The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Those people I have met—not the dark ones—have been nice. It is hot,” Anna offered, “much, much hotter than where I’m from. And the air is much drier.”

  “It has been hot for the past years, because of the black ones. They’ve stolen our rain, and the winter snows, and every year the grain harvests have been less, the kernels smaller,” added Madell.

  “And Lord Brill? How was he? He is said to be a great sorcerer. Daffyd has said much, but I would know what you thought,” asked Dalila.

  “Yes, what did you think?” asked Madell, with a smile not quite a smirk.

  “Lord Brill was most hospitable to a stranger, and very helpful, to the end. He was a learned man, and I don’t think he was ever comfortable in using his sorcery for warfare. In his own way, he seemed honorable about most things, but I couldn’t say for sure, because I didn’t know him that well or for very long.”

  “I daresay you knew him better than most,” offered Madell. “Being as you’re a sorceress,” he added quickly.

  “I don’t know,” Anna said, stifling a yawn. She was tired, but still hungry, and she took another mouthful of stew, followed with more bread. The bread was good, though not so good as Serna’s, but the stew was far better than any meat dishes she had had at Brill’s hall. And she was hungry all the time, anymore.

  “He was a good sorcerer,” Daffyd said. “But … he didn’t …” The player shook his head.

  “You’re tired, Daffyd,” suggested Dalila. “How long a ride was it?”

  “Almost four days,” answered the young man. “We had to take the old road because the Ebran armsmen were marching on Mencha.”

  “A long four days,” added Anna, mechanically taking another bite. Her head ached slightly, still, and her muscles all were tight. She yawned, covering her mouth.

  “Tired you are, lady?” asked Dalila as she rocked Ruetha in her arms. Her daughter’s eyes were closed, and a faint smile crossed the child’s lips.

  Anna nodded. How long had it been since she had held hers like that? How long since Elizabetta … ? She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not thinking very well.”

  “Have you had enough to eat?” asked Daffyd’s sister.

  “Yes. It was good.”

  “Then shoo … . You need some rest. Four days in the saddle.’Course you’d be tired.” With her free left hand, Dalila gestured toward the guest room. “You just climb into that bed and sleep till you wake. We’ll leave bread and cheese for you. So don’t worry. Get some rest.”

  “Thank you. I will.” Anna eased out from the bench, almost stumbling because her feet felt so heavy, vaguely amused at the pert and motherly tone from the young woman.

  “Now … you be sleeping well, lady,” Madell said heartily as he stepped closer to her, almost grinning.

  “I’m very much looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep,” Anna said. She turned away from Madell and looked at Dalila. “Thank you again for dinner. It was the best food I’ve had in a long time.”

  Dalila flushed. “You’d just be saying that, Lady Anna.”

  “I meant it. Thank you.” She turned to Daffyd. “Good night, Daffyd.” And then to Madell. “Good night.”

  She stopped in the doorway of the guest room, but someone—Madell, she guessed—had lit the single candle on the dresser. So she stepped into the room and closed the door, letting the latch click.

  Anna hadn’t liked the looks from Madell, or the tone of his words, and she stopped and checked the door. There was only a simple catch, not a bolt, nor a lock. She grinned as she saw the simple chamberpot behind the door, but the smile faded.

  What if Madell came after her? Would he, in the same house as his wife or consort or whatever the term was? Anna snorted. Madell’s type well might. Were men the same everywhere? She shook her head. Brill had been a gentleman; he’d even tried to give youth to Liende with his death. Anna’s eyes burned for a moment. Nothing ever turned out the way anyone planned.

  Her eyes drifted back to the door. She yawned, not wanting to deal with Madell. But she didn’t want to deal with a surprise visitor in the middle of the night, either.

  Her fingers strayed to the truncheon and the knife at her belt, then she shook her head. Unless she wanted to hurt or kill the man, they wouldn’t do much good, and he was probably physically stronger than she was.

