“None, save their closeness to the river.”
“And if I am not on the ground, but beneath it, and the dark sorcerer can tell only that I am surrounded by grass and dirt, how will he know where I am?”
“He will not.” Alvar nodded. “But if you sat in the grass, would he know, either?”
“Captain Alvar, sometimes you have to follow your feelings. This time I have to follow mine.” She gave a slight shrug, watching as the last of the armsmen scrambled from the trench, then turning in the saddle to ease the lutar out of its case.
“Now?” he asked.
“A concealment spell.” Anna took a deep breath and began to strum, then to sing.
When any trace of the displaced grass and the trench vanished, gasps whispered from the squad of armsmen waiting on the west side of the rise.
“Your orders?” asked Alvar.
“We head back to the others,” said Anna. “We will camp at least four deks west—over those rises there. Even if the sorcerer sees us in his glass now, he will not know exactly where I will be later. Then, when they near, Daffyd and I and a few riders will come back here.”
The captain frowned.
“How can we protect you?”
“By not being too close.” Anna turned Farinelli westward, toward where Captain Himar held the main body of Anna’s company.
She hoped she wasn’t being too brave, or too foolhardy, but what seer could miss two companies of lancers? And what would Eladdrin think if they were perched on top of the ford?
89
WEST OF MENCHA, DEFALK
Eladdrin studies the mirror on the ground, though the image wavers. Finally, he packs the mirror into its leather case and straightens.
“Ser?” asks the mounted subofficer.
“Behlem seems to have split his forces. Half are on the north side of the river, to the east of Pamr. The others are on the south side, on the high ground at the southernmost bend in the river.” Eladdrin eases the leather case into the oversized saddlebag and swings up onto the black. “The sorceress is somewhere in the grasslands, but she could be anywhere within fifty deks of either army. She’s probably in front of them somewhere, but close enough to retreat after she’s done her worst.”
The subofficer looks at the Songmaster inquiringly.
“No, Gealas, I cannot discern where she is. She has used a concealing spell. While it reveals its use, she is in the middle of brown grasses that could be anywhere in Defalk.”
Gealas nods. “Which way should we go?”
The Songmaster blinks, then looks to the west, away from the mid-morning sun. “We do not have to decide yet. They are more than a half day from the ford, no matter which way they go.” Eladdrin flicks the reins and heads toward the front of the long black column. “We will attain the ford, and pause, and scout.”
When the subofficer catches up and settles his mare into a trot beside the Songmaster, he finally asks, “Why would the Prophet split his forces?”
“They are split now, but they will not be when we meet. The Prophet is drawn up defensively. If we go north and cross the river, then he can pull back the southern forces and cross the river at Pamr to support the northern body. The same of the northern forces if we go south.”
“What is the point in that?”
“The point,” explained Eladdrin, his voice slightly hoarse, “is that half his forces are well rested and dug-in no matter what we do, and that we will have to come to him.”
“That does not sound like the Prophet.”
“Oh, it does. Remember, this is not his land, Gealas. He can sacrifice territory to save soldiers, as he could not do in Neserea. He also has some local levies. He fights us where his own people are not harmed and makes us work. The bulk of the harvests are beyond the river valley, or in it. He is guessing that we will not take the ford, and he is probably right. Going down in that kind of lowland against a sorceress is dangerous. That’s why she’s out from their forces, to try and trap us if we do. But we won’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose we take two days to cover a long half-day march, then stop several deks away. We are in no hurry, and perhaps I can find the sorceress. She is not a warrior, no matter how powerful she may be.” Eladdrin snorts and flicks the reins. “In any case, no sorceress alone can stop our forces.”
Gealas nods again.
Eladdrin’s eyes focus on the clear western horizon.
90
Despite the heat that had seeped into the chest-deep trench where she and Daffyd—along with Spirda, Fhurgen, and another armsman named Mysar—had waited since early morning, Anna could smell a shift in the weather, a hint of something like fall.
