Opposite the junipers, Anna reined up, then dismounted and handed Farinelli’s reins to Rickel. She took out the glass, and unwrapped it again. Then she took out the lutar and retuned it, not that it needed much work in traveling less than a dek.
Words drifted uphill as she touched a tuning peg.
“. . . hope we’re wherever we’re going. . . .”
“Don’t hope too much. You might have to fight, then.”
. . . avoids fights when she can . . .”
“. . . lucky we are, there . . . not like Barjim or Donjim. . . .”
Then, reflected Anna, clearing her throat for a vocalise, Barjim and Donjim hadn’t been able to call on sorcery. Would her voice last? She pushed that thought back as well. Not the time for that. . . .
Finally, her fingers touched the strings.
“Show me now and show me clear,
where I stand to make a tunnel near . . .”
In the glass, Anna stood perhaps a yard uphill of where the glass lay on the dust of the trail. The image in the mirror was crystal-clear, and the spell took nearly no energy at all, a confirmation of her closeness.
After quickly clearing the image from the mirror, the sorceress glanced at Hanfor and Jecks. “This is the place.” She almost laughed, thinking of someone else’s words in another canyon a world away and years past. Careful . . . don’t get punchy. You haven’t even started. Worry? Fear?
She turned and looked for Liende. “Chief player?”
“We are coming, Regent.”
As the players gathered and began to tune, Hanfor called orders in the background.
“Alvar, take the purple company up to the crest. Jirsit, the greens back to the last hilltop there. Scouts. . . .”
“The building spell?” asked Liende.
“The second one,” Anna confirmed.
“After that? Do you know?”
“The loyalty spell . . . if it goes well. If not,” Anna winced, “the flame spell.”
“Let us pray to harmony it goes well,” Liende murmured.
It won’t . . . Anna pushed that thought back as well and cleared her throat, bending to retrieve the mirror. First, she packed away the lutar. Then came the traveling mirror. The sorceress noted that the frame was so black it was almost polished like hard coal. How long would this one last? Like singing, sorcery was hard on everyone and everything involved.
Jecks had dismounted and stepped closer to Anna, leading his horse. “So far . . . there’s no sign of Dencer’s folk.”
“That’s fine with me.” Anna glanced at the wall of red-and-gray rock layers. Red and gray? That seemed odd to her, but it had been twenty years since freshman geology.
She looked up. Above and before her, the rocks climbed several yards more. To either side they towered even farther. The mountains had been Stromwer’s protection for years.
“I like it not, not seeing your enemy.” Jecks chuckled. “Like as not, we’ll see them soon as your tunnel appears west of the keep.”
“It won’t be over the keep. It’s still almost a dek from the overlook I’m trying to create to the keep walls. That’s as close as we can get.”
“Is that close enough?”
“It will have to be.” Anna offered a cold smile. “If it’s not . . . well, I can always resort to turning everything into molten rock.” She bit off the next words, the ones like, . . . and what would that do for the sensibilities of your northern lords? “I hope I don’t have to do that.”
“Nor I.”
Anna stepped away and started a vocalise . . . softly. She didn’t want to strain her cords. She had no idea how many spells she might need on the other side of the tunnel—assuming she could create a tunnel, assuming it didn’t collapse, assuming . . . The sorceress forced her mind onto the vocalise, onto the exercise itself, shutting out everything.
A second vocalise followed the first.
“Lady Anna?” Liende’s voice broke through the sudden comparative quiet, where the only sounds were those of horses and the murmurs of the one company Hanfor had pulled back from where Anna and Jecks and the players stood. Even Fhurgen and Rickel had moved their mounts back, and Anna’s and Jecks’ as well. “Lady Anna, we are ready when you are.”
The sorceress and regent nodded.
“The second building song!” Liende gestured.
Anna took a deep breath. Are you crazy? Trying to use sorcery to drill a tunnel through a mountain? But it’s not a mountain, just a short chunk of rock, and that’s not as bad as calling up lava from underground. . . . She cut off the mental dialogue and hummed, trying to get her pitch. Then she began the spell.
