“Oh...” The involuntary murmur came firm 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.
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.”
Secca nodded. “Are you unhappy to be here?”
“No. I’m thankful. I know enough to know I’d be unhappy without the Harmonies. Jyrll... he loves the land and the people. He’ll listen to me, if it comes to that, but he wouldn’t do anything to hurt people, except to stop a greater hurt.”
Secca wondered if Richina hadn’t just summarized ruling—do no harm except to stop a greater evil. “You’ll be all right.” Secca rose.
“I know.” Richina smiled wanly. “‘Thank you, lady.”
After Secca closed Richina’s door, she walked farther down the lower conidor—away from the entry hall—and stepped out the side door into the cool night air that had descended upon Loiseau and brought a chill into the courtyard. Above her, the liedburg loomed, seemingly lightless, for all the lamps and candles within.
Her feet carried her toward the gates. Above the near-silent hold, in a clear sky, the stars shone bright—and cold. Secca shivered, despite her green leather riding jacket, and her hand brushed the hilt of the sabre—another gift of sorts from Anna.
The white disk of the moon C1earsong shimmered near its zenith, and Secca was grateful that the red point of light that was Darksong had not yet risen. She stopped in the space between the open gates of Loiseau, looking to the east, not quite sure why. Neither the stars nor Clearsong offered any answer to her unvoiced questions. To her sight, to the south, lay the domed work building, dark and empty.
In time, she turned and walked back up the stone steps and back into the soaring space of the entry hall. Neither guard looked at her as she passed, her steps slowed as she neared the center of the spacious foyer and what awaited her there.
She looked up to the brass chandelier, its white candles still dark, for a moment before her eyes skipped over the blue-tinted stone blocks of the walls and dropped to the polished black and white interlocking triangular floor stones. Finally, the red-haired sorceress lifted her eyes to the shimmering bronze catafalque that held a simple and ancient oak casket, one that had once been meant for Lord Brill’s sire, three generations back, polished so that it shimmered under the light from the candles of the single four-branched sconce set behind the catafalque.
There. . . against the green velvet of the open silvered coffin, lay the body of the woman who had transformed Defalk, the woman who had saved Secca time and again, who had taught her music and sorcery ... and life.
Anna’s face was drawn, but she looked almost as young as when Secca had first seen her more than twenty years before, and Secca wondered if, perhaps, her body would remain incorrupt forever, like a statue. Anna still looked young, her features too drawn, too fine, to be beautiful without the fierce spirit that had animated them. But she was dead, perhaps because she had demanded too much from herself, in life, in sorcery ... and perhaps because she was tired.
Lord Jecks had died nearly a half-score of years before his heart bursting as he had been instructing young arms-men at his own hold of Eldheld. Anna had been quieter, more withdrawn, since Jecks’ death, leaving more and more of the day-to-day sorcery to the trio, only occasionally traveling to Falcor. After Lord Jecks’ death, Anna seldom had seen or conferred with Lord Robero, and when she had, neither had been particularly happy, not from what Secca had overheard and seen, although Robero had always taken Anna’s advice.
Secca shook her head.
She doubted that Robero would care that much personally about Anna’s death, although he would regret deeply the loss of the power Anna had held and always used for the benefit of Defalk and its people.
Secca took a deep breath. Now she would have to deal more with Robero, as Anna had suggested—and with Jolyn and Clayre. She pushed that thought away. Those problems could wait.
How long she stood, looking at Anna’s visage, missing the fierce blue eyes, forever closed in what seemed endless sleep, Secca neither knew nor cared. A deep void had opened within her, like a wound she doubted would ever close, always aching, even beneath any smile she might offer.
So motionless had she stood, wrapped in grief that only the aching of legs locked too tightly finally broke through the concentration of her vigil.
Slowly, slowly, she stepped back and then slipped around the catafalque and walked slowly through the second archway and toward the grand staircase, her boots murmuring on the hard stone.
Behind her remained the guards, watching over the sorceress who had watched over them for all their lives.
