The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  After washing up, Anna returned to the salon where, for once, she arrived before the sorcerer. She seated herself, pouring more water into her goblet, and sipping it while she waited.

  Brill’s face was solemn, almost impassive, when he finally entered the salon. “You need not have waited.”

  From the formality of his statement, Anna decided it was better that she had. “You have always waited for me.”

  The sorcerer pulled out the heavy iron chair, which grated slightly on the stone floor, then sat and immediately filled his goblet with the dark wine that Anna had not tried.

  “Bad news?” she asked, adding, “I saw a rider in purple, earlier … .”

  Brill lowered his goblet. “Lord Barjim sent a messenger.”

  “You don’t sound pleased.”

  The sorcerer shook his head. “The dark ones are beginning to mass their forces on the far side of the Sand Pass. Lord Barjim estimates they will begin to march in two weeks, perhaps three.” He took a long sip from the goblet.

  Serna slipped through the doorway, her sandaled feet almost silent as she carried two platters to the table—one with narrow wedges of both yellow and white cheese, surrounded with dried apple slices, the other with a long loaf of dark bread.

  Brill waited until the server set down the platters, then broke off a chunk of bread from the one and nodded to Anna. She took a chunk herself, and added several wedges of the yellow cheese, and some apples, to her plate.

  “Did you expect them so soon?” Anna asked, hoping the sorcerer would provide more information. She still knew so little.

  Brill chewed through some cheese and bread before answering. “That they would attack before harvest was to be expected. This soon … Barjim had hoped for more time, and so had I.”

  Anna chewed through another mouthful of bread, nodding for him to continue.

  “With the bad harvest of last year, and the dry winter, supplies are scarce. We have a half a season to harvest—and Lord Barjim probably owes half his share of the harvests to the usurers in Encora.”

  “Encora … you haven’t mentioned that.”

  “That’s the liedstadt of Ranuak, and the richest city in Liedwahr.”

  “That’s the one women run?” Anna asked. “If it’s so rich, why aren’t the dark ones attacking there?”

  “They are,” snorted Brill. “They’re moving the Whispering Sands south.” The sorcerer refilled his goblet. “Defalk is an easier target. With all the coins the usurers have, the Ranuans can afford a large standing army, not just levies. Of course, the bitches also need the army and the ships to prove they can collect on their loans.” Brill took another deep swallow from the goblet, then broke off another chunk of bread.

  Anna ate silently for a time, trying to put together what she had learned. Finally, she spoke. “Do you think that what the Ebrans plan is to take over Defalk, then bring back the rain and prosperity, and use that—”

  “Exactly,” snapped Brill. “It’s so obvious, that an outsider like you can figure it out in less than a week, and no one in Liedwahr has been able—or willing—to say so.” The goblet went down on the table with a thump. “Then, they might have to join forces against the dark ones. Instead, they each hope that the lizard snake eats the others first.”

  “You’re upset,” Anna prompted.

  “I am requested, in return for silver, to join Lord Barjim’s forces at his summons.”

  “‘Requested’?” Anna gave the word an ironic twist.

  “I don’t exactly have a choice, dear lady. If Defalk falls to the Ebrans, they will have no use for sorcerers of my type—or yours. If, by some miracle, Lord Barjim holds them off without my assistance …” Brill frowned.

  “You’re not exactly in the best of graces?”

  “Exactly—if you consider being dead or exiled as being in poor graces.” The sorcerer’s eyes flicked to the window.

  Anna followed, but the sky outside remained clear, the walls empty.

  In the silence that followed, Anna asked, “What do you expect of me?”

  “Lady Anna, I expect nothing. You will do as you see fit. You owe Lord Barjim nothing, and so he can ask nothing.”

  “I owe you hospitality and information,” she replied, biting back the thought that the information remained hardfought and scanty.

  “In a struggle such as this, one cannot ask,” Brill said gently.

