Shadowsinger

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  In the grayness before dawn, Secca woke to the faint smell of smoke. She sat up abruptly in the bedroll she had laid on one side of the pallet bed in the cot that was little more than a neatly kept hovel.

  Beside her, Alcaren bolted up, shaking his head and looking at her. “What is it?”

  “Smoke. It’s not like a cookfire.” Secca swung her legs over the side of the rickety bed and bent to pull on her boots. Then came the belt and sabre, and then her riding jacket. Absently, she scratched her leg. Despite using her bedroll, she had a few bites from something. She shook her head and headed for the doorway to the one-room dwelling.

  Alcaren scrambled to follow her, his jacket half-on as he came through the door behind her and out into the cold morning.

  Secca stood in the open space before the cottage, glancing at the lancers who had stood guard before the cottage. “Overcaptain Wilten?”

  “He said he’d be back shortly, lady.” Gorkon pointed to the southeast. “That be him, I’d think.”

  Wilten was already riding back into the center of the hamlet, from wherever he had ridden, hurrying past the lancers stationed out as pickets.

  Secca sniffed the cold air again, but the odor of smoke remained strong and pungent, and the southeastern horizon was hazy from the smoke.

  Richina had joined Secca and Alcaren by the time Wilten reined up his mount.

  “The smoke comes from the south, lady,” Wilten said. “Overcaptain Delcetta and I have already sent out scouts, but they have not returned.”

  Secca nodded. She hadn’t wanted to try an attack in dawn or darkness, but she feared she knew what the smoke signified. “If you would find Delcetta and join us, we will see what the glass shows.”

  “She should be here momentarily,” replied Wilten.

  Secca looked to Richina. “If you would find the chief players…?”

  “That I will.” Richina hurried toward the cottage to the west.

  While the others were gathering, Secca stepped back into the cottage, out of the chill, and, since there had been no table left in the dwelling, laid the scrying glass on the packed-dirt floor of the hovel, then took out her lutar and began to tune it.

  Alcaren tuned his lumand as well, and waited.

  Richina returned, with both Palian and Delvor, and within moments of their arrival, Wilten and Delcetta stepped inside the single-room dwelling.

  Secca did not bother with explanations, but launched into the spellsong.

  “Show us now and in this day’s clear light

  from where the smoke has taken flight…”

  The mirror displayed the hilltop hamlet that the Sturinnese had held the day before. Half the buildings were already blackened stone or brick and fallen timbers, with mere wisps of smoke trailing upward. A few outbuildings still smoldered.

  “They burned it.” Wilten’s voice was flat. “So we could not reprovision there.”

  “They would have taken all the supplies, except hay or feed for mounts,” Alcaren said. “They burned it to deny us shelter.”

  Secca sang the release couplet before speaking. “There’s more here than shows in the glass.” She looked to Wilten. “I would hear what the scouts have discovered when they return.”

  Both overcaptains nodded.

  Secca looked to Palian and Delvor. “I fear we will have a long and a hard ride in the days ahead. I would that you make certain the players are ready for such.”

  “We can do that,” Palian said. “Might I ask…?”

  “The Sea-Priests wish to keep us in Dumar, and to make this a long and arduous campaign. We cannot afford such. I will be looking for a way to shorten that.” If you can.

  After the others filed out of the cottage, except for Richina, Secca turned to Alcaren. “Am I wrong to worry about staying overlong in Dumar?”

  “When the Sea-Priests have always attacked swiftly and in force before? I think not.” Alcaren glanced toward the door. “I may ride out with one of Delcetta’s squads, if you do not mind.”

  “No. I do not.” Secca smiled, if briefly. “We each must trust our feelings.”

  With a nod, her consort slipped out the door.

  As she waited for the scouts to return and report, Secca forced down chunks of the dry crackerlike bread that they had found in Hasjyl, and hard yellow cheese, accompanied by cold water that she had used a songspell to purify the night before. Richina ate with her.

  “You were not surprised, Lady Secca,” ventured Richina.

