The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (53 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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“Imagine that,” echoed Anna, her mouth dry.
“There be others that feel that way, too. Strange times, Lady Anna, these be most strange times.” The older woman’s eyes grinned behind the somber facade. “Then, too, they have been inspecting the towers. Some folks, servitors of the Lady Cyndyth, I would imagine, peered through every room, like as not so she can reorganize it all. Changes everywhere. They even took my poor Garreth, not even telling me for what, just that the Lady Cyndyth needed her, and I have not seen her since.” Essan’s eyes were cold, but she continued. “I would be hoping that they would not turn out an old lady, or worse, but who have I to turn to? I came down the stairs soon as I heard you are returned, and I prattle on, and you have not even had a chance to
prepare yourself for all that will come with the victory.”
Anna wanted to wince at the slight hardening in Essan’s last words, but she only nodded. Clearly, these walls had ears, or the lady thought they did, as did Skent. “I’ve enjoyed your company, and your insights from the beginning, Lady Essan, even if I am a stranger and a woman. I do feel for the land, and it was hard for me when I saw the destruction from the river.” She bowed her head momentarily. “I had not thought … about all that has befallen you, the widow of a great lord, and I feel blessed that you have shared your thoughts with me.” How could she get across what she was trying to say without giving it totally away?
“I must leave you to … whatever … whatever sorceresses do.” Lady Essan rose, her face blank, and Anna knew she had to say more, somehow, even as she stood.
“My children, you know, are far, far away,” Anna began, “but I understand, and perhaps I can act as your daughter, as you would have her act now.” Anna smiled. “But you’ll have to keep acting like a mother. There’s too much I don’t know, and even adopted daughters need guidance, especially now. I hope I can live up to Nelmor’s expectations. I’ll certainly try.”
The light in Essan’s eyes told Anna that she had been understood, even before Essan stopped by the door. “You be sure that I be no old woman, badgering and bothering you?”
“If you did not talk to me, how would I learn about Defalk? Or the liedburg?”
“Much you have to do, sorceress-girl. Much, but don’t you worry. I’ll be back, and it is good to see you in health. See that you stay that way. I will tell you that though you were mine.” Essan nodded affirmatively and opened the door. “Now get that pretty face clean.” Her eyes went to the recital gown. “And wear that gown when you want all eyes on you.”
“I hope so,” Anna answered ambiguously.
After she watched the older woman climb up the stairs, firmly but slowly, Anna closed the door.
She needed to clean up—quickly—and then to develop and cast some sort of protection spell—or something. And that was just the beginning. The Lady Essan had made it clear—very clear.
One thing was very clear. She was running out of time. She had to do something—either leave or fight, and she really wasn’t a fighter.
Anna laughed. She hadn’t been a fighter, but something about Erde had changed her from being a survivor to a fighter. Was it that the worst had already been done to her children? That her actions couldn’t be used against them?
So be it. She would fight Behlem. But in her own way and on her own terms.
FALCOR, DEFALK
“Y
ou could not keep that uniformed fop Nubara …” Behlem breaks off and paces across the corner of the room, brushing away a spider web that has tangled in his reddish-blond beard. He pauses by the window, pushing the shutters wide. “Double moons, to boot.”
“How would you have me do that?” asks Menares, ignoring the Prophet’s comments about the ominous moons. “You wish to offend the Liedfuhr?”
“You don’t consider the doubled moons a problem?”
“The moons are not in our control, Lord Behlem.” Menares pauses, then adds deliberately, “I was … surprised to see the sorceress.”
“What would you have me do? My own officers, except Zealor, worship the bitch. She put herself out in front of the army, almost got killed by some lancers, and destroyed dissonance-near the entire Ebran force. And you want me
to have her executed, if I could? For what? I should have let her have that sorcerer’s hall and pensioned her off, but no, I had to listen to your advice about all Defalk rising with her.” The Prophet turns from the window and steps toward the table. “What on Erde was I thinking about?”
“Replacing one danger with a greater one,” murmurs the white-haired counselor.
“I am supposed to believe that?” Behlem ignores the nearly-empty goblet and lifts the bottle to his lips.
“You are the Prophet. You can do as you wish.” Menares shrugs. “You will anyway, once you have heard me.”
“Go ahead.”
“You have noted how respected she is, and how few she knows. Some already love her, except that they do not love her, but her image. Who respects and loves the Evult? Yet none know him, just his image. Eladdrin was the only Ebran respected, and the sorceress has vanquished him. If you left her in Mencha, even if she helped you again, even if she defeated all of Ebra and laid it at your feet, a season, a year, from now who would be respected? You—or her?”
“Why are matters so complex?”
“Because you are a ruler,” replies Menares. “You know that. Things are simple for a farmer or a peasant.”
“Fine. What do I do now?”
“Let events take their course.”
Behlem’s eyes flicker to the door at the side of the room. “Already?”
“Cyndyth saw Lady Anna this afternoon, but I believe her mind was made up already.”
The Prophet’s tongue licks his lips. “And if her schemes fail?”
“How can you lose? You had no part in it, and there never is anything to link them to her.”
“She will inform Konsstin that it is once again my fault, and his assistance will halt,” Behlem points out.
“Only for a time. He cannot afford to stop aiding you, not when he wishes you to take the brunt of the effort in destroying the Evult and weakening Nordwei.”
“You don’t have to live with her. I had thought by undertaking this campaign … perhaps get some peace, some affection without politics and more politics.”
“She knows that. Why else would she be here?” Menares toys with his goblet but does not lift it.
“Enough. She is waiting, and she will need her say.” Behlem shakes his head. “Enough.”
