The Shadow Sorceress: The Fourth Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by Modesitt. Jr. , L. E.

  Secca sat in a blue-lacquered and delicate-appearing chair at the side of the bed. She held the dying woman’s hand in her own, swallowing as the older sorceress’s breathing lapsed into silence for a moment before resuming once more.

  “So…tired…promise me…no Darksong…no spells,” Anna had whispered less than a half a glass before. “Defalk…everyone…they need you…more than me.”

  Nodding agreement had been hard for Secca, but she had, and now she waited, her guts tied into knots, her eyes burning, wondering why she had offered that promise.

  “…won’t be long…” The smile on the drawn face of the sorceress had been more a rictus than a true expression. “Elizabetta…got…my last letter…told her…be the last…didn’t tell you…tried to…last night…”

  Every time Anna had sent a missive across the void to the Mist Worlds, it shortened her life. That had been the one thing about which Secca and Anna had always disagreed, but Anna had been adamant, her only concessions having been limiting the frequency of such spell-transmissions and letting Secca sing the spells to retrieve Elizabetta’s missives.

  The effort of merely retrieving those missives had prostrated Secca, leaving her exhausted for one to two days, even despite her comparative youth, and the effect reminded her how short she fell of the sheer power that Anna had been able to bring to her sorcery. Yet Anna had insisted that using Clearsong to cross the Mist Worlds was easier for her than for those born in Liedwahr, and that the trio—Secca, Clayre, and Jolyn—were as powerful as Anna had been.

  At the slightest whisper of a knock on the door, Secca turned in the chair.

  Richina slipped just inside the door. The sandy-haired young woman, although but a few years more than a girl, stood nearly a head taller than Secca. Richina’s face was blotchy, and her green eyes were reddened.

  Touching her finger to her lips, Secca nodded for Richina to join her, waiting until the apprentice sorceress stood next to the chair.

  Richina bent and whispered. “There’s so little left. I can sense it. Can I do anything…please?”

  Secca shook her head, murmuring back. “She’s forbidden it, and it won’t change anything. I don’t even think Darksong would work.”

  “It’s unfair,” replied Richina in a whisper.

  “Life is unfair, child,” said the dying woman, her voice momentarily strong, her eyes opening for a moment and fixing on the pair beside her bed, before they slowly closed. “Don’t…ask…for fairness…create it.”

  “Her mind is all there,” murmured the apprentice, “but the Harmonies are leaving.”

  Secca nodded. “You can stay.”

  Her eyes burning, Secca looked at the dying sorceress again, squeezing Anna’s hand ever so gently, trying to let Anna know that she was there. Sometimes the slim and smooth fingers offered the faintest pressure back, but most of the time Anna’s hand was limp, cool, but not cold. Not yet.

  Secca swallowed again, blinking back tears, sensing, knowing that there was nothing she could do—not that Anna would have accepted.

  So light was Anna’s breathing that Secca hadn’t been certain she would know when the pale blonde woman on the high bed stopped breathing.

  She needn’t have worried…because a long and low chord, perfect in harmony, filled the room, if but for a timeless instant. Even the sorcery-warmed air flowing from the window louvers halted for a moment.

  Secca stood, bent forward, and offered a last kiss.

  She found she wasn’t crying. Perhaps the time for tears had been earlier, after she had found Anna collapsed beside the reflecting pool in the domed building that had been the elder sorceress’s working space. Secca had brought Anna back to her chamber, fearing the worst, as it had happened.

  There would be more tears later. That she also knew.

  Richina was standing at the foot of the bed, sobbing silently.

  Behind the sorceress and the apprentice, the door opened quietly.

  The red-haired sorceress turned. So did Richina.

  Two figures stood in the doorway—the graying saalmeister Halde and the white-haired household head Florenda.

  “We heard…like a single note of farewell.” Florenda’s voice broke on the last word.

  Halde nodded. He swallowed wordlessly.

