The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (68 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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Even before she had finished the last chorus—strophicspell, some part of her mind insisted—that great harp behind and within the world had vibrated with a frequency so deep it felt like her bones had been jellied—harmonic, yet disharmonic.
Crracck!
The bale-yellow lightning slammed the mountainside less than a hundred yards away, and Anna started to put her hands to her ears to shut out the pain.
Yet, powerful as the lightning was, painful as the blast of sound and energy was, she could sense a finality, a desperation. She blinked and turned back to the players.
Daffyd held his viola and bow, staring past her toward the still-swirling and dying clouds, as if he expected the world to end.
Iseen’s mouth hung open, her horn almost dangling from her hands, and, beside her, Ristyr’s eyes bulged.
In the background, Anna could hear blades ringing, and
shouts, as if through a muffled curtain. Were the Ebrans upon them?
“The fire song! The fire song!”
Daffyd looked blank.
“The fire song, damn it!” Anna shrilled.
“The fire song!” Daffyd repeated.
The notes were more ragged, but they would have to do. There was no more time, not with all the mounted Ebrans hacking at Alvar and his lancers.
Anna sang—sang as if it were the last song.
“Armsmen brown, armsmen black,
not flame nor ashes shall you lack …
from the strings, from the sky,
fire flay you till you die!”
Crackling bolts—golden red—nared like snapping harp strings from the still-dark clouds, whipping across the evergreens, a line of endless down-pointed fireworks raking the long road down to the valley. A second line of fire followed the first, and then a third, and fourth … until the sky seemed hatched with lines of fire.
And yet the ground beneath heaved and groaned, and the rocks shrieked.
Anna’s arms fell to her sides, as she stood there dazed. Too battered even to wince at the screams that seemed to go on and on, too stunned to cover her ears, too flashblinded to see what she had unleashed.
Before her, Daffyd staggered, and two others staggered and went to their knees, as the ground rumbled and shuddered, with a shrieking grinding from deep beneath the rocks that went on and on and on.
The rumbles and the shudders made those that had occurred around the Sorprat sinkhole seem like nothing. Small cracks ran down the middle of the narrow road, and dust puffed into the air above the cracks.
Anna could vaguely hear horses neighing, some screaming, but those sounds were lost in the deeper shrieks and
rumbles of the earth itself. The entire world seemed to vibrate, the clash of harmony and disharmony shaking the very bones of the earth.
The sorceress shifted her weight, trying to keep from being toppled. She looked eastward toward the valley. Had the clouds stopped rising?
Anna swayed on her feet as the earth rolled under her, and as a fissure split the bottom of the valley in a jagged line that crept uphill, back toward the river below the outcrop where she stood. Both the red glare and the heat from that chasm seared her face, and she staggered back and threw up her hand.
A wall of flame, blue and red, wavered out of the chasm’s depths, growing and fountaining with each instant, and the fallen trees vaporized into ashes as the almost living fire marched down toward the toppled gray-stone towers of Vult and up toward Anna.
As she braced herself against the tremors that continued to shake even the solid rock of the mountain beneath her, Anna’s mouth dropped open as she saw curtains of steam rise, ghostly white against the swirling black sky, from both rivers as their waters poured into the rising wall of golden red magma that welled out of the earth in dozens of spots.
The wind dropped from a northern gale to intermittent gusts from the southeast carrying waves of chill and waves of heat, sulfur, and ozone, all swirled together, and carrying the odor of steamed vegetation and steamed meat.
Oh Lord, no,
thought the sorceress as her stomach churned at the sickening odors that she had created, as she choked back the bitter bile, and straightened, despite the needle-knives that stabbed at her eyes and the hammering through her skull.
Down the valley, the dark pines began to fall, row by row, impossibly uphill, as though scythed by an invisible blade that left none standing.
The screaming of a horse overrode the other cries and shrieks.
Farinelli? Anna turned and staggered toward where she thought the palomino might be.
WWHHHUMMMP!!!!!
The shock wave threw Anna flat across the trail, skidding her on her back toward the boulders on the mountain side of the trail.
She struggled to her knees at the edge of the road, and lurched upward. No one else could calm Farinelli. No one.
Another rending shriek of tortured rock bombarded her ears as the sorceress took another step through the unearthly haze of powdered rock, of steamed vegetation and fireflayed armsmen, of dust, and sulfur, and …
WWHHHUMMMP!!!!! WWHHHUMMMP!!!!!
The two massive ground shudders lifted her into the air, and she half turned, throwing her hands out before her as the boulders seemed to fly toward her, ever so deliberately, ever so slowly.
