The Saprano Sorceress

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  "My children, you know, are far, far away," Anna began, "but I understand, and perhaps I can act as your daughter, as you would have her act now." Anna smiled. "But you'll have to keep acting like a mother. There's too much I don't know, and even adopted daughters need guidance, especially now. I hope I can live up to Nelmor's expectations. I'll certainly try."

  The light in Essan's eyes told Anna that she had been understood, even before Essan stopped by the door. "You be sure that I be no old woman, badgering and bothering you?"

  "If you did not talk to me, how would I learn about Defalk? Or the liedburg?"

  "Much you have to do, sorceress-girl. Much, but don't you worry. I'll be back, and it is good to see you in health. See that you stay that way. I will tell you that though you were mine." Essan nodded affirmatively and opened the door. "Now get that pretty face clean." Her eyes went to the recital gown. "And wear that gown when you want all eyes on you."

  "I hope so," Anna answered ambiguously.

  After she watched the older woman climb up the stairs, firmly but slowly, Anna closed the door.

  She needed to clean up—quickly—and then to develop and cast some sort of protection spell—or something. And that was just the beginning. The Lady Essan had made it clear—very clear.

  One thing was very clear. She was running out of time. She had to do something—either leave or fight, and she really wasn't a fighter.

  Anna laughed. She hadn't been a fighter, but something about Erde had changed her from being a survivor to a fighter. Was it that the worst had already been done to her children? That her actions couldn't be used against them?

  So be it. She would fight Behlem. But in her own way and on her own terms.

  99

  Falcor, Defalk

  You could not keep that uniformed fop Nubara…" Behlem breaks off and paces across the corner of the room, brushing away a spider web that has tangled in his reddish-blond beard. He pauses by the window, pushing the shutters wide. "Double moons, to boot."

  "How would you have me do that?" asks Menares, ignoring the Prophet's comments about the ominous moons. "You wish to offend the Liedfuhr?"

  "You don't consider the doubled moons a problem?"

  "The moons are not in our control, Lord Behlem." Menares pauses, then adds deliberately, "I was… surprised to see the sorceress."

  "What would you have me do? My own officers, except Zealor, worship the bitch. She put herself out in front of the army, almost got killed by some lancers, and destroyed dissonance-near the entire Ebran force. And you want me to have her executed, if I could? For what? I should have let her have that sorcerer's hall and pensioned her off, but no, I had to listen to your advice about all Defalk rising with her." The Prophet turns from the window and steps toward the table. "What on Erde was I thinking about?"

  "Replacing one danger with a greater one," murmurs the white-haired counselor.

  "I am supposed to believe that?" Behlem ignores the nearly-empty goblet and lifts the bottle to his lips.

  "You are the Prophet. You can do as you wish." Menares shrugs. "You will anyway, once you have heard me."

  "Go ahead."

  "You have noted how respected she is, and how few she knows. Some already love her, except that they do not love her, but her image. Who respects and loves the Evult? Yet none know him, just his image. Eladdrin was the only Ebran respected, and the sorceress has vanquished him. If you left her in Mencha, even if she helped you again, even if she defeated all of Ebra and laid it at your feet, a season, a year, from now who would be respected? You—or her?"

  "Why are matters so complex?"

  "Because you are a ruler," replies Menares. "You know that. Things are simple for a fanner or a peasant."

  "Fine. What do I do now?"

  "Let events take their course."

  Behlem's eyes flicker to the door at the side of the room. "Already?"

  "Cyndyth saw Lady Anna this afternoon, but I believe her mind was made up already."

  The Prophet's tongue licks his lips. "And if her schemes fail?"

  "How can you lose? You had no part in it, and there never is anything to link them to her."

  "She will inform Konsstin that it is once again my fault, and his assistance will halt," Behlem points out.

  "Only for a time. He cannot afford to stop aiding you, not when he wishes you to take the brunt of the effort in destroying the Evult and weakening Nordwei."

