Darksong Rising: The Third Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Jecks had his blade free, as did Kinor, and a moment later, Jimbob. The three blades joined those of Blaz and Kerhor.

  The evening was filled with grunts, and the dull sounds of metal on metal, metal on wood, wood on flesh and bone, but not a single yell or shout issued from the lips or throats of the attackers. The only sound from the attackers and the town, the one that seemed to shiver both the air and ground alike, was that of the deep triple-toned drums.

  Anna’s fingers fumbled over the lutar strings, and she sang a few syllables, seeking a pitch. Any pitch! Her voice cracked, and she attempted to clear her throat, trying somehow to force dust and mucus out.

  Somewhere in the darkness a horse screamed.

  More arrows sleeted past, and there was a dull thunk and a gasp from one of the guards, and Anna glimpsed an empty saddle even while she tried to sort out a spell, any spell.

  You need a spell … The thought pounded at her.

  63

  PAMR, DEFALK

  A man races through the twilight and onto the porch of the chandlery. On the porch, one brown-haired figure straightens from behind the largest of the drums arrayed there. The runner looks past the drummer to the taller bearded figure of the chandler standing in the darker shadows. “She returns, mighty Farsenn. And her players have not even their instruments out.”

  “She returns to Pamr … but never to Falcor.” Farsenn laughs in his deep bass voice and looks to Giersan. “Ready your drums.” Then he turns back to the bearded messenger. “Summon our mighty warriors. The archers go behind the hedges near the first trees—as we practiced. Keep them in the shadows. Have no torches lit until you hear the drums. Then the torches and the arrows.”

  “As you command, mighty Farsenn.” The man turns and hurries into the darkness, ringing the handbell that he carries.

  “Yes … yes … Today and tonight will be long remembered in Pamr,” Farsenn says as he looks along the main street, toward the east and the approaching sorceress.

  “Best we finish the task, or it will not be recalled as we wish,” suggests Giersan.

  “Taking down the bitch Gatrune was scarce a task at all. None had seen the power of Darksong.” Farsenn strains as he looks eastward.

  Shutters close, and lights and lamps vanish. Seemingly within moments, the town of Pamr is dark and silent, and even the ringing of the handbell is gone. Shadowy figures move toward the eastern side of the town, arranging themselves in the dimness behind the hedges.

  “Now?” asks Giersan.

  “No. They have not reached the hedges.” Farsenn waits silently, then raises his hand. Finally, he drops it. “Now!”

  The drummer’s mallets caress the skins of the drum set, and a low rolling thunder rumbles out.

  “The muddling song. Three, two … mark!”

  The rolling sound of thunder switches into an almost-staccato beat to accompany Farsenn’s dark and deep voice.

  Take their wits and hold them fast,

  so their actions cannot last.

  Take their eyes and make them slow,

  so they know not where the time may go … .

  From somewhere to the east a torch flares, then another.

  “Now! Men of Pamr! Strike!” With the command, the bearded figures surge from the hedges toward the line of riders.

  The triple-toned drums shake the ground around the chandlery, seemingly more intense than thunder.

  Against the clang of metal, the intermittent whir of arrows, and the grunts of men fighting, the single scream of a mount pierces the night air.

  “Now!” calls Farsenn. “The death song.”

  The big drums shift their rhythm again, and the tones form a simple melody that melds with the darksinger’s deep voice.

  Clearsong, sorceress, fall to the old,

  bright voice still and songs grow cold.

  Darksong, darksong, strike with might,

  put the sorceress to death this night … .

  Farsenn glances up as he finishes the spell, sweat streaming down his face, while the triple-toned drums roar out yet another pattern.

  The night sky blurs, then shudders, as if the clouds are being shaken by an unseen hand, and then a tinkling, yet penetrating chord blankets the land.

  “No! NO!!!!” screams Farsenn, shaking his fist upward. “No!”

  Silvered arrow-notes fly from somewhere east of the chandlery, arching into the dark sky and then falling … and with each of those silver notes, the thunder-rumble of the drums is muffled, more and more. Yet Giersan labors over the drums, even as their sounds die away.

