Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 413

In an abstract way, he admired that… which made it no less frustrating. Still, he didn't suppose he wanted to put her husband Leino in a situation like the one from which poor, luckless Cornelu hadn't escaped. No, he didn't want that at all. All I want is to go to bed with her. If only things were so simple. But he knew too well they weren't.

Pekka said, "In spite of everything, we do make progress. We shall be sending the energies farther from the site of the sorcery than we have ever tried before." She paused before adding, "Almost far enough to be useful in the field."

"Almost," Fernao said. But his comment was rather gloomier than hers: "Almost is one of the saddest words in the language- in any language. It speaks of hopes with nothing to show for them."

"We are already releasing nearly as much energy with our sorcery as the Algarvians are with their murderous magecraft," Pekka said. "And our magic is far cleaner than theirs."

"I know," Fernao replied- the last thing he wanted to do was affront her. "But they still have more control over theirs than we do with ours. We do not yet know how to project the energies from our spell across the Strait of Valmiera, for instance, and we know too well that Mezentio's mages can."

As usual, speaking classical Kaunian gave the conversation a certain air of detachment- some, but not enough here. Pekka's shiver had nothing to do with the icy air through which the sleigh glided. "Aye, we do know that too well," she agreed with a grimace. "Were it not so, we would still have Siuntio on our side, and not a day goes by in which I do not miss him."

"I know," Fernao said again. He might have dragged Siuntio out of the blockhouse when it started to collapse and burn during the Algarvian sorcerous attack. He'd dragged Pekka out instead. She still didn't realize he'd been closer to Siuntio than to her. No matter how much he wanted to bed her, he would never tell her that.

Ptarmigan fluttered away from the sleigh, wings whistling as they took flight. "They are in their full winter plumage now," Pekka said. "The rabbits and the ferrets will be white, too."

"So they will, here," Fernao said. "Up by Setubal- and on the Derlavaian mainland farther north, too- many of them will stay brown the whole winter long. I wonder how they know to go white here, where it snows more, but not to where the winters are milder."

"Savants have puzzled over that for a long time," Pekka said. "They have never yet found an answer that satisfies me."

"Nor me," Fernao agreed. "It almost tempts me to think some inborn sorcerous power is hidden inside animals. But if it is there, no mage has ever been able to detect it, and that makes me not believe in any such thing."

"You are a modern rational man, and I feel the same way you do," Pekka said. "No wonder, though, that our superstitious ancestors thought beasts had the same potential for using magic as people did."

"No wonder at all," Fernao said.

Before he or Pekka could say anything more, the driver reined in and spoke two words of Kuusaman: "We're here."