Shadowsinger (41 page)

Secca lay rigid on the captain's wide bunk, the memory of the internally clashing, agonized single note that embodied chords of both harmony and dissonance still reverberating through her entire body.
Her face burned, as if a fire were consuming it again and again, moment by moment. Beyond that, her head throbbed; her body ached; and daystars flashed across her vision.

“Your faces are blistered,” Richina said, “as if you had ridden for days under a summer sun.” She eased the cloth she had wet once more in fresh water back over Secca's face.

“Or worse,” Secca said, her voice muffled by the cloth. Even moving her lips sent faint lines of added pain radiating through her face and skull.

“Worse,” mumbled Alcaren from where he sat, leaning back in one of the chairs around the table.

“How do
you
feel?” Secca managed.

“My face is just a little red, but I looked away when all that fire exploded into the sky. I am tired.” Richina sighed. “I can feel someone probing the wards again.”

“The Sea-Priests in Neserea,” said Alcaren. “They have sorcerers.”

The cabin door opened, and the captain stepped inside, her eyes going first to Alcaren, then to Secca, and finally to Richina. “How are they?”

“Their faces are blistered from the heat,” Richina replied. “In a glass, I will use Alcaren's balm, and, in a day or so, they will be better.”

“What about the crew?” Secca asked, sitting up, despite her headache, and the fire in her face, and the pain in her eyes.

“We lost three off the yardarms when the wave hit. Near-on a half-score are burned like you, except more on their arms and necks. Too busy to be looking aft, I'd wager. Some of your players are scorched, too, especially your chief player.”

Secca winced. She hadn't even thought of Palian.
So much you haven't thought about…

“She is not so bad as you two,” Richina said quickly.

“That's because the poop shielded most of them,” replied Denyst.

“How about you?” asked Alcaren.

“Back of my neck. That's it.” Denyst half snorted, half coughed. “Thankful we've spare canvas below. Half what we had on was shredded.” There was a long silence. “Don't think we'll be worrying about the Maitre and the Sea-Priests ever again.”

Secca squinted against the pain in her eyes and face, not that she could see with the damp cloth spread over her cheeks and forehead. “They still have a fleet in the Bitter Sea and more lancers than all of Liedwahr put together.”

“You think they'll fight after…” There was another pause. “The
whole night sky to the south is red—bright enough to steer by or read a chart. The whole place is aflame, and you sang that spell near-on three glasses back.”

Secca was silent.

“You said it was a terrible spell,” Denyst mused. “Wasn't sure anything could be that awful. Wrong, I guess.”

“I made it as strong as I could,” Secca said, all too conscious of the stiffness of her mouth and cheeks and lips. “I didn't want them coming back to Liedwahr in another score of years, just waiting, and attacking again.”

Denyst sighed. “You'd be right on that. Took 'em twoscore years before they took the Ostisles, and threescore before that to take Pelara.” There was another sigh.

“You think the cost was too high?” Secca tried to keep the edge out of her voice.
Of course it was too high. It was something like this or watch them take Liedwahr
.

“Lady Sorceress…what be done is done, and it's not like they were all servants of harmony. Just…so sudden-like.”

Secca swallowed, unable to speak.

“Till tomorrow, sorceress.”

Secca listened to the door close, still holding herself half-erect, although her arms were beginning to tremble.

“Lady…you must rest,” Richina said softly, helping Secca lie back down. “You must.”

How can you rest?
Secca lay in the darkness, her head pounding, knives slashing at her eyes, and her face burning, wondering how she could ever explain.
You can't, except to Alcaren, or Richina, and maybe the Matriarch…Robero would never spend the golds to raise thousands of lancers and allow us to train scores of sorcerers and sorceresses, and that wouldn't work because we can't control them the way the Evult did or the Sea-Priests do…

Why was life the way it was? She didn't have scores upon scores of lancers, and scores of sorcerers. She had three people and terrible spells. She could destroy a land, but the three of them were only one force. The Sturinnese were everywhere—in Ebra, in Dumar, in the Ostisles, in Neserea, and the three of them could be but in one. Yet, just as the Ladies of the Shadows faulted the ancient Matriarchs for using sorcery to save their people, she would be condemned—even if she succeeded.
Are there sorceries so terrible that it is better to suffer defeat? Are you wrong to use them? Even when you see no alternatives?

Under the cloth, the tears oozed from the corners of her eyes, tears that scalded her burned face like steam, and silent sobs racked her.

