The Saprano Sorceress

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  "Can you create any of the magics like the iron birds?"

  "No. Even on my world," Anna said slowly, "to create one of them takes a long time and hundreds of special workers."

  Brill nodded. "I thought as much. What about the magic staffs that throw fire?"

  Anna frowned. Magic staffs that threw fire?

  "People put them to their shoulders, and smoke and fire comes from the end," Brill added. "Sometimes they kill people from a distance."

  "There are two parts to that," Anna said. "You need to make the gun, and then it needs ammunition, bullets, and that takes a special powder… gunpowder." Avery probably knew the formula for gunpowder, but she didn't. Anyway, would gunpowder even work on Erde? Slowly, she dabbed more of the berry preserves on another hunk of bread. She was hungry.

  "You look very doubtful, lady." Brill set his cup on the table.

  "I don't know enough about Erde to know what might work here, and what won't." Anna tried to keep from pursing her lips. "It took thousands of people hundreds of years to develop the things you're talking about." She took another mouthful of bread and preserves, then cut a slice of melon.

  Brill frowned openly. "You make it sound as though magic is very difficult on your world. Yet my few glimpses in the mirror waters show many magic devices."

  "Few?" asked Anna, stalling and trying to think of an appropriate answer before she was pushed into admitting something unwise, although everything she might say appeared unwise in some way.

  "It is dangerous to look more than infrequently," answered Brill. "What about these magic devices? Why can you not spell some?"

  How could Anna explain? She sipped some water. Finally, she took a deep breath. "It's hard to explain, but I'll try. What you call magic in my world is called technology. People don't make the magic devices through spells. They use machines to make them. First, hundreds of years ago, we had simple machines. We used them to make more complicated machines. Then people improved those machines." Anna stopped, before adding, "It took lots of people a long time."

  Brill nodded pensively. "The reflections show many people in the mist worlds, and your face shows you are telling the truth." He sighed. "But it is disappointing. We have few people compared to your world, and little time. Is there not something from your world that we could use?''

  "I don't think our worlds are quite the same, Lord Brill," Anna offered. She pointed to her watch. "On my world, this tells time. Here it doesn't even work."

  "Perhaps the shock of crossing the mist barriers…" suggested Brill.

  "It doesn't feel like it will ever work here," Anna added. She pursed her lips before continuing. "Also, I can tell you that my songs have never been as powerful on earth as on Erde. That takes some getting used to." What she said was true, if misleading, but she felt it wasn't a good idea to admit she wasn't a sorceress at all on earth. Not now, anyway.

  As Brill pondered her words, she cut and ate several more slices of melon and even had another sip of the pine-needle tea. Then she had more bread and preserves.

  "Hrnmmm," he said after sipping his own tea with far more relish than Anna could see reason for, "this bears more thought. You are a powerful sorceress here, and your mist world has many things that would seem impossible here. Both are true." Brill laughed. "So we shall see."

  Her mouth full, Anna offered a nod. She was still hungry, more hungry than usual in the morning. Was it nerves? Or something about Erde?

  "Well? Are you ready for your ride?" asked the sorcerer with a smile after she had finished the last of the bread. "Perhaps I can show you something of Erde, enough to stimulate your thoughts on how you might help us."

  Anna nodded, wondering why she should help Brill. The sorcerer hadn't really given any good reason for her to help, and he had admitted killing Daffyd's father over what seemed a trifling thing, and yet he was acting as if she would.

  As Brill stood and turned, his hand brushed the crystal water goblet.

  Anna lurched toward it, but was too late. The shimmering goblet seemed to fall in almost slow motion toward the polished stone floor—where it rang as it bounced… and bounced… and rang… and did not break.

  "It's all right," Brill said calmly. "Serna will wipe it up."

  Anna tried to look away from the delicate-seeming crystal that still rolled back and forth on the light-blue stone floor. After a moment, she forced a smile. "Your crystal is rather durable."

  "I had thought so," Brill answered with a smile. "I had thought so."

  What did he mean? Then she remembered. She had shattered one of the goblets with her botched spell. She wanted to blot her suddenly damp forehead. "Would you excuse me for a moment?"