  "You don't have to live with her. I had thought by undertaking this campaign… perhaps get some peace, some affection without politics and more politics."

  "She knows that. Why else would she be here?" Men-ares toys with his goblet but does not lift it.

  "Enough. She is waiting, and she will need her say." Behlem shakes his head. "Enough."

  Behlem walks to the side door without looking back.

  Menares smiles sadly and looks at his own untouched goblet. Then he stands.

  100

  Anna looked out her window, craning her neck. She smiled. Clearsong and Darksong—the twin moons— were close together, one silvered gold, one dark silvered red. Two moons—the idea still fascinated her, even while it reminded her that Erde was far different from earth.

  Voices rumbled from the walls, carried in the night stillness.

  "… dissonant moon near the other… an omen of bad things…" . "Bah… happens every year or so…"

  "… tell you, that was when they killed Mikell…"

  "… died in his sleep…"

  "… tell you…"

  The sorceress yawned. She felt paranoid, as though she were using sorcery for every little thing. She'd even sung a spell over the rather dry and boring beef pie Skent had brought her for dinner. She could have sought out the players and eaten with them, she supposed, but that sent the wrong signal, somehow.

  Omens, deaths, what else? She stiffened, turning from iflfi the window toward the sole flickering candle in its mantle on the table.

  Garreth! What had Essan meant about Garreth? She'd been so absorbed in trying to read through the words and frame the right kind of response, and then to hurry and come up with spells for what lay ahead that her concerns about the girl had been submerged.

  For a moment, she thought, then mentally figured the words, before she faced the mirror and lifted the lutar.

  She cleared her throat and sang.

  "Mirror, mirror, on the wall show me Garreth from this hall, where she is or last did lie if she live or if she die."

  The mists swirled across the mirror, then revealed a patch of bare earth covered with weeds flattened by the river. Anna thought the space might be the land sloping to the river to the southeast of the hall, but the location really didn't matter.

  Her eyes burned, and her jaw clenched for a moment. Why hadn't she paid attention sooner? Except… it wouldn't have mattered.

  She turned from the newer mirror, with its painted green frame, laid the lutar on the bed, and walked to the window. The light wind, cooler now than when she had left Falcor, ruffled her hair, hair that had more natural curl than it had ever had before. Another image of Brill's?

  She shook her head, thinking again that she had the gift of youth because she had gone to Brill's side when he died—she and not Liende, and from that much else had flowed. And she was here in Falcor because two innocents—Daffyd and Jenny—had tried the impossible. If ever there had been a case of fools rushing in where angels feared to tread… but they had, and Jenny was dead, and Daffyd in the middle of intrigue that made Brill an angel by comparison.

  Anna pulled the handkerchief from her belt and blew her nose. She sniffled too much when she was upset. Why had they killed Garreth? Because the poor girl was associated with both Anna and Lady Essan? Because of what she might know?

  Garreth had been seated there, and drawn Anna on a stool, even doing the background so that Elizabetta would know something about where Anna was. And now Garreth, who had wanted little except to be safe, was dead.

  An
na glanced to the door where the bolt was drawn. It seemed to fade in and out in the flickering light from the candle.

  What else did Anna need to worry about? Her eyes went to the door, and she carried the candle as she crossed the floor.

  Anna studied the sliding bolt on the door, closely, first inside, then outside. She nodded. Maybe she was paranoid, but there were two small holes in the wood on the outside, and a thin slit between them, just enough that something slender could open the bolted door from outside silently.

  That needed to be remedied, but she needed to redesign the bolt first. Brill had said that inanimate materials were easier.

  Before long, she had a drawing of a double drop bolt— strong enough that it would take several men and a battering ram some time to break down the door. She hoped that would be all she needed.

  Next came the first spell.

  She grinned as she completed the last words,

  "… iron hard and fixed in place!"

