The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Holly-lolly-polly-pop …”

  Good, her throat was clear, her cords resilient.

  The green formal gown was clean, and she hadn’t worn it where the president had seen it. After hanging it from the top of the folding closet door, she rummaged through the plastic bags she’d never unpacked or put in the drawers until she found the new longline bra—she hated any kind of bra, but she couldn’t wear the gown without it. Then came the slip—tight, almost too tight. She sucked in her stomach as she zipped it, then twisted it around, checking in the full-length mirror. Of course, it wasn’t straight, and when she tried to straighten it, the bra twisted.

  Finally, with both bra and formal slip in place, she took a deep breath.

  “Holly-lolly-polly-pop …” She could breathe, and it wasn’t as though she’d be doing Mimi or Butterfly. It was just five songs for the university’s big donors—the Founders’ Dinner.

  She took down the gown and slipped it out of the plastic, before beginning the struggle. These days, everything was a struggle, especially zipping a formal gown without help.

  Her eyes strayed toward the picture on the Queen Anne dresser—the four of them, one of the few with just the children and her. Most of the old family pictures had Avery in them. He’d been insisting that he was Antonio or Tony thirty years, but Anna had known him when he’d been Avery Marshall—long before he’d become Antonio Marsali. The great Antonio Marsali, king of the comprimarios, who’d never paid a cent toward any of the children’s education—except for Irenia.

  They all looked so young—Irenia, Mario, and Elizabetta, even Anna herself—standing in front of the lilacs at the lake house. Now, it was Avery’s vacation home. How could she have been so stupid?

  Shoes—the green ones were in the corner, she thought, and they were. Her eyes went back to the picture, to the blond-haired young man. Mario always joked that he was “northern Italian” or a “WASP Italian,” probably just to irritate his father. Marsali had been Avery’s great-grandmother’s maiden name, and she was the only Italian in the family, but Avery—the great Antonio—had insisted that an Italian name was a must for an opera singer, especially a high baritone. Then he’d become a tenor.

  After Mario had left to go back to Houston, the condo had seemed so empty, but he called, like a dutiful son, every few days. Anna blew her nose and looked away from the picture. Think about singing. Think about singing.

  Jewelry? Something ornate enough not to get lost, but simple. The silver necklace didn’t look right.

  The gold-link necklace looked good, but where had she put the earrings? They were where she’d left them, next to the telephone.

  She squared her shoulders. “I can do this.” She lifted the lipstick and touched up her upper lip. “I can do this.” Especially since the president was the only supporter she had left now that Dieshr had become chair of the music department.

  She could sing for the major-donor dinner, and Dieshr would sit by the president and say sicky-sweet things—like “Anna’s so good with young voices.” Or “She does very well without a doctorate.”

  As if she’d had any choice—

  She went to the window. Cloudy, but it wasn’t raining, not yet. She picked up the green leather purse and hurried downstairs. Her raincoat, not exactly fashion-coordinated with the gown, was folded across the banister.

  After slipping it on, she glanced at the clock—five-forty—checked for her keys, then locked the door and stepped out under the town house’s pseudo-Georgian portico. The cramped townhouse condo was definitely not what she would have ideally chosen, but aging junior music faculty members lived where the bargains were, in this case, the Colonial Mansions.

  A roll of thunder was followed by a spattering of rain on the sidewalk, and a gust of wind that whipped the long skirt of the green formal around her calves.

  Her hand went to her hair. The umbrella was in the car.

  The line of rain struck the far side of the parking lot and gusted across toward her.

  “Damn!” She was going to be late—or wet … or both, and she was being paid to look good as well as sing. “Damn! I’d just like to run away … anywhere. Anywhere,” she repeated grimly. “Anywhere!”

  As she reached for her key to let herself back into the condo, the world swirled around her.

