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Authors: L. E. Modesitt Jr.

The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (48 page)

BOOK: The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

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Looking at the weathered face, Anna was certain she wouldn’t.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“I do not think so, but we can talk in the morning. I will be there to see you off.”

“You don’t—”

“I see off all detachments, Lady Anna.”

“I’m sorry. I told you I was no military person.” She rose from the too-hard stool.

“Unlike some, lady, you acknowledge that,” answered Hanfor, his lips twisting into a sardonic smile, as he inclined his head and walked to the door opening it for her.

“Thank you, overcaptain,” said Anna as she left the small space.

The sentry remained frozen in place as she left, heading for the courtyard—still bustling with activity. She could still hear the chickens, and she wondered if all the horse hoofs on the stones stirred them up. Was it because travelers meant slaughtered chickens? Anna shook her head and dashed across to the north tower.

Back in her room, she rubbed her temples and then her neck. A concealing spell? How could she do that? And what if other magic would see through it? Somehow, she had to set it up so that both sorcerers and nonsorcerers could not see where she was—even if she appeared in a scrying glass or pond.

How?

Camouflage? She filled her goblet, deciding against cooling her room until she was certain her headache had passed. Besides, she had to work out the concealment spell.

First, she took a long swallow of the lukewarm water. Then she dragged out the greasemarker and some of the paper Skent had dredged up for her. It could be a long day.

A
nna patted Farinelli and turned in the saddle, looking away from the sun that still almost touched the eastern horizon. Spirda rode at her left, Alvar at her right, and Daffyd to the right of the captain, almost on the shoulder of the road.

Behind them, the dry road dust rose like a plume, cloaking the few roadside trees in brown, and most of the lancers in the rear of the column. Moving troops by horse in Defalk certainly was easy enough to detect. The dust could be seen from deks or leagues away. They were less than three deks east of the Falche River, and already the heat haze and the dust had cloaked both the stone bridge across the Falche
and Falcor, as if they had vanished, as had most of its people over the previous weeks.

Anna turned her gaze back to the dusty road ahead that stretched into the rising sun. Her eyes squinted against the glare. Her stomach growled; her system had not enjoyed bread and cheese before dawn, especially in the quantities required. Then, she seldom enjoyed anything that early, something Sandy had never understood, with his chirp-bird early-morning chatter.

She readjusted the battered, floppy-brimmed hat, but the sun was too low for the brim to block all the glare. Her fingers brushed the hilt of the dagger at her belt, then dropped away.

“The rest of the Prophet’s forces will begin to march tomorrow morning,” Alvar said, drawing his dapple fractionally closer to Farinelli and Anna.

The sorceress nodded politely, although Hanfor had told her as much as she had saddled Farinelli in the predawn grayness. Absently, she patted the gelding again.

“They will be two days behind us by the time we reach Sorprat,” Alvar continued.

“The armsmen on foot?” Anna asked, to give him the chance to explain.

“Aye, and the supply wagons. The land is too poor to forage, and besides, if we foraged, the locals would shoot arrows at our backs as much as at the Ebrans. Perhaps more, for they fear us less.”

Anna hadn’t thought about supply wagons. Then, she hadn’t thought about the logistics of waging war in a medieval culture. There was too much she still had not considered, far too much.

“Kkchheww!”

At Daffyd’s sneeze, Anna glanced to her right. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, lady, fine, except for the dust.” The player rubbed his nose and sniffed as if trying to stifle a second outburst.

“Dust—we will breathe plenty of that before we reach
Sorprat,” Alvar said with a laugh. “I have been in the rear, and being in the van is better, far better.”

“Until the arrows fly,” answered Spirda.

“If they fly,” said Daffyd.

With that indirect reminder, Anna felt her shoulders sag. Her choices were abysmal. If she were totally successful, thousands of Ebrans would die. If she were unsuccessful, she and thousands of Nesereans and Defalkan levies would die. If she were partly successful, thousands on each side would die. Why did it have to be that way?

Her mouth twisted. She could bemoan her situation, but the days ahead were no time to be self-sacrificing. She’d done that, and with little enough to show, in her years in academia.

She leaned forward and thumped Farinelli’s shoulder again.

WEI, NORDWEI

“Y
es Gretslen?” Ashtaar motions the blonde woman into the room. Through the open window at her back come the sounds of hammers, saws, and the scattered curses of carpenters and masons beginning the rebuilding of the dock quarter.

Gretslen stops opposite the table and waits.

“You may sit.” The dark-haired woman’s fingers fold around the polished oval of black agate. “What have you to report?”

“Both the Ebrans and the Nesereans are moving toward Pamr. The Prophet has nearly eight thousand of his best armsmen, plus a number of Defalkan levies. Eladdrin has about ten thousand under arms, as well as his darksingers.” Gretslen shifts her weight in the hard chair.

“What of the blonde sorceress?”

“She rides ahead of the Prophet’s forces, perhaps two days.”

“Alone?”

“With a personal guard and several companies of crack lancers.”

“Behlem must put great stock in her.” Ashtaar laughs softly. “Or he needs her and mistrusts her.”

Gretslen does not answer the observation.

“Can you detect any spellcasting?” pursues the spymistress.

“Before the sorceress left, she nearly rent the chords of harmony. She opened a small gate to the mist worlds, briefly. We could not see what was involved or why.”

“And she is well enough to ride?” Ashtaar asked.

“She was walking later that day.”

Ashtaar’s fingers tighten on the polished rock. “You are certain? No bums? No fire?”

“Very certain, honored Ashtaar. She is mighty and knows it not.”

“I would like a written report on this matter. By tonight.”

“Yes, Ashtaar.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Eladdrin is trying to seek out the sorceress, also.”