  Secca returned the nod. Richina also swallowed, blotting her eyes.

  The four stood in silence, a long silence following a single harmonic chord that had announced a great loss to Erde, a loss so great that even those who had never heard the chords of Harmony had done so.

  10

  Wei, Nordwei

  The dark-haired seer enters the study and bows to the Council Leader. “Leader Ashtaar…”

  “I know. I heard the Harmonies chime.” Ashtaar brushes back a lock of fine silver hair. Her eyes are now as dark as once her hair was, and black circles ring those eyes, eyes set in a finely wrinkled skin, but her voice is clear and hard.

  “The sorceress just breathed her last,” announces the seer, her face contorted in confusion, “moments ago.”

  “You think the Harmonies would not mark her passing, Escadra?” Ashtaar blinks, as if something has irritated her eyes, and she blots them with a dark green cloth.

  Escadra lowers her head, her pale gray eyes on the green and maroon carpet that covers the polished stones of the study floor. “I am sorry to have bothered you, Leader Ashtaar.”

  “I asked you to let me know, and you have.” Ashtaar gestures to one of the polished wooden armchairs across the ebony desk from her. “Sit down.”

  The slightest frown creases Escadra’s forehead, then vanishes as the chunky seer seats herself.

  “You are what…a score less a year?” asks the older woman.

  “Yes, your Mightiness.”

  “All your life you have heard of the Sorceress of Defalk, that forbidding presence from the Mist Worlds. Is that not so?”

  Escadra nods.

  “How she buried hundreds of scores of armsmen under lakes, entombed the Evult of Ebra with molten rock, killed every last man in a town that revolted? Or how she pulled down an entire city upon its innocent inhabitants to destroy the Lord of Dumar?”

  “Yes, leader.”

  Ashtaar brushes away the honorific.

  “Do you remember the story of Gretslen?”

  A quizzical expression fleets across Escadra’s eyes, quickly, but not quickly enough to escape the scrutiny of the older woman.

  “You wonder why I ask that now?” Ashtaar’s laugh is light, with a sense of brittleness. “Because it is appropriate. Gretslen never understood why things changed, or what power is. She thought power could be separated from its use. The great sorceress is dead, but those who would use power as she did are not. Yet too many in Liedwahr will believe that matters will return to what they were now that she is dead. We in Wei must not entertain that alluring temptation.”

  Ashtaar’s eyebrows lift. “What does that have to do with the horrible stories about the sorceress? It is simple, if one thinks. What the sorceress did was to use power for ends she thought worthwhile. She has taught others both how to use power as she did, and, equally important, the ends she favored, and the reasons for those ends. There will be struggles, even here in Wei, because many will not believe the changes she wrought are enduring.” An ironic smile crosses her lips. “Those who question those changes will fail, but they will make us all suffer, and for that reason alone, I would mourn her passing.”

  Escadra’s mouth opens, then closes.

  “You wonder why I question the legends, or why I am disturbed at the passing of one seen as the eternal enemy of Wei?” Ashtaar laughs. “Dear child, for more than a score of years, we have prospered from trade with Defalk, Neserea, and Ebra—and even farther across the oceans. We have built our ships and our fleets, and we have managed to secure safety for our traders against the Sea-Priests and their fleets. We could do this because our borders to the south were guarded by the sorceress. Never have we been safer.”
She laughs. “The Lady of the Shadows and her followers even grudgingly admit that, much as they fear and dislike sorcery.”

  “It was to the sorceress’s interest as well,” ventures the young seer.

  “Indeed it was. But people are not merely interests. Did you know she had children? And was forcibly separated from them by the sorcery that hurled her into our world? Or that once, for nearly a half-score of years, she effectively ruled all of eastern Liedwahr? And then stepped aside? Did you know that before her, not a single one of the Thirty-three of Defalk had ever been a woman?” Ashtaar coughs, covering her mouth with the dark green cloth. After a moment, she sets the cloth beside the time-and-finger-polished black agate oval on the desk. “Leaders are people, Escadra. Their pasts influence their present—and ours. Never forget that.”

