“Show me best and show me clear
the route to avoid this danger near.
Like a vision, like a map or plot . . .
This time the glass came up blank.
Shit! . . . So now what? Anna frowned. his is going to take a bit.”
Trying to compose another spell in her head took what seemed forever. Finally, she lifted the lutar once more.
“Show the route, where it will start
to take us to the Vale’s very heart,
away from that road that all do take,
above the lines our foes do make. . .”
A lousy spell . . . truly lousy. . . .
Weak spell or not, the glass presented another map-picture, showing a depression in the road where a trail wound off to the left. Anna could see what looked to be the narrow gorge that held the road and stream leading down into the Vale of Cuetayl.
“How far from the entry gorge?” she asked.
“Two deks, mayhap.” Hanfor sketched rapidly.
Anna thought and waited, thinking. She needed a better map or idea.
When Hanfor nodded, she had another spell ready, one probably equally shaky. Nonetheless, she tried it.
“Show us now and from the air,
the southern trail to Vale,
and how it winds its way to there . . .”
Anna looked at the image in the glass, and there was an image, much to her surprise. The so-called trail looked more like a goat track winding along a series of switchbacks, but eventually coming out on a plateau overlooking the middle of the Vale.
“The destination . . . that is good. But the trail, that is dangerous.” Jecks fingered his clean-shaven chin.
As the steam began to rise from the mirror frame, Hanfor sketched even more rapidly, speaking as he did. “We won’t reach that trail until late today, I would hazard. The stream is still close to the road. We could stop there.”
Anna said nothing, just nodded and studied the image as Hanfor continued to sketch out what he needed.
Finally, he nodded in turn, and Anna released the image with a couplet, and then a deep breath. She lowered the lutar and walked slowly to Farinelli to get her water bottle.
After drinking, she packed the mirror, and then the lutar.
“That’s a narrow trail for mounts,” mused Jecks. “Even if blessed by sorcery.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Anna asked.
Jecks flushed.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “We have to get rid of Ehara.”
“We do what we must,” he said stiffly.
Anna pursed her lips. She’d apologized once, and once was enough. She was getting tired of apologizing. Even for a lord who looked like a movie star.
97
VALE OF CUETAYL, DUMAR
The Sea-Priest chants over the silvered water glass in a thin falsetto. Sweat beads on his forehead, mixing with dust to form rivulets of mud down his cheeks while he struggles with the melody and the tempo.
As he finishes, a small and wavering image fills the center of the glass, an image that shows a long line of horses on a narrow trail, a trail clearly not the main road into the Vale.
“The bitch . . . the unpredictable sow. . . .”
The image shatters into silver globules that chase each other for several moments. JerRestin sits down on a boulder, breathing heavily and ignoring the heat that seeps through his dust-smeared white trousers.
After a time, he chants again, using a voice more tenor than falsetto.
When an image forms, it shows a figure in green atop a flat hill. Behind the slender woman in the brown hat, a line of players forms. Behind them are dusty armsmen, still mounted. Flanking the sorceress are two mounted guards bearing heavy shields.
The Sea-Priest chants quickly, and the image dissolves into silver globules once more. He seats himself for a time, breathing heavily, before he climbs wearily from the shelter of the oblong rock overlooking the road and slowly scans the valley, a valley all too still for the life it encompasses.
He can sense the hidden archers and lancers to the west, but the sun has fallen on the side of the sorceress, not on her face.
The sounds of strings and horns echo faintly in the distance, so faintly he can barely hear them—but they come from the south. He scrambles down the scree of the slope toward his mount.
“ . . . bitch . . . the bitch. . . .”
His mumbled words are lost in the clatter of the small stones dislodged by his boots.
