As Alvar and Hanfor brought the force to an orderly and now well-rehearsed stop, Liende rode up beside the sorceress. “Have you need of us, Lady?”
“No . . . actually, yes, thank you.” Anna forced a smile she definitely didn’t feel. “I’m just looking, but it would help—if it won’t tire you too much. I’ll need you all when we catch up with Lord Ehara.”
“We could do a spell now and still stand ready.”
“Thank you.” Anna dismounted, unwrapped the traveling scrying glass and took a deep breath as she waited for the players to tune, afraid of what the glass might show. Jecks and Hanfor had also dismounted and stood only slightly back of her as she prepared to sing the spell. Anna’s guards held the reins of the three mounts.
She glanced at the mirror where it lay on the lush grass that seemed to grow everywhere in western Dumar, then cleared her throat. When the players began, so did she.
“Mirror, mirror on the ground,
show me where Ehara’s forces may be found . . .”
The image in the glass was clear. The Dumaran forces neared a small town.
“That must be Hasjyl . . . if the maps are correct,” murmured Hanfor.
Anna squinted as she tried to recall the maps she had pored over. Hasjyl—less than a day’s ride from Envaryl, the last sizable town in the west of Dumar before the southern rim of the Westfels, or was it the western end of the Mittfels? The two ranges intersected north of Envaryl, and geography, Anna was discovering, was even less precise in Liedwahr than it had been in Iowa where to her, one cornfield, one low hill, had pretty much resembled another.
She released the image quickly. Jecks handed her a water bottle—her own orderspelled water—even that spell took effort. But everything in a military campaign cost, she’d discovered.
“He will try to fortify Envaryl—or plot some trap there,” predicted the white-haired lord. “Or before we reach there.”
Anna nodded, wondering why she bridled so much every time Jecks offered some totally obvious observation. She handed back the bottle and wearily lifted the lutar once more.
“Show from Dumar, danger to fear,
all the threats to me bright and clear . . .”
The mirror flickered through a series of images, but Anna could not discern a one because one image replaced another so quickly. She canceled that spell even more quickly.
“The same danger ahead . . . but I can’t tell what it is.” Anna pursed her lips.
“Can you call an image of the Sea-Priest?”
This time she used a variant of the mirror spell.
“Show from the Sea-Priest, danger to fear . . .”
The image of the Sea-Priest was clear enough, but it showed little beside the man’s face—and the burns across it, one almost festering, and the hatred in the dark eyes. Those—and the background of fields—or perhaps long grass.
“That one—he will kill you any way that he might,” said Jecks.
Anna could see that, but it didn’t help when she couldn’t formulate spells precisely enough to determine where the sorcerer was or what he had in mind.
She tried a last spell, the danger spell, using the town name of Hasjyl in place of Dumar. The mirror remained clear. The sorceress lowered the lutar and glanced along the flat road toward the roofs of the town ahead. “There’s no problem there, anyway.”
“I am not greatly cheered, my lady Anna,” Jecks said wryly.
Neither was Anna. Every time she had used the general danger spell, she’d gotten the flickering response, but it had shown no danger in any of the river towns through which they had passed. There was danger, but she couldn’t find it. Or didn’t know how. Or the Sea-Priest had a way of hiding it from her. Or . . .
Tiredly, she replaced the lutar in its case, while Jecks rewrapped the mirror.
“We continue, Lady Anna?” asked Hanfor.
“Until we find Ehara,” she answered. “Until we can end this mess.” She climbed into the saddle, then wiped away more sweat. She flicked the reins gently, and Farinelli started forward.
Once the column was moving, she reached for the water bottle. Another swallow of lukewarm water helped, but she still sweated in the midafternoon sun. To the west, the afternoon clouds were building for the storm that would ensure the next day would be another steambath.
