One of the hearths contained a number of iron brackets for spits or something similar.
“Do you roast a lot of things?” she asked.
“We used to, Lady Anna. Lately, it’s been bullocks for the guardsmen. Lord Arkad, all he could eat was boiled fowl, not even game birds.” The heavyset and gray-haired cook half nodded as she finished her statement.
“Did his illness change things beyond the kitchens?” she asked.
A puzzled look passed over several faces.
Finally, the heavyset cook spoke. “Not so as we’d notice. Excepting that he would have none in the main hall save the cooks. No maids, none.”
That answered—partly—one question. Anna nodded. “How many can you feed at once?”
“One time we fed twentyscore and we’d not have strained to feed twice that.” The cook pointed to the narrow hallway to the right. “There—down that . . . I be showing you, lady. Not meats . . . those come from the animals and fowls in the old side bailey—that’s the sunny one with the grass. Had a hard time making that clerk Fauren understand the need for grass.” She snorted.
Anna followed as the cook escorted her down the hallway, opening doors.
“Beans—the black ones, more than a hundred scheffels here. White beans here . . . lentils . . . Fifty’s more than enough.”
The sorceress tried to keep an amused smile from her face as the head cook continued to point out all the dry supplies.
“Dried and shelled maize here, then the flour in the next one, next to the barrels of the hard wheat, and then the next ones are the soft cake flour. . . .”
They came to a staircase.
“Down here be all the roots.” The cook took a candle from the holder, and with a deft motion of the striker hanging beneath it, lit the taper.
Anna, Jecks, Alvar, and the armsmen followed her down the narrow brick staircase.
“Potatoes, I used to keep two hundred, but right less than half that now. . . .”
“Beets—one of the few roots the lord wouldn’t eat. Could have fifty scheffels, but just ten or twelve, for the soup for the holding folk. . .
“Onions . . . three bins here, white, purple, and yellow. White keep best. Yellow turn mushy . . . have to watch them closer. . . .”
Anna grinned in the dimness.
When they emerged into the fuller light of the storage corridor, the sorceress was convinced that not only could the cook feed a small army, but that she had provisions for years.
“You are . . . ?” Anna finally asked. “I mean, your name.”
“Me? I’m Hilde. Always been Hilde, lady. Always will be.”
Of that, Anna had no doubts. “Thank you, Hilde. You have been very helpful.”
“You know yet who our new lord will be?”
“That hasn’t been decided yet,” Anna said. “But there won’t be many changes in the people who work here. Not unless they don’t feel comfortable with the new lord.”
“So long as he lets us run the kitchen, don’t matter too much.”
Anna nodded. “I’ll let whoever it is know that.”
“Be a fool to change us.”
The sorceress agreed, if not for quite the reasons Hilde probably had in mind. One thing Anna had noted. There were no locked cupboards or closets. No guarded storerooms. She frowned. Again, she was missing something.
“Are there any official chambers?” she asked Jecks as they took the door that led along a narrow back corridor to the main entry hall.
“I did not look.” He shrugged.
“There is a large dining salon,” Alvar said, and some larger rooms. They are very dusty.”
What might have once been a state dining room held a long table and matching benches, although Anna had to lift the blanket-like coverings to look at both. The ornately carved wood was dark, but Anna had no way of knowing if that darkness were because of age or stain or natural coloring. An odor of mildew clung to the coverings.
“Khhchew!” She stepped back and rubbed her nose.
The hall adjoining the large dining area was empty, except for several twice-life-sized paintings of men in armor, several faded tapestries, one of which appeared to be a rendition of Synfal itself. The floor, unlike the others in the holding, which were either polished stone or brick, was wooden.
“Odd,” she murmured.
Jecks was frowning. “Abomination. . . .”
“What?”
“I had heard, but one never believes all one hears.”
Alvar nodded, but both Fhurgen and the armsman acting as guard looked as puzzled as Anna felt.
“I may be regent,” Anna finally said, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I have the feeling that I should.”
