Shadowsinger

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Alone in the receiving room, Alya does not rise from the crystal chair. Her eyes are dark, and her face remains drawn.

  11

  With the sun barely rising over the port quarter of Encora, Secca and Alcaren dismounted on the pier where the ocean trader was tied. Secca still felt tired from having to do sorcery early in the morning to send the message tube to Lord Robero, but she hadn’t wanted to send it much before they left, and did not wish to send it later, when she might need all her strength to deal with the Sturinnese. As she turned, Secca glanced again at the wooden plaque below and aft of the bowsprit, where the spare script letters proclaimed Silberwelle.

  “You don’t mind that it’s the Silberwelle, do you?” asked Alcaren.

  “Not so long as you don’t have any Darksong in mind,” Secca replied. Still, it had been disconcerting to find that the “flagship” of her small expedition was the same vessel from whose deck she had destroyed the Sturinnese fleet blockading Encora—and where she had nearly died.

  After unstrapping her saddlebags and lutar, Secca turned and looked once more at the Silberwelle. “I hadn’t thought…”

  “You hadn’t thought what, Lady Sorceress?” came the question from the ship’s railing beside the upper end of the gangway.

  Secca glanced up and smiled at the woman who addressed her. Captain Denyst was less than a span taller than Secca and little broader. The captain’s broad and welcoming smile, set in a face tanned and weathered, showed even white teeth.

  “You’d not be depriving me of the chance to help you strike at the Sea-Pigs now, would you?” asked the Silberwelle’s captain in her unique voice, a voice that carried the slightest of rasping edges and seemed to cut through everything around.

  Secca shook her head. “I’m afraid I didn’t end the last battle particularly well.”

  “Any battle you win and survive is a good one.” Denyst gestured abruptly. “Don’t stand there. Come on board. Need to load all those players and mounts coming down the pier, and need to cast off no later than midmorning.”

  Secca walked up the gangway, trying to reconcile the feelings she harbored with the knowledge that the Silberwelle and her captain were the best suited for the voyage ahead, yet also recalling the chill feeling of those moments but a few weeks before when she had gone to the edge of death—and perhaps farther. As her boots touched the wood, and she moved away from the pier, two crew members waited to descend to begin loading Secca’s and Alcaren’s mounts.

  “It’s good to see you looking so well,” offered Denyst, once Secca and Alcaren stood on the main deck. “Consorting looks to agree with you two.” The wiry captain grinned directly at Secca. “Take someone like you to set this rascal’s heart afire.” Denyst then glanced toward Alcaren. “Good thing, too.”

  “You’d have me ablaze all the time?” joked Alcaren.

  “Better that than an unhappy trader or a guard to the Matriarch, don’t you think? Love’d be the only ruler you’d abide.” Denyst turned slightly and called to the crewmen leading the gray up the gangway. “Those two in the forward stalls!”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Denyst turned to the two. “The first, and I’ll be sharing her cabin. You can have mine.”

  “You don’t have to…” Secca began to protest.

  “Aye, and I don’t, but consorting happens but once, and there’s little enough time before you face the Sea-Pigs.” Denyst’s eyes twinkled. “Next voyage you take with me, you two can have a smaller space.”

  “Thank you.” Secca hoped there would be the opportunity for another voyage.

  “Thank you,” echoed Alcaren.

  “No thanks till we port at Stygia.” Denyst frowned. “There are no Sturinnese vessels in Narial? That is what you said?”

  “That is what the glass shows,” Secca admitted.

  “They don’t have anything here to challenge us,” Alcaren replied. “But there is a fleet gathering in the Ostisles.”

  “We best hasten home,” Denyst said. “Leastwise, quick enough to discourage them from coming after us. Best you get yourself settled while I tend to the load-on. Figuring the balance with all those mounts will take some doing.” With a quick smile, Denyst stepped past them toward the gangway.

  Alcaren gestured toward the hatch leading aft.