  Right! She would be forced to volunteer by Brill’s expensive hospitality. “What will you do, then?” she asked

  “All that I can,” answered the sorcerer, with a rueful laugh. “There is little point in doing less.” He lifted his goblet, then held it momentarily, while asking, “How was the workroom? Is there anything … I might help with?”

  The sorcerer’s condescending tone irked Anna, just as Avery’s had, but she wasn’t married to Brill, and she smiled and asked, “Why couldn’t you use just a drum to replicate thunder, rather than requiring both a falk horn and a violincello?” Anna watched Brill intently.

  Brill swallowed hard, then squinted at Anna. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he took another swallow of the vinegarlike wine. “No one has tried to create storm magic in a century—except for the dark ones—and they use the chorus—the power of massed voices.”

  “Why couldn’t you use a drum?” Anna broke off a corner of the dark bread, still the best part of the meals Serna offered.

  “It is like matching voices with different melodies and the same words.”

  “We call that ‘harmony,’” supplied Anna.

  “If the match be not perfect,” Brill continued as if she had not spoken, “then both singers could be destroyed.”

  “But you said that the darksingers used massed voices.”

  “They sing the same notes and words in chorus. That is different.”

  She wondered how different—or were sorcerers so paranoid, or untrusting, like rival tenors, that harmony was effectively avoided? She ate more of the bread, wondering why she was not becoming a balloon.

  “You continually surprise me, Lady Anna. Burning paper, and actually reading.”

  “Don’t most sorceresses read?”

  Brill laughed, not unkindly. “Very few sorcerers or sorceresses could have read what you obviously did. The talent to cast spells does not necessarily require reading. Young Daffyd’s friend Jenny cannot print or read her name, but she is good at summonings and sendings—if someone else supplies the spell and music. That earns her a fair living.”

  Anna shook her head at the reminders that Liedwahr was still mainly an oral culture, even in spell magic, and one where a prosperous woman was one who owned a small house. She noted that, once again, Brill hadn’t answered the question. “Why wouldn’t a drum be enough?”

  The briefest of frowns vanished from the sorcerer’s face. “It has to do with the nature of magic. There is no link between one drumbeat and another. All are the same tone, and by the construction of the drum, all must be of the same tone.” He pulled at his chin. “The first Evult was said to have wrought spells with drums of different pitches, but no one has tried that since, not that I know of, although who would know what they do on the Eastern Isles or in far Sturinn?” Brill turned to Anna, and with that cheerfully false smile, added, “You still puzzle me, lady. You understand some aspects of music, yet not others. Your voice is firm, precise, yet spells seem foreign to you. Once given a hint, you can perform a spell as powerfully as the best, yet you seem to know no spells.”

  “I didn’t say I had no spells,” Anna said slowly. “I think I could come up with several dozen love spells, but love spells aren’t really what I need.”

  “Several dozen?” Brill’s voice sharpened.

  “Maybe more,” Anna admitted. “You might say that those songs are the ones most in demand in my world.” There! She’d told the truth, but not in a way that revealed anything new. “I was working on a different spell this morning, and I think I have it right, but I need to make sure I have th
e support correct.” She hoped Delibes’ ghost weren’t whirling too much in his grave.

  “I thought you burned the paper?” Brill looked confused.

  “Oh, I did that, all right. That was just an adaptation of the candle spell. And I figured out how to really chill water without smashing your crystal. This was something else.” She smiled brightly, and took another mouthful of the bread.

  “And you said you hadn’t been working that hard?”

  “At a recital, I’d have to perform for at least an hour. A glass, roughly,” she explained. “Perhaps two.”

  The sorcerer shook his head. “Glasses’ worth of love spells, performed one upon the other. Yet you have few other spells? What a strange world must yours be.”

  “It is,” Anna agreed. Put that way, earth did sound strange. “It is.”

  16

  SOUTH OF SYNEK, EBRA

  “Eladdrin?” the voice song-whispers from the harp that stands on the pedestal in the small pond, above the image of the hooded figure in a brown robe so dark it is almost black.