“. . . remove all boulders, clay and stones.
Fix the braces in their proper zones . . .
Drill the tunnel straight and true and square;
form this hill to my pattern there . . .
“Smooth the rock and make it hard . . .”
The problem with spells wasn’t just the words in rhyme but making sure that the word matched the note values as well, and sometimes—too many times, it seemed—she was shading notes or note values or words, or all three. Just so long as it’s musical. . . .
The ground shivered. The unseen chime, or chimes, or chords that no one seemed to sense but Anna, rang across the skies, for a moment, turning the entire heaven bright blue, before the scattered and puffy clouds reappeared.
Dust, and a gout of hot air geysered from the rock in front of Anna, and she backed up, squinting, then closing her eyes. There was the patter of rain, except it was tiny fragments of rock.
As the haze settled, Anna opened her eyes back to a squint, peering through the semicircle that arrowed into the improbable gray-and-red rock. At the other end was a semicircle of light, light that seemed to cascade and flare around her.
She staggered and sat down.
Jecks knelt beside her, offering bread and hard yellow cheese. “You need to eat.”
“Have to hurry. . . .” she muttered.
“You cannot move until you eat.”
“Drink?” she asked.
He also had her water bottle, and she took a long swallow, then a mouthful of bread, then one of cheese, and then more water. The pulsating glare receded.
“Not too bad.” Anna looked at the tunnel. “I still worry.”
“Keep eating,” said Jecks. “If your spell is as you planned, what can Dencer do? If it isn’t, you’ll have to be strong.”
She drank more of the water, and then finished the bread, before she looked back. Behind her the players sat on the rocks and the trail itself and followed her example.
When she had finished, Anna slowly stood and stretched.
Liende walked slowly toward the sorceress. “How many more spells?”
“I hope one—the loyalty spell. Otherwise, the long flame spell. I’m going to see.” Anna started toward the tunnel.
Jecks took two quick steps to join her. Both Fhurgen and Rickel hurriedly dismounted, handing off their equine charges to other guards, and scurried after Anna, shields on their arms.
Anna took one step after another, the way getting dimmer as she walked. The floor felt warm, almost uncomfortably so, but a breeze blew from the eastern end. Anna kept walking, but the semicircle of light at the other end grew but slowly.
Her nose began to itch, and she sneezed, abruptly, three times in a row. Sweat dripped down the back of her shirt.
“Hot as dissonance here,” murmured someone—Rickel or one of the guards who trailed them.
At last, she peered out of the tunnel onto the ledge—and the sunlight. Her eyes watered. At the end was a low wall, waist-high. Did I put that in? She almost wanted to laugh. She hadn’t remembered visualizing a safety wall, but her fear of heights had definitely kicked in.
With a swallow, Anna stepped in the sunlight.
“A moment, lady,” said Fhurgen.
Fhurgen and Rickel, bearing the shields they used to protect her, stepped out onto the ledge.
Anna followed them, with Jecks beside her, out to the wall. She forced herself to look down at the valley beyond. The tunnel and ledge were more than a hundred yards above the valley floor. With another swallow, she surveyed Stromwer.
Less than a hundred yards to the east, and a hundred yards below, lines of archers were forming up, still ragged, but the bows were obvious—both for the larger group in tan and the smaller group in crimson. So were the four crossbowmen to their left. Behind them, were over twoscore mounted figures, most in crimson—the Dumarans. Behind the archers was an angular figure waving a blade and shouting commands.
“Best you hurry,” Jecks suggested. “Their shafts could reach the ledge.”
“They can lift arrows that far?”
As if to answer her question, an arrow arched over the wall and clattered on the stone.
Rickel and Fhurgen lifted the shields, and Anna turned and called down the tunnel. “Players!”
“Players!” Jecks’ heavier voice boomed against the stones.
