The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  In the gloom barely lifted by Clearsong—that point of light in the west that was far brighter than earth’s evening star and far dimmer than earth’s moon—she could see Farinelli outlined against the stars. Glancing overhead and then to the south, she made out the small reddish disk of the second moon—Darksong.

  The moons were a discordant reminder that Erde was real. Never would Anna have dreamed a dream with two moons—they were something Avery or Sandy would have thought up.

  She tightened the tuning pegs and then strummed the lutar’s strings. The tone was … different, not as tinny as the mandolin, but not as resonant as she would have expected from a guitar.

  “That’s strange,” Daffyd said. “Harsh, it is.”

  She wondered how he would have heard a true guitar, without the softness that the gut strings provided.

  “I thought sorcerers had to be separate from the music and the players.” Stepan adjusted his thin blanket on the dry grass that seemed to crackle with each movement.

  “I’m told that it works better that way.” Anna frowned as she wrestled with the stiff tuning peg. “Some spells it doesn’t matter.”

  “Stepan,” called Markan out of the gloom, “we need some help with the tieline for the mounts.”

  “Coming.” The sandy-haired young man bounced up and away from Anna and Daffyd.

  “Lord Brill said that it didn’t matter with darksong,” Daffyd whispered.

  “You didn’t tell me that before.”

  “I didn’t know you could do darksong.”

  “I can?”

  “Anything that affects living things has darksong in it. The spell with Madell …” Daffyd’s shrug was pronounced enough to be visible in the dim moonlight and starlight.

  Wonderful—she’d have a reputation as a dark sorceress before she ever got to Falcor. “So now everyone will call me a darksinger?”

  “Most sorceresses are considered darksingers, whether they are or not, lady.” Markan folded a blanket and sat down on it.

  “Any woman with power is evil,” Anna said wryly.

  “Except in Ranuak, where men with power are evil. Or Nordwei, where both men and women with power are evil. Or Ebra, where anyone in a dark robe has power and is evil.” Markan’s boyish grin was wide enough to be visible in the dim light.

  A faint breeze swirled through the campsite, and for the first time since dawn, Anna began to feel comfortable.

  Fridric sat down next to Markan.

  “Stepan?” asked Daffyd.

  “He gets first watch, since we did most of the work on the tieline.”

  In the silence that followed, since Anna didn’t feel like talking, mentally she reviewed some of the spells she had developed—the repulsion spell, the various burning spells, the looking-glass spell, the untried spell to create a gown. Would a gown spell be considered darksong? All the fabrics she knew came from something living—except polyester, and somehow that didn’t seem likely on Erde.

  Anna tried the chording for the burning-spell song.

  “That’s not quite a melody, is it?” observed Markan.

  “No. It’s homophonic.” Anna felt difficult.

  Daffyd and Markan exchanged glances, but Anna kept working on the chords and the tuning until she had the progression and the fingering the way she wanted them.

  Then she shifted to “Go Away from My Door”—her repulsion spell, but had to stop after a handful of chords as the lutar slipped out of tune. That was to be expected with new strings, but it was irksome to keep retuning.

  After a time, Markan and Fridric lay down, and so did Daffyd.

  Finally, she stopped struggling with the lutar and looked up at the cold and unfamiliar stars. Was her sun, her earth, somewhere in those heavens? Was her daughter looking at the same stars from somewhere else?

  The stars blurred as her eyes burned with not-quite-shed tears. She put the instrument back in its case and stretched out herself, the blanket only across her waist as sleep slowly crept over her.

  54

  Anna stood in the stirrups, trying to stretch her legs and relieve the tightness in the muscles above her knees. Either she wasn’t riding the way she should be, or everyone’s upper legs were ready to fall off.

  The road was a strip of dust rising from packed red clay five yards wide and stretching from one low hill to the next. To her left was what had once been an orchard, with over half the trees dead or dying. The stead’s house, visible a hundred yards back from the road, had a sagging roof and empty, shutterless windows.

