Darkness Descending

For a wonder, the Lagoan did slow down. In fact, he began speaking as if to an idiot child. No doubt that was patronizing. Cornelu didn’t mind. After two or three repetitions, he learned which caravan line he needed to take to get to the Guild’s headquarters. He bowed his thanks and went off to the corner--three blocks up, one block over, as the constable had said, and said, and said--at which the ley-line caravan would stop.

More ley lines came together in and around Setubal than anywhere else in the world. That was one reason why Setubal was the commercial capital of the world. But Setubal had been the greatest trading city in the world even back in the days of sailing ships and horse-drawn wains. It boasted a grand harbor, the Mondego River offered communication inland, and the Lagoans were not in the habit of disrupting their kingdom with internecine strife.

Too bad, Cornelu thought. Sibiu would have been stronger if they were. It was a relief when the caravan car came gliding up; he didn’t have to go on with such gloomy reflections. He stepped up into the car, threw a copper in the fare box--the conductor’s watchful eye made sure he did--and sat down on one of the hard, not particularly comfortable seats.

Ten minutes later, he got off the caravan car and crossed the street to the Grand Hall of the Lagoan Guild of Mages. It was a splendid white marble building in uncompromising neoclassical style, as were the statues in front of it. Had they and the hall been painted instead of remaining pristine, they might have come straight from the heyday of the Kaunian Empire.

The splendor inside the Grand Hall proclaimed louder than words that the Guild of Mages had been very successful for a very long time. When Cornelu asked the first mage he saw in what he thought was Lagoan how to find Fernao, the fellow stared at him in incomprehension, then put a return question to him: “Sir, do you speak Kaunian?”

“Badly,” Cornelu answered. Scholars kept it alive to use among themselves, but he was a navy man and had forgotten most of what he’d learned. Frowning in concentration, he tried to ask the question in the classical tongue.

He was sure he’d made a hash of the grammar, but the mage didn’t criticize him. Instead, still speaking Kaunian, the Lagoan said, “I think you had better come with me.” Cornelu wasn’t sure he’d got that, but then the fellow turned and gestured, a language more universal even than Kaunian.

Instead of getting his question answered, Cornelu found himself conducted to a very impressive office with an even more impressive door, at the moment closed. Sitting in front of it, behind a desk wide as a ship’s desk, was a clever-looking man going through papers. He looked up and exchanged words in Lagoan with Cornelu’s guide. The Lagoan mage turned back and spoke in Kaunian: “Sir, this is Brinco, secretary to Grandmaster Pinhiero. He will help you.”

Cornelu bowed. “My thanks.”

He’d spoken only a couple of words, but Brinco looked alert. “Sibian?” he asked, and Cornelu nodded. Brinco switched languages, saying, “You will speak Algarvian, then,” and Cornelu nodded again. This time, so did the secretary. “Good. We can talk. I read your tongue, but can’t claim to speak it, and you have trouble with mine. What is it that you want with Fernao?”

“It does not have to be him, your Excellency--” Cornelu began.

“I am not an excellency,” Brinco said. “Grandmaster Pinhiero is an Excellency.”

“However you like,” Cornelu answered. “But Fernao and I have met each other, so I thought I could ask him how you Lagoans will keep Algarve from doing to Setubal what she did to Yliharma.”

“It is a good question,” Brinco agreed. “But Fernao is not here to answer it; he is with his Majesty’s forces on the austral continent.”

“Ah,” Cornelu said. “He was there, and came off, and now is back. I pity him. All right, sir, since I have been brought before you, I will ask you the question I would have asked him and hope to learn from your answer.”

“My answer is, we are doing everything we can, and we think it will help,” Brinco said. “And my further answer is that I have no further answer. I pray you will forgive me, sir, for pointing out that, until my distinguished colleague brought you hither, I had not had the honor of making your acquaintance, even if Fernao did mention you in the report he prepared on his return to Lagoas.”

“You do not trust me, you mean,” Cornelu said slowly.

Brinco inclined his head. “It grieves me to say that is exactly what I mean. I intend no disrespect, but I will not put my kingdoms secrets in the hands of those whose trustworthiness I know less well than I might like. Such is life in these troubled times, I fear.”