Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

“I believe they did,” Brivibas answered. “The evidence from inscriptions at the King’s University in Eoforwic strongly suggests they did. But, so far as I know, no one has yet performed the sorcery which alone can transform supposition into knowledge. That is why we are here.”

“Yes, my grandfather,” Vanai said resignedly. He was very good to her; he’d raised her since her parents had died in a wrecked caravan when she was hardly more than a baby. He’d given her a splendid education in both Kaunian and modern subjects. She found his work as an archaeological mage interesting, sometimes even fascinating. If only he didn’t treat me like nothing but an extra pair of hands when we’re in the field, she thought.

He set down his pack. With a sigh of relief, she did the same with hers. “Now, my granddaughter,” Brivibas said, “if you would be good enough to fetch me the green medius stone, we may begin.”

You may begin, you mean, Vanai thought. But she rummaged through the pack till she found the weathered green stone. “Here you are,” she said, and handed it to him.

“Ah, thank you, my granddaughter. The medius stone, when properly activated, removes the blindness from our eyes and lets us see what otherwise could no longer be seen,” Brivibas said. But, as he chanted, and as Vanai unobtrusively wiped her hands on her trousers—handling the stone irritated her skin—she wondered if, when the spell was complete, it would show only ancient thorn bushes as opposed to modern ones. No matter what the fluttering gold leaves declared, she doubted any power point had ever existed here.

Her mind was elsewhere, anyhow. When Brivibas paused between spells, she asked, “My grandfather, how can you so calmly investigate the past when all the world around you is going up in flames?”

Brivibas shrugged. “The world will do as it will do, regardless of whether I investigate or not. And so—why should I not learn what I can? Adding some small bits to the total of human knowledge may perhaps keep us from going up in flames, as you put it, some time in the future.” His mouth twisted. “I would have hoped it had done so already, but no one sees all his hopes granted.” After fiddling with the latitude screw and the leveling vernier on his portable sundial, he grunted softly. “And now, back to it.”

And now, Vanai, shut your trap, she thought. But her grandfather was expert at what he did. She watched closely as he evoked power from a power point forgotten since the days of the Empire. It was here after all, she thought. And then, at his word of command, the scene before her suddenly shifted. She clapped her hands together: she was looking back at the long-vanished days when the Kaunian Empire stretched over a great part of northeastern Derlavai.

Naturally, Brivibas’s use of power had summoned up the image of another time when power was used here. Vanai stared at ancient Kaunians. They went on about their business; they could not sense her or her grandfather. If she walked over the front edge of the stretch of cleared ground that had appeared before her, she wouldn’t be able to turn around and see the other side of the scene from long ago. She would just see the scrub through which she’d trudged to get here.

The ancient Kaunians wore woolen trousers, baggier than hers; some had on tunics of wool, too, others of linen. Some of the tunics and trousers were undyed, some dark blue or muddy brown: no bright colors anywhere. Almost all the clothes were visibly dirty, and so were a fair number of the Kaunians. People who’d worked with archaeological magic tended to be less romantic about the glories of the past than the bulk of the populace.

Brivibas sketched the scene, rapidly and accurately. Skill with a pencil was part of fieldwork. “The men are wearing beards,” he remarked, “and the women have their hair piled high on their heads with curls,” he remarked. “From what period would that make this scene date?”

Vanai frowned as she thought. “About the reign of Verigas II,” she replied at last.

Her grandfather beamed. “Very good! Yes, about two hundred years before the Algarvian Irruption—so-called—wrecked the Empire. Ah!” He readied a new leaf for sketching. “Here we have the action, I think.”

Four Kaunian men carried in a woman who was lying on a litter. She looked not far from the point of death. A fifth man, in cleaner clothes than the litter-bearers, led a sheep after them. He drew a knife from his belt and tested the edge with his thumb. Evidently being satisfied, he turned so that his back was to the modern observers and began magic of his own.

Brivibas exclaimed in frustration: “I wanted to read his lips!”

After raising one hand to the sky and pointing with the other—the one holding the knife—to the power point, the ancient medical mage cut the sheep’s throat. As blood poured down, the woman rose from the litter. She still seemed less than perfectly well, but far better than she had a moment before. As she was bowing to the man who had helped her, the scene faded away, to be replaced once more by modern underbrush.

“Even then, they knew life force helps make sorcery stronger,” Vanai said in musing tones. “But they didn’t know about ley lines: they still traveled on horseback and carried things in oxcarts.”

“Our ancestors were splendid intuitive sorcerers,” Brivibas said. “They had no true understanding of the mathematical relationships by which magic is harnessed though. Ley lines being a far more subtle phenomenon than power points, it is no wonder they failed either to discover them or to predict their existence.” He muttered something in Forthwegian that sounded angry, then returned to Kaunian: “A pity I could not learn more of the healing spell that fellow used.” With what looked like deliberate effort, he forced himself back toward calm. “At the very least, though, I can now definitively document this power point and its use in imperial times. And let us see what the learned Professor Frithstan thinks of that !” He held out his hands in appeal to Vanai: “I ask you, have Forthwegians any business meddling in Kaunian history?”

“My grandfather, they say it is also the history of Forthweg,” she answered. “Some of them, from the books and journals I have read, are scholars to be respected.”

“A few,” Brivibas sniffed. “A handful. Most write for the greater glory of Forthweg, a subject, believe me, of scant intrinsic value.”

He fumed all the way back to the village of Oyngestun, about ten miles west of Gromheort, where he and Vanai made their home. Only when he started tramping along the dusty main street of the village did he fall silent; Forthwegians in Oyngestun outnumbered people of Kaunian blood four or five to one, and failed to appreciate the way the elder folk looked down on them as barbarians.

Falling silent didn’t always help. A shopkeeper came out to stand on the board sidewalk in front of his sleepy place of business and call, “Hey, old man, have fun playing with your shadows and ghosts?” He set hands on hips and laughed.

“Yes, thank you,” Brivibas answered in reluctant Forthwegian. He stalked along stiff-backed, like a cat with ruffled dignity.

That only made the shopkeeper laugh louder. He reached out with one of his big, beefy hands, palm up, fingers spread and slightly hooked, as if he were about to grab Vanai’s backside. Rude Forthwegian men—often a redundancy—enjoyed aiming that gesture at trousered women of Kaunian blood. Vanai ignored it so ostentatiously, the shopkeeper had to lean against the whitewashed plaster of his front wall to keep from falling over with what he reckoned mirth.

Fewer young Forthwegian louts were on the streets and cluttering the taverns of Oyngestun than would have been true a few weeks earlier, though: the army had summoned them to fight the Algarvians. King Penda had also taken a fair number of men of Kaunian blood from Oyngestun into his service. As long as they dwelt in his realm and had blood in their veins, he didn’t care what sort of blood it was.