  As she set the lutar on the bed, her eyes straying to the window and the almost locked moons, she had to wonder. Should she just leave? Why was she tempting fate to stay in a hall where the walls had ears and where who knew how many souls plotted against her?

  Because she would be on the run… and because… be-cause she was tired of running. What was the point of youth and a new world if she just repeated the old?

  Anna took a deep breath and reached for another piece of paper. Not running was getting complicated, and her head was beginning to ache again.

  Before too long, she wrote out another set of simple words, based on the fire spell, then worked on memorizing them, not that they were much different, but she might well need them in a hurry.

  Then she laid the striker by the candle, the words there as well, with the lutar on top of its case and waiting.

  She hoped she needed none of them, and feared she would.

  She did not sleep, not at first, not with her thoughts of poor Garreth, possibly tortured, and her own imagination about shadowy figures creeping up the steps and pounding down the door. In time, she dropped into the darkness.

  Clang! Clang!

  The reverberations of the hammers, or whatever they were, woke her out of a nightmare where she kept riding, and riding, and found nowhere to rest. Her whole body was drenched in sweat, and now… now someone was trying to break into her room.

  Her fingers trembled as she fumbled with the striker.

  Clang!

  "… get on with it…"

  "… boys'll keep it clear long enough… bitch… center it, frig it!"

  As the candle flamed, she lifted the lutar, and let her fingers caress the strings, clearing her throat, and hoping, just hoping she could make trembling hands, and trembling voice work.

  Clang!

  The first note told her she wasn't lucky. Her throat was clogged with mucus, and she coughed it clear.

  Clang! The door shivered.

  Anna ran through a quick vocalise, stopping halfway through to cough up more junk. Shit! Shit! Shit! What a time for an allergy attack!

  "What was that?'' muttered the voice beyond the door.

  After another set of coughs, she sang, chording the simple structure to match her spell.

  "Attackers there, attackers strong, turn to ashes with this song. Be you right or be you wrong, death take you all along."

  "Aeiii!…"

  The tools dropped on the stones of the landing. The screams did not last long, but Anna only half-dozed the rest of the night, the candle burning, the lutar at hand.

  The tower remained silent, eerily silent, as though abandoned, and Anna dozed, and woke, and dozed.

  101

  Falcor, Defalk

  T'he raven-haired woman shakes Behlem's shoulder.

  "Wha…" He blinks and tries to open his eyes, although the sun has barely cleared the horizon, and the room is dim, its shutters closed tightly.

  "We need to talk, dear consort and Prophet." She wears a silk robe of dark bloodred, tucked in to show a narrow waist and more than ample breasts.

  "At this glass?" he groans, dropping his head .back on the sheets.

  "What I do not understand, Behlem," says the raven-haired woman, almost languidly, as she perches on the foot of the bed that had once belonged to the lords of Defalk, "is why you always think you can deceive me when you go off and leave me."

  "Deceive you?" He struggles up into a sitting position. "What on Erde are you babbling about. I told you everything."

  "In the middle of the night, some… intruders… entered the north tower. They were apparently bent on some mischief with your dear sorceress."

  Behlem rubs his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

  "There were screams, I am told, but they were not from the sorceress. I was led to believe that she was unprotected." Cyndyth smiles. "After last night, I almost believed you, until this morning."

  "You used your father's… resources, and they failed?" Behlem laughs. "The resources of the great Konsstin failed?"

  "You would be wise to remember, consort dear, that he is paying for the arms and supplies for this expedition." Cyndyth shifts position, and her eyes smolder. "In the interests of everyone's safely, I inspected many of the lock-bolts throughout the liedburg, rustic place that it is. The sorceress's was singularly inadequate. "Yet…" Cyndyth shrugs. "So I would like to know why you warned her."

  Behlem shakes his head, almost sadly. "I did not. I would wish I had, just to see you frustrated, dear plotting consort, but had I, your tame seers would know already."