  “Is it like this all the way to Falcor?” asked Anna.

  “For the next day or so,” said Markan, “until we get to the Chean River valley. Lord Kysar built ditches from the river three years ago.”

  “Didn’t the river dry up, too?” Anna brushed away a persistent fly, and Farinelli’s tail swished at the pesky insect.

  “My legs are sore,” mumbled Daffyd, from the gray mare to Anna’s right. “When do we stop for something to eat?”

  “We stopped just a while ago.” The senior armsman looked at Anna.

  “We can keep going for a while.” Anna took off the floppy hat and fanned her face with it, then replaced it. Despite the long sleeves of the shirt, and the hat, her skin was still getting burned by the endless sun, especially the back of her neck.

  “Good idea,” said Markan.

  Fridric and Daffyd both groaned. Anna glanced back. Stepan grinned and shook his head at the sounds coming from the two youngest riders.

  “About the river?” she prompted Markan. “Why hasn’t it dried up?”

  “It rises in the Ostfels, and the dark ones couldn’t cut off the rain there without hurting Ebra. Both the Chean and the Fal run lower now, and there’s been a spate of fights over the water. Lord Jecks had to raze Lord Jurlt’s hall two years ago.” The armsman shook his head. “Wager there’s thousands fewer folk in Defalk now than five years ago, and more leaving and dying each year. More dust storms with the great west winds.”

  Anna tightened her lips. Dust bowls because of natural occurrences were one thing, but using magic to starve a land to death was another. Isn’t it?

  “Can’t we stop soon?” asked Daffyd.

  Anna shook her head. If she could deal with it, the player could.

  Her eyes strayed to the east, across barren, weed-filled fields and another set of collapsing hovels. For some reason, the view reminded her of the back roads of eastern Colorado, when she’d let Sandy navigate.

  “Arms!” snapped Markan.

  “What?” asked Daffyd.

  Stepan and Fridric pulled bows from their leather cases and strung them, following Markan’s example.

  Anna twisted in the saddle and fumbled with the lutar case, extracting the instrument more slowly than the armsmen had readied their weapons.

  From the southwest a narrow trail joined the main road just past a long row of waist-high bushes. Anna glanced back down the southern trail. Three figures on horseback had reined up. The three appeared ragged and bearded, and only one bore a bow. The burly rider in the center carried a huge blade in a shoulder harness.

  For a time the three studied the larger group, then turned their mounts back south.

  “I suppose this means we can’t stop for a while,” muttered Daffyd.

  “Not unless you want to chance getting robbed or worse,” said Markan ironically.

  Daffyd slowly took one leg from the stirrup and awkwardly massaged his thigh as the gray mare plodded along, carrying him up yet another gentle hillside.

  “They’ll bear watching,” said Markan. “Might follow and try to take us by surprise tonight.”

  “Not another night on the ground?” asked Daffyd, replacing his foot in the stirrup.

  “If we’re lucky, we’ll reach the waystop below Stendir.” Markan snorted, still turned in the saddle to watch the retreating bandits—if that were what they were. “Halas is just ahead, and after that, there’s Yrean, and then Poskit. Even in the g
ood years, they didn’t have inns, and few live anywhere near any longer.”

  “There haven’t been many people on the road,” Anna said. “Is that because they all left?”

  “Some. This isn’t the main road to Sudwei, either. So we won’t run across traders. People are too poor to buy now.”

  Anna looked back, but the would-be bandits were cut off from sight as Farinelli started down the far side of the slope. Ahead, the reddish dirt strip stretched past another set of orchards, these apparently tended, and toward another rolling hill.

  “Might be we could rest at the crest of that next hill,” suggested Markan.

  “Good,” mumbled Daffyd. “If I can stay on this beast that long.”

  Were they traveling that much faster than they had coming from the Sand Pass? Anna wondered. Was she stronger because she was younger? Or was Daffyd just bored by the endless and monotonous nature of the journey?

