Secca looked forward as the Silberwelle rode through a swell, spray flying past her, and fine droplets of saltwater mist settling on her. “Life isn’t just about doing things.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It requires us to do a lot so that we can have time, if we are fortunate, for other things, to enjoy each other, or to watch a sunset without worrying what it means for the battle ahead…”
“What other things? It seems so long since I’ve thought of anything but sorcery and Sea-Priests.”
“Do you want children?” he asked softly.
Secca stood frozen. Children…she’d once hoped, but she’d seen how so many had grown up. She’d seen a boy named Jimbob go from a bully into a coward named Robero, despite everyone’s efforts. She’d seen her own brothers turn cruel, and be poisoned by an even crueler uncle.
“You’re afraid…aren’t you?”
She could not look directly at him. “Do you?”
He smiled sadly. “I don’t want them unless you do. You’re too strong a person.”
“Too strong a person?” Secca laughed. “Every time I do great sorcery, I almost die.”
“That is not what I meant, my lady.” He paused. “You know where my words lead.”
Secca turned her head away. “I don’t want to talk about it now. I can’t.” How can I even think of children?
95
Secca had gathered the eight in the captain’s cabin in the early morning, hoping that the coolness of the day would help, but even so, the space was getting warm quickly, and her face, still tender, even warmer. As she stood by her seat, lutar in hand, she glanced around the circular table, and at two overcaptains and the two chief players who stood behind the chairs.
“We still have to deal with the Sturinnese in Neserea,” Secca began, “and they have a fleet somewhere in the Bitter Sea.”
“You don’t believe that they’ll sail away and let us port at Esaria?” Alcaren’s voice carried a hint of mischief. “I cannot imagine why.”
A few low chuckles followed his remarks. Palian shook her head, even as she smiled.
“I thought I’d try to show where those ships might be,” Secca said, lifting her lutar.
“Show us now where’er the Sea-Priests ships may be
on a map that shows both Liedwahr and the Bitter Sea…”
After Secca’s last words, the scrying glass in the middle of the captain’s circular table silvered and darkened. The outlines of the map were barely visible against the silvered background of the scrying glass, even in the comparative dimness of the cabin.
Alcaren peered down at the image, finally pointing as he spoke. “They’re in the southern part of the Bitter Sea, but not too near Esaria.”
Secca sang the release spell and looked at her consort. “We also need to see how Esaria is faring.” She sat down.
Alcaren eased himself out of his chair and checked the tuning on his lumand, before clearing his throat and singing.
“Show us now and in clear sight
Esaria in this morning’s light…”
The second image was far brighter and clearer, but the scrying glass did not display the ordered structures and streets of a city, but of ruins, with thin trails of smoke rising from buildings smoldering on hilltops and pools of water scattered among what had been dwellings and shops and streets in the lower-lying lands. There was no sign of a waterfront or piers, just heaps of wreckage.
“Fire and flood,” murmured Richina.
Secca’s mouth almost dropped open in shock. Why should you be shocked? Didn’t you know that the Sturinnese would strike back?
“The Nesereans did not do anything to them,” Wilten said slowly.
“It is a message to us,” Secca said.
“It’s also a way of denying us any supplies in following them,” Alcaren added.
“Following them?” blurted Richina.
“To Defalk,” replied Alcaren. “That is how they think. They will not surrender. They will lay waste to all that they ride through, and they will try to destroy as much of Neserea and Defalk as they can.” He cleared his throat and sang the release couplet.
The mirror blanked.
“How long before we could reach Esaria?” Secca looked at Denyst.
“Be but four days with good winds. The winds aren’t the best this time of year. We’re having to tack too much. Could be a week, or longer, if they don’t change,” replied the captain.
Secca nodded slowly before she spoke, addressing her words to the chief players. “We will need the first building song again, and we will use the storm spellsong against ships.” She turned her head to face Denyst. “If we come in from the north, and they are the ones closest to the shore, will that make a difference?”
“Aye…if the storms you call keep heading south. Otherwise…”
“We’ll have to go through what we did last time?” Secca said.
“Might not be so bad,” replied Denyst. “Storms die out quicker in colder water. Don’t see many this time of year that far north.”
Secca nodded slowly. “I need to think. Until tomorrow…unless anyone has anything I should know about.”
There were headshakes around the table, and Secca stood. So did everyone else.
After the others had filed out, Secca and Alcaren reseated themselves and looked at each other across the table.
“I feared, but I was not certain,” she began. “They have already left Esaria…”
“We travel faster than do they, and the roads will be muddy. We will have a chance to catch them—”
“Who are ‘they’?” Secca asked. “What sorcerer would destroy a city for so little—” She laughed bitterly. “I should ask that?”
“I wonder,” mused Alcaren. “I wonder.”
Secca frowned. “You wonder what?”
Her consort did not answer, but, instead, picked up the lumand and ran his fingers over the strings. After clearing his throat, he sang another scrying spellsong.
“Show me now and in day’s clear light
those whom for and with the Maitre fight…”
The glass revealed a column of riders in white, riding eastward along a river road. Behind them, barely visible, rose trails of smoke from what Secca thought was a small hamlet.