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Anna rubbed her eyes. Although it was well after dawn, and she had munched through bread and cheese, the standard travel breakfast, she still felt groggy. Not enough sleep? Worrying too much? Coffee would have helped, but coffee, or anything drinkable with the same effect, wasn’t one of the plants known in Liedwahr. Brill had brewed a bitter evergreen tea, so bitter that one or two sips on those first hot days in Loiseau had convinced Anna that she was better off without it. Her stomach was dubious enough about the morning without the kind of jolt provided by Brill’s bitter yellow tea. Cider, hot or cold, wasn’t much better first thing in the morning.
She licked a stray bread crumb from her lips, tired of stale bread and cheese, and looked down at the mirror on its leather wrappings. Then she began her morning spellscrying.
Despite three different spells, the mirror showed nothing new. Ehara had almost reached Envaryl, from what she could tell, and the Sea-Priest was next to the Envar—somewhere—but the images of scenes that posed possible danger continued to shift so rapidly that she could tell nothing.
After rewrapping the traveling mirror and recasing the lutar, she slipped the heavy blanket onto Farinelli, and then the saddle.
Whuff . . .
“I know. It’s early. Tell me.”
Farinelli declined the opportunity, and Anna cinched the girths, then patted the gelding’s shoulder.
“Another long day.” She looked westward, along the river road, though the Envar was now more like a stream.
Clearsong hung just above the western horizon—the smallest dot of light as the pink haze of sunrise flooded into orange before the sky turned pale blue.
Anna looked at the disc of the small moon, searching for the smaller, redder point of light that would be Dark-song and not finding it. She’d never really even followed earth’s moon. How did she expect to follow the motions of the two moons of Erde?
As Hanfor rode up, signaling that the armsmen were ready, so did Liende. Jecks led his mount toward her and Farinelli.
“Players are mounted and ready, Lady Anna,” said the chief player.
“Thank you.” Anna mounted easily, but slowly, as did Jecks.
Fhurgen and Rickel slipped their mounts in front of the sorceress. Jecks rode on her right. To the left, the Envar glittered silver in the postdawn light.
Anna rode silently for nearly a glass, trying not to yawn overmuch, as the column continued on the damp clay of the road. The humidity already had her sweating, but the rains had kept the dust down—one advantage. She didn’t itch from the red grit of eastern Dumar and the Sudbergs. The disadvantage was that by midmorning she’d itch from the salt of her own sweat.
“We should reach Hasjyl by noon,” Jecks said, breaking the long silence. “Perhaps we should rest there.”
“Before getting too close to Envaryl?” Anna yawned. Lord, she was tired. The way she felt, she’d need some sort of rest.
“I would not wish that we face Lord Ehara and his Sea-Priest sorcerer with a tired sorceress and players,” answered Jecks. “A day or two more spent in Dumar will not changes matters overly. You will have done the impossible.”
“Impossible?” Anna had to laugh at the thought. She was no horse-warrior, no Genghis Khan or Napoleon—just a very tired woman trying to keep a country of religious chauvinists from getting a foothold in Liedwahr. The Sea-Priests reminded her of Islamic fundamentalists, in a roundabout way, and she’d never been that fond of Islamic men after the year studying in London. “I doubt that anything I’ve done is impossible.”
“We left Stromwer in late spring. It is not yet late summer, and Dumar lies in your grasp. None would have
deemed that possible, not even for the Liedfuhr of Mansuur or the Traders of Wei.”
“It may not be possible for us. We haven’t done it yet.”
“And how would anyone undo it?” Jecks laughed. “If you vanished this moment, Ehara would find it impossible to avoid allying himself with Defalk.”
“That might be, but the Sturinnese would be back.” With their damned chains . . . . Anna couldn’t help it. She still saw red when she thought of women in chains—even the so-called chains of adornment.
Her eyes flicked ahead and to the left, down toward the river. Less than a hundred yards away, a section of the knee-high grass bordering the river seemed to shimmer. Anna rubbed her eyes, then blinked. The whole area seemed out of focus. Dissonance! Was she that tired?
Her stomach tightened and she twisted in the saddle, fumbling for the lutar, even as she yelled, “The Sea-Priest! By the river!”