  She wiped the sweat out of the corners of her eyes, then repeated the acrobatics to replace the lutar in its case before she finally reached for her water bottle.

  55

  Anna looked to the north, across rows of corn taller than Farinelli’s shoulders. The river valley was a lot more like Ames, flat and humid, though much of the humidity had to come from the irrigated fields extending away from both sides of the road that stretched ahead to the flat western horizon. With the humidity and the greenery, it was hard to believe that the drought-struck desolation of Mencha and Synope lay but a few days ride behind her.

  She brushed away another of the flies that had plagued them from almost the moment they had descended from the river bluffs on the east side of the Chean River the afternoon before, even before they had forded the wide brownish waters outside the little hamlet of Sorprat.

  Farinelli swished his tail almost constantly as the five rode almost due west under the noonday sun, and the flies continued to buzz and circle.

  Anna readjusted her battered hat, then turned in the saddle. “How much farther to Pamr?”

  “Unless I miss my guess, that’s it.” Markan pointed to a brown-and-green smudge on the horizon, where trees lifted above the greenery of the endless crops.

  “It is,” Daffyd confirmed. “I was there a couple of years ago.” He shifted his weight in the gray mare’s saddle, wincing.

  “Are your legs still stiff?” Anna asked.

  “They’re stiff, and they’ve been aching since the first day. I don’t know how you manage.”

  Anna’s legs hurt, too. It was almost torture to walk for the first few steps whenever she dismounted, but she didn’t see much point in talking about it. What could anyone else do?

  “Ouch …” The player swatted vainly at one of the flies. “They bite.”

  “Hard,” Anna agreed. She had a few welts on her neck, and one on the back of her left hand. “I wonder if we could find out what the dark ones are doing? Or if the Prophet is going to attack them soon?”

  “Or if the Norweians have bought both countries,” suggested Daffyd.

  “Might be a good idea,” Markan said. “Can you use your sorcery?”

  Anna frowned. “I could call up images, but I don’t know how to get what they say.” She paused. “I also don’t know who would give us that kind of information. Sorcery doesn’t do that. Not what I can do, anyway,” she added.

  A gray blot on the road ahead slowly grew into the shape of a wagon as they continued to ride west.

  “Could we ask the drivers of that wagon?” Anna asked. “They might know something.”

  “We can ask,” Markan said. “They might just be local farmers.”

  By the time they neared the wagon—also headed west—the man beside the driver had turned in the seat and had a bow ready.

  “Off with ye!” snapped the driver. “We don’t want trouble.”

  “Arms!” snapped Markan, and the guard lowered his bow in the face of the three armsmen.

  “We don’t want your goods or anything else,” Anna said, “except information. And civility,” she added sweetly.”Do you know how far the Ebrans have marched?”

  “Couldn’t say. We only went as far as Sorprat. Some say they stopped at Mencha.” The driver spat onto the road, flicking the reins. “Not get us out there again. Levies running everywhere, except for Kysar’s. Some captain had them in tow. Half decent, they were, but they marched back, and the others, every time you looked around, some fool was trying to grab something, even raw carrots.”

  “Some of them just drooled and plodded along,” added the driver’s guard.

  “Have you heard about Lord Behlem?” asked Markan.

  “Some say he’s bringing in a regular army. Some say he’s goin’ to make Defalk part of Neserea. Who cares? Just leave us and our horses alone. One lord, another lord … don’t make much difference.”

  As they rode around the wagon team and toward Pamr, Anna kept looking back. So did Markan, until they were well beyond bow range.

  “They weren’t very friendly.” Anna said.

  “No wonder, if there are that many levies and armsmen wandering loose,” said Stepan from where he rode behind the pack mares.

  “It’s bad. Probably get worse,” Markan mused. “Be better to take the long south road and then the river trail back.”

  “Why didn’t we go that way?” the sorceress asked.

  “It takes twice as long, and we didn’t know which might be worse.”