  3

  MENCHA, DEFALK

  The black-haired young man bounces in the saddle a last time as he reins up the horse in front of the thick-walled cottage. The dark-oiled wooden shutters are closed against the midday heat, and not even the chickens are out in the hot still air. Dust lies heavy on the planks of the small porch shaded by the overhanging eaves, and the oiled oak door is shut as tightly as the windows.

  After wiping the muddy sweat created by road dust off his forehead, he struggles down from the horse and ties the mare at the heavy stone hitching post at the end of the porch under the single oak in the yard. Then he eases the viola case from the oversized saddlebag.

  “Well, Daffyd, where’d ye be getting a horse?” asks the slender brunette from the half-open door. Her hair is pulled back and bound high enough on the back of her head to lift it clear of her neck. She wears a sleeveless homespun brown shirt that reaches mid-thigh over loose gray trousers that stop at mid-calf. Her feet are bare.

  “It was Da’s.” Daffyd looks to the half-open door.

  “He give it to ye? A fine gift that’d be.”

  “He be dead, Jenny. Lord Brill killed him.” Daffyd takes the two steps onto the porch, then stops several paces short of her, the canvas and wooden case in his right hand.

  The brunette steps back toward the door. “What be ye here for?”

  “You owe me, Jenny,” Daffyd says. “You be owing me more than you can ever pay. How many times have I played for you, just the way you wanted, to send or summon folks all the way to Nordwei or Elioch?”

  “I’ve been more than nice to you, Daffyd.”

  Daffyd flushes, then adds, “Aye, and I’ve been nice to you, not charging you for the music.”

  “If Lord Brill be after you …”

  “He’s not after me.” Daffyd waits.

  “Then why are you here?”

  The young man wipes his forehead. “You could invite me in where it’s cooler. You’ve no company.” His eyes traverse the dust on the porch planks, unmarked except by his boots.

  Jenny tightens her lips and looks toward the empty lane, then jerks her head toward the door.

  “Jenny, seeing as it’s me, no one would be saying anything.”

  “Come in, then, seeing as there’s no stopping you.” She stands back from the door.

  Daffyd crosses the porch and steps inside, closing the heavy door with his left hand. The main room is empty, but a faint scent of onions wafts from the kitchen area to the left rear of the cottage. While the cottage is cooler than the late-morning heat outside, Daffyd wipes his forehead with the back of his left hand, his right still clutching the old brown canvas viola case.

  “Well, fine talking Daffyd, what do you want?” The brunette looks to the closed heavy door, and then at the mirror on the cottage wall. “I can’t bring your da back from the darkshadows. Lord Brill himself couldn’t do that. I could send you to Farway. That’s as far as I can do.”

  “That won’t bring back Da.”

  “Nothing will bring back yer da. Not even Meringuay could do that. I’m a rote travel-sorceress—good enough to hold a house—but not more. You told me that yourself. ‘Member that?”

  Daffyd pulls his lips together, then speaks. “He hummed—just a few notes. Just a little. That was all. And only once—not twice like Brill said.”

  “That’d be strong, accusing Lord Brill of lying. He’d not like that.”

  “Like it or not, he lied. Da hummed a little. He’s hummed for years. Everyone knows that, but he doesn’t hum tunes, and it’s never upset patterning before.”

  “Just a few notes in front of the land’s strongest sorcerer.” Jenny shivers
, pursing her narrow lips.

  “He turned him into dust—just dust—and the wind blew him away …”

  “All I can do is send you somewhere,” she repeats.

  “Can you bring someone here?”

  “Aye. If they want to come, but who wants to come to dry Defalk?”

  Daffyd smiles. “Bring me a sorceress. One out of the mists. Make her blonde and strong enough to turn Lord Brill into red dust himself.”

  Jenny shivers again. “Out of the mists? A sorceress? She’d have to want to come, and what one of them would want to leave the mists? Why would they help the likes of you?”

  “Try it. Please … .”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You try it—or I’ll keep you from sending anyone anywhere.” Daffyd’s voice turns cold.

  “You do, and Lord Brill will be a-chasing you.” Jenny backs away. “And you don’t be threatening me, Daffyd. You’re not the only friend I’ve got.”