“They are indeed scorching the earth,” she noted, then she shook her head as she realized what else the image showed. “Of course! It makes sense. The Maitre was in Neserea all along. Do you think he was the one with Belmar?”
Alcaren shrugged and smiled. “He was that one, or one in the background.”
“I should have seen that sooner.” Secca shook her head.
“How would you know?” asked Palian softly. “All the great sorcery till now was done by Belmar? No one in Liedwahr has ever seen the Maitre—”
“I would guess that we could not,” suggested Alcaren. “Let me try something else.” His voice began another scrying song, this one asking to show the Maitre directly.
The mirror blanked, revealing only the timbers of the overhead.
“You see?” asked Alcaren.
“He’s dead,” suggested Delvor.
Secca shook her head. “We’d get blank silver with no image at all. As do we, he has wards.” After a long pause, she added, “We have wards, and he has wards.”
“Why does that bother you so much?” Alcaren asked.
“Because of where it leads,” she answered. “We have wards, and so does he. We destroy Stura, and he destroys Esaria. Do you think he is destroying absolutely everything along the rivers?”
“Everything that does not take too much strength,” Alcaren said. “He will not weaken himself too much. Also, someone must be holding the wards, and that sorcerer cannot use his strength for destruction.”
“There must be a better way than following them.” Secca frowned. “There must be…”
Alcaren tilted his head. “Let me think. We should also talk to Denyst and perhaps Palian.”
“Older and wiser heads?�
�� asked Secca.
“Wisdom and knowledge can save much effort,” Alcaren pointed out. “Someone told me that.” He grinned.
“And we have made enough mistakes that we could have avoided?” Secca jabbed back.
“No. But I think we could.” His eyes twinkled.
“You are most difficult, my love.”
“That is most necessary when one is consorted to a powerful sorceress.”
For a moment, they both smiled.
96
Mansuus, Mansuur
The Liedfuhr of Mansuur stands in his undertunic before the desk of his private study. His sky-blue tunic is laid across the back of the desk chair. He holds a lancer’s sabre and begins a series of exercises, then proceeds to fence, as if against an imaginary opponent. When he finally pauses, to wipe the sweat from his brow, there is a discreet knock on the study door.
“Yes?”
“Overcaptain Bassil, sire.”
“Have him enter.” Kestrin replaces the sabre in the scabbard at his belt. Then, he shrugs and takes off the sword belt, laying belt, scabbard, and sword in one of the chairs set at an angle to the desk. He does not redon the tunic, but blots his still-damp forehead once more before turning to address the lancer officer. “Yes, Bassil?”
“You said you wished me to let you know about the reports of great waves crashing over the piers at Wharsus and Landungerste…?”
“Is it good news or bad? We could use a little of the former these days, if you could manage to supply it. That is, if it is at all possible in these troubled times.” Kestrin offers a rueful smile, one that vanishes as quickly as it appeared.
“Yes, sire.” Bassil bows, showing hair far more silver than it had been even weeks earlier. “It might be considered good news, of a sort.”
“Of a sort?” questions Kestrin.
“Stura is no more. That is, it still stands in the middle of the isles, but nothing lives there. It is a seething, smoking expanse of molten rock and noxious gases.”
“The volcanoes? You mean the harmonies acted for once?”
“No, sire. The harmonies had great assistance from the shadowsinger. Very great assistance.”
“So she has destroyed their home defense fleet, and killed all who live on Stura, and poisoned their home isle so that none can live there?” The Liedfuhr raises his eyebrows. “Exactly how would this be considered good news?”
“Of a sort, sire. I recall that I said, of a sort.” Bassil smiles blandly. “Her ships remain mostly intact, although the seers say she has lost one somewhere, and it appears as if she may be sailing to Neserea.”
“Revenge will not bring back my sister and my niece, Bassil.”
“No, sire. But your other niece lives, and if the sorceress can succeed in defeating the last remnants of the Sturinnese…it may be possible that she will survive and prosper.”
“May? What will stop the shadowsinger after what she has done?”
“The largest of the Sturinnese fleets remains in the Bitter Sea, and it appears as though the Maitre himself is with the Sturinnese forces in Neserea.”
“Appears?” Kestrin snorts. “Stop making me ask questions and just tell me.”
“He and his sorcerers have flooded Esaria and ravaged it with firebolts. They ride eastward and have fired every town and hamlet through which they have passed, and the whole time he has maintained wards which keep a glass from seeing him and where he personally may be. I would judge that he will attack Defalk, or try to, before the Shadow Sorceress can return.”
“So that he will turn as much of Liedwahr into burning ruins as he can? I cannot say that all this surprises me that much.” Kestrin sighs. “We have sorceresses to our east who wish all women to have the powers of sorcerers and men, and we have Sea-Priests to our west who wish to put all women in chains, and we have the misfortune to be caught between them at a time when great and evil new sorceries are being discovered and used day by day.”
“That is true, sire.”
“What is worse is that the best that can happen is for the sorceresses to triumph.”
Bassil nods sympathetically.
“My father had little to fret over, compared to this.” Kestrin shakes his head. “What of our plans with the catapults and flaming oil?”