  "Certainly, lady. I'll meet you in the front entry." Brill bowed, not quite sardonically, as if well aware of the confusion he had created, and picked up a cap from the side table.

  Anna wanted to scream that she wasn't slow, that she wasn't stupid, that she'd like to see how he would do plopped into her world. He'd probably get run over in a parking lot in thirty seconds—especially in Ames. Instead, she pasted on a smile, and inclined her head momentarily. "I won't be long."

  Ignoring Florenda, who had appeared as she left the salon and fluttered alongside her, Anna walked slowly back to her chamber.

  In the robing room, Anna washed her hands mechanically, once, twice. How could this be happening? Every time she turned around there was another reminder that people thought she was something special, another hint that she had to do something.

  How? She was just Anna Thompson Marsali, born Anna Mayme Thompson in Cumberland, Kentucky, a soprano not quite good enough, or lucky enough, to have made it to the Met, but good enough to place second or third in every competition she had been able to afford—before she'd given in to Avery and gotten pregnant.

  She walked back into the bedchamber and stood before the window. The scene remained unchanged—the stone walls, the dirt roads, and the distant view of Mencha to the north… and the sun, already beating down on the dry countryside.

  Anna went back to the closets, searching again, until she found a floppy brown hat with a brim wide enough to shade her face. At least she hoped it would.

  Florenda waited in the corridor and followed her back down to the entry where, as he had promised, Brill waited, knee-length riding boots polished and glimmering.

  Anna stepped out into the morning behind the sorcerer, and felt herself begin to sweat almost instantly in the summer heat—worse even than Ames in August.

  "This way," Brill suggested.

  They walked along the shaded north side of the main hall building, across more of the flat stones that paved the entire courtyard, and back into the sun, toward a low, blue-tile-roofed structure.

  The stable was like the rest of the hall—well designed and of finely finished stone. Like all stables, there was the odor of straw and manure, and of leather and oil.

  "Morning, lord." A short, white-haired man stepped from the dimness of an open and empty stall into the sunlit doorway, offering a perfunctory nod to the sorcerer.

  "Good morning," Brill answered, gesturing from Anna to the wizened man. "Quies, this is the lady Anna. We'll be riding out to the south dome, but she'll need a horse." He added. "Quies is the stablemaster, and a fine one."

  "I'm pleased to meet you, Quies." Anna nodded at the wizened stablemaster, who scarcely reached her chin, although his shoulders were broad and his arms heavily muscled.

  "How good a rider are you, lady?" asked Quies.

  "Not very," Anna admitted. "And I'm out of practice."

  Quies pulled at his stubbled chin as if to ask how anyone could get out of practice when riding was the only sensible way to travel. "Well… you're a tall woman… and a sorceress…"

  Anna held in a frown. Tall? She'd never thought of herself as tall, but on Erde, she seemed to be above average, especially for a woman.

  "Maybe the palomino gelding…" Quies nodded as though he expected Anna to follow him.

>   She did, stepping into the stable that was cooler than the courtyard, and followed the stablemaster toward the rear of the long building. Her nose itched from the straw dust, and she rubbed it, hoping she wouldn't sneeze too much.

  "Here…" Quies opened the stall door and slipped inside. '"I'll saddle him."

  Anna looked toward Brill, but he had stepped to an adjoining stall. He nodded before turning back to Anna. They waited.

  Finally, Anna asked, "Is there any magic to make riding easier?"

  "Not that I know of, lady." Brill offered the crinkled smile.

  When Quies led the palomino out, Anna looked at the horse doubtfully, and even more dubiously at the saddle, something higher than an English saddle, but not as solid as a western one, and there was no saddle horn. The palomino swished his tail, but didn't edge away as Anna stepped up toward him. She frowned at the fine tracery of lines across his shoulders, half concealed by his coat.

  "What's his name?" she asked.

  "Name?" Quies shrugged. "He belonged to one of the raiders out of the high grasslands. Barjim sold him at auction, and he was cheap because he was cut up." The stablemaster looked to Brill.

  The sorcerer shrugged. "It wasn't that hard to heal him— minor darksong. He was strong."

