DARKSONG RISING
BOOK THREE
OF THE SPELLSONG CYCLE
L. E. MODESITT JR.
ATOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
To and for the sorceress who made this all possible-Carol Ann
Copyright 1999
First edition: October 1999
First mass market edition: January 2001
CONTENT
CHARACTERS
I
LIEDFALSCH
1
2
WEI, NORDWEI
3
4
ESARIA, NESEREA
5
6
PAMR, DEFALK
7
8
9
ESARIA, NESEREA
10
11
DOLOV, EBRA
12
13
14
15
MANSUUS, MANSUUR
16
17
18
19
20
ENCORA, RANUAK
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
ESARIA, NESEREA
29
30
31
32
OUTSIDE OF PAMR, DEFALK
33
34
35
36
37
38
WEI, NORDWEI
II
LIEDFINSTER
39
40
ESARIA, NESEREA
41
42
43
44
ENCORA, RANUAK
45
46
ELAHWA, EBRA
47
48
49
NORTHWEST OF ELAHWA, EBRA
50
51
52
53
54
ESARIA, NESEREA
55
56
57
58
MANSUUS, MANSUUR
59
60
61
62
63
PAMR, DEFALK
64
65
66
ENCORA, RANUAK
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
WEI, NORDWEI
74
75
76
NORTH-NORTHWEST OF FUSSEN, DEFALK
77
78
ENCORA, RANUAK
79
80
MANSUUS, MANSUUR
81
82
NORTH OF FUSSEN, DEFALK
83
84
85
NORTH OF FUSSEN, DEFALK
86
87
88
NORTH OF FUSSEN, DEFALK
89
90
91
92
WEI, NORDWEI
93
94
95
96
97
98
III
LETZTLIED
99
ENCORA, RANUAK
100
101
MANSUUS, MANSUUR
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
MANSUUS, MANSUUR
111
112
WEI, NORDWEI
113
CHARACTERS
Anna Regent of Defalk and Lady of Loiseau [Mencha]
Jimbob Heir to Defalk, and Lord of Falcor and Synfal [Cheor]
Hanfor Arms Commander of Defalk
Dythya Counselor of Finance
Essan Lady and widow of Lord Donjim
Herene Younger sister of Lady Gatmne [Pamr]; warder of Dinfan, heir to Suhl
Herstat Saalmeister of Synfal [Cheor] Menares Counselor
LORDS OF DEFALK
Jecks Lord of Elheld [Elhi] Lord High Counselor to the Regent
Birfels Lord of Abenfel; consort is Fylena
Cletliner Lord of Mordland
Dannel Lord of Mossbach; consort is Resengna
Dinfan Underage daughter of late Lord Sargol; heir to Suhl
Ebraak Lord of Nordfels
Fustar Lord of Issl
Gatrune Lady of Pamr
Geansor Lord of Sudwei
Genrica Lord of Wendel
Gylaron Lord of Lerona, consort is Reylan
Hryding Lord of Flossbend [Synope]; consort is Antenna
Huther Lord of Silbenfelt
Jearle Lord of Denguic
Klestayr Lord of Aroch
Mietchel Lord of Morra, brother of Lady Wendeila of Stromwer
Nelmor Lord of Dubaria consort is Delyra, eldest son and heir is Tiersen
Tybel Lord of Arien
Vlassa Lord of Fussen; heirs are twin sons, Ustal and Polar
Vyarl Rider of Hemnene
Wendella Lady of Stromwer
FOSTERLINGS AND PAGES
Alseta Daughter of Chief Player Liende
Barat Page
Birke Heir of Lord Birfels [Abenfel]
Cataryzna Daughter and heir of Lord Geansor [Sudwei]
Cens Page
Clayre Younger daughter of Lord Birfels [Abenfel]
Hoede Youngest son of Lord Dannel [Mossbach]
Kinor Son of Chief Player Linde
Lysara Daughter of Lord Birfels [Abenfel]
Resor Page
Secca Daughter of Lord Hryding [Flossbend]
Skent Page
Tiersen Son and heir of Lord Nelmor [Dubaria]
Ytrude Daughter of Lord Nelmor [Dubaria]
DEFALKAN ARMSMEN
Alvar Overcaptain
Himar Overcaptain
Jirsit Undercaptain
DEFALKAN PLAYERS
Daffyd Viola; first chief player
Liende Woodwind; second chief player
Delvor Violino
Duralt Falk-horn
Hassett Violino
Palian Violino
Yuarl Violino
OTHERS OUTSIDE DEFALK
Ashtaar Spymistress of Nordwei
Bertmynn Lord of Dolov, Ebra
Hadrenn Lord of Synek, Ebra
Konsstin Liedfuhr of Mansuur; heir is Kestrin; eldest daughter is Aerlya
Maitre of Sturinn Leader of Sturinn; master of the Sea-Priests
Matriarch Head of State, Ranuak; consort is Ulgar
Nubara Overcaptain of Lancers, Mansuur, stationed in Neserea as Regent
Rabyn Prophet of Music, Lord of Neserea; regent w Nubara
Siobion Widow of Lord Ehara; Regent of Dumar
Tybra Leader, Council of Wei, Nordwei
I
------------
LIEDFALSCH
1
Anna readjusted her floppy brown hat and shifted her weight the saddle. Beneath her, Parinelli, the big palomino gelding, continued his quick walk eastward along the dusty road that ran south of the Chean River toward the former ford at Sorprat. Anna glanced sideways at Himar, the sandy-haired captain-overcaptain now-whose mustache drooped more than usual-perhaps from the road ~... perhaps from sweat. Two of her personal guards flanked them-Eckel on her left, and beyond and slightly back of Himar, Lejun. An overcaptain, personal guards-sometimes it was still hard to believe that she was Regent and Sorceress of Defalk, and Lady of Mencha
Less than two years earlier, she had be
en Anna Marshall, struggling assistant professor of voice in Ames, Iowa, a divorcée mourning the death of her eldest daughter. Then, a spell sung in Defalk and her own ill-uttered wish to be anywhere but Ames had thrown her into the intrigues and battles of Liedwahr, both colored by the ever-present male chauvinism, a chauvinism that so often she seemed the only one to recognize, even after she'd survived three attempted rapes.
