretical sorcerers in Kuusamo had just let her know they thought she belonged in their company. All things considered, she decided she’d earned the right to sound a little dazed.

Back in his study, Brivibas labored over yet another article on the bygone days of the Kaunian Empire. By immersing himself in the past, Vanai’s grandfather did what he could to ignore the unpleasant present. Vanai wished she could find such an escape for herself.

She longed for escapes of all sorts, escape from Major Spinello chief among them. She glanced back toward the study. Brivibas would not come out till suppertime and would do his best to ignore her while they ate. She had hours in which to try her spell, the casting of which would take only a few minutes. Her grandfather would be none the wiser, and what he did not know he could not tell.

As Vanai opened the book of classical Kaunian sorcerous lore, she laughed without much humor and bowed in the direction of the study. “You have not trained me in vain, my grandfather,” she murmured, “even if I use my knowledge to ends different from yours.”

Though she was no trained mage, the spell before her looked simple enough. She’d had no trouble getting daffodil root from Tamulis the druggist; to this day, the boiled root was a simple preventive against bladder pains, and Brivibas had reached an age where it was easy to imagine him suffering from such. And Vanai’s mother had owned a set of silver earrings, necklace, and bracelet set with sea-green beryls. Taking an earring from the dusty jewelry case without her grandfather noticing had been simplicity itself.

“Now,” she said, gathering herself, “to hope this proves a true spell.” There lay the rub, as she knew only too well. However loath Brivibas was to admit it, the ancient Kaunians had been a superstitious lot, believing in all manner of demons modern thaumaturgy proved nonexistent. Some of what they’d reckoned magic, too, was nothing but imagination run wild. Too many of their spells gave no results when worked by—or against—skeptical moderns.

Vanai shrugged. One way or another, she’d learn something.
I can write a paper afterwards,
she thought. But she did not want to write a paper. She only wanted Major Spinello gone.

As the classical text recommended, she’d made a crude straw image of her Algarvian tormentor. Soaking the top of the image’s head in red ink showed its model came from Mezentio’s kingdom. Now that the ink had dried, Vanai held the image in her left hand. With her right, she stirred a bowl of water in which she’d boiled the daffodil root. As she cast the image into the bowl, she called out the classical Kaunian invocation from the text: “Devil, begone from my house! Devil, begone from my door!”

Devil, begone from my bed,
she thought. She wanted to say that aloud—she wanted to scream it. But the charm said,
Follow exactly what is written, and thou shalt surely gain thy desire: and this hath been proved in our time.
She would not deviate, not yet. If the charm failed her (which she knew to be only too likely), she would think about what to do next.

For now, she took the image out of the bowl of infused water and dried it on a rag. Some of the red ink had smeared, which made the straw man look badly wounded. Vanai’s lips skinned back from her teeth in a predatory grin. She didn’t mind that. No, she didn’t mind that at all.

Once the image was dry enough to suit her, she laid the beryl on its ink-stained chest. “Beryl is the stone that driveth away enemies,” she intoned. “Beryl is the stone that maketh them meek and mild and obedient to the operator’s will.”
And my will is that he go away and never trouble me again, or any other Kaunian either.

When she was done, she threw the image and the rag on which she’d dried it into the cookfire. For one thing, she hoped that would hurt Spinello, too. For another, it got rid of the evidence. Like conquerors since the days of the Kaunian Empire, King Mezentio’s men took a dim view of those they had defeated practicing sorcery against them. After the image had gone up in smoke, she poured down the privy the daffodil root and the water in which she had boiled it. The earring went back into the case from which it had come, the book of charms onto its shelf.

As she set about peeling and slicing parsnips to add to the pot of bean soup simmering above the fire, she wondered if she’d just wasted her time. Also like conquerors since the days of the Kaunian Empire, King Mezentio’s men were warded against their enemies’ magecraft. And she didn’t know whether she’d truly practiced magecraft or simply tried to use one of her ancestors’ outworn, mistaken beliefs.

But she hoped. Oh, how she hoped.

