The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (39 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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The sound of hoofs caught her ear, and she walked to the window. Another troop of horse was gathered outside the portcullis gate, reminding her that she remained in the middle of a war on a strange world.
You’d better find out where those maps Menares promised you are, and get to work. The Ebrans aren’t going to wait forever
.
After a last look in the mirror, she left her room, still troubled that she had no way to lock it, not that it mattered, she supposed, since Behlem’s people would certainly be able to force their way into any place. Anna took the steps up to the upper level slowly. She didn’t want to arrive panting.
The white-haired woman who opened the heavy tower door was neither stocky nor frail, and stood nearly as tall as Anna, though her face was heavily lined.
“Lady Essan, I am Anna.” The sorceress inclined her head.
“You are tall,” said Essan. “Too tall for a blonde woman from Mencha. Please come in.” She stepped aside and gestured toward the pair of chairs covered in embroidered upholstery. Between the chairs was a polished table of dark wood, on which rested a pewter pitcher, two goblets, and a platter containing nuts.
Anna stepped into the tower room, the same size as hers, and bowed. “I am pleased to meet you.”
“Yet you did not seek me.” The words were not quite acerbic as Lady Essan closed the door and walked stiffly toward the chairs with the pillow on one side of the seat.
Anna followed and waited for the older woman to sit before extending the scroll. “The lady Gatrune suggested that I not be too forward.”
“How do you know Gatrune, if you are such a stranger?” Essan unwrapped the scroll and slowly read it.
“I had met her consort, Lord Kysar, at the battle for the Sand Pass. When I passed through Pamr later, I stopped to pay my respects. I didn’t know that he had died. That was when I met Gatrune.”
“That’s what she says. Foolish woman. She believes what people tell her.” Essan gestured to the pitcher. “Help yourself, as you want. Don’t if you’re not thirsty. Makes no difference to me.”
“Thank you.” Anna eased into the chair across from the older woman.
“Olive butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Here you are, young and beautiful, and half the tower’s running scared of you. Some nonsense about your coming from the mist worlds. They look in those fancy waters and mirrors, and anything they don’t understand belongs to the mist worlds.” Essan snorted. “You look normal enough, too normal to come from a mist world, and you talk like we
do, except for that odd accent. So where are you really from?”
“A world called ‘Earth.’ They say it’s a mist world, but I couldn’t tell you. In some ways, our worlds are similar. In others they are very different.”
Lady Essan stared straight at Anna as the sorceress spoke, then leaned forward and took a sip from her goblet. “You believe what you say. Why should I?”
“Because it’s true. I wish it weren’t.” Anna smiled wryly. “At least, in some ways.”
“According to the legends, no one can be transported without wanting it. Why did you want to come here?”
Essan’s blunt frankness was disarming in some ways, and Anna found herself answering in the same spirit. “My daughter was killed recently, and I thought things couldn’t get much worse. Just when I thought that, apparently, a sorceress in Mencha was asked to summon a sorceress from the mist worlds, and I found myself in a totally strange world.”
“Your daughter …” mused Essan. “Some have insisted you are near as old as I am, and enchanted to look younger. How old was she?”
“Irenia was twenty-eight.” Anna poured some of the amber liquid from the pitcher, trying to guess whether it was cider, wine, or something worse.
Essan nodded to herself. “You have other children?”
“Two. I miss them.”
And I need to do something
,
somehow
…
“Sorcery does not work, or it works weakly in your world—is that not true?”
“That’s true,” Anna admitted. “How did you know?”
“You are said to be powerful, and too many people have seen your sorcery for that not to be true. Yet you are not arrogant, and you are most careful. You work miracles with sorcery, and often forget, or do not think to use the simplest spells. Why do you not use your mirror to view your children?”
Anna barely kept her jaw in place. She hadn’t even
thought of that. She should have, but it just hadn’t occurred to her.
“If you are powerful here, yet are not familiar with simple spells, and have little pride in sorcery …” Lady Essan shrugged. “Then sorcery is not strong on your world.” She laughed once, twice, harshly. “The hopes of Defalk lie in the Prophet of Neserea and an unknown sorceress. I am almost glad Donjim did not live to see this.”
Anna took the smallest of sips from the goblet—and was glad she had. The liquid was something like a strong apple brandy that seared her tongue. With the amount that Lady Essan had sipped already, Anna wondered how the woman could talk, let alone be so lucid.
“So … how might I help you?” asked the older woman. “Gatrune thinks I should.”
“I did not come seeking help,” Anna said.
“Why did you offer your services to the Prophet?”