  "You slept with her."

  "I would rather sleep with a grass-snake." The Prophet grins momentarily.

  "As pretty as she is? Have you lost all manhood?"

  "Cyndyth, I have no idea what happened to your assassins, but I saw what she did to Delor, as I am certain Menares informed you. I had no desire to end up as he did." Behlem shrugs and sits up farther in the bed. "Since you would be displeased at the results and since I would also, I did not think that you would mind."

  "Good. Then you will not mind our devising a way to remove her?"

  Behlem holds up a hand. "Only one stipulation. That her removal be quietly handled —after the victory dinner. Her demise before it would not set well with many of the captains and their troops. She must appear… low on the table, below all the overcaptains and senior captains. And I will delicately suggest that her victory, while welcome, created significant additional problems that are entirely her fault."

  "You worry about peasants?"

  "They have more weapons than we do, Cyndyth, and even the densest of them will suspect us—especially after this botch of yours."

  "Mine? I had nothing to do with it."

  "Yours. Now go get something else to chew on and let me get dressed and talk to Menares. We will work out something quiet—perhaps in Mencha. I will give her the sorcerer's hall, as compensation, despite her failings."

  "You what?"

  "Then she will have to travel there. The dark ones will be waiting, to avenge their losses. Something like that. Now… go find someone else to annoy." Behlem staggers to his feet.

  Cyndyth smiles as she sways toward the door.

  102

  Lady Anna?"

  "Yes?" the sorceress answered without unbolting the door. Despite washing up, eating, and dressing, she still felt tired.

  "It's Menares. Might I come in?"

  "You and who else?"

  "There is no one else here." A pause followed. "Do you think anyone else would dare?"

  After using the mirror spell to verify that Menares was indeed alone, and feeling untrustworthy about it, Anna opened the door.

  Menares stepped in slowly, glancing around. He licked his lips.

  "I won't incinerate you, Menares," Anna promised, closing and bolting the door behind the counselor.

  "I would… appreciate that."

  "I've never wanted to kill anyone here," she added. "That's why it's so hard to understand why
so many people want to kill me."

  "Lady Anna… the Prophet is distressed." After another sweep of the room, his eyes halting on the uncovered lutar on the bed, the counselor settled into one of the chairs.

  "Menares, I'm distressed. Do you think I enjoy having people trying to break into my room in the middle of the night?" Anna paused, then sat on the bed beside her instrument. "Do you know who they were?"

  "No, Lady Anna. No one is missing from the Prophet's retinue." Menares' eyes flickered, and Anna knew a lie would follow. "It could have been the dark ones. At Synek, when they came, the streets were filled with bodies and they hacked to death those who would not follow."

  "These didn't feel like dark ones," Anna said.

  "There is no way to tell. They had blades and daggers and coins in their purses. Everything else…" The counselor shrugged.

  "And some sort of hammer and chisel?" prodded Anna.

  "Ah… how did you know?"

  "When someone takes a hammer to an iron hinge, it is loud." Anna smiled. "I also found it interesting that no one came to investigate until Skent brought my breakfast tray and found the… remains. Was he supposed to find mine?''

  "Lady Anna, I swear I had nothing to do with this." The white-haired counselor licked his lips. "And the Prophet is most unhappy about this…occurrence."

  Anna almost nodded. She believed most of his statements. There had been a massacre in Synek, and Menares had known, or suspected, someone was out to assassinate her, but had had nothing to do with it, and the Prophet wanted her out of the way, but more subtly, and probably after his victory dinner.

  Lord, how many people wanted her dead?

  "Can't you find out who they were?" she asked.

  "Lady Anna," the white-haired counselor said with a shrug, "you did not leave much except their leathers and their weapons. And their tools."

  "I'm sure they would have left little of me, Menares." Anna smiled coldly. "What do you want?"

  "To reassure you, and to offer a solution mutually agreeable to you… and everyone, I hope."