3
Mencha, Defalk
The black-haired young man bounces in the saddle a last time as he reins up the horse in front of the thick-walled cottage. The dark-oiled wooden shutters are closed against the midday heat, and not even the chickens are out in the hot still air. Dust lies heavy on the planks of the small porch shaded by the overhanging eaves, and the oiled oak door is shut as tightly as the windows'
After wiping the muddy sweat created by road dust off his forehead, he struggles down from the horse and ties the mare at the heavy stone hitching post at the end of the porch under the single oak in the yard. Then he eases the viola case from the oversized saddlebag.
"Well, Daffyd, where'd ye be getting a horse?" asks the slender brunette from the half-open door. Her hair is pulled back and bound high enough on the back of her head to lift it clear of her neck. She wears a sleeveless homespun brown shirt that reaches mid-thigh over loose gray trousers that stop at mid-calf. Her feet are bare.
"It was Da's." Daffyd looks to the half-open door.
"He give it to ye? A fine gift that'd be."
"He be dead, Jenny. Lord Brill killed him." Daffyd takes the two steps onto the porch, then stops several paces short of her, the canvas and wooden case in his right hand.
The brunette steps back toward the door. "What be ye here for?"
"You owe me, Jenny," Daffyd says. "You be owing me more than you can ever pay. How many times have I played for you, just the way you wanted, to send or summon folks all the way to Nordwei or Elioch?"
"I've been more than nice to you, Daffyd."
Daffyd flushes, then adds, "Aye, and I've been nice to you, not charging you for the music."
"If Lord Brill be after you…"
"He's not after me." Daffyd waits.
"Then why are you here?"
The young man wipes his forehead. "You could invite me in where it's cooler. You've no company." His eyes traverse the dust on the porch planks, unmarked except by his boots. .
Jenny tightens her lips and looks toward the empty lane, then jerks her head toward the door.
"Jenny, seeing as it's me, no one would be saying anything."
"Come in, then, seeing as there's no stopping you." She stands back from the door.
Daffyd crosses the porch and steps inside, closing the heavy door with his left hand. The main room is empty, but a faint scent of onions wafts from the kitchen area to the left rear of the cottage. While the cottage is cooler than the late-morning heat outside, Daffyd wipes his forehead with the back of his left hand, his right still clutching the old brown canvas viola case.
"Well, fine talking Daffyd, what do you want?" The brunette looks to the closed heavy door, and then at the mirror on the cottage wall. "I can't bring your da back from the darkshadows. Lord Brill himself couldn't do that. I could send you to Farway. That's as far as I can do."
"That won't bring back Da."
"Nothing will bring back yer da. Not even Meringuay could do that. I'm a rote travel-sorceress—good enough to hold a house—but not more. You told me that yourself. 'Member that?"
Daffyd pulls his lips together, then speaks. "He hummed—just a few notes. Just a little. That was all. And only once—not twice like Brill said."
"That'd be strong, accusing Lord Brill of lying. He'd not like that."
"Like it or not, he lied. Da hummed a little. He's hummed for years. Everyone knows that, but he doesn't hum tunes, and it's never upset patterning before."
"Just a few notes in front of the land's strongest sorcerer." Jenny shivers, pursing her narrow lips.
"He turned him into dust—just dust—and the wind blew him away…"
"All I can do is send you somewhere," she repeats.
"Can you bring someone here?"
"Aye. If they want to come, but who wants to come to dry Defalk?"
Daffyd smiles. "Bring me a sorceress. One out of the mists. Make her blonde and strong enough to turn Lord Brill into red dust himself."
Jenny shivers again. "Out of the mists? A sorceress? She'd have to want to come, and what one of them would want to leave the mists? Why would they- help the likes of you?"
"Try it. Please…"
"I don't know."
"You try it—or I'll keep you from sending anyone anywhere." Daffyd's voice turns cold.
"You do, and Lord Brill will be a-chasing you." Jenny backs away. "And you don't be threatening me, Daffyd. You're not the only friend I've got."