“Dancing,” Jecks said. “This is a . . . place for dancing. I knew the Suhlmorrans were decadent, but . . .”
Anna managed to keep her jaw in place. Her talents didn’t lie in that direction, and she certainly wasn’t the world’s best dancer, but why would anyone call dancing decadent?
“It’s a misuse of the harmonies,” Alvar added.
The sorceress wanted to shake her head. Dancing, a misuse of the harmonies? How could movement in time to music be a sacrilege? Just when she thought she might understand Liedwahr, something like this popped up. How many more surprises were there?
Too many. “Are there places on Erde where dancing still goes on?” She finally asked, not wanting to say anything directly about dancing.
“They say that the Sea-Priests use it in some of their ceremonies,” Alvar said.
Jecks was still shaking his head as he turned and surveyed the room. “They didn’t even hide it.”
“They obviously didn’t think it was evil,” Anna ventured.
“I am glad Arkad died without heirs.” Jecks’ voice was cold.
Anna wanted to shiver. Just as she’d thought he was approachable . . . “We can’t do much now,” she said quickly. “Jimbob or Herstat could turn this into something more . . . appropriate.”
“They must—before Synfal is acceptable for guesting.”
Anna moved toward the arched double doorways. After a moment, Jecks and Alvar followed.
The next hall was smaller, and contained a dais, with a covered chair or throne upon it, and a series of straight-backed chairs lined up around the wainscotted walls. Bronze sconces on all the walls held age-discolored candles behind relatively clean glass mantels. The receiving room would have held two of the largest halls at Falcor.
“Another remnant of the Suhlmorrans?” Anna wondered if agreeing to give the holding to Jimbob was wise, or whether he would get delusions of grandeur. She and Jecks definitely had some educating to do.
“It would seem so.”
There were other smaller chambers, including an intimate dining room almost off the kitchens and a library that held more empty shelves than volumes—or so it seemed to Anna. But there were no more surprises, just rooms, all of them dusty.
By the time they finished the inspection and returned to the second floor, the players were gathering outside the guest quarters Anna had adopted for her use.
“I’ll be a moment,” she told Liende. “Why don’t you tune while I check out the spell I’ll need?”
“I will wait outside,” Jecks said.
Anna nodded, aware she was getting distant again, but fighting fatigue and discomfort took some toll. Once inside the smelly guest quarters, she rummaged through the folder she carried in the lutar case. Where was the basic spell?
She wondered if part of the room’s smell weren’t coming from one sorceress, dirty from days on the road. It probably was, but the place was so dirty that she couldn’t be sure.
After using her knife to sharpen the grease marker, left-handed and awkwardly, she sat down on the chair and pulled it up to the small table, making sure the chair didn’t touch the bed she was certain was vermin-ridden. How could she adapt one of the spells the players already knew?
It has to be short.
That meant the shorter building spell.
After studying the spell for a time, she shifted the marker to her right hand. She finally closed one eye, trying to see the paper well enough to read as she wrote.
Abruptly, she stopped.
“Idiot! Why do you have a headache and double vision?” Because the damned spell you used on the keep was Darksong. . . . “And what are you doing now?” Drafting a spell that will do the same thing.
She rubbed her forehead again. All she wanted to do was rest and sleep, and she wouldn’t get either in the pigpen that Synfal’s main hall had become. And she didn’t want to ride elsewhere. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to think.
She’d killed thousands, without the impact on her that the truthspell or the loyalty spell had created. So a spell that created death wasn’t necessarily Darksong. Manipulation of living things—or once-living things?
“Wait a moment.” Anna considered the structure of her battle hymn. After a moment, she smiled . . . if grimly. It was simple, and it was clear, and it was insane. Her battle spells had only moved inanimate objects against animate objects. Even her household spells had impacted inanimate objects.
So you can kill . . . Don’t even think about it! Just figure out a quick way to clean this pigpen with Clearsong . . . and only Clearsong.
