The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Birke guided Anna around the horse droppings and toward the stable. “It’s good to be able to ride again, and the Prophet even let me send a scroll to my sire. I told him about you, and about riding. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Heavens, no.” Anna laughed.

  “It’s not quite like it was when Lord Barjim was here, but it’s getting there. We still don’t have lessons like we used to, but Galen’s gone.”

  “Galen?”

  “He was Jimbob’s tutor, as well as counselor to Lord Barjim, but he managed to take Jimbob out of the liedburg before the Prophet arrived. Some armsmen clattered out of here in the middle of the night, and the Prophet’s forces were here in the morning.” Birke stopped as the dark-haired Daffyd stepped from the shadowed doorway ahead.

  “I’m glad you could come, Lady Anna.” Daffyd bowed.

  “She keeps her word,” Birke said. “By your leave, Lady Anna?”

  The sorceress and the player watched as the redhead hurried back toward the north tower.

  “I’m hungry,” Daffyd confessed.

  “Then lead on, master player,” Anna said lightly.

  “We’re there,” he said, turning and opening the weathered door. The room had two trestle tables in it, and four long benches. The rough-planked ceiling was low enough that Anna could have reached up and touched it. Three men and a woman sat at the tables, the three men in one group, and the woman alone. All looked up as Anna and Daffyd entered.

  “You don’t mind bread and cheese, with beer?” asked the violist.

  “That’s fine. I can’t stay too long, though. I have another command performance.”

  “Lord Behlem?”

  “Lady Essan. She’s important, but I don’t remember quite why.”

  “She’s the widow of Lord Donjim. He was Lord Barjim’s uncle and the Lord of Defalk before Barjim.” Daffyd pulled at his chin. “Do you know why she wants to see you?”

  “Not a clue. I hoped you might know. You know more about Defalk than I do. But you’re hungry.”

  “Let me introduce you to Fiena. Just sit down and I’ll get you a platter.”

  “Make it a lot, please,” Anna said. “Twice as much as you’d eat.”

  Daffyd’s eyes widened.

  “Sorcery. If I don’t eat like a stuffed horse, I lose weight.”

  “If you say so.” Daffyd gestured toward the woman sitting at the table nearest the stone wall—clearly part of the exterior wall of the liedburg. “Fiena, this is the lady Anna. Fiena is the lead string player for the Prophet.”

  “I am most honored.” Fiena, a strawberry-blonde with wide blue eyes and a pinched face, sat with her back to the wall. Her eyes went to the platter before her, filled with wedges of yellow brick cheese and a large chunk of dark bread, then back to Anna as the sorceress eased herself onto the bench across from the string player. “You do look so young, lady. Everyone said that, but it’s hard to believe until you see.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” Anna said blandly, deciding she didn’t really trust the blonde. “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from Esaria. Most of us are. There’s a players’ school there. It’s the only one in Liedwahr, they say.”

  “There was one in Elahwa once,” Daffyd interjected as he set a platter before Anna and another to her right. Both were filled with bread and cheese, Anna’s overflowing in all directions. “The dark ones destroyed it.”

  “Where did you hear that?” asked Fiena.

  “Lord Brill.” Daffyd slipped back to the serving table.

  “Oh, he was the one who failed.” Fiena gestured vaguely.

  “He was very successful in many things,” Anna said gently, taking a good-sized mouthful of bread, then breaking off a generous chunk of cheese.

  “I suppose so,” answered Fiena. “I don’t know much about Defalk.”

  Daffyd set a tumbler before Anna and another before his own plate.

  “How many players are there with the Prophet?” Anna asked.

  “Just eight of us. That’s more than enough. He can only do small spells. They say his sire was a great Prophet.”

  “That was Mikell,” Daffyd explained. “Even Lord Brill admitted he was a great sorcerer. That’s why the Norweians assassinated him.”

  “He died in his sleep,” said Fiena.

  Daffyd shrugged. “Lord Brill said he was killed, that no one but a Norweian assassin could bring down that great a sorcerer.”

