Into the Darkness by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

replied. “My older brother died in the woods in front of Priekule. I don’t remember much about him; I was only six or seven. I lost an uncle—my mother’s younger brother—and a cousin, and another cousin came home short a foot.” He shrugged. “I know it’s not anything special. Plenty of families in Lagoas have worse stories to tell. Too many families simply aren’t, after the Six Years’ War.”
    “That’s the truth,” Rogelio said with an emphatic nod. Everything he did was emphatic; he aped Algarvian style in more than his mustache. “So why do you sound so cursed glum about staying at peace, then?”
    “I’m not glum about our staying at peace,” Fernao said. “I’m glum about the rest of the world going back to war. All the kingdoms of eastern
    Derlavai suffered as much as we did.”
    “And Unkerlant,” Rogelio put in. “Don’t forget Unkerlant.”
    “Unkerlant is a kingdom of eastern Derlavai … in a manner of speaking,” Fernao said with a thin smile. The smile soon slipped. “Thanks to the Twinkings War, they hurt themselves worse than Algarve ever managed, and Algarve hurt them plenty.”
    Rogelio’s lip curled scornfully. “They were efficient at hurting themselves.”
    Fernao’s chuckle had a bitter edge. “King Swemmel will make the Unkerlanters efficient about the time King Gainibu makes the Valmierans shy.”
    “But Gainibu has a little sense—as much as you can expect from a Valmieran, anyhow,” Rogelio said. “He doesn’t try to make his people into something they’re not.” The captain waved a hand. “There! You see, my friend? Between us, we’ve solved all the problems in the world.”
    “All but one: how to get the world to pay any attention to us,” Fernao said. His sardonic streak made a good counter to Rogelio’s extravagances.
    When it came to running the Leopardess, though, the captain was all business. “If we are sailing an evasive course, my sorcerous friend, should we not be shifting ley lines soon?”
    “If we really wanted an evasive course, we would sail, with canvas and masts, as they did in the days of the Kaunian Empire,” Fernao said. “If we did that, we could slip by Sibiu close enough to spit, and we’d never be noticed.”
    “Oh, aye, no doubt,” Rogelio said, arching his eyebrows. “And if a storm blew up at the wrong time, it’d fling us on to the Rocks of Cluj, too. No, thank you! They might have been men in those days, but they were madmen, if anybody wants to know what I think. Sailing by wind and by guess, without the earth’s energy matrix to draw on? You’d have to be a madman to try that.”
    “No, just an ignorant man—or a yachtsman,” Fernao said. “Not being either of those myself…” He drew from around his neck an amulet of lodestone and amber set in gold. Holding it between the palms of his hands, he felt of the energy flowing through the ley line along which the Leopardess cruised. He could not have put into words the sensation that passed through him, but he understood what it meant. “Three minutes, Captain, perhaps four, before our line intersects the next.”
    “Time enough for me to get to the wheel myself, then,” Rogelio said. “That chucklehead of a helmsman we’ve got would likely be picking his nose or playing with himself when you signaled, and then we’d just keep barreling along, probably right down the Sibs’ throats.”
    Without waiting for an answer, he hurried away. Fernao knew he was maligning the helmsman. He also knew Rogelio knew he was being outrageous, and that the captain always used the fellow with great courtesy when they were together. Extravagant Rogelio was; simple, no.
    And then the mage forgot about Rogelio, forgot about everything but the sensation trickling out of the amulet and through him. He was not so much its interpreter as its conduit, in the same way that the ley line was a conduit for the energy the amulet sensed. He leaned a little as the trickle shifted, then