  That made sense, especially in a world where rapid communications were nonexistent. Anna kept from shaking her head, and instead looked at the fields beside the road, now filled with what looked to be some form of beans.

  As she watched, a fat bird, like a golden pheasant, flapped out of the grass between two fields, and across the road before them.

  “Oh … for a net,” said Daffyd. “The goldens are delicious.”

  “Best not say that too loudly, player. Most places they’re reserved for the lords.” Markan laughed. “In the light of day, leastwise.”

  “Lord Brill said they belonged to those who caught them, but he punished any who took the females or the chicks.”

  “Wise man,” said Markan.

  The more Anna traveled Defalk, the wiser Brill sounded—yet he had killed Daffyd’s father in cold blood. She shook her head. Would she seem like that to others—if she survived?

  A well-tended home, with a lane to a barn, stood on the north side of the road. Two men struggled with shovels on an irrigation ditch beyond the single-story house.

  “KKhhhcheww!” Anna’s whole body ached with the force of the sneeze. She wiped her nose gently and blotted the involuntary dampness from her eyes. She hated to sneeze like that.

  Slowly, as they rode west, Pamr rose out of the fields, a wide clump of tended trees, overshadowing houses and shops. Anna could see a second line of trees running from the southeast to the northwest, marking the turn of the river back toward the west just beyond the town.

  The road remained dusty, and Anna tried to avoid rubbing her itching nose, but she still sneezed intermittently, as did Daffyd and the armsmen.

  On the right they neared a fenced field, and Anna smelled the cattle even before she saw them.

  A reddish stone stood on the left side of the road, proclaiming, Pamr—1 D.

  “See?” exclaimed Daffyd.

  Anna nodded, and kept riding, riding past the small huts and larger homes, all white-plastered as in Synope, although the walls were more reddish tan than white. Irrigation didn’t do much for road dust, or any other dust outside the fields.

  While none of the houses in Pamr appeared deserted, many had a worn sense to them. Was that just the nature of homes in a more primitive culture—or was that because of the hard years? Anna didn’t know.

  Unlike the chandlery in Synope, the one in Pamr was freshly painted—blue with white trim—and the sign read Forse. Beside the chandlery on the left was a cooper’s, and on the right was a narrow brick building without any sign. Across the street was an inn
—whitewashed with green trim, and a sign bearing the picture of a green and well-endowed bull.

  Anna reined up outside the chandlery and dismounted, glancing across the empty street toward the Green Bull, where two bearded men watched. A wagon creaked down the dusty street and swung into the inn’s courtyard.

  “Would you like us to come in?” asked Markan.

  Anna shook her head. “I’m only going to ask directions.”

  She stepped inside the building, which reeked of leather and wax and sweat, and looked at the long counter to the left, on which were haphazardly piled items, including a mildewed bedroll, several sets of water bottles, a saddle, and three open boxes of candles of varying lengths.

  “What would you like?” asked the stocky and unshaven man standing in the dimness by the counter.

  “Directions. Which way to Lord Kysar’s hall?” Anna forced a pleasant smile, not an alluring one, but one she hoped was businesslike.

  The stocky man stepped forward. “Aren’t you a beauty. Sure you aren’t looking for the River’s Rest?” He leered.

  “I’m looking for Lord Kysar’s hall.” Anna’s voice was cold.

  “Why you be looking for that? Old Kysar’s dead, and some captain I never heard of is holding it for his consort. Arrogant pup. Bet he’d like to see the likes of you. Don’t know as you’d like it, not the way those captains are. Now … I could be real friendly.” Another leer followed.

  Anna tightened her lips, fighting back the temptation to use some spell on the chandler, before asking, “It wouldn’t be Captain Dekas, would it?”

  “One’s the same as the other.” The leer faded, and the chandler’s eyes took in her riding clothes and the knife and truncheon. “You know that captain?”

  “I know some of the ones that were at the Sand Pass.”

  “Oh … a favorite, were you?” The leer returned.

  “No. I was there.” She couldn’t say she was there to fight, for all that she had killed.