  Sorcery? Her lips tightened. Same problem. Assuming she could sing, she could kill him … but that wouldn’t make things any better, especially for Daffyd’s sister. She took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead. Why did things keep getting more complicated? Why?

  The room was close, still hot, although some air circulated through the louvers of the shutters. The single candle fluttered on the narrow dresser.

  All she wanted was to be left alone, to get some rest, but she had a gut feeling that it wouldn’t work out that way.

  First, she stacked the saddlebags with the tools in them against the back of the door. Then, with one eye on the door, she rummaged through the other set of saddlebags. She had the one gown, not in the best of shape, that Palian had—bless her heart—stuffed into the saddlebags. But she couldn’t keep sleeping in her clothes. Finally, still watching the door, she slipped out of the filthy riding clothes and into the somewhat cleaner gown.

  She still didn’t have an answer.

  All she wanted was for him to leave her alone. Just—go away. Then, she smiled, and began to call up the words. They were appropriate, and she didn’t even have to change them. She spoke them all the way through twice, then hummed the melody.

  After turning back the covers, she slipped the truncheon and knife under the corner of the thin pillow, then blew out the candle and stretched out on the pallet—lumpy like every mattress or bed she’d found in Erde. But it didn’t matter. Her eyes closed almost immediately.

  Sccccttcchhh …

  Anna woke to the scratchy sliding sound of the door being opened and pushing the saddlebags. She sat up and pulled the knife from the sheath, her sleepy hands fumbling as she did. Grasping the truncheon was easier. She slid to the end of the bed, trying to get her eyes to focus, and to clear her head.

  She was so groggy—and tired. The words? The song? Something about going away? Why? Why?

  Sccctttcchhhh … Now the door was being closed.

  She could make out the vague outline of a figure padding toward the bed.

  “Oh … you’re awake and waiting, lass … .” Madell’s soft words oozed toward her.

  Her head ached, and she kept trying to remember what she was going to sing. Why did it take her so long to think when she woke? She wanted to cry in frustration, even as she edged away from Madell.

  “Now … with your fine protector gone, who will look after you, lass?” Madell whispered, his hands grasping her wrist. “You’re no sorceress, just a pretty trollop pretending to be one. You need a real man …”

  Anna tried to think. What were the damned words? Damn! What were they? Why couldn’t she think? Because she was so damned tired?

  “The door?” she asked.

  His hand relaxed slightly as his head turned toward the door. Anna jerked away from him, standing and holding the knife low as Albero had taught her.

  “Go away …” she murmured to herself. Finally! She had them.

  In the gloom, Madell looked at the shimmering blade, and at the way she held the knife, and paused.

  Anna began to sing as she stood there, trying to keep her weight balanced, hoping the words would be enough, mentally insisting that they suffice.

  “Go away from my window,

  go away from my door.

  Oh, please go away from this heart of mine,

  and trouble me no more.”

  Madell stopped short of her, as if he had run into an invisible wall. He reached toward her a second time, then recoiled.

  Anna slashed with the knife, drawing a bloody line across his wrist, but Madell’s lunge stopped short of her again.

  “What h
a’ ye done to me?”

  “Not nearly so much as I will,” snapped Anna, “if you don’t get out of here and leave me alone.”

  Slowly, Madell backed toward the door as Anna advanced, still keeping the knife low. She wanted to kill the bastard.

  Madell backed up more quickly, fumbled with the latch, opened the door, and slipped into the main room, leaving the door ajar behind him. Anna closed it slowly and pushed the saddlebags back into place.

  For a long time, Anna sat on the pallet, trying not to shiver. Did she shiver because Madell might have assaulted her or because she knew, after the spell, clumsy as she was, that she could have killed the man?

  What was she becoming? Did she have any choice? Why didn’t anyone leave her any choice? Why?

  She wanted to scream. Instead, she slipped the knife and truncheon under the pillow and lay back. Sleep eluded her for a long time, a long time filled with images of broken walls, and men flayed with fire, and Madell lusting and panting about “a real man.”

