Shadowsinger (57 page)

Aroch, Defalk

The Maitre is seated behind a wide desk of cherry that appears warm in the light from the lamps and the hearth. His eyes, unlike the wood of the desk, glitter like the ice of Pelara lit by the heatless
sun of midwinter. His words are even colder as he beholds the two lancer officers in white who stand before the desk.

“You are telling me that you fear your lancers will not obey? Lancers of Sturinn?”

“I do not fear that they will not obey. I am telling you that they will not make another fruitless suicide attack,” replies Marshal jerLeng. “That is exactly what I am telling you.”

Standing behind the Maitre's shoulder, jerClayne shakes his head, as if to warn the marshal against his words.

“We have lost more than fifty companies in less than a week, thirty of them this very afternoon. Every lancer and every officer out there knows that. They also know that no lancer has survived in going against the Sorceress Protector.” JerLeng smiles grimly. “My officers are not stupid, Maitre. You can do no worse to them than can the sorceress, and perhaps not so much as she has done. They will not attack again until you attack with sorcery.”

“And if I replace you?”

“Then you will have to replace me, as well,” offers the overcaptain who stands slightly behind jerLeng. “No officer will give such an order. If he did, no lancer would obey it.”

“No lancer?”

“No, ser,” replies the overcaptain.

“We have almost won, and you would back away?” snaps the Maitre.

“We have destroyed two weak lands, and we have lost our homeland,” counters jerLeng. “We have lost over four hundred companies of lancers in less than a year, and the enemy has lost twenty—if that. It may be that others cannot stand against our sorcery, but it is also clear that our lancers cannot stand against the sorcery of the Sorceress Protector. You have said you are her superior. It is time for you to make good on that claim.”

“I am the Maitre. I decide when—”

“No.” JerLeng's voice is chill, colder than the Maitre's eyes and words, cold enough to freeze the chamber into silence. “You may well have the power to destroy me and every lancer in Aroch. If you do, then you will still have to face the sorceress. And if you should defeat her…then…without lancers, how can you rule? And what will you have to rule? Or for whom?”

“I see.” The Maitre stands, slowly. “You make matters difficult. Then, I want your promise that, after we destroy the sorceress tomorrow, that you and your lancers will not question my orders.”

“If you destroy the sorceress, we will follow you as we always have.” The marshal does not bow as he finishes his sentence. He turns and walks from the chamber without another word, followed by the overcaptain.

“Fools!” The Maitre shakes his head, then looks at jerClayne. “It would have been so much easier with one more attack. So much easier. She lost three companies, and the two junior sorcerers almost broke their wards.”

“You cannot make them attack,” jerClayne points out.

“I cannot. Now. But they will pay for their insubordination. That they will.” A hard smile crosses his face. “For now, we must plan how we will break the sorceresses.”

He points to the map laid across the desk. “Here. You will direct the junior Sea-Priests to begin with an attack with firebolts—as many as they can muster against the sorceresses. Darksong will not be above the horizon until dawn. A glass later, you will begin…”

As the Maitre details his strategy, jerClayne nods, listening intently.

In the late evening, sitting on her bedroll, with Alcaren beside her, Secca looked into the embers in the hearth of the tiny cot. In one corner, Richina, Anandra, and Valya slept. In the corner closest to the hearth, so did Jolyn.

“You are worried about more than the battle to come,” offered Alcaren in a low voice. “Are you not?”

“If I do not worry about the battle, I will not be worrying about anything else,” Secca temporized, her voice barely above a whisper. “The glass shows that the Maitre still has something like forty companies of lancers. I have perhaps three in name and less than two in fact. I have lost more than half the lancers I brought from Loiseau. The SouthWomen have lost more than half their numbers. Kinor and Tiersen have lost close to half their lancers. Fewer than ten companies against more than forty?”

“The Sturinnese have lost hundreds of ships and hundreds of companies of lancers,” Alcaren pointed out.

“They have them to lose. We do not.”

“Kinor has the trenches and berms ready. The players have run through the sixth building song until they know it well. Richina knows the first building song, and even carrying the wards, she can do one spellsong…”

“That is asking much of her,” Secca said.
Yet Alcaren and Jolyn can do but one as well
. In everything she tried to do, they were stretched, asking too much of everyone.

