Jaws of Darkness

Ealstan fled. Back inside his own flat, he barred the door as if all the Algarvians in Forthweg were after him. He wondered if Ebbe would come knocking in turn. To his vast relief, she didn’t.

But that relief quickly passed. The Algarvians in Forthweg weren’t after him. They were after Vanai-and he was horribly afraid they had her.

He ate barley bread and olive oil and salted, garlic-tangy almonds for supper, washing the food down with harsh red wine. Then, instead of talking and laughing and probably making love with Vanai, he spent the longest, loneliest, most miserable night he’d ever passed. He might have slept a little. On the other hand, he might not have, too.

When dawn came, he made a breakfast much like his supper. Then, yawning, he started back to Pybba’s pottery. Someone-more likely several someones-had scrawled a new graffito-Habakkuk!-on walls and fences. Dully, he wondered what the nonsense word meant. Nothing in Forthwegian, Algarvian, or classical Kaunian; he was sure of that.

Pybba glared when he got to work. “You’re late,” he rasped, as he did most mornings whether Ealstan was or not. Then he took a longer look at his bookkeeper. “Powers above! Who hit you over the head with a rock?”

“I wish somebody had,” Ealstan answered. He wasn’t late. Anything but-he and Pybba had the offices to themselves. “My wife wasn’t home when I got there. She still isn’t. I think the redheads have grabbed her.”

“Why in blazes would they want her?” the pottery magnate demanded. “You two didn’t just have a fight or something?”

“No,” Ealstan said flatly. “Why would they want her? She’s Kaunian, that’s why.” He’d never told his boss that. Pybba hated Algarvians, aye, but he had no great use for blonds.

Now Pybba stared at him, eyes big as the saucers he turned out by the tens of thousands. “Oh, you fool!” he cried. “You great stupid fool!”

Habakkuk-the first Habakkuk, the nameship of what would be a growing class-glided east along a ley line not far from the island kingdom of Sibiu. The hobnails in the soles of Leino’s boots dug into the great vessel’s icy deck. The Kuusaman mage smiled-no, he gri

Ships had sailed the seas for centuries uncounted: ships, aye, but none like Habakkuk. Ships had been wood and canvas, riding wind and wave.

Then, as magecraft and manufacturing grew more sophisticated, they’d been iron and steel, traveling the ley lines of the world’s energy grid in defiance of wind and wave. Now… Leino took another step. His hobnailed boots bit into the icy deck again.

Habakkuk was a thing of ice, ice and a little sawdust for strength. Leino and his fellow mages had planed the top of an iceberg flat, down in the iceberg-ridden seas bordering the frigid austral continent. They’d hollowed out chambers in the ice, chambers that held men and supplies and-the point of the exercise-far more dragons than any ordinary ship could haul.

Magecraft had shaped the Habakkuk. More magecraft propelled it along the ley lines. And still more magecraft kept it from melting away to nothing as it sailed these warmer (though still far from warm) waters farther from the land of the Ice People. Leino wondered what the natives of the tropical continent of Siaulia would think if the Habakkuk ever had occasion to sail there. Most of them had never seen any ice in all their lives, let alone a great floating mountain of it that refused to disappear even in that blood-warm sea.

High overhead, a dragon screeched. Leino glanced up not in fear but in wariness, lest it prove an Algarvian beast diving to the attack. But it wasn’t; it was painted in the Kuusaman colors of sky-blue and sea-green, which made it hard to spot for a moment against the drifting clouds. Down it spiraled: long, snaky body; short, clawed limbs; great batwings now gliding, now beating; long neck and fearsome, big-eyed head. So much ferocity, all governed by a brain the size of a plum-and by the dragonflier who sat strapped into his harness at the base of the beast’s neck.

Leino’s shiver had nothing to do with the ice on which he trod or with the chilly quartering breeze. Facing the impersonal forces of magecraft was hard enough. They would kill you only if you abused them or made a mistake with them. Dragons, now, dragons might kill you out of malice or simply because they forgot what a command meant. With plum-sized brains, they were better at forgetting than remembering. Leino didn’t think there was enough silver in the world to make him train to become a dragonflier.

But his countryman aboard the descending dragon handled his dangerous job with nonchalant competence. He brought the beast down right where a gang of handlers waited for it. One of the handlers chained the dragon to a stout iron stake fixed deep in the ice. Another tossed it chunks of meat yellow with crushed brimstone or scarlet from a coating of powdered ci

Leino went below, too. The stairways and the corridors were cut from ice. So were all the chambers opening onto the corridors. The doors and their fittings were ordinary doors and fittings, and some of the chambers had wall hangings inside to lend more privacy to what went on in them.

When Leino walked into one of those chambers, the four mages already inside looked up and nodded to him. “Good morning,” Leino said in classical Kaunian. Two of the other wizards were Kuusamans like himself, the other two Lagoans. They shared the great island off the southeastern coast of the Derlavaian mainland, but did not share a language. But every educated man who hailed from eastern Derlavai or the island could use classical Kaunian, the common language of sorcery and scholarship.

“And a good morning to you,” answered his countrywoman Essi. She pointed to a teapot above a spirit stove. “Get yourself a cup, if you care to.”

“I think I will.” Leino smiled. “Being inside all this ice makes me want to have something warm inside myself.”

Essi nodded. “We all feel that way now and again.” Like Leino, like Pekka his wife-of whom she reminded him more than a little-she was short and slim, with golden skin, coarse black hair, and a broad, high-cheekboned face with dark, narrow eyes set at a slant. A steaming mug of tea sat on the table in front of her.

“Aye, so we do.” That was Ramalho, the senior Lagoan mage of the pair here. He’d worked with Leino on the Habakkuk down in the land of the Ice People. Lagoans sprang from Algarvic stock: Ramalho was tall and fair and redheaded, though a flattish nose said he might bear a little Kuusaman blood. He went on, “Of course, there is warmth, and then there is warmth.” He took a swig from the flask on his hip. His coppery ponytail bobbed at the base of his neck as he drank. He’d done that down in the austral continent, too, but never to the point where it interfered with his work.

After pouring himself a mug of tea, Leino sweetened it with honey and took a couple of big swallows before it started getting cold. Then he sat down at the place waiting for him at the table. “Shall we begin?” he said.

“We could have begun some little while ago, had you got here on time,” said Xavega, the other Lagoan mage.

“I am so sorry, Mistress,” Leino said, inclining his head to her. “I did not realize you had an urgent engagement elsewhere.”

“Really, Xavega, it was no more than a minute or two,” said Aalbor, the last Kuusaman mage in the chamber. He was in his early forties, a decade or so older than Leino, and was more inclined to be patient than sardonic.

Patience didn’t help here, not least because Xavega had so little herself. She glared first at Leino, then at Aalbor. “I might have known one Kuusaman would stick up for another.”