  Secca glanced back up at the poop deck railing, where she had fallen at the end of the battle, and where Alcaren had used Darksong to save her. Then she swallowed and followed Alcaren through the hatch toward the captain’s cabin.

  12

  East of Esaria, Neserea

  A fire burns in the narrow hearth of the small sitting room. Despite the heat thrown out by the dark iron reflector plates set against the bricks at the back of the hearth, white rime covers the panes of the windows, largely masked by heavy and worn hangings, once crimson, but now closer to maroon. The sorceress pulls back the left hanging and scrapes one of the paired windows clear of the ice for a moment. Through the waning and weak late-afternoon sun, she looks down at the gate of the small keep.

  Then, at the knock on the door, she pulls the hangings back over the windows and walks to the door, opening it and looking past the single guard, who has barely begun to speak.

  “Lady Clayre…your chief player.”

  “Please come in, Diltyr,” Clayre says to the brown-haired chief player, who stands in the chill, stone-walled corridor.

  As Diltyr enters and closes the door, he smiles. “You are looking well in such cold weather, my lady.”

  “If I must choose, I will take the cold over the heat of summer.” She laughs gently. “Especially when one must wear what ladies must.” Her smile fades. “I know the cold is hard on the armsmen and players. I would not subject them to it, were it not necessary.”

  “They understand, lady.”

  Clayre steps toward the table, picking up the lutar she had tuned before looking out the window to study the gate to the small hold. “We must see where Belmar is at the moment, and if we can determine what he essays.”

  The two figures stand before the glass laid upon the ancient hexagonal table. Clayre’s fingers touch the lutar’s strings, and she begins a vocalise to warm up her voice.

  When the sorceress finishes the vocalise, the chief player clears his throat, then offers, “Lord Nysl frets that we remain here, Lady Clayre.”

  “I worry that we remain here. Yet we must see what small opening Belmar may offer us. With but two companies of lancers and a quarter-score of players remaining with us, we must take any advantage we can. That is why we will study the glass.” Clayre picks up the lutar and clears her throat, before offering the spell.

  “Show us Belmar and those who play his spells,

  bring in view all that spellsong tells…”

  The glass obediently displays the dark-haired Belmar standing before a group of more than a half-score of players, with three drummers, each before a set of three drums.

  “Drums…always where there is trouble are there drums,” murmurs the sorceress as she surveys the image in the glass.

  After a time, the dark-haired sorceress sings the release spell and steps back from the glass upon the table. She lowers the lutar slowly, then looks at the chief player. “What do you think, Diltyr?”

  “Belmar has more players than do we,” answers the man with the short-and-square-cut brown hair. “Scarce a half-score of years ago, no one could find enough players anywhere in Liedwahr, and there were neither drums nor drummers. From where do they come?”

  “From Sturinn, I would wager, although I doubt Belmar has looked closely into the mouth of that gift horse.” Clayre frowns, pursing her lips. “We must strike in some fashion he will not see, and quickly.”

  “In the snows of winter, Lady Clayre?”

  “Better now than in the mud of spring, or the heat of summer, when he can bring all the lancers he has bought and borrowed against us with even greater numbers of players.” Clayre lifts the lutar. “We need to find what else we
can.” She lifts the lutar once more.

  13

  Secca slipped along the railing, up toward the bow of the Silberwelle, where Alcaren stood just aft of the bowsprit, taking in the cool morning wind and the winter sun that offered but slight warmth. To Secca’s right was a long low line of darkness on the horizon—the south coast of Dumar.

  “Are you feeling better?” she asked.

  He turned, showing a countenance merely ashen, as opposed to the greenish cast his face had held earlier in the voyage. “It’s always better up here.”

  She shook her head sympathetically. “You didn’t want to be a trader, and here I am, dragging you back onto ships.”

  “But not all the time.” A ragged grin appeared on his face. “I hope.” After a moment, he added, “The harmonies must have a sense of humor. There’s definitely an irony here.”