  "Now he's worth a good five golds—be thirty if the raiders hadn't gelded him," observed Quies.

  Anna had the feeling that she and the palomino would be spending a lot of time together. Why she couldn't say, but she'd learned to trust her feelings. So the horse had to have a name. What did one call a horse?

  She laughed. "Farinelli!"

  "What?" said Brill.

  "That's his name. Farinelli." She really didn't know if the original Farinelli had been blond, but it didn't matter. The name felt right.

  Brill and Quies exchanged a look that said, "If you say so."

  She studied the palomino once more—a lot taller than a mule or even most of the broken-down horses she'd climbed on for her handful of trail rides when Elizabetta had gone through the horse-loving phase. She swallowed.

  Her redheaded baby—except Elizabetta was scarcely a baby, not after a year at Emory. But what had she thought when she had come home from her job at Pransted's and found her mother missing?

  "Lady Anna? Is this horse… ?" Brill asked solicitously. "It's not the horse," Anna said. "My thoughts wandered." She looked back up at the gelding, who whuffed. Riding Farinelli couldn't be too much worse than riding old Barney had been, and she'd managed Barney bareback. Then, she'd been a lot younger, and her grandfather had been more than a little upset.

  After she took the reins from Quies, she patted Farinelli on the shoulder again. The gelding whuffed again. Then she led him toward the front of the stable.

  Brill paused by the other stall, opening the door. Shortly, he followed, leading a blacfc mare, already saddled.

  Outside the stable, back in the dry, dusty heat of the morning, Anna looked up at Farinelli, trying not to swallow. Finally, she grasped the saddle and levered herself up. "Doesn't need a mounting block…" Quies observed. Anna turned to see a frown cross the sorcerer's forehead, then vanish. Quies seemed to ignore the expression as Brill swung up into the mare's saddle.

  "Just be firm with him, lady," Quies added, "and if he tries to nip, clout him on the nose. Once is enough."

  Anna let Farinelli follow Brill's mare along the side of the hall toward the front gate. Brill reined up at the main hall entrance, slid out of the saddle, and used the braided, blue-corded bellpull. Anna remained in her saddle, waiting. After a moment, the door opened and a brown-haired youth appeared. "Yes, ser?"

  Brill turned to Anna. "Gero, this is the lady Anna. She is a sorceress, and to be respected and obeyed." Gero bowed. "My lady."

  "Gero is my assistant. He's perfectly tone-deaf, which saves us both a great deal of misunderstanding."

  "I'm pleased to meet you, Gero." Anna said politely.

  Gero bowed again.

  "We'll be riding for a time, Gero. I'd like you to tell Kaseth to gather the players, at the ninth glass."

  "At the dome, ser?"

  "That would be best." Brill nodded and climbed back into the mare's saddle.

  "Yes, ser." Gero bowed again. "At the ninth glass, ser."

  The sorcerer remounted without looking back, although Gero remained standing stiffly by the door, and turned the mare toward the hall gates.

  The twenty-foot-high gates stood open as they rode into the morning sun. Despite the floppy-brimmed hat, Anna had to squint against the glare as the horses' hoofs clipped against the stone pavement that stretched for a few hundred feet beyond the gates.

  "Where are we going?" she asked.

  "First, I'll show you the dome building. There." Brill pointed to the small and heavy-walled building on the hilltop. "That's where I work on new spells. While I certainly wouldn't wish to impose, Lady Anna, I thought you might find one of the workrooms… useful, at least for a time." Again, the sorcerer offered the friendly crinkled smile, although Anna didn't feel the undercurrent of alarm she had before.

  So…he's being honest? Why? Because he doesn't want you trying to figure out things and damaging his beautiful hall?

  Brill turned the mare onto a narrower dusty lane that wound down the hilltop where the hall sat, and then up toward the dome building.

  Dust rose with every step Farinelli took, some of it seeping into Anna's nose. After a time, she sneezed.

  "It is dusty," Brill said. "It's been that way for the past few years." His arm stretched eastward, encompassing the low brown hills, some with scattered trees, others with a handful of dead and leafless trees. "I can remember when all that was green, and the taller hills were filled with trees." He shrugged. "Then we began to hear more of the dark ones, and the summers, and the winters, got drier and drier."

