The Saprano Sorceress

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Anna shook her head. "I need something a lot sooner. A lot sooner."

  "I can try," Daffyd said. "The seasoned woods will help, but it will not be as good as I would like if I hurry."

  "Daffyd… most times I would agree with you, but this is one time where a poor instrument is better than none."

  The young instrumentalist's eyebrows lifted.

  "Go…" Anna laughed. "Listen to your elders."

  When the young man had left the salon, Anna stood, gathered the papers, and walked slowly up to her chamber, accompanied by Florenda. What other tasks could she devise for the girl?—not too onerous, but ones that would keep her out of Anna's hair all the time.

  She tried not to sigh, wishing that she felt stronger. Still, she intended to be riding again within another few days. If she had to stay in the hall much longer, she'd scream— except she wouldn't. She always tried to be reasonable.

  24

  Falcor, Defalk

  Why does it take your sire, the powerful and wise Lord Jecks, so dissonantly long to gather his levies? Three weeks more before he can move them down the Mencha road?" Barjim looks at the half-eaten loaf of bread on the table between them, then scoops up a handful of the heavily salted almonds.

  The broad-shouldered brunette, whose short hair shows streaks of gray, brushes the crumbs off the worn leathers that match Barjim's. "Because it's the only way he can buy you time. You can't be expected to move against the dark ones without the largest company of your lords' levies." She.takes a deep swig from her pewter goblet and sets it on the table. "The dark ones wish to crush us at one blow, and they will wait—for a time, but not until harvest, or even close to it."

  "Alasia, I songpraise the day we were joined—when I'm not cursing it." He refills his goblet.

  "I know. Do you want me to be less than I am? Would that help?" Her voice is calm, free of edge or bitterness, gentle, but not soft.

  "No. You know that. So does half of Liedwahr, unfortunately." After a sip from the goblet, he asks, "What can I gain from such time?"

  "Send a message to your sorcerer, for one. Suggest that he had best use the time to good advantage."

  "I did that already. Twice, as you may recall. He responds that he stands ready for my summons." Barjim takes another swallow of the harsh wine.

  "Can you replace some of the liedburg guards in Denguic with levies in similar garb, levies from Sudwei, perhaps?"

  "That might help. That cripple Geansor won't complain."

  "Not with his heir and daughter in the south tower," says Alasia dryly.

  "You've never approved of that, but what choice do I have? In any case…" Barjim pauses and rubs his left temple. "In any case, we could move them in with the supply wagons over the next week. Behlem wouldn't notice the difference through a scrying pond, no matter what he claims about being the Prophet of Music. It's easy to claim that sort of thing with the Liedfuhr of Mansuur behind you."

  "And his coins," murmurs Alasia.

  "Those, too." Barjim takes another handful of nuts.

  25

  "The first battle song—again," ordered Brill.

  Daffyd shifted his weight on his stool, his eyes flicking to Anna and then away, before- he lifted his bow.

  From the chair at the side of the practice room, Anna listened as the eight players followed Brill's gestures. Kaseth, one of the other violinists, one clarinetist, and the bass-horn player were missing.

  Gero sat on a stool in the corner, his eyes on Brill.

  Liende and the falk hornist carried the main melody of the short battle song, and the strings supported them, rather than the other way around, as it had been in the previous practices Anna had attended. Even so, the structure still seemed mostly polyphonic, and she couldn't help but wonder if homophonic music would provide stronger spell support—or even vocal harmony.

  Anna suppressed a bitter laugh. Theory wasn't her bag, and she was speculating again on what kind of music would cast spells better in a world she scarcely understood. Avery would have done that, but was she any better?

  Mentally, she tried to construct some verse that would follow the music, but found she could not—not anything that made sense. She could adapt something she knew… but creating it from scratch, that she hadn't been able to do—not yet anyway. Had Brill actually written the battle song—or inherited it from his father?

  After the practice, Anna made her way across the room to Daffyd. "How are you coming on the lutar?"

  "I have the frame done. Do you want the fingerboard rounded like a violin?"