98
The midmorning sun beat down as fiercely as at midday in Falcor, and Anna’s shirt was again plastered to her back with perspiration as she shifted her weight in the saddle—carefully, given the steepness of the slope to her left. The trail was less than that, barely wide enough for a single mount, as it wound upward, back and forth on the southern side of the flat-topped mesa. According to Anna’s scrying, the mesa overlooked the south side of the Vale of Cuetayl and the central hills where Ehara’s forces and the Sturinnese waited to ambush the Defalkan contingent.
Jecks glanced ahead, at the scouts posted on each switchback, and then at Hanfor.
“No one has seen us,” the arms commander confirmed. “They do not know about this trail, or”—he smiled—“do not believe that a sorceress would stoop to such trickery.”
“Archers could inflict much damage here,” Jecks said.
“They have to be here to do such,” pointed out Hanfor, as he gestured upwards at the barren side of the mesa where little grew except for waist-high scrubby junipers at wide intervals, and intermittent patches of grass already browning. “And there is as little cover for them as for us. They would be seen from deks.”
Jecks nodded.
Anna said nothing, just used the kerchief, once gray and now reddish brown from sweat and dust, to wipe more moisture off the back of her neck. The air was drier than it had been at Abenfel or Stromwer and smelled faintly of some form of evergreen—juniper?
She’d stopped once to use the mirror, but it had shown no armsmen on the trail or near it. She just hoped the spell had been accurate enough.
“Still,” continued the graying veteran, “I will be happier when we can re-form all the armsmen.”
Anna eased out her second water bottle and drank, nearly draining the bottle. There were two more bottles, fastened behind her saddle. Sometimes, she felt she loaded Farinelli like a pack animal, with the extra water, the mirror and the lutar. But the lutar was light, and she wasn’t exactly heavy, not anymore. Sometimes, it was hard to believe she’d ever fought weight, now that she had to struggle to keep every pound.
The sun beat down, and on the slope above the narrow valley to the south of the Vale, not a blade of the sparse grass stirred. Not an insect hummed, and the only sounds were those of men and horses climbing the narrow trail.
Wheeeeee . . . eee . . .
Anna glanced back—just in time to see an armsman and mount seemingly rolling down the steeper slope below one of the switchbacks, then a second as the mount following took a similar misstep . . . or lost footing on part of the trail weakened by the first mishap. She took a deep breath as the figures bounced, and slid out of sight. Shit . . .
The line of riders slowed.
“Better that than hundreds of arrows,” suggested Hanfor from ahead.
Anna knew it to be true, but she still felt for the men and their mounts. Then she checked the path ahead.
Near the top of the mesa, the trail entered a depression slightly wider than the path had been on the lower slopes, a U-shaped gulch scooped out by infrequent rain runoff over the years. The sides came nearly to Farinelli’s shoulders. The end of the gulch flattened, broadened into a fan-shaped jumble of shallow and dry rivulets opening onto the flat of the mesa.
Just before leaving the gulched part of the trail at the top of the mesa, Anna glanced back. The line of mounts still stretched a third of the way down the slope like a snake running from switchback to switchback. Her eyes turn
ed northward. The generally flat plain of the mesa stretched ahead for nearly a dek, dotted with the same scattered junipers and clumps of grass as the slope Farinelli had carried her up.
In the distance, the sorceress could see the more jagged rocky peaks on the north side of the valley. Was the valley a juncture between geologic plates? Anna pushed the vagrant thought away. She needed to know where the Dumaran and Sturinnese armsmen and archers were.
Liende and the players had reined up to Anna’s left, west of where Hanfor, Jecks, and Anna remained mounted. The guards had fanned out in front of the sorceress, watching as the rest of the armsmen appeared, mount by mount, riding up out of the low gulch.
“Best we form up here, and wait until the others are here,” suggested Hanfor.
“I’ll try the mirror to see where Ehara and his forces are now,” Anna said.
Hanfor nodded, his eyes still on the armsmen as they rode onto the mesa.
The sorceress rode Farinelli another fifty yards westward to a space clear of the scrubby junipers and even lower creosote bushes, but sheltered by the higher boulders that cast enough shade for the mirror. Jecks and the guards followed.