  Escadra nods.

  Ashtaar’s dark eyes burn into the seer. “Use your pool to scry Defalk in the days ahead. See what you can of how the people feel about her death. See how the younger sorceresses of Defalk feel, if you can. See how Liedfuhr Kestrin feels, and the young Matriarch of Ranuak. And if you can, the Ladies of the Shadows in Ranuak. Then we will talk again.” After a moment of silence, the Council Leader of Wei adds, “You may go.”

  Once the door closes, Ashtaar looks toward the window, and the late twilight beyond.

  11

  In the midafternoon light, Secca glanced around the entry hall of Loiseau, looking at the pale blue stone of the walls, then up, to the brass chandelier, its candles dark, and then to the trapezoidal cupola that topped the foyer. Slowly, she let her eyes follow the blue-tinted stone blocks of the walls downward until her eyes rested on the polished black and white interlocking stone triangles of the floor, the regularity of the triangles emphasized by the inlaid strips of curlicued brass.

  In the center of the soaring hall, directly under the cupola, was a rectangle of wooden planks—two yards deep and three wide. On three sides of the rectangle were stacks of copper and tin ingots, almost half a yard high.

  The red-haired sorceress stepped back to the easel and studied the drawings there, noting the simple lines, but also the inner support struts. Even if Anna were not being paraded in state through Falcor, as the greatest sorceress ever in the history of Defalk, she deserved some measure of grandeur in the ceremony that would mark her farewell to Loiseau and the people of Mencha. For a moment, Secca’s eyes burned. She blotted them with the back of her sleeve, took a slow breath, and then studied her drawing again. After a moment, she closed her eyes and attempted to visualize just how the funeral catafalque would look.

  At the squeak of ill-lubricated wheels, Secca glanced up to see the two lancers wheeling in the handcart laden with another load—the last one—of copper ingots from the storeroom. Secca watched as Richina followed the example Secca had set earlier and motioned to the rectangle of wooden planks set directly under the center of the entry hall. “Put them on the planks, evenly spaced, like the others.”

  The lancers began to stack the ingots on the section of planking that had none.

  Secca nodded to herself and went back to studying the schematic drawing, another innovation of Anna’s. From what Secca had read and studied in the old books Anna had inherited from Lord Brill, the only images used to aid in sorcery had been simple line drawings. Soon after she had become regent, Anna had started using multiple drawings, some even of internal supports unseen when a device or structure was finally fabricated through Clearsong. But the more detailed schematics had come after Lord Jecks’ death, and after Anna had turned Defalk over to Lord Robero and returned to Mencha.

  “Lady Secca?” Richina stood, respectfully, a yard back from the easel and the drawings it held. “Will you need more of the copper?”

  Secca studied the ingots stacked neatly on the plank rectangle, then the two lancers standing by the empty cart. “No, thank you, Richina. What we have should be enough.” She smiled. “How are you coming on your spell to return the catafalque to ingots once…” The words trailed off.

  “Ah…it’s hard.”

  “You haven’t started?” Secca raised her eyebrows.

  Richina dropped her eyes. “It’s hard to think…she’s gone.”

  “You don’t think I don’t care?” asked Secca gently. “She was my mother from the time I was eight.”

  “Oh, no, lady. Never. It’s just…” Richina looked down, but not before Secca could see the tears welling up.

  Secca reached out and touched her hand. “I know. We still…she would want us to go on…and she deserves our best.”

  Richina lifted her eyes. “I will start once I am through here.” This time Richina paused, as if she had more to say. “There is one thing.”

  Secca smiled. There was always “one thing” more with students and apprentices.

  “Kerisel and Jeagyn would like to watch you do the spell,” Richina ventured.

  “They may, if they stand well back, and behind me. You may get them.” Secca grinned momentarily. “That is, if they’re not already hiding just inside the dining hall.”