  "Flat, if you can, and…" Anna shook her head. There wasn't any point in fretting the board, not when she didn't know and couldn't begin to calculate the intervals. That would make fingering hard, and even harder on her fingers, but violinists managed it.

  "I have also found some of the best spruce for the bass peg and the sounding peg."

  "Good." Anna recalled spruce was supposed to be good for that. "Hardwood for the front and back?"

  "Maple and rosewood."

  "How soon?"

  "I cannot say." Daffyd closed the case for his viola. "Sooner than I had thought." He glanced toward the entry hall where Brill and Liende stood. "Lord Brill said that I should only work on your lutar and my playing."

  Anna nodded. So Brill thought her lutar was that important. He hadn't told her.

  Daffyd, Liende, and several of the players followed them back to the hall, riding discretely behind Anna and the sorcerer.

  Brill pointed to the east, and the dark clouds over the distant mountains. "The clouds—the dark ones are working the weather again. The eastern rains never reach us."

  "… black bastards…"

  Anna caught the words but not the speaker, although she thought it might have been Frideric.

  Once they were back inside the hall's wall, Anna led Farinelli into the cool of the stable and to his stall, almost wishing she could unsaddle him, but she hesitated to try with her injured arm. She'd never had that much upper-body strength anyway.

  "Let me do that, lady," offered Quies.

  "Thank you. I really should be doing it myself by now, but this shoulder…"

  "Quite a wound you took," Quies said. "Even left some blood on Farinelli, more than a little. Good thing you're a strong woman." With quick motions he undid both front and rear cinches and lifted the saddle off the gelding.

  Anna patted the palomino's shoulder. "Good steady fellow you are."

  Farinelli whuffed.

  "You want to be fed, I'll bet."

  "You've that right, lady. He's a glutton, or would be if I'd let him." Quies shook his head. "He likes you. Doesn't like many. Albero wouldn't ride him. Neither would Husto." The stablemaster grinned. "Figured you two would get along, and I was right."

  "I like him," Anna admitted.

  "He likes you," Quies repeated. "I like to see that."

  With a last pat, Anna headed out of the stable and back to the hall, far enough behind the others that the courtyard was empty. She could feel the sweat beading up under the hat, and she swept it off when she stepped inside the entry hall, where Florenda waited.

  Anna repressed a sigh as she climbed the steps to the second floor, absently peering down the hallway as she stopped at her door. Brill's rooms lay at the end of the corridor. That Anna knew, though she had never been there. In fact, the issue had never come up, and in some ways that bothered her almost as much as if it had.

  Was she getting that old? Brill was as old as she was, or close to it.

  "Florenda?"

  "Yes, lady?"

  "I'm going to need some clean clothes."

  "They're all clean, or drying, except for what you have on, lady."

  "All right." Anna couldn't help but smile. "Go find something to do. Get me an apple, if you can."

  Florenda grinned briefly, then bowed. "I will ask Serna."

  "Fine."

  As Florenda hurried away, a figure stepped into a doorway at the end of the hall.
Anna thought the woman was Liende, but she wasn't sure.

  If so, Brill wasn't going after the young-ones like Florenda. She could have been wrong, but he didn't strike her as the type to chase a number of different women at the same time. "Interesting," she murmured.

  Her chamber remained cool, and she set the hat on the flat surface in the robing room, then began to wash up, getting rid of as much dust as she could. After she blotted her face dry, she returned to the bedchamber and-stood in front of the window, gazing out the tinted window at the same clear sky, the same sunbaked view of Mencha, the same dusty and empty roads.

  After a time, she turned to the table and lifted the water pitcher.

  Thrap… thrap.

  "Who's there?"

  Someone answered, but she didn't catch the name. So she walked to the door.

  "Yes?"

  "It's Liende, Lady Anna. Might I enter?"

  Anna opened the door, then gestured for Liende to come in and to take a seat at the table. The player took the one facing away from the window, crossing her trousered legs and showing a pair of pale tan leather boots.