“I didn’t see many other choices. I also disliked the Ebrans.”
“Not many as do like them, but that’s no reason for a stranger to stay.”
“I don’t like running.”
I’ve had to run too often because I’ve never had any power.
“I like you, girl. Except you’re not a girl. How old are you?”
“Forty-seven,” Anna admitted.
“Young enough. You don’t know enough, Anna.” Essan cackled. “No, you don’t. No one told you about youth spells, I’ll wager.”
“No one had a chance. This was a death spell.”
“That harmonizes. Brill’d be noble to the end, the dissonant noble fool.” Essan paused to munch several of the nuts. “Youth spells mean you stay young until you die. You live a little longer because you’re healthy, maybe even twenty years longer, but one day, young as you look, you die. Very sudden-like. Me, I prefer the natural state. It’d be too long that I have been around anyway, and being young and pretty isn’t always what it could be. Men,” Essan
snorted, “if you’re pretty, they think you have no brains. And if you let it be known that you do, then you’re uglier than a wall-eyed goose, and more dangerous than a pointed blade. So … woman-girl from the mists, ask me questions.”
“What I don’t understand is how Lord Behlem took over Falcor so easily.” Anna tried the nuts, found that they were salted and spiced almonds, and that she remained hungry.
“That is not difficult to explain.” Essan adjusted an embroidered pillow behind her back. “Defalk has not been blessed with a solid lineage of lords for generations, and it is a difficult land. I had three children. Niedra died in childbirth. Senjim was killed in the first peasant uprising in the south, not the one ten years back—the first must be thirty years now. Carlon—poor boy. He never was quite right, for all that the sorcerers tried, even Lord Brill. So Barjim was the best of the lot, even if his father was a scoundrel. Barjim was honest, and people liked him. We got him to take Jecks’ bright daughter, old maid or not, as his consort. All that work … and for what?” Essan refilled her goblet.
“Doesn’t he have a son?”
“Jimbob? Aye, and Jecks has him safe, for now, but Jimbob has no guardsmen beyond those of his grandsire. I remain near a prisoner, and the old lords of Defalk needs must acknowledge Behlem … as you must, powerful as you may be.” Essan added more of the applelike brandy to her goblet.
“And if Jimbob could become lord?”
“He’s yet far too young, and at the mercy of his counselors he’d be, for Jecks would not live to see him safe.”
“What will happen if the Prophet can stop the Ebrans?”
Essan sipped more of the brandy and shrugged. “Who might say? Behlem is a trickster, but some say Menares understands what Behlem does not, and Menares is beholden to the north.” The older lady laughed. “Behlem knows that well, yet can find no better counselor. It be that way ever. Donjim’s best counselor was Werum, and he was beholden to Konsstin.”
Anna wanted to shake her head. It seemed like everyone was tied to someone else, and everyone pretended it wasn’t so—just like university politics—or opera companies.
“That would be why all fear you, Lady Anna. No ties have you, and power that will grow. Yet ties you will need. Choose those ties carefully.” Essan set down the goblet and stood. “I be a meandering old lady, and you are gracious, for all your strangeness.” She yawned. “Time for my rest.”
Anna got the hint and stood. “You were most gracious to receive me, and I appreciate your kindness and your insights.”
Exactly what they mean is going to take a little time to sort out
.
“Nonsense. I enjoy the company. Do come and see me again.” Essan eased toward the door.
Anna walked across the purple-and-gold braided rug to open the door for herself. “I will, and thank you.”
As Anna stepped out onto the landing, Lady Essan smiled faintly, then added. “Someday, I hope you can meet Jimbob. He has the cleverness of his mother and the honesty of his sire.”
“I hope so,” the sorceress answered, before turning and heading down the stone steps to her own quarters. The coolness felt welcome, and she stood back from the window for a time, enjoying it and watching the gate, and thinking about all that Lady Essan had told her while pretending to offer nothing.
She could see Elizabetta—maybe. She could try, in any case. But she needed to think about the Ebrans, too, and what she should do, and a dozen other things. She rubbed her forehead. She shouldn’t rush into anything, but looking at maps wouldn’t hurt.
Her eyes went back to the portcullis. No one had departed or arrived, and after a bit, still thinking about Elizabetta, she stepped back and reached for the bellpull.
Skent arrived alone.
“Lady Anna?”
“Did you know Lord Barjim’s son Jimbob?”
“Yes, Lady Anna.”
Anna studied the page, hoping to read more from the dark and serious eyes. “Would he have made a good page?”