Anna dropped to her knees, letting the wall shield her, and took another look at the armsmen below. Two blocks of archers—one in tan, one in crimson—were loosing shafts rapidly. Was the tall figure on horseback beside the archers in tan Dencer himself? The Lord of Stromwer had to have had some warning, some scrying ability, to have gotten his men formed up so quickly. Anna could see Dencer had sheathed his blade and was drawing a bow from horseback. She ducked behind the shield.
Another arrow clattered against the smoothed rock that reinforced the tunnel mouth, then dropped onto the stone of the ledge.
“Players!” Jecks boomed again, his fingers tightening on the hilt of a blade all too useless from where he viewed the valley.
A figure paused at the tunnel mouth.
“Stay there!” Anna didn’t need to lose another chief player. “Line up everyone right there inside the tunnel. They’ve got dozens of archers. I’ll need the flame song for them.”
Liende paled.
“Just for the archers and the horsemen,” Anna emphasized. “Then we’ll have time for the loyalty spell.”
She tried not to wince . . . but she didn’t trust Dencer, even under a loyalty spell, and Dencer didn’t deserve mercy. You’re the avenging angel now? She pushed away the thought, and cleared her throat, going through the simple “polly-lolly-pop” vocalise on her knees. It didn’t feel right. She had to cough and clear out her throat. “I need to stand up.”
Fhurgen and Rickel-locked shields.
“When I tell you, you’ll have to step to the side,” Anna said.
“Yes, lady.” Fhurgen grinned grimly. “But not until then.”
Another arrow clattered, this time against the safety wall.
Behind her, a ragged warm-up tune followed as she struggled to clear her cords.
Three more arrows bounced from various angles onto the ledge. A heavier clank announced a crossbow bolt that skidded almost to Anna’s feet.
“Now!” snapped Anna. The arrows would only get more accurate.
“The flame song. On my mark. Mark!”
The tune was ragged, but not too bad, Anna hoped as she launched into the spell.
“Turn to fire, turn to flame
those below who reject my name.
Turn to ash all tools spelled against my face
and those who seek by force the Regency to
replace . . .”
Another volley of arrows arched over the wall, one sticking into the shield Fhurgen held, several others clattering against the stone of the cliff above and around the arch of the tunnel entrance.
“Turn to fire, turn to flame . . .”
Fiery spikes of flame seared out of the sky, more like lances of flame than arrows, and the harmonic chord that only Anna seemed to hear strummed deeply, once, twice.
Anna winced as the screams rose from below, as another volley of arrows clattered on the stone, and as more lances of fire slashed from sky to valley.
57
STROMWER, DEFALK
The angular Dencer peers down at the clouded image in the glass—an image that shows a woman standing on a road and singing at a rock face. Behind her are the even more shadowy figures of players.
“Where is she?” demands the Lord of Stromwer. “I know she works sorcery. She always works sorcery. But where works she this sorcery?”
“We will try, ser.” The sweaty-faced man in tan linens gestures to the three players and begins to sing.
“Now show in the shining light of song
where the sorceress may be found . . .”
The singer coughs and the images shiver back into silver mists.
“Show me! Now!” snaps Dencer.
The seer coughs again, then repeats the refrain, the violinos matching his thin voice.
This time the cloudy image shows horsemen along a narrow trail.
“Not much better. Thank the harmonies I know my lands.” Dencer glances at the seer. “Cannot you do better than that?”
“Ser . . . she is powerful.”
“What use are you all? Worthless! Why have I only the weak and worthless?” The lank-haired lord knocks aside the seer with his gauntleted left arm and strides from the room. “Gortin! Zerban! Form up the archers! Now!”
Dencer still yells commands as he rides from the stables and closes with the waiting Dumaran captain. “Are your men ready?” The Lord of Stromwer gestures toward the gate to the south. “Zerban! We ride!”
“I have followed your orders, Lord Dencer, but I see no sorceress.”
