Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Which is why practical mages make jokes about what happens when theoretical sorcerers go into the laboratory, Pekka thought. Too much of their kidding wasn’t kidding at all, but sober truth.

But then even embarrassment and worry fell away as she lost herself in the intricacies of the spell she was casting. Getting the words precisely right; making sure the passes matched and reinforced them; feeling the power build as verse after verse, pass after pass, fell into place… It was almost like feeling pleasure build when she made love. And then she madethat thought fall away, too-not without regret, but she did it.

Power built, and built, and built-and then, as she cried, “Let it be released!”, itwas released. She felt the secondary sorcerers take hold of what she’d brought into being, felt them hurl it forth to the banks of animal cages set far from the blockhouse, and felt it kindle there.

And then she needed no occult senses to feel it, for the ground shuddered beneath her feet. A great roar rumbled thought the air. She knew that, when she and the other mages went to examine the site, they would find another huge crater torn in the frozen ground. The Naantali district was starting to look like the moon as seen through a spyglass. Its wide stretches of worthless land were the main reasons experiments had moved here.

“Nicely done,” Fernao said. “Very nicely done. When we measure the crater, we will be able to calculate the actual energy release and see how close it comes to what the sorcerous equations predicted. My guess is, the discrepancies will not be large. It had the right feel to it.”

Pekka nodded-wearily, now that the spell was done. “I think you are right,” she replied, also in classical Kaunian.

Ilmarinen said, “And, when we go out to the crater, we can see how much green grass and other out-of-season bits and pieces we find at the bottom of it.”

Pekka grimaced. So did Fernao. The spells they were working with twisted time, among other things. The equations made that very clear. Ilmarinen, ever the radical, kept insisting the twist could be exploited for itself, not just for the energy it released. The unanimous opinion of the rest of the theoretical sorcerers was that the energy release came first.

As Pekka and Fernao rode out toward the crater, an exhausted little bird-a linnet-came fluttering down out of the sky and landed on their sleigh. When Pekka reached out for it, it flew off again, and was soon lost to sight. She stared at Fernao in no small consternation. She’d never seen a linnet in wintertime. They flew north for the winter, to escape the cold. Maybe this one hadn’t escaped the cold. Maybe it hadn’t escaped the sorcery, either.

And if it hadn’t, what did that mean?

Hajjaj’s carriage rolled up to the dragon farm outside Bishah, the capital of Zuwayza. When the carriage stopped, the Zuwayzi foreign minister descended to the sandy soil: a skinny man with dark brown skin and gray, almost white hair he’d earned by lasting close to seven decades-and also by guiding Zuwayza’s relations with the other kingdoms of the world ever since his homeland regained its freedom from Unkerlant in the chaos following the Six Years’ War.

GeneralIkhshidcame bustling up to greet him. Ikhshid was paunchy, with bushy white eyebrows. He carried almost as many years as Hajjaj; he’d been a captain in the Unkerlanter army during the Six Years’ War, one of the few men of Zuwayzi blood to gain officer’s rank there.

Like Hajjaj, Ikhshid wore sandals and a broad-brimmed hat and nothing in between. In Zuwayza’s fierce desert heat, clothes were nothing but a nuisance, however much Zuwayzi nudity scandalized other Derlavaians. Ikhshid had rank badges on his hat and marked with greasepaint on his upper arms.

He bowed to Hajjaj, wheezing a little as he straightened. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said. “Always a pleasure to see you, believe me.”

“You’re too kind,” Hajjaj murmured, returning the bow. “Believe me, the pleasure is mine.” Aimed at a lot of men, Hajjaj would have meant that as no more than the usual pleasant hypocrisy. With Ikhshid, he meant it. He’d never been convinced Zuwayza’s senior soldier was a great general, though Ikhshid was a good one. But Ikhshid, like Hajjaj himself, commanded the respect of every Zuwayzi clanfather. Hajjaj could think of no other officer of whom that was true.

“You do me too much credit, your Excellency,” Ikhshid said.

“By no means, sir,” Hajjaj protested. Zuwayzi forms of greeting and politeness, if uninterrupted, could go on for a long time.

Here, an interruption arrived in the person of Marquis Balastro, the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza. To Hajjaj’s relief, Balastro was not nude, but wore the usual Algarvian tunic and kilt, with a hat of his own to keep the sun off his head. His bow, unlike Ikhshid’s, was deep and flamboyant-Algarvians didn’t do things by halves. “Good day to you, your Excellency,” he said in his own language.

“And to you as well, your Excellency,” Hajjaj replied in the same tongue. He’d been fluent in Algarvian for a long time: back before the Six Years’ War (an era that seemed so distant and different, it might have been a thousand years ago), he’d spent his university days in Trapani, the Algarvian capital.

Balastro struck a pose. “Now, sir, you will see that Algarve stands by her allies in every way she can.”

“I shall be glad to see it, very glad indeed,” Hajjaj said.

That gave the Algarvian minister the chance to strike another pose, and he made the most of it, pointing to the sky and exclaiming, “Then look now at the dragons summoned to Zuwayza’s aid!”

Hajjaj looked. So did Ikhshid. So did the writers from a couple of Zuwayzi news sheets summoned to the outskirts of the capital for the occasion. Sure enough, half a wing of dragons-thirty-two in all-painted in Algarve’s gaudy green, red, and white spiraled down toward the dragon farm.

“They are indeed a pleasure to see, your Excellency,” Hajjaj said, bowing once more. “Bishah shall be safer because of them. After the last raid, when the Unkerlanters pounded us from the air almost as they pleased, dragons to fly against those in Swemmel’s rock-gray are most extremely welcome.”

“I can see how they would be,” Balastro agreed. “Till lately, Zuwayza has enjoyed all the advantages of the Derlavaian War, but only a few of the drawbacks: you won land from Swemmel, yet paid relatively little for it because he was more heavily involved against us.”

That was imperfectly diplomatic, no matter how much truth it held. Hajjaj felt obliged to reply, “Do remember, your Excellency, that Unkerlant attacked my kingdom a year and a half before yours went to war againstKingSwemmel.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Balastro said. “But ours is the bigger fight with Unkerlant, even reckoning in the relative sizes of your kingdom and mine.”

Another undiplomatic truth. When Hajjaj started to answer this time, a landing dragon’s screech drowned out his words. Normally, that would have annoyed him. At the moment, it gave him the excuse he needed to say to Balastro, “Walk aside with me, your Excellency, that we might confer together in something a little closer to privacy.”

Balastro bowed again. “With all my heart, sir. Nothing could please me more.” That might well not have been true, but it was diplomatic.

WhenGeneralIkhshid started to follow the two of them away from the other dignitaries and the writers and the folk concerned with the mundane needs of dragons, Hajjaj sent him a quick, hooded glance. He and Ikhshid had served Zuwayza side by side for many years. The veteran officer stopped after a step and a half and began fiddling with a sandal strap.

Had Hajjaj and Balastro sought privacy among Algarvians, everyone close by would have swarmed after them: the redheads were powerfully curious, and also powerfully convinced they had the absolute right to know everything that went on around them. Hajjaj’s countrymen showed more restraint. They could hardly show less restraint than most Algarvians, the Zuwayzi foreign minister thought.