The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle (21 page)

Outside a small hut, a dark-haired woman, barefooted,
hoed at the dark soil of a garden row, as if to prepare it for planting. With almost every stroke of the hoe, she struggled with a toddler tied to a rope wound around her waist. Several gray geese pecked along the crumbling yellow bricks of the wall of the old house. The woman scarcely looked up at the column of riders.

Anna understood. Mario had been a handful at that age, and there had been times when she wouldn’t have cared if a row of tanks had rumbled past the little house outside Williamsburg, if only her son had given her a moment’s peace.

She shook her head.
Now what wouldn’t you give to have that time back?
Her eyes burned for a moment.
Careful . . . just get it together. You’re the sorceress. You can do this
.

As they continued northward and Cheor receded behind them, Anna studied the fields—all rich dark bottomland formed in the area between the two rivers. Had it once been a swamp? It was flat enough. What Papaw wouldn’t have given for land like this, rather than the rocky patch around the holler.

There were low hedgerows around many of the fields, but no stands of trees, except in the distance to the east. A single horse pulled a plow guided by a stocky figure in the fields off to the right. The farmer was nearly a mile away—more than a dek and a half, Anna corrected mentally, trying again to keep her references in Liedwahran terms.

To the left were several other figures, carrying baskets and pointed sticks. Planting? Anna wondered.

Ahead, a low yellow-brick wall stretched across the fields, forming the southern side of a rough square that looked to be almost two deks on a side. In the center of the square was a low hill whose base was encircled by a second and higher yellow-brick wall. On the crest of the hill was a sprawling, high-walled complex—also of yellow bricks.

“That’s Synfal,” Jecks announced. “It’s been home to the lords of Cheor since before there was a Defalk.”

A skeptical look crossed Jimbob’s face, and Anna wanted to say something, but she bit her lip. Now wasn’t the time, not in public, especially.

“Big place,” offered Alvar, from where he rode slightly ahead of Anna, Jecks, and Jimbob.

“Aye. Only a rich holding could support that.”

As they continued toward the nearer wall, Anna looked more closely. The first wall, almost waist-high, was rough-formed, and covered in places with vines, showing a few new leaves. By full summer, it would vanish into the green of the surrounding fields, Anna suspected. There was no gate where the road met the wall, nor any sign of one. The wall just ended in a tumbled pile of bricks on each side of the road.

“Wall from the old days,” explained Jecks. “From when this was part of Suhlmorra.”

Anna raised her eyebrows—another part of Liedwahr’s history no one had bothered to mention. “How long ago was that?”

Even Jimbob turned in the saddle as Jecks answered.

“So long ago even the poets don’t count the years. Synfal”—Jecks gestured toward the keep on the hill a good two deks ahead—“was the northern march and the place where the Corian lords and the Morran lords usually met in battle.” He grinned. “The Corians usually won.”

“I take it your ancestors were Corian,” Anna said dryly.

“How did you guess?”

“And that they were proud folks, too.”

Jecks flushed.

Anna grinned.

Jecks shook his head.

Beside his grandsire, Jimbob merely looked puzzled, and Anna and Jecks let him remain that way.

As the column neared the second wall, a barrier Anna could see was at least four yards high, she reclaimed the
lutar from the left saddlebag. As she tuned the instrument, her eyes went to the walled edifice ahead, a structure nearly twice the size of the keep at Falcor, if with brick walls, rather than more solid stone.

Could they just demand admittance? Jecks had said that was the right of the Lord of Defalk—and thus Anna’s, especially with Jimbob beside her. But would Arkad accept that right? Or would she have to use one of her destructive spells to enforce that right?

She really didn’t like the idea of tearing up the keeps and holds of lords disloyal to the Regency—or killing their armsmen—not until all the other lords perceived that such action was a necessity. The missing liedgeld was less than two seasons in arrears—not enough to create such a perception on earth. Here, everyone assured her, it was an obligation of honor, and two seasons’ default was more than dishonorable enough for Anna to act.

Even for a woman regent
. She wanted to snort. Instead, she adjusted a tuning peg and turned in the saddle, leaning toward Jecks, and saying in a low voice, “You know I’ve hesitated to put Jimbob into trouble, and here I’m putting him forward.”

