The ShadowSinger

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  At her words, Wilten nodded in affirmation.

  “They would.” Secca glanced to the shuttered windows. "It would be better to have both players and lancers rested.” And, perhaps . . . perhaps she could find a spell that would stop the archers without dipping too deeply into the spell-songs Anna had prepared.

  16

  Mansuus, Mansuur

  Kestrin stands on the balcony outside the private study of the Liedfuhr. He does not wear a cloak, despite the fat flakes of late winter or early spring snow that drift past him. His eyes follow, the river, still ice-covered, that flows westward to the port of Wharsus, and there, into Defuhr Bay.

  To his left, also wearing neither jacket nor cloak, stands Bassil, in the maroon of a lancer officer. For a moment, as each flake strikes his tunic, it stands out before melting and leaving a small spot of darkness on the fabric.

  “What now?” asks Kestrin.

  “Your seers report that the Sturinnese fleet has sailed from the Ostisles.”

  “It will not arrive in time to stop the shadowsinger from destroying the Sturinnese forces in Dumar.”

  “If she can indeed do that,” replies Bassil. “There are more than a half-score of Sea-Priest sorcerers with the Stu­rinnese forces, and all have players and drummers.”

  “She has already destroyed more than that, has she not?” Kestrin’s eyebrows lift. “Or have I been misled in the re­ports that have come to me?”

  “She has, but it may take her much time to retake Dumar. She landed at a small fishing harbor to the southwest, and now rides across the high plains to aid Fehern. It will be at least a week before she can reach Envaryl. That is if she does not have to fight any skirmishes along the way, and if the weather holds.”

  “How does that change anything? Once the snows melt, hopefully in the next three weeks, we can still send our lancers into Neserea to support Aerlya and Annayal. The Sturinnese will be in the south, contesting with the sha­dowsinger.”

  “You may not wish to send them through the Mittpass, sire.” Bassil’s tone is apologetic. “Even when the snows melt.”

  Kestrin turns and faces the lancer overcaptain. “And why might that be?"

  “Your seers fear that the Sturinnese have set their course for Mansuur, not Nordwei, or Neserea, and certainly not for Dumar.”

  “They fear? Do they not know?" snaps the Liedfuhr. “The course is northerly, and that would be the same at the beginning for a destination of Mansuur or Neserea . . . or Nordwei. But the seers have glimpsed maps of Defuhr Bay.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  “I was doubtful, sire. I asked them to scry for me, and I also saw such maps on the chart tables.”

  “That can only be a bluff,” Kestrin says. “Why would they leave such out, except for us to see? It must be a bluff.”

  “Bluff or not, can you afford to leave Wharsus unde­fended—or lightly defended?" Bassil uses the back of his hand to blot away the water that has come from the snow melting in his short hair and that has begun to ooze down his face toward his eyes.

  "What other companies can we summon to Wharsus?” Kestrin’s voice bears both an edge and a hint of resignation.

  “You can bring those from Hafen and Cealur, and detail most of those here in Mansuus to Wharsus.”

  “That won’t be enough,” Kestrin says.

  “If we took two thousand from the five thousand you have garrisoned in Unduval, we could still leave seventy-five companies there to enter Neserea---when the snows melt. That would be enough to keep Belmar from taking Esaria if they are careful to strike only those forces that are not supported by sorcery and take care to avoid the sorcerer,” suggests Bassil.

  “That will not be so easy as it sounds.” Kestrin gives a dramatic shrug. “Yet what else can I do?"

  “Hope that the shadowsinging Sorceress Protector of the East and the Sorceress of Defalk will be more effective than they have been . . . and trust in the harmonies.”

  “Send a message to the Council of Wei,” Kestrin sug­gests, “telling them what you have discovered—except that you might tell them that the Sturinnese fleet could easily be headed to their shores.”

  “It will be difficult to get a messenger there, sire. The Bitter Sea remains frozen, and no passes are open in the Westfels. We can send a ship to Elahwa and hope that the Sand Pass will be open--- but that will take weeks, and will not arrive un­til long after the Sea-Priest fleet does.”

  “Forget the messenger. We must trust that their seers will see what ours have seen.” The Liedfuhr shakes his head. “Everywhere, I must trust others. Is there nothing else I can do?”

  Bassil remains silent, even as he blots more water from his forehead.

  “Is there nothing?”

  “I would not suggest anything, sire, merely to provide an appearance. You can but protect your land, and aid your sister as you can. The snows in the Mittpass melt earlier than all others, and far earlier than the sea ice breaks in the Bitter Sea. You might consider having provisions to send to the Sorceress Protector of the East, should she defeat the Sturinnese in Dumar and start to ride northward into Nes­erea.”

  “I should support her, riding into. . .“ Kestrin laughs. “What you are telling me is that she is my sole hope of preserving Annayal’s succession.”