She reined up and dismounted, handing Farinelli’s reins to Lejun, since Fhurgen and Rickel still bore the heavy shields. The white-haired lord dismounted as quickly as she did, and took the leather-wrapped traveling mirror while she uncased the lutar and began to tune it.
Jecks laid the mirror on the leather wrapping in the shade while Anna ran through a vocalise.
She had to cough her throat clear of dust and mucus. A second vocalise helped. At the sound of hoofs she looked up to see Hanfor and Liende nearing.
“Alvar is forming the companies. I should see where our enemies are drawn up,” said the weathered armsman.
“I should have thought of that.” There were still so many things she should have thought of, but she hadn’t been trained to be a sorceress or a regent or a ruler. Like everything else, she seemed to have to learn what she was supposed to be doing on the job.
Liende dismounted in a businesslike fashion, and Anna motioned for her to join the group. You’ve got to make more of an effort to keep Liende included. Don’t treat her like furniture . . . Lord, Anna hated that when Dieshr and Avery had acted as though she were Queen Victoria’s chair—just expected to be there.
Hanfor smiled as he dismounted and walked toward the shadowed space under the largest sandstone boulder. “A regent and sorceress cannot remember everything all the time.”
For his words, she was grateful. She cleared her throat, and stood over the mirror, humming softly to try to get the pitch right.
“Show me now and oh so clear
where our enemies now appear;
whether hidden or in sight,
show their places in your light.”
An overhead view of the vale appeared in the oblong mirror, bordered by a thin band of silver mist. Anna studied the mirror, with Jecks, Alvar, and Hanfor practically at her shoulder. Liende stood farther back.
Anna couldn’t see anything.
“There . . . you see they have the archers in the center, where they can blanket the road. Those are nets . . . darker than the rocks.” Hanfor spoke softly, but clearly. “The white and green. . . . the man by the overhang right there—he’s gone now—lancers—those are the ones from Sturinn—they are on the south hills.”
“The ones from Dumar are on the north?” Anna wasn’t sure she’d seen anything.
Jecks nodded.
She studied the image again before singing the release couplet. “That valley is wide, and the hills in the middle are high enough to block my voice, even from here. I don’t know if any spell will reach the north side—not unless it’s strong enough to destroy the whole valley.”
“The Sturinnese are more dangerous,” Hanfor said. “They are better trained. The Sea-Priest put them closest to the road.”
Anna took a deep breath. “We’d better get ready.” She turned to Liende. “The first spell will be the flame spell. After that . . . we’ll see.”
“The flame spell,” Liende repeated with a nod.
“I don’t think that the arrow spell will carry far enough.” Anna doubted that the arrows would carry, even boosted by her spells.
“You rely heavily on sorcery,” offered Jecks.
“I know. But what else do I have?”
“I will have the archers form up near the north edge of the overlook. That is the closest to the Sturinnese armsmen.” Hanfor remounted and rode back toward where the last of the armsmen were emerging onto the mesa.
Jecks wrapped the mirror, while Anna replaced the lutar in its case. Liende mounted and rode back toward the waiting players.
“They have not moved from their positions,” Jecks said quietly. “I worry that the Sea-Priest may have yet another surprise. Is your shield yet enchanted?”
“It feels that way.” The faintest sense of an unseen spiderweb tugging at Anna remained.
“Good.”
Anna remounted and guided Farinelli toward the section of the mesa that formed an overlook, reining up a good ten yards back from the edge, marked by fissured white limestone, partly covered with the red dirt. The hills in the center of the Vale, dotted with green spots that were junipers and greenish blue splotches that were creosote bushes, seemed almost close enough to touch in the hot clear air.
After studying the Y-shaped line of hills below for a moment, the sorceress dismounted and handed Farinelli’s reins to Lejun. Fhurgen and Rickel dismounted quickly and stepped forward of Anna with their shields, one in front of each shoulder, so that they could close quickly to block any arrows or quarrels.
