The Shadow Sorceress (12 page)

Wearing the heavy leather trousers, the padded leather tunic, and carrying the cumbersome practice helmet, Secca walked under a leaden gray sky toward the small walled courtyard beyond the lancers' barracks. From the worn brown leather belt at her left side hung the battered scabbard that held her unedged practice sabre.

As she neared the archway to the practice yard, she could hear the sound of metal on metal, the scuffing of boots on the stone pavement, panting, more than a few grunts, and an occasional mutter.

“Lady's coming, Easlon said…”

“…get one of the new ones to spar with her…”

“…don't want any bruises, Gorkon?”

“…can't win. Hard to touch her…strikes hard…and if you do hit her…then what?”

“She laughs…tries harder…better 'n a lot of lords.”

Secca smiled and stepped through the archway. Almost a score of armsmen were practicing, half that number paired off and sparring with each other. Two were stood under the overhanging eaves in front of the armorer's shop, watching the ancient Albero while he used the pedal grindstone, sharpening one of their sabres.

Everything stopped, and the lancers turned toward Secca.
Secca didn't see any of the officers, but she often didn't if she came later in the day, since most had consorts.

“Lady?” asked Westl, one of the senior squad leaders, who had clearly been instructing a younger lancer.

“I need to sharpen my very rusty skills with a blade, Westl. We are leaving tomorrow.” Secca smiled. “I'm sure there is someone here who won't mind.” She looked across the lancers who had been sparring, then nodded toward the dark-haired Gorkon, who reminded her vaguely of Lythner. “Gorkon? Would you spar with me?”

Gorkon bowed slightly. “As you wish, lady.”

Secca could sense the suppressed laughter. She was always amazed at how often people were surprised when she said something based on what she had overheard, thinking that she had somehow used sorcery instead of her ears.

She smiled pleasantly. “I realize I offer a smaller target than you seek.” She shrugged expressively. “But since everyone is larger than I…”

That drew a few smiles, even from Gorkon.

She pulled on the practice helmet—her one concession to sorcerous practicality, since a blow to her throat or face would have consequences that she couldn't really afford, especially with the tasks before her. Then she stepped forward into the nearest empty practice circle and drew the sabre, setting her feet. The blade felt heavier than usual in her hand. Was it tiredness? That was something she also couldn't afford.

“Go on,” Secca suggested to the lancer.

Gorkon's first move was little more than a halfhearted feint, as if he really didn't wish to strike at her.

Secca slammed the edge of her shorter sabre against his, then forced his blade down, and thwacked the bigger man across his right shoulder with the flat of the sabre, letting her blade return to a guard position. She tried to remember to keep her weight balanced.

His next moves were neither feints nor weak, and Secca had to fall back, parrying the furious slashes, waiting…until Gorkon overextended himself. Her blade slammed down on the back
of his practice gauntlet, and he lurched backward, barely holding on to his blade.

As Secca stepped forward, her boot skidded on the sandy surface of the stone. Instead of trying to catch her balance, which would have gotten her spitted in a real fight, she ducked into a roll, and came up to the side with the sabre ready.

Gorkon's mouth was still open when she slammed the side of his arm with the flat of the sabre once more. His blade clanked on the stones.

“You're too kind, Gorkon. What would you do if you had to fight a woman trained by the Matriarch, or the Traders of Wei?”

The lancer rubbed his arm before bending to retrieve the blade. “I be remembering that, lady.”

A few more murmurs whispered from the watching lancers.

“…like a cat…”

“…wildcat…red hair and all…”

She ignored the words and gestured with the sabre. “Would you like a turn, Rukor?”

“Begging your pardon, lady…but I fear you be far better than me.”

“I doubt that, but you won't improve sparring with someone worse.”

For all his protestations, Rukor was good with the blade, and his weapon was a good span and a half longer than Secca's sabre.

Still…she managed to avoid all but a few blows, but those would be bruises by evening, as would be the shoulder she'd hit on the stone rolling when she had slipped. She bruised all too easily, but there wasn't anything she could do about that.

By the time she was tired, and felt she had had the exercise she needed, despite the coolness of the day, and the chill wind out of the northeast, her hair was plastered flat with sweat, and her undertunic was dripping.

After pulling off the practice helmet and sheathing the sabre, she inclined her head to Rukor, and then Gorkon. “Thank you both. I needed the practice and the exercise.”

“Our pleasure, lady,” offered Rukor, then Gorkon, a moment later.

Secca listened to the faint murmurs as she turned and began to walk toward the archway, and back to the main building of the keep—for a bath before she dealt with the other problems she had to clear up before leaving Loiseau.

“…know any other sorceresses—or ladies—spar with their lancers?”

“…why she do it?”

“…a fool, Nyrtal…She goes into battle…only do so much sorcery, you know…needs to be able to defend herself…All the lords do…why not her?”