  “Yes, Evult?” The Songmaster bows slightly, his golden hair a pale blur in the darkness of the closed tent.

  “I can still sense the ripples in the music of Liedwahr. Those ripples have already reached Sturinn. What have you done about the mist-world sorceress?”

  “I have taken steps, Evult. The ripples will be removed.”

  “It may not be easy, Eladdrin.”

  “I have made ready a second effort, Evult.” The Songmaster bows again to the image in the luminescent pool. “If necessary, there will be a third.”

  “Good. It would be better were she removed before the faithful combat against the infidels of Defalk.”

  “It would be better, Evult, but one who ripples the weave of the music is strong, and we must march soon.”

  “I understand, Songmaster, but bear my words in mind.”

  “I hear the melody of your music, Evult.” Eladdrin offers a last bow, but the image in the pool has vanished, and the harp is silent above the water.

  After wiping his forehead, then easing the soft cloth into the left waist-pocket of his robe, Eladdrin steps into the cool outside the tent, breathing deeply of the damp air that has followed the rains to the east, taking in the scents of the orchards and the fertile fields.

  As he steps toward the campfire, the two armed monks slip from the shadows and follow.

  17

  Anna sat at the desk in the eastern workroom, her eyes blank. Why was every song she could recall a love song? Or a lullaby? Or useless? She refilled the goblet, and took a sip.

  With each day, she felt more and more useless. Yes, she could burn wood objects, and paper, and freeze water or chill it. She could light and snuff candles, and she had two or three spells that might, just might, do something in a battle. She’d pried some more information out of Brill, but each syllable that meant anything was an effort.

  She’d terrorized a poor servant girl into not following her every step—just every other step—and she had another riding outfit, and a casual gown, and a pair of soft leather shoes for wearing around the hall. But the sheets were still scratchy, the mattress lumpy, and each day, she owed more of that intangible debt to Brill—one he clearly didn’t want paid with her body, but with the skills he pressed her to keep developing.

  The indirectness was driving her crazy.

  She jerked upright at the rap on the workroom door.

  “Are you ready—?”

  “Not yet.” Anna forced a smile. “Would you sit down?” She gestured toward the chair across the desk.

  Brill sat gingerly, his eyes flicking to the window, and then back to Anna.

  “Customs are somewhat different in the mist worlds, or mine, anyway,” Anna began. “And I’ve tried to discuss certain matters with you, but you are so charming that they never get discussed. So I have a few questions, and I’d be even more deeply in your debt if you could bear with me and answer them.”

  “I have tried to be most forthcoming.”

  “As I know you have,” Anna said flatly. “First, in simple terms, if Daffyd and Jenny, who have far less skill than you, could summon me, why can’t you send me back to my world?”

  Brill looked at Anna. “Song magic isn’t just a sorcerer singing and players playing. The words have to be right, and the sorcerer has to be able to see what he wants. I have to be able to see the fort Lord Barjim wants, almost to feel it. I use the drawings and plans to help create the image in my mind.” He shrugged. “Daffyd could bring you here, because he was asking for any sorceress to be placed in a setting he could see. The problem with sending you back into the mist worlds is that you’re the only one who can see where you need to go, and you can’t send yourself.”

  Anna half understood the visualization aspect, but it still bothered her. It had been almost a week, and Elizabetta had to be upset—a totally vanished mother, with no trace whatsoever. “That’s almost saying that no one can send me back unless I can show them an image that they can hold to.”

  “You must trust them, totally,” the sorcerer pointed out. He frowned, then added. “Perhaps you can see why sometimes the smallest of distractions can upset a sorcerer. They should not, but they do. And there is the problem of the burning. Too many attempts, and the fires turn on the sorcerer. That is why my glimpses of the mist worlds have been infrequent and seasons apart, fascinating as I find such glimpses.”

