The Shadow Sorceress (42 page)

Dark gray clouds loomed over the valley to the west of the road, clouds so dark that the early afternoon felt more like twilight. The road, while not paved, was of a firm clay and just wide enough for two wagons to pass side by side. The valley itself was split by a narrow river. To the east of the river, below the road, was an ancient-looking conifer forest, although the trees displayed a coloration that held as much black and purple as green.

Beyond the river to the west were small ponds fringed with yellowish reeds and linked by patches of sickly greens and orangish-browns. From amid the browns protruded leafless pole-like trees. Secca could see not a single dwelling in the entire valley, which stretched a good fifteen deks from northeast to southwest, and more than ten in breadth.

A light mist drifted across the riders heading along the ridge road to the southwest. Secca and Alcaren rode near the front of the column, behind a small vanguard of four lancers, and in front of Richina and Palian. With the mist came a sickly bitter odor from the valley, not quite like burned meat, nor like swamps, nor like rotten fruit, but reminding Secca of all three.

“Not a pleasant place,” she said quietly.

“No,” Alcaren admitted. “These are the Great Dismal Swamps of the north. They say that once the entire valley was like the western side.”

“What caused them?” Richina's voice drifted up from behind Secca and Alcaren.

“The Spell-Fire Wars,” Alcaren replied. “There are many valleys like this throughout Ranuak.”

“From sorcery?” Richina's voice carried a tone of disbelief.

“From sorcery,” Alcaren affirmed. “You have seen a battlefield blasted black by Lady Secca, have you not? Do you think she or the Lady Anna were the first to harness such power?” He glanced at Secca.

“We have blackened the land in a few places,” Secca admitted. “But nothing I have done would turn a valley into something like this—even after scores of generations. Nor did Lady Anna create any destruction such as this.”

“I would hope not, lady.” Alcaren's voice was calm. “Yet this was the price for the freedom of both Wei and Ranuak from the Mynyan lords. These valleys once held hamlets and towns, and the sorcery of the Mynyans turned them into spell-blasted holes that filled with water and became poisoned bogs and swamps. The Sand Hills are where the ancient Matriarchs turned the once-fertile borderlands of Mynya into desert heaped with sand. When the spring storms shift the dunes, folk still find hamlets where lie the bodies of those poor folk buried under the sand in those long-ago days.”

“Are you sure that the dunes date back that far?” asked Richina. “I thought the Evult used sorcery to move the Sand Hills to block the Sand Pass.”

“He moved the Sand Hills.” Alcaren turned in his saddle. “He did not create them. The first Matriarchs did that through their sorcery.”

Had sorcery done all that? Secca glanced to the dark and misshapen trees, and then to the sickly greens of the bogs and swamps. After a moment, she considered the contents of the notebooks locked behind iron at Loiseau…and shivered.

Alcaren did not remark upon her reaction, but continued to ride beside her. Secca looked ahead, where the road followed the ridge line toward the southwest…and Encora.

Secca shifted her weight in the saddle, glad for the morning's sunshine, hazy as it was. She rode between Palian and Delvor, and behind Alcaren and Richina. The road followed the northern bank of a small river that wound through low rolling hills generally covered with scattered grasses and scrub bushes. At times, Secca had seen small flocks of sheep in the distance, but the size of the flocks suggested that the grazing was indeed poor.

“Is there a better way to set up the players if we must offer spells from a ship again?” she asked, looking first to Palian, and then to the lank-haired chief of second players.

“The sound of the instruments might carry farther from the rear deck,” offered Delvor. “They would from the front deck, but there is much spray, and damp strings lose their tuning in moments.”

“Do you think we will need to use ships against the Sea-Priests?” Palian frowned.

“I cannot see them bringing their fleet into a harbor so that I can sing a spell over it,” Secca replied.

“Did not the Lady Anna…?”