"You aren't the only one I've got, either." Daffyd shrugs.
"Mayhap… but it's my cottage where you've come." She crosses her arms and waits.
Daffyd sighs, and waits. Finally, he speaks. "You're the best I know, and I need the best."
"Ha! You tell all the girls that, and that's just when you want something." She walked over the bare open space of the room to the stone hearth, then turns and recrosses her arms. "What you want is trouble."
"I need a strong sorceress."
"What am I—failed bread?"
Daffyd's lips tighten, and his breath hisses out through his nose. After a moment, he asks, "Do you want to take on Brill?"
"Am I looking as daft as a heatstruck fowl?"
The young man shrugs.
"Oh, Daffyd… you've always been trouble."
Daffyd sets the viola case on the battered waist-high square table set against the wall that separates the kitchen from the main room. He opens the case carefully and extracts the polished viola, then the bow.
"I need a spell for the mists," points out Jenny.
"I have one." He gently sets the viola on the table beside the case, and fumbles in his wallet before extracting a scrap of paper covered with smeared markstick. He reads the words slowly.
"Bring us a singer, truly strong, from the mists beyond our song. Her voice like fire, hair like gold, her words filled with flame and bold…"
Jenny holds up her hand. "This spell's pretty chancy, Daffyd. You could get a blonde-haired lizard that sings."
"Let me read it all the way through."
The brunette nods.
Daffyd glances down and keeps reading, his voice deliberate as he pronounces each word. When he finishes, he looks at Jenny and asks, "Well… ?"
"It might work. Just you make sure you play it all the way through. Those first lines are chancy." She takes a deep breath and looks at the mirror on the cottage wall. "But you get her outta here quick-like. I'll be telling Lord Brill you tricked me. You understand that, don't you? I'd have to be telling him that."
Daffyd nods.
"Recite it again. I need to get the words in my head. Then you'll be playing your tune. I'll be needing to listen a few times." She shakes her head. "A sorceress out of the mists… why…"
4
Anna completed an uncertain step, swaying for an instant. The outdoor light of Ames had been replaced with something gloomier—and hotter. She stood in the middle of a room, smaller than the cramped living room in the condo. The walls were a dirty white plaster that was uneven and rough, and there was no ceiling, just open rafters. The faint light that seeped around ill-fitting shutters on the room's two windows was the only source of illumination.
Where was she? How had she gotten there? Had she fainted? Her hand twinged, and the door key was somehow burning her hand. Anna slipped the key into the green leather purse, then squeezed her fingers together, pressing her thumbnail into her palm, stopping before the pressure became pain.
White spots flickered in front of her eyes, and she forced herself to take a deep breath, then another. What had happened?
"You did it! You did it!" exclaimed a male voice, interrupting her self-inquiries.
"A travel-sorceress I am. Give me a good spell and a decent tune, and I will bring someone from anywhere," answered a woman. "You'd better hope she's what you want."
Wondering what the young man wanted, and fearing that she did know, Anna slowly turned from the hearth. On her left were the two shuttered windows, on her righ
t a wall containing only a single wood-framed mirror and near the far end, a closed wooden door. In the middle of the room stood two figures. The man, black-haired and somehow both angular and round-faced, was barely out of youth. He held what looked to be a viola and a heavily arched shed bow and wore faded blue trousers and an armless and col-larless shirt fastened with oblong wooden buttons. The woman was several years older, square-faced, in short trousers and a baggy armless blouse.
Behind them was another wall, with an opening into another room.
"She is beautiful," the man said as if Anna were not even present. Anna hated being referred to in the third person. It reminded her of all too many auditions, especially the year she'd been in New York.
"A sorceress has to appear beautiful, Daffyd. You do not know what she really looks like."
Anna glanced down. She still wore the raincoat over her gown, and she was getting hot in the small and stuffy room. After a moment, she unfastened the buttons and the trench coat's belt and stuffed the ends of the belt into the coat's pockets. Then her eyes went back to the woman.
"I'm Anna. Who are you?" Her words sounded firm. Totally inane, but firm.