  Anna closed the door and took the chair across the table from the other woman.

  "I needed to talk to you," Liende said.

  Anna felt tongue-tied. Why did the clarinetist feel this way—because she was Brill's lover? Or was she? Was Liende worried? "I should have thanked you earlier," Anna started. "Without your help, I understand I could have died."

  "You are stronger than that, Lady Anna. I was pleased to have been able to help." The red-haired woman cleared her throat gently. "It is about Lord Brill… You saw me… and…"

  "There's nothing to explain," Anna said. "Lord Brill has offered great hospitality, and I value his friendship, especially because I'm a stranger here. But I'm not interested in him, not in a romantic way." She added, "I also get the impression that he is far more interested in my sorcery than in anything else I might offer."

  Liende gave a gentle smile. "I am not certain about the last, but with women he is a true noble. He has been with me."

  "I can only offer you water. Would you like some?" asked Anna.

  "Thank you."

  "You know, Lord Brill loves Loiseau."

  "Loiseau?" Anna set her own goblet on the table before her.

  "That is the name of the hall and holding. That is why he will turn to darksong against the dark ones. That is why he hopes you can help. Loiseau is all he really has. He cannot have children. At least, he never has, and it appears unlikely."

  Anna understood that. In a world without modern birth control, if Brill had no children at his age, he probably never would have them.

  "You say Lord Brill is kind," Anna temporized. "Yet Daffyd says that he killed his father. He says he killed him for humming."

  "Some things are true, and that is true," Liende admitted. "But it was not quite that way."

  "I don't understand," said Anna. "Humming?"

  "Daffyd did not lie. Lord Brill did kill his father, and Culain hummed for years. He could not really even hum. There was no music there." Liende shook her head. "The only melody was in his violino." She lowered her voice. "The humming was the last note. Brill had stood it long enough. He couldn't stand it any longer."

  "Stand what?" Anna took a long sip from the goblet, wondering what else she would find out.

  "Brill took a fancy to Nyreth—that was Daffyd's mother. She was never happy with Culain, but she used Brill to buy her way out of Defalk. She was beautiful even then, and Brill was lonely. All sorcerers are. You are already, and you will become more powerful and even more lonely.''

  Powerful and lonely? Anna wondered if that would be all bad. At Ames, it had seemed like she was powerless and lonely. -

  "You should know how hard sorcery is," Liende continued. "The slightest mistake in his thoughts, and Brill could destroy his own spell, or what he strove for… or even himself. That is why sorcerers are so touchy. And Culain was a hard man. A fair man, but hard. Hard," Liende repeated. "He beat Nyreth more than once." Liende shrugged. "Brill was gentle. He is kind in his own way. But Culain kept nagging him silently. Culain kept humming to annoy him and distract him. He told Daffyd how terrible Lord Brill was." Liende shrugged.

  If what Liende said were so, that put a different light jon things. Still, Brill had killed Culain. Anna wasn't quite sure what to think. "What happened to Nyreth?"

  "Folks say she's a lady in Elioch, but no one really knows. With a sorcerer, anything's possible, but when she left, a week later, my cousin Zania saw her on the long-carriage to the west, and she gave Zania a silver to keep her mouth shut for a week. That must have been five years now."

  "Why did you agree to be Brill's… lover?" asked Anna.

  "Gaelin died four years ago. Brill is gentle, and," Liende touched her hair, "sorcerers can make you young again, and it stays. Nyreth looked like first youth—that's why no one recognized her."

  "But Brill isn't young."

  Liende cleared her throat, then looked toward the closed door. "Those are the rules. Sorcerers can't do anything for themselves."

  Anna pursed her lips. Brill wanted her to make him young—or worse. Every time she learned something, life got more complicated. That hadn't changed from earth to Erde. It didn't look like it would, either.

  26

  Anna struggled to unfasten the cinches and got them both loosened before Quies entered the stall. "Would you mind, lady," he asked ironically, "if I did my duties and racked the saddle?"