“She destroyed one of their fleets by building the giant dam on the Falche, and letting it gather water for seasons. When she tilted the dam with sorcery, the flood destroyed the fleet because it was anchored in the harbor at Narial. That was because the Sturinnese held the city,” replied Secca. “They don't hold Encora.”

“I doubt there's a river that big flowing through Encora.” Palian nodded to the narrow stream flanking the road.

“Or that the Sturinnese will anchor somewhere like that without watching the river through their glasses,” added Delvor.

“We won't have that much time, either,” Secca pointed out.

Silence fell over the three for a moment.

“What is that?” Richina's voice contained such curiosity that Secca looked forward and followed the gesture of the younger sorceress. The hilltop a good five deks to the north of the road glistened black in the hazy morning sunlight.

“It is called The Last Encampment,” Alcaren said. “It is said to mark the farthest advance of the Mynyan lords into Ranuak. There the first Matriarch cast the first true Darksong spell and turned all of the Mynyan forces there into stone, but the spell was so violent that even the stone figures melted like wax.” Alcaren pointed farther west. “That smaller hill there, do you see it?”

“It's black, too,” Richina observed, “but smaller.”

“That was where the Matriarch stood. The spell recoiled upon her and those around her.”

Secca winced at that thought. She cocked her head, thinking exactly about his words, about the spell recoiling upon the first Matriarch, and about the feeling behind those words.

“Lady?” asked Palian.

“I'm fine. Just thinking.”

“Have you ever been there?” Richina pressed.

“Only to the lower part of the hill,” Alcaren replied. “Nothing lives where it is black, and often animals still die if they spend much time among the shining black stones.”

“Have you seen that?”

Alcaren nodded. “The hair falls from their fur in clumps, and they bleed from all over their skin. If they live for more than a few days, all their hair vanishes and their teeth fall out. Any animal that eats the flesh of one of them also dies.”

“After all these years?” asked Delvor, his voice skeptical.

“None will stop you if you wish to test what I have said,” replied Alcaren. “But none will touch your body or aid you, either.”

Delvor shuddered.

Palian nodded, sadly and reflectively.

Somehow, reflected Secca, the concerns of the Ladies of the Shadows did not seem quite so strange, not if a fraction of what Alcaren had said happened to be true…and she had yet to hear a word from him that she knew to be untrue.

As the gray mare carried Secca to the crest of the road that passed between two hills almost tall enough to be very small mountains, the sorceress could see a broad plain spreading before her, filled with winter-turned fields edged with stone walls and interspersed with infrequent woodlots, also marked by stone walls. Every morgen of land seemed to be in use, either for homes or fields or barnyards—and the trees in every woodlot or orchard ran in neat rows.

To the south, perhaps ten deks from the road, lay the dark blue-gray expanse of the Southern Ocean, empty of either sails or whitecaps that could be seen from that distance. A dark smudge appeared on the horizon to the southwest—the island that sheltered the port.

A good fifteen deks to the west was a second set of low ridges, topped with lines of white stone walls that shimmered in the midday winter sun.

“There! Those are the northern and eastern walls of Encora.” Alcaren gestured toward the ridge hills.

“Walls?” While Secca had seen more than a few walled keeps in Defalk and in Ebra, she had never seen walls around an entire city—or even parts of it.

“They are older than the city. They have never been used for defense, but they were built in the generations after the Spell-Fire Wars.”

“I suppose there are seawalls as well?” asked Secca.

“Of course.” Alcaren nodded. He did not smile. “Even all the fleets of the Sea-Priests would have difficulty in taking Encora from the sea.”

“There don't seem to be any ships out there,” ventured Richina, from where she rode behind Secca.

“The Sturinnese would have to be either to the southeast or much farther to the southwest. Except for a few narrow channels, those waters are too shallow for most of their war vessels.” Alcaren smiled. “We have never marked the channels, and they change often.”

“They cannot scry the channels?” asked Richina.

