Darkness Descending

“Don’t think so.” Skarnu leaned forward, too, till their heads almost touched. “Tell me, why don’t you?”

“I’ll do that. I will indeed.” Had the taverner brought his mouth any closer, he could have given Skarnu a kiss. “They say--I can’t prove it’s true, but they do say it, and nobody says anything different, not that I’ve heard--they say the redheads are going to knock over the Column of Victory down in Priekule.”

“What?” Skarnu jerked as if stung by a wasp. “They can’t do that!” His memories of the column went back to earliest childhood, back to the days before his parents had died in a ley-line caravan collision, orphaning him and Krasta.

“They can,” the taverner said. “Pretty rotten piece of business, anybody wants to know what I think . . . which isn’t too likely, especially if you listen to my wife go on.”

Skarnu was only half listening. He picked up the mug of ale, gulped it down, and shoved it and coins across the table for a refill. He took a long pull at that, too, trying to imagine the capital’s skyline without that pale stone needle thrusting up from the middle of the park. He couldn’t do it; he had an easier time visualizing the royal palace gone. “Powers above,” he said at last. “They wouldn’t just knock down a monument. They’re trying to make us forget who we are.”

Now the taverner gave him a blank look. The fellow might be shrewd in business, but how much education did he have? Not much, probably. That wasn’t so for Skarnu, who’d always been a better student than his sister. Valmiera’s roots, like those of Jelgava to the north, were anchored in the soil of the long-ago Kaunian Empire. Monuments survived all over both kingdoms; the Column of Victory was just one of the more spectacular. If the Algarvians were trying to destroy them . . .

“They’re trying to kill our Kaunianity,” Skarnu said.

Intelligence kindled in the taverner’s eyes. He understood what that meant, all right. “Hadn’t thought of it so,” he said, “but curse me if I’ll tell you you’re wrong. No, curse the redheads.”

“Aye, curse the redheads,” Skarnu agreed.

“Aye, curse the redheads,” Merkela said, coming up beside him. “Buy me some ale and tell me why we’re cursing them this time.” She didn’t bother keeping her voice down. Both Skarnu and the taverner looked around the square in alarm. Fortunately, none of the Algarvians seemed to have heard. Skarnu explained--in a voice hardly above a whisper--what Mezentio’s men spoke of doing. Merkela nodded. “Powers below eat them,” she snarled.

“May it be so,” Skarnu said, and did his best to change the subject: “Have you got what you need?”

Such ploys failed more often than they worked. This time, he got lucky. “I do,” Merkela answered, “and for a better price than I thought I would, too. Every copper counts these days.” That set her cursing the Algarvians again, but in a more restrained way. “What about you?”

“Oh, I just came along to keep you company and get out of a morning’s work,” Skamu answered. And to keep you out of trouble, he added to himself. As for the work, only in winter could a farmer--or even someone turning into a farmer--say such a thing and get away with it.

Even at this season of the year, Merkela reproachfully clicked her tongue between her teeth. “Work shouldn’t wait,” she said, which might have been a peasant’s creed all over Derlavai. She drank the mug of ale Skarnu had got her, then slipped her arm into his. For a moment, he thought that was fond possessiveness. Then she declared, “Come on, let’s go. You can finish most of the chores this afternoon and not leave so much for tomorrow.”

She was in deadly earnest. She usually was. Skarnu wanted to laugh it off, but didn’t quite dare. Meek as any henpecked husband, he let her lead him out of the square, out of Pavilosta, and back toward the farm. He was chuckling inside, but made sure it didn’t show.

Like most towns, Pavilosta had gone up at a power point, which let mages work there without fueling their sorcery with sacrifices. Pavilosta’s power point was small and feeble, one reason the place remained no more than a village.

Another reason was that it did not lie on the ley line connecting two stronger local power points. That line lay between Pavilosta and Merkela’s farm. Most times going to and from the village, Skarnu hardly noticed it. The Algarvians kept the brush down along it, as had the Valmierans before them; but in winter there was no brush to keep down.

Today, though, he and Merkela had to pause at the ley line because a long caravan was passing by; it was heading southeast, in the direction of Priekule and, beyond the capital, the Strait of Valmiera. Merkela stared at the cars as they silently slid past. “Why are all the windows covered with those wooden grates?” she asked.