The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (23 page)

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Authors: L. E. Modesitt Jr.

BOOK: The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle
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WEI, NORDWEI
G
retslen slips into the armless wooden chair, her face expressionless under the short blonde hair, the green eyes intent upon Ashtaar.
“While your reports are quite clear about what the Ebrans are doing,” begins the spymistress, “I find that I need more explanations for the Council on what they are
not
doing. We had anticipated that Behlem’s forces would already be in Falcor and that Eladdrin would be at least to Pamr by now. Instead, the Ebrans, after having crushed the Defalkans and killed Lord Barjim and his too-capable consort, squat a few leagues inside the border. Is that not so, Gretslen?” Ashtaar steeples her fingers, and her dark eyes flash.
“They have taken Lord Brill’s hall and outbuildings in Mencha, and the surrounding farms and dwellings. The sorcerer’s hall is easily suited for a base of operations, still within ten leagues of the Sand Pass. They are also rebuilding the Defalkan fort there.” Gretslen’s tone is level.
“Both are late Lord Brill’s masterpieces, no doubt?” Ashtaar frowns. “What do they do there that is so vital?”
“They have established a continuous resupply from Synek, and they are rebuilding their forces. Their losses were substantial, as I noted.”
“From the purported mist-world sorceress? Any sorceress that powerful would be transformed to cinders crossing the worldgates. Are you certain it was not Brill?”
“Lord Brill was dead when more than half the Ebran armsmen were flayed with fire.” Gretslen’s eyes flicker to the window, through which she sees an afternoon storm above the harbor.
Ashtaar’s fingers close around the dark oval of polished stone before her. “The waters could be wrong.”
“They could be.”
“You do not think so, do you?”
“No, honored Ashtaar.”
The spymistress sets down the dark oval no larger than her clenched fist. “This is troubling. A sorceress that powerful cannot cross from the mist worlds. There was no sorceress that powerful known in Liedwahr, and there has not been one that strong since the time of Vereist. You do not know where she is? How can that be? The waters can surely trace that kind of power.”
“The waters show her image. She is riding, with a single companion, somewhere in Defalk.” Gretslen shrugs. “After the drought, one part of Defalk looks much like another.”
Ashtaar nods. “Then keep watching, and let me know. What of the travel-sorceress?”
“A team was dispatched the afternoon you requested it, but they have had to avoid the fleeing soldiers.”
“This is vexing, Gretslen. Is the sorceress also the reason for Behlem’s caution?”
“I could not tell you that with certainty, but his seers have used their waters to scry the battle.”
“So this unknown sorceress gives Behlem pause, and nearly destroys the Ebrans. We don’t know who she is, or where exactly she is. We don’t know where her loyalties lie. In the meantime, Eladdrin is wary enough not to move until he has far more armsmen than he needs, and Behlem has learned caution.” Ashtaar pauses. “Very vexing. Defalk should have fallen easily.”
“Most of the armsmen fled as we planned,” points out Gretslen.
“Except those of Lord Jecks.”
“We could not subvert them, as we noted.”
“What is Jecks doing?”
“His forces are quick-marching to Falcor.”
“Gretslen … .”
“I only scried that a few moments ago,” answers the blonde hurriedly.
“What a dissonant mess … .” mutters Ashtaar before looking up. “Is there anything else? Anything else that the Council could spring on me?”
“Well … this sorceress works only with a mandolin, not with players.”
“Donner save us … . You’re certain?”
“Yes, Ashtaar.”
“I suggest you consider a method for removing the sorceress. No … don’t send anyone … not yet … but consider it. Consider it carefully.” Ashtaar offers a hard smile.
F
rom the hillside to the northeast, where Farinelli carried Anna steadily down the dusty road that they had reached earlier in the day, Synope looked like a larger and even hotter and drier version of Mencha. She checked the
rope that ran from her rear saddle ring to the brown mare. The mare plodded after the gelding, bearing two sets of saddlebags, filled partly with stale travel bread, some daggers, a few hand tools and an awl—and two swords. Daffyd led another mare, a piebald one, similarly loaded.
“Are you sure this wasn’t the road you had in mind?” Anna asked for the second time, or maybe it was the third, glancing at the late-afternoon sun that hung over the dusty fields.
“Lady Anna … I said I was sorry.”
“So am I.” Anna wasn’t quite sure why she found it hard to forgive Daffyd. Was it because she hadn’t wanted to kill the bandits? Or because she’d been glad to be able to stop them before they hurt her or anyone else?
They deserved it
, a part of her mind said.
But you were pleased,
another part said. She took a deep breath. “Daffyd, I don’t mean to be sharp with you, but … I’ve already done things here that I’m not proud of.”
Except you are, in a perverse way.
“Those bandits, lady? You stopped them from killing many people. How can you say it was something you aren’t proud of?”
Anna thought. “If I kill a snake or a mad dog, it has to be done, but it’s nothing to be proud of.”
There!
