Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

“Does anyone actually live here?” Fernao asked. As Pekka’s had, his wave encompassed the whole Naantali district.

“If you mean, are there towns here, or even villages, the answer is no,” Pekka told him. “If you mean, do some of our nomads drive their herds through this country every now and again-well, of course they do.”

Beneath the fox-fur hat that was close to the coppery shade of his own hair, Fernao’s narrow eyes-sure proof of Kuusaman blood-narrowed further. “They had better not, not while we are here,” he said.

“They will not,” Pekka said reassuringly. “We have soldiers on snowshoes and skids patrolling a perimeter wider than any we could possibly need for this experiment.” She suspected some nomads could slip past patrolling soldiers even if the troopers went arm in arm, but didn’t mention that to Fernao.

His thoughts, this time, glided along a different ley line: “A perimeter wider than any we could need for this experiment unless things go badly wrong.”

“If they go that badly wrong,” Pekka answered, “none of us will be in any condition to worry about it.”

“A point,” Fernao admitted. “A distinct point.” He started to say something else, then pointed ahead instead. “Is that where we are going?”

“I think so,” Pekka said. “So far as I know, it is the only real building in this whole district.”

“Was it once a hunting lodge?” Fernao asked.

“No. I do not think there is anything to hunt in these parts-there has not been since we cleaned out the last of the wolves hundreds of years ago,” Pekka answered. “You have Master Siuntio to thank for the building. He went to the Seven Princes and told them we might need a headquarters in some isolated place for our experiments. Here is a headquarters in an isolated place.”

“Isolated is hardly the word,” the Lagoan mage said. “Desolate might come closer.”

He had a point, but Pekka didn’t feel like admitting it. To her, this structure here in the middle of nowhere was a sign of Kuusamo’s might, and also a sign of the importance of the work in which they were engaged. But she was glad wolves had been hunted out of the land of the Seven Princes. Were any still here, she felt sure she would have heard them howling of nights.

Fernao said, “Our experiments had better go well. If they do not, the sleighs will stop coming, we shall quietly starve, and no one will ever find us again, no matter how hard people may look.”

“Stop that!” Pekka told him. “This is a civilized land. No one would do any such thing, and you know it.”

He dipped his head to her. Mischief glinted in his eyes. “I will believe it, but only because you say it.”

Their driver, who up till then might have been operated by sorcery or clockwork, chose that moment to speak up: “Here we are.” He used Kuusaman, of course. Pekka wondered if he understood classical Kaunian. Most sleigh drivers wouldn’t have, but he might have been chosen for something other than how well he could handle reindeer.

The hostel-for lack of a better word, Pekka thought of it as such-did nothing to remind guests of the Principality or of any other fine establishment back in Yliharma. It had been hastily built from yellow pine, the timber so fresh it hadn’t yet aged and weathered even in this harsh climate. The roof climbed steep, to keep snow from clinging. Smoke rose from the red-brick chimney, though the wind swept it away almost at once. Soot here didn’t stain the snow, as it would have in a town; there wasn’t enough of it to matter.

“How cold do you think it is?” Fernao asked as he unswaddled himself and climbed out of the sleigh.

“Not cold enough to freeze quicksilver, I don’t think.” Pekka also descended, taking Fernao’s hand to steady herself on the way down (the injured mage shifted his crutches for courtesy’s sake). With both of them wearing thick mittens, it was hardly a touch at all.

With help from their driver, Siuntio and Ilmarinen were alighting from the other sleigh. Ilmarinen looked at the raw building set down in the middle of the raw land. In perfect idiomatic Kaunian, he exclaimed, “Everybody always told me I’d end up somewhere bad if I stayed on the ley line I was traveling, but I never thought it would be as bad as this.”

“You didn’t come here by ley line,” Siuntio pointed out, “and you still have the chance of escaping.”

Ilmarinen shook his head. “The only way to escape is through failure. If we fail one way, they will send us back in disgrace to lands where people actually live. And if we fail another way, they won’t find enough of us to send anywhere-but they’ll send more poor fools after us, to see if they can get it right.”

“You have left out the possibility of success,” Pekka reminded him.

“Oh, no, by no means,” Ilmarinen replied. “Success and escape have nothing to do with each other, I assure you. If we succeed, if everything goes exactly as planned. . Aside from being a miracle, what will that do? I’ll tell you what: it’ll make the Seven Princes keep us here so we can go right on succeeding. Doesn’t that sound like a delightful prospect?”

“It is what we have come here to do,” Pekka answered.

“Of course it is,” the cantankerous mage said. “But pray pay attention, pretty lady, for that’s not the question I asked you.”

Pekka looked around. She didn’t like the idea of being cooped up here, but she was less worried about it than Ilmarinen. “They will not keep us here for too long a time,” she said, “for they cannot keep us here for too long a time.” Her Kaunian was grammatically accurate, but, try as she would, she couldn’t make the old language come to life in her mouth.

Ilmarinen blew her a kiss. “What an innocent soul you are.”

Siuntio was shivering, standing there in the snow. Had Pekka told him to go indoors, he would have been too proud to listen. Instead, she said, “I am cold,” and went inside herself. That let Siuntio and the other mages follow. Fernao was laughing a little; he must have seen what she was up to.

Fires laid by servitors roared in the hearths. Pekka took off her fur hat, opened her coat, and shed it a moment later. To her relief, Siuntio needed no urging to go stand in front of a fireplace. To her even greater relief, the sleighs carrying their baggage, the experimental animals, and the sorcerous apparatus came up to the hostel just then. So did the other sleighs in which rode the secondary sorcerers-the ones who would keep the animals alive in the cold and transmit spells from where they were cast to where they were needed. The experiments would go forward, then.

With that settled, Pekka claimed a room on the ground floor. It too was about as far removed from the comfort and elegance of the Principality as it could be. It had a cot-with, she saw, plenty of thick wool blankets-a chest of drawers, a stool, and a small bookshelf filled with standard sorcerous reference books. That last was a nice touch, and almost made up for the basin and pitcher that stood on the dresser and the lidded chamber pot under the iron bed. She couldn’t have had a stronger reminder that they were out in the countryside.

Still shaking her head in bemusement, Pekka went out and got her trunk. She manhandled it back into the hostel, doing her best not to get in the way of the secondary sorcerers, who were bringing cage after cage in out of the cold. Fernao managed to get his own case inside and said something in Lagoan. “What was that?” Pekka asked.

“It does not translate into Kaunian, I am afraid,” he replied in the classical tongue. “I said, ‘If I live out of my trunk any longer, I shall turn into an elephant.’ “

Pekka scratched her head. “You are right. It does not translate. I do not understand at all.”