Rulers of the Darkness

Sure enough, all three princes came down to breakfast the next morning and accompanied the team of sorcerers to the blockhouse. They and their protective mages badly crowded it, and they suffered most because of that, since Pekka insisted on stationing them against the walls where they wouldn't be in the way. "You came to see the sorcery succeed- is that not so, your Highnesses?" she said with her sweetest smile. "And so you could not possibly want to interfere with those who perform it, could you?" Juhainen shrugged. Renavall smiled. Parainen gave back only stony silence.

We had better succeed now, Pekka thought. She recited the Kuusaman ritual that marked the beginning of any sorcerous enterprise in her land. As always, it helped steady her. "I begin," she said abruptly, and did.

For a demonstration for three of the Seven, they broke no new ground. She used a spell they had tested before, and gave it every ounce of concentration she had. The rumbling roar of suddenly released energies shook the blockhouse. Stones and clods of dirt thudded down on the roof, even though the secondary sorcerers had transferred the effect of the spell to the animal cages a couple of miles away.

"May we see what you wrought?" Parainen asked when silence and steadiness returned.

Glad he was the one who'd asked and even gladder he sounded less sure of himself now, Pekka said, "By all means." Ilmarinen caught her eye. She shook her head. This was not the time or place for him to expound on his hypothesis of what they were really doing. To her relief, he subsided.

To her even greater relief, the princes gaped in undisguised wonder at the new crater gouged from the soil of Naantali. Parainen said the two words Pekka most wanted to hear from him: "Carry on."

***

Numbers had always been Ealstan's friends. He was, after all, a bookkeeper's son, and now a bookkeeper of growing experience himself. He saw patterns in what looked like chaos to most people, as mages did when they developed spells. And when he found chaos in what should have been order, he wanted to root it out.

Pybba's books drove him mad. Money kept right on leaking out of the pottery magnate's business. Ealstan was morally certain it went to resist the Algarvians, but Pybba had paid him a hefty sum not to notice. Vanai didn't want him poking his nose into things, either.

And so, when he probed the mystery, he had to be most discreet. He told neither his boss nor his wife what he was doing. He just quietly kept doing it. My father would act the same way, he thought. He'd want to get to the bottom of things, even if somebody told him not to. Maybe especially if somebody told him not to.

More of the money vanished in the invoices at one of Pybba's warehouses than from any other place in the magnate's business. Ealstan had never been to that warehouse, which lay on the outskirts of Eoforwic. He thought about asking Pybba if he might go look things over there, thought about it and shook his head. His boss would see right through him if he did.

When he went to look the place over, then, he went on his day off. He wore a grimy old tunic and a battered straw hat against the sun. As he headed out the door, Vanai said, "You look like you're ready for a day of tavern crawling."

He nodded. "That's right. I'm going to come home drunk and beat you, the way Forthwegian husbands do."

Even in sorcerous disguise as a swarthy Forthwegian, Vanai blushed. Kaunians often perceived Forthwegians as drunks. In modern Kaunian literature in Forthweg, the drunken Forthwegian was as much a clichй as the sly or aloof Kaunian was in Forthwegian romances. Vanai said, "You're the only Forthwegian husband I know, and I like the things you do."

"That's good." A wide, foolish grin spread over Ealstan's face. He couldn't get enough praise from his wife. "I'm off," he said, and headed out the door.

To get to that warehouse, he could either walk for an hour or ride most of the way on a ley-line caravan. Without hesitation, he chose the caravan. He tossed a small silver bit into the fare box- everything was outrageously expensive under the Algarvians- and took his seat.

Because the fare was high, the caravan wasn't close to full. As best he could tell, the car hadn't been cleaned since the Algarvians took Eoforwic, or maybe since the Unkerlanters took it a year and a half before that. Someone had slit the upholstery of the seat on which Ealstan sat. Someone else had pulled out most of the stuffing. What was left protruded from the gashes in the fabric in pathetic tufts. The seat next to Ealstan's had no padding at all, and no upholstery left, either. None of the windows in the car would open, but several had no glass, so that evened out.