“You will not let me do the first one,” Alcaren pointed out.

“You almost did not finish the storm spell,” Secca replied, “and I need you and Jolyn for the sixth building spellsong.”

Alcaren nodded. “You know what is best. But you must believe in yourself, my lady, and your preparations. The glass shows that no lancers have left the keep of Aroch, and there are scouts watching the bridges. There is little more that you can do this evening except to get sleep so that you will be rested for the morrow.”

“That I know. Yet…” Secca shook her head. “I am a sorceress. I am barely a lady in experience, and must rely on others to handle even my own demesnes. I am not an arms commander.” She offered a low and bitter laugh. “What good arms commander would lose half his lancers?”

“Secca, my love…” Alcaren drew out the words. “You have won every battle you have fought. You have destroyed more than thirty times the number of lancers that you have lost. You have conquered three lands and destroyed the power of a fourth. You have lords and ladies who would die for you—and lancers and players who have followed you across half of Liedwahr. If those are not what make a successful arms commander, please tell me what does.”

“One who does not have to fight her way across an entire continent. One who does not have to call on sorcery to rend lancers and players limb from limb.” Secca sighed. “I hate fighting. Yet…I can see no end to it.”

“If you triumph tomorrow, there will be no more fighting in Liedwahr,” Alcaren promised.

“How can you say that?”

“Was there any after Lady Anna triumphed?” he countered.

“But when she died…” Secca pointed out.

“She prepared you. If you defeat the Maitre tomorrow, it will prove that you are a worthy successor. And if you prepare a successor, there is less chance of war for her.”

“You offer many ‘ifs' there, my love,” Secca replied.

“Life is filled with them,” he admitted with a smile. “Yet, you cannot refuse what will be. Lady Anna turned her rule to a weak successor, and all Liedwahr has paid.”

Anna had no choice. She could have no heirs
. Secca did not say those words, instead replying, “But I'm not strong like her.”

Alcaren shook his head slowly. “I am strong, or so I thought, but I swoon, after a single one of your spells. Do you think the Rider of Heinene would entrust his daughter to a weakling? Do you think that the Council of Wei would offer passage to such? Or the Matriarch and her ship mistresses would follow one with no strength? You had the courage to defy an heir when you were but nine. All remember it. You had the courage to defy the greatest sorcerers and fleets ever assembled, and all you need do tomorrow is act as you always have.” He slipped his arm around her shoulder. “I will be there, but you do not need me.”

“I want you beside me,” Secca admitted.

Alcaren smiled at her, warmly. “For that I am most glad, and grateful.” He squeezed her gently. “You must sleep.” Then he yawned. “So must I, for I am not so strong in this craft of sorcery as are you.”

“I've had more practice,” Secca murmured.

“Enough,” he replied, leaning back and stretching out, stifling yet another yawn. “I must sleep, and so must you.”

Secca lay back beside him.

In the grayness of the cloudy early morning, the four sorceresses and Alcaren stood on the mud-smeared grass of the southeastern side of the hill facing Aroch, just below the crest. With them were the two overcaptains and Tiersen and Kinor. Lysara stood back from the group, but her posture indicated that she had no intention of leaving. The air was chill and damp, and the winter-killed grasses held dew that looked almost like ice where it clung to the few blades of grass that had not been trampled into the hillside by the boots of the lancers who had dug
the trenches the evening before. The two berms of raw earth rose almost a yard above the grass. Yet to Secca, they appeared fragile, almost useless against what she knew was to come. She looked toward Aroch once more, where the outlines of the keep were half-shrouded in ground mist, although it was less than half a glass past dawn.

To her left the players had gathered and begun to tune their instruments. The deep chords of the grand lutars of the second players sounded almost menacing to Secca.
Is that because you know what your spells may do?

Secca let her fingers run over the lutar, checking the tuning once more, while Alcaren laid the scrying glass on the leathers over the hillside grass. Then, after strumming the lutar a last time, she sang an unforced spellsong, the one seeking the players of the Maitre.

The glass silvered over, turning blank, and showing nothing, nothing at all.