Secca winced.

“Lady…” Alcaren's voice was patient.

“Oh…”

Secca could sense the flush and embarrassment of the younger sorceress. At times, it was hard to remember that Richina was still several years shy of a full score—until she asked a thoughtless question that betrayed a lack of experience at variance with her very womanly appearance.

“Is that why the Elahwan vessels cannot travel farther south than Ilygot?” Richina asked quickly.

Before they had left the small town of Zedal that morning, Secca had used the scrying glass to seek out the lancers of Loiseau that followed her to Encora. The glass had shown that the two remaining companies were sailing southward on three of the Elahwan vessels and that there were no Sturinnese forces near the ships. Secca only hoped she had phrased the spell correctly enough that there would be none near by the time the three vessels neared Ilygot.

“Yes,” replied Alcaren. “The secrets to the channels are held most closely. Also, it would be difficult to maneuver more than a ship or two in the shoals and the shallows, and even the most experienced Ranuan captains will not traverse the East Sound in rough waters or in storms.”

“Encora is well-protected,” offered Palian easily.

“With our past, could we afford otherwise?” countered Alcaren.

“After more than a thousand years?” questioned Secca.

“Whose fleets blockade our ports?”

At the dryness of Alcaren's tone of voice, Secca laughed, even as she considered the memories of a war so violent that scars remained everywhere throughout the land after scores of generations. “You make a good point, overcaptain.”

The light breeze was chilly, but not unbearably cold, as the column began the descent into the valley that lay between them and the white walls of Encora.

“We should dispatch the messengers now, should we not?” asked Secca.

“It would be best,” answered Alcaren.

While they had already sent one set of messengers from Ilygot, and while it was almost certain that the Matriarch already had known of their journey and approach to Encora even before those messengers had arrived, the courtesy of a more formal and immediate notification was certainly due. Secca and Alcaren had earlier decided on sending eight more lancers, four from the SouthWomen and four from Secca's diminished forces.

“Messengers to the fore!” called Alcaren.

The eight riders rode forward along the shoulders of the road, passing the players, and then Richina, Delvor, and Palian.

“You have your scrolls?” asked Secca.

“We do, lady,” answered the squad leader—a South Woman in a crimson-trimmed blue riding jacket.

“Convey our regards to the Matriarch and to all others as well,” Secca continued.

“Yes, lady…overcaptain.”

Secca and Alcaren watched as the lancers trotted ahead and down the road that angled northward on its initial descent toward the flatter land of the valley below.

“You are certain we will be welcome?” Secca asked in a low voice.

“Who else can use sorcery against the Sturinnese?” replied the Ranuan.

“With what I have seen in the last few days, I would question whether the use of sorcery is that welcome.” After a moment, she added, “Unless the sorcery is performed beyond Ranuak.”

Alcaren shook his head ruefully. “I am most certain the Matriarch would have few difficulties with that and would support any such efforts.”

Secca still wondered as she shifted her weight in the saddle, her eyes going again to the distant white stone walls of Encora.

By late afternoon, heavy gray clouds had drawn across the sky, and a fine mist sifted down, carried by a light wind out of the south. Each fine droplet felt like a tiny point of ice on exposed skin. Secca had refastened her jacket and pulled the green felt hat from her saddlebags. Alcaren rode bareheaded, but Secca could see the redness from the damp and chill on the tips of his ears and on his cheeks.

The road itself was similar to the main highways in Defalk—stone-paved and straight, raised a half-yard above the plain through which it passed, and very slightly crowned so that rain would run off the broad and graveled shoulders. The thoroughfare was far, far older than any of the stone highways in Defalk, as the fine cracks and more than occasional replacement stones indicated. Those darker replacement stones were also much smaller than the massive slabs that represented the original paving.