  “What?” asked Secca. “That, try as you may, you can’t escape ending up aboard ships?”

  “I’m consorted to a sorceress who can’t swim and whose lands are hundreds of deks from any water except small lakes and rivers…and I’ve taken more sea voyages in the past season than in the past half-score of years.”

  “It won’t be long,” Secca said. “Denyst says that we’ll be turning northward and heading into Stygia shortly.”

  “I know.” Alcaren smiled. “I asked her just a while ago.” His smile faded. “I worry about her return voyage.”

  “You think the Sturinnese fleet—or some of it—can get there that quickly? The glass doesn’t show—”

  Alcaren glanced back at the sails of the vessels following them. “I would say not, but with the Sea-Priests, one never knows.” He offered a laugh, only slightly forced. “But that is even more true with you.”

  “Me?” Secca protested. “I fear not. All know I must attack.”

  “But not where.”

  Secca doubted that. The Maitre or his sorcerers certainly had already marked her progress and would be ready for her comparatively small force long before she reached Envaryl.

  The two stood, side by side, for a time, until several crew members began to scurry aloft, and the Silberwelle began to swing more directly northward, settling onto a new heading, her stem pointed toward a slightly higher headland.

  “Stygia must be near those bluffs,” Secca suggested.

  “Directly under them, as I recall.” Alcaren stretched. “It will be good to stand on ground that doesn’t move.”

  “I’d better get my lutar and glass ready,” Secca said.

  Alcaren nodded, taking a last look at the headland before following Secca aft across the gently pitching deck and through the hatch into the captain’s cabin.

  There, Secca laid the glass upon the table and took out the lutar, tuning it carefully. Then, clearing her throat, she sang.

  “Show us now and in the light of day

  Any who would bar our landing on Stygia’s quay

  or ships that lie in wait to fight…”

  The glass remained blank, showing only the reflection of the overhead.

  Secca nodded, then gathered both the grand lutar and the leather-wrapped traveling glass. Alcaren picked up his cased lumand and took the glass from Secca. Both had already repacked their saddlebags in anticipation of porting in Stygia, but left them on the doublewide bunk when they left the cabin.

  The two climbed the ladder to the poop deck, where Denyst stood forward of the woman at the helm. The captain’s eyes studied the lighter blue waters inshore of the Silberwelle.

  “Shallower than I’d like, but there’s a channel. Narrow, but not so narrow as the East Bay in Encora.” Denyst laughed, once, her laughter cutting through the morning.

  “The glass shows no one is there to stop us,” Secca observed.

  “Wouldn’t think so. Not so as this is a place where most would land lancers or the like.”

  “Except us,” Secca said.

  The three watched as the Silberwelle led the way toward the small harbor that was supposed to lie below and between the gaps in bluffs to the west of the headland.

  Secca could just make out the outlines of dwellings on the grassy bluffs above the harbor when Palian, Delvor, Wilten, Delcetta, and Richina joined them.

  Then, from nowhere seemingly, appeared the long-faced chief archer, who bowed. “Should you need us, we stand ready, Lady Secca.”

  “Thank you, Elfens. The glass shows no enemies, but we will let you know.”

  After a sweeping bow, Elfens descended to the main deck.

  “The players stand ready on the main deck, should you need them, Lady Secca,” Palian said.

  “Thank you. I don’t think we will, but if we do, we’ll have little notice.”

  “Indeed,” murmured Wilten.

  Stygia was indeed a small harbor, if it could even be called that. Less than a score of dwellings rested on low bluffs overlooking the ocean. Between the two bluffs was a rocky depression or narrow valley where a small stream entered a semicircular bay, barely big enough for two oceangoing traders. From the rocky base of the western bluff a semicircular breakwater extended. The top of the breakwater was paved in cobblestones, and a narrow stone way led from the foot of the dark stones along the base of the bluff toward a narrow flat stretch of land on the west side of the valley where the stream entered the bay. What looked to be a single warehouse was the only structure below the bluffs.