  Anna felt like she was following a tennis match, with her head traveling back forth. She tried to concentrate on forcing more food into her system.

  “I don’t know much about Nordwei.” Fiena dismissed Nordwei with a gesture that reminded Anna of too many over-the-hill divas, or Mozart’s prototypical Madame Goldentrill. “I do know that it is impossible for assassins to have killed Lord Mikell.”

  “How did you get to be a player?” Anna decided to change the subject. “Was anyone in your family a player?”

  “My father was the lead string player for Lord Mikell.” Fiena shrugged. “I was the youngest daughter. I would far rather be a player than the consort of a flax merchant.”

  Did that mean that her father had had too many daughters? “How many sisters did you have?” Anna asked.

  “Four. Grendee is the consort of Dene—”

  “Dene was the son of Lord Mikell’s brother,” Daffyd added.

  “Sort of a duke,” mused Anna.

  “Duke?”

  “Never mind.” Anna took a healthy swallow of the beer. “It means something like the brother of a lord.”

  Fiena shook her head minutely, stopped her intermittent eating and looked at Anna silently for a moment, before saying, “I don’t know much about foreign words.” The string player dismissed foreign words with the same gesture that she had dismissed Daffyd’s speculations about Mikell’s death.

  “I take it that most players do not have consorts,” Anna offered.

  “Not women. It disturbs the harmonies.” Fiena looked at Anna’s platter. “You eat like a sorcerer. All of you eat so much and are so thin.”

  Anna broke off another piece of bread and chewed it slowly, along with some of the hard cheese. What Fiena said about women players didn’t make sense. Liende had been Brill’s lover, as had Daffyd’s mother. She looked toward Daffyd.

  His mouth full, the young violist shrugged.

  Anna took a long sip of beer, then asked, “What is Esaria like?”

  “Esaria is beautiful, with white stone buildings on the hills, and wide bridges over the Saris. It’s the oldest city in Liedwahr, and scholars come from across all of Erde, even from far Sturinn, to study at the Temple of the Prophet.” Fiena smiled faintly. “Each season has its beauty, and no other city is beautiful in all seasons. That is why the Prophet chose it, and why it has endured.”

  “What makes Esaria so beautiful?” Anna pressed.

  “Just everything.”

  “Is there anything in Falcor that resembles Esaria?”

  “I haven’t seen much of Falcor. I didn’t bother.” Fiena dismissed Falcor.

  Anna took a last mouthful of bread. Had she eaten the entire platter of cheese and bread? She felt still hungry, and yet as though she could not swallow another morsel. She finally nodded to Daffyd before rising and turning to Fiena. “It was nice to meet you, Fiena.”

  “It was pleasant to meet you, Lady Anna, but I hope I didn’t offend you. I don’t know much about sorceresses.” Fiena smiled her faint smile.

  Anna returned the smile.

  Daffyd gulped the last of his meal and scrambled after Anna.

  “Are they all like that?” she asked Daffyd after they left the room and stood in the courtyard.

  “Like what?”

  “Never mind,” Anna said.

  “Fiena’s nice, once you get to know her.”

  “I’m sure she is.” Nice and empty-headed. The sorceress stepped back as two messengers guided their mounts toward the stable. The faint braww
king of chickens echoed through the courtyard and the heat of the day.

  “Sometimes, Lady Anna, I do not understand you.”

  “I’m sorry, Daffyd. It’s hard to explain. Just because, by some fluke, we speak a language that is similar, we don’t see things in the same way. It’s not your fault.” She paused. “I need to go meet with Lady … Essan.”

  “You should be careful. She is very clever.”

  Anna nodded, instead of snapping out at the condescension in his tone, then added, “I’ll talk to you later.”

  Her boots echoed on the stones as she walked back to the north tower.

  Back in her room, she washed quickly, then slipped into the new tunic and trousers, combed her hair again, swearing as she broke one of the comb’s teeth. She hadn’t seen any combs in Defalk. Then, she hadn’t seen a lot of things, but she couldn’t go around trying to create everything through sorcery. After more than a few spells, especially spells without the lutar, the headaches started, the ones that carried needles that stabbed.