Each of the scattered dwellings that flanked the highway was also of stone, with a slate roof. Stubble in the fields had long since been turned under, leaving neat rows. Although the dwellings varied in size, all were scrupulously kept, as were the outbuildings. Perhaps because of the cold, Secca saw few souls out, and those she did see paid little attention to the column of riders plodding westward toward Encora.

The column was less than two deks from the base of the ridge holding the city walls when Secca could make out through the mist both a crossroads coming directly from the north, and more than a score of riders reined up in two lines just beyond the crossroads.

Alcaren gestured toward the riders waiting at the crossroads ahead. “We have an honor escort waiting.”

“Let us hope they are just an honor guard,” replied Secca.

“Were they not, the gates would be closed, and there would be no guard at all,” suggested the Ranuan.

Secca debated taking out the lutar, then decided against it, since the rain would do it little good, and displaying it would only offer offense. She did begin a gentle vocalise.

Alcaren looked at her, eyebrows raised.

“I prefer not to ride into a strange city with no defenses at all, overcaptain.”

“You have a certain ability with a blade, lady.”

“It is not sufficient to make a would-be enemy hesitate, as you well know.” She paused, then said with a smile, “Your blade might, but not mine.”

“I would not wish to cross blades with you again, my lady.” As Secca turned, he added, returning her smile with one of his own, “Not if you were angry.”

Secca laughed gently, enjoying the moment of banter, but she continued to warm up until she had ridden to within a hundred yards of the riders beyond the crossroads.

The twelve lancers that Secca and Alcaren had sent as messengers waited, mounted, on the flat of the road below the inclined and paved road that wound upward through four switchbacks to the gates above. Behind the twelve were two companies of Ranuan lancers wearing pale blue riding jackets identical to the one worn by Alcaren—one company on each side of the road.

The overcaptain of the Ranuan lancers rode forward and halted her mount. “Lady Sorceress! The Matriarch welcomes you and your company to Encora.”

Secca reined up the gray and inclined her head. “Thank you.
As you know, we come in friendship, and in hopes of finding a way to defeat the Sturinnese.”

Behind her, Richina and the other riders slowed to a halt.

“The Matriarch knows such and welcomes you as friend and ally. All Encora is open to you.”

“Thank you, and the Matriarch.”

“We are here to escort you to the guest quarters and barracks.”

“We appreciate your courtesy and grace.” Secca nodded again.

One company of the Matriarch's lancers swung onto the road to lead the way up the road to the gates above, while the second waited and then brought up the rear.

Alcaren's SouthWoman squad leader eased her mount up beside the Ranuan overcaptain. With her was Delcetta, the SouthWoman company captain.

“Overcaptain, ser?” offered Captain Delcetta.

“Yes?” replied Alcaren.

“The Matriarch has requested that we remain under your command until the problem with Sturinn is resolved. The South Council has concurred.”

“I appreciate the support of the Council,” Alcaren said.

So did Secca, especially after riding through Ranuak. The SouthWomen seemed more likely to support sorcery than many throughout the land.

With a nod, the captain and the squad leader turned their mounts.

While she rode up the inclined road toward the gates, Secca studied both the road and the walls as best she could through the mist. The road narrowed slightly, and indented stone rain gutters appeared on both the uphill and downhill sides, gutters that drained into stone channels at each of the four switchbacks. Once Secca neared the top of the ridge, the scale of the walls became even more apparent, ramparts of gray-white granite that towered a good fifteen yards above the rocky ground out of which they rose.

Secca held herself ready to use sorcery, even without the lutar,
should it be needed, but those massive walls held no guards, nor were any evident near the gates. The single gate opening was but four yards wide, and framed with massive stone pillars, two on each side. Each pillar had been cut as a single unit. Between the pillars were the edges of the gates, each nearly a span in thickness. Each gate was designed to slide out from between the pillars, and the city walls behind them, along stone channels more than two spans deep and across the gate opening, one before the other, so that when the gates were closed there were two thicknesses of timber, each tightly anchored in stone on three sides. Where the channels crossed the roadway, they were covered with thin oak planks to ensure neither horses nor people broke legs in them.