“Lord Barjim made him work with us. He even got punished,” Skent said. “I got to ride some then, too.”
Anna felt like nodding to herself. At the very least, young Jimbob had gotten some discipline, and Skent did not seem to dislike the heir apparent.
“Skent? Does Menares have a page?”
“He has three. There’s Cens and Barat and Hoede.”
“Good. Wait just a moment.” The sorceress went to the table and found a blank sheet of paper, one of the few remaining from those she had brought from Mencha. She wrote out her request, then rolled the paper up and handed it to Skent. “This is for Menares. I need some maps he promised. Can you make sure he gets this?”
“Yes, Lady Anna.” The dark-haired page nodded somberly. “Barat owes me.”
After Skent left, Anna pulled out the lutar and began to practice. She still wasn’t as familiar with the instrument as she knew she would have to be, not by a long ways.
She managed to ignore the voices from the courtyard, the hoofs on stone, and the occasional horn call. She still hadn’t figured out the purpose of most of the horn signals.
She managed to struggle through her revised battle hymn twice, and had gone back to work on adaptations of burning spells, when the door knocker thumped.
Thunk!
She set the lutar aside and went to the door where Skent and a second page stood on the landing. Each carried an armful of scrolls.
“Your maps, Lady Anna. The counselor only asks that they remain in your rooms.”
Anna laughed. “I can promise that.” She held the door wide. “Put them on the bed.”
“It’s cool here,” said the other page.
“I’m Lady Anna. And you are?”
“This is Barat, lady.”
Barat bowed deeply.
“I appreciate your helping Skent, Barat, and convey my thanks to Counselor Menares.”
“Yes, lady.” The round-cheeked Barat looked up at Anna. “Did you use a spell to get it so cool here?”
Anna nodded. “It’s much cooler where I’m from.”
“Me, too. My sire’s lands are in the south Mittfels, and the snow doesn’t melt until the trees are green in the lowlands.” Barat paused. “It’s nice here.”
“Thank you.”
With a slow long breath, Barat bowed again, as did Skent, before the two left the room.
Anna stood with the door ajar as the two headed down the steps.
“ … she’s pretty! … so lucky, you two are …”
A faint smile crossed Anna’s lips as she closed the door. She replaced the lutar in the case and unrolled the first scroll. She had a lot of studying to do.
A
nna looked into the mirror, wishing she had a clear pool of water, much like the one Brill had used. But she had no way to have either a clear pool or a harp, and the wall mirror would have to do. She hoped it would work.
The sorceress ran through the two sets of vocalises with the lutar, then brought out the scrap of paper with the words and notation for the spell.
She cleared her throat, once, twice, took a sip of water, and then began the spell, trying to mesh the lutar with the words.
“Mirror, mirror …”
The mirror surface shivered into a silvered darkness, reflecting nothing of the tower room. In the midst of the shimmering darkness, an image appeared, first as a small point of light, then expanding to fill the dark wooden frame that held the silvered glass.
The image was clear—too clear.
Elizabetta sat on the deck of the New Hampshire house, across the white table from Avery—Antonio. Even through the shimmer of the mirror, Anna could see that Elizabetta had been crying, and Avery was talking. He was always talking, trying to rationally turn everyone to his way of thinking.
Anna watched, but the two just talked, and Paulina didn’t appear. The light dimmed, and the shadows around her daughter and former husband deepened as the two figures talked, as Avery smiled and offered yet another statement, and as Elizabetta frowned and tried to hide her disagreements.
From what Anna could see, Elizabetta was protesting, saying something like, “She wouldn’t do that … it’s not like her … something’s happened … .”
The sorceress bit her lips. That bastard! Avery was trying to convince her daughter that Anna had run off. What could she do? Could she?
She couldn’t send herself, and Daffyd couldn’t send her back, and she couldn’t reach Jenny—not with Mencha in the Ebrans’ hands.
No one she’d talked to even knew another living sorcerer, and Brill hadn’t been exactly encouraging about her being able to return to earth. He’d once muttered something about transport between Erde and the mist worlds creating fires, but when she’d pressed, he’d just shaken his head, and then they’d had to fight the Ebrans, and Brill had been dead before she’d been able to get a straight answer.
The mirror seemed hot, heat radiating off the silvered surface, the heat growing …
She looked around, then tried to improvise, as the heat beat from the mirror surface at her.
“End this view with a song,
for the heat’s too strong.”
A
crack!
followed, slashing across the glass, leaving it blank.
For a moment, she just stood there.
Why was everything so fucking difficult?
