Shadowsinger (22 page)

Under the late-morning sun, Secca had unfastened her jacket, so warm had the day become. She was trying to work on harmonies with Richina and Alcaren as they rode up over the hills, and that was work as well, and contributed to her getting warmer and warmer, although some of the heat was from the sun, enough that she could smell the earth warming. The three rode close together, but the trail was so narrow that Richina and Secca were side by side, with Alcaren trailing close behind.

“Just sing ‘la' for every syllable,” Secca said, mostly to remind Alcaren, since Secca and Anna had worked such exercises with Richina for several years. “On my mark…Mark!”

“La, la, la…”

Halfway through what was supposed to have been the first stanza of the third building song, Secca said, “Stop!” She looked to Richina. “You're singing what I do. It won't harm the spell, but it won't be as strong.”

“I know you have said it is not so, but it seems so odd,” replied the sandy-blonde sorceress, easing herself into a different position in the saddle. “It would seem stronger if we sang the same notes.”

Secca shook her head. “We do…on the last part of each stanza. That is where we come together. Think of it as…” she frowned. “The music has more depth. Anna would have called it color. Depth and color make it stronger.”

“But…if you spin threads together, they are stronger, and they are all alike,” replied Richina.

“The different parts support different things…like the braces for a causeway…or a bridge,” Secca responded.

“If you say so, Lady “Secca.” Richina's tone remained polite, but dubious.

Secca wanted to yell at the younger sorceress, but swallowed the feeling, and mentally tried to figure out another way of explaining. After
a moment, she spoke. “You know, when the second players join in a spell, they do not play the same as the first do?”

“They play chords,” Richina admitted.

“If you listen to the chords—closely,” Secca went on, “they often have a different sound. Yet, when they play so, the spellsongs we sing are more powerful. What they do with the accompaniment is what we must do with the spellsong.”

Richina nodded, too politely for Secca.

“It is like blades, then,” offered Alcaren, from where he rode slightly behind the two women. “A sabre must have more than just iron in it. Even a bronze platter is harder than one made of pure copper. Sometimes, something that is all of a kind is weaker than something having different substances.”

Secca wouldn't have thought of blades, but the analogy was mostly correct. “That's right. We're forging a stronger kind of spellsong.”

This time, Richina's nod seemed to encompass understanding.

“That's why you need to sing the line below mine,” Secca repeated. “You are not singing to support me or Alcaren. We are all singing to weld together a powerful spell.”

Secca just hoped that they would be able to work out the three-part arrangement. While failure of the spell would not be as deadly as failure in a conventional battle, since they would be trying it from much farther away, her feelings kept telling her that she had far less time than it would seem. Clayre's defeat and death reinforced that sense of urgency, yet even Alcaren did not seem to understand fully her concerns about time.

But then, she told herself, she might not be reading her consort's feelings, since he kept so much hidden, and, to be fair, she had not had a chance to talk to him fully in a place where she felt comfortable explaining how she felt.

“Now…can we try it again?” Secca asked.

Alcaren and Richina both nodded.

Standing before the bare-limbed oak, a tree that had yet to show the buds that would herald spring, Secca glanced from the hilltop to the distant road, shading her eyes against the sun as she studied the ravine a dek or so west and below the hilltop, and the angled lower ridge farther to the southwest. The line of silver that was the Envar River was nearly six deks from the hilltop. In the distance, she could see what looked to be a cloud of dust rising from the river road.

A brief gust of wind swirled around her, a mixture of warm and cold air, but one hinting more at the spring to come than the winter past, with the scent of moisture and a hint of some early-spring flower, although Secca had seen none on the ride through the hills, even in the low bushes on the sunny side of the windbreaking line of firs a dek downhill and to the west.

“They are within two deks of where they must be for us to begin the spellsong.” Secca turned to her right, looking to where Palian and Delvor stood before the arrayed players. “A half a glass, I would judge.”

“We stand ready,” replied the gray-eyed and gray-haired chief of the first players.

Secca turned back to Alcaren and Richina. “Have you the spell words firmly in mind?”

“Yes, lady,” replied Richina.

Alcaren nodded. His eyes were dark, and Secca understood why. Richina was preoccupied with the task to come, too young too understand what using the spell meant, and where it well might lead.

“How close must they come?” asked Alcaren in a low voice.

“I do not know,” Secca admitted. “When I sang the spell alone, the one against the archers, the effects reached four deks. Anna once sang a spell alone with players that reached more than ten deks. I can but hope that by holding the hillside, and with us singing together, that we can reach the six deks or so from here to where the road passes the
closest.” She offered a crooked smile. “If we fail, they cannot pursue us directly, not over the ravines and broken ground.”

“If we fail badly enough,” he said with a laugh, “they will never know we attempted such.” The forced smile faded. “You worry more about success.”

“I do.” She paused. “If this works, we need to think about warding spells, ones that will wake or protect us if sorcery is being tried against us.”

“You think we are being watched in a glass?”

“If not already…soon. And if we can strike from a distance with spells, we can be struck from a distance.”

Richina turned. “They are not so strong as you, lady.”

Secca laughed, mirthlessly. “I appreciate your feelings, Richina, but…they do not have to be so strong. Anna was attacked in Dumar by a hidden Sea-Priest with a pair of enchanted javelins. There are many more sorcerers among the Sea-Priests than in all the other lands of Liedwahr. What we do, sooner or later they will try.”

“Unless you vanquish them all,” Richina said.

“And then what?” asked Secca.

Richina's brow wrinkled into a puzzled frown.

“If we destroy all the Sea-Priest sorcerers in Liedwahr, what will the Maitre do? Leave us alone forever? Or just for a few years?” pursued Secca.