“…seems…strange…”

It didn't seem strange to Secca. She could still remember Lysara and Ytrude using blades to defend her when Hoede and Lord Dannel's armsmen had attacked Falcor. If Anna hadn't had them trained with blades, Secca would have died. On that night, Secca had made up her mind that she would master both blade and sorcery. While she would never be a true master blade, she wouldn't be an easy target, either. And neither would Richina or the other apprentices, for Anna hadn't stinted on their training, and Secca intended to carry on that example as well.

The Liedfuhr stands at the closed window, looking out into the gray afternoon where ice pellets bounce off the railings of the balcony beyond. The chill of the day seeps through the windows. At the knock on the study door, he turns.

“Yes?”

The graying Bassil steps through the door and bows. “You had summoned me, ser?”

“Has Overcaptain Tein arrived in Mansuus yet?”

“What do you plan, sire?” Bassil's eyebrows lifted. “If I might inquire.”

“I don't know if the man is guilty, or innocent and incompetent, but he should have had some idea of what the problems were in Hafen.”

“Oh?” Bassil's voice is neutral.

“We lost a company of armsmen. Someone paid off the captain, or promised to, and probably the men as well. Then they were murdered through sorcery in Neserea, and all of Liedwahr is thinking I'm either making a power play or so ineffectual that I can't control my own armsmen. It reeks of the Sea-Priests, but there's not a single bit of proof, and there won't be, as we both know.”

“You do not think that the overcaptain can provide such?”

“I doubt it. The stupidest overcaptain wouldn't remain in Mansuur if he were a party to something like this. And if he'd found out, he would have fled or let me know. So I doubt he knows anything. But he should. If the overcaptain doesn't know his officers well enough to anticipate that, it can only mean two things. Either the promised payoff was extraordinarily high or the morale of the men was very low.”

“A high payoff to the captain doesn't make his superior officer incompetent or guilty, sire.”

“Oh?” asks Kestrin. “Would you ever have been able to afford that summer cottage in Cealur without the golds from your consort's parents' bond? Or would you have bought that matched pair of grays if you'd lost that wager to Commander Grymm? Or would your consort have silk outfits if her sister weren't consorted to a cloth factor?”

Bassil smiles. “You have a point, like your sire. A superior should know the officers under him.”

“I think you had best have Commander Latollr report to me.”

Clearing his throat gently, Bassil says quietly. “I already took that liberty, sire. He is waiting in the anteroom.”

Kestrin laughs, a booming, self-deprecating sound. “And if I hadn't thought of it, you would have set it up so that I thought I had.”

“One does learn after a few years, sire.”

“What else have I missed, then?” Kestrin studies the older overcaptain. “I'm young enough to have missed something.”

Bassil tilts his head. “I may be aging…but on this, I think not.”

“There's something else, then.”

“Yes, sire. Your seers report that the Sturinnese are attacking Dumar. They have used sorcery with the ocean to destroy most of Narial.”

“When?”

“Several days ago.”

“And they did not find out until now?” Kestrin's voice rises.

“You have but two that are well, sire, and they have been seeking the causes and those involved with the missing lancers.”

Kestrin nods slowly. “We have much to discuss—after we deal with the commander.” He motions to the door. “Have him come in.”

In the dim gray predawn light of the late fall morning, Secca looked at the notebooks on the one bookshelf, then at the rows of the oversized jars with the substances she and Anna had gathered over the years. Her eyes dropped to the single saddlebag that held small stoppered jars of ingredients taken from certain of the jars. Then she closed the iron door to the safe room and its iron-lined interior walls, and slid the bar into place.

Picking up the lutar and accompanying herself, she began the spell.

As the words died away, Secca stepped back at the momentary flash of heat. She studied the bar welded to the door and the iron frame. The notebooks and all her notes were behind the iron. While the door and storeroom were not proof against metalsmiths with hammers and chisels, even those would take time to break into the room. The spelled iron would stop any sorcerer or sorceress less powerful than she was. For the moment, that was all she could do. She never left Loiseau without sealing the safe room and had no intention of ever doing otherwise, especially with two curious and only partly trained apprentices remaining at Loiseau.

She disliked leaving Kerisel and Jeagyn, but liked even less taking the two with her or sending them to Falcor. So she had handed each a small stack of books, asked them to read and write notes on each, and given them the notations for several simple spells.

After checking the spell-weld a last time, she replaced the lutar in its case and lifted the saddlebag onto her shoulder. She closed the chamber door behind her as she walked out to the waiting gray mare for the ride back across the hill to the lancers and wagons that were assembling in the north courtyard of Loiseau.

Her guards followed her silently as she rode through the gray of the glass before dawn.

The breeze that had barely ruffled hair at the Sand Pass fort had turned into a chill and steady blast at the backs of Secca and the lancers—and the wagons for the iron and their drivers—as the column rode back westward to the road that would lead to the red rock escarpments from which Secca would pull the iron Belan needed. While Secca could have tried the sorcery late the day before, after worrying about the effect on tired men and mounts she had decided against it and had the force ride directly to the fort for the night. That meant that, while they would be better on the day's ride after her sorcery, she would not be. Nor would the players.