Secca sang the release couplet nearly immediately. She replaced the lutar in its leather case. Alcaren took both the mirror, which he had rewrapped in its leathers, and Secca's lutar and carried them to Easlon, who strapped them behind his mount.

“They are preparing,” Richina observed. “They must be, for they wish not that we have even a glance at the keep or their players.”

“But there are no lancers beyond the keep walls. Not a one,” observed Wilten, “except for the squads guarding the bridges.”

“The scouts report that no lancers have crossed the bridges. None has even neared them,” added Delcetta.

Alcaren frowned. “That I do not like. Do they plan such sorcery—”

“As we do?” asked Secca ironically, raising her voice slightly to carry over the discordant sounds of the players beginning to tune their instruments. She winced at a particularly off-key squawking that came from one of the falk-horns. Still, she turned and gestured toward the chief player.

“Finish tuning, now!” called Palian, an edge to her voice, the first true edge that Secca had heard ever from the seasoned chief player. “Make ready for the warm-up tune!”

“Ready for the warm-up tune,” echoed Delvor.

The players launched into the warm-up, and Secca turned to the four commanders of lancers, and Lysara, who remained standing several paces back of the others. Before Secca could speak, a long and dull-sounding series of thunder-rolls—or giant drumbeats—echoed through the air from the north. Then came the ever-increasing rumbling shrieking roar as the firebolt seemed to accelerate out of the clouds.

Secca barely had time to moisten her lips before four enormous balls of fire flashed above them and arced down to the south, splashing across the bare-limbed brush-and-hardwood forest on the lower hill below. The hillside shook, and columns of flame arose in a half-score places, with trails of smoke and steam rising almost immediately.

The players' warm-up finished raggedly.

“Finish what you play. You do that when they're singing, and you'll end up fried by one of those fireballs!” snapped Palian.

After glancing to Alcaren, Secca looked to Richina and Anandra. Some of the color had already drained from Anandra's face, and Richina had taken a step back as if an invisible hand had pushed her.

Secca gestured toward the four commanders of lancers. “Best you make sure all the lancers are behind the crest of the hill.” Secca looked first to the overcaptains, then to Kinor, Tiersen, and, finally, Lysara, who stood several paces back. “No one should be able to see Aroch. No one!” she repeated.

“What of you?” asked Lysara softly, although her voice carried.

“Richina and I will try the spell that brought down Dolov.” Secca looked to the overcaptains. “Now see to your lancers.” Without waiting for a response, she turned back toward Palian.

“If it does not work?” asks Alcaren, his voice quiet, but tense.

“Then we will sing the terrible spell,” Secca replied. “We will have no other choice.”
Not that you or anyone else has been able to find. Not that will stop the Sturinnese
. She stepped toward the chief player. “The first building song.”

Palian inclined her head, then addressed the players. “You will play once, twice at most. No matter what happens, or falls from the sky, do not hesitate. Concentrate solely on the spellsong.” She glanced quickly toward Secca. “We stand ready, Lady Secca.”

Another series of distant thunder-rolls echoed from the northern sky. Secca could feel the shuddering of both air and the harmonies. Richina and Anandra still stood firm.

Secca raised her voice. “As soon as this fireball passes, we will sing.”
You hope it will pass, but they will not play without the possibility of error in the midst of a falling firebolt
.

The redheaded sorceress forced herself to listen, to watch, and to wait, as the hissing, shrieking, and roaring rumble rose into an ear-numbing storm of sound, then swept past. There were three firebolts, but they were no closer than the first attack, and slightly to the east of the first, when they sprayed across the lower hill and beyond, plowing up ground, and shattering trees.

Even before the ground shook and more columns of flame erupted into the sky, Secca motioned to Palian, and then to Richina. The younger blonde sorceress smiled confidently and stepped up beside Secca.

Secca knew they were taking a chance with Richina, but she knew that Alcaren could sing but one spell, and the same was true for Jolyn, and Secca would need both for the terrible spell.

She gestured to Palian.

“Now!” ordered the chief player. “The first building spell…at my mark! Mark!”

The sounds of both first and second players rose into the gray morning, climbing over the smoke of the numerous small fires started by the firebolts, and out over the valley below and the gorge beyond. Secca's and Richina's voices melded with the melody from the first players, supported as it was by the chorded harmony of the second players.