“Marshal Turek has been testing two types. They look most promising.” Bassil raises his eyebrows in inquiry.
“We will still need them, even if the Shadow Sorceress is successful with the last of the Sturinnese. The world will not change back to the way it was. We will need all manner of weapons that a man or small groups of men may use.”
“I fear the world is changing faster than I can run, sire.”
“That may be true for all of us, Bassil, and even more for the shadowsinger, but we must try.” Kestrin shakes his head. “Why? Why could not the Maitre have let dozing dogs lie? Had he left Defalk alone, the sorceresses would have had less power over time.”
“You think so? Or merely hope that it would have been so?”
The Liedfuhr laughs, ruefully. “Like all men, I hope for things that might have been. That, I admit. Do not we all so hope?”
97
In the midmorning, Palian, Denyst, Alcaren, Richina, and Secca sat around the table in the captain’s quarters of the Silberwelle. The air had become decidedly cooler since the day before, for which Secca was grateful, since her face still burned at times. She was also trying to ignore the cramping and the nausea that plagued her—it seemed that she was reminded that she was indeed a woman when it was either dangerous or uncomfortable, if not both. She counted herself fortunate that she was merely uncomfortable.
Denyst stood, bathed in the grayish green light from the overhead skylenses. She looked down on the large chart. “The traders of Wei have always been fearful of being held hostage to but a single port. So they have maintained certain roads and wharfs in other cities. Seldom do they use them. It has cost them dearly to maintain the road from Wei to Ostwye, but the waters off Ostwye are never frozen, and they value that. Likewise, the port at Sendrye affords not too difficult a trip to Wei, should there be a problem with the River Nord. Lundholn is something else. It was a trading port in the days of the Mynynans, and they say that the stone pier there dates back to the Spell-Fire Wars. Something else, too, about Lundholn. Used to be a trading outlet for the Corians when they held what’s now the west of Nordwei. Was their only port, and when the traders forced them out…well, that was the beginning of their fall. There’s still a good stone road that runs all the way to Morgen, and along the river to Vyel, and then down to Wei. The part that runs east from Morgen goes almost halfway to Nordfels…”
“What?” asked Secca, involuntarily.
Palian nodded as Secca spoke.
Secca looked to the older chief player. “Do you know how long the unpaved road is between the old stone road and Nordfels?”
“I do not,” Palian replied, “but from what I have heard I would judge it to be fifty deks, no more than sixty. Still, that is a fair distance in the spring on unpaved roads. It might be faster to port at Wei.”
“You might consider such, lady,” added Wilten.
Secca turned to the captain. “Does your chart show that road?”
Denyst shook her head. “Could make a rough gauge.” She took out a pair of calipers from somewhere and spread them, then eased one tip to a point east of Morgen. “If half the distance is on the river road and the road follows the river…then the whole distance is ninety deks, and no road runs truly straight. So I’d guess your chief player’s thought is close.” She frowned. “You still thinking of landing in Lundholn? With unpaved roads in spring?”
“We’ll have to look at the old stone road to see what it looks like,” Secca temporized. “But ships travel faster than horses, and we can’t get provisions from towns flooded and burned out. We can also travel faster on paved roads at this time of year than the Sturinnese can on the muddy roads in eastern Neserea.” As she finished speaking, S
ecca began to look for yet another clear space or yet another corner of her brown paper scraps where she could find a space to craft one more spellsong.
“You certain they’ll keep heading east?” asked Denyst.
“About as certain as I am that the sun will keep rising. Vipers don’t stop using their fangs.” Secca found the grease marker and began to write.
The cabin turned silent, and Secca forced herself to concentrate on the spellsong.
Alcaren beckoned to the captain, then asked Denyst in a low voice, “How long from Esaria to Lundholn?”
“Anywhere from three days to a week or longer, depending on the wind and the seas. Could be longer, if there are too many ice floes.”
“Thank you,” he murmured in response.
Secca looked at the hasty spell, then stood and reclaimed the lutar from the net-covered bin beside the double-width bunk. After tuning the lutar, she pulled on the supple leather gloves with the copper-tipped fingers, cleared her throat, and offered the short scrying spellsong.
“Show us in this glass that road of ancient stone
that leads to Morgen from the port of Lundholn,
the section that is the very best and strong…”
The glass showed a narrow stone road flanking a hillside, half covered in snow, half in browned grass and grayish shrubs. The road was clear, and somehow reminded Secca of the road that had taken her the last fifty deks into Encora.
She glanced to Alcaren.
“Mynyan sorcery,” he affirmed.
Secca repeated the spellsong, except with wording designed to find the worst section of the road. The image was not that different, except that the paving stones were cracked, and in one place several paving blocks were missing and the space had been filled in with smaller and far more roughly cut stones.
A third spellsong followed, one with words about any part of the road being blocked, but the glass came up blank and silver. For that, Secca was glad, since she was getting a hint of dizziness, the kind that preceded daystars across her vision, doubtless because she hadn’t eaten that much earlier. If she ate, at this time in her season, she felt nauseated. If she didn’t, she couldn’t do sorcery without being exhausted and feeling ready to faint.
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