Anna managed to ignore the stabs of pain in her hand as she wrote slowly, and with one eye closed. Writing was one thing she couldn’t do well left-handed.
Finally, she rose. The words weren’t wonderful, but they fit, and she’d just have to visualize strongly.
Anna turned to Fhurgen as she opened the door. “After we leave here to clean some of the other rooms, could you get someone to fill that tub in the washroom?” She paused and smiled. “Not your armsmen. Someone here should have that duty. I’m sorry, but . . .”
Fhurgen nodded, not grimly.
Jecks stepped forward, almost beside Anna, concern in his hazel eyes, saying in a low voice, “Should you . . . ?”
“I think I can. . . . Don’t want to sleep in filth, and from what the cook said, there’s no one to clean up.” Anna gestured toward the players. “If you’d play right outside the door. I’m going to try to extend the spell to cover some of the rooms on this end of the hall.”
She waited until they rearranged themselves. “The first building spell, the short one.”
Liende gestured, and the melody rose. Anna sang.
“Clean, clean, the bricks and wood and lesser things,
And take the dirt until all shines and spotless sings . . .
The very air and song . . . ensure all filth and vermin gone.”
The impact was as though a silent whirlwind had rushed through the spaces, and every surface glistened.
Anna staggered, and Jecks slipped his arm under her left to steady her. She took a deep breath. It definitely smelled better, and her head didn’t ache any more than it already had. Nor was her double vision any worse. She wanted to smile. She’d managed it without doing Dark-song . . . so far.
She smiled directly at Liende. “Now . . . the players’ quarters. Go ahead.”
As the players headed for the stairs, Jecks turned to Anna. “Is this wise?”
“I can manage one more spell.”
“Are you certain?”
She nodded and began to walk toward the steps. She did let Jecks steady her.
Jecks paused to look in his spaces as they passed. He smiled at Anna and shook his head. “That is much cleaner.”
“I’m glad. I’d rather not use sorcery for cleaning, but there are times when it’s almost easier.”
The quarters Alvar had found for the players were up on the third level, smaller, dustier, and with an even less appetizing aroma. Anna shook her head as she stopped.
“This definitely needs sorcery.”
Even Kaseth smiled.
Beside her, Jecks did not.
“Let’s do it.” At the bewildered look, she added, “The spell.”
There was more enthusiasm in the playing on the third level. Amazing how much better it gets when it helps you.
Her head ached after the spell, but her vision remained unchanged—still double, but no worse. She turned to Jecks, still helping her unobtrusively. “I would like to wash up. Then maybe we could find something to eat.” She paused. “Can the kitchens feed all our armsmen and players? They need to eat, too.”
“I have already made those arrangements, Regent Anna, as you requested,” Jecks added.
She hadn’t requested that, but she appreciated Jecks’ covering for her.
“They will eat at the tenth glass.” Jecks nodded to Alvar and Liende.
“Thank you, again, all of you,” Anna said to the players.
She got a scattering of smiles before they dispersed.
Liende slipped up to Anna. “I thank you.”
“I’m glad I could do it.”
“You will have more playing for us?”
“I’d planned on it. Not here, but I’m told that the bridge on the other side of Cheor is ready to fall.”
“We will be ready.” With a brief smile and a bow, Liende stepped away.
“I’m ready for a bath,” Anna said. “What about you?” She blushed, realizing that she hadn’t quite said what she’d meant.
A twinkle flashed in Jecks’ eyes, but his voice was evenly modulated as he answered. “I look forward to washing up.”
They walked down to the second level, where Jecks bowed after he had escorted her to her own door. Then he turned and entered his quarters.
Anna closed her door behind her, glad in a way that there were guards outside her door. The more she’d seen of Synfal, the more puzzled she’d gotten, because of the conflicting impressions she’d received.
Was it because of her own preconceptions?
She sat on the chair in front of the writing desk for a moment, pouring herself a goblet of water, and drinking.