"I am Jenny, lady." The brunette offered a slight bow.
Anna's eyes went to the man.
"Daffyd." His voice was defensive, and he didn't bow.
Where was she? They spoke English, or she understood what they spoke, but it sounded like English.
"Could you tell me where I might be?" Another totally inane question—she was in a peasant cottage—or totally out of her mind. Had she been hit by a tornado, like Dorothy, and was she lying somewhere hallucinating? Or worse, had Sandy been right about parallel universes or worlds? She'd always believed that the world was the world. Another thought flicked through her mind, a thought that seemed to move so slowly—time travel?
"Why, you are in Jenny's cottage," answered Daffyd sardonically.
"That much I surmised," snapped Anna, reacting to the teenaged-student tone she'd heard all too many times in her life already, particularly from ungrateful students. "But where is Jenny's cottage? And when?"
The two locals exchanged glances. Daffyd walked to the square table on the wall and slipped first the viola, then the bow, into a canvas case. He did not close the case.
Anna sighed, then stripped off the raincoat and folded it over her arm. The heat was making her feel faint, and the last thing she wanted was to collapse in front of total strangers in this unknown place. "Could you please tell me where we are?"
' 'We are in Mencha, and it is on the eastern marches of Defalk," said Daffyd, as if the entire world knew the obvious.
That helped a lot, reflected Anna, before answering. "I'm sorry, but I've never heard of Mencha, or Defalk, and I don't know the name of your world."
"It is the world, the earth," answered the brunette. "Some of the sorcerers call it Erde."
"Erde," mused Anna. Germanic, but the two didn't look especially Teutonic.
"Except for the worlds of the mist," added Daffyd, "it be the only world."
The only world? Anna felt flushed, "Might I have something to drink? It's been a long trip."
Again, the two exchanged glances, as if Anna had said something profoundly stupid, and she wanted to scream. That would have made matters worse; it always did. Then Jenny bowed slightly, turned, and walked through the opening in the wall to what might have been a kitchen, although all Anna saw was what seemed to be a brick stove and a table with a bench oh one side. Her legs felt stiff, and Anna looked for a place to sit. There were two short benches and a higher stool.
Daffyd kept looking at her as if she were not quite real, the way her new students did after she'd done a recital, as if they couldn't believe that she could sing, really sing.
Bother it! Anna stepped away from the unused hearth toward the stool. She set her purse on the dusty plank floor and quickly folded the raincoat over the rough wooden stool, hoping that the trench coat would shield the gown from any splinters. As she sat, her nose twitched from the dust in the hot room, and she rubbed it gently, almost afraid to sneeze.
Jenny returned across the dusty plank floors, a brown earthenware mug in her hands. She extended the handleless mug to Anna. "Here, lady."
"Thank you." Anna stared at the water in the mug. It looked clean.
"I spell my water clean," offered Jenny. "Most folks can't, you know, and they won't pay to get it done."
Spelling water clean? What sort of place was this Erde— like a medieval pigsty? "Thank you." Anna sipped the lukewarm water, then drank the mug down to the bottom. She'd been thirstier than she'd realized.
The two continued to study her intently, as if looking for some sort of sign.
"Why did you bring me here?" Anna reached down and lifted the green leather purse into her lap, rummaging through it for a handkerchief. She used the rumpled cloth to blot her damp forehead gently. The room was hdt, hotter than the Colonial, and she had the feeling that it was even hotter outside. She looked down at the purse. The leather around the metal clasps was browned, as if it had been scorched or burned. She didn't recall that, but she'd grabbed the purse in a hurry.
Daffyd looked down at the dusty planks.
"Daffyd needs a sorceress from out of the mists," Jenny finally volunteered.
"A sorceress? You can't be serious." A sorceress? They thought Anna was a sorceress? What sort of nuthouse was this?
"You have to be a sorceress. Jenny couldn't have brought you if you weren't," stammered the youth with the short and ragged black hair.
"Why do you need a sorceress?" Anna had trouble believing she was behaving so rationally. Or was it irrational to talk sensibly in a lunatic situation? Daffyd and Jenny exchanged glances. "Well?"