  “You aren’t the only one I’ve got, either.” Daffyd shrugs.

  “Mayhap … but it’s my cottage where you’ve come.” She crosses her arms and waits.

  Daffyd sighs, and waits. Finally, he speaks. “You’re the best I know, and I need the best.”

  “Ha! You tell all the girls that, and that’s just when you want something.” She walked over the bare open space of the room to the stone hearth, then turns and recrosses her arms. “What you want is trouble.”

  “I need a strong sorceress.”

  “What am I—failed bread?”

  Daffyd’s lips tighten, and his breath hisses out through his nose. After a moment, he asks, “Do you want to take on Brill?”

  “Am I looking as daft as a heatstruck fowl?”

  The young man shrugs.

  “Oh, Daffyd … you’ve always been trouble.”

  Daffyd sets the viola case on the battered waist-high square table set against the wall that separates the kitchen from the main room. He opens the case carefully and extracts the polished viola, then the bow.

  “I need a spell for the mists,” points out Jenny.

  “I have one.” He gently sets the viola on the table beside the case, and fumbles in his wallet before extracting a scrap of paper covered with smeared markstick. He reads the words slowly.

  “Bring us a singer, truly strong,

  from the mists beyond our song.

  Her voice like fire, hair like gold,

  her words filled with flame and bold …”

  Jenny holds up her hand. “This spell’s pretty chancy, Daffyd. You could get a blonde-haired lizard that sings.”

  “Let me read it all the way through.”

  The brunette nods.

  Daffyd glances down and keeps reading, his voice deliberate as he pronounces each word. When he finishes, he looks at Jenny and asks, “Well … ?”

  “It might work. Just you make sure you play it all the way through. Those first lines are chancy.” She takes a deep breath and looks at the mirror on the cottage wall. “But you get her outta here quick-like. I’ll be telling Lord Brill you tricked me. You understand that, don’t you? I’d have to be telling him that.”

  Daffyd nods.

  “Recite it again. I need to get the words in my head. Then you’ll be playing your tune. I’ll be needing to listen a few times.” She shakes her head. “A sorceress out of the mists … why …”

  4

  Anna completed an uncertain step, swaying for an instant. The outdoor light of Ames had been replaced with something gloomier—and hotter. She stood in the middle of a room, smaller than the cramped living room in the condo. The walls were a dirty white plaster that was uneven and rough, and there was no ceiling, just open rafters. The faint light that seeped around ill-fitting shutters on the room’s two windows was the only source of illumination.

  Where was she? How had she gotten there? Had she fainted? Her hand twinged, and the door key was somehow burning her hand. Anna slipped the key into the green leather purse, then squeezed her fingers together, pressing her thumbnail into her palm, stopping before the pressure became pain.

  White spots flickered in front of her eyes, and she forced herself to take a deep breath, then another. What had happened?

  “You did it! You did it!” exclaimed a male voice, interrupting her self-inquiries.

  “A travel-sorceress I am. Give me a good spell and a decent tune, and I will bring someone from anywhere,” answered a woman. “You’d better hope she’s what you want.”

  Wondering what the young man wanted, and fearing that she did know, Anna slowly turned from the hearth. On her left were the two shuttered windows, on her right a wall containing only a single wood-framed mirror and near the far end, a closed wooden door. In the middle of the room stood two figures. The man, black-haired and somehow both angular and round-faced, was barely out of youth. He held what looked to be a viola and a heavily arched shed bow and wore faded blue trousers and an armless and collarless shirt fastened with oblong wooden buttons. The woman was several years older, square-faced, in short trousers and a baggy armless blouse.

  Behind them was another wall, with an opening into another room.

  “She is beautiful,” the man said as if Anna were not even present. Anna hated being referred to in the third person. It reminded her of all too many auditions, especially the year she’d been in New York.

  “A sorceress has to appear beautiful, Daffyd. You do not know what she really looks like.”