Her eyes welled up with tears, and when she could see, the mirror still bore the crack, splitting the reflection of a stone-walled tower room.
She wanted to scream. Instead, she walked past the bed, and the heaps of map scrolls, out the door onto the narrow landing and up the stairs to the top of the tower.
Elizabetta … Elizabetta … so near, and so far. An image in a mirror, yet a world away, and Avery, the snake, telling her that Anna had willfully abandoned her! All Anna had wanted to do was get away from the nastiness, the pettiness of the university politics—and she’d made the mistake of saying that at the worst possible time. But that seemed to be her lot in life—saying or doing something at the worst possible time. She hadn’t wanted to leave Elizabetta, but the spell hadn’t heard that.
She was breathing hard when she reached the open roof of the tower, blotting her eyes, and trying to stop the tears.
The sun was a red ball touching the horizon that cast long shadows across Falcor. Anna crossed the ancient tower stones to the north side and peered out over the parapet at Falcor, still blotting her eyes. Only a handful of chimneys smoked, fewer each night, Anna thought. While the dwindling fires might reflect the late-summer heat, Anna suspected that they also reflected a slow diminution of the population as more and more people slipped out of Falcor, fearful either of Behlem or the Ebrans—or both.
With each daily ride, the sorceress saw fewer souls on the streets, more shuttered windows, and yet no one else remarked on the changes. Did they fail to see them, or fear to report them to the Prophet?
“Probably the latter,” she murmured to herself. No one
liked to report bad news to the ruler—just like the department chair, she reflected as she used the tear-soaked cloth to blot her forehead.
The hot air of twilight reminded her of Brill. She’d been able to duplicate some of his spells—cooling her room, seeing Elizabetta in the mirror, lighting candles—but so many she had not. Anna laughed, a sound both soft and harsh. How many spells had he created about which no one knew? Were they still there at Loiseau, somewhere in his notes? Would one be able to return her to Ames? Or anywhere on earth?
Anna shook her head.
She couldn’t hope that, not now, not with the Ebrans gathering their forces. What could she do to stop them? Eladdrin, according to Menares, was almost ready to move westward, and more of the darksingers, younger ones, were arriving daily from the training stronghold in Vult to replace those Anna had destroyed.
Water? Could she do something with water? Brill had said that water was hard to handle, and perhaps they wouldn’t expect that. There was a place where the main road crossed the small river—the Chean—near Pamr. The whole curved section of the river valley there was low. The irrigation ditches proved that.
The sorceress pulled at her chin. What could she adapt? And how? She gazed out at the small city—or town—then stopped and turned.
A girl stood on the last step leading out onto the tower, almost frozen as Anna moved toward her.
“You can come up,” Anna said, stepping toward the thin-faced young woman who clutched something to her chest.
“I didn’t know anyone was here. I’d … better go.” The dark-haired girl started to turn.
“Please don’t go. I’m Anna.”
“I … know … Lady Anna. I am Garreth. Birke warned me, but he didn’t think you’d be up here.”
“Warned, Garreth? I’m not a monster.” Anna didn’t
have to force a smile. “Please come up.” She paused, looking at the drawing board that the girl held tightly. “Do you draw?”
Garreth glanced around. “I’m not supposed to, not now. The lady Essan says that drawing girls and singing boys will come to no good end.”
“I don’t know,” Anna mused. “I used to draw, but I sang better than I drew, and there wasn’t time for both. Do you like to draw?” She stepped back, afraid that she was crowding Garreth, and motioned for her to step onto the stones of the tower.
“Oh … sometimes.” The brunette stepped out of the stairwell, but at an angle to avoid nearing the sorceress.
Anna shook her head and laughed, gently. “You’ll have to do better than that to hide it. That’s what I would tell my teachers, and the whole time I was saying inside that I liked singing more than anything.”
“You’re truly, truly a sorceress.” Garreth tilted her head as if trying to see Anna in a different light.
“That’s not sorcery,” the sorceress explained. “I was young once, and I remember.”
“Birke said that you were old. You do not look old.” Garreth’s deep-set green eyes narrowed slightly in the red light of sunset.
“I am older than I look,” Anna admitted. “It wasn’t my idea. It happened in the battle for the Sand Pass.” Her eyes fell to the drawing board. “I won’t press you, but could I see what you’re working on?” She shook her head. “Around here, it seems no one has time for beauty.”
“It’s not beautiful. It’s awful.”
“I doubt that. Could I? I won’t say anything.”
“Birke did say you keep your word. He said you would die before you would break it. That be important to him.”