Daffyd looked down at the mane of the gray mare. “ … sorcerers … sorceresses …”
There was so much Anna didn’t know. She had weapons and tools she didn’t know how to use. She had coins, but what were they worth?
“Daffyd?”
“Yes?”
“What are the gold coins called?”
“They’re golds, that’s all.”
“What can you get for a gold or a silver?”
“Things, of course.” Daffyd sounded exasperated.
“I meant, what are they worth? How much can you buy with them?”
“Oh … like boots or blades or food?”
Anna nodded.
“A good meal at an inn will cost three or four coppers.” Daffyd frowned. “My last boots cost Brill three silvers. A good horse runs from three golds up.”
“Are there ten coppers in a silver?”
“Of course. Ten silvers in a gold. Always have been, far as I know.”
The sorceress’s lips tightened.
“You could sell some of those blades, Lady Anna. Not here, but in places like Falcor or Cheor or maybe Sudwei. They’d bring over a gold each, maybe more.”
“I don’t know what we should do.” And she didn’t. She was carrying, apparently, a fair amount of coins for a local, plus goods that might be worth even more. But business wasn’t her strongest point, especially in a strange place like Liedwahr.
The road curved around an orchard. The trees had leathery gray-green leaves. An olive orchard? Anna didn’t know, but Russian olives had those kinds of leaves, and olives grew in hot climates.
As she rode around the gentle curve, she could see scattered trees lining what might be a river off to the right, but the road curved back and continued south and parallel to the river toward the scattered dwellings that marked the outskirts of greater Synope.
“Is that a river?” Anna pointed.
“The Synor River. It never was very big, and it’s smaller now. Even with the dam, there’s barely enough water for the mills.” Daffyd fell silent.
“What will your sister say about your showing up with a complete stranger?”
“Every time I come, she says I should come more often. She doesn’t mind if I bring friends.” Daffyd smiled. “After all, I am her little brother.”
That didn’t exactly reassure Anna. “Where does she live?”
“On the east side, but not so far east as the hills where the mills are.”
Anna glanced to the east and the low hills beyond Synope. The Ostfels were no longer visible on the eastern horizon and had not been since well before midday, which meant that Synope was farther from the mountains than Mencha was.
“Does she have children … a husband, consort?”
“She and Madell have a daughter. Ruetha is three, I think.”
“What do they do? She’s not a player, is she?”
“No. Madell’s father is a miller, but there hasn’t been that much milling lately.”
They passed a small cot on the left side of the road. The door hung open, and one of the shutters lay on the ground beneath the window. The next cot had neither windows nor doors.
Farinelli tossed his head and took a side-step.
“I know. You’re a hungry and thirsty boy.” She patted the gelding’s shoulder, looking ahead to where a wagon stood outside a building. A youth carried a bench from the building to the wagon.
“That used to be the woodworker’s place, but I never met him,” explained Daffyd.
“How long has it been since you were here?”
“Two years, I’d guess,” Daffyd admitted.
The woodworker’s apprentice looked up at the two riders and their de facto packhorses. His eyes crossed Anna’s, and he took a long look before flushing and looking away. Then he scurried back into the shop.
Anna pursed her lips, then moistened them. What had that all been about? Certainly, the young man had seen women before, even women on horseback. From what she’d seen in Erde so far, all women who rode wore trousers—none of the sidesaddle idiocy spawned by the English.
Synope had a central square—of sorts—with a mélange of shops clustered around a dusty red stone platform standing in the middle of an intersection of an east-west road
and the north-south road that had carried Anna and Daffyd into the town.
Yuril’s
proclaimed a faded green sign bearing two crossed candles. Under the sign was a shop with narrow and grimy windows. Beside Yuril’s was a larger building, from which projected a white-painted sign bearing only line-drawing outlines of a mug and a bowl.
“The Cup and Bowl,” offered Daffyd. “Could be the worst food in Defalk, maybe in all Liedwahr.”
A heavyset woman in frayed brown trousers and an overlarge tunic that had grayed from too many washings dragged her daughter away from the horses. Her eyes went to Anna, and then away, and she pulled the girl under the narrow porch beneath the sign for Yuril’s.
Anna tried not to frown. She knew she was dirty, dusty, and probably had circles under her eyes that reached to her jaw, but when people looked at her and then ran, it wasn’t exactly encouraging.
“That way.” Daffyd pointed to the left.
Anna urged Farinelli around the red stone platform and its chipped sandstone balustrade that looked like a town bandstand without a roof. She couldn’t imagine a bandstand in Defalk, though.
Two armsmen in soiled light-green tunics, trimmed with purple, stood in front of another shop—this one with a barrel displayed over the door. Neither looked away. Both stared at Anna. She ignored the pair, but could feel their eyes on her back until she and Daffyd were at least another hundred yards from the center of Synope.
The few shops gave way to houses, almost all of one story, and most were finished on the outside with a plaster or stucco. Some were gray, others painted, but the paint on all had faded.
“There it is,” said Daffyd, turning the mare down a short lane off the main thoroughfare—if a dirt strip ten yards wide constituted a main thoroughfare.