Northeast of Esaria, Neserea

The Maitre stands on the headland to the northeast of the city he and his forces have taken and made theirs—if but for days. Now it stands empty of all those from Sturinn and all those who have served Sturinn, returned for the moment to those inhabitants who dared to remain. As he faces the west-northwest, his eyes study the city below the headland. “You
will
see, all of you. You will see the might of Sturinn.”

Then he turns to look over the players and drummers arrayed in a semicircle.

At the sound of boots on gravel he turns back to watch Marshal jerLeng approach, followed by jerClayne.

The lancer marshal bows, slightly, but deferentially, then straightens. “The lancers are drawn up to the east as you requested, Maitre, and we have stripped the city of coin and provisions. We stand ready to travel.”

“Good. We will leave shortly. After we complete what must be done here.” The Maitre nods to the younger Sea-Priest.

JerClayne also bows, slightly more deeply, before he reports. “The fleet has returned to the open water to the northwest, and the captains will do their best with the sorcerers they have, as the sorceress nears the Bitter Sea. They have your instructions.”

“Excellent. Now, we will do our best.” The Maitre smiles grimly, and his eyes glitter with determination.

“If I might ask?” inquires jerLeng. “What spell will you use?”

“One that gathers the dust and flame of the heavens and turns them into fireballs that will fall on Esaria. There is always dust and flame. Why, it might even gather fire and dust from Sturinn. A touch of justice, do you not think?” The Maitre laughs, hauntingly, a sound that rises almost into cackling.

JerLeng barely conceals a wince.

“Maitre…might I ask,” stammers jerClayne, “what will this destruction do, besides create hatred and enmity?”

“Why, it will deliver a message. It will tell the world that Stura's might still lives, whether the isle of Stura does or not. And that message is necessary,” replies the Maitre. “Even though Stura is no more, much of what was Sturinn remains. By bringing down Liedwahr in shambles and destruction, then we give Sturinn the time to rebuild. No matter how mighty this sorceress, she is but one of a kind. She has also shown us what else is possible, and with our players and drummers, we can and will do far more. When we succeed here, then we can return to our isles and the Ostisles and rebuild, knowing that we will have time to do so. If we were to fail to bring down this Shadow Sorceress, then what has made Sturinn great would cease to be for all time. That must never be. Never!” He pauses, then asks, more quietly, “Is that not reason enough?”

Both men stiffen from the fire in the Maitre's eyes, and the iron in his words, as if they wished to step back, but dare not move.

The Maitre turns and steps forward to a position before the players and the drummers. He makes one sharp gesture, and the players begin, followed a bar later by the drums. The Maitre's voice joins them on the third bar.

Before the end of the long stanza, a mournful groaning issues from deep within the earth, and a shudder runs through the land, and then a streaking ripple dances beneath the waters of the Bitter Sea, running northward and vanishing.

For a time, nothing occurs.

The Maitre, now pale-faced, watches the Bitter Sea, as do jerLeng and jerClayne, and the players and lancers assembled behind them.

Shortly, a hummock of water appears on the horizon. Then, with a deep sucking sound, the waters of the harbor below the bluffs of the headland retreat seaward, leaving the few fishing craft stranded on the mud. Two deks seaward rises a wall of dark gray-blue water, which towers over the doomed port and capital as it rushes landward.

The top of the great wave is almost level with the headland before it crashes across the city, flooding all but the highest hills, and flattening structures as though they had been made of fragile sticks and paper, and not of stone and brick.

As the water begins to ooze back seaward, running in streams and
torrents and rivulets, carrying debris, planking…and bodies, the Maitre turns and makes a second gesture.

A single note issues from a violino, and the players retune.

When they are silent once more, the Maitre raises his hand, and lets it fall, and the accompaniment for the second spell begins.

When the spell is complete, the Maitre turns and walks slowly, almost shuffling to the stool set under a canopy, where he reseats himself and listens…and watches. His eyes have deep circles under them, circles that had not been there before the spellcasting.

First, there is a distant booming, almost as if an echo of the drums, and then whistling, hissing, shrieking.

Then the fireballs begin to fall from the sky upon the ruins of the city and upon those structures that had escaped the flood—including the buildings that had once comprised the palace of the Prophet of Music.

“Fire and flood. That is a sufficient beginning.” The Maitre slowly rises from the stool and begins to walk toward his mount, even though the fireballs still bombard what had once been a city.