  45

  Anna looked around the empty main room of the house. It didn’t seem that late, but she had slept at last, surprisingly, and longer than she would have thought possible after the night before. At least Madell didn’t seem to be around, for which she was thankful.

  She walked across the wide plank floor toward the table. As Dalila had promised, a half loaf of bread lay there, along with something folded in cloth. Anna unwrapped the cloth—yellow cheese. Using her belt knife, she sliced off several chunks and ate them with an end of the bread. Then she sliced some more, and ate them. A third set followed. Why was she so hungry?

  She hadn’t been that hungry when she was young the first time. Or was it the magic? She orderspelled the water in the pitcher and poured some into a clay mug. In the end, she ate more than half of both bread and cheese, and drank nearly three mugfuls of water—she’d pay for that later, with a trip to the little house in back.

  After hearing humming from the doorway at the end of the house, Anna edged toward it. The door opened into a room—or addition to the house—the size of the guest room, and two steps down to a lower level, the ground actually, as shown by the packed-clay floor. Two big wooden barrels set above the packed clay floor on square stones filled the space. Ruetha sat beside the barrel closest to the outside door, and scratched lines—or a design or picture—in the clay. Then the little girl threw down the stick and stood.

  Dalila walked through the door and poured a bucketful of water into the barrel farthest from the door, then turned and walked out, not even looking toward the doorway.

  On a crude long shelf on the wall were piled heaps of clothes. Outside, Anna could hear someone—Daffyd?—chopping or splitting wood. She stepped down and looked into the tubs. The one closest to the door was empty, the one farthest about half full.

  “Laundry?” Anna asked as Dalila reentered with yet another bucket.

  “Washing, aye. I hate it, and there’ll be more of it once there’s another.” Dalila looked down at her protruding abdomen.

  “I never liked laundry that much,” Anna said quietly, stepping up to the end of the table and smiling down at Ruetha, whose face was already grimy.

  The little girl smiled back, shyly, then buried her head in her hands for a moment.

  Anna hadn’t thought about what washing would require in Liedwahr—one step above the riverbank—hot water to be heated on the stove, tubs to be filled, clothes to be hung on lines. Did Dalila heat an old-fashioned cast-iron iron on the stove, or were the clothes worn wrinkled?

  “I didn’t know as ladies worried about laundry.”

  “The ‘lady’ business is recent,” Anna said. “Sin—sorceresses are far more common in the mist worlds, and I did my own laundry, but we had magic machines—everyone did—that gave us hot water … and a few other things.”

  “That would be nice.” Dalila sighed, and reached across the table to extract a work shirt from Ruetha’s grasp. “Could you sing magic like that here?”

  “I don’t know.” So far, she’d never really used her magic for anything useful—except for the business of lighting candles and lamps or cooling and purifying water. “Let me think about it for a moment.”

  Could she bring water to the two barrel-tubs? With a variant of her water spell?

  Anna walked back to the guest room and retrieved the mandolin, still puzzling out alternative words for the water spell.

  Finally, she stood in the wash room doorway, and sang.

  “All day she’ll face the laundry’s tasks,

  and she’ll need her casks

  of water, clear, pure water …”

  Despite the hokey words and the inadequate rhyme scheme, water splashed in both tubs.

  Dalila stopped at the nearer barrel with her bucket in hand, a puzzled and worried look on her face. “Lady … I’d not ask … but … most times I have to heat the water for the one barrel.”

  Anna should have known, but why not try again?

  “Do you mind experimenting?” she asked.

  “Experimenting? Is that a form of sorcery?” The pert brunette put down the bucket and picked up her daughter.

  “Perhaps. Do you put soap in the tub with the hot water?”

  “Aye.” Dalila nodded.

  “And then you put in the clothes, and use the paddle there to stir and wash them?”

  “Know ye another way?” Dalila’s tone was both interested and faintly sardonic.