The white-haired and clean-shaven Lord of Elhi shook his head, leaned back toward her. “Best he learn under your protection.”

Anna still wasn’t sure how much Jimbob was really learning, and how much the redheaded heir was pretending to learn. Mario had been like that, too, playing the game until he was out from under her control—or Avery’s.

Her eyes went to the road ahead, and the second wall. The taller wall ended at each side of the road in a set of pillars. On each pillar were rusted iron brackets, four of them, that had once held gates. Of the gates there was no sign.

“No guards here.” Alvar cleared his throat and looked toward Anna. “Should we . . . the banner?”

“Yes.” She should have thought of it herself, but she
still wasn’t fully accustomed to Defalk. Less than a year wasn’t time enough to learn all that was necessary, whether she was a sorceress or not.

“The banner! Forward!” ordered the swarthy and wiry captain. “Forward.”

Anna watched as the purple banner with the golden crossed spears and the crown, with the
R
beneath, billowed for a moment in the light breeze, then drooped, even as the young armsman she didn’t know rode to the head of the column bearing the standard.

“We should stop before we get within bow range, Lady Anna,” Alvar offered.

“How much farther is that?” Anna had no concept of bow range. She knew Alvar had brought a half-score of archers and considered himself lucky to have so many in his command. Good archers seemed to be rare. Not so rare as sorcerers, but rarer than any other kind of armsmen.

“By the waste ditch there.” The spot where he pointed lay another thirty yards ahead on the road.

A faint odor wafted toward Anna on the light breeze out of the north. “How about stopping right here?” She reined up.

Jecks grinned, but said nothing.

“Column halt!” Alvar reinforced the command with a raised blade.

As Alvar rode back to ensure some form of order, Anna, lutar held ready, ran through a vocalise, while idly looking toward Synfal. The entrance to the keep was by a gate partway up the hillside, perhaps five yards above the flat of the plain.

Alvar rode back and reined up as Anna finished the second vocalise.

“That hill’s not natural.”

Jecks frowned.

Anna didn’t know that much geology, but she did know that it was highly unlikely that one isolated fifty-foot-high hill would rise out of bottomland as flat as a lake. Had
some earlier lord built the mound? Or had a series of holds resulted in the hill? Did it matter?

The walls of the keep, unlike the outer and untended walls, were over eight yards high and clearly in good repair, although Anna suspected that the yellow bricks were more susceptible to sorcery or to the cannon she didn’t have than stone would have been. The twin gates, doubtless with a portcullis behind, were of heavy oak, iron-bound, and closed.

“You must request entrance, lady,” Jecks said softly.

“He won’t grant it.”

“Still . . .”

Anna understood and turned to Alvar. “Do you have someone you can send closer?”

Alvar gestured to the standard bearer, and the young armsman eased his mount up beside the four. “What would you have him say?”

Anna cleared her throat. “His lordship Jimbob, the regent Anna, and the lord Jecks . . . here to see Lord Arkad of Cheor.” She looked at Jecks. “What else?”

“You request hospitality on his honor.”

Anna nodded. “His lordship Jimbob, the regent Anna, and the lord Jecks . . . here to see Lord Arkad of Cheor. We request his hospitality, on his honor.”

The armsman repeated the phrase, then eased his mount forward and past the waste ditch, halting on the gently rising road about fifty yards from the closed gates. He raised his voice and declaimed Anna’s words.

For a time, there was silence.

Then a voice replied, words spoken too faintly to be heard.

Anna eased Farinelli forward, but halted short of the wooden planks that served as a bridge over the waste ditch, steeling herself against the pungency that rose from the dark liquid that oozed toward a pond to the right.

The armsman repeated his message.

“How do we know you’re who you say?” demanded
a round-jowled man in purple from a parapet over the gates.

“You know the banner. Who are you to deny the regent?” snapped Alvar.

“The servant of Lord Arkad.”

“A nameless servant, and you would deny two lords and the regent?” responded Alvar.

Anna nodded.

The round-jowled figure drew himself up. “I am Fauren, head seneschal and counselor.”

