The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (63 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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A
nna took another sip of water and a mouthful of bread as she studied the scroll again, hoping that it didn’t say what it did.
… will always remain loyal to Lord Barjim and to his son Jimbob, and have great sympathy for the task which you have undertaken. While Lord Jecks and other respected lords of Defalk have reluctantly endorsed the expediency of a prolonged regency, as have I, some concerns remain about the continuity of such an arrangement … . Defalk has a long and glorious tradition … upheld even recently by the bravery of Lord Barjim and Lord Jecks, not to mention the sacrifice of Lord Kysar and others … .
The words rambled on for pages, saying nothing overtly damaging, but clearly implying that the writer was not exactly pleased about the way Defalk was being governed, since all the great warriors and leaders of the past had been great
men
.
The signature was not a signature, but a sealmark, a name written beside it—that of Arkad, Lord of Cheor.
Anna snorted. The last thing she wanted to do was visit Lord Arkad of Cheor, but in some way she had to put an end to such garbage, preferably without putting an end to the writer. The clearly illiterate writer? She paused. Did Lord Arkad even know what his scribe had written?
She sighed. That was another problem in a semiliterate society. How much power was really held by talented and scheming subordinates, like Virkan had been? She didn’t like the idea of such a weaseling message coming from
someone who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—sign his name personally.
The sorceress cut a wedge of cheese—a late breakfast for another day that was likely to be all too long. But she had so much trivia to attend to before she left on the day after tomorrow, and she wanted to spend some time with Lady Essan, getting the equivalent of a briefing on Lord Jecks, Jimbob, and the situation in Elhi. Even eating enough to keep from wasting away took more time than she wanted to spend.
Hanfor wanted to discuss last-moment details about what supplies she would need, and she still needed to talk to Tirsik about how to handle his training in stables, horses, and the like for her pampered darlings, some of whom couldn’t bear the thought that their underlings knew more than they did.
She snorted. That—in a society where some lords could barely write and others questioned the wisdom of learning how.
She also wanted to hear what Hanfor and Menares had been able to find out about events in Neserea. Perhaps their information would enable her to make sense out of her own scrying efforts.
“Lady Anna … the overcaptain and the counselor.” Skent bowed as he delivered the message.
“Have them come in.” She swallowed the last of the water in the goblet and refilled it before standing. With the weather returning to the hotter days that had ushered in the harvest weeks earlier, a warm breeze blew in through the high rear window.
“Lady Anna …” murmured Menares, barely loud enough for her to hear.
“Lady Anna—” Hanfor clipped off the salutation briskly.
“Sit down.” She reseated herself and waited for them to settle around the conference table before she asked, “What do you know about what’s happening in Neserea?”
“Nubara seems to be acting as regent for Rabyn,” offered Menares.
“Nubara—he’s the one who set the assassins on me?”
“Ah …” coughed Menares. “He was close to Cyndyth, but …”
“That’s good enough for me,” said Anna. “Why is it unexpected that he is regent?”
“We had thought that Ysel would be regent, but it appears that the Liedfuhr has insisted on Nubara … .” The heavy white-haired counselor shrugged. “Ysel would have been more … temperate.”
“Ysel has disappeared,” said Hanfor dryly. “As many do when Konsstin becomes involved.” The weathered overcaptain glanced at Menares. “Better you took service with Lady Anna.”
“That I can see,” replied Menares. “Still … one never thinks it might happen.”
“I can’t detect any armsmen headed in our direction from there,” Anna said. “Not with a glass. Would Nubara send them now?”
“Not now,” said Hanfor. “Even he would have to consult with Konsstin, and I would wager that Konsstin would not wish to start a war with a sorceress with winter coming on.”
“You are hard on glasses, Lady Anna,” offered Menares. “You might consider a pool.”
