Out of the Darkness

Then the Gong on the dragon’s back waved and pointed southeast. Fernao and his dragonflier waved back. The dragonflier whacked his mount with a goad. After a couple of bad-tempered screeches, it followed the Gyongyosian beast.

Tawny-bearded dragon handlers secured the Kuusaman beast to a spike: dragon farms the world around operated on similar principles. Fernao slid down from his perch on the dragon’s back and looked around. The grass under his feet was . . . grass. Some of the bushes a little farther away looked unfamiliar to him, but he would have had to be an herbalist to recognize the differences. The buildings on the edge of the dragon farm . . .

They had steeply pitched roofs. In that, they resembled buildings in Kuusamo and Lagoas and Unkerlant, which also saw a lot of snow. But they didn’t look like houses or hostels. They looked like gray stone fortresses. They were spaced well apart from one another, too, as if the Gyongyosians didn’t think it safe to have them too close together. When the Gongs weren’t warring with their neighbors, they often fought among themselves. Their architecture showed it, too.

A man emerged from the nearest of those fortresslike buildings and walked toward Fernao. He wore a sheepskin jacket over wool leggings. Gray streaked his beard and hair. “You are the mage from Kuusamo?” he called in slow, oddly accented, but understandable classical Kaunian.

“I am Fernao, a mage of the first rank, aye. Actually, I represent both Lagoas, my own kingdom, and Kuusamo,” Fernao replied. “And you are, sir ... ?”

“I am called Vorosmarty, a mage of five stars,” the Gyongyosian said. “It is a rank more or less equal to your own. How can you be trusted to represent two kingdoms?”

“I am from Lagoas, as I said. And I am engaged to be married to a Kuusaman mage. Neither kingdom feels I would betray its interests,” Fernao said. That wasn’t strictly true. Grandmaster Pinhiero was less than delighted to have him representing Lagoas. But he was the best bargain Pinhiero could get, and so the grandmaster had had to make the best of it.

Vorosmarty shrugged. “Very well. This is not truly my concern. I am ordered to show you Gyorvar, to show you what your magecraft has done. I obey my orders. Come with me. A carriage waits for us.”

He didn’t, he couldn’t, know that Fernao was one of the mages who’d unleashed that sorcery. His your

had to mean your kingdoms’. Fernao didn’t intend to enlighten him, either. He said, “You are ordered? Who gives orders in Gyongyos these days?” With Ekrekek Arpad and his whole family dead, how were the Gyongyosians running their affairs?

“Marshal Szinyei, who ordered our surrender, has announced that the stars commune with his spirit, and has declared himself our new ekrekek.” Vorosmarty’s voice was studiously neutral. Fernao judged he would be unwise to ask the Gyongyosian wizard how he felt about Szinyei’s elevation.

As he got into the carriage, he did ask, “How far to Gyorvar?”

“Perhaps six miles,” Vorosmarty replied. “No dragon farm closer than this one survived in working order.” His gray eyes flicked over to Fernao. “In the name of the stars, what did your wizards do?”

“What we had to,” Fernao said.

“That is no answer,” the Gyongyosian said.

“Did you expect one?” Fernao replied. “Even if I knew how this wizardry was made”--no, he wouldn’t admit it--”I could not tell you.”

Vorosmarty grunted. “I am sorry. I do not know how to act like a defeated man. No such disaster as this has ever befallen my kingdom.”

“Lagoas and Kuusamo tried to warn your sovereign,” Fernao said. “He would not believe the warnings, but we were telling the truth.” Vorosmarty only grunted again. Had he been one of the advisors telling Ekrekek Arpad the islanders couldn’t do as they claimed? If he had, he wouldn’t want to admit that.

Gyongyosian farmhouses also looked like strongpoints, designed as much for defense as for comfort. Since they were of stone, their exteriors showed little damage. But the fence rails were wood. Before the carriage had got even halfway to Gyorvar, Fernao saw that the sides of the rails facing the city were scorched. Vorosmarty noticed his gaze and nodded. “Aye, your spell did that, even this far away.”

Before long, fruit trees showed leaves sere and brown, as if autumn had come early. But something worse than autumn had come to Gyorvar. After another half mile or so, even stone farmhouses looked as if they had been through the fire. And the trees weren’t just scorched--they were burnt black on the side facing the Gyongyosian capital, and then, a little later, burnt black altogether.

The air stank of stale smoke. Here and there, smoke still rose from one place or another. A different stench also rode the breeze: the stench of death. “You threw this whole city on a pyre,” Vorosmarty said as they passed a party of workers taking bodies out of a block of flats.

“You would not yield,” Fernao said. “This was the way we saw to make you know you were beaten.”