The ShadowSinger

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Is that our weakness?" mused Secca. “Those who try to do what is right . . . are we always at a disadvantage because of our doubts, while those who never question their beliefs can justify anything to further what they believe?"

  “That is possible,” Alcaren replied. “But is it not better to question than to accept blindly?”

  “I wonder. Because I question, and must suppress my own doubts in order to act, then do I act more harshly to overcome both my own doubts and my adversaries?"

  “You ask hard questions, my lady. But in the end, you must act.”

  “I know.” Secca sighed. “In the end, refusing to decide is every bit as much a decision and an action as acting.

  “Sometimes, refusing to act,” he pointed out, “creates more death and hardship than acting, however harsh those actions may seem. Would not many more have died and suffered had you not acted to save Elahwa? Would not many more have suffered and died had you not destroyed the Stu­rinnese in Dumar?’

  Secca nodded slowly. “Yet . . ."

  Alcaren laughed again. “Yet never can we prove the dan­gers and deaths that might have been. Never can we prove how awful might have been the alternative, not without al­lowing it to occur.”

  “And that we cannot do,” Secca said slowly, reflecting. Anna had been right there, too, as in so many things. To make decisions for others meant having to take the respon­sibility--- and the blame—even when matters would have been far, far worse without the action.

  “No. We cannot.”

  Secca looked eastward, wondering how long it would be before they neared the Sturinnese ships and what else might be required of her and Alcaren.

  101

  Even after the Silberwelle entered the Bitter Sea, the swells remained heavy, but regular and long. The water stayed dark, and the sky turned to a hazy overcast, leaving the poop deck where Alcaren and Secca stood damp and chill. Keeping one hand on the taffrail, Secca glanced aft. A dek or so behind the Silberwelle followed the Schaumen­flucht, and then farther aft was the Liedmeer.

  Denyst checked the heading and studied the helmswoman briefly before turning back to the couple. “This heading, the way the wind is swinging, we could make better time if we didn’t have to turn south to deal with the Sturinnese. That course would bring us right into the teeth of the wind before long.”

  “Let us see if they will come to us,” Secca suggested.

  Alcaren nodded slowly.

  “You think they will?" asked Denyst.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. We’ve looked in the glass, and their ships are close to Esaria,” Secca said. “I don’t know, but we could save several days if we did not have to go all the way to Esaria, could we not?"

  “That we could . . . but I would not wish to be caught unloading at Lundholn,” Denyst said dryly. “The wind there makes leaving the harbor long and tricky. Or so it is said.”

  “I don’t think that will happen,” Secca said. “If the Maitre is trying to destroy Neserea and then DefaIk, and we look to be sailing past Esaria, what would you do if you were the fleet commander? Let us sail blithely by?"

  Denyst laughed.

  “What if they do?" questioned Alcaren.

  “Then . . . we’ll have to come back later and destroy the fleet. Right now, it has done as much damage as it can to much of Liedwahr. That is not true of the Maitre.”

  “For that reason, you think that they will sail north to attack us?” asked Denyst.

  “The Sea-Priests are angry,” Secca pointed out. “If we seem to be avoiding them, they would have to believe that we either fear them or wish to avoid them. If they think we fear them, then they may be bolder to attack. If they think we wish to avoid them to make haste to Defalk, will the Maitre let those ships sail a useless picket and do nothing?”

  "When you tell it that way,” Denyst said, “it seems likely that they will come to us.”

  “I’d wager golds on it.”

  “I don’t think I’d wager against that.” Denyst laughed.

  “We’ll have to keep a close watch on their ships in the glass,” Alcaren added, swaying on his feet as the Silberwelle pitched forward, then up and into a heavier swell. Some of the spray from the bow drifted far enough aft to mist down across the three by the helm platform.

  “We can do that,” Secca said.

  “They’d be trying a stern chase, as well, and that will give you more time to use your sorcery when it suits you and not them.” Denyst inclined her head. “You set on this?”

  Secca nodded.

  “Then, if you’d excuse me, I’d like to check the charts for a bit. We could angle more northeast and pick up more speed...as I recall.” With a nod, the mistress of the Sil­berwelle slipped away.

  Secca grasped the taffrail firmly as the ship nosed down between swells, more steeply than before, waiting for an­other misting of spray.

  “This war has changed,” Alcaren mused.

  “Oh?”

  “When it began, you and all of Liedwahr needed to react to the Maitre. Now, you are forcing him to react to you.”

  “Only in this one matter,” Secca pointed out.

  “More than just this. By burning towns and hamlets in Esaria, he is acting as much in rage as in calculation.”

  “Perhaps . . .” Secca conceded. “Perhaps.” What if he is not? What if he is the one forcing us to react? Yet...? There was so much yet that she did not know, could not know, and they were racing toward Lundholn, without having seen, yet, any signal that the traders of Wei would allow them to land uncontested. You hope you don’t have to make that choice, either.