Yet she could not even find time to open her mouth before she could feel the impact, the white-fired pain cascading up her outstretched arm like the most dissonant of chords slamming through her whole body.
Then there was silence … and darkness.
ENCORA, RANUAK
“Y
ou see,” offers the Matriarch.”The harmonies are reknitting.”
“The entire world shuddered. The winds screamed, and the sea smashed the front line of shops in the harbor.” Black-haired Veria frowns. “Vult is a pile of molten rock and steam. The north of Ebra is devastated, and most of Synek has been washed away by the rains and melted snow
and ice. The Evult has been destroyed, as have all the darksingers, and almost all the dark armsmen in Liedwahr. That is harmony?”
“I would call that dissonance,” says Alya coolly. “Dissonance the like of which Erde has never seen.”
“If your mother and matriarch says the harmonies are rechording,” says Ulgar, “then they are.”
“Father … saying it is so does not make it so,” protests Veria.
Alya looks toward the round-faced, gray-haired woman and offers the slightest of shrugs, as if to indicate that there is little point in arguing the issue.
“Might I point out, daughters, ever so humbly as a worthless old male whose views are doubtless beneath notice, that the soprano sorceress called upon Harmony, has attempted to rebuild Defalk, and renounced immediately any thoughts of building a dynasty. Might I also point out that the rains have begun to return to Defalk and that the sorceress has survived, while the Evult did not.”
“How long will she linger?” asks Veria.
“She will live, and prosper. The harmonies will see to that,” offers the Matriarch.
“Mother … you keep making these grandiose statements, and you never explain.”
The Matriarch ignores the slip in salutation, instead offering a warmer smile before speaking. “The sorceress has acknowledged Defalk’s debt justly, not as hers, but as one for which she assumes the responsibility.” The round-faced matriarch smiles even more broadly. “Since when did either Lord Behlem or the Evult acknowledge anything? The sorceress acknowledged her debt to Lord Barjim, and she was willing to put herself in the way of dissonance. We will rebuild a few shops, and the harmonies will not fail her—or us.”
Ulgar coughs, hiding a grin with the hand that covers his mouth.
“S
he’s so good with young voices …”
Young voices, young voices … what about older voices? What about opera? What about … .
“Could you not have stopped this? You are the greatest sorceress …” Greatest sorceress … greatest sorceress … greatest sorceress …
“I MISS YOU!!!”
Miss you, too, littlest redhead, miss you, miss you … .
Something jolted Anna, and she moaned. She didn’t mean to moan, but she did. She tried to open her eyes, but even attempting to lift her eyelids sent lances of pain through her skull, and the darkness came up and swallowed her.
What’s a furl … furl … furl?
“There is the question of the banner.” Whose banner … whose?
“Will we learn magic?”
No such thing as magic, except there is.
“Can you not bring back the rains and the river?” Can you not … not … not?
“Most impressive—again—Regent Anna.” Most impressive … impressive …
What was impressive? Going out and getting yourself killed?
She could feel her body being moved, somehow, and again, the pain was enough to drive her under—for a time.
“Drink … lady … drink.” Each word out of the darkness echoed in her ears, each syllable burning, boring like a dull dentist’s drill into her skull and train.
She drank, she thought, though she could not feel anything but a hot liquid spilling across her face. Hot liquid and soft sounds that burned through her ears and into her brain.
I
n time, Anna recognized where she was—in the great guest quarters in Lord Jecks’ hall, and for the time that flowed around her, she drank and ate mushy stuff and dozed—it hurt too much to sleep, really sleep.
Her right arm was encased in the medieval equivalent of a splint, a leather-and-wood contraption that weighed on her stomach if she rested it there, and hurt, besides making her feel lopsided, in any other position.
Finally, she could stay awake—sort of.
The door opened.
“You are awake,” offered the white-haired lord, standing at the foot of the triple-wide bed. Beside him stood Alvar, with what looked to be burns across half his face.
“Partly.” She winced. Even her own words hurt her ears. So did the sight of the injured captain.
“The women—they were reluctant to let us in. Even the healer. She rode from Ohal when she heard you suffered.” Jecks shook his head, then gestured to the grayness outside the half-open window. “Do you see the rain? We have had no rain in more than four years.” He laughed. “I feel for you, lady.”
“It’s not that bad,” lied Anna. Her mouth felt like it had been lined with mildewed blankets. She didn’t even want to think about the havoc she had unleashed, not yet.
