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Overview
Harry Turtledove's rousing saga of a fantastic world at war, which began in Into the Darkness and continued through Darkness Descending, Through the Darkness, Rulers of the Darkness, and Jaws of Darkness, draws to its climactic conclusion in Out of the Darkness.
As the Derlavaian War rages into its last and greatest battles, allied nations maneuver for positions against each other in a postwar world. But before that time can come, the forces of Algarve, Unkerlant, and their allies must clash a final time, countering army with army and battle magic with ever-more-powerful battle magic. In the midst of it all, the people the war has battered and reshaped must struggle to face their greatest individual challenges, as loves are shattered and found, terrible crimes avenged . . . and some journeys end forever.
And the end of the war may not bring peace...
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429915038 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2007 |
| Series: | Darkness , #6 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 528 |
| Sales rank: | 583,960 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Harry Turtledove (he/him) is an American fantasy and science fiction writer who Publishers Weekly has called the "Master of Alternate History." He has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Hugo Award for Best Novella, the HOMer Award for Short story, and the John Esthen Cook Award for Southern Fiction. Turtledove’s works include the Crosstime Traffic, Worldwar, Darkness, and Opening of the World series; the standalone novels The House of Daniel, Fort Pillow, and Give Me Back My Legions!; and over a dozen short stories available on Tor.com. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Laura Frankos, and their four daughters.
Read an Excerpt
Out of the Darkness
By Harry Turtledove, Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2004 Harry TurtledoveAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-1503-8
CHAPTER 1
Ealstan intended to kill an Algarvian officer. Had the young Forthwegian not been fussy about which redhead he killed, or had he not cared whether he lived or died in the doing, he would have had an easier time of it. But, with a wife and daughter to think about, he wanted to get away with it if he could. He'd even promised Vanai he wouldn't do anything foolish. He regretted that promise now, but he'd always been honorable to the point of stubbornness, so he still felt himself bound by it.
And he wanted to rid the world of one of Mezentio's men in particular. Oh, he would have been delighted to see all of them dead, but he especially wanted to be the means by which this one died. Considering what the whoreson did to Vanai, and made her do for him, who could blame me?
But, like a lot of rhetorical questions, that one had an obvious, unrhetorical answer: all the other Algarvians in Eoforwic. The Algarvians ruled the capital of Forthweg with a mailed fist these days. Ealstan had been part of the uprising that almost threw them out of Eoforwic. As in most things, though, almost wasn't good enough; he counted himself lucky to remain among the living.
Saxburh smiled and gurgled at him from her cradle as he walked by. The baby seemed proud of cutting a new tooth. Ealstan was glad she'd finally done it, too. She'd been fussy and noisy for several nights before it broke through. Ealstan yawned; he and Vanai had lost sleep because of that.
His wife was in the kitchen, building up the fire to boil barley for porridge. "I'm off," Ealstan said. "No work for a bookkeeper in Eoforwic these days, but plenty for someone with a strong back."
Vanai gave him a knotted cloth. "Here's cheese and olives and an onion," she said. "I only wish it were more."
"It'll do," he said. "I'm not starving." He told the truth. He was hungry, but everyone in Eoforwic except some — not all — of the Algarvians was hungry these days. He still had his strength. To do a laborer's work, he needed it, too. Wagging a finger at her, he added, "Make sure you've got enough for yourself. You're nursing the baby."
"Don't worry about me," Vanai said. "I'll do fine, and so will Saxburh." She leaned toward him to kiss him goodbye.
As their lips brushed, her face changed — literally. Her eyes went from brown to blue-gray, her skin from swarthy to pale, her nose from proud and hooked to short and straight. Her hair stayed dark, but that was because it was dyed — he could see the golden roots, which he hadn't been able to do a moment before. She seemed suddenly taller and slimmer, too: not stubby and broad-shouldered like most Forthwegians, including Ealstan himself.
He finished the kiss. Nothing, as far as he was concerned, was more important than that. Then he said, "Your masking spell just slipped."
Her mouth twisted in annoyance. Then she shrugged. "I knew I was going to have to renew it pretty soon, anyhow. As long as it happens inside the flat, it's not so bad."