“I know.”
Garreth slowly lowered the board. A single sheet of paper lay there, held in place by leather triangles glued to each of the four corners of the wood. On the paper was a halfcompleted view of Falcor, as seen from the north side of
the tower. Anna took a quick breath. “It is lovely. You are an artist.”
“It be not my best.”
Anna smiled, even more warmly. “Your best must be very good.”
Garreth blushed, ever so slightly.
“What do you do here?” Anna asked. “Are you a page?”
“Dissonance, no, lady. My mother was the maid to Lord Donjim, and I help Lady Essan. I am too young to be a proper maid, and the lady needs but one. Yet she tells Lord Behlem that she needs us both. Synondra is her real maid. She be quiet.”
Anna studied the girl, noting the deep-set and hooded eyes. Had Barjim’s uncle had those eyes?
“Everyone says I have his eyes, those of Lord Donjim. Lady Essan has been good to me. Elsewise … I would have nowhere to go.”
Anna nodded, a glimmer of an idea in her mind. She would have to see, and it might take time.
The evening bell rang, reminding her that she was expected for dinner with the Prophet and his senior captains and overcaptains. Why on some nights and not others? Or was it that the Prophet didn’t offer full dinners to everyone every night? She didn’t know, only that Birke had brought her the invitation—or summons.
Her eyes flicked eastward, catching the dim red spot that was the moon Darksong—hanging just above the horizon. Darksong … she hoped it wasn’t too much of an omen. “Garreth … I must go. I enjoyed talking with you, and I hope I’ll see you again.”
“You eat with the Prophet?”
“Sometimes. Tonight is one of those times.”
After hurrying back down to her room, Anna briefly enjoyed the cool while she washed and donned the dressier tunic and trousers she had created for meeting with Lady Essan. Somehow, she felt the time for gowns was past, at least for now.
Then she used the bellpull to summon a page—Birke this time.
“You are ready, lady?” gasped the youth as she stood waiting for him on the landing.
“Sometimes I can be early, Birke.” She nodded to the steps, and added, “I’ve decided that I should dine in more … functional clothes.”
“Yes, lady.” The redhead started back down the tower steps.
“I noticed that more armsmen in Neserean colors have been arriving,” she said, ignoring his unvoiced disapproval of her garb.
“They have had to quarter some of them outside the liedburg. That’s how many have arrived. Are we going riding tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? Probably.”
After that, who knows? I really need to go back to Pamr and study the river
, and I’ll have to argue with Menares about it, tomorrow, since it’s not something to be done publicly.
“I’m glad I can ride again. Did I tell you that they even let me send a scroll to my sire?”
“You told me the other day. I’m glad.” She paused. “Are you the oldest, Birke?”
“The oldest son? Of course. I need be here so my sire would not declare fealty to Ranuak or Neserea. But Wasle is only two years younger.”
“I see.”
None of the lamps in the wall sconces were lit in the corridor leading to the middle hall, and they walked through the gloom almost silently.
“We’re here,” announced Birke, to both Anna and to the guard at the door.
“The lady Anna,” announced Giellum after opening the door to the middle hall.
Anna smiled back at Birke, then stepped into the gloom of the middle hall. She’d refrained from lighting the chandeliers since the first dinner, especially given the late-summer heat. This time, she had arrived before Behlem,
and the senior armsmen stood in groups around the table. Nitron, the dashing captain of the Prophet’s Guard with the sweeping mustaches, stood in a corner with some of the captains Anna had not met.
The sorceress nodded politely to Hanfor and to Zealor, who stood together near the middle of the single long table. Both shifted their weight from side to side, uneasily. That bothered Anna, since neither had seemed that nervous at previous dinners. Hanfor inclined his head slightly more than a perfunctory nod, while the sad-faced Zealor offered a bow. Anna smiled briefly.
“Lady Anna?”
Near the head of the table, and Behlem’s vacant high-backed chair that was not quite a throne, a wiry man with graying hair stood beside Menares. The counselor beckoned to Anna, and the sorceress walked toward the pair.
“Lord Vyarl, this is the lady Anna,” offered Menares. “She is the sorceress from the mist worlds that Lord Behlem had mentioned.”
“From the mist worlds? Are they all as young and beautiful?” asked Vyarl.
Anna was slightly taller than Vyarl, and she smiled her professional smile before answering. “While I appreciate the compliment, I am rather older than I look. My people are like yours—good-looking and not-so-good-looking.” After the briefest pause, she added, “I am a stranger here, and I’m not familiar with you, or your lands.”

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