Shadowsinger (20 page)

West of Itzel, Neserea

In the dimness of the private study of the keep, Belmar studies the image of the woman in the glass that lies in the center of the dark oak desk. “She has been in the same room for near-on a week.”

“Has there not been a snowstorm? And high winds?” asks jerGlien. “She has but two companies of lancers. She would not risk such against the weather.” His tone is close to that of idle speculation.

“She would wish us to think that, I wager.”

“Be careful what you wager.” The Sturinnese laughs without mirth. “One never knows who might accept your bet.”

“She will not gamble.” With those words, Belmar clears his throat and sings, without accompaniment.

At the compressed rhyme and stressed note values, jerGlien winces. “You should use the players or learn to play a lute.”

“It will work,” Belmar says. “See!”

The image in the glass shows the sorceress riding eastward along a snowy road, the sun that has finally broken through days of clouds at her back.

“The devious bitch! I'll set a trap, and not just one for Nysl and his type, but for her. That I will.” After a moment, Belmar lets the image fade from the glass, slowly, without singing a release couplet, and turns to jerGlien. “You knew she would do such.”

“I knew she could. Any of the sorceresses could do so, were they so minded. I did not know she would. She is usually most direct, and most cautious, as you well have noted.” The Sturinnese pauses, then adds,
“Women can be most unpredictable. That was noted long ago in Sturinn.”

“And that is why you chain them?”

An ironic smile plays across jerGlien's face. “Let us say that it has proven effective over many, many years.”

“Well…I cannot chain this sorceress. So we must let her believe her stratagem has worked,” muses the younger man. “Then she will act, instead of dancing all over the countryside avoiding us.” He smiles coldly. “And when she acts, why then, so will we.”

“You will follow the decoy lancers more closely so that once she has cast her spells and revealed herself you will crush her?” suggests jerGlien.

“I had thought so. Is aught wrong with that?” Belmar glances down at the blank glass upon the desk.

“Not so long as you use sorcery strong enough to destroy her. She will not give you a second opportunity.”

“Nor I her. One must indeed act before she becomes stronger and more devious through experience.” Belmar grins at the man in gray. “Is that not the way of Sturinn? To act before another gains strength?”

“That is one way,” concedes jerGlien.

“Nothing is simple in Sturinn, is it?”

“Is it anywhere? You should know that appearances can deceive. The shadow sorceress is far stronger than those senior to her, yet all think she is the weakest because she is younger and because she has kept her distance from Falcor.” A pleasant smile appears. “As I have told you before, nothing in all Erde is quite what it seems, Lord Belmar.”

“Including you? You are here, and then you are not. Whatever you recommend, the Maitre seems to favor.”

“The Maitre has not adopted all of the requests you have asked me to convey.”

“That is not what I said.” Belmar laughs lightly.

“I have conveyed your requests,” jerGlien says evenly. “You have done well…from what the Maitre has granted.”

“As well as any, and yet I cannot say I know you.”

“You know me as well as any do,” replies jerGlien, “and better than many.”

“That is to say, not at all.”

The Sturinnese shrugs, as if to end the discussion.

The wind blew harder than on the days before, but it came out of the southeast, and was far warmer than in the recent past. For Secca and her forces, that had meant more muddy patches of the Dumaran road, and a slower journey eastward along the side road that roughly paralleled the river road. Secca had hoped that they could ease closer to the Sturinnese, enough to flank or circle the Sea-Priests somehow without overly tiring her own lancers and their mounts.

She half stood in the stirrups, trying to stretch legs that felt even shorter after two glasses of riding. As she eased back down into the saddle, she glanced at Wilten, who rode beside her for the moment. Alcaren and Delcetta rode close behind, and Richina and Palian just ahead of Secca and Wilten.

“You are certain that the Sturinnese are moving eastward, back toward Dumaria?” asked Wilten.

“That is what my glass showed, and Richina's,” Secca replied. “They are retracing their route back along the river road.”

“They are not even attempting to use the hills of Hasjyl, then, although you left them that opening,” Wilten continued.

“They regard such as a trap,” suggested Delcetta.

“I think not,” Secca replied. “The farther east we go, the farther we are from the trade pass, and when we vanquish the Sea-Priests, we will have even more travel to reach Esaria.”