  “Yes, sire. Only she has the knowledge of the Great Sor­ceress. Whether she has the strength and the will to use such . . . that we can but see.”

  “We will see.” Kestrin looks to the river for a long mo­ment before turning back. “We have more than a few orders to draft to re-deploy forces, do we not?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Best we get on with it.” Kestrin motions for the over-captain to reenter the study, then follows him, closing the door firmly behind himself and stamping his boots on the maroon mat inside the door.

  17

  In the midmorning, Secca sat in the middle of the battered wooden bench, with scraps of rough brown paper stacked around her on the table. She massaged her forehead with her left hand, blinking eyes that were reddened with the effort on concentrating in the dim light, then tried to hold a sneeze. “Kkkk . . . chew!”

  She rubbed her nose.

  “You’re not getting a chill, are you?” Alcaren sat at the corner of the table farthest from Secca, facing away from her, lumand in hand. On his corner of the table were two sheets of the brown paper with notes, and a grease marker beside them.

  “No. It’s something in here. When I go outside, I’m fine.” Secca looked at the notes she had made, then the sheets of paper she had taken from the large envelope Anna had la­beled “Armageddon.”

  “You can’t exactly read through those outside.”

  “No.” What troubled Secca, more than when Anna had explained the file, was the understanding that she might have to use the spells---and that the alternative of not using them would mean her defeat and the fall of Liedwahr.

  “You may never need these spells, Secca,” Anna had said. “I hope you never do. But if you do . . . and if you use them, Erde will never be the same because everyone will see what sorcery can truly do.”

  Secca picked up the sheet before her, and slowly read through the spell, as well as the musical notation, which indicated that the spell melody was based on one of the simpler fabrication spells that most players knew.

  Remove the air and in emptiness hold fast

  till—and all within breathe their last...

  Anna’s gracefully angular writing noted, “This is for Use against sorcerers. I doubt any sorcerer can sing without air to breathe, and without air there isn’t a spell that can carry."

  Secca winced and leafed to the next spell, a long one she didn’t remember seeing.

  Hydrogen to hydrogen, fuse in pressured desire,

  oxygen free to sear just like the sun’s fire

  The note below was long and cryptic, with words and phrases that Secca didn’t understand at all, except for the last words. “If you don’t understand
this one completely, don’t use it. Either it won’t work, or it will turn whatever you direct it against into a blast of fire hotter than the center of the sun. Don’t sing it unless you’re behind three feet of stone and more than three deks away. Even so, it could kill you and everyone around you. This is only to destroy an enemy when you can’t possibly escape.”

  Secca shuddered. Why hadn’t she noticed that spell? She turned to the next.

  Magma, magma, rise in tubes from the mantle deep

  below...

  The explanation of that was worse than the one before, perhaps because this explanation Secca understood. She’d talked about the creation of the Zauberinfeuer with Anna, and about the Circle of Fire in Mansuur, and even the glow­ing mountains of Sturinn.

  “With each spell you become more ashen,” Alcaren ob­served. “And with each you sigh more loudly. Surely, those spells cannot be so tiresome.”

  “Not tiresome. Terrible. You should read them,” Secca suggested. “Read this one, and Anna’s notes.” She thrust the two sheets at her consort.

  Alcaren read the age-yellowed sheet, a parchment prob­ably dating from Anna’s early years as regent. Finally, he looked up. He swallowed. “I read the words, but they mean nothing. That is, except for the last part, and that is indeed terrible.”

  Secca nodded.

  “None of this she ever used?"

  “Nothing as fearsome as that one. Some of the others, I do not know. I don’t know of a time when she did, but she didn’t tell me everything, especially when I was young and learning sorcery. After her first years as regent, as I told you, she engaged in more shadow sorcery. Because it was in the shadows, few would even know that such sorcery had been practiced.”

  “The Ladies of the Shadows have more to fear than I would have thought,” Alcaren said slowly.

  “If you’d read all of these, you’d understand more.”

  “Did you not know---about these?”

  Secca laughed, ruefully. “Of course I did. I used one of them to kill the sailors and lancers on the Sturinnese ships we captured for the Matriarch. That was bad enough, as you know. I’d hoped not to use more. It’s one thing when you read something, no matter how terrible it might be, and an­other when you look at it and think that you may have to sing it to save yourself or your forces or your land."

  She extended her hand and took back the two sheets from Alcaren, easing them all into the folder and closing it. “For a time, I will try my own efforts."

  Alcaren looked down at the paper before him. “Mine are child' s rhymes against yours.”

  “You’ll do better with practice.”

  “Perchance.”

  Secca looked at the blank sheet before her.

  Archer. . . archers? What other spell did Secca have that could strike at a distance, that would not be so terrible as those Anna had developed? Secca had done it with the Stu­rinnese fleet. Could she adapt that spell? Use the wind from a distance before the archers got, too close?

