Darkness Descending

But the fellow who’d clapped didn’t come from Zossen. Garivald had never seen him before. He was skinny and dirty and mean-looking. Once upon a time, his grimy tunic had been rock-gray. He carried a stick; Garivald’s hatchet wasn’t much against it. He wasn’t pointing it at Garivald, though. Instead, he was nodding in slow approval.

“Good song,” he remarked, and his accent proved he hadn’t been born anywhere near the Duchy of Grelz. “Did you make it?”

“Aye,” Garivald answered before realizing he should have lied.

“Thought so--hadn’t heard it before,” the stranger said. “Aye, a good song. Sing it over, friend, so I get it straight.”

Garivald did, this time all the way through. The stranger listened, then made a peremptory gesture for him to do it again. Now, the stranger sang along. He had a good ear; he made few mistakes.

“My pals will like that,” he said. “Aye, in a few months people will be singing that all over the countryside. Not everyone’s given up against the Algarvians, no indeed, not even after their behemoths ran over us. What’s the name of your village yonder?”

“Zossen,” Garivald answered.

“Zossen,” the stranger--a soldier who hadn’t surrendered?--repeated. “Zossen will hear from us one of these days.” He sketched a salute, as if to an officer, before slipping away between the trees. He was far better in the woods than Garivald and vanished almost at once.

Fernao didn’t know why he’d been summoned to the royal palace in Setubal. The bored functionary who’d linked crystals hadn’t explained, saying only, “All will be made clear upon your arrival, sir.” In a way, Fernao supposed his caution made sense: a good mage could spy on the emanations passing between two crystals. But not knowing why he had to go to the palace irritated him.

As he got off the caravan car in front of the palace grounds, an unpleasant thought crossed his mind: what if it had to do with the exiled King Penda of Forthweg? That was worse than irritating. It was downright frightening. He would have been perfectly happy--powers above, he would have been delighted--never to see Penda again.

He worried as he walked up the broad red-brick path toward the palace, worried so much that at first he paid little attention to the building itself. Having lived his whole life in Setubal played a part in that; he took die palace for granted, where a man who saw it but seldom would not have.

Even for him, it wasn’t easy. The Lagoan royal palace cried out to be noticed--cried out in a loud, piercing voice. It was built in the ornate Algarvian style of the century before last: the Algarvian style carried to an extreme only the royal treasury could have supported. Everything leaped toward the heavens, and everything was carved in incredible, maniacal detail. The entire history of Lagoas up till that time appeared on the walls and buttresses and towers, all of it perfect, much of it swathed in gold leaf. Fernao wondered how many stonecutters had gone blind while the palace rose.

If anything, the great bronze doors that led into the royal residence were even more astonishing than the building. On them was the Second Battle of the Strait of Valmiera--in which, not long before the palace went up, Lagoas had won a smashing victory over Sibiu--all picked out in enamelwork whose brilliance had not diminished a bit over the course of two centuries.

Muttering under his breath, Fernao passed through those brazen doors and into the palace. A dozen secretaries sat behind desks in the antechamber there. He went up to one of them and gave his name.

“A moment, sorcerous sir, if you please,” the fellow said. “Let me consult my list of appointments.” He ran his finger down the sheet. “Ah, here you are—and right on time, too. Your appointment is with Colonel Peixoto, in the Ministry of War. That is in the south wing, sir--go through this hall and take the corridor to your left.”

“Thank you very much,” Fernao said. The secretary bowed in his chair, almost as ceremonious as an Algarvian. Fernao walked through the antechamber with a new bounce to his stride. Only the splendor of his surroundings kept him from whistling as he walked. Whatever this was about, it had nothing to do with Penda. And if it has nothing to do with Penda, he thought, I don’t care what it is.

As he got farther from the parts of the palace where King Vitor actually lived, interior decoration grew less grandiose. By the time he reached the offices of the Ministry of War--a good ten minutes’ walk from the antechamber--he’d come to surroundings in which he could actually imagine men doing serious work.