“The man is no fool. He knows his greatest danger. What else?”

“The lady Cyndyth is traveling to Falcor with the envoy from Mansuur.”

“And?”

“That is all … but we will continue to scry.”

Silence seeps across the room, blotting out the noise from the city repairs.

Her fingers still caressing the black agate oval, the spymistress’s eyes focus on the door behind the blonde woman, and she says quietly, “That is all. The report. By tonight.”

“Yes, honored Ashtaar.” Gretslen eases out of the room, not quite backing, but not turning away from the spymistress either.

A
nna rode closer to the dozen armsmen who sweated and toiled in the heat with the small spades. She felt almost guilty as they worked, but she wouldn’t have lasted an hour—a glass, she corrected her thinking—digging in the heat of Defalk.

Her eyes turned eastward, down the gentle rise that was barely perceptible to the highway from Mencha. To her left was the road cut down to the Sorprat ford. She studied the waist-high sun-browned grass in front of the trench—she’d insisted that no one walk or ride on the down-rise side—and then the trench itself.

“That’s deep enough,” Anna said to Alvar, after inspecting the trench. Even Farinelli and several mounts would fit into the sloped end-ramps angled into the center part of the excavation, and with the spell, she hoped Eladdrin would not see them—at least until it was too late.

“Clean it up, square it out,” ordered Alvar. “Then mount up.” The captain turned in his saddle toward Anna, as if to speak, then paused.

In the slightest of breezes, a few stalks of brown grass whispered, not enough to cover the mutterings from the trench.

“ … glad she is pleased … not the one digging …

“ … sshh … you want to be up here with her … when the dark ones …”

“ … better dig than die, Fifard … .”

Anna pursed her lips, then waited for Alvar.

“I still do not fully understand the need for a trench.”

The sorceress didn’t, either, but her feelings told her it was necessary, and she’d learned years ago that every time
she disregarded her feelings she ended up in trouble. Here trouble meant death.

“What is the difference between this grassland and that?” Anna gestured from where the trench gaped to the grasslands more to the south of the bluffs. “Or those?”

“None, save their closeness to the river.”

“And if I am not on the ground, but beneath it, and the dark sorcerer can tell only that I am surrounded by grass and dirt, how will he know where I am?”

“He will not.” Alvar nodded. “But if you sat in the grass, would he know, either?”

“Captain Alvar, sometimes you have to follow your feelings. This time I have to follow mine.” She gave a slight shrug, watching as the last of the armsmen scrambled from the trench, then turning in the saddle to ease the lutar out of its case.

“Now?” he asked.

“A concealment spell.” Anna took a deep breath and began to strum, then to sing.

When any trace of the displaced grass and the trench vanished, gasps whispered from the squad of armsmen waiting on the west side of the rise.

“Your orders?” asked Alvar.

“We head back to the others,” said Anna. “We will camp at least four deks west—over those rises there. Even if the sorcerer sees us in his glass now, he will not know exactly where I will be later. Then, when they near, Daffyd and I and a few riders will come back here.”

The captain frowned.

“How can we protect you?”

“By not being too close.” Anna turned Farinelli westward, toward where Captain Himar held the main body of Anna’s company.

She hoped she wasn’t being too brave, or too foolhardy, but what seer could miss two companies of lancers? And what would Eladdrin think if they were perched on top of the ford?

WEST OF MENCHA, DEFALK

E
laddrin studies the mirror on the ground, though the image wavers. Finally, he packs the mirror into its leather case and straightens.

“Ser?” asks the mounted subofficer.

“Behlem seems to have split his forces. Half are on the north side of the river, to the east of Pamr. The others are on the south side, on the high ground at the southernmost bend in the river.” Eladdrin eases the leather case into the oversized saddlebag and swings up onto the black. “The sorceress is somewhere in the grasslands, but she could be anywhere within fifty deks of either army. She’s probably in front of them somewhere, but close enough to retreat after she’s done her worst.”

The subofficer looks at the Songmaster inquiringly.

“No, Gealas, I cannot discern where she is. She has used a concealing spell. While it reveals its use, she is in the middle of brown grasses that could be anywhere in Defalk.”

Gealas nods. “Which way should we go?”

The Songmaster blinks, then looks to the west, away from the mid-morning sun. “We do not have to decide yet. They are more than a half day from the ford, no matter which way they go.” Eladdrin flicks the reins and heads toward the front of the long black column. “We will attain the ford, and pause, and scout.”

When the subofficer catches up and settles his mare into a trot beside the Songmaster, he finally asks, “Why would the Prophet split his forces?”

“They are split now, but they will not be when we meet. The Prophet is drawn up defensively. If we go north and cross the river, then he can pull back the southern forces
and cross the river at Pamr to support the northern body. The same of the northern forces if we go south.”

“What is the point in that?”

“The point,” explained Eladdrin, his voice slightly hoarse, “is that half his forces are well rested and dug-in no matter what we do, and that we will have to come to him.”

“That does not sound like the Prophet.”

“Oh, it does. Remember, this is not his land, Gealas. He can sacrifice territory to save soldiers, as he could not do in Neserea. He also has some local levies. He fights us where his own people are not harmed and makes us work. The bulk of the harvests are beyond the river valley, or in it. He is guessing that we will not take the ford, and he is probably right. Going down in that kind of lowland against a sorceress is dangerous. That’s why she’s out from their forces, to try and trap us if we do. But we won’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose we take two days to cover a long half-day march, then stop several deks away. We are in no hurry, and perhaps I can find the sorceress. She is not a warrior, no matter how powerful she may be.” Eladdrin snorts and flicks the reins. “In any case, no sorceress alone can stop our forces.”

Gealas nods again.

Eladdrin’s eyes focus on the clear western horizon.

BOOK: The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

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