  “Dissonance! Clearsong cannot prevail! Never!” Farsenn’s bass is hoarse, as though the words had come from a raw throat.

  More of the silver-arrowed notes fall—striking bearded forms running westward, away from the remaining riders, away from the silvered and shimmering figure that is the sorceress, away from a voice whose clarity shivers through the shuttered town.

  Farsenn looks up once more. His mouth opens, but he cannot speak before the silver arrows strike.

  The drums blaze into flame, so quickly, and so violently that they might have been the driest of tinder soaked in oils, but the drums do not blaze so brightly as the briefly shuddering forms that topple from the porch of the burning chandlery.

  64

  Arrows kept sleeting past Anna, striking armsmen, and in the background the heavy multitoned and ominous rumbling thunder of the drums continued.

  Sluggish as Anna continued to feel, with eyes sometimes almost feeling like she were looking through a fog, with her armsmen dying around her, Anna had to act. She had lost the time to think. All she could do was sing the one spell she knew … knew cold, changing but a few words, for she knew her attackers were not armsmen in the regular sense:

  Turn to fire, turn to flame,

  those weapons spelled against my name

  turn to ash all those spelled against my face

  who seek by spell or force the Regency to replace.

  Turn to fire, turn to flame …

  Almost harplike, the night sky shivered … and Anna could not help but look skyward as visible silver notes cascaded like arrows down across Pamr. Where each struck, a silver flame seared like a flare, and with the sonic collision of drumbeat and harp note, silent screaming bolts of sound shivered the town.

  “Dissonance!” The single exclamation rode over the irregular hissing of the fire arrows.

  For the first time, screams filled the darkness—short agonizing screams that ended almost as they began.

  Then … the night was silent, except for the panting of lancers, and the moans of wounded Defalkan armsmen.

  “Lady?” Jecks addressed Anna, but his eyes surveyed the darkness, going from one fallen torch to another.

  Anna’s stomach turned, for by those torches were charred figures, and each had been a man, some woman’s consort, some girl’s brother, some child’s father. And all had been set against her because, more than a year earlier, she had turned a chandler into ashes to stop him from raping her. When he had tried to force her over her violent objections, and then kill her when she had used gentler sorcery to dissuade him, she reminded herself. You didn’t use violence first … you didn’t …

  “My lady?” Jecks asked again.

  “I’m here … .” She looked at the guards who surrounded her, seeing again the empty saddle. After checking faces, she asked, “Kerhor?”

  Kinor, blood splashed across his dusty tunic, reined up beside Jecks, answered slowly. “He took an axe, Lady Anna, and an old halberd.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered to no one in particular. “I’m sorry.”

  Behind her, a crackling sound began to grow. Turning, she saw the dwelling next toward the center of Pamr had begun to burn. More than a hundred yards farther away, the chandlery was already a bonfire reaching skyward toward the low clouds.

  Anna and Jecks slowly surveyed the burning town … and the bodies strewn everywhere.

  Unbidde
n, one of the stanzas from Britten’s On This Island song cycle pounded through Anna’s mind:

  Starving through the leafless wood

  Trolls run scolding for their food;

  And the nightingale is dumb,

  And the angel will not come.

  “The nightingale is dumb …” Anna whispered hoarsely.

  “Lady Regent?” asked Himar. “We have lost near-on another twoscore lancers. What would you have of us?”

  “We’ll go on to Lady Gatrune’s. There’s no one left here to harm us.” Anna’s voice sounded as dead as she felt inside.

  “Bodies across their saddles! Leave no man who fought,” ordered Himar. “Then mount up and ride out.”

  Anna continued to hold the lutar with her right hand as she flicked Farinelli’s reins, her eyes scanning the darkness to the west and north.

  The sound of hoofs and the heavy breathing of mounts and tired lancers began to rise over the crackling of dwellings burning and the scattered low moans of wounded men. Rickel and Lejun continued to flank Anna, their shields held high.