“By then the Sturinnese will have landed their fleet in Worlan or Esaria,” Palian noted, half-turning in the saddle.

“Worlan?” asked Delcetta.

“Those are the lands held by Belmar,” replied Secca, “Lord Belmar, who would be the next Prophet of Music. They are west of Esaria, and there is a small port there.”

Wilten frowned, but did not speak, keeping his eyes on the narrow road ahead, winding as it did between rich river bottomland, and hills that supported woodlots and orchards with twisted trees that reflected
the less fertile higher ground away from the river valley that was less than five deks wide. Still, although the ground was warming, they had seen no signs of the land being tilled or turned in preparation for planting.

Secca tried to recall the details of the map of western Dumar. “Can you send scouts to see if—there's a loop in the river, isn't there, not too far ahead—we could cut across the hills and strike from the higher ground while they follow the river road?”

Delcetta nodded. “Scouts—that we can do.”

“They have almost fifty companies of lancers and three of archers,” offered Wilten.

“I do not plan to fight that way,” Secca said.
Not if you can avoid it
.

“They will not, either,” pointed out Alcaren. “So we must surprise them. Would you think of an attack through sorcery at night?”

“We will have to see.” Secca shrugged. She wouldn't be at her best if she had to ride most of the day. Neither would the players. Yet she had no doubts that the Sturinnese would not stay close to her for a day to let her rest—not unless she and her forces were so exhausted that any battle promised an easy victory for the Sea-Priests. “I will think of anything that will allow us to fight the Sturinnese when we are rested and have the greatest of advantages.”

“You ask much, Lady Secca,” offered Wilten.

“Perhaps too much, Wilten,” Secca admitted. “Yet we can ill afford to lose many more lancers or any more players.” Her eyes went to the winding road ahead. If she could only find a way to sing a spell that would carry farther than the few deks that she had managed in destroying the Sturinnese archers. But her voice had been stretched to its limits to create an effect that had extended three deks. Her voice? She and Richina had destroyed the keep at Dolov by singing harmony together. What if she could manage to add Alcaren? Could the three of them succeed where she could not—in a campaign that now stretched into a future she could neither see nor predict—nor even guess.

West of Itzel, Neserea

Light powdery snow falls intermittently from the hazy clouds that are somewhere in color between gray and white, and occasionally part to show a blue sky above, then scud together swiftly to dim the day. The road itself appears empty, and the lands beside the road reflect the coming end of winter, with brown spaces in the fields that will be tilled in weeks to come still dotted with snowdrifts. The meadows show the same pattern, save that winter-flattened grass alternates with the snow. Along the road itself, the drifts are fewer, and deeper, usually extending from a fence or stone wall bordering the shoulder of the road.

At one point on the road are three larger and longer drifts in a row, separated by but a few yards of frozen grass. Only four players, Clayre, and a single lancer stand in the space carefully created by hand and sorcery to resemble a snowdrift, the one in the center of the three. Under the white canvas that has been dusted with snow, the six wait for the column of Neserean lancers recruited and trained by Belmar to ride eastward toward Esaria, over the barely melted surface of the still-frozen clay of the road from Itzel to the capital.

“This is most dangerous, Lady Clayre,” murmurs Diltyr.

“Indeed.” Clayre nods. “But one snowdrift looks like another, and even if he were to see us in his glass, he would not know exactly where we might be.”

“He might not come along this road.”

“He might not,” agrees Clayre. “If they do not, we are no worse off than before.”

“True,” grudges Diltyr.

“Who will stop this Belmar if we do not? Lord Robero has no more lancers to spare, and the Lady Secca fights her way across the south of Liedwahr. She will not soon reach Neserea, not against the Sturinnese
and with the deep snows of the Mittfels blocking all the passes. So it must fall to us.”

Diltyr inclines his head in acknowledgment.

They fall silent as the lancer watching the road through the smallest of peepholes in the canvas gestures.

The scouts who ride the road before the column scarcely glance at the snowdrift as they scan the road for signs of hoofs and wagon tracks, and the road farther ahead for riders. The sound of hoofs on the frozen road fades as they pass.

