The Shadow Sorceress (19 page)

Snow has fallen across Wei, but the sun is out, and beyond the window, the light is corruscatingly brilliant. Ashtaar must squint as she looks down the hill toward the river and the harbor piers she cannot actually see. After a moment, she draws the shutters to reduce the glare, but leaves them positioned so that the remaining light falls across the straight-backed chair fac
ing her and the desk. Then she reseats herself at the desk, picking up the first scroll from the pile on the left side.

She has read four scrolls when there is a knock on the study door. “Yes?”

“Escadra, Leader Ashtaar.”

“Come in.”

Escadra steps inside the door and immediately bows. “You asked for reports…some matters of interest.”

Ashtaar gestures toward the chair across the table desk from her, set at a slight angle.

The chunky seer eases herself down into the chair and into the line of sunlight that strikes her face. The seer squints against the glare.

“Go ahead,” prompts the older woman.

“You may recall that Lord High Counselor Clehar was killed in the battle east of Narial…?”

“That was last week. Is there something new?” Swallowing as if to stifle a cough, Ashtaar picks up the large square of green cloth from the desk, holding it in her left hand. “Something that affects us?”

“His brother Fehern has assumed the title and position of Lord High Counselor,” Escadra announces. “Without even notifying Lord Robero, from what we can scry.”

“In a time of invasion and trouble, that is understandable,” Ashtaar replies dryly.

“We do not believe that the Sturinnese killed Lord Clehar. There is a partly trained sorcerer who remains close to Fehern all the time.” Escadra moistens her lips nervously. “His demeanor is like unto that of the Sea-Priests. Fehern consults him often. Since the death of his brother, Feharn avoids battle, and towns in Dumar are falling quickly to the Sea-Priests.”

Ashtaar nods. “What else?”

“Yesterday, the Sorceress-Protector of the East destroyed Mynntar and his forces, and close to ten companies of Sturinnese lancers. They were marching toward Synek. She also used a smaller sorcery the night before.”

“Do you know what that was?”

“No, your Mightiness.”

Ashtaar frowns.

Escadra shifts her weight uneasily in the hard straight-backed chair.

“I have yet another charge for you, Escadra.”

“Yes, Leader?” The seer's voice is somehow subservient yet wary.

Ashtaar laughs but once before she speaks. “I am not that unobservant, even approaching my dotage.”

Escadra waits.

“As you can, watch the Lady of the Shadows and her followers.”

The seer's eyebrows lift.

Ashtaar coughs, harshly, then covers her mouth with the dark green cloth. After several more violent coughs, she sets the cloth by the black agate oval and takes a slow deep breath. Finally, she speaks. “We have a Sea-Priest sorcerer in Neserea, aiding or teaching a Neserean holder who claims descent from the Prophet of Music. There is another Sturinnese sorcerer in Dumar. There are thunder-drums in Ebra, and two Sturinnese fleets. There are three powerful sorceresses in Defalk, and they have at least two strong assistants.” She pauses. “And Lord Robero cannot best the Sea-Priests without those sorceresses.”

“That is most likely so, your Mightiness.” Escadra shifts her weight in the chair, as if trying to escape the glare without seeming to do so.

“What do the Ladies of the Shadows most oppose? Is our Lady of the Shadows any different?”

“I understand, Leader.”

“Good. I need not tell you more. But do not neglect the sorceresses.”

“No, Leader Ashtaar.”

“You have done well.” Ashtaar smiles, then nods as she picks up the scroll she had been reading. “You may go.”

Escadra stands and bows, then turns and slips from the study.

Once the door is closed, Ashtaar turns and closes the study shutters all the way, cutting off the glare from sun and snow.

Secca took another bite of the hard white cheese as she sat on one side of the table in the dining hall of Hadrenn's palace and listened to Palian. A single set of candles in a double sconce offered the only illumination in a room seemingly as chill as the cold and clear day beyond the dark wood-paneled walls.

“Yesterday…it was a blow to some of the players. Bretnay woke sobbing this morning, and Rowal would speak to none,” Palian said.