"Lord Brill… he turned my da into red dust because he hummed during a wall-raising. He said Da ruined the spell, and that was why the gate was crooked, but Da never hummed in tunes. It was just an excuse."
Anna moistened her lips. The more she heard, the worse it got. "What sort of wall?" Another rational-sounding question that made no sense.
"It was a whole fort—stone and brick. They'll finish the roof later. You can't handle wooden roof beams with sorcery, not unless you go to strong darksong, and that's dangerous, even for a sorcerer like Brill."
"They say he does a lot of darksong when no one's around," Jenny added. "Liende plays for him then."
Daffyd looked at Jenny. "That can't be."
"I know what I know."
Anna's eyes flicked from one to the other. Both felt they were telling the truth—that was her feeling, and that meant something was wrong, very wrong. ' 'Why is that a problem, Daffyd?" Her voice was as calm as if she were teaching her musical-theatre class, and that was wrong, too, because the more questions she asked, the fewer got answered.
"Liende wouldn't do that. She wouldn't."
"I know what I know," affirmed Jenny.
"Stop it!" snapped Anna. "Daffyd, you still haven't told me why you wanted a sorceress. You haven't said why it's important enough to summon one from far away. You haven't told me exactly how far this world is from mine. You seem to be why I'm here. I'd like some answers." She licked her dry lips. "Try to make them clear."
"Go ahead, Daffyd. It be your idea." The young man looked at the plank floor, then at Jenny, then back to the floor. His eyes did not rise to meet Anna's. "I wanted you to turn Lord Brill into red dust, like he turned Da into dust."
Keep to the point, Anna told herself, whatever the point is. "How?"
"With sorcery, acourse."
"You say I have to be a sorceress," ventured Anna, pausing. The room was small and hot. "Why?"
"The spell called for a sorceress, and you're here. Spells work, or they don't. It worked. That means you're a sorceress."
Confused as she felt, even Anna could follow that logic, and she held in a shiver. Wonderful! She was either dead, dying, hallucinating, or truly in another world or time where they thought she was a sorc
eress. Anna pursed her lips. She didn't like any of the choices. And she'd thought Ames after Irenia's death had been bad. I can handle this, she told herself silently. I can handle this.
"Daffyd spelled for a strong sorceress," Jenny added. "You must be very strong."
"Could I have another cup of water?" Anna asked, wondering what she was supposed to do next. A strong sorceress who didn't even know what sorcery was? She didn't know whether to cry or laugh, or just break down and sob.
I can handle this, she repeated, whatever this is.
5
Mencha, Defalk
A single chord ending in a discordant minor reverberates from the silver harp that stands on the pedestal in the middle of the marble basin.
"What now?" The resonant baritone voice is far more impressive than the slender and balding man who speaks. Circles ring his brown-flecked green eyes as he walks to the harp. His eyes drop to the ripples that disrupt the image in the silvered surface—that of a blonde woman in a brown cloak.
"I did not do it, Lord Brill, sir. Not me." The youth in the short blue tunic backs toward the narrow door through which he has just hurried.
"You could not have done this, Gero." Brill's eyes study the vanishing image, taking in the green gown that shows from under the blonde woman's cloak, the rough-walled cottage—and the brown-haired songstress.
"Jenny… oh, Jenny…" His eyes flick to the fading black-haired figure in the corner. "Daffyd… well, we'll just have to do something about this. Yes, we will."
Gero backs up until he shivers silently in the arch of the doorway.
"The cloak," Brill murmurs, then reaches for the harp and strums it gently.
"Hold this image in my sight. Keep it fresh; keep it bright…"
He replaces the harp and watches for a time as the image in the mirrored water sharpens and as the woman removes the strange cloak with arms to display the magnificent green gown she wears. She also carries a large leather wallet that looks to be of green leather that matches the gown.
Brill frowns once more as the blonde woman sits on the stool and apparently begins to question Daffyd and Jenny.
The Saprano Sorceress Page 2