A low screaming, thrumming sound shivered the ground, like drums being beaten so fast that the individual impacts and their resonance blended into a seamless percussive texture, a strange form of homophony. But you can’t do that with drums . . . Brill said. . . . Yet Brill had died. Drum homophony? What else would she find out too late?
Anna yanked the lutar from the case, her fingers curling over the strings as her other hand positioned itself on the instrument’s neck.
Streaks of gray light flashed from the flickering silver and green, angling straight toward Anna.
The sorceress found her mouth open, trying to find a spell, as the small round shield flew from its holder up toward the first screaming streak of gray. Javelin and shield crashed into the clay of the road.
Anna jerked her head left toward the second streak, just in time to see Jecks half throw himself into the vibrating line of fire—or steel. Lord and javelin smashed toward the road with a dull thudding sound.
The third streak ended in another thud and rattling as Fhurgen seemed to wrestle the third javelin away from Anna, buried as it was through his ribs and breastplate.
Anna coughed, looking down as the heavy iron-headed weapon buried in her defensive shield inched across the clay, still creeping toward her.
From out of the tall grass sprang a tall figure in soiled white, climbing onto a mount once concealed by some manner of sorcery. The horse scrambled up the riverbank and onto the road, headed westward.
Alvar raised a blade, and spurred his mount into a charge, followed by a full squad of Defalkan armsmen.
Trying to ignore the fleeing sorcerer, Anna forced herself to concentrate . . . to concentrate on the spell she had worked out because Jecks had insisted. Her fingers touched the strings of the lutar.
“Weapons of sorcery, weapons of night, hidden by spells and away from Clearsong . . . your powers rebound to your speller so strong with double the power and double the might . . . Burn into dust and sear unto ashes and light . . .”
The interlocked half-couplet scheme was supposed to make it stronger . . . would it? Anna wondered as she sang, but forced her voice into the spell, forced herself to finish it, slamming home the last note with all the power she had.
Then she vaulted from Farinelli, half noting the scream and the column of flame that flared from the road ahead. She stumbled, but did not fall as she dropped to her knees beside Jecks, where Liende already worked with a cloth to stanch the blood. The javelin had vanished, the result of Anna’s spell. She only hoped that the spell hadn’t made the wound worse.
Jecks’ face was pale, whiter than his hair, and his breath was light and ragged.
Liende looked at Anna.
The sorceress bolted to her feet, fingers on the strings of the lutar. She had hoped never to use the song, but the words were burned in her mind, from another time, another battle, and she could only improvise quickly, hoping she would be quick enough, and sure enough.
“. . . always strong, as though young,
spells always cleanly sung,
back from danger, bring him life,
. . . through all strife . . .”
Again, she had to struggle to keep her voice open, free, against all the strains pressing in on her, ignoring the press of horses, and the clamor of voices—all pushed away as she finished the Darksong spell.
Strophic Darksong. . . .
Around her, strange chords were reverberating in a pattern of polyphony she couldn’t quite grasp. But polyphony is a pattern . . . or is it a texture? You should know. . . .
“Too much . . .” That was what she thought someone said.
Above her, despite the scattered puffy white clouds, the sky shimmered silver and black, alternating like a strobe light, the black quickly predominating, the silver vanishing, as the sky turned the jet of night around her.
“The lutar . . .”
Her fingers were as numb as her mind as she tumbled forward into the darkness, the darkness of Darksong.
When Anna woke, lying on her cot, Liende was sitting beside her on a stool—rather, two images of Liende were, no matter how hard Anna squinted. The chief player’s white-streaked red hair was tangled, almost matted, and dark circles ringed Liende’s eyes, but the player smiled faintly.
“Jecks . . . ?” Anna rasped.
Liende extended a water bottle, and Anna fumbled for it, eyes unable to gauge the distance, before she drank gratefully.
“He will live. It will be seasons before he lifts a blade.”