Whhnnnnn! From the north end of the trench came the sound of Farinelli’s displeasure, echoed by a similar sound from one of the mares.
“Quiet!” hissed Anna.
Whhhnnnn!
She sang the word, lingering over the syllables, and surprisingly, the horses quieted.
Beyond Daffyd, to her left, she could see Fhurgen jab Mysar in the ribs. The younger armsman handed a copper to the black-bearded man. Anna felt amused and irritated simultaneously.
“How much longer?” whispered Spirda, leaning toward her from her right, his breath smelling of something like garlic.
Anna shrugged. “I don’t know, and I’m not about to use another spell. If Eladdrin is close, he might be able to tell where we are.”
The sun inched higher, and over the faint and intermittent whispers of the grass came the calls of something like a meadowlark. The sorceress smiled, recalling the time she and the children had spent a week in the Garrisons’ cabin in Estes. So long ago … so far away.
She swallowed and looked up at the grass that hung on its brown stalks, still in the mid-morning heat—so still, as if the world were hanging on a thread, waiting for her to act.
Anna snorted. Delusions of grandeur! She was a singer, lucky enough to have talent, and hardworking enough to have mastered technique and repertoire, and those talents enabled her to cast spells, not manipulate worlds.
Daffyd sniffed, stifled a sneeze, and rubbed his nose. Was he allergic to grass, wondered Anna, or getting sick?
Perhaps another glass passed before Anna readjusted her hat once more, blotting away the sweat that gathered under the band and oozed onto her forehead. Her hair was damp as well, and she wanted a bath or a shower. Washing her hair in a basin left it feeling still unclean, but cleanliness wasn’t high on the priority lists in Defalk.
She cocked her ears. Was that a dull thudding, a rumbling in the soil?
“Something out there,” hissed Fhurgen,
Spirda eased past the mares and partway up along the earthen ramp, peering through the grass. After a time, he slipped back. “There are a good four companies of lancers, but they’ve halted back a dek or so.”
Anna eased past the blond officer, careful not to make contact with him in the narrow confines of the trench. While he wasn’t her type, she still didn’t want to convey any ideas. Except for a few like Alvar and Hanfor, most of the armsmen seemed so young. Then, they were. People on Erde lived fast and died young, except for lords and ladies. Lord Jecks was probably the only one near her age. He was almost like a white-haired Robert Mitchum. She’d liked the actor, thought he was sexy, and so was Jecks. She pushed away the thoughts and concentrated on the present.
She studied the distant horsemen, and the two drooping black banners. They were on the fringe of the area she had prepared, but only on the fringe, and they clearly waited for someone or something.
The sun climbed higher, and the horsemen waited, and Anna readjusted her hat and blotted her forehead and neck, and Daffyd sniffed. The two armsmen looked at each other, and Spirda rocked from one foot to the other, and the grass hung limply in the hot air.
Then a single horn sounded, and the horsemen turned toward the ford, letting their mounts walk slowly toward the bluff. They were within a dek of the concealed trench
before the first dark figures of the main body appeared on the eastern rise of the highway.
“What’s she waiting for?” whispered Mysar.
“For all of them to get close enough to destroy them!” hissed Anna at him. She shouldn’t be whispering, she realized. So she eased the lutar from the case, and began to check its tuning, as quietly as she could. Following her example, Daffyd took out the viola and did the same.
A whisper of wind ruffled the grasses and was gone, and Anna shivered, sensing the unnaturalness of that seeking wind and feeling vindicated that she had insisted on the trench. A grim smile appeared and vanished.
To the east of her vantage point, the horse troops reined up again, this time at the top of the bluffs, a good half-dek east of Anna, at the beginning of the road cut down to the ford. Several dismounted and stretched, walking around and pointing to the river and the valley, talking, although she could not hear their voices.