  She began, to write, slowly at first.

  Clouds to form and winds to rise

  like a caldron in our skies.

  Build a storm with winds swirling through...

  She crossed out the words in the third line then tried another set. They didn’t fit the note values, either.

  She paused. This time...this time... she might avoid the spells Anna had created. But, even if she could develop this spell--- and use it against the Sturinnese, could she again before they had a defense? Or would she have to cre­ate ever greater, ever more devastating sorceries? Or use those Anna had already developed?

  Even as she tried not to sigh, she found herself moistening her lips.

  18

  The wind had died away earlier, and the peasant’s cot­tage was warmer than on the previous days, with theafternoon sun falling on the south wall of the dwelling di­rectly enough that the fired mud bricks carried gentle heat into the large room. As the seventh glass of the day passed, in the period between mid-afternoon and late afternoon, Secca and the others of her informal council watched as Richina sang the scrying spell.

  “Show us now and in this day’s light

  the closest Sturinnese that we might fight...”

  The image in the glass showed the Sturinnese in a small hamlet, with horses being led into corrals, or tethered on tie-­lines, and a set of two four-man patrols, apparently being briefed by an officer. Several drummers were unloading drums wrapped in oiled leather from packhorses and care­fully carrying them into one of the small hovel-like cots. Puffs of smoke came from a cooking fire beside one of the larger dwellings.

  After everyone had studied the image, Secca nodded to Richina. The younger blonde sorceress sang the release cou­plët and lowered her lutar.

  “If you would show us where they are, Wilten?” Secca gestured to the maps laid out on the table beside the scrying mirror--- maps hand-drawn from the views Alcaren, Richina, and she had called up in the scrying glass over the two previous days.

  “They have sent out scouts, and they have begun to set up an encampment in this smaller hamlet,” Wilten said, touching the map with a stick that had been whittled into a pointer. “It is about ten deks from here.”

  “How far from the hillside to the south?”

  “A fraction over seven deks, I would judge.” Secca glanced to Alcaren, then Richina, and finally, Palian. “Can you have your players ready to ride in less than half a glass? Leaving all but their instruments behind?”

  “That we can do.”

  “And your lancers?” Secca asked the two overcaptains.

  “Easily,” offered Delcetta.

  “That we can do,” Wilten said after the briefest of pauses.

  “Then, let us make ready.” Secca glanced to Palian.

  “Have them prepare the third building song, with the flame song in reserve for Richina.”

  “The third building song, and then the flame song.”

  “I hope we will not need the second,” Secca said, "but with the Sturinnese, it is best to be prepared.”

  “You do not expect them to give battle, lady?” asked Wilten.

  “They may see us drawing up on a hilltop some three or four deks away, but that is a ride of close to a glass. We will either have succeeded or failed long before they can reach us.” She smiled. “If we saw the Sturinnese beginning to ride out after we had finished a day’s ride, would we wish to ride hard to battle?”

  “No, lady,” said Delcetta. “But we would be watchful.”

  “Most watchful,” added Wilten.

  “I hope they are no different,” Secca replied. “Watchful­ness will not harm us.” She turned to Alcaren. ‘Would you use the glass to scry what they do as we make ready, and after we reach our position?”

  “I would be happy to, my lady.” Alcaren inclined his head in acceptance.

  “You, Richina,” Secca continued, “must stand ready with the flame spell in case we are beset unexpectedly. You may be able to use the players, but you may only have your own voice and lutar.”

  “Yes, lady.” Richina nodded, still holding her lutar, but her eyes going to the corner where the opened lutar case lay.

  “Get the lancers and players ready,” Secca said.

  “Yes, lady.”

  Palian and Delvor hurried out of the cottage, followed by Delcetta and Wilten, leaving Secca, Alcaren, and Richina standing around the long and battered wooden table.

  “You are not pleased with what you must do,” Alcaren observed.

  “That seems to be my duty in life,” Secca replied dryly. “If I do not strike first, then they will. If I do not strike hard enough to destroy them utterly, then we will pay in greater losses later. In turn, in later times, they will try to strike first and with more deadly force.”

  “Is that not all war, all battle?” asked Alcaren.

  “Always it has been, but a sword, an arrow, even a cross­bow . . . they can but strike from a limited distance.” She shook her head. “T
o survive, we will change warfare.”

  “You fear it will change Liedwahr and us?"

  “I know it will change all Erde--- and us.” Secca forced a smile. “Talking will do us little good now. In a few moments, will you again study the Sturinnese in the glass?”

  Alcaren nodded.

  Secca walked toward the small bedroom, aware as she stepped through the narrow door that, short as she was, the lintel was less than a span above her head. She donned the green leather riding jacket, and the green felt hat, before stepping back into the main room, where she recased her own lutar.