Anna nodded. She tried to lift her head, but lay back when dissonant bass chords slammed through her skull, rippling the double images of tent silk overhead.
“You stopped breathing,” Liende said, her tone matter-of-fact. “I had to move your chest.”
“Thank you.” Anna blinked. Her eyes burned. “I’m sorry. It didn’t seem right. . . . Now, I’ve messed up everything.”
“That is not so.” Liende shook her head. “Your armsmen respect you for saving him—and for destroying the Sea-Priest. Your players are resting, and Ehara still remains behind the walls of Envaryl.”
Anna took another swallow of water. The dissonant chords assaulting her subsided, slightly, but the two images remained.
“Fhurgen?”
Liende glanced down, confirming what Anna had already felt.
Yet what else could she have done?
“He was dead . . . almost before you dismounted.”
Anna wanted to shake her head. Even before she had been regent, the big black-bearded guard had looked out for her. Then . . . Jecks had been looking out for her as well.
“Darksong is dangerous.” Liende paused. “Do you love Lord Jecks?”
“Sometimes I think so. Sometimes, I don’t know.” There’s so much I don’t know . . . been so little time . . . so much to do. . . .
Liende smiled more broadly. “There is a saying about actions revealing the heart.”
Do you love Jecks? Because he has stood by you. Or for more? Or are you desperate? That desperate?
Before Anna could think more, her eyes closed.
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Struggling against the faint double images that still cloaked her sight after more than four days, Anna stood in the doorway and looked from the sleeping white-haired figure in the bed to the chief player, and then to the guard at the door.
“He sleeps more easily,” said Liende. “There is no fever. The wound is clean. Your elixir, it kept out the poisons.” Her lips pursed. “And your spells.”
Anna sometimes wondered if her greatest legacy might not be distilled alcohol, rather than anything else. She glanced back to Jecks. “I still worry about leaving him here in Hasjyl. The javelin ripped up his chest and shoulder badly.” Would she have had the courage to take enchanted javelins meant for someone else? She hoped she could have been so brave, but she doubted she had that kind of courage. She was a survivor, not a hero.
She’d been lucky to be able to cast a Darksong spell without being totally destroyed, as she had been at Stromwer. Then, the spell over Jecks had been limited to one person at clo
se range, probably before there had been too much damage from the wound. Even so, it would be more than a week before she was fully recovered, she suspected.
“You have spell-searched the town, and left twoscore of armsmen to guard him. He should not be moved until he is better, a few days, at least,” Liende pointed out. “Once you finish Lord Ehara, you can watch over Lord Jecks on the return to Dumaria.”
“I know, and I can’t let Ehara get away,” Anna said. “I don’t have to like it.” How many times over how many years had she thought those words? You have to do it, but you don’t have to like it. . . . Was that always the way it would be?
Jecks’ eyes fluttered, then opened. Anna stepped nearer the bed.
“You . . . are . . . here. . . .” The raspiness of Jecks’ voice tore at her.
Where was the strong leading man? The man who had taken a javelin meant for her?
He’s right there, you idiot. . . .
“I’m here,” she said quietly. “You’ll be fine, but you need to rest.”
“You . . . saved . . . me.”
“You saved me. You did a better job,” Anna said.
“The . . . Sea-Priest. . . .”
“Lady Anna turned him into flame with her anger,” interjected Liende.
“Fhurgen . . . ?”
Anna looked down at the stone floors she’d insisted be washed before moving Jecks into the house she’d borrowed—or commandeered.
“He was dead before Lady Anna could even begin a spell,” said Liende.
Anna wasn’t sure that was so, but she’d only had the chance to save one of them, and she’d made a choice.
“He . . . good . . . man.”
“Just rest,” Anna urged.
Jecks’ eyes closed slowly, almost unwillingly, and Anna stroked his forehead for a moment.
“Just rest,” she repeated softly before straightening, carefully, hoping that the double images and semi-migraine headache would fade before she reached Envaryl, hoping, as always, that she did the right thing—and fearing she wouldn’t.
The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 60