  Secca gripped the taffrail even more firmly, and. not just because of the motion of the ship.

  102

  Along the River Saria, Neserea

  A warmish wind wafts over the two Sea-Priests who stand at the hillcrest, looking down at the hamlet be­low.

  In the late afternoon, a cordon of mounted lancers sur­rounds the score of cottages and hovels. All have their swords unsheathed. A squad of lancers approaches each dwelling. The process is quick and efficient. Any man or male child is dragged out and cut down, his body left on the bloodstained dirt. The women’s hands are bound, and each is tied into a long coffle that has already begun the march up the hill to the Sturinnese camp.

  “They will serve us, one way or another,” the Maitre ob­serves.

  As the last of the women is tied into the coffle, Sturinnese squad leaders apply torches to the hovels, the cottages, and the barns and outbuildings.

  The Maitre nods and turns, walking back across the hill­crest to his tent. The wind that ruffles the panels of the Maitre’s tent, as he enters it, also brings with it the odor of burning wood . . . and the sweet-acrid smell of other mate­rials burning as well. The Maitre seats himself on a camp stool, ignoring the sounds and smells from the hamlet to the west, as he considers the maps spread on the camp table.

  A time later, jerClayne enters the tent and clears his throat.

  After a moment, the Maitre looks up from the maps. “Yes?

  "Fleet Marshal jerStolk has sent a plate requesting your instructions,” offers jerClayne. Mud spatters dot his boots and white riding trousers.

  “He had instructions,” snaps the Maitre. “What problem has he with them? Must I spell out everything to everyone?"

  “The ships carrying the Shadow Sorceress are on a course to bypass Esaria, and appear to be heading to Wei,” replies the younger Sea-Priest, his voice carefully neutral. “He will have to sail north to engage them.” After a moment, he adds, "We have used the glass, and that seems to be so. The Ran­uan vessels are on a northeasterly heading.”

  “Why would she bypass Esaria?" the Maitre muses. “Has she given up on retaking Neserea . . .”

  “Perhaps she knows that we will leave her no supplies or provisions,” suggests jeClayne.

  “She could take another route, even if it were slower . . .” The Maitre stops. “The bitch . . . the devious bitch. Spe
ed! I should have thought of that. Ships are faster. The Council of Wei is in league with her. That’s why their fleet was in the Ostisles. So she can sail to Wei and take the river roads, and then the metaled roads of Defalk. .

  The hollow-checked jerClayne sways slightly on his feet, then stifles a yawn, waiting. Finally, he speaks. “Ser . . . in­structions?”

  “Send a plate back telling him to attack, but using the group tactics. He must at least delay her. He should know that. And tell him to destroy her ships!”

  “Yes, ser.” The tall and ever-thinner Sea-Priest coughs, then asks. “And what will we do, then?”

  “Keep as we are. Time is still on our side. While we must reduce Neserea to rubble, we will still be in Defalk in two weeks. Even if she avoids the fleet, she cannot be out of Wei by then. She will gain some time, but little enough.” He shakes his head. “Make it clear to jerStolk that she must not escape him.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Why must I spell out everything in letters large enough for the least intelligent of schoolboys and acolytes?”

  JerClayne says nothing.

  “Well . . . go and have the plate made and sent—quickly.”

  The younger Sea-Priest bows and departs.

  The Maitre looks down at the maps, his expression be­tween a glare and a frown.

  103

  Bright as the early-afternoon sun shone in the blue south­ern sky, little of its warmth reached Secca where she stood beside the helm platform, between Alcaren and Den­yst. The heavier swells of the days previous had subsided into long and low masses of water that rose and fell far less than a yard. The wind had dropped to little more than a light breeze, just enough to keep the sails of the Silberwelle taut.

  “Might not be that long.” Alcaren gestured toward the south. “But the lookouts haven’t spotted sails yet.”

  "They will be there,” replied Secca. “The glass showed sails filled with wind.”

  “Sorcery,” added Denyst. “Wind’s so light we’re barely more than making headway.”

  “They can’t use sorcery for everything,” Secca said. You hope they can’t.

  “They’ll do anything to stop you, sorceress,” suggested the ship mistress.

  “I know.” Secca cleared her throat. “We need to warm up.” She glanced forward.

  The players had begun to assemble below on the main deck, and a few discordant bowings and off-tune horn notes drifted aft.

  Secca coughed, and began slowly. “Holly-lolly-lolly . . ."

  Alcaren slipped away to the port side, where, more qui­etly, he began to warm up, his vocalises clearly better than in weeks previous.

  The sorceress was midway through a second vocalise when the cry came from the yards above. “Sail ho! Star­board quarter.”

  Secca finished the second vocalise and then a third before she turned and strained to see the vessels that the lookouts had reported and that Alcaren had earlier discovered in the scrying glass, but either her eyes were not sharp enough, or the Sturinnese ships were at the edge of vision and she was too short---or both.