  Anna cleared her throat. "Hasn't anyone tried to do something about them?"

  "The Ebrans were warlike before the dark ones. No one has ever conquered Ebra—unlike Defalk," he added sardonically, "which has been conquered and reconquered. The Norweians lost several thousand troops under their last Council, and the Ranuans have always relied on the protections of the Sand Hills and the Whispering Sands."

  "Isn't there anyone else?"

  "The only three countries that border Ebra are Nordwei, Ranuak, and Defalk."

  Anna lurched forward as Farinelli reached the bottom of the trail and started back up the winding way toward the dome house. She grabbed the front rim of the saddle and steadied herself. "That doesn't sound good," she temporized, reading Brill's face as much as his words.

  "It is not good. Lord Barjim cannot even defend Defalk, much less consider attacking Ebra. So the dark ones will move on us first."

  "Why are you still here?" Anna blurted.

  "I intend to show you why, Lady Anna. That may take some time." The sorcerer reined up halfway up the hillside and pointed eastward. "Those are the Sand Mountains, and a bit to the south is the Sand Pass to Ebra."

  "How far is the pass?"

  "Somewhat less than ten leagues."

  Anna tried to remember what Daffyd—had it been Daf-fyd?—had said about measurements. Ten deks were a league, and a dek was almost a kilometer, and that was something like six-tenths of a mile, and that meant… less than sixty miles from the border with Ebra?

  "You look disturbed."

  "I hadn't realized Ebra was so close."

  "It's a good two days' ride to the Sand Pass, and another half day beyond that to the true border." Brill frowned.

  Anna shook her head. She'd forgotten that sixty miles or ten leagues or whatever was a long way on horseback. She needed some perspective. "How far is the border with the country to the west?"

  "Neserea? I suppose it is around sixty leagues."

  So Defalk wasn't a postage stamp-sized country, either. "What's to the north? And how far?" Anna pressed.

  "Nordwei—it runs across most of the north of Lied-wahr—more than three hundred-l
eagues from Cape Eastwei to the mountains north of Esaria." Brill pursed his lips. "The border is about thirty leagues north of Falcor, and a little farther from here."

  "Is Falcor the capital of Defalk?" Anna asked.

  "Capital? You mean the coins amassed by a usurer? There are few coins indeed in Falcor. Falcor is the liedstadt of Defalk, because that is where Lord Barjim's liedburg is."

  Every time she tried to get an answer, somehow the answer led into something else. If the Germanic word roots meant the same things, then Falcor was the capital of Defalk, but liedstadt translated roughly as "song-city," while Lord Barjim's castle or hall was a "song-castle." Anna grabbed the saddle as Farinelli lurched forward, her thoughts spinning as she tried to construct a mental map— Ebra to the east, and Neserea to the west, and Nordwei to the north.

  "What's south?" she blurted.

  "Ranuak," Brill answered tersely. "I have a map in my workroom."

  His tone bothered Anna. Was she just supposed to sit on Farinelli and follow the sorcerer around and meekly take what information he offered? She'd stopped doing that with Avery—which had been one of the many things that had led to the divorce—and she wasn't about to start again.

  The sorcerer reined up by a stone hitching post outside the squat building, £nd dismounted. The dusty path to the oaken door bore boot tracks, almost all the same boot tracks, probably Brill's, Anna reflected as she climbed off Farinelli and tied him beside the mare.

  Anna followed the sorcerer, almost as in a daze, as he led her through the small entryway and into a room filled almost entirely with a pool contained in a raised stone pedestal, where, on one side, rested a harp, half reflected in thei silvered water. Anna squinted as she glanced at the silvered surface, where images seemed to flicker and then vanish. The cool of the building was a relief after the searing heat' outside.

  "Reading the pool takes some effort, and it's hard to separate what is from what you hope. There is the map."

  On the wall was a crude map. Anna refrained from smiling as her study of the map confirmed—generally—her mental picture. Defalk was indeed surrounded on all sides, both by mountains and other countries.