Brivibas, as usual these days, was taciturn over supper. He’d given up lecturing her and reproving her, and had no idea how to talk to her in any more nearly normal, more nearly equal way. Or maybe, she thought as she watched him spoon up the soup, he had so many nasty things he wanted to tell her, he simply couldn’t decide which one to shout out first and so swallowed all of them. However that worked, his silence suited her.

Major Spinello did not visit her the next day. She hadn’t expected that he would; she’d come to know the rhythms of his lust better than she wanted to. Knowing them at all, for that matter, was knowing them better than she wanted to. When he stayed away the day after that, she began to hope. When he stayed away the day after
that,
too, her heart sang a hymn of freedom inside her.

That made the peremptory, unmistakably Algarvian knock on the door the following morning all the more devastating. Brivibas, who had been examining one of the antiquities in the parlor, let out a disdainful sniff and retreated across the courtyard to his study. He slammed the door behind him as if taking refuge in a besieged fortress.

He would be long since dead, were I not doing this,
Vanai reminded herself. But her steps dragged even more than usual as she made her way to the door. “Took you long enough,” Spinello said. “You don’t want to keep me waiting, you know, not if you want to keep your grandfather breathing.”

“I am here,” Vanai said dully. “Do what you will.”

He took her back to her bedchamber and did exactly that. And then, because he hadn’t done it for longer than usual, he wanted to do it again. When he didn’t rise to the occasion quite so promptly as he’d hoped he would, Vanai had to help him. Of all the things he made her do, she despised that most of all.
If I bite down hard,
she thought, not for the first time—for far from the first time—
the redheads will slay me and my grandfather, and the powers above only know what they’ll do to the rest of the Kaunians in Oyngestun.
And so she refrained, though the temptation got stronger every time.

At last, after what seemed like forever, Spinello gasped his way to a second completion. He preened and strutted as he got back into his kilt and tunic. “I know I’m spoiling you for every other man,” he said, meaning it as a boast.

Vanai cast down her eyes. If Spinello wanted to think that maidenly modesty and not disgust, she would let him. “Aye, I think you are,” she murmured. If he wanted to think that agreement rather than disgust. . . again, she would let him.

He left Brivibas’ house whistling cheerfully, the picture of sated indolence. Vanai barred the door after him. She went back to the house’s crowded bookshelves, to the text from which she’d taken the classical spell of repulsion. She’d hoped that, because it was so old, Spinello would not be warded against it. Maybe he was. Or maybe the spell, like so many from the days of the old Empire, had no real value. Either way, she wanted to throw the book into the fire or drop it down the privy.

As she had when pleasuring Spinello, she refrained. She’d made sure she put the text back exactly where she’d got it. If it went missing, Brivibas would know and would hound her without mercy till it turned up or till she explained why it couldn’t. Or he might think Spinello had stolen it. If anything could rouse her grandfather to violence, a purloined book might.

Spinello returned three days later—he probably needed extra rest after his unusual exertion during his previous visit—and then again two days after that. In his own way, he was nearly as regular and methodical as Brivibas. Vanai cursed the classical Kaunians under her breath, and sometimes above it. Her grandfather remained convinced his ancient ancestors had been the font of all knowledge. Maybe so, but what they’d reckoned magecraft couldn’t keep the Algarvian major out of her bed. As far as she was concerned, that made them useless—worse than useless, for she’d built up her hopes relying on their wisdom, only to see those hopes dashed.

Two days later, Spinello came back, and then two days after that. By then, Vanai had resigned herself to the failure of her ploy. She let him do what he wanted. He did leave more quickly these days than he had at first; he’d discovered she didn’t care to listen to his tales of Algarvian triumphs in Unkerlant, and so had stopped regaling her with them. He allowed her all sorts of small courtesies, but not the larger one of deciding whether she wanted to give herself to him.

And, after another two days, he returned once more. This time, to her surprise, he had a couple of ordinary Algarvian troopers at his back. Horror blazed through her. Was he going to give her to them as a reward for good service? If he tried to do that, Vanai would ...

She realized she didn’t have to decide what she would do then. One of the troopers carried a crate holding four jars of wine; the other was festooned with sausage links and cradled a ham in his arms. Spinello spoke to them in Algarvian. They set the food and drink inside the front hall, then went away.