The house to which the young player pointed was similar in shape to that of Jenny, the travel-sorceress in Mencha, if
somewhat longer. The red dust had stained the outside white stucco or plaster walls a faint pink, and two weathered wooden benches stood on the warped planks that formed a porch under the overhanging eaves. The front door was closed against the late-afternoon heat, as were the four shutters, two on each side of the door.
The wood had once been painted a bright blue, but the paint had faded and peeled, giving the house a faintly disreputable look. Behind the house was a long shed, with an overhanging roof and one side without doors, showing six stalls. Five were empty.
“Are you sure your sister won’t mind?” Anna asked again.
“She’s always saying that I should come more often.”
“But I’m an outsider.”
“You’ve saved my life. That counts for something.”
“When did I do that?”
“When you talked to Lord Brill, and when you killed all those darksingers and Ebrans. Otherwise none of us would have lived. And you stopped the bandits.” The violist grinned briefly. “Three times ought to merit some hospitality.”
Anna shook her head.
Daffyd tied the mare and his packhorse to one of the two stone hitching posts, and Anna used the other.
“Young Daffyd.” An angular and wiry man stepped out onto the narrow porch. “Your sister will be pleased to see you.” He looked at Anna.
“Madell, this is the Lady Anna.”
Madell bowed deeply, without looking Anna in the eye. “Lady …” He was barely taller than the sorceress. Despite the superficial respect, Anna distrusted Dalila’s consort, mate, whatever he was. He reeked of trouble.
“Daffyd!” Dalila was pert, if stocky, and short, barely above Anna’s shoulder, and very pregnant. And she bounced off the porch and hugged her brother.
A dark-eyed, dark-haired girl peered from the doorway.
Daffyd hugged his sister carefully, then disengaged himself.
“Dalila, this is the Lady Anna. She’s a sorceress. Fortunately, for you, and especially for me, she’s managed to save my life several times.”
“Then we do indeed owe her. You’ve always needed a saving.” Dalila turned to Anna, and her eyes twinkled, as she gave a head bow. “You are most welcome to what we have, lady. It isn’t much, and certainly not fit for—”
“This is a palace,” Anna said. “We’ve slept in the rocks, and before that in a tiny room with lots of people in a fort.”
“But shouldn’t you be paying your respects to Lord Hryding?” The small brunette held out a hand, and the girl scurried across the porch and grasped it. “This is Ruetha.”
“I don’t even know who Lord Hryding is,” Anna admitted. She smiled at the girl. “Hello, Ruetha.”
The three-year-old buried her face in her mother’s trousers.
“Lady Anna is from the mist worlds,” Daffyd explained, “and she hasn’t been here very long.”
“The mist worlds, fancy that,” murmured Madell, openly disbelieving.
“I summoned her,” Daffyd retorted. “Me and Jenny, anyway.”
“Then she should surely see Lord Hryding,” said Dalila, stroking Ruetha’s dark brown hair.
“She cannot do that now,” said Madell. “I know it for a fact that Lord Hryding is on his way back from Sudwei and will not be in his hall for at least two more days.”
“And how might you know that?” asked Daffyd.
“His saalmeister came to tell us that he would be bringing back Ranuan grain in his wagons for us to mill.”
Anna frowned. Wasn’t flour easier to transport than grain?
“You see,” Madell expounded, “if we mix the hard winter grain of Synope with the soft grain of Ranuak, then the flour doesn’t spoil as quickly.”
“And it doesn’t taste so bitter,” added Dalila.
“Right now, I’d rather not deal with another lord,” Anna admitted.
Dalila studied Anna for a moment, then smiled again, warmly. “I can be seeing that. Well … you’re welcome. You’re certainly welcome. It must have been a hard trip.”
Anna nodded. So did Daffyd, but not, she thought, for exactly the same reasons.
“There are bandits along the back roads, especially now, and you were carrying some fair-looking goods and horses. Did you see any?” asked Madell speculatively.
“One group,” Anna said. “We managed to leave them behind.”
Daffyd swallowed slightly and started to open his mouth. Anna looked at him, and he closed it. The less Madell knew about her abilities, the better.
“There are matters you’re not talking about, but those are yours.” Dalila smiled.
“There’s a lot we’re not talking about,” Anna admitted.
Including the coins and the weapons in our packs.
“We were in the middle of a battle with the dark ones … .”
“Aye, and the words come to Synope even.” Dalila turned to her brother. “The Prophet of Neserea has sent his forces to Falcor, and he is now traveling after them. Sasia was saying so at Yuril’s this morning.”
“That’s all Defalk needs,” snapped Madell. “Another ruler to bleed us all dry.”
“Do you think Lord Barjim was that type?” asked Anna.
“He was better than most,” grudged Madell, “and look what happened to him.”
“There is that,” Anna agreed.
“Well … we’re talking, and your legs are most likely to be falling off, and you’d need to rub down your mounts and wash up, and then we’d be pleased to eat.” Dalila offered another warm smile.

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