“Between the spells from Lord Brill and the healer,
you will heal. That is not why I pity you.” Jecks looked at her thoughtfully. “You have done the impossible, and your people—they have claimed you, now—will expect that and more. You are the destroyer of dissonance, the savior of the land, lady and sorceress, great Regent of Defalk.”
Destroyer, that was about right. The greatest destroyer in history … because there were no other options, but who would remember that? You will … .
She closed her eyes.
“They will expect miracles and more,” Jecks reiterated.
Anna groaned. “Forever, I suppose.”
“No … thank the harmonies. I do not know exactly what sort of spell rendered you forever young, Lady Anna,” said Jecks, “but even an old warhorse like me knows that no spell creates immortality. Did you think you could not be killed … to attempt such a massive destructive spell in the midst of the Ostfels?” He shook his head, still looking like Robert Mitchum, Anna thought. “Such youth spells only mean that you will remain young until you die. Because you have more vitality you may live a decade or two longer, but you will still have a human life-span. That, you will find, may be all too long.” He shrugged. “Then perhaps your youthful energy will support you. I am only glad that it is you, and not me.”
Alvar nodded.
Anna coughed, wincing at the shock through her chest and arm. “What happened … afterward? Spirda? The players?”
Alvar swallowed, moistening his lips. “Vult is … no more. All … The whole valley steams with the fires of dissonance. The rivers … they became torrents with the melted snow and ice and the mighty rains.” He shook his head. “Synek is mostly gone. Even half of Elawha was destroyed. The mountains still shake, and a new peak rises, a volcano. They call it Zauberinfeuer.”
Anna struggled with the word.
Zauberflotte
was a magic flute—Mozart; so “Zauberinfeuer” had to be a magic fire,
didn’t it? “The players? Your lancers?”
“About half the purple company survived, and most of the green company.” The wiry captain swallowed again. “The outcrop where the players … It split off the mountain.”
Anna’s eyes burned even more. “All … of them?”
Alvar nodded.
“Even Daffyd.”
The slightest of affirmations followed. “Spirda and Mysar, too. Fhurgen dragged you clear.”
“Is he all right?”
“He will be.”
The sorceress closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. Both men waited. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“You are tired, regent, and I talk too much, but I too wanted you to know that I am in your debt, and all you need do is ask.” The Lord of Elheld bowed. “We are all in your debt.”
“All of us.” Alvar bowed.
Anna blinked, or thought she did, and the two were gone. On the breeze that drifted in from outside, she could smell the dampness, even hear the rain. Was there ever such a price for rain?
And Daffyd? Had a man ever paid so much to revenge his father? Without even really getting it?
As she lay on the pillows, the pain still pounding through her skull, and her broken arm still throbbing, questions flooded her mind.
Too tired to even lift her good left hand, she hurt too much and was too awake to sleep. She closed her eyes. That way, they didn’t hurt, but her thoughts continued to spin through her mind.
Magic was far from easy, but even with all the constraints, there should have been more than three sorcerers in Defalk. Why weren’t there more sorcerers, or sorceresses? Once she’d gotten the hang of it, sorcery hadn’t been
that
difficult.
After a while, the answer floated out of the depths inside
her, and she could have kicked herself—except that would have hurt even more, and she was tired of pain. It was so obvious. It wasn’t the lack of a good voice, or of intelligence, or even knowledge. The limit was the lack of human kindness.
If any song could potentially invoke magic, training a voice could be potentially fatal, given the ungrateful nature of most students—literally murder. Also, given the consequences of a bad spell, and the arrogance of many gifted youngsters, trying to learn sorcery alone could be equally fatal. That limited sorcery to those with strong natural voices, the ability to craft words, and match them to music—and there just weren’t many who could do that—even on earth. Add in the need to visualize the results of a spell … you couldn’t even create an iron chair without knowing what it looked like.
That left few enough with the talent. But from whom could they learn? Without teaching, few would go beyond the rote of sorceresses like poor Jenny, and no one with any brains would touch a potentially ungrateful student. Here, sorcerers had to have brains and power … so they didn’t have to teach the ungrateful.
Kindness, consideration … the ultimate limits, because they were so very rare in their deepest forms.
She wanted to laugh, but it would have hurt too much.
You talk of kindness, of consideration … after the thousands you’ve killed?
She sank deeper into the pillows. Sorceress, savior, and regent—she was trapped in what she had created, and then some—and every part of her body still hurt. Her soul … she didn’t even want to consider that, not anymore, not given the deaths that rested on her.

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