Behlem walks to the side door without looking back.
Menares smiles sadly and looks at his own untouched goblet. Then he stands.
A
nna looked out her window, craning her neck. She smiled. Clearsong and Darksong—the twin moons—were close together, one silvered gold, one dark silvered red. Two moons—the idea still fascinated her, even while it reminded her that Erde was far different from earth.
Voices rumbled from the walls, carried in the night stillness.
“ … dissonant moon near the other … an omen of bad things …”
“Bah … happens every year or so …”
“ … tell you, that was when they killed Mikell …”
“ … died in his sleep …”
“ … tell you …”
The sorceress yawned. She felt paranoid, as though she were using sorcery for every little thing. She’d even sung a spell over the rather dry and boring beef pie Skent had brought her for dinner. She could have sought out the players and eaten with them, she supposed, but that sent the wrong signal, somehow.
Omens, deaths, what else? She stiffened, turning from
the window toward the sole flickering candle in its mantle on the table.
Garreth! What had Essan meant about Garreth? She’d been so absorbed in trying to read through the words and frame the right kind of response, and then to hurry and come up with spells for what lay ahead that her concerns about the girl had been submerged.
For a moment, she thought, then mentally figured the words, before she faced the mirror and lifted the lutar.
She cleared her throat and sang.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall
show me Garreth from this hall,
where she is or last did lie
if she live or if she die.”
The mists swirled across the mirror, then revealed a patch of bare earth covered with weeds flattened by the river. Anna thought the space might be the land sloping to the river to the southeast of the hall, but the location really didn’t matter.
Her eyes burned, and her jaw clenched for a moment. Why hadn’t she paid attention sooner? Except … it wouldn’t have mattered.
She turned from the newer mirror, with its painted green frame, laid the lutar on the bed, and walked to the window. The light wind, cooler now than when she had left Falcor, ruffled her hair, hair that had more natural curl than it had ever had before. Another image of Brill’s?
She shook her head, thinking again that she had the gift of youth because she had gone to Brill’s side when he died—she and not Liende, and from that much else had flowed. And she was here in Falcor because two innocents—Daffyd and Jenny—had tried the impossible. If ever there had been a case of fools rushing in where angels feared to tread … but they had, and Jenny was dead, and Daffyd in the middle of intrigue that made Brill an angel by comparison.
Anna pulled the handkerchief from her belt and blew her nose. She sniffled too much when she was upset. Why had they killed Garreth? Because the poor girl was associated with both Anna and Lady Essan? Because of what she might know?
Garreth had been seated there, and drawn Anna on a stool, even doing the background so that Elizabetta would know something about where Anna was. And now Garreth, who had wanted little except to be safe, was dead.
Anna glanced to the door where the bolt was drawn. It seemed to fade in and out in the flickering light from the candle.
What else did Anna need to worry about? Her eyes went to the door, and she carried the candle as she crossed the floor.
Anna studied the sliding bolt on the door, closely, first inside, then outside. She nodded. Maybe she was paranoid, but there were two small holes in the wood on the outside, and a thin slit between them, just enough that something slender could open the bolted door from outside silently.
That needed to be remedied, but she needed to redesign the bolt first. Brill had said that inanimate materials were easier.
Before long, she had a drawing of a double drop bolt—strong enough that it would take several men and a battering ram some time to break down the door. She hoped that would be all she needed.
Next came the first spell.
She grinned as she completed the last words,
“ … iron hard and fixed in place!”
As she set the lutar on the bed, her eyes straying to the window and the almost locked moons, she had to wonder. Should she just leave? Why was she tempting fate to stay in a hall where the walls had ears and where who knew how many souls plotted against her?
Because she would be on the run … and because … because
she was tired of running. What was the point of youth and a new world if she just repeated the old?
Anna took a deep breath and reached for another piece of paper. Not running was getting complicated, and her head was beginning to ache again.
Before too long, she wrote out another set of simple words, based on the fire spell, then worked on memorizing them, not that they were much different, but she might well need them in a hurry.
Then she laid the striker by the candle, the words there as well, with the lutar on top of its case and waiting.
She hoped she needed none of them, and feared she would.
She did not sleep, not at first, not with her thoughts of poor Garreth, possibly tortured, and her own imagination about shadowy figures creeping up the steps and pounding down the door. In time, she dropped into the darkness.
Clang! Clang!
The reverberations of the hammers, or whatever they were, woke her out of a nightmare where she kept riding, and riding, and found nowhere to rest. Her whole body was drenched in sweat, and now … now someone was trying to break into her room.
Her fingers trembled as she fumbled with the striker.
Clang!
“ … get on with it …”
“ … boys’ll keep it clear long enough … bitch … center it, frig it!”
As the candle flamed, she lifted the lutar, and let her fingers caress the strings, clearing her throat, and hoping, just hoping she could make trembling hands, and trembling voice work.
Clang!
The first note told her she wasn’t lucky. Her throat was clogged with mucus, and she coughed it clear.
Clang!
The door shivered.
Anna ran through a quick vocalise, stopping halfway
through to cough up more junk. Shit! Shit! Shit! What a time for an allergy attack!
“What was that?” muttered the voice beyond the door.
After another set of coughs, she sang, chording the simple structure to match her spell.
“Attackers there, attackers strong,
turn to ashes with this song.
Be you right or be you wrong,
death take you all along.”
“AEiii! …”
The tools dropped on the stones of the landing. The screams did not last long, but Anna only half-dozed the rest of the night, the candle burning, the lutar at hand.
The tower remained silent, eerily silent, as though abandoned, and Anna dozed, and woke, and dozed.

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