Because the world of Erde was governed by the harmonies-and song magic that worked-those snuggles she faced were more deadly than the faculty politics of Ames. But only slightly, Anna reflected as she thought of the fate of untenured and discarded junior faculty members at the universities where she had taught over the years.
Th. late-summer sun had burned the back of her neck, despite her ever-present felt hat, and the sweat that oozed from her hair added to the stinging. In her green trousers and shirt, and floppy brown hat, she scarcely looked like a regent. Only the gold-trimmed purple vest betrayed the slightest indication of rank-that and her position at the head of the column that stretched a good hundred yards behind her.
An older-looking woman with red hair liberally streaked with white rode up alongside Himar, clearing her throat to announce herself.
Anna turned toward her chief player. "Yes, Liende?"
"Lady... the players are tired... especially young Delvor."
Anna glanced at the road ahead, rising slowly to a crest perhaps a dek away-roughly a kilometer in earth terms-then back to Liende. "I suspect all the armsmen are tired, too," Anna temporized, blotting the sweat from her forehead. "Everyone can rest a little when we get to Sorprat I mean, this side of the river. I think it should be only two or three deks from here."
"Four at the most," added Himar.
"It won't be that long," Anna promised.
"As you say, lady." The woodwind player nodded, then let her mount drop back.
The air was still, so hot that the browned gasses to the south of the road hung limply in the heat. Road dust coated the legs of the horses, and a finer film covered the riders' legs. Anna rubbed her nose, gently, wondering why she had ended up breathing so much road dust. Because there wasn't any other way?
Himar eased his mount closer to Anna, his eyes on the pair of scouts nearing the rise in the road almost a dek ahead. "I will be glad when you have completed this task, lady," the overcaptain said in a low voice, "and you can return to Falcor."
Anna nodded. Lord Jecks would also be glad when she returned, since the white-haired and still-young-faced lord of Elheld had questioned the need for her mission, even though he was the grandfather of young Jimbob, the heir to Defalk, for whom Anna ruled as Regent. Regent for a youth not always grateful. Yet you've used your sorcery for Jiinbob when you can't even use it to see your own children.
She swallowed, her throat even drier than from road dust alone. Would she ever be able to use the mirrors and her song magic to see Elizabetta again? Or Mario?
"Lord Jecks was concerned about this task," Himar added, unnessarily.
The blond-haired Rickel-head of her personal guard- smiled, if briefly, before the professional indifference again masked his amusement at Himar's acknowledgment of Jecks' protectiveness of the sorceress.
Anna hadn't realized how much she missed Jecks, but she'd insisted that he remain in Falcor to heal from his wounds. In their efforts to drive the Sturinnese out of Dumar, to save Anna he'd thrown himself into the enchanted javelin hurled by the Sea-Priest of Sturinn. She still wasn't sure that she would have been able to do something like that to save someone else-to die immediate and selfless way Jecks had done to save her. She moistened her lips at the memory.
Jecks had not been happy with her decision to leave Falcor- especially for the ten days it would take, and he had been quite forceful. "I do not see why you insist on riding out to Sorprat... you do not need a ford there. Not this year. What crops there are come from the lower valley, and the peasants and farmers can use the bridge at Pamr. For another year or so, there will be little enough trade with Ebra. What there is can take the old road on the south side of the Chean River."
Except that the old road adds almost two days travel to Mencha-and Ebra-and you may need those days all too soon. In fact, her own journey to repair the ford was on the old road, and even pushing, it would take a day more-but she knew she needed to be on the south side to see what she could do to undo the mess she'd made of the ford when she'd created a giant sinkhole to swallow the Ebran invaders. And she felt that repairing the ford was necessary. She ignored solid gut feelings at her own peril, and the ford's destruction had been nagging at her for well over a year.