  The sound of hoofs caught her ear, and she walked to the window. Another troop of horse was gathered outside the portcullis gate, reminding her that she remained in the middle of a war on a strange world.

  You’d better find out where those maps Menares promised you are, and get to work. The Ebrans aren’t going to wait forever.

  After a last look in the mirror, she left her room, still troubled that she had no way to lock it, not that it mattered, she supposed, since Behlem’s people would certainly be able to force their way into any place. Anna took the steps up to the upper level slowly. She didn’t want to arrive panting.

  The white-haired woman who opened the heavy tower door was neither stocky nor frail, and stood nearly as tall as Anna, though her face was heavily lined.

  “Lady Essan, I am Anna.” The sorceress inclined her head.

  “You are tall,” said Essan. “Too tall for a blonde woman from Mencha. Please come in.” She stepped aside and gestured toward the pair of chairs covered in embroidered upholstery. Between the chairs was a polished table of dark wood, on which rested a pewter pitcher, two goblets, and a platter containing nuts.

  Anna stepped into the tower room, the same size as hers, and bowed. “I am pleased to meet you.”

  “Yet you did not seek me.” The words were not quite acerbic as Lady Essan closed the door and walked stiffly toward the chairs with the pillow on one side of the seat.

  Anna followed and waited for the older woman to sit before extending the scroll. “The lady Gatrune suggested that I not be too forward.”

  “How do you know Gatrune, if you are such a stranger?” Essan unwrapped the scroll and slowly read it.

  “I had met her consort, Lord Kysar, at the battle for the Sand Pass. When I passed through Pamr later, I stopped to pay my respects. I didn’t know that he had died. That was when I met Gatrune.”

  “That’s what she says. Foolish woman. She believes what people tell her.” Essan gestured to the pitcher. “Help yourself, as you want. Don’t if you’re not thirsty. Makes no difference to me.”

  “Thank you.” Anna eased into the chair across from the older woman.

  “Olive butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Here you are, young and beautiful, and half the tower’s running scared of you. Some nonsense about your coming from the mist worlds. They look in those fancy waters and mirrors, and anything they don’t understand belongs to the mist worlds.” Essan snorted. “You look normal enough, too normal to come from a mist world, and you talk like we do, except for that odd accent. So where are you really from?”

  “A world called ‘Earth.’ They say it’s a mist world, but I couldn’t tell you. In some ways, our worlds are similar. In others they are very different.”

  Lady Essan stared straight at Anna as the sorceress spoke, then leaned forward and took a sip from her goblet. “You believe what you say. Why should I?”

  “Because it’s true. I wish it weren’t.” Anna smiled wryly. “At least, in some ways.”

  “According to the legends, no one can be transported without wanting it. Why did you want to come here?”

  Essan’s blunt frankness was disarming in some ways, and Anna found herself answering in the same spirit. “My daughter was killed recently, and I thought things couldn’t get much worse. Just when I thought that, apparently, a sorceress in Mencha was asked to summon a sorceress from the mist worlds, and I found myself in a totally strange world.”

  “Your daughter …” mused Essan. “Some have insisted you are near as old as I am, and enchanted to look younger. How old was she?”

  “Irenia was twenty-eight.” Anna poured some of the amber liquid from the pitcher, trying to guess whether it was cider, wine, or something worse.

  Essan nodded to herself. “You have other children?”

  “Two. I miss them.” And I need to do something, somehow …

  “Sorcery does not work, or it works weakly in your world—is that not true?”

  “That’s true,” Anna admitted. “How did you know?”

  “You are said to be powerful, and too many people have seen your sorcery for that not to be true. Yet you are not arrogant, and you are most careful. You work miracles with sorcery, and often forget, or do not think to use the simplest spells. Why do you not use your mirror to view your children?”

  Anna barely kept her jaw in place. She hadn’t even thought of that. She should have, but it just hadn’t occurred to her.