In the late afternoon, despite the burning of her face and continued throbbing in her head, Secca made her way topside and to the stern of the
Silberwelle
. Alcaren had preceded her, by less than quarter of a glass, but stood near the bow.

Despite the full canvas, the wind was light, and the ship barely seemed to move through the dark blue waters of the Western Sea. For a time, Secca stood at the stern railing, staring southwest at the wide and dark column of clouds and smoke and ash that was still visible, for all that the
Silberwelle
was more than a hundred deks northeast of Stura.

Stura had become a funeral pyre, and she had done it. One spell, sung by two, and Stura would not host life in generations. Secca had seen the poisoning and the damages wrought by the conflict of the Mynyans and the Matriarchs, devastation wrought ages past and still blighting the lands of Ranuak—and yet she had sung her own terrible spell.

What else could you have done? What else that you could do would stop them?
The question circled in her mind, and still she had no answers.

At the shadow on the deck she glanced up.

Palian slipped to the railing beside the sorceress. Her face was blotchy and red, and had blisters scattered across it, blisters covered with unguent, much in the way Secca had seen her own face that morning in the glass.

“Lady Secca…” offered the chief player.

“It was a terrible spell,” Secca said quickly. “I know.” Her hands clasped together, almost as if they had thoughts of their own. “I knew it was terrible, but I did not realize how terrible it could be.”

The gray-haired chief player did not speak, just stood beside Secca.

Secca continued to speak, if in a low voice barely audible to the woman next to her at the railing. “They are defeated, and they return. Their ships are destroyed, and they build more. Their armsmen and lancers are slaughtered, and they raise more and return in greater force. They chain their daughters and consorts, and few beyond Ranuak seem to think it that ill. They tear out the tongues of women who essay sorcery…” She shook her head. “My own ruler…he would seek peace with such?” Secca swallowed, realizing that she had never mentioned that to Palian, or anyone but Alcaren. She added quickly, “And yet…to stop them…the only way to stop them…and thousands upon thousands died. Many were chained women, or children, helpless babes.”

“It
was
terrible, and it is indeed terrible that it needed to be sung,” Palian said, her voice firm. “What is more terrible is that few will see that it needed to be sung. They will claim that there must have been another way. Or that you could have threatened the Sea-Priests and forced them from Liedwahr. Some will say that you should have used the spell on some small isle to show its power.” The older woman laughed softly, mournfully. “The lady Anna showed the power of sorcery. As soon as she died, the Sea-Priests attacked. The lady Clayre died. She did not die because she was a weak sorceress.”

Secca turned. “You do not think Belmar was stronger?”

“Belmar had help from the Sea-Priests, it is true,” Palian admitted. “The lady Clayre did not understand that waiting benefits only the Sturinnese and their allies. Your consort said it well. Only you and the lady Anna have attacked as swiftly as you could, and only you two have prevailed.”

“We have not prevailed yet,” Secca said.

“You are prevailing, my lady sorceress. You will fail only if you lose the will to prevail. Do not let false sympathy betray you, or all the women of Erde will be lost.”

“But thousands upon thousands died…”

“Many more of those would have died in the wars that the Sturinnese would wage in the years to come. Many of those gloried in those wars and the spoils of such wars. Those who glory in war have little right to complain about how it is waged. We also have the right to live as we choose, do we not?”

“Yet…” mused Secca, “yet Lady Anna changed the way of living in Defalk, and Dumar, and Neserea, and killed many who did not want those changes. And I am no better.”
No better at all
.

Palian laughed, ironically. “You could do far worse. Is Defalk a better place for all now? How would it be were the Sea-Priests to rule?”

“Is it always like this…having power?” asked Secca, knowing the answer, knowing no one, not even Palian, could absolve her of the guilt and pain.

“No. It is worse to have power and to do nothing. It is worse to have power and use it only to protect one's own lands and golds. It is worse to watch all fall around you, and to know that you might have changed it, but that you did nothing.”

Secca winced.

“There are many things worse than what you have done, Lady Secca. I would that I never see them.”

After a long and deep slow breath that seemed to burn as much as the light wind did on her skin, Secca turned, and said softly. “Thank you.”

“She taught me that,” Palian replied, “when I was your age. I have not forgotten.”

Secca understood who had taught Palian. Secca also hoped she could hold to what the gray-haired chief player had said, because Palian had shared those thoughts not because the worst was over, but because it was yet to come.