As she rode across the high bluff on the south side of the river, Anna glanced to her left, northward out across the river, across the green valley that-everywhere away from the irrigation ditches-had been brown and dusty little more than a year earlier. She did not look forward to revisiting the site of the battle with the Dark Monks of Ebra-except that it had been more of a slaughter than a battle. Even under the hot sun of late summer, she shivered, recalling the screams and the terrible grinding of the earth as her song-sorcery had churned the muddy waters of the Chean River over the trapped soldiers.
The column crossed the low rise in the road and started on the gentle downgrade toward the point on the south bank of the river opposite the town of Sorprat-or what of it had been rebuilt after the destruction wrought by Anna's magic. It still astounded her that "good" or harmonic song magic-Clearsong-could create such massive destruction, often with not too great a side effect on Anna. Yet the smallest of Darksong spells-even those which would have obviated the need for destructive Clearsong-could prostrate her, possibly threaten her life. Another unfairness that you can do nothing about... because that's the way this world operates. Period. She put that thought aside and concentrated on the spell she would have to use shortly.
Before long, she reined up Farinelli short of where the high grassland ended-abruptly. Himar gestured, and a trumpet signal echoed through the early afternoon. Behind them, the column slowed and halted. Anna patted Farinelli on the shoulder, and the gelding nodded ever so slightly as if to suggest that he indeed deserved some thanks.
Where the plateau ended, what had once been a sinkhole was now a circular and placid lake, smaller than it had been, and cut off from the Chean River by a low muddy rise barely three yards above the lake's surface. The water was still brownish. Below the sorcery-cut bluffs, between the base of the bluffs and the water's edge, instead of beaches, mud slopes angled into the murky lake.
"It is peaceful now' said Himar quietly. "One would hardly know that thousands perished there."
Anna nodded. Ten thousand Ebrans. Dark Monks, she added mentally. "We're close enough."
Himar turned his mount and stood in the stirrups. "Stand down!"
As she thought about the Ebrans, Anna almost wanted to shake her head. Hadrenn, the Ebran Lord of Synek, had beseeched her to accept his fealty. She had, and in making him one of the thirty-three lords of Defalk, thereby effectively added a quarter of Ebra to Defalk. And probably ensured another war in Ebra. One way or another there would have been war in Ebra she reminded herself, between Hadrenn and Bertmynn, the noble who had taken the title of Lord of Dolov and sought to unite all Ebra under his rule. The difference was that Hadrenn had a legitimate claim to lands that had been seized from his father, and sought only those lands, while Bertmynn was willing to sell out to the Liedfuhr of Mansuur and the Sturinnese to rule all of Ebra, And the Sturinnese chain their women.
Anna dismounted. Ear a moment, as she grasped the cantle of the saddle with one hand, she wasn't sure if her legs would hold. After site took the bottle that still held water, she drank slowly. She recorked the battle and replaced it in the holder before walking slowly in the open road before Farinelli to stretch her legs. Next came the vocalises to clear her cords of dust, and the mucus from allergies that Brill's youth spell had done nothing to remedy.
"Holly-lolly-pop..."
Behind her, horses sidestepped, and the armsmen murmured m voices so low that the sound was mare like locusts than men. She shook her head, then began another vocalise, hoping that getting her cords clear would not take forever.
"Quiet!" snapped Himar and the murmuring died away.
When Anna felt her cords were clear, she walked back to the gelding and extracted from the left saddlebag the sketch of the ford she had drawn from memory back in Falcor. Once she unrolled it, her eyes flicked from the drawing to the terrain before her and back to the drawing, comparing the two.
The sketch showed almost a wide and flat stone shelf like structure that would spread the river into a shallow and wide expanse, similar to the clay flats and gravel shallows that had existed before Anna had destroyed the bend in her efforts to annihilate the Ebran forces. She'd also sketched out what amounted to a gradual spillway that would funnel the river back into the deeper channel that existed below where the ford had been.
While she could have used sorcery to construct another bridge, the ford had worked before, and she was reluctant to change what had worked, especially since the northern side of the river was so much lower than the south and there was little enough stone beneath the bluffs.
Finally. Anna lowered the scroll, turned, and motioned to Liende, who stood before the players. Anna waited until the red-and-white-haired woodwind player eased forward.
"If you would bring the players up here. Face them toward the river, not the...lake," the sorceress said. "We'll use the long building spell. Warm up and run through it a few times while 1 finish getting ready!'
"Players to position, here." Liende motioned for the others to gather in a semicircle.
Anna walked forward a few steps, before stopping and looking at the sketch of the ford and attempting to reconcile it to the reality of crumbling bluffs and mudflats split by a turbid river perhaps thirty yards wide in a deep channel.
While the falk-horn, the woodwinds, and the strings tuned behind her, she sang the notes of the spell, using "la" instead of real words, and worked at visualizing the ford.
"We stand ready," Liende announced.
Anna turned to the chief player. "I'd like one run-through to fix the spell and words, please!'
"At my mark," Liende ordered. "Mark!"
Anna tried to mesh the visual image, the words, and the melody, all without actually singing the spell itself. Halfway through, she stopped and shook her head. "I'm sorry. Could we try that again?"
Darksong Rising Page 1