The next set of horsemen, leading the main body, became more than outlines, became real men in black, bearing sabres. Some had lances. From the concealment of the trench, Anna looked through the browned grasses at the oncoming mass of armsmen. The dark ones had even more troops than she had seen at the Sand Pass. In the van were the dark horse, hundreds of them, followed by a long column of foot, then wagons, dozens of wagons, followed by more foot.
Anna wanted to shake her head. The Ebrans were too strung out. She hadn’t realized how far a marching army would stretch along the road, especially a large one.
“Dissonance! How many are there?” murmured Daffyd.
“There might be five hundred—score.” Spirda wiped his forehead.
Ten thousand troops? Could she? Anna swallowed, thinking about what ten thousand troops would do to Pamr, and Gatrune and Firis—or Falcor. Could she not?
“Lady?” ventured Spirda.
Anna shook her head.
Another sweep of the dark, seeking wind ruffled the grasses and passed, and yet more horn signals echoed across the grass toward the bluffs. With the signals the scouts who remained afoot remounted, and formed their mounts into two rough lines.
A square of black banners borne by black-coated armsmen appeared. The column split to allow the bannered group to advance.
Eladdrin? Anna swallowed, then turned to Daffyd and motioned. She eased up toward the south end of the trench, hoping the concealment spell would hold, stopping where the excavation was only knee-deep.
The wind swirled around her, and several of the bannerbearers turned toward them.
“Now! The sinking song.”
Daffyd stroked the bow, twice, then began the song, and Anna chorded the lutar, trying for the maximum volume, not belting, but full-voiced opera technique, launching into the first spell, the one that she hoped would neutralize the Ebrans. Neutralize? her mind asked. She pushed away the nagging thought, and concentrated on spellcasting, matching lutar and voice with Daffyd’s viola.
“Sink, sink, sink the land
deeply through the ground
easily, easily, easily,
mud is all around.
“Churn, chum, churn the rocks …”
Even before she hit the second stanza—and her perverse mind insisted on pointing out that spells were strophic—the ground trembled—once, twice, and then even harder.
BBbrrrrrrrrrr …
She shifted her feet and kept singing.
At least two squads of horsemen galloped toward her, but they seemed to move in slow motion, and several horses stumbled, throwing riders, as the ground swayed under them.
Still, five or six riders thundered toward Anna and Daffyd.
Spirda ran past Anna, his blade out, followed by Fhurgen, who carried a sabre in each hand. Both staggered as the ground rumbled and lurched, and another Ebran rider went down.
Anna could sense some sort of activity around the Ebran black banners, a gathering of power, but she kept her voice and mind on the spellsong, concluding with a perfect onkey finale.
“ … swirled underground!”
A massive chord seemed to vibrate both through the ground and across the clear blue-green heavens, even casting a flickering shadow over the sun momentarily. Anna’s ears rang with that timeless, yet instantaneous, vibration.
Then the grasslands seemed to whirl around her, and a ground wave rippled the grass and the soil as it spread outward from somewhere to the east of Anna, just as though it had been caused from the impact of a stone on a quiet pond.
RRRRUuuuuuurrrrrr …
That rending, grinding roar paralyzed Anna’s hearing, as the second set of ground waves rumbled across the grasslands and brought her to her knees. Somehow, she kept from going all the way down and crushing the lutar.
Hammers slammed at her skull, and the ground kept trembling.
Somewhere before her, Spirda slashed at an oncoming Ebran armsman who had struggled off a fallen mount, while Fhurgen flailed through the grass toward the blonde subofficer.
Anna tried to rise from her knees, but had to put a hand out as another tremor raced through the ground. She blinked as she realized that the grasslands ended not more than thirty yards in front of her. They just … ended.
A vast chasm, more than a dek long and slightly narrower in width, centered on where the highway to Mencha had been and ran down where the road cut to the ford had been, so that water from the Chean was already oozing into the depressed area, across the mass of mud and grass-covered patches of earth that filled the sinkhole.