From the first words that Secca and Richina sang, the low overcast thickened and began to descend, forming into black and roiling clouds. With the growing darkness came more dull rumblings, angrier and closer than those of the Sturinnese firebolts.

The triplet of chimes that Secca remembered from Dolov cascaded across the hills, past the gorge and the bridges guarding it. Secca could feel, even as she finished the last words of the spellsong, that the song had surrounded the rise on which sat the keep of Aroch.

Then came the lightnings, yellowish bolts flashing toward the keep, bright against the darkening sky. Secca opened her mouth soundlessly, as the lightnings flared harmlessly against a circular dull white dome that arched over the keep, appearing only to absorb or deflect the lightnings.

From deep within the depths of the earth issued a deep rumbling groan. The hillside below the sorceresses and the players rippled, and waves of soil and earth, less than a span high at the base of the hill, began to head southward toward the keep. Trees toppled, falling in all directions, but mainly to the north. Secca spread her feet to keep her balance, but her eyes remained on Aroch, even as her head rang with the reverberations of an unseen chime.

A rampart of earth surged toward the gorge, and parts of that chasm's ancient granite edges tumbled inward over each other, down
into the depths carved by the unseen stream. But the gorge did not stop the moving of the earth, nor the felling of trees beyond the gorge. The rippling of soil and stone rumbled toward the gray walls of the keep—and halted, impossibly, just short of the stones, leaving an earthen rampart almost as high as the chisel-cut stones.

Beside Secca, Richina sank onto the brown grass. Anandra already lay flat on the grass, her eyes closed.

Secca whirled, almost unaware of the slight throbbing in her head, calling to Palian. “We must sing the sixth building song spell. Now! The very moment that the players finish, they must run behind the berm and lie flat on the ground in the pit. Any who look up may be struck blind.”

Palian swallowed.

“Now,” Secca insisted. “We must sing the sixth building song before they can bring their firebolts upon us. We have no wards remaining, and if we do not strike now, they well may strike first.”

Palian turned to the players. “Ready the sixth building spellsong.”

Secca bent and touched the dazed Richina on the shoulder, then shook her. “Richina! Behind the hill! Now!”

Richina staggered to her feet and took a half-score of steps, unsteadily. From where she had remained mounted with the lancers serving as Secca's guards, Valya rode forward and half-lifted, half-dragged the near-limp blonde sorceress up before her, before turning her raider stallion northward and toward the top of the hill and beyond.

Dymen and Achar had ridden forward with Valya. Achar vaulted from his mount and lifted the unconscious Anandra up to Dymen, then remounted. The two lancers turned their mounts to follow the Rider heir.

“Lancers! The rest of you. Both of you, follow Valya and Dymen! Now!”

Gorkon looked at Secca.

“Go!” she snapped. “I'll need you later. You'll be hurt if you remain, and then you can't help us.”

Slowly the last two lancers turned their mounts, following Valya.

Secca turned back to check the players, sensing Alcaren to her left. As Jolyn stepped up to Secca's right, the redheaded sorceress motioned to Palian.

“The sixth building spell. At my mark…Mark!”

Secca focused her entire being on the spellsong, on the words, on the images, on the meaning behind those words and images, letting herself become one with the song, thinking only of the sorcery itself. Even so, she could feel the energy, from both Alcaren and Jolyn, as the three voices fused into one near-harmonically perfect spellsong, one great and
terrible working of voice, accompaniment, and knowledge better left unused—if it but could have been.

As Secca launched into the second stanza, the clouds above Aroch began to glow with a white light. Even the darkest of the sorcery-created storm clouds from the first spell began to shred into foggy fragments, then white mists. A circle of dazzlingly clear sky appeared directly above and around the keep of Aroch.

Then, a beam of white light lanced downward from high in the heavens, growing wider and so intense that Secca had to close her eyes with the last few words of the spellsong. Even her closed eyelids provided little relief as she whirled away from the light that seemed to burn right through her entire body.
Never…never thought it would be like this…

With the light came a single chime, a single harmonic chime that shivered through Secca, through the dazzle-cleared skies, through the solid stones of the world, through…everything, as powerful and ear-numbing as the light was blinding—beyond blinding.