  “I had hoped for better, but not expected it,” replied Secca.

  “What will you do?”

  “In a moment, we will use the glass to see how Clayre fares. The last time, she was in a hold somewhere in Neserea.”

  Secca checked the lutar’s tuning, but it had held. Then she sang.

  “Show us now and in clear light

  Lady Clayre for our full sight…”

  The mirror displayed an image of the dark-haired sorceress holding her lutar and looking into a glass set upon a bare wooden table in a dark room barely illuminated by a single twin-branched candelabra.

  Secca frowned.

  “What is the matter, lady?”

  “Something…” Secca shook her head. “She is in the same room as when we looked two days ago.” After a moment, the older sorceress sang the release couplet. Then she repeated the spell.

  This time, Clayre appeared in the same room, but sitting at the table studying the glass. The lutar was nowhere in sight.

  “The lutar…it has vanished.”

  “So has Clayre. She has set a spell that shows these images to any who seek her directly.” Secca again released the spell-image, frowning. “She must be trying something of great desperation.”

  “Will that mislead Belmar or whoever seeks her?”

  “It may,” conceded Secca, “if they do not seek her often in a glass.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She has to be alive, for her energies power that spell.” Secca frowned again. “She will not have quite the strength that she would if she had not used that songspell.”

  “Should we try to see what she does?” Richina was the one to frown. “But how…?”

  “That will not be difficult.” Secca pursed her lips and thought for a moment.

  “Show us now and as through Diltyr’s sight

  Lady Clayre in what is his full light…”

  Richina offered a low “oh” as the mirror displayed a very different scene. A small band of players, preceded by one company of lancers and followed by another rode along a narrow and winding lane covered with snow. The steam of the breath of the mounts was clear even through the mirror.

  After a moment, Secca sang a second release song and set down the lutar.

  “Could not Belmar do as you have?”

  “He could indeed—if he suspects all is not as it should be. Clayre’s hope is that he will not suspect.”

  “Should we warn her?” asked Richina.

  Secca sighed. “That would be my first inclination. But that will render one of us unable to do much sorcery for a day or longer. Clayre must know that Belmar will not be long deceived. But I cannot risk us losing because we are not strong.” She shook her head. “Save it is not that clear. We could avoid a battle with the Sea-Priests easily for a day or two, for that is what they wish. Yet I fear each day we avoid battle brings even greater danger.” Secca held up a hand to forestall any questions. “I do not know what that danger may be, only that the Sea-Priests are doing all in their power to keep us in Dumar.”

  “Could they be giving that appearance to force you into overhasty action?”

  Secca laughed, ruefully. “They could, and that makes the dilemma worse.” She took out her belt knife and cut off another slice of the hard yellow cheese, breaking off more of the crackerlike bread. The way matters were going, she knew she had to eat more than she wanted—much more.

  “Lady Secca?” called Gorkon from outside the hovel. “Overcaptain Wilten.”
/>
  “Have him come in.”

  “Lady,” began Wilten, almost hesitantly as he closed the rough plank door behind him. He squinted in the dim light, trying to make out Secca more clearly.

  “They burned the hamlet, and…?” Secca asked. “What about the people?”

  “Most had fled,” Wilten said. “Some did not. They are dead.”

  Secca pursed her lips. “We will see where the Sturinnese are headed, but I would wager that they will retrace their route toward Dumaria, burning each town through which they pass.”

  “Burning?” asked Richina. “But why? Why not just take the provisions?”

  “If we triumph, they wish us great ill in restoring the land, and would lay the blame on Defalk for the devastation because we could not protect them. If they triumph, they will declare that such will always be the fate of those who defy the Maitre of Sturinn.”

  “But they can retreat as fast as we can advance, can they not?” questioned Wilten.

  “Not if they must destroy a town—a larger town,” suggested Secca. “If we can circle to the south and move eastward…”

  “Also, they may wait for the force in the north to join them,” suggested Richina.