In some ways, Liedwahr was so like her image of a medieval culture that she’d assumed it was one. Bad assumption. She glanced down at her hand. Luckily the cut had been shallow and relatively clean, and her alcohol had seemingly been effective in disinfecting the wound. Not painless, but better than the alternatives.
Finally, she stood and walked to the bathchamber and the tub filled with murky cold water. She winced as she thought about the necessary spells, but walked back to the main room and retrieved the lutar.
Her head and her hand were throbbing before she had the water clean and steaming and the lutar replaced in its case, and the wound had oozed more blood on the dressing.
More alcohol. She needed more alcohol for internal, not external, purposes. But she had a deep swallow of orderspelled water instead.
Finally, thank God, she could ease into the tub. Thank God? From nowhere, seemingly, came another thought. There were no churches in Liedwahr. She hadn’t seen one, anyway. Why not? In every culture on earth there was a worship of some form of supreme being. Why not on Erde?
Yet Jecks had been truly appalled at the idea of a ballroom and dancing, and Alvar had been upset as well, more in a disgusted sort of way, as though dancing were obscene, rather than evil.
She washed slowly, hoping the hot water would loosen the stiffness in her shoulders. The heat helped, but not enough, by the time the water was cooling, and she pulled out the plug. She still found it amusing that the few tubs for the well-off all had drains, but were filled by buckets. It made sense, in an offbeat way.
She forced herself into a clean set of riding clothes. Laundry of the old set could wait, would have to wait.
At least she’d been able to get her room clean and disinfected, even if it had taken all her players, and the spells involved had given her a splitting headache. But no more Darksong side effects.
Finally dressed, and with her wound resterilized and rebandaged, she poured another goblet of orderspelled water and took a long swallow, then another, and refilled the goblet. After that,
she ate one of the hard biscuits left over from her travel provisions. She could almost feel the worst of the headache subside.
Food and more food—you’re always eating.
Was the room dimmer? She laughed. Of course it was. It was twilight, twilight of one of the lengthiest days she’d spent in a long time. Finally, she sang the candle spell, and the wall candles lit. Her head only twinged.
At the thrap on the door, she stood. “Yes?”
“Lord Jecks to see you, Lady Anna,” Fhurgen announced.
“Oh . . . please come in.”
“My lady.” Jecks wore a clean blue tunic, and had washed up. He looked more handsome than ever.
“Lord Jecks.” Anna wished she were more in the mood to appreciate him. “Please sit down.”
Instead of sitting on the window seat, he pulled one of the wooden chairs over to the side of the writing desk opposite her.
“Jecks?” she ventured. “Will you humor me and answer some questions?”
“I would well humor you after all you have done for Jimbob.”
She wished he hadn’t put it quite that way. “Even after my railing on about the greediness of the lords of Defalk?”
“You did not rail. You frowned.” Jecks laughed. “That was enough.” He paused. “Vierk said that there were six thousand golds. I told him you were the sorceress. Then he said there were ten, and that some of the rents had not arrived.” Jecks shrugged. “I have never seen ten thousand at once, not in the whole time I have held Elhi. Some farmers, they can offer no coins, and I have accepted fowl and beeves, even. Such help feeds the hold.”
“I have another question. It doesn’t have anything to do with golds.”
“You have many questions. That is why you are regent.” The white-haired lord’s voice was wary.
“Do people believe in a god here?”
“A god?”
“A supreme being . . . a supernatural . . . entity . . . in charge of the world?”
“An almighty Lord of Harmony, do you mean?”
“Something like that.”
“There are some.” Despite her concerns, his slightly crooked smile warmed Anna as Jecks shifted his weight on the plain wooden chair. “The . . . women of Ranuak believe that harmony is governed by the earth mother. The Sea-Priests, they believe that harmony and disharmony flow with the tides of the great oceans. The Pelarans, who might know? The Evult thought he was the Lord of Harmony, until you appeared.” Jecks offered a wider smile, somehow tentative. “Some are saying you are the Lady of Harmony.”
The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 20