Spinello came in and closed the door behind himself. As he was barring it, Vanai found her voice: “What’s all this?”

“Farewell gift,” Spinello answered lightly. “My superiors, in their wisdom, have decided I am better suited to fighting the Unkerlanters than to administering a Forthwegian village. It will be boring, I expect—no antiquities, and mostly homely women—but I am the king’s to command. You will have to take your chances with the constables who take over for me. But”—he slid a hand under her tunic—”I am not gone yet.”

Vanai let him lead her back to her bedchamber. When he had her straddle him, she did it joyfully. It was not the joy of fulfilled desire, but it was the joy of
a
fulfilled desire, and surprisingly close to the other—closer than she’d ever come with Spinello, of that she was certain.

Had he wanted a second go then, she would have given it to him without much resentment, knowing it would be the last. But after she’d brought him to his peak, he caressed her for a moment, then patted her bottom to show he wanted her to let him up. She did, and he began to dress.

“I’ll miss you, curse me if I won’t,” he said, bending down to kiss her. An eyebrow quirked. “You won’t miss me a bit, and curse me if I don’t know that, but I brought the meat and wine to give you something to remember me by.”

“I will always remember you,” Vanai said truthfully as she got back into her own clothes. Now, perhaps, she might not remember him quite as she would have before his gift—or not to the same degree, at any rate. She might even hope he would live when he went into battle—though she might not, too.

To her relief, he didn’t ask her anything about that. He kissed and fondled her at the doorway before going out. She closed the door and barred it. Then she stood in the entry hall for a couple of minutes, scratching her head as she stared down at the sausages. Had her spell got Spinello sent off to fight King Swemmel’s men, or was this only a coincidence? If it was only a coincidence, had some coincidences like it convinced the ancient Kaunians they had an effective cantrip?

How could she be sure? Had she been her grandfather, she would have gone to the shelves of dusty journals to find out what historians and historical mages had written. But she was not Brivibas. Knowing how she’d got free of Spinello didn’t matter to her. Knowing that she’d got free did. There in the crowded little hallway, she began to dance.

For once, Corporal Leudast looked at behemoths with admiration rather than dread. These behemoths belonged to his own side and were trotting into action for King Swemmel and against the Algarvian invaders. “Stomp ‘em flat!” he shouted at the Unkerlanter soldiers riding the big beasts.

“Poor tactics, Corporal,” Captain Hawart said. “More efficient to blaze the redheads down or toss eggs onto their heads.” But having delivered that admonition, he grinned. “I hope they stomp the buggers flat, too.”

“We’ve got fine big behemoths there to do it,” Sergeant Magnulf remarked. “I think they’re bigger than most of the ones the Algarvians breed.”

Hawart nodded. “I think you’re right. That’s the far western strain, bigger and fiercer than any the redheads or the Kaunians ever tamed. I wish we had more of them.” His grin faded. “I wish the size difference mattered more nowadays, too. With the weapons behemoths carry, it’s not body against body and horn against horn as often as it used to be.”

“Maybe not, sir,” Leudast said, “but if I don’t like medium-sized Algarvian behemoths coming at me, Mezentio’s men sure won’t like great big Unkerlanter behemoths coming at them.”

“Here’s hoping they don’t,” Hawart said. “Whatever we do, we’ve got to hold the corridor between Glogau and the rest of the kingdom. The Zuwayzin have stopped their push, but the Algarvians—” He broke off, his face grim.

Leudast wondered if anything could stop the Algarvians. Nothing had yet, or he and his comrades—those of them left alive—wouldn’t have been pushed so far back into Unkerlant. But new recruits in rock-gray tunics kept coming out of die training camps farther west. King Mezentio’s men occupied his own village along with countless others, but Unkerlant still held even more.

“Come on!” Captain Hawart shouted to the mix of veterans and new men making up his regiment. “Forward, and stick close to the behemoths. We need them to smash a hole in the enemy’s line, but they need us, too. If the redheads pop up out of the grass and blaze the men off those beasts, they aren’t any good to us by themselves.”