Secca studied the stone of the walls as the gray mare carried her past the unguarded gates. She nodded.

“Lady?” asked Alcaren.

“The stone work was accomplished with sorcery.”

“You recognize the method?”

“I have some familiarity with it. I don't think those gate pillars could have been put there any other way. Not that I know of, anyway.”

“That may be, but it might be best if you did not voice that too widely.”

Secca snorted. “Use the fruits of sorcery, but do not mention it?”

“You have seen what sorcery has done to this land.”

“Like any tool, it can be used for good or evil. One should not blame the tool.”

“Blaming the tool is far easier, especially when the user may have had little choice.”

Secca did not reply. She understood Alcaren's point, but also felt that those who restricted what tools could be used often deserved the results that befell them.

Once through the gates, the Ranuan lancers turned slightly right and began to follow a gray stone boulevard that, within fifty yards of the wall and gate, arced downhill through a grassy park toward the dwellings and structures of the city below. For
the first time, in the park, Secca saw hardwoods and fruit trees, rather than the endless conifers that had seemed to populate the land of Ranuak all the way from Ilygot.

“Are there many such parks in Encora?” she asked.

“One cannot go a dek in any direction without finding a large park, and less than that for small greens,” replied the overcaptain.

To the southwest, Secca thought she could make out long stone piers at the edge of the dark circle of water that formed the harbor, and seawalls to the east of the piers. At least two vessels were tied up at the longer pier, and there might have been others, but the taller structures near the center of the city blocked a full view of the wharfs and piers.

Below the park, the boulevard straightened, pointing like a quarrel toward the harbor, and settled into a gradual decline toward the water. Raised stone sidewalks flanked the boulevard, and the dwellings on each side were generally of two or three stories, built of stone, with covered balconies looking out in front, and over rear garden courtyards.

Less than four blocks from the base of the park and toward the harbor, Secca glanced up at the topmost balcony of a three-story dwelling on the left side of the boulevard. There stood a figure in a dark hooded cloak, the face lost in the hood and the gloom of the growing twilight. A Lady of the Shadows?

Why?

To warn Secca against sorcery?

For the first time since they had begun to ride through Ranuak, Secca noticed people who actually looked at her, and at the others, although indirectly. No one seemed to stare or study the column intently, but they were not traversing the city without notice.

The guest quarters and barracks lay just on the northwest side of the boulevard less than half a dek from the harbor. They were so similar to those in Elahwa that they might have been designed by the same person, save that the walls of the structures were of the whitish-gray granite, and that a wall a good five yards in height surrounded the entire compound. The blue-painted iron
gates were swung back and locked open. When the Ranuan honor guard swung through the gates, the stone walls threw the echo of their hoofs on the stones of the drive back at Secca.

The drive was flanked on both sides by a low boxwood hedge that did nothing to mute the echo of hoofs, and before the guest house itself was a circular rose garden, one whose roses had long since been cut back to ready them for the spring still many weeks away.

Standing on the steps at the rear of the guest quarters was a tall and squarish woman in the pale blue of the Ranuan lancers, but with a single red rosette embroidered upon each shoulder of her riding jacket.

Alcaren reined up and bowed. “Commander.”

“Overcaptain.” The commander smiled at Secca. “On behalf of the Matriarch, Lady Sorceress, I bid you and all those with you welcome to Encora. The Matriarch offers her hospitality and support, and assures you that you will lack for nothing as you prepare to deal with the Sturinnese invaders.”

“We are pleased to be here and greatly appreciate your support and that of the Matriarch,” replied Secca.

“We are even more pleased to welcome you.” The commander bowed deeply. “Once you have rested, the Matriarch looks forward to meeting you.”

“As I do her,” Secca replied, wondering how long before the meeting would actually take place.