Into The Darkness

"Well, then!" Vanai tossed her head again. "You see, you don't need to worry about Ealstan after all."

She'd made a mistake. She knew it as soon as the words were out her mouth. And, sure enough, Brivibas pounced on it: "I would wolk far less had you forgotten the young barbarian's name."

Had he stopped nagging her about Ealstan, she probably would ha forgotten the Forthwegian's name in short order. As things were, looked more attractive every time her grandfather made a rude comme about him. If such a thing had happened to Brivibas during his long-a youth, it had fallen from his memory in the years since.

"He was very nice," Vanai said. Even handsome, in the dark, blo[..] Forthwegian way, she thought. Having made one mistake, she did not compound it by letting her grandfather learn of that thought.

He did not need to learn of it to keep on carping. After a while, Vanai got tired of listening to him and went out to the courtyard around whim the house was built. She didn't stay as long as she'd thought she would.

For one thing, a raw breeze made her shiver. The sun ducked in and o from behind gray, nasty-looking clouds. And the courtyard, no long bright with flowers as it had been through spring and summer, seemed a far less pleasant refuge than it would have been then. The alabaster bowl into which the fountain splashed was a genuine Kaunian antiquity, but it too failed to delight her. Her lip curled. Living with her grandfather was living with an antiquity. She needed no more examples.

She wished she could have gone out on to the streets of Oyngestun.

These days, though, with Algarvian soldiers patrolling the village, she went out as seldom as she could. The Algarvians had committed relatively few outrages: fewer, certainly, than she'd expected when they occupied the place. But she knew they could. She might speak well of a Forthwegian, but of a redhead? About Algarvians, she completely agreed with Brivibas.

Why not? Indeed, how could she have done otherwise? He'd taught her. But that thought never crossed her mind, no more than the thought of water disturbed a swimming fish.

"My granddaughter?" Brivibas called from his study, where they'd been quarreling. Far more slowly than he should have, he realized he'd really irked her. If only some ancient Kaunian had written a treatise on how to bring up a granddaughter! Vanai thought. He'd do a better job.

She didn't want to answer him. She didn't want to have anything to do with him, not just then. Instead of returning to the study, she went into the parlor through a different door. Brivibas had set his mark there, too, as he had through the whole of the house. Bookshelves almost overwhelmed the spare, classical - and none too comfortable - furniture.

All the ornaments were Kaunian antiquities or copies of Kaunian antiquities: statuettes, painted pottery, a little glass vial gone milky from lying underground for upwards of a thousand years. She'd known them her whole life; they were as familiar to her as the shapes of her own fingernails. Now, suddenly, she felt like smashing them.

On the wall hung a print of an old painting of the Kaunian Column of Victory in faraway Prickule. Vanai sighed. Thinking of Kaunian victorious didn't come easy now. Neither did thinking of a kingdom nearly a1l Kaunian, as Valmiera was. What would living in a land where every one looked more or less the way she did be like? Luxurious was the word that sprang to mind. The Kaunians of Forthweg, remnants left behind wvhen the [.t1dc.] of ancient empire receded, enjoyed no such luxury.

She went into the kitchen. A terra-cotta low relief of a fat little [..of ry go nal ich ild..] demon with a big mouth and a bigger belly hung on the wall there. Her imperial ancestors had fancied the demon of appetite looked like that.

Sorcerous investigation had long since proved there was no such thing as the demon of appetite. Vanai didn't care what sorcerous investigation had proved. She liked the relief. Had there been a demon of appetite, he would have looked like that.

Had there been a demon of appetite, he would have turned up his nose at what he saw in that kitchen. Cheese, a little bread, mushrooms, strings of garlic and onions and leeks, an ever-shrinking length of sausage… not much to keep a spirit dwelling in a body.

Brivibas hardly cared what he ate, or sometimes even if he ate. His mind ruled; his body did strictly as it was told. Vanai sometimes wished she were the same way. Her grandfather assumed she was, though he would have been angry at others who judged people using themselves as a touchstone. But Vanai enjoyed good food. That was why, as soon as she grew big enough, she'd taken over the kitchen. Till the war came, she'd done as well as she could without much money.