“Archers on the flanks!” Alvar ordered, and the armsmen who doubled as archers dismounted and formed a double row on either side of Anna and Jecks and the players who stood behind Anna and continued to tune their instruments.
“The warm-up song,” said Liende.
Anna edged closer to the edge of the overlook, and her guards moved forward with her.
The wind rose from the valley, carrying cooler air from somewhere, air with the faintest scent of . . . something. Horses?
Without the mirror, the sorceress could see nothing but dirt and junipers, red rock and shadows—and the track of the road that traversed the seemingly empty Vale below.
After exhaling slowly, and trying to relax her shoulders, Anna turned to Liende. “The flame spell first.” She’d tried to craft the spell to cover the widest range, and it should work. “Should” doesn’t mean it will. Anna forced back the vagrant thought and concentrated on the vocalise. When she finished, feeling her cords firm, her throat clear, she nodded to the chief player. “Ready.”
“On my mark . . . mark!” Liende gestured, and then the notes of the clarinet-like woodwind joined with those of the other players.
Anna sang.
“Archers strong, armsmen strong,
enemies bathed in flame from this song,
against Defalk and you will burn . . .”
Anna shivered, suddenly tired from the short and full-voiced effort. Her eyes scanned the valley, but for what seemed an eternity, all remained as before, silent, except for the insects and the occasional unknown birdcall.
The points of fire flared across the closest range of hills . . . then faint cries followed. . . and more cries.
Anna looked away, her stomach turning, trying to rationalize it all. You offered terms . . . warned them. . . . Would they be any less dead with an arrow through their chests . . . ?
The space around Anna, except for the breathing of horses, remained silent.
Jecks handed her a water bottle, and she drank, deeply. Then he offered her a chunk of bread and a small wedge of cheese. She ate both, and then took another deep swig of the lukewarm water.
As she finished, he gestured toward the Vale of Cuetayl, where a single horseman in white galloped along the road, dust rising behind his mount.
“Archers!” called Al
var.
A rain of arrows arched out over the road, somewhat more than a half dek north and a good three hundred yards lower.
“The arrows curved,” snapped Jecks. “Shields!”
The rider turned from the road and continued to ride up the lower slope of the base of the mesa, aimed directly toward the overlook. Abruptly, he halted and pulled a spear from his lanceholder.
Anna couldn’t see what happened next because Rickel and Fhurgen stepped in front of Anna, blocking her from the charging wizard.
Still . . . she could feel a tingling—like a smaller version of the great chords she had called over Vult.
A second tingling seemed to fly from her momentarily, though she had done nothing, spelled nothing at that moment. Then a dark streak flew from Farinelli, crashing into something else perhaps three yards in front of Anna, before falling onto the red soil. A barbed javelin seemed to vibrate in the small spelled shield that had hurled itself from the open case attached to Anna’s saddle.
Both javelin and shield, bound together, inched across the bare reddish ground toward Anna. The sorceress retreated toward Farinelli and the lutar, trying to recall what spell she could use to stop the magic in the javelin.
Jecks flung himself from his saddle and ran toward the edge of the mesa.
Anna pulled the lutar from its case.
Moments later, Jecks straightened, lunging back toward Anna, and the still-vibrating javelin and the shield, but carrying a flat stone more than a yard long, struggling with the weight.
Fhurgen handed his shield to the guard mounted beside him. “Lejun, cover her!” The black-bearded guard followed Jecks’ example, sprinting for the rocks at the edge of the plateau, while Lejun held the shield, edge to edge with Rickel.
Jecks almost eased his stone onto the still-vibrating javelin, then straightened slowly as Fhurgen added another stone. Two other guards added more stones, but the pile vibrated and inched toward the sorceress.
Anna fumbled with the lutar, her mind struggling for something she could adapt.
Fhurgen added yet another stone to the pile, but the stones shifted again as the javelin continued to vibrate toward Anna.
The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 52