  Behind the Defalkan lancers, as they reached the center of Pamr and turned their mounts northward on the road to Lady Gatrune’s hold, flames hissed and built to a roar, casting flickering shadows across charred bodies left on the bloodstained clay.

  Anna swallowed and moistened her lips. “I should have spent the time to find them.” She wanted to shake her head. To think that … all those people dead because one oversexed chandler wouldn’t take no for an answer. Or because you couldn’t find another way out of the situation. Were you just stupid, not realizing just how much Defalkan men regard women as property? And too tired because you were pushing too hard to reach Denguic? “I should have.”

  “I would wager that last spell of yours did so,” suggested Jecks. “Could you tell such?”

  “I think so … but I don’t know. I’ll check when we get to Lady Gatrune’s,” Anna answered, looking into the darkness ahead. If you can … if you can sing another spell tonight.

  “Torches! To the van!” ordered Himar. His voice lowered as he let his mount drop back, and as he addressed the Regent. “I like this not. Were the holding not close, I would ask that you have us make an encampment.”

  “Should we stop? I’d rather have friendly walls around us,” Anna replied, “but I probably caused this by wanting to go on.” Probably? Definitely … it’s all on your head.

  “I have sent scouts out, as if the land were not ours,” Himar said, “but I would press on, so short is the distance, but with care. Great care.”

  Anna decided to continue keeping the lutar ready.

  “I also,” said Jecks. “Still, it is an ill night, without the bright moon.”

  Anna scarcely would have called the small white disc of Clearsong bright, not compared to the bright moon of earth. “We couldn’t see it anyway.”

  “Mayhap not, but the clouds oft roll in under the evil moon when it rises.”

  Could that be? There’s still so much you don’t know. Darksong rising … pitted against sorcery … and where are the stars, the army of unalterable law? Her laugh was hoarse.

  The torches shed only minimal light, and with Clearsong not in the sky, and the heavy low clouds blocking even starlight, the column moved slowly northward.

  Even after perhaps half a glass, no lights betrayed the hold, although Anna knew it was but a few deks out the north road from Pamr. The air still smelled smoky despite the breeze out of the north.

  Smoke drifted toward the Defalkan riders, reaching them in waves, waves Anna could smell more than see. The smoke came from dying fires, but with an odor both similar to and different from that she had created in Pamr.

  “Oh, no …” murmured the sorceress. “No …”

  “Torches forward! Ready arms!”

  There won’t be any need for arms.

  Anna was right. The holding was silent as death, and the dim light of the torches revealed the first bodies at the gates, bodies savagely hacked into near unrecognizability, mercifully cloaked in the dimness of the dark night.

  “An ill night, indeed, my lady,” Jecks said. “I am sorry. Most sorry, for I know the ties and gratitude you bore all who were here.”

  Anna held the lutar ready, though she knew she would need it no longer. Not tonight. Then, you really didn’t think you’d need it coming into Pamr, either.

  More bodies lay along the lane to the hold, a hold that had burned, leaving the stone-and-brick shell. From the ruins glimmered but faint coals.

  “Purple company, check the stables. Green company, Yujul—check the barracks, over there. The rest of you search the grounds. By company now …” When he finished directing the lancers, Himar turned toward Anna. “Wait, if you would, Lady Anna.”

  Anna reined up and waited in the darkness barely broken by the torches, surrounded by guards in the ruins of a hold she had thought friendly and strong.

  When the lancers confirmed that the grounds were indeed empty, Anna finally dismounted and walked up the ash-strewn steps toward what had been the entry to Gatrune’s hall. At the threshold, as if he had tried to hold back the horde, lay a dark-haired, dark-bearded figure. Within the light of the torch held by Kinor, sprawled more than a half-score of figures. Others lay farther away from Firis.

  “Most would not die so well,” murmured Himar.

  Anna swallowed. The dashing captain had always claimed Anna had brought him fortune. Not this time.