Secca glanced at Delvor.

The chief of the second players nodded. “More of mine are like stunned bullocks. It is one thing to see a pit open in a hillside, and another to see scores upon scores of men and mounts turned into charred flesh.”

Behind Delvor's shoulder, Richina winced at Delvor's words, then took a long swallow of the light and bitter ale that Secca had trouble drinking, but was swallowing slowly because she didn't wish to spend the effort to sing a spell to provide clean water. Although Secca did not voice it, the sights and smells of the carnage had indeed forced a relocation back to Hadrenn's palace, both for a day or two of rest and resupply, and for some better planning for the campaign that lay ahead. All were clearly needed.

After the battle—or slaughter—Secca understood why Anna had preferred shadow sorcery. Fewer died, and usually the guilty, while in a battle all too many died who were at most but guilty of following the wrong leader. Yet people thought she and Anna
were cold-blooded? What was kind and humane—or honorable—about sending scores upon scores to certain death in massed battles?

At a cough from the door, Palian turned, then stood as Hadrenn walked into the hall. So did Delvor and Richina. Out of form alone, so did Secca.

“Frengal said that you might be here, Lady Sorceress.”

“We are here,” Secca replied.

Hadrenn glanced at Palian, then Delvor.

Secca nodded at the players, then at Richina, and the three slipped out of the hall, leaving the Lord High Counselor and the Sorceress-Protector of the East by themselves in the dimly lit hall.

“Stepan informs me that your sorcery cost us a score of lancers.” Hadrenn's voice was bland.

“It did. That was far less than a battle would have.”

“And ensured that none survived who would be hostile to Defalk.”

“That was not the intent,” Secca pointed out, “although I doubt that Lord Robero would be greatly troubled by it, nor should you be.”

Hadrenn frowned, fingering his chin, then studied Secca for a long moment. “You are much like the Lady Anna.”

Secca waited to see if Hadrenn would add more.

“If my lancers do not accompany you, will you still travel to Dolov?” asked Hadrenn.

“I must, if only to assure Lord Robero that Dolov remains loyal.”

“You do not believe it will. Nor do you believe I will do what is necessary to ensure that.” Hadrenn offered a single short bark of a laugh. “And you would be right. Synek, even after a score of years without wars, remains poor. In just Synek, I rule a demesne nearly a third the size of Defalk, and yet perhaps twelve companies of lancers are what I can muster without prostrating the merchants and peasants.” Hadrenn tilted his head. “What say you to that?”

Secca laughed gently. “Thac it behooves you even more to
send your lancers with me, for you can display your power with far less cost than in any other fashion.”

“You are so like her, though you look not in the slightest the same.”

Like Anna? Secca strongly doubted that.

“A strong north wind would seem to blow you into the next holding, yet the wind passes, and all is changed, and you remain.” The heavy-set and balding Lord High Counselor of Ebra fingered his chin again before speaking. “The new part of the road…it makes what was there before seem poor indeed. I had heard that you sorceresses had created stone roads all across Defalk and for but a short way into Ebra. Would it be possible…?” Hadrenn did not finish the question.

“There are only so many sorceresses, Lord Hadrenn,” Secca said tiredly. “Richina replaced and paved a section of road that was perhaps a half a dek in length. It took all her effort, and she will not be able to do much sorcery for another day or so yet, perhaps longer. That was all she could do for a week, and she is a strong young sorceress. There have been four full-fledged sorceresses in Defalk, and we have been working on the roads there for more than a score of years. We now have perhaps one highway in each direction from Falcor to the borders of Defalk. You are more fortunate than other neighbors, for Lady Anna esteemed you,” Secca exaggerated, “and used her sorcery to pave the road through the Sand Pass and for another fifteen deks into Ebra.”

“Your roads benefit you more than others, for now traders flock to use your roads,” Hadrenn pointed out.

“That is true, but however it benefits us, a sorceress can only do so much sorcery in a day or a week, and sorceresses are called upon to do more than build roads. Anna did also build you the bridge across the Syne to the west.” Secca smiled. “Once we have settled the current…situation…perhaps, if there is another bridge…”

“If there were one across the Syne perhaps thirty deks to the east…that would save much travel, and make the folk on one side closer to those on the south.”