  “Let’s try. Put in the soap, and then the clothes.”

  As Dalila glanced at Anna, a smile crossed her face.

  “Perhaps you should put your clothes in?”

  Anna looked down at the stained and dusty shirt and trousers, smiling in turn. “I should. Do you have a robe—or something?”

  It was the younger woman’s turn to smile.

  Before long, the white clothes—or those that had once been white or light-colored—were in the front tub, and Anna stood barefooted in the doorway wrapped in a light linen robe. She hoped Madell didn’t show up too soon, but in the dry heat of Defalk, she suspected that her clothes would dry soon—assuming her sorcery worked.

  For some reason, Blake’s The Tyger had kept slipping into her thoughts, and she found a way to use it.

  “Water, water steaming hot,

  in the confines of the pot.

  Boil and bubble up to clean

  the clothes as bright as ever seen.”

  A wave of heat flared back from the barrel, followed by a wave of steam.

  “Mummmy!” Ruetha shrieked.

  Dalila swallowed and eased back from the barrel.

  Anna wiped her forehead. Had she overdone it—again? She felt tired for a moment, and she sat on the step from the kitchen into the washroom. She also realized she was hungry—again.

  “Are you all right, lady?”

  “I’m fine,” Anna said automatically.

  “I think not.” Dalila stepped around the sorceress into the main part of the house and brought back more of the bread and cheese.

  As Anna ate, wondering why such a short spell of singing should take so much energy, Dalila went back to the front tub. There, with the wooden paddle, she lifted out one sodden shirt, holding it as water vapor steamed away from it. She squinted, then moistened her lips as she carried it over to the rinsing barrel, where she dunked it before lifting it out and hand-wringing it. Then she carried the shirt out to the rope-line hung between two posts behind the kitchen door where she smoothed it before stretching it and fastening it in place with a wooden clothespin.

  Dalila studied the shirt for a long moment, then walked back into the washroom.

  “There were stains, lady, but they aren’t there now, and I never could get them out.”

  Anna looked up. “I’m sorry.” As she said it, she wondered why she was apologizing. She’d done the best she could, but her head hurt. Was she still tired from the Sand Pass battle? Or had she done something wrong?

  Dalila scooped up Ru
etha and sat on the floor near Anna’s feet. “Madell was angry this morning … . He tore off some bread and he left. He was saying he was worried about the grain, but he was angry.” Dalila tightened her lips. “I’m not fancy the way you are, and I’m not a player like Daffyd, but I’ve eyes to see … .” The young mother looked imploringly at Anna.

  Anna took a deep breath. “Your Madell thought I was something I’m not.”

  “Aye. I saw the looks … but you … it was plain you were not.”

  “Some men—” Anna broke off.

  “Why was he so angry?”

  “Because I told him to leave me alone … and he wouldn’t … so I cast a spell to keep him from touching me.” Anna looked down at the table. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I should go.”

  “You’re still tired, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Anna admitted.

  “But you used your magic to help me?” Dalila gestured to the tubs.

  “I wish I could do more. The song magic here in Liedwahr is new to me.” Anna glanced down at the three-year-old, who looked back with steady eyes for a time.

  Dalila offered a wan smile. “Best I finish these clothes, and put the others in.”

  Daffyd looked in from the doorway between the washroom and the kitchen end of the main room. He held the ax loosely. “I thought you needed wood to heat the water.”

  “The lady Anna heated it,” Dalila said, bending down to disengage Ruetha’s hand from the washing paddle that Dalila had momentarily leaned against the barrel as she wrung out a shirt. The three-year-old grabbed a dangling lock of hair and pulled, but her mother disengaged her daughter’s grip with a gentle movement and a smile.

  “You mean that I chopped this all for nothing?”

  “No. It’ll be used, little brother. After you and your sorceress friend leave, there will be many weeks where I need wood.” Dalila forced a smile. “Please, would you split some more?” Dalila added, “Please?”