  Anna nodded, trying not to swallow at the double impact, as she understood also what Brill was saying about Daffyd’s father. And the business of burning—was that why her key had been so hot?

  But she had to get more answers while Brill was sitting still. “Second, what can song magic do to stop the dark ones, and what is it that you want me to do to help you?” Anna held up a hand to cut off Brill. “No more nice fancy statements. Plain and simple.”

  “If all women of the mist worlds are like you, I see why the old books caution against summonings.” Brill added a slight laugh.

  Anna presented a hard professional smile.

  Brill’s laugh died away.

  “I will have to use clearsong if they are near the hills, or darksong, if they are not, to bring destruction on the Ebran soldiers.” The sorcerer spread his hands. “Some of my players … darksong would destroy, and that weakens what I can do.”

  “What would you like from me?”

  “Any spell or magic that will stop the Ebrans or the dark ones.” Brill smiled ruefully.

  Anna understood the smile. He found her attractive, but her possible power even more so. She stood. “Last question. Why do I need guards?”

  “For the same reason as I do. These days people want to kill sorcerers … or sorceresses. And you don’t know how to use a blade, either.” Brill eased to his feet.

  “There must be something I can carry,” Anna suggested. “You carry a sword.”

  “Not willingly, and not well. It takes seasons, if not years, to really master a blade.”

  Anna frowned. She’d used a sword once, when she’d played Clorinda. She’d been younger then, twenty years younger, and her arms had ached for weeks, and that had been a choreographed fight. “What about a knife?”

  “That’s worse.”

  “So … what do you suggest, lord and master of the hall Brill?” Anna’s eyes flashed.

  The sorcerer looked away.

  Anna waited.

  “A truncheon or a short staff. You should have some personal-protection spells worked out before long, and you won’t ever master the blade enough to hold off trained armsmen.” Brill added hastily. “I can’t, either. So what you need is something to keep people off you enough to allow you to use your voice.”

  Anna had to admit that the sorcerer made a sort of sense, even if he were suggesting that she get some personal-protection spells in a hurry. “How about one of each?”

  “It couldn’t hurt, just so long as you remember that you really don’t know how to use a knife.”r />
  Anna tried to repress the glare she felt at Brill’s condescending tone.

  The sorcerer stepped back. “If you hold a knife and a truncheon, that might give you time to use a spell.”

  Again, what he said made sense, but she still hated that air of condescension. “How do I get them?”

  “Quies’ son Albero is the armorer, as close to one as we have. I believe we have some knives and truncheons. Those would be better.”

  “I know. It’s been twenty years since I held a sword, and I didn’t do well with it then.” Anna forced a rueful smile.

  “I had not realized blades were used in the mist worlds.”

  “They’re not, not normally. I was in grad school, and I played a part that required using a sword. That was a long time ago.” Anna’s stomach growled. “I’m hungry. We can go.”

  “You have no more questions?”

  “I have a lot more questions, more than you’ll want to answer, but I’m hungry.” Anna gestured toward the workroom door.

  Outside the dome building, the midday sun beat through the clear air, as it had every day without fail. Even in the shade of the portico, the air seemed hotter than the day before—as if the atmospheric oven had been eased up a few more degrees. Anna looked down at the empty water buckets for the horses.

  “We refilled’em twice, lady,” said Frideric apologetically. “Gero’s gone to get some more.”

  Brill glanced to Wiltur. “Any visitors?”

  “No, ser. The roads are clear, mostly, except for a messenger of Lord Barjim’s. He was riding toward the Sand Pass.”

  “We’ll be seeing more of that.” Brill untied the mare and mounted.

  “A-feared so, ser.”

  As Anna bounced toward the hall, she realized, not for the first time, that she needed more practice riding. Then, again, she needed more practice at everything.

  18

  ENCORA, RANUAK

  “What was that awful disharmony in the chords, Veria?“The round-faced and gray-haired woman offers a cheerful smile as she lifts with both hands the steaming cup that has no handles.”Did you ever manage to find out?”