Slowly, her head pounding, and her ears ringing in the aftermath of the subsidence of her massive sinkhole, Anna struggled to her feet.
In front and to her right, Fhurgen slashed at the Ebran lancer, who had not even seen the second armsman. The Ebran’s blade dropped, and he stood for a moment, then wavered, before crumpling into the waist-high grass.
The sorceress forced herself to walk toward the edge of the bluffs and to study the mess. She swayed as she looked down and out across the churning, bubbling mass of mud and chunks of grassland that bobbed in the mud. On the intact sections of land below, especially near the eastern side of the depression, armsmen on foot scrambled away from the gooey mass, only to find themselves facing sheer, if crumbling, dirt walls. Perhaps a thousand troops, or more, seemed to have survived the drop of her undermined sinkhole.
On the far side of the depression, a fewscore armsmen, mostly on foot, scrambled eastward through the grasslands and along the highway, back toward Mencha.
Slowly, she glanced down at the lutar she had not even been aware that she carried, then, despite her headache, lifted it and touched the strings. “The river song, Daffyd.”
There was no answer, and Anna turned. The player stood a dozen steps behind her, his mouth open, his eyes wide.
“We need the river song,” she repeated.
“But …”
“The river song!” Again, her feelings drove her. While the men below were pawns, Eladdrin might be among them, and she could not chance his escape.
After a moment, Daffyd, his eyes not meeting hers, lifted the viola and began to play, raggedly.
“We have to do better than that. Start again!” Anna hated herself for the hardness in her voice, but she didn’t have that many reserves left, and she didn’t want to fight yet another battle with the Ebrans.
As Daffyd started the melody over again, Anna’s fingers touched the lutar strings, and she began to sing, letting her voice fill the troubled air.
“Ol’ man riber …”
She tried to visualize the mighty power of the Mississippi, a brown torrent filling the banks of the Chean, sweeping into the vast circular sinkhole that lay before her, swirling and covering all that lay there.
The ground trembled yet again, and shivered, and shivered. With that second shiver, her feet slipped, but she kept chording, kept singing, her thoughts firmly on that image of a brown torrent.
Almost … almost, she could sense the waters rising and plunging toward the circular sin
khole that adjoined the river where the ford had been.
Screams rose from the sinkhole, but Anna shut them out, singing …
“ … he just keeps roiling along …”
Her voice and chording were alone. Daffyd had stopped playing midway through, but she had to finish, had to get to the end of the section. She gave the lutar a last strum, and tried to swallow. She couldn’t, so dry were her mouth and throat. She licked her lips, but even her tongue was woolly and dry.
Sw w w ussssss!
A thin sheet of spray, almost like fine rain, cascaded across her, and the screaming ended, as if choked off. A second, heavier, sheet of water slammed across her, half spinning her around, and she staggered backward three or four steps before she could catch her balance, standing, gasping, thrusting the lutar out like a balance pole for a moment to steady herself.
A last, finer spray flared from the crumbling cliff edge less than twenty yards in front of Anna, then subsided.
The sorceress forced herself-back toward the muddy caldron, where she gazed into her own hell—or discord, or dissonance. Already, the waters were draining from the oval sinkhole, pouring back into the Chean, carrying timbers, dead horses, and unmoving uniformed figures. Anna could feel the odor of death building, though she knew it had to be her own imagination. Her eyes narrowed against the burning and the knives that jabbed into her skull, and she turned, putting one foot before the other as she trudged, slow step after slow step, toward Farinelli.
She automatically stepped around the dead Ebran lancer, who lay sprawled face-up, and past Spirda.
The blond officer staggered up and away from the spot in the grass where he had been bent double, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and tottered back toward the trench and the mounts, slightly behind Anna. His complexion was pale underneath his tan.
Mysar stood, unmoving, where he had since the first spell, his face blank, his mouth unmoving.
The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 46