  Anna glanced down. She still wore the raincoat over her gown, and she was getting hot in the small and stuffy room. After a moment, she unfastened the buttons and the trench coat’s belt and stuffed the ends of the belt into the coat’s pockets. Then her eyes went back to the woman.

  “I’m Anna. Who are you?” Her words sounded firm. Totally inane, but firm.

  “I am Jenny, lady.” The brunette offered a slight bow.

  Anna’s eyes went to the man.

  “Daffyd.” His voice was defensive, and he didn’t bow.

  Where was she? They spoke English, or she understood what they spoke, but it sounded like English.

  “Could you tell me where I might be?” Another totally inane question—she was in a peasant cottage—or totally out of her mind. Had she been hit by a tornado, like Dorothy, and was she lying somewhere hallucinating? Or worse, had Sandy been right about parallel universes or worlds? She’d always believed that the world was the world. Another thought flicked through her mind, a thought that seemed to move so slowly—time travel?

  “Why, you are in Jenny’s cottage,” answered Daffyd sardonically.

  “That much I surmised,” snapped Anna, reacting to the teenaged-student tone she’d heard all too many times in her life already, particularly from ungrateful students. “But where is Jenny’s cottage? And when?”

  The two locals exchanged glances. Daffyd walked to the square table on the wall and slipped first the viola, then the bow, into a canvas case. He did not close the case.

  Anna sighed, then stripped off the raincoat and folded it over her arm. The heat was making her feel faint, and the last thing she wanted was to collapse in front of total strangers in this unknown place. “Could you please tell me where we are?”

  “We are in Mencha, and it is on the eastern marches of Defalk,” said Daffyd, as if the entire world knew the obvious.

  That helped a lot, reflected Anna, before answering. “I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of Mencha, or Defalk, and I don’t know the name of your world.”

  “It is the world, the earth,” answered the brunette. “Some of the sorcerers call it Erde.”

  “Erde,” mused Anna. Germanic, but the two didn’t look especially Teutonic.

  “Except for the worlds of the mist,” added Daffyd, “it be the only world.”

  The only world? Anna felt flushed. “Might I have something to drink? It’s been a long trip.”

  Again, the two exchanged glances, as if Anna had said something profoundly stupid, and she w
anted to scream. That would have made matters worse; it always did. Then Jenny bowed slightly, turned, and walked through the opening in the wall to what might have been a kitchen, although all Anna saw was what seemed to be a brick stove and a table with a bench on one side. Her legs felt stiff, and Anna looked for a place to sit. There were two short benches and a higher stool.

  Daffyd kept looking at her as if she were not quite real, the way her new students did after she’d done a recital, as if they couldn’t believe that she could sing, really sing.

  Bother it! Anna stepped away from the unused hearth toward the stool. She set her purse on the dusty plank floor and quickly folded the raincoat over the rough wooden stool, hoping that the trench coat would shield the gown from any splinters. As she sat, her nose twitched from the dust in the hot room, and she rubbed it gently, almost afraid to sneeze.

  Jenny returned across the dusty plank floors, a brown earthenware mug in her hands. She extended the handleless mug to Anna. “Here, lady.”

  “Thank you.” Anna stared at the water in the mug. It looked clean.

  “I spell my water clean,” offered Jenny. “Most folks can’t, you know, and they won’t pay to get it done.”

  Spelling water clean? What sort of place was this Erde—like a medieval pigsty? “Thank you.” Anna sipped the lukewarm water, then drank the mug down to the bottom. She’d been thirstier than she’d realized.

  The two continued to study her intently, as if looking for some sort of sign.

  “Why did you bring me here?” Anna reached down and lifted the green leather purse into her lap, rummaging through it for a handkerchief. She used the rumpled cloth to blot her damp forehead gently. The room was hot, hotter than the Colonial, and she had the feeling that it was even hotter outside. She looked down at the purse. The leather around the metal clasps was browned, as if it had been scorched or burned. She didn’t recall that, but she’d grabbed the purse in a hurry.