13
In the bedchamber right at the top of the grand staircase—the one Anna had first used when she had come to Loiseau, a chamber larger than the master chamber in Secca’s own hold of Flossbend—the red-haired sorceress dressed slowly in the grayness before dawn. She donned dark green trousers and a lighter colored silky green shirt, but with a black vest and a black mourning scarf.
She looked at her image to the robing room mirror, a mirror fringed with moisture from the hot bath she had hoped would relieve the stiffness that had come with an uneasy sleep. Amber eyes ringed with dark circles and set above still-freckled and youthful-looking cheeks looked back at her. She frowned, if wryly. More than a score and a half of years behind her, and she still stood little taller than the youngest of apprentice sorceresses. After a moment, she turned heading toward the door to face a day she dreaded.
She had to talk about Anna, and she wasn’t quite sure she’d ever understood Anna. “But maybe I will . . . like the volcalises. . .
“ While Secca had appreciated Anna’s insistence on all the women apprentice sorceresses and fosterlings learning skills with blades, perhaps because of the attack on Falcor when Secca had been a child, Secca had been well into her twenties before she had begun to understand fully the value of the vocal exercises and endless technique—or the songs from the Mist Worlds that were scarcely spells at all, except perhaps love spells. And the thought of learning songs or spells in five or six languages, as Anna had. . . Secca wondered if anyone besides Clayre or Jolyn really understood, or even whether they truly did.
Today... all she could do was to express the feeling of loss, and that would have to do, but, inside, she knew that was far from enough.
Would Secca ever understand—or would she be old and unable to explain to anyone else before she did?
For all the older sorceress’s love and kindness to Secca, Anna had not shied from delivering tongue-lashings to Secca herself—or even to Robero, or to Lord Jecks, or to apprentices, like Richina. Yet Anna had gone out of her way for all of them, and for people she had scarcely even met, and she had tried her best to heal a land that had been wounded throughout most of its long and bloody history.
Perhaps Secca’s father had said it best, decades past, when he had told Secca, before sending her to Anna in Falcor, “She is a good woman, but far from perfect. Accept her goodness, and do not expect perfection.”
But then, in ruling Defalk or any land, could anyone be perfect? Secca’ s lips twisted into another wry expression as she opened the door into the upper corridor.
“Your thoughts are wandering,” she murmured to herself. How could they not wander? In most ways, for almost all of Secca’ s life—or at least the last twenty-five years— Anna had been her mother, the one Secca looked to, talked to, and had wanted to please. And Anna was gone, gone far earlier than she had to have died. Because she had spent too much of her life and energy to ensure Defalk was strong, too much energy teaching the sorceresses who were to succeed her?
It was strange, too, in a way, because the older three were all so different—Jolyn, blonde, almost what Anna had called a contralto; the brown-haired Clayre with her middle voice, in some ways the closest to Anna’s, if without the power the older sorceress had always projected; and Secca, the redhead with the voice that had turned all too many glasses into crystal powdered almost like fine sand.
For another moment, Secca stood at the top of the grand staircase. Then, halfway down the wide stone steps, as she caught sight of the score of lancers in green—one company of the five that had comprised Anna’s personal armsmen—Secca found her face stiffening into a mask of grave composure.
Wilten, overaptain of the Loiseau armsmen, met her at the base of the stairs. He bowed. “They’re lined up for leagues, it seems, Lady Secca. Some have been waiting outside the gates since a good two glasses before dawn.”
Secca nodded. “‘Thank you. I suppose we should open the doors and let them pay their last respects. Are your men ready?”
“Yes, lady.”
From the rear lower corridor. Richina appeared, as if she had been waiting, as she doubtless had, slipping up to follow Secca wordlessly. Like Secca, the younger sorceress wore green and black. Behind her were Kerisel and Jeagyn, without vests, but with black scarves.
The red-haired sorceress walked toward the front entry doors, her steps curving away from the open coffin and the glistening bronze catafalque. Behind her followed the three younger women.
At the entry hall doors, Secca looked out into the morning—a morning seemingly like many other fall mornings, with scattered clouds and blue skies. She’d almost wished for something dramatic, like a storm, or even heavy clouds.