“The Sea-Priests left us alone for a score of years.” Richina finally replied.

“So we must fight them every score of years? Or should I follow their example, and try to destroy them in their own land? And how am I different from them in that instance?”

“You did not start this war or the last,” replied Alcaren bluntly. “You sorceresses have only asked that women be treated as equals. The old lords, the Prophet of Music, and the Sturinnese cannot accept that. You can change the old lords in Defalk…and without the meddling of the Sea-Priests, you can change Neserea—but you will never change Sturinn. It is a land that has enslaved and chained its women since before the Pelaran Devastation, and killed or silenced any woman of strength for endless generations.”

Secca sighed almost silently. “We don't have to face those questions now. We have to worry about one spell.”
Yet…will it come to that?
She pushed the thought away and looked to her right, where the players had finished running through a warm-up tune.

“When you are ready, Lady Secca,” Palian said quietly.

“It will not be long.”

Secca concentrated on the images she intended to use, knowing that her visualization had to be clear and precise, although she had told Alcaren and Richina to concentrate on words and melody, and to leave the imagery to her.

“The main body of the Sturinnese is nearing the bend in the road,” called Delcetta from the southern end of the ridge.

“Players, stand ready!” ordered Palian.

Secca glanced from Alcaren to Richina. Both nodded in response.

After looking to the southwest, to confirm as best she could Delcetta's report, Secca cleared her throat, then declared, “At your mark, chief player!”

“At my mark…Mark!”

The first bar was only the first players, followed by Delvor's second players. Secca and the other two joined on the third bar, and the spellsong rose from the hillside into the clear sky.

Even before the end of the first stanza, hazy clouds had begun to form, and the light breeze out of the north had strengthened into a solid and stiff wind that pressed against Secca's back and simultaneously carried the spellsong and accompaniment toward the distant Sturinnese force.

A quick breath was all that Secca managed before launching into the second stanza. She concentrated on keeping a clear image of the dark funnel cloud sweeping along the road, sparing none of the Sturinnese force, especially the Sea-Priest sorcerers and drummers.

Beside her, Alcaren's voice held true, strong but supporting, while Richina's provided almost a counterpoint.

With the last words of the spell, and the deep, not-quite-dull chime of the harmonies that rolled through her, indeed through all nearby who
could sense them, Secca looked toward the southwest and the road that held the Sturinnese force. The skies above the river and the road had turned almost black, yet the higher clouds were nearly perfect white—but Secca could see them only for a few moments before the lower and blacker clouds thickened and covered the entire sky, turning the afternoon into twilight.

Her arms felt stiff, and exhaustion had dropped across her like a heavy wet blanket. The exertion of the spell had left her momentarily hot and damp all over, but that lasted only for moments, and she shivered in the rapidly chilling air. Her head ached, and her eyes watered, blurring with the flash of daystars.

The stiff breeze had become a whining, roaring torrent of air, pushing Secca toward the steeper downhill slope before her, with such force that she staggered to hold her balance, before dropping to her knees in the damp and flattened grass. With the gale came snow that whipped around Secca, chill and beadlike. Then, ice pellets began to fall, flaying her back and shoulders.

Abruptly, she felt herself lifted by Alcaren's strong arms.

“We need to get to lower ground,” he shouted above the roaring of the wind that had only strengthened. “We are too exposed here.”

“Order it!” Secca turned out of Alcaren's grip and, fighting her way into the wind and ice, struggled uphill toward the gray mare that stood stolidly against the sorcery-called storm.

“Down into the trees to the west! Down to the trees!” Alcaren called out.

“To the west…” Delcetta's voice rose above the whistle of the wind as well, carrying the same orders.

Wishing she had worn the battered green felt hat, instead of leaving it in her saddlebags, Secca bent farther forward against the wind until she reached her mount. In one moment, when the snow and ice pellets abated for a mere instant, to the south she could see the players lashing instruments to their horses. Secca levered herself up into the saddle with tired legs and arms.

“Here!” called Alcaren, his mount practically beside hers. “This way.”

Secca squinted through the whiteness to see Richina on the other side of Alcaren.

“This way,” Alcaren repeated, guiding them downhill.

Secca followed, wordlessly, noting that three of her lancers—Gorkon, Rukor, and Achar—had joined them to re-form as a guard. The group had gone less than a quarter of a dek, when Alcaren spoke
again. “I need to go back and make sure all the players and lancers are getting clear.” He pointed downhill. “Beyond the trees you can take shelter. We will rejoin you shortly.”

“Be careful!” Secca called out, as her consort turned his mount back uphill. Once again, she wished she were larger and stronger, but for her to follow Alcaren, as she felt, barely able to stay in the saddle, would have served no one well.

“I dare not be otherwise,” he replied before vanishing into the flurry of white snow and ice pellets.

Secca kept looking over her shoulder as she and Richina rode northward and downhill. At first, she could see nothing; but Alcaren had been right for the farther downhill she rode, the easier it became to see. Before long, looking back, she could see the players emerging from the worst of the storm, and then a company of SouthWomen, and more lancers. She just hoped that Alcaren would return before long.

“The storm is clearing,” Richina suggested to Secca.

Secca gestured for the younger sorceress to turn in the saddle and look back over her shoulder. A sheet of white rose from the ridge behind them, a whiteness that seemed like a wall that climbed from the ridge crest as far skyward as Secca could make out, a wall behind which lay a great darkness.

Richina followed Secca's gesture. “Dissonance…” The younger sorceress's voice died away.

“Let us hope it was as effective as it appears,” Secca said, turning from the view behind toward the trail road ahead, toward the trees ahead that looked to form a windbreak.