"Not bad at all," Ealstan said, and gave her another kiss. As she smiled, he went on, "I like the way you look just fine, regardless of whether you seem like a Forthwegian or a Kaunian. You know that."
Vanai nodded, but her smile slipped instead of getting bigger as he'd hoped. "Not many do," she said. "Most Forthwegians have no use for me, and the Algarvians would cut my throat to use my life energy against Unkerlant if they saw me the way I really am. I suppose there are other Kaunians here, but how would I know? If they want to stay alive, they have to stay hidden, the same as I do."
Ealstan remembered the golden roots he'd seen. "You should dye your hair again, too. It's growing out."
"Aye, I know. I'll take care of it," Vanai promised. One way the Algarvians checked to see whether someone was a sorcerously disguised Kaunian was by pulling out a few hairs and seeing if they turned yellow when removed from the suspect's scalp. Ordinary hair dye countered that. The Algarvians being who and what they were, thoroughness in such matters paid off; Vanai kept the hair between her legs dark, too.
Carrying his meager lunch, Ealstan went downstairs and out onto the street. The two blocks of flats across from his own were only piles of rubble these days. The Algarvians had smashed both of them during the Forthwegian uprising. Ealstan thanked the powers above that his own building had survived. It was, he knew, only luck.
A Forthwegian man in a threadbare knee-length tunic scrabbled through the wreckage across the street, looking for wood or whatever else he could find. He stared up in alarm at Ealstan, his mouth a wide circle of fright in the midst of his shaggy gray beard and mustache. Ealstan waved; like everyone else in Eoforwic, he'd spent his share of time guddling through ruins, too. The shaggy man relaxed and waved back.
Not a lot of people were on the streets: only a handful, compared to the days before the uprising and before the latest Unkerlanter advance stalled — or was allowed to stall? — in Eoforwic's suburbs on the west bank of the Twegen River. Ealstan cocked his head to one side. He didn't hear many eggs bursting. King Swemmel's soldiers, there on the far bank of the Twegen, were taking it easy on Eoforwic today.
His boots squelched in mud. Fall and winter were the rainy season in Eoforwic, as in the rest of Forthweg. At least I won't have to worry much about snow, the way the Unkerlanters would if they were back home, Ealstan thought.
He spotted a mushroom, pale against the dark dirt of another muddy patch, and stooped to pick it. Like all Forthwegians, like all the Kaunians in Forthweg — and emphatically unlike the Algarvian occupiers — he was wild for mushrooms of all sorts. He suddenly shook his head and straightened up. He was wild for mushrooms of almost all sorts. This one, though, could stay where it was. He knew a destroying power when he saw one. His father Hestan, back in Gromheort, had used direct and often painful methods to make sure he could tell a good mushroom from a poisonous one.
I wish the redheads liked mushrooms, he thought. Maybe one of them would pick that one and kill himself.
Algarvians directed Forthwegians hauling rubble to shore up the defenses against the Unkerlanter attack everyone in the city knew was coming. Forthwegian women in armbands of blue and white — Hilde's Helpers, they called themselves — brought food to the redheads, but not to their countrymen, who were working harder. Ealstan scowled at the women. They were the female equivalent of the men of Plegmund's Brigade: Forthwegians who fought for King Mezentio of Algarve. His cousin Sidroc fought in Plegmund's Brigade if he hadn't been killed yet. Ealstan hoped he had.
Instead of joining the Forthwegian laborers as he often did, Ealstan turned away toward the center of town. He hadn't been there for a while: not since he and a couple of other Forthwegians teamed up to assassinate an Algarvian official. They'd worn Algarvian uniforms to do it, and they'd been otherwise disguised, too.
Back then, the redheads had held only a slender corridor into the heart of Eoforwic — but enough, curse them, to use to bring in reinforcements. Now the whole city was theirs again ... at least, until such time as the Unkerlanters chose to try to run them out. Ealstan had a demon of a time finding the particular abandoned building he was looking for. "It has to be around here somewhere," he muttered. But where? Eoforwic had taken quite a pounding since he'd last come to these parts.