“After I return from my visit to Lord Jecks, I’ll consider it.” Anna regretted not letting Menares in on the full details of her “visit,” but she still didn’t fully trust Menares. He wouldn’t act against her, but he might pass on information, and the more information that was out, the less the chance of her efforts providing a surprise to the Evult. Her expedition couldn’t be a surprise once she neared the Ebran border, but no army could catch her if she could reach Ebra before the Evult knew, especially not where she was headed. Hanfor’s suppositions about Nubara and Konsstin reinforced her determination to try to defeat the Evult immediately. She could not fight on two borders at once.
“Is this visit wise?” asked Menares. “You have not had a chance to complete …”
“I know. Things aren’t really nailed down here, but I am the regent, and if I don’t visit young Lord Jimbob pretty quickly, the other lords are going to start saying that I’m really trying to be lord or master of Defalk in my own right. We just got a scroll from Lord Arkad of Cheor pretty much suggesting that.”
“Some say he is a windy soul,” offered Menares.
“Perhaps,” agreed Anna, “but what he says, others are thinking.”
Hanfor nodded.
“You have met with many lords—even Lord Nelmor recently,” said Menares.
“There’s a difference between their coming here and my visiting them. I visited Lady Gatrune, and now we have the use of her levies—some of them. We also have a pledge of support from Lord Hryding, and he even sent his daughter to join us.”
“When did that come?”
“Last week, with her, I think,” Anna answered. Absently, she remembered that she hadn’t groomed Farinelli, either, and that seemed to be one of the things that she couldn’t delegate. Tirsik could partly clean the stall, but none of his stable boys, and no one else could so much as touch the palomino, only hold the reins once he was bridled and saddled.
She smiled faintly, trying to pay full attention and to shuttle everything else she needed to do to the back of her mind—again.
A
nna led Farinelli out into the courtyard, her eyes once more checking the saddlebags and the extra water botties, her left hand touching her belt and overlarge belt wallet, and then her knife.
Hanfor waited in the long shadows and gloom of dawn, his fingers going to his trimmed salt and pepper beard. Behind him, Alvar stood on the stones of the courtyard, reins in hand.
Anna could sense the mounted lancers of Alvar’s company beyond the portcullis, waiting for her and the players.
“You didn’t have to see us off,” Anna began as she stopped short of Hanfor. Then she smiled. “You’re the armsmaster of Falcor and arms commander of Defalk. You have to, don’t you?”
“It would be remarked upon—not favorably—if I failed to be properly respectful to the regent of Defalk.” The older-looking man smiled wryly. “Never let it be said that I am not respectful.” The smile dropped. “I cannot say I am pleased to remain here while others bear the brunt of what must be done.”
“I know.” Anna looked at her commander. “But if you accompany me, especially with armsmen …”
“I understand, and I agree. I do not like it. You are wagering on surprise and your own powers. I can only hope to the harmonies that they will be enough.”
“They have been before, but this will probably be the last chance. If this works, then every movement I make will be followed through all the scrying ponds and glasses of Liedwahr, and the fishbowl will be even worse.”
“Fishbowl?”
“Everyone will watch—forever. Also, I can’t fight the
Evult and Nubara both next year. We know that. So I have to go.” Anna shook her head. “And how could I leave anyone else in charge? Everyone knows you are honest and that you represent me. The armsmen will obey you, and even Lady Essan wishes that her consort had had a commander such as you.” She shrugged. “That means you’re the one.”
“Such an honor I had not expected.” The commander accented “honor” slightly, and followed his statement with a gentle laugh.
“You earned it.”
“I must be more careful in the future.” Hanfor lowered his voice. “Do take care, lady. Much rests on you, much more than you wish to believe.”
The sorceress didn’t need that reminder. It was easier to believe she was just a stranger who had a few useful talents. “I also don’t need such honor.”
Hanfor smiled briefly.
A light breeze, almost cool, wafted down from over the walls, and she hoped that the Ostfels would not be too cold. Was she totally insane to try her campaign?
Not totally, but what else could she do? The Evult continued to rebuild the Ebran armies, and enlist more and more souls into the massed darksingers. As time passed, more and more would be pressed on Anna and her regency.