Less than half a glass later comes the main body. Lancers in the ancient green of the Prophet of Music lead the column that follows the road westward. The hoofs of their mounts clop dully on the frozen clay.

Clayre motions the lancer aside and studies the advancing lancers through the peephole in the canvas. Finally, she steps away and nods to the players. “Once the canvas is clear, play on your mark, Diltyr.”

“On my mark…”

Clayre motions to the lancer. He quickly pulls the canvas away to expose the sorceress and players—and to allow their sound to carry toward the lancers and the figure who wears the colors of Belmar.

Even as the canvas is being cleared, Clayre nods to Diltyr, who brings his hand down, and then begins to play. The other three players join him, and the spellsong accompaniment swells, flowing out into the chill day, each note precise.

Clayre begins the spell on the third measure, lifting her voice into the cold morning air, air solid enough to carry the words and melody more than the half a dek length of the column. She has chosen the players wisely, and though they are few, their notes are firm and forceful, and both spell and accompaniment meld and soar.

With the spell comes a harmonic chord, reinforcing the words and music, for all its briefness in passing. Then, lightnings flash from the skies, not from the hazy clouds, but from somewhere below them, from where darker clouds begin to form and swirl into being.

From the column of riders come screams and curses, filling the chill morning air. Smoke begins to circle skyward as the lightnings fall like fire lances into the lancers, turning man after man into flaming torches,
until the fires and smoke stretch nearly half a dek eastward.

The clouds thicken, and the morning darkens more, until the light resembles dawn or twilight.

As the last sounds of the spellsong die away, Clayre stands, breathing deeply, watching as the last of the lancers in green fall. A grim smile crosses her thin lips, then fades as she beholds the charred figures that once were men. She shakes her head, almost sadly.

“There was no dissonance,” offers Diltyr, glancing toward the carnage upon the road.

“No.” Claire frowns, and as she does, a deep rolling thunder fills the air, a rhythmic thunder that comes from somewhere behind her, drowning out the more distant rumbling from the roiling clouds overhead, clouds that continue to thicken and darken.

From the direction of the drumming thunder appear more riders—another line of of lancers in green who sweep from the south toward the unprotected players.

Clayre turns and sees the attackers in their cream and green. She bends and snatches the lutar from its case. Without a pause, or a word, she lifts the lutar, her fingers touching the strings precisely. Facing the grim-faced riders who charge across the meadow toward her and who ride through the small snowdrifts, the sorceress faces the riders and begins another spell. Her voice is clear and strong.

Another line of flame lances drops from the heavens, but this line is far thinner, more like arrows than lances. Thin or not, it is sufficient to turn the entire company that had led the charge across the meadow into charred corpses, so that the colors of the meadow are the dirty white of old snow, the winter tan of last year's grass, and the black of sorcerous death.

Clayre takes a deep and quick breath, then another, listening as she does.

“Lady…” begins Diltyr.

Clayre gestures him to silence.

Somewhere beyond the field of death, the rhythmic thunder continues.

She straightens, ignoring the burning in her eyes and chest, and begins another set of chords on the lutar, those that matched the first spell played against the column.

The storm above the sorceress and the small band of players crackles, and more flame lightnings flare to the south…but they do not strike the next wave of lancers, but bend aside near the rear of the attackers, as if they had struck an invisible shield. The lancers ride forward, deliberately.

Clayre staggers as she finishes, then forces herself erect, watching for but a moment, breathing heavily, as the lancers in green gallop toward her and her players.

She swallows, then coughs, and clears her throat.

The rhythmic drumming is louder, more intense, and the sorceress shakes her head, then takes a quick swig from the water bottle at her belt. She squints, as if she has trouble remembering the words to the spell, but her fingers are deft upon the strings of the lutar, and once more, her voice rises, well above the drums, and even above the thunder of the clouds above.

She has but reached the second line of the spellsong when the white-tipped flame lightnings arc from the still-lowering clouds, ripping into her and the players beside her.

The sole lancer's mouth opens, but before he can yell or speak, he too is transfixed with flame. Behind him the white canvas flares into a bonfire, then turns black as the flames consume it.

A single dull harmonic chime sounds, dissonant, unheard except by those few who understand all too well what it means.