  Richina flushed. “They had hoped…”

  Secca shook her head ruefully. “Just tell them.” Her eyes flicked to the lancers and the empty cart. “You had better dismiss the lancers. They’re still waiting to know about whether you need them.”

  Richina’s hand went to her mouth. “I’m sorry.” She turned and walked quickly to the two men. “Lady Secca says that you may go and put the cart away. She has the copper she needs.”

  The shorter of the two rankers inclined his head momentarily. Both turned. The taller man took the handcart and turned it, wheeling it out the front entry doors before him. Without the ingots on it, the cart did not squeak.

  Richina headed back past Secca, bowing her head as she hurried past, in the direction of the formal grand dining hall—seldom used in recent years.

  Secca pulled on the gloves with the copper-tipped fingers, then picked up the grand lutar and began to check the tuning. Even before she had finished, she heard careful footsteps on the polished stone behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she took in the three figures, putting a finger to her lips before returning her full attention to the task before her.

  Her eyes went to the drawing of the catafalque on which Anna’s coffin would rest. She began to play, the spell melody first, one time through, without words, to smooth the way for the full spell. Then came melody and spell, welling out into the stillness of the entry hall.

  “Build of bronze, with this song

  shining true, hard and strong…”

  The air above the planks was filled with a glowing haze that flashed a near-brilliant blue before subsiding into a blue-gold fog that surrounded the planks and ingots. With a second flash, of golden white and a single harmonic chord that was, as always, heard only by the sorceresses and the apprentices and students, and the more gifted players, the fog lifted to reveal a rectangular structure not quite a yard high, but three yards wide and two deep. Each surface of the catafalque glistened as if it were lit from within.

  “Oh…” The involuntary murmur came from one of the students. The slender Kerisel, Secca thought as she slowly lowered the grand lutar.

  “It’s beautiful,” Richina said quietly, stepping forward and bowing her head. “It’s almost too beautiful—”

  “It’s for her only,” Secca replied firmly. “Just once, just hers.”

  Richina nodded slowly.

  As she stripped off the insulating gloves and slipped them into the pouch on the right side of her belt, beside the dagger and opposite the short sabre on the left side, Secca hoped the sandy-haired apprentice truly understood why Anna deserved the best Secca—or any of them—could provide her.

  12

  Later…after Secca had completed what else needed to be done, sent short scrolls to Clayre for Lord Robero, and helped Florenda and Halde with what only she could do for Anna, the red-haired sorceress stopped by the smaller room on the lower level to see Richina.
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br />   As Secca knocked and stepped into Richina’s room, the sandy-haired young sorceress looked up from where she sat in the single chair near the foot of the bed.

  “Lady Secca…”

  “I wanted to see how you were. You were troubled, more than I realized…” Secca let the words die away.

  “She still looked so young,” blurted the young sorceress, “but there was no Harmony left in her.”

  “That was the death Darksong of Lord Brill. It did not change her years, only her shape. You know that,” Secca said gently.

  “Mother…she said that…the sorceress would never change. But…it’s hard. Two days ago…she was so alive.”

  “Death is like that,” Secca reminded her apprentice. “We must never forget that it is sudden and forever.”

  “I know. Lady Anna said that all the time.” Richina frowned. “Sometimes, she was so stern, but I know she cared.”

  “She did. More than most people ever knew. She didn’t let people see. You know…once, when I was much younger than you, nine, I think, she carried me to bed. That was when she was regent. She didn’t have to, but she carried me there and tucked me in, and promised that I could stay with her.” Secca swallowed. “She was the one who saw that your mother would be better at holding Suhl than her brothers would be.”

  “My uncle Keithen…he wanted Suhl.”

  “I know. He tried to kill your mother, and then poison her. She never asked Anna for help.”

  “Not until I came along.” A faint smile crossed Richina’s lips. “She cared not for sorcery in the hold.”