“Had we waited until we saw her, too late would it have been. Are all you Dumarans so stupid?” Dencer urges his mount toward the gate. “Archers! Ride to the west! After me!” The gates groan open, and the armsmen in tan leathers flank Dencer as he rides out through the gates and along the berm road to the west.
Gortin gestures to his own lancers and smaller number of mounted archers, then follows the gawky-looking Lord of Stromwer through the gates and across the flat grass of the high berm toward the cliffs to the west of the keep.
“Why here?” asks the Dumaran officer when he finally draws his mount alongside that of Dencer, more than halfway to the base of the cliff.
“The bitch uses sorcery, and if she succeeds, she will make her way through that low point in the cliffs.” Dencer draws his blade and gestures. “There. See you not the rock steaming?”
Gortin half ducks as the weapon swirls by him, then looks to the cliffs ahead and overhead. As Dencer has said, steam or mist—something boils off the rock nearly a hundred yards up from the base of the cliff.
“She will level that mountain, if it takes that, to get to us. She is already calling on dissonance to support her attack.” The tall lord reins up and half turns his mount. He stands in the saddle easily, despite his awkward appearance, and gestures with the long blade. “Form up the archers! Here! Now! Right before me!”
Gortin gestures, and the Dumaran archers begin to form to the south of the tan-clad forces of Stromwer. Dencer watches as the archers tumble off of mounts and form on the long grass before him.
Above them and to the west, a dull rumbling fills the midday air, and gray clouds of dust spurt from the cliff’s side.
“A tunnel. . . . The bitch has created a tunnel. . . . Proves she’s not all-powerful.” Dencer gestures with the long blade again—toward the gray-and-red layers of the cliff that lies less than a hundred yards from where his archers prepare.
The gray mist swirls away in the light breeze, revealing a rock-walled balcony jutting out of the cliff. Gortin’s jaw drops momentarily, but he closes his mouth quickly and glances toward Dencer.
“Your lord—did he not realize the danger this sorceress poses?” Dencer’s voice oozes with irony. “The great Lord Ehara . . . he did not realize?”
“I think not, Lord Dencer.”
Two shields appear above the wall on the cliff, and then a figure in greens—apparently blonde—peers over one of the shields.
/> “The bitch! She’s there already,” mutters Dencer. His voice rises as he sheathes the blade. “Zerban! Archers! Blanket that place with shafts! Now! Every shaft you have!”
To his left, Gortin echoes similar commands, and the half-score of crimson-clad Dumarans begin to loft shafts over the short expanse of wall. Some arrows bounce off the rock.
“More shafts!” insists Dencer, stringing his own great bow, and then loosing one shaft, then another.
The sounds of horns, then of strings, waft out over the valley—followed by a strong voice, a clear voice, a voice that makes that of Dencer’s seer seem as nothing.
The Lord of Stromwer glares, nocks another shaft, and releases it. “Bitch! Bitch! Get you if I can . . .” His voice is low and ragged.
The puffy white clouds to the south and west darken into gray, and the ground seems to rumble.
Dencer looses another shaft.
A lance of fire appears from somewhere in the sky and sizzles into the archers before Dencer.
“Ooooh . . .” The muted moan of the dying man mixes with the odor of burning flesh.
“Aeeeiiii . . . aeeiii . . .”
Fire lances begin to fall as fast as raindrops in a thunderstorm, and the screams of the dying rise with the flames that engulf them.
Dencer nocks yet another shaft and lofts it toward the stone wall above him. “Bitch! No sorceress . . . No woman . . . Bitch!”
He struggles to reach one more shaft as the fires enfold him, tries to lift it to the burning bow, while he clamps his lips shut. Then he raises one fist . . . slowly . . . before his charred figure is thrown from the back of the mount that rears to escape the flame, rears . . . and collapses under the rain of fire that appears to be everywhere there are armsmen.
58
As Anna finished the spell, she took a deep breath, then began to cough. Rickel and Fhurgen raised the shields around her.
The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 37