Rulers of the Darkness

He wished he could have held those memories instead of just being aware that he'd had them. All the Kuusaman mages around him were exclaiming in awe and dread as they used their counterspells, so he supposed they were going through the same thing he was. And then, at last, when he thought the chaos in the timestream would cast them adrift in duration- or perhaps cast them out of it altogether- the counterspells began to bite.

Now suddenly took on meaning again. His consciousness, which had been spread over what felt like a century or more, contracted back to a single sharp point that advanced heartbeat by heartbeat. He remembered things that had happened to him before that point, but nothing more. No, not quite nothing more: he remembered remembering other things, but he could not have said what they were.

"Well, well," Ilmarinen said. Sweat beaded his face and soaked the armpits of his tunic. Even so, he didn't forget to use classical Kaunian: "Wasn't that interesting, my friends?" He didn't forget his ironic tone, either.

Pekka, who had been standing while she cast the spell that went awry, slumped down onto a stool and began to weep, her face hidden in her hands. "I could have… us all," she said in a broken voice. Fernao didn't know the Kuusaman verb, but he would have been astonished if it didn't mean killed.

He limped over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "It is all right," he said, cursing the classical tongue for not letting him sound colloquial. "We are safe. We can try again. We shall try again."

"Aye, no harm done," Ilmarinen agreed. "Any spell you live through is a spell you learn something from."

"Learn what?" Pekka said with a laugh that sounded more like hysterics than mirth. "Not to miss a line at the key moment of the incantation? I was already supposed to know that, Master Ilmarinen, thank you very kindly."

Fernao said, "No, I think there is more to learn here than that. Now we know from the inside out what our spell does, or some of what it does. If our next version is not better on account of that, I shall be surprised. The method was drastic, but the lesson is worthwhile."

"Aye," Ilmarinen repeated. "The Lagoan mage has the right of it." He glanced over at Fernao. "Accidents will happen." Fernao smiled and nodded, as if at a compliment. Ilmarinen glared at him, which was exactly what he wanted.

***

Every time a peasant sneaked into the woods and sought out the battered band of irregulars Garivald was leading these days, he almost wished the newcomer would go away. He'd heard a great many tales of woe, some of them horrible enough to move him close to tears. How could he resist bringing such people into the band? He couldn't. But what if one of them was lying?

"What do I do?" he asked Obilot. "Let in the wrong man- or woman- and the Grelzers will know everything about us a day later."

"If we don't get new blood, they won't care about us one way or the other," she answered. "If we didn't take chances, none of us would be irregulars in the first place."

Garivald grunted. That held an unpleasant amount of truth. But he said, "It's not on your shoulders. It's on my shoulders. And you're one of the people who helped dump it there." He glowered at her with none of the interest, none of the liking- why lie? none of the desire- he usually felt.

Obilot met the glare with a shrug. "Munderic got killed. Somebody had to lead us. Why not you? Thanks to your songs, people have heard your name. They want to join Garivald the Songmaker's band."

"But I don't want to lead them!" Garivald said in a sort of whispered scream. "I never wanted to lead anybody. All I ever wanted to do was raise a decent crop and stay drunk through the winter and- lately- make songs. That's all, curse it!"

"I wanted this and that, too," Obilot said. "The Algarvians made sure I wouldn't have any of that." She'd never said just why she'd joined the irregulars, but she hated the redheads with a passion that made what her male comrades felt toward them seem mere mild distaste by comparison. "And now you can't have the things you always wanted, either. Isn't that one more reason to want to do everything you can to make them suffer?"

"I suppose so," he admitted. "But it doesn't mean I want to lead. Besides, we aren't strong enough to do anything much right now."

"We will be." Obilot sounded more confident than Garivald felt.

He didn't have to answer. Rain had been falling steadily for a while. Now lightning flashed and thunder bellowed, drowning out anything he might have said. Nobody could do anything much in such weather: the Grelzers couldn't push into the woods, as they had when snow lay on the ground, but the band of irregulars couldn't very well sally forth by squelching through the mud.

After another peal of thunder rumbled and subsided, Obilot said, "Would you rather be taking orders from Sadoc?"