  Anna had to smile. "No. That would still be hard." She added after a brief pause. "I'm not trying to do your job, but I guess I feel that if I ride Farinelli, I should know how to take care of him."

  Quies racked the saddle with the effortless motion that came of long practice, and healthy shoulders. "That feeling might not sit so well with other lords and ladies, excepting Lord Brill, and maybe one like Lord Jecks."

  "They don't have to live with me," Anna said. "I do."

  Quies smiled briefly. "Then let me show you how to take off the bridle. Anyone can fumble a saddle into place."

  Anna thought of Farinelli's teeth, but nodded. Good intentions and an open mouth always led to trouble.

  "Horses are just like people. They're not much for others fiddling with their mouths," said Quies. "Now, watch."

  Anna watched.

  "You try it now."

  She felt like her hands were all thumbs, and reaching up to get the top over the gelding's ears strained her shoulder. She winced involuntarily, but managed. Farinelli whuffed, as if to ask that she get it over with, but, surprisingly, did not toss his head or attempt to nip.

  She patted his shoulder. "Good boy."

  "He likes you. That helps."

  "I like him, and I owe him a lot. He got me back here."

  "You did that, Lady Anna. Your mount helped, but you did it. Took a lot to do that."

  Anna flushed. Although she felt she was a survivor type, she'd never thought of herself as courageous or one of those people who rode into battle. Then, again, she hadn't. She'd just survived… again, and there wasn't much sense in taking herself too seriously for that. "Thank you, but I did what any sensible person would do. I rode to where I could get help. I didn't fight off people or protect anyone."

  "Sense is the last thing most people have with a war arrow through their chest."

  Realizing that Quies would always think her actions were special, Anna shifted the subject. "Lord Brill said that your son could help me with learning something about the knife." Anna's fingers touched the hilt. "He sent them to me, or someone did, but I don't know where to find him."

  Quies laughed briefly. "The armory, such as it is, is on the other side of the stable. He's there now."

  "Good. I have some time before the midday meal."

  "Nearly a glass," confirmed Quies. "Albero will help. He likes sensible women."

  "Thank you." Anna didn't shake her head. Were, sorceresses not supposed to be day-to-day sensi
ble?

  She tried two doors before she found the armory. The first was a storeroom filled with barrels, and the second she left sneezing from the hay or grain she stirred up just in opening the door. The third door opened into a dim and narrow room.

  A redhead with his back to the door sat on a stool pumping a grindstone with his foot as he sharpened a long blade.

  He looked up as Anna entered, then stood and set aside the blade. "Lady."

  "I had hoped that you could help me with the knife," Anna said.

  The red-haired young man smiled. "If you had not already been wounded, Lady Anna, I would say that you needed no blade." The smile vanished. "Times are changing, my sire says, and not for the better."

  "So it seems. Where do we start?"

  "I cannot teach you the knife in days, or even in seasons. I can help you enough so that you can stop a desperate or stupid man, or hold off someone long enough to use one of your spells." Albero eased the yard-long blade he had been sharpening onto a set of brackets on the side wall, then stepped out into the open space to the right of the grindstone. "Take the knife out of the sheath."

  Anna struggled for a moment, then wrestled the blade out. She looked down at the short length of polished iron— or was it steel?

  Albero laughed. "That is the first problem. You have to draw your blade quickly enough to use it."

  Anna flushed.

  "I do not mean to jest. The simple matters are important. You must keep the blade oiled and sharpened. Do not use too much oil, just enough that there is a thin layer, one you can almost not see. Do not touch the edge. Your fingers will dull it A clean blade draws quickly."

  That made sense to Anna.

  "Also you must have a sheath that lets you draw the blade quickly. That one is pretty, but it catches the blade." Albero turned toward the shelves on the wall to Anna's right. After a moment, he returned with a battered but stiff black leather sheath. "Let's try this one."

  Anna fumbled the softer, tooled leather sheath off her belt and replaced it with the more functional looking one. The knife slid in and out smoothly.

  "Can you feel the difference?"

  She nodded.