“We will see, and I will not forget.”

“Neither did she, for good or for evil.” Hadrenn laughed. “And you are much like her.”

Secca offered a smile she wasn't certain she felt.

The man and the woman sit across from each other, platters empty but still on the table. In a smaller and higher chair sits a daughter, with the blonde hair of her mother. The Matriarch sips a glass of an amber wine, while her consort glances at their child.

The child leans forward in the chair to take one of the glazed almonds from the dish on the table.

“Just a few,” says Alya.

“Yes, Mother.”

A half-smile crosses the man's face before his eyes return to Alya. “You are disturbed by the news from Synek?”

The Matriarch frowns. “I would have been surprised if Mynntar had prevailed, even with the aid of the Sturinnese. I worry greatly about the use of Clearsong to poison Mynntar.”

“Did he not deserve it?” asks Aetlen.

“He did. That is not the difficulty. I fear we shall see much more and different uses of spellsongs in the seasons ahead. Now is not the time for shadow sorcery. Not with the Ladies of the Shadows visiting me, and recalling the horrors of the Spell-Fire Wars.”

“You worry about them?”

“Their worries are the same as mine—but they will not see
that the evils of not using sorcery may be even worse than the horrors of using it.”

“You expect the new Sorceress-Protector to abandon what has worked so well for more than a score of years?” asks Aetlen.

“No. She acted then as she needed, but I fear she will yet try more subtle shadow sorcery,” replies the Matriarch, smiling at her daughter even while she eases the dish of almonds out of reach of her youngest.

Alcaren—wearing the pale blue of the Matriarchy, but with insignia neither of an officer nor a ranker—sits in the straight-backed chair by the door, eyes flicking from the Matriarch to her daughter and then to her consort. He stands and slips to the second-story window, studying the way below, then the dark clouds beyond the harbor. His fingers curl around the hilt of the sabre, then uncurl, as if willed to do so.

“Because she does not understand that shadow sorcery is fully effective only after great power has been displayed?” Aetlen's voice is dry as he brushes back white-blonde hair that shows neither the white nor the silver of aging.

The Matriarch nods.

“Mother?” asks the girl, who would stand perhaps to the Matriarch's shoulder, “why couldn't you bring another sorceress from the Mist Worlds, the way they once did in Defalk? One who had great power?”

Alya frowns. “It is not that simple, Verlya. Knowledge is a form of Harmony. The great sorceress Anna was not a sorceress when she came to Liedwahr. She was a singer of songs, for songs do not have the power in the Mist Worlds that they do here. Even so, she was most fortunate to have survived the trip. Such a trip would kill a knowing sorcerer or sorceress.” The Matriarch smiles. “We were most fortunate that she was who she was. I would not gamble on such. I could not.”

“Are the other sorceresses like her?”

“No. No person is like unto another. Nor are sorceresses. There are three, and they are all powerful, but most different. The eldest is the Sorceress of Defalk, and she is most like the sorceresses of old, and finds herself in a world where such is most
dangerous. The second would be a sorcerer, for she uses men as men have used women, and she feels the currents of power among the lords. The third, and the youngest, she is the shadow sorceress, much as the great sorceress was, and should she ever emerge into the full light of Harmony, she also will change Liedwahr, perhaps far more than the great sorceress. Yet she would hug the shadows close.”

“Why does she stay in the shadows?”

“Because for many years, the shadows have allowed her and the one who taught her to shape the future of Defalk and of Liedwahr unseen and more gently.”

“I would not like my future changed from the shadows,” states Verlya. “Not by a sorceress.”

“That will change, for a time.” The Matriarch sighs. “It will change so much that all will yearn for the shadow days.”

“I won't,” avers the girl.

“We shall see,” temporizes the Matriarch.

“Indeed we shall,” adds Aetlen.

By the window, Alcaren frowns, ever so slightly, as his gaze returns from surveying a harbor far too empty of vessels.