  “That may be. It may not be. That force may wait for us, and then create greater delays in whatever fashion they can.”

  Wilten nodded slowly and deliberately.

  Secca could feel her stomach tightening. Although she could not explain, even to herself, the feelings, she knew that she must find a way to defeat the Sturinnese in Dumar quickly. Yet she must do so in a way that would not sacrifice any more of her already slender forces.

  39

  West of Itzel, Neserea

  In the dimness of the private study of the keep, Belmar studies the image of the woman in the glass that lies in the center of the dark oak desk. “She has been in the same room for near-on a week.”

  “Has there not been a snowstorm? And high winds?” asks jerGlien. “She has but two companies of lancers. She would not risk such against the weather.” His tone is close to that of idle speculation.

  “She would wish us to think that, I wager.”

  “Be careful what you wager.” The Sturinnese laughs without mirth. “One never knows who might accept your bet.”

  “She will not gamble.” With those words, Belmar clears his throat and sings, without accompaniment.

  “Paint upon this glass in clearest sight

  she who rides Lady Clayre’s mount in today’s light…”

  At the compressed rhyme and stressed note values, jerGlien winces. “You should use the players or learn to play a lute.”

  “It will work,” Belmar says. “See!”

  The image in the glass shows the sorceress riding eastward along a snowy road, the sun that has finally broken through days of clouds at her back.

  “The devious bitch! I’ll set a trap, and not just one for Nysl and his type, but for her. That I will.” After a moment, Belmar lets the image fade from the glass, slowly, without singing a release couplet, and turns to jerGlien. “You knew she would do such.”

  “I knew she could. Any of the sorceresses could do so, were they so minded. I did not know she would. She is usually most direct, and most cautious, as you well have noted.” The Sturinnese pauses, then adds, “Women can be most unpredictable. That was noted long ago in Sturinn.”

  “And that is why you chain them?”

  An ironic smile plays across jerGlien’s face. “Let us say that it has proven effective over many, many years.”

  “Well…I cannot chain this sorceress. So we must let her believe her stratagem has worked,” muses the younger man. “Then she will act, instead of dancing all over the countryside avoiding us.” He smiles coldly. “And when she acts, why then, so will we.”

  “You will follow the decoy lancers more closely so that once she has cast her spells and revealed herself you will crush her?” suggests jerGlien.

  “I had thought so. Is aught wrong with that?” Belmar glances down at the blank glass upon the desk.

  “Not so long as you use sorcery strong enough to destroy her. She will not give you a second opportunity.”

  “Nor I her. One must indeed act before she becomes stronger and more devious through experience.” Belmar grins at the man in gray. “Is that not the way of Sturinn? To act before another gains strength?”

  “That is one way,” concedes jerGlien.

  “Nothing is simple in Sturinn, is it?”

  “Is it anywhere? You should know that appearances can deceive. The shadow sorceress is far stronger than those senior to her, yet all think she is the weakest because she is younger and because she has kept her distance from Falcor.” A pleasant smile appears. “As I have told you before, nothing in all Erde is quite what it seems, Lord Belmar.”

  “Including you? You are here, and then you are not. Whatever you recommend, the Maitre seems to favor.”

  “The Maitre has not adopted all of the requests you have asked me to convey.”

  “That is not what I said.” Belmar laughs lightly.

  “I have conveyed your requests,” jerGlien says evenly. “You have done well…from what the Maitre has granted.”

  “As well as any, and yet I cannot say I know you.”

  “You know me as well as any do,” replies jerGlien, “and better than many.”

  “That is to say, not at all.”

  The Sturinnese shrugs, as if to end the discussion.

  40

  The wind blew harder than on the days before, but it came out of the southeast, and was far warmer than in the recent past. For Secca and her forces, that had meant more muddy patches of the Dumaran road, and a slower journey eastward along the side road that roughly paralleled the river road. Secca had hoped that they could ease closer to the Sturinnese, enough to flank or circle the Sea-Priests somehow without overly tiring her own lancers and their mounts.