  “Sail to the south and to the west, still closing, Lady Sor­ceress. You were right.” The captain of the Silberwelle gave an off-center smile. “How many ships do they have?"

  “The glass showed close to threescore, but there were no more than five in any one group and each group was deks from any other group.”

  “And each group has at least one sorcerer, I would wa­ger,” Alcaren added.

  “Are they all to the south?” asked the captain. “The look­outs only see sail there.”

  “To the south and west.”

  The sounds of the players tuning rose from the main deck, drifting aft to Secca and Alcaren, only to die away abruptly.

  “First warm-up, at my mark,” ordered Palian. “Mark!”

  As the warm-up song filled the air, Secca walked forward across the poop deck, until she stood just aft of the railing overlooking the main deck. From there, she watched, her eyes finding Bretnay, and then Elset the woodwind player. Both looked to be in good form.

  Alcaren stepped up beside her, offering an inquiring ges­ture toward the south. “How much longer before we must spellsing?"

  “I do not know. They’re closing but slowly, and that both­ers me. What if they have some sorcery that strikes from even more distance than does our storm spell?”

  “They could,” he said, “but I cannot imagine what that might be?"

  “That does not mean they do not have such.”

  Alcaren nodded slowly.

  The two glanced to the starboard side of the poop deck where Richina stood, a faint smile on her face, a face some­how older than before. Secca wondered just what it was that made the younger sorceress look older, but her thought was interrupted by a distant, whistling roaring that slowly grew until it rose over the sound of the players’ warm-up tune, its intensity seeming to vibrate the very deck of the Silber­welle.

  Alcaren stiffened.

  Secca glanced to the south, but saw nothing, then turned aft, to the west, but saw nothing except for the sails of the other Ranuan ships. A hissing roar shook Secca as some­thing passed overhead, coming not from the south, but out of the northeast. A gout of water geysered into the air less than a dek to the south of the Silberwelle, and even as the spout subsided a froth of steamy fog formed above the dark blue waters of the Bitter Sea.

  Secca watched for a moment, openmouthed, but the fog began to shred and dissipate within moments. “Huge fire­balls . . . What . . . what kind of sorcery . . . is that?”

  Another whistling roar began to rise out of the north.

  “We need to sing. Now!” She turned and took three steps toward the railing overlooking the main deck where, below her, the players had finished the warm-up——or perhaps Pal­Ian had halted it.

  Alcaren followed and drew up beside her at the railing. As if Palian had not a care in all Erde, the chief player called up to Secca, “Your players stand ready.”

  “The first building song—on your mark! Secca ordered.

  “The first building song, on my mark. Mark!”

  Alcaren coughed, as if trying to clear his throat, caught, unaware, but somehow his baritone was there, matching and joining Secca, with the beginning of the words of the spell-song.

  “Water boil and water bubble

  like a caldron of sorcerers’ trouble...

  In the moments when Secca was singing the last words of the first stanza, the second fireball roared overhead, so close to the Silberwelle that Secca could feel the heat, and with such a rush of wind that she found herself swaying on her feet. Somehow, she managed to keep the words, images, and rhythm all together as she and Alcaren began the second stanza. So did the players.

  A dull boom shivered the Silberwelle. Even with that, the players did not falter, and the two singers continued with the spellsong. Secca concentrated especially on waterspouts spread widely enough to destroy the scattered Sturinnese vessels as she came to the last phrases.

  “...crewed by those in Sea-Priest white

  and let none escape the water’s might!”

  The by-now-too-familiar sounds of wind and water and forming storms began to rise, even over the hissing of an­other gout of steam rising out of the dark waters of the Bitter Sea aft of the Silberwelle. Three patches of mist obscured the view so that she could not see clearly the other Ranuan vessels.

  In the distance between Secca and the groups of sails that were the Sturinnese, dark spouts began to form, first as hazy patches of air, then as darker wedges, and finally as black funnels rising out of the dark waters of the Bitter Sea. The funneled waterspouts seemed darker. . . more menacing than those Secca had raised in the isles of Sturinn.

  Secca gripped the railing, exhausted, just hanging on, as the skies continued to darken, and the wind to rise, whipping her short red hair around her face. Her head and body ached, and daystars flashed before eyes that had trouble focusing.

  Alcaren stood
beside her, breathing deeply, also with both hands on the railing.

  “Lady Sorceress!”

  At the words from the Ranuan ship mistress, Secca turned.

  “Those fireballs.” Denyst was shouting to lift her voice above the rushing and mating of the winds. “Struck two of ours. One was the Liedmeer. Can’t tell about the other. Will there be any more?"

  Rather than fight the wind and strain her voice, Secca offered an exaggerated shrug. You hope there won ‘t be, but who knows?