The side road to the red rock escarpments turned south from the main paved highway between Ebra and Mencha just two deks east of the old Sand Pass fort. The side road, while half the width of the main thoroughfare, was stone-paved as well. Anna had insisted that she didn't want heavy-laden wagons mired in the mud. But then, Secca thought, Anna had been insistent on road-building throughout Defalk—road- and bridge-building—and Secca had done more than her share of both. Would she ever see a stone bridge in Defalk without thinking about Anna?

In the orangish light of the moments just past dawn, Secca turned the gray onto the narrower way to the mine, following Wilten and Dymen, a young standard bearer she barely knew except that he had come from Synope to serve in her lancers. Beside Secca rode Richina, wearing a new blue leather jacket Secca had given her two nights before at Loiseau. The apprentice's lutar was strapped behind her saddle and on top of her saddlebags, just as Secca's was.

The south road angled up the slope at a steady grade, running almost two deks before leveling out on the sorcery-flattened hilltop before the jagged red hills that signified the western edge of the Ostfels, the natural border between Defalk and Ebra.

Secca glanced back, taking in the players, and, behind them, Elfens and his half-score archers, and even farther back, the four companies of green-clad lancers, and well behind them, the wagons that would carry the iron back to Loiseau.

After Secca reached the artificial plateau and had ridden to the eastern end, a hundred yards short of the gaping pit filled with black water, the red-haired sorceress reined up the gray mare and brushed back the hair from her forehead, readjusting the green headband that was supposed to keep it out of her face. She turned in the saddle to check on the riders behind her—and the wagons still moving up the long incline—then glanced at Richina. “If you would please let me know when the wagons are here?”

“Yes, lady.”

Secca dismounted, handing the gray's reins to Richina, and turned to study the skies to the north, relieved that they were clear. Then she began to run through the warm-up vocalises.

Behind her, the players had all dismounted and were beginning to tune their instruments.

Secca had finished three vocalises, and the tuning and warm-up melodies were fading away, when Richina spoke.

“Everyone is here.”

Secca glanced at Wilten. “Are your men ready?”

“Yes, Lady Secca. They have their mounts reined in, and have been warned.”

Secca glanced next at Palian, and the first players, then at Delvor.

“We stand ready,” replied Palian.

Delvor nodded his readiness.

“Begin,” Secca ordered.

“The mining spell…on my mark,” Palian called. “Mark!”

The first three bars were all violino, before the woodwinds and falk-horn joined. Then came the massed chords of the lutars of the second players.

Secca concentrated first on matching her voice and words to the accompaniment of the two groups of players and then on visualizing the iron being pulled from the red rocks of the escarpments and being formed into the ingots that Belan—and Defalk—needed.

As usual, well before the end of the spell a low rumbling rolled out of the skies that had filled with a gauzy haze, a haze quickly thickening into interlinked thunderclouds. Spider lightning came next, bright enough that Secca had to force herself to concentrate even harder on finishing the spell.

With a single harmonic chord of the kind that only sorceresses or certain players heard, the ground shivered, then rolled ever so slightly. Secca shifted her weight and waited. A blast of hot air raked across her and the players, followed by one almost equally chill.

Another, longer, peal of thunder rumbled over Secca and the players.

Ignoring the burning in her eyes, she slowly looked at the ground between her and the gaping pit before and below the red cliffs, a pit now larger than it had been a glass earlier. The dark ingots of iron, each one weighing nearly two stones, lay in rows on the red-sand soil between the sorceress and the pit.

“Lady…” Richina extended a water bottle.

Flashes—daystars—flickered before Secca, as she took the water and began to sip slowly from the bottle.

“You need to eat,” urged the apprentice.

Secca took a small mouthful of the bread that would get crustier with each day of travel, then a bite of the white cheese, then more bread, and another swallow from the water bottle.

Murmurs drifted from some of the ranked lancers.

“…they all like that?”

“…small…big voice…”

“…early storm…all we need, going through the Sand Pass…”

Fine droplets of rain cascaded around Secca and then across the lancers, players, and the wagons that Belan had brought to carry the iron back to Loiseau. Almost as quickly as it had come, the rain stopped, and the sky began to clear under the chill wind out of the north.

Secca's eyes drifted northward, to the road, and to the Sand Pass fort, barely visible against the red stone cliffs. Only a squad of lancers from Loiseau maintained the fort, and they were rotated every two weeks. These days the fort served more as waystation for traders and travelers, who were grateful for the stark accommodations and the small copper per head charge.

“You need more, lady,” Richina reminded Secca.

Dutifully, Secca took another mouthful of bread and cheese, aware that the dayflashes were beginning to fade.

She studied the sky, especially to the northeast, from where the worst storms came, but there were but a few scattered clouds, if moving swiftly westward. While it was not winter yet, not for a few weeks, late fall could still bring ice rain or snow.

Was traveling into Ebra so late in the season wise? Possibly not, but letting Hadrenn fend for himself against Mynntar and Sturinnese lancers was even less so. And the reflecting pool had shown that Synek was safe, at least so far.

Secca took another sip from the water bottle.