  “If you are powerful here, yet are not familiar with simple spells, and have little pride in sorcery …” Lady Essan shrugged. “Then sorcery is not strong on your world.” She laughed once, twice, harshly. “The hopes of Defalk lie in the Prophet of Neserea and an unknown sorceress. I am almost glad Donjim did not live to see this.”

  Anna took the smallest of sips from the goblet—and was glad she had. The liquid was something like a strong apple brandy that seared her tongue. With the amount that Lady Essan had sipped already, Anna wondered how the woman could talk, let alone be so lucid.

  “So … how might I help you?” asked the older woman. “Gatrune thinks I should.”

  “I did not come seeking help,” Anna said.

  “Why did you offer your services to the Prophet?”

  “I didn’t see many other choices. I also disliked the Ebrans.”

  “Not many as do like them, but that’s no reason for a stranger to stay.”

  “I don’t like running.” I’ve had to run too often because I’ve never had any power.

  “I like you, girl. Except you’re not a girl. How old are you?”

  “Forty-seven,” Anna admitted.

  “Young enough. You don’t know enough, Anna.” Essan cackled. “No, you don’t. No one told you about youth spells, I’ll wager.”

  “No one had a chance. This was a death spell.”

  “That harmonizes. Brill’d be noble to the end, the dissonant noble fool.” Essan paused to munch several of the nuts. “Youth spells mean you stay young until you die. You live a little longer because you’re healthy, maybe even twenty years longer, but one day, young as you look, you die. Very sudden-like. Me, I prefer the natural state. It’d be too long that I have been around anyway, and being young and pretty isn’t always what it could be. Men,” Essan snorted, “if you’re pretty, they think you have no brains. And if you let it be known that you do, then you’re uglier than a wall-eyed goose, and more dangerous than a pointed blade. So … woman-girl from the mists, ask me questions.”

  “What I don’t understand is how Lord Behlem took over Falcor so easily.” Anna tried the nuts, found that they were salted and spiced almonds, and that she remained hungry.

  “That is not difficult to explain.” Essan adjusted an embroidered pillow behind her back. “Defalk has not been blessed with a solid lineage of lords for generations, and it is a difficult land. I had three children. Niedra died in childbirth. Senjim was killed in the first peasant uprising in the south, not the one ten years
back—the first must be thirty years now. Carlon—poor boy. He never was quite right, for all that the sorcerers tried, even Lord Brill. So Barjim was the best of the lot, even if his father was a scoundrel. Barjim was honest, and people liked him. We got him to take Jecks’ bright daughter, old maid or not, as his consort. All that work … and for what?” Essan refilled her goblet.

  “Doesn’t he have a son?”

  “Jimbob? Aye, and Jecks has him safe, for now, but Jimbob has no guardsmen beyond those of his grandsire. I remain near a prisoner, and the old lords of Defalk needs must acknowledge Behlem … as you must, powerful as you may be.” Essan added more of the applelike brandy to her goblet.

  “And if Jimbob could become lord?”

  “He’s yet far too young, and at the mercy of his counselors he’d be, for Jecks would not live to see him safe.”

  “What will happen if the Prophet can stop the Ebrans?”

  Essan sipped more of the brandy and shrugged. “Who might say? Behlem is a trickster, but some say Menares understands what Behlem does not, and Menares is beholden to the north.” The older lady laughed. “Behlem knows that well, yet can find no better counselor. It be that way ever. Donjim’s best counselor was Werum, and he was beholden to Konsstin.”

  Anna wanted to shake her head. It seemed like everyone was tied to someone else, and everyone pretended it wasn’t so—just like university politics—or opera companies.

  “That would be why all fear you, Lady Anna. No ties have you, and power that will grow. Yet ties you will need. Choose those ties carefully.” Essan set down the goblet and stood. “I be a meandering old lady, and you are gracious, for all your strangeness.” She yawned. “Time for my rest.”

  Anna got the hint and stood. “You were most gracious to receive me, and I appreciate your kindness and your insights.” Exactly what they mean is going to take a little time to sort out.

  “Nonsense. I enjoy the company. Do come and see me again.” Essan eased toward the door.