But he couldn’t keep eyeing the local landscape forever, even if he wanted to. His eyes rose to the gray beach and the gray-green, rock-studded sea beyond, and to what had been the camp where the Algarvians housed their Kaunian captives before killing them to capture their life energy.
Some of the fences that had surrounded the camp still stood. Others were flat, or had been hurled some distance away by the force of the magic that had come back from Kuusamo. As far as he could see at this distance, none of the buildings inside the perimeter still stood, neither those that had housed the redheads nor those where their victims had dwelt.
“What do you see?” he asked Palasta. The young mage was the one who’d needed to make this journey. Skarnu was along because he’d been fighting for a long time to keep Mezentio’s men from massacring Kaunians from Forthweg, and because sending a girl on her own-even a girl who was also a mage-had risks the underground hadn’t felt like facing.
“Power,” she answered absently. “Great power.”
“The kind the Algarvians get from killing?” Skarnu asked.
“Oh, that, too,” Palasta said, though she sounded as if she needed to be reminded of it. “Aye, that, too. But something else, something brighter… cleaner.” She frowned, groping for the word she wanted.
“Can you tell what it is?”
Palasta shook her head. “It’s nothing I’ve run into before. I don’t think it’s anything anybody ever ran into before.”
She seemed very certain. Skarnu studied not the camp where the Kaunians from Forthweg had been but Palasta. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. How could she know about what trained mages had run into over the years, over the centuries, over the millennia? (Those lichen-splashed standing stones made Skarnu think in longer stretches of time than he might have otherwise.) Carefully-he didn’t want to offend her-he asked, “How can you be sure of that?”
“Suppose you’ve eaten beef and pork and mutton and chicken,” Palasta said. “If someone serves you fresh oysters, will you be sure you’ve never had them before?”
“Aye.” Skarnu nodded. “But I won’t be sure no one’s eaten them in all the history of the world.”
“Ah. I see what you’re saying.” Palasta looked at him as if he were a bright pupil in primary school. Absurdly, that affectionate, forgiving glance made him proud, not angry. The young mage said, “I know what I know. What I know is based on what all the sorcerers before me have known, all the way back to the people who raised those stones, whoever they were.” They were on her mind, too. She went on, “I can tell what’s new and what isn’t. Whatever did that”-she pointed to the ruined camp-”is something new.”
“All right. And I see what you’re saying, too.” Now Skarnu believed her. She sounded as sure about what she knew and what she didn’t asSergeantRaunu ever had. As it had with the veteran underofficer, her conviction carried weight with Skarnu. He asked, “Do you want to get closer, if we can? Do you think it would do any good?”
“I’d like to try,” Palasta answered. “I don’t see any Algarvians around there right now, or sense any of their wizards, either. If we spot soldiers when we come up to the camp, we can always walk off in some other direction.”
“Fair enough.” Skarnu started down the slope that led to the camp.
Palasta stayed at his side. After a few steps, she said, “We may not need to do this, after all, now that I think about it. The answers I’m looking for are probably on the other side of the Strait of Valmiera. So if you want to go back…”
Skarnu kept walking. “Let’s try it. We’ve come all this way”-”Tytuvenai” yanked me away from my wife and son-”to try to find out what happened here, and whether we can use it against the redheads, too. It would be a shame to stop half a mile short.”If we do stop half a mile short, I’ll wring “Tytuvenai’s” neck the next time I see him.
“That makes good sense.” Palasta sent him a speculative look. “You seem to have a very logical mind. Why didn’t you ever think about becoming a mage?”
“I don’t know,” Skarnu answered. “I never did, that’s all. I’ve never seen any signs I’d have the talent for it, either.” As a marquis, of course, he’d never had to worry about making a living. Since his parents’ untimely death, he’d never had to worry about anything till he took command of his company when war broke out. He’d done that as well as he could, and done a lot of other things since. Krasta, now-Krasta hadn’t worried about anything but shops and lovers her whole life long. The corners of his mouth turned down as he thought about his sister’s latest, Algarvian, lover.
“Talent does count,” Palasta said, “but only so much.”
“As may be,” Skarnu said. “It’s too late for me to worry about it now.” Palasta looked at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking Unkerlanter. Too late meant little to her: a telling proof of how young she was. More roughly than he’d intended to, Skarnu continued, “Come on. Let’s see how close we can get you.”
Palasta didn’t say anything as they walked on toward the ravaged camp. She didn’t have to. Watching her face was fascinating. She either didn’t know how to or else didn’t bother with hiding anything she thought or felt. She seemed to grow more astonished, more interested, more excited with every step they took. She also grew more puzzled. “I don’t know what they did,” she said. “I don’t know how they did it. But I don’t think magecraft will ever be the same.”
Skarnu wanted to laugh at her. She was much too young to speak with such self-assurance. But she was also too self-assured for him to dwell too much on her youth. She’d shown him she knew what she was talking about. What would she sense, what would she learn, if she could walk through the heart of the shattered camp?
He didn’t get to find out. About a quarter of a mile short of the camp, an Algarvian soldier popped out of a hole in the ground so well hidden by bushes that Skarnu had no idea he was there till he emerged. “No going farther,” he said in accented Valmieran. “Forbidden military area, by ordering ofGrand DukeIvone.”
Ivone was the highest-ranking Algarvian in Valmiera. As a man of the underground, Skarnu knew that. Would he have known it if he were as ordinary as he wanted to seem? Maybe-but maybe not, too. He said. “My sister and me, we just want to go on down to the beach to hunt for crabs.” He deliberately tried to sound none too bright.
The soldier shook his head. “Not here. Forbidden. You wanting crabs, you going back to town, finding wrong girlfriend.” He guffawed at his own wit.
Try to bribe him? Skarnu wondered. He decided against it. More redheads were surely lurking around the camp. “Plenty of good crabs on this beach,” he grumbled, for the Algarvian’s benefit. “Lobsters, too.” When the soldier shook his head again, Skarnu took Palasta’s arm. “Come on, sis. We’ll find ‘em somewheres else.”
“You leaving her with me, you go looking,” the Algarvian suggested. That made Skarnu retreat in a hurry. The redhead had thrown out the notion in a casual way. Skarnu hustled Palasta away from him before he decided she ought to be his because he was an occupier and he had a stick in his hands.
To Skarnu’s relief, she waited till they’d got out of earshot of the guard to ask, “Can we sneak around to the camp some other way?”
“I doubt it,” he answered regretfully. “They’re bound to have more than one man keeping an eye on it. If they send us away from it once, that probably won’t mean much to them. If they catch us trying to get there once they’ve told us no, that’s liable to be a different story.” He hesitated. “Unless you think you really have to get inside. If it’s that important, I’ll do my best to get you past the guards. You might have to use some of your magecraft, too.”
“No,” Palasta said after brief thought. “I’ve learned enough-and perhaps the biggest thing I’ve learned is how much I don’t know.” She spoke in riddles, but she sounded pleased doing it, so Skarnu supposed he should be pleased, too. And he was, for his own reasons: now he could go back to Merkela and little Gedominu.