  A trail-like road wound up the west hillside—through several switchbacks.

  “It’s even smaller than it looked in the glass.” Secca glanced at Denyst.

  “Only a bit of chop. We can unload there. Be a while. We can bring but one vessel in at a time.”

  Secca looked to Alcaren. “Would you use the glass to see if there are any lancers or armsmen around?”

  Without a word, the broad-shouldered Ranuan unwrapped the traveling glass and set it on the deck. Then he took out the lumand. After tuning the instrument, he sang.

  “Show us now and in clear light

  any of Sturinn close enough to fight…”

  The glass remained silvered, displaying only sky and sails.

  Wilten nodded, then glanced toward the small harbor, as did the others.

  “Thank you,” mouthed Secca to Alcaren. She should have realized earlier that the overcaptains needed to see that there were no Sturinnese nearby, even if she and Alcaren had already seen that there were none.

  Alcaren nodded.

  Behind them, Denyst began issuing commands that sounded absolutely meaningless to Secca, but with each command, another set of sails was furled, and the Silberwelle slowed, almost crawling inshore.

  “Look!” called Richina. “Someone’s leaving.”

  As Secca and the others watched, two figures tumbled from the warehouse, opened a sliding side door, and led out two mounts. Without closing the stable doors, they rode quickly up the narrow road, leaving dust hanging in the air.

  “Didn’t like our look, did they?” Denyst laughed.

  Secca and Alcaren continued to watch, but could see no other signs of people, even when Denyst brought the Silberwelle in under short sail, the ship barely creeping up to the two closely spaced bollards near the end of the quay.

  “First squad!” ordered Delcetta. “Stand by to disembark!”

  “Green company! Second squad! Stand ready!” ordered Wilten.

  Secca studied the harbor and the single warehouselike structure again, but it appeared empty, as if the two riders who had fled had left it deserted.

  From the higher poop deck, Secca and Alcaren watched, with Delvor and Palian—and the players to the seaward side of the ship—all ready for any spellsong that might be necessary. Not only was the long quay empty, but so was the entire area below the bluffs—that Secca could see even before the first squads of lancers from Loiseau and the SouthWomen hurried toward the single warehouse.

  In less than half a glass, after the crew and lancers had begun to walk mounts down the gangway and onto the narrow cobbled surface o
f the quay, Delcetta and Wilten returned.

  “No one’s here, lady,” reported Delcetta.

  Behind her, Wilten nodded. “They may be re-forming at the end of the road, at the top of the hill.”

  “It looks like the houses have been abandoned,” suggested Delcetta. “They wouldn’t want to face the armsmen carried on eight vessels.”

  “With the Sea-Priests,” Wilten replied, “it is better to be certain.”

  “We’ll check the glass to see if there’s anyone there,” Secca said.

  “Would you like me to do that?” murmured Alcaren.

  “If you would,” Secca replied.

  Alcaren again took up the lumand.

  “Show close and clear the houses on the hill,

  and armsmen or lancers near them still…”

  All the glass showed was vacant-looking dwellings, not a single lancer or armsman, and not even a single person of any sort.

  Secca looked to Wilten, then Delcetta. “Let us be thankful that there are no armsmen here. There will be enough battles to come.”

  14

  The late-afternoon wind moaned out of the north, and the sun hung just above the lower Westfels. Trying not to shiver in a green leather riding jacket that felt all too thin against the wind, Secca looked to the west, beyond the hills with bare-limbed trees to the Westfels behind them, still covered with snow, except where patches of trees rose above the snow or where the rock was too steep to hold snow or trees.

  Then she turned her eyes back to the frozen dirt road her forces traveled. The high plains stretched for deks before them, filled with winter-browned grass that had faded into a pale tan and had yet to be supplanted by the green shoots of spring.

  “It should not be this cold,” said Alcaren, riding beside her.

  “You think the Sturinnese have used sorcery on the weather?” asked Richina from where she rode directly behind them, beside Wilten.