Anna mounted Farinelli, then bent forward in the saddle and patted his shoulder, getting a
whuff
in response. “I know. You’re ready for more exercise than I’ve been giving you. We both may be getting more than we want before it’s over.” She looked around the courtyard as the gray sky lightened.
The players were already mounted, as was Daffyd. As she surveyed the group inside the walls, Alvar and Spirda vaulted into their saddles.
“The regent’s players are ready, Lady Anna,” said the young violist.
“Are you ready, lady?” asked Alvar.
“Let’s go,” she said, and flicked the reins, urging Farinelli
toward the raised portcullis, with Daffyd, Alvar, and Spirda closing up behind her.
Once they were outside the liedburg walls, the rest of the lancers eased their mounts in behind Anna, and the sound of hoofs echoed from the stones of the road.
A few faces peered from a handful of windows in Falcor as the regent’s party rode northward through the still mostly deserted city. The sorceress wanted to shake her head. She had so much to do.
Could she use sorcery to rebuild the bridge across the Falche? And the ford at Sorprat?
Those would have to wait—but not long, because the Falche would regain its normal flow by the spring runoff, if she were successful. Nothing was likely to wait, not long enough, anyway. She tightened her lips, then forced herself to relax.
She patted Farinelli, which somehow helped, and continued to study Falcor, from the red dust in the corners where walls and ground met, overlying dried mud, to the cracking and unrepaired mortar, to the broken and dangling shutters on too many windows.
A
nna readjusted the floppy-brimmed hat. Disreputable as it looked, even after some sorcerous cleaning, it was comfortable and did the job. Besides, any hat worn on the dusty roads of Defalk would end as a worn and dirty mess.
The cool breeze still blew out of the north, and the sun still shone through clear blue-green skies, and the dust still rose from the hoofs of the horses. The one better thing about being regent was that she didn’t have to eat anyone else’s dust.
She studied the road ahead—a long arcing curve to the
east, following the course of the almost-empty Fal River.
“I take it the river was once much larger?” Anna asked Daffyd, who rode directly to her right.
“Much larger. Even two years ago, well after the rains stopped, the water covered the center there, the sandy part.” The player pointed to the sand flats where only a thin trickle of brown water had etched a narrow curving channel in the middle of the river bed. Dried grasses, broken and bleached tree limbs lay scattered across the depression that had once held a far larger and mightier river.
“It is not much of a river now,” observed Alvar.
“No,” Anna agreed. From what she could tell, most of the flow of the Falche River at Falcor now came from the Chean River—and she hadn’t exactly helped that.
Somehow, as her explorations of the upper Fal with her glass had shown—she had no problems scrying so long as she confined her attempts to Erde—the Evult had created the flood that had rampaged down the Fal by melting off most of the snowpack of the Ostfels around the headwaters. Since the headwaters weren’t that far from Vult, the Evult’s action might make Anna’s efforts easier—there certainly wasn’t any snow to block them—not yet.
“It is sad,” Alvar said.
Beside him, Spirda nodded.
The sorceress repressed a smile. From all his initial complaining about providing a protection detail, the blonde subofficer had certainly changed, and Anna doubted that he would ever willingly give up his position. She found it interesting how she had less trouble with the professionals than with the amateurs, but that had been true back on earth. She had developed great relationships with conductors and performers—it was only the academics who were mediocre performers, and often worse teachers, who created the problems.
She chuckled to herself as she reached for her water bottle. Some things didn’t change.
The chuckle stopped as she looked along the seemingly endless red clay road that stretched to the northeast horizon,
bordered on the left by empty lands filled with browned grass, bleached weeds, and dust, by empty peasant cots, and by low hills crowned with dead and dying trees.
After two full days, they still had not reached Ohal, the small hamlet supposedly two thirds of the way to Elhi.
She opened her water bottle and drank, slowly, then stoppered it, and replaced it, before patting the palomino. “A long ways to go, fellow. A long ways.”
That was true in more ways than one. She straightened in the saddle and blotted her forehead.

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