Out of the Darkness

“Good.” The forensic mage waited till he’d chased down the last bit of fried turnip and given his plate to the guard who’d fetched it before beginning by asking, “You knew Captain Frigyes, did you not?”

“He was my company commander,” Istvan replied. She had to have already learned that.

“And you also knew Borsos the dowser?” Lammi asked.

“Aye,” Istvan said-why not answer that? “I fetched and carried for him here on Obuda, as a matter of fact, back when the war was young. And I saw him again when I was fighting in Unkerlant.”

Lammi nodded once more. “All right. He never should have come to an ordinary captives’ camp, but that was our error, not yours.” She had a pad of paper in her lap, and drummed her fingers on it. “Tell me, Sergeant, what do you think of what your countrymen did here?”

“It was brave. They were warriors. They died like warriors,” Istvan answered. Lammi sat there looking at him-looking through him-with those sharp, sharp eyes. Under that gaze, he felt he had to go on, and he did: “I thought they were stupid, though. They could not do you enough harm to make their deaths worthwhile.”

“Ah.” Lammi scribbled something in the notepad. “You are a man of more than a little sense, I see. Is that why you did not offer your throat to the knife?”

Istvan felt the ice under his feet getting thin. “I was ill that night,” he said. “I was in the infirmary that night. I couldn’t have done anything about it even if I’d thought it was a good idea.”

“So you were, you and Corporal Kun,” Lammi said. “And how did the two of you manage to be so, ah, conveniently ill?”

The ice crackled, as if he might fall through. And what was Kun saying, over in the other tent? “I had the shits,” Istvan said. Maybe the raw word would keep her from digging further.

He should have known better. He realized that even before her eyes blazed. “Did you think I was bluffing?” she asked quietly. “An evasion is also a lie, Sergeant. I will let you try again. How did you come to have the shits?” She spoke the word as calmly as a soldier might have. He supposed he should have guessed that, too.

But he evaded even so: “It must have been something I ate.”

Lammi shook her head, as if she’d expected better of him. He braced himself for whatever the guards would do to him. He hoped it wouldn’t be too bad. The slanteyes really were softer than his own folk. He saw Lammi raise her left hand and start to twist it-and then he suddenly stopped seeing. Everything went, not black, but no color at all. He stopped hearing. He stopped smelling and feeling and tasting. As far as he could prove, he stopped existing.

Have I died? he wondered. If he had, he knew none of the stars’ light. Or is it her wizardry? Thinking straight didn’t come easy, not when he was reduced to essential nothingness. His mind began to drift, whether he wanted it to or not. How long before I go mad? he wondered. But even time had no meaning, not when he couldn’t gauge it.

After what might have been moments or years, he found himself back in his body, all senses intact. By the way Lammi eyed him, it hadn’t been long. She said, “I can do worse than that. Do you want to see how much worse I can do?”

“I am your captive.” Istvan tried to calm his pounding heart. “You will do as you do.”

To his surprise, she gave him a nod of obvious approval. “Spoken like a warrior,” she said, just as a Gyongyosian might have. She went on, “I have studied your people for many years. I admire your courage. But, with war the way it is these days, courage is not enough. Do you see that, Sergeant?”

Istvan shrugged. “It’s all I have left.”

“I know. I am sorry.” Lammi gestured. The world disappeared for Istvan once more. He tried to get to his feet to spring at her, but his body would not obey his will. It was as if he had no body. After some endless while, his mind did drift free of the moorings of rationality. And when he heard a voice speaking to him, it might have been the voice of the stars themselves, leading his spirit toward them. He answered without the slightest hesitation.

The world returned. There sat Lammi, looking at him with real sympathy in her dark, narrow eyes. Realization smote. “It was you!” he exclaimed.

“Aye, it was me. I am sorry, but I did what was needful for my kingdom.” She studied him. “So you and this Kun knew ahead of time. You knew, and you did nothing to warn us.”

“I thought about it,” Istvan said, and the admission made Lammi jerk in surprise. “I thought about it, but, no matter how stupid I thought the sacrifice was, I might have been wrong. And I could not bring myself to betray Ekrekek Arpad and Gyongyos. The stars would go dark for me forever.”