Anna could see that she needed Arkad and his scribe or counselor in hearing distance before she could cast a spell. She also had another problem, and that was that Liende and her players, farther back in the column, didn’t know enough of the spellsongs Anna used to be useful. That meant spells had to be supported only with the lutar, and that meant Anna couldn’t afford to waste any.

Still, there was no sense in delaying. Fauren—two syllables—the same as the word “armsman.” Anna rode forward another few yards.

Jecks accompanied her, but waved Jimbob to stay back. “Enough,” he suggested to Anna.

She glanced toward the walls rising above them, then cleared her throat. She strummed the chords, then sang.

“Fauren right, Fauren wrong.
Obey this regent’s song.
Open all gates strong . . .

“Faithful and obedient be,
to Anna and the Regency!”

Silence followed the song. A silence Anna welcomed with the faint throbbing that had invaded her skull with the spell—and another double image of the hold before her. She slowly extended her free hand to the water bottle and fumbled it open, drinking slowly.

Beside Anna, Jecks shifted his weight on the dark stallion.
The broad-shouldered and black-haired Fhurgen urged his mount forward and before her, as if to act as a human shield. Farinelli sidestepped two steps.

Then a creaking followed, and the dark gates swung open. The iron portcullis lifted.

“Do we ride in?” asked Jimbob, who had slipped forward and reined up behind his grandsire.

“No,” said Jecks. “Lord Arkad must come to us. Especially after this.” He looked to Anna. “Can you offer another spell?”

“If I have to,” she answered, again lifting her water bottle one-handedly.

“ ‘Have to’?” Jimbob’s freckled face reflected puzzlement.

Anna ignored the expression and drank once more, then replaced the bottle. Jecks bent over and extracted the travel biscuits from the bag tied on the left saddle ring, offering her one. She took it and began to eat, trying to swallow all the dry crumbs. Then she took another swallow of water.

Her headache was mild, and the double vision had faded, but she’d need both the energy and the water.

Behind them, horses milled, and the low buzz of conversation sounded like the beehive in Papaw’s back field.

Shortly, Fauren limped out and stood in the shadow of the open gates. “My master bids you enter.”

“Return with your master, Fauren, and have him bid us welcome and enter. On his honor,” snapped Jecks, the first time Anna could recall hearing anger in the white-haired lord’s voice.

“I bid you welcome for him.” Fauren bowed, almost obsequiously. “He is indisposed and ill.”

“Then have him carried here.” Jecks’ voice was cold.

“Alas . . .” pleaded Fauren.

Anna caught sight of movement on the walls. Was that an archer? She cleared her throat and lifted the lutar, glad she’d thought about the spell earlier.

“All within this faithless hall
forever serve in lifelong thrall
the regent and the lord she serves . . .
. . . Defalkan order she preserves.”

Anna tried not to wince, but the rhyme scheme was the best she’d been able to do.

A horrified look crossed the seneschal’s face, and his hands curled toward himself, and his heart, and he staggered. His knees buckled, and then he collapsed, writhing, on the road.

A single figure plummeted over the wall and landed with a sickening thud on the ground beneath the walls.

Anna reeled under an equally sickening thud that seemed to rock her skull. Her eyes watered, and she could see clearly, side by side, two images, as if her brain could not integrate the separate visions from each eye—except that the left image seemed “warmer” and the right one “cooler.” Her once mild headache was scarcely mild, and her free hand grasped the front of the saddle to steady her.

“Are you all right, Lady Anna?” asked Jecks in a low voice.

“I will be.”
And I have no intention of collapsing before Arkad’s gates because of a little spell
.

“Perhaps you should send a squad to see the keep is safe,” suggested Jecks, his eyes still on Anna.

“Fine.”

“Our job, Regent.” Alvar stood in the saddle and turned. “Green company! Forward!”

With Fhurgen’s and his men surrounding them, Anna, Jecks, and Jimbob waited as the twoscore lancers rode around the still figure of Fauren and through the open gates. Not an arrow flew. Not a blade flashed, but Anna kept shifting her weight in the saddle.

Finally, she reached for the biscuits again. Her head still ached, and her eyes still saw double. Jecks leaned from his saddle and reclaimed the bag. “Here.”

She ate and drank.

Alvar rode out through the gates alone, a wide smile on his face. “Your spell worked. You’ll not have any trouble.”