If this doesn't work, I'll think of something else, he told himself. Still, this had to be his best chance. There was the building: farther into Eoforwic than he'd recalled. It didn't look much worse than it had when he and his pals ducked into it to change from Algarvian tunics and kilts to Forthwegian-style long tunics. Ealstan ducked inside. The next obvious question was whether anyone had stolen the uniforms he and his comrades had abandoned.
Why would anybody? he wondered. Forthwegians didn't, wouldn't, wear kilts, any more than their Unkerlanter cousins would. Ealstan didn't think anybody could get much for selling the clothes. And so, with a little luck ...
He felt like shouting when he saw the uniforms still lying where they'd been thrown when he and his friends got rid of them. He picked up the one he'd worn. It was muddier and grimier than it had been: rain and dirt and dust had had their way with it. But a lot of Algarvians in Eoforwic these days wore uniforms that had known better years. Ealstan held it up and nodded. He could get away with it.
He pulled his own tunic off over his head, then got into the Algarvian clothes. The high, tight collar was as uncomfortable as he remembered. His tunic went into the pack. He took from his belt pouch first a small stick, then a length of dark brown yarn and another of red. He twisted them together and began a chant in classical Kaunian. His spell that would temporarily disguise him as an Algarvian was modeled after the one Vanai had created to let her — and other Kaunians — look like the Forthwegian majority and keep Mezentio's men from seizing them.
When Ealstan looked at himself, he could see no change. Even a mirror wouldn't have helped. That was the sorcery's drawback. Only someone else could tell you if it had worked — and you found out the hard way if it wore off at the wrong time. He plucked at his beard. It was shaggier than Algarvians usually wore theirs. They often went in for side whiskers and imperials and waxed mustachios. But a lot of them were more unkempt than they had been, too. He thought he could get by with the impersonation — provided the spell had worked.
Only one way to learn, he thought again. He strode out of the building. He hadn't gone more than half a block before two Algarvian troopers walked by. They both saluted. One said, "Good morning, Lieutenant." Ealstan returned the salute without answering. He spoke some Algarvian, but with a sonorous Forthwegian accent.
He shrugged — then shrugged again, turning it into a production, as Algarvians were wont to do with any gesture. He'd passed the test. Now he had several hours in which to hunt down that son of a whore of a Spinello. The stick he carried was more likely to be a robber's weapon than a constable's or an officer's, but that didn't matter so much these days, either. If a stick blazed, Mezentio's men would use it.
Algarvian soldiers saluted him. He saluted officers. Forthwegians gave him sullen looks. No one paid much attention to him. He hurried west toward the riverfront, looking like a man on important business. And so he was: that was where he'd seen Spinello. He could lure the redhead away, blaze him, and then use a counterspell to turn back into his proper self in moments.
He could ... if he could find Spinello. The fellow stood out in a crowd. He was a bantam rooster of a man, always crowing, always bragging. But he wasn't where Ealstan had hoped and expected him to be. Had the Unkerlanters killed him? How would I ever know? Ealstan thought. I want to make sure he's dead. And who has a better right to kill him than I do?
"Where's the old man?" one redheaded footsoldier asked another.
"Colonel Spinello?" the other soldier returned. The first man nodded. Ealstan pricked up his ears. The second Algarvian said, "He went over to one of the officers' brothels by the palace, the lucky bastard. Said he had a meeting somewhere later on, so he might as well have some fun first. If it's anything important, you could hunt him up, I bet."
"Nah." The first redhead made a dismissive gesture. "He asked me to let him know how my sister was doing — she got hurt when those stinking Kuusamans dropped eggs on Trapani. My father writes that she'll pull through. I'll tell him when I see him, that's all."
"That's good," the second soldier said. "Glad to hear it."
Ealstan turned away in frustration. He wouldn't get Spinello today. Braving an Algarvian officers' brothel was beyond him, even if murder wasn't. He also found himself surprised to learn Spinello cared about his men and their families. But then he thought, Well, why shouldn't he? It's not as if they were Kaunians.