  She half stood in the stirrups, trying to stretch legs that felt even shorter after two glasses of riding. As she eased back down into the saddle, she glanced at Wilten, who rode beside her for the moment. Alcaren and Delcetta rode close behind, and Richina and Palian just ahead of Secca and Wilten.

  “You are certain that the Sturinnese are moving eastward, back toward Dumaria?” asked Wilten.

  “That is what my glass showed, and Richina’s,” Secca replied. “They are retracing their route back along the river road.”

  “They are not even attempting to use the hills of Hasjyl, then, although you left them that opening,” Wilten continued.

  “They regard such as a trap,” suggested Delcetta.

  “I think not,” Secca replied. “The farther east we go, the farther we are from the trade pass, and when we vanquish the Sea-Priests, we will have even more travel to reach Esaria.”

  “By then the Sturinnese will have landed their fleet in Worlan or Esaria,” Palian noted, half-turning in the saddle.

  “Worlan?” asked Delcetta.

  “Those are the lands held by Belmar,” replied Secca, “Lord Belmar, who would be the next Prophet of Music. They are west of Esaria, and there is a small port there.”

  Wilten frowned, but did not speak, keeping his eyes on the narrow road ahead, winding as it did between rich river bottomland, and hills that supported woodlots and orchards with twisted trees that reflected the less fertile higher ground away from the river valley that was less than five deks wide. Still, although the ground was warming, they had seen no signs of the land being tilled or turned in preparation for planting.

  Secca tried to recall the details of the map of western Dumar. “Can you send scouts to see if—there’s a loop in the river, isn’t there, not too far ahead—we could cut across the hills and strike from the higher ground while they follow the river road?”

  Delcetta nodded. “Scouts—that we can do.”

  “They have almost fifty companies of lancers and three of archers,” offered Wilten.

  “I do not plan to
fight that way,” Secca said. Not if you can avoid it.

  “They will not, either,” pointed out Alcaren. “So we must surprise them. Would you think of an attack through sorcery at night?”

  “We will have to see.” Secca shrugged. She wouldn’t be at her best if she had to ride most of the day. Neither would the players. Yet she had no doubts that the Sturinnese would not stay close to her for a day to let her rest—not unless she and her forces were so exhausted that any battle promised an easy victory for the Sea-Priests. “I will think of anything that will allow us to fight the Sturinnese when we are rested and have the greatest of advantages.”

  “You ask much, Lady Secca,” offered Wilten.

  “Perhaps too much, Wilten,” Secca admitted. “Yet we can ill afford to lose many more lancers or any more players.” Her eyes went to the winding road ahead. If she could only find a way to sing a spell that would carry farther than the few deks that she had managed in destroying the Sturinnese archers. But her voice had been stretched to its limits to create an effect that had extended three deks. Her voice? She and Richina had destroyed the keep at Dolov by singing harmony together. What if she could manage to add Alcaren? Could the three of them succeed where she could not—in a campaign that now stretched into a future she could neither see nor predict—nor even guess.

  41

  West of Itzel, Neserea

  Light powdery snow falls intermittently from the hazy clouds that are somewhere in color between gray and white, and occasionally part to show a blue sky above, then scud together swiftly to dim the day. The road itself appears empty, and the lands beside the road reflect the coming end of winter, with brown spaces in the fields that will be tilled in weeks to come still dotted with snowdrifts. The meadows show the same pattern, save that winter-flattened grass alternates with the snow. Along the road itself, the drifts are fewer, and deeper, usually extending from a fence or stone wall bordering the shoulder of the road.

  At one point on the road are three larger and longer drifts in a row, separated by but a few yards of frozen grass. Only four players, Clayre, and a single lancer stand in the space carefully created by hand and sorcery to resemble a snowdrift, the one in the center of the three. Under the white canvas that has been dusted with snow, the six wait for the column of Neserean lancers recruited and trained by Belmar to ride eastward toward Esaria, over the barely melted surface of the still-frozen clay of the road from Itzel to the capital.