Her eyes focused on the open gates of Loiseau. Beyond them, the line of men and women, most of them older— gray-haired, silver-haired, or bald—stretched along the dusty stone road, back down the hill, winding almost back to the yellow-and-red-leaved orchards, in the direction of Mencha itself. Some of them had to have come from other towns, because there were more in the long line than could have ever lived in Mencha.
Secca turned to Wilten, who had also followed her. "Let them in.”
Secca nodded at Richina. “Stay at my shoulder.”
“Yes, lady."
Secca reached out and squeezed Richina’s hand. “Thank you.”
The sandy-haired young woman flushed, then lowered her eyes.
Secca’s eyes went to the two students. “You two may stand just behind Richina.”
Both inclined their heads silently.
The four walked back toward the coffin, turning before the catafalque and waiting. A half-score of Loiseau lancers eased up behind and beside her before the first of the mourners stepped into the entry hall.
As the men and women, but mostly women, filed past. Secca smiled politely and nodded—and listened.
“Can’t believe... like as she’s gone.”
"... looks like she’s sleeping
"... so thin, like a child
“The redheaded one there, say she was like her own daughter... sorceress, too.”
"... hope she’s as strong and good…”
So did Secca
"... never be anyone like her again...”
Secca smiled briefly at those words, knowing all too well their understatement. All too many past lords of the Thirty-three and some of those still holding lands hoped fervently that there would never be another like Anna.
“Seems...a shame...all she did for him, and Lord Robero not even here...“
Secca kept her face emotionless. Anna had demanded that she not be paraded like a trophy in the event of her death, but laid to rest in the small mausoleum Anna and Secca had designed and created through sorcery on the hill overlooking the orchards.
A small wizened woman stopped after viewing the coffin. Her bright brown eyes fixed on Secca. “You carry on like her, sorceress, you’ll be all right, and so will everything.”
"Thank you,” Secca murmured, not quite sure what else she could say.
In the end, Secca had to stand before the casket and the catafalque on which it rested... and speak.
“A score and a six years past, a tired woman appeared in a house in Mencha. She had been ripped from her own world. She had been separated from her own children. She was a sorceress who knew nothing of Defalk. She may have wept and raged. If she did, no one saw it. Instead, from the first moment, she did what she thought was right. For this, she was attacked. She suffered more wounds than most armsmen. For the first years she lived in Defalk, she was always attacked, if not by arrows and sorcery, then by words. Defalk was poor and starving and suffering from a terrible drought caused by sorcery. She destroyed the invaders and stopped the drought. Time after time, she almost died trying to put things right.
“Along the way, she helped people—a player here, a miller’s consort there, an orphaned child. I know. I was one of those orphans. Along the way, she became powerful. But she still helped people. She restored Defalk and gave a stronger land back to Lord Robero.
“She was not perfect. I will not say she was, but I will say that never has Defalk or Liedwahr had a ruler so powerful who was also so good. She came from another world, but she made Loiseau and Mencha and Defalk her home.” Secca paused. With each sentence, the words got harder, and her eyes blurred more.
“Because of her, we all have what we have. Because of her, we have seen nearly a score of years of peace and prosperity in a land that scarce knew weeks of peace before her.” Secca swallowed again. She had more to say, but there was no way she could express it all.
“My father said it best The sorceress was a good woman. She asked more of herself than of anyone, and she never stopped trying to do her best. Because she never spared herself, others did more than they thought they could, and Liedwahr is a far better place... May we all remember that Forever.”
Secca just stood before the coffin, the rest of the words she would have said cho
ked within her, her eyes burning and unable to take in the hundred or so who had crowded into the foyer—or those who filled the courtyard outside, or even the holding’s staff and the guards who flanked her. Finally, she just bowed her bead, then, after another long moment, turned and walked back toward the staircase.
There, halfway up the steps, she stood silently. Beside her stood Richina, equally silent. On the step below, one to each side, stood Kerisel and Jeagyn.
As the mourners shuffled out into the bright fall sunlight, the four sorceresses watched. Secca stared almost sightlessly toward the front of the entry hall, her throat thick, her stomach knotted so tightly she could scarcely breathe, her cheeks streaked with tears.
Outside, the high puffy clouds drifted westward—toward Falcor—in the light chill breeze.
The Shadow Sorceress Page 6