For four years and more, the west wing of the mansion on the outskirts of Priekule had housed the Algarvians who administered the capital of Valmiera for the redheaded conquerors. No more. Occupying it these days were Marquis Skarnu; his fiancée, Merkela; and Gedominu, their son, who was just starting to pull himself upright.
Skarnu's sister, Marchioness Krasta, still lived in the east wing, as she had all through the occupation. She'd had an Algarvian colonel warming her bed all through the occupation, too, but she loudly insisted the baby she was carrying belonged to Viscount Valnu, who'd been an underground leader. Valnu didn't disagree with her, either, worse luck. That kept Skarnu from throwing Krasta out of the mansion on her shapely backside.
He had to content himself with seeing his sister as little as he could. A couple of times, he'd also had to keep Merkela from marching into the east wing and wringing Krasta's neck. The Algarvians had taken Merkela's first husband hostage and blazed him; she hated collaborators even more than redheads.
"We don't know everything," Skarnu said, not for the first time.
"We know enough," Merkela answered with peasant directness. "All right, so she slept with Valnu, too. But she let the redhead futter her for as long as he was here. She has to pay the price."
"No one ever said she didn't. No one ever said she won't." While Skarnu was out in the provinces, he'd got used to thinking of himself as being without a sister after he'd learned that Krasta was keeping company with her Algarvian colonel. Finding things weren't quite so simple jolted him, too. He sighed and added, "We're not quite sure what the price should be, that's all."
"I'm sure." But Merkela grimaced and turned away. She didn't sound sure, not even to herself. Doing her best to recover the fierceness she'd had when fighting Algarve seemed futile, she brushed blond hair back from her face and said, "She deserves worse than this. This is nothing."
"We can't be too hard on her, not when we don't know for certain whose baby it is," Skarnu said. They'd had that argument before, too.
Before they could get deeply into it again, someone knocked on the door to their bedchamber. Skarnu went to open it with more than a little relief. The butler, Valmiru, bowed to him. "Your Excellency, a gentleman from the palace to see you and your, ah, companion." He wasn't used to having Merkela in the mansion, not anywhere close to it, and treated her as he might have treated any other dangerous wild animal.
Her blue eyes widened now. "From the palace?" she breathed. Gentlemen from the palace were not in the habit of calling on farms outside the hamlet of Pavilosta.
"Indeed," Valmiru said. His eyes were blue, too, like those of Merkela, of Skarnu, and of almost all folk of Kaunian blood, but a blue frosty rather than fiery. Over the years, his hair had faded almost imperceptibly from Kaunian blond toward white.
Merkela pushed at Skarnu. "Go see what the fellow wants."
"I know one thing he wants," Skarnu said. "He wants to see both of us." When Merkela hung back, he took her hand, adding, "You weren't afraid to face the redheads when they were blazing at you. Come on." Merkela glanced toward Gedominu, but the baby offered her no excuse to hang back: he lay asleep in his cradle. Rolling her eyes up to the ceiling like a frightened unicorn, she went with Skarnu.
"Good day, your Excellency, milady." The man from the royal palace bowed first to Skarnu and then, just as deeply, to Merkela. He was handsome and dapper, his tunic and trousers too tight to be quite practical. Skarnu had outfits like that, but he'd come to appreciate comfort in his own time on a farm. Merkela's tunics and trousers were all of the practical sort needed if one were to do actual work in them. Instead of working, the functionary handed Skarnu a sealed envelope, then bowed again.
"What have we here?" Skarnu murmured, and opened it. Someone who practiced elegant calligraphy instead of working had written, To the Marquis Skarnu and the Lady Merkela: the pleasure of your company is requested by his Majesty, King Gainibu of Valmiera, at a reception this evening to honor those who upheld Valmieran courage during the dark days of occupation.
"I trust you will come?" the palace functionary said.
Skarnu nodded, but Merkela asked a question that sounded all the sharper for being so nervous: "Is Krasta invited?" She gave Skarnu's sister no title whatever.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Out of the Darkness by Harry Turtledove, Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Copyright © 2004 Harry Turtledove. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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