  “Lady … if you would abide, with your guards,” Jecks suggested.

  The sorceress and Regent nodded, knowing what he had in mind. “I’ll wait here. You won’t find anyone alive.”

  Jecks’ lips curled, but he did not speak as he and Himar stepped gingerly through the ruined doors.

  “Was this the work of the rebels?” asked Jimbob, his voice simultaneously puzzled and deferential.

  “They weren’t rebels,” Anna said slowly, finding she still clutched the lutar. “They were deluded men spelled with Darksong by a young man who didn’t understand, and who didn’t want to.”

  “Peasants …”

  “No.” Anna kept her voice level. “Your grandfather was right about the evil that can be done with drums. Two men did evil, and the others died because of it.”

  “Could you have done aught—” Jimbob’s question halted with the jab to the ribs from Kinor.

  “If I had … then we couldn’t have gone into Ebra, and we’d be facing another enemy to the east.” You hope your judgment was correct. Enough people had already paid.

  The returning glow of the torch showed Jecks and Himar as they walked slowly back through the ruined doors toward Anna and the others.

  “Both the lady … and her son …” Jecks’ voice was flat, emotionless.

  “I should have acted before.” Anna could feel the dampness on her cheeks.

  “You could not … not if you wanted to ensure that Ebra remains an ally,” pointed out Jecks. “Even you, mighty as you are, can do but what you can.” Jecks paused, then asked more gently, “Would you have wished to kill men who had done nothing then, suspecting only that they might do ill?”

  Anna winced at the question. You had thought about it.

  Was that another part of being Regent? Choosing when no action was without negative consequences? Letting things happen because there was no proof of evil that could justify action? Or was that just the lot of Defalk?

  “You can do no more until first light,” Jecks said gently.

  Anna wished he could hold her, if but for a moment. Instead, she stiffened. “We will have much to do tomorrow.” Too much … like every other day.

  65

  Anna stood beside the ash-dusted steps that led to the ruined main dwelling. She looked down the slight rise toward the half-ruined stables and barracks and the meadow beyond where her lancers had camped. Blaz and Lejun stood perhaps a yard behind her, with Jecks beside her. A raw cool wind blew out of the east, in surging gusts, as if presaging a
cold rain, but the clouds were thin and high.

  In the light of a gray morning, the hold looked even worse than the night before, and Anna didn’t feel as though she had slept either well or long enough. Her eyes burned; her head still ached, even after forcing herself to eat; and her nose itched from something, perhaps from grooming and saddling Farinelli, or from the fine ash that was everywhere, so much that she almost wanted to tear at her face. Her riding clothes bore spots of blood that she hadn’t noticed before. She moistened her lips as she watched her chief player walk slowly up the lane toward her.

  Jecks did not speak, though his eyes also surveyed the devastation, and far larger patches of blood stained his tunic.

  Liende stopped and bowed. “Lady Anna?” The chief player straightened, her tunic smeared with ash, one sleeve bearing a splotch of blood.

  “How are you doing this morning?”

  “We were fortunate. Delvor has a bruise on one leg, and Duralt and Palian have small cuts on their arms. They can still play.”

  “How about you?”

  A wintry smile appeared, and Liende’s freckled face appeared younger for a moment. “I have seen worse.”

  Anna nodded. “Could you and the players manage a spell this morning? After last night?”

  “One … that we can do … or two, if it be the same spell.”

  “Depending on how they feel, we might repeat it for the stables and barracks. If everyone feels strong enough.”

  “Players play.” Liende bowed slightly. “I will gather them.”

  Just like you … she’s another woman who had no idea where things would lead, but she’s not exactly happy about it all. Then, in Liende’s shoes—or boots—Anna wouldn’t have been all that happy either.

  “You must rebuild it now?” asked Jecks once Liende was beyond earshot.

  “Yes.”

  “There is no lord to hold it.”

  “Lady Herene will take it and refurnish it to her taste. I think one of the older fosterlings, perhaps Ytrude, can replace her at Suhl.”