Konsstin gestures broadly, his arm passing so close to the candelabra that the flames flicker, twisting the vague shadows that fall on the paneled walls and the bookcases.
The door closes, and Bassil enters, straightens his maroon tunic, and pushes his dark hair back.
“So I woke you?”
“No, sire. I was reading over the dispatches . . .”
“What reports from Defalk?” asks Konsstin cheerily.
“Your seers are overworked.” Bassil bows, briefly. “The sorceress has subdued all but Stromwer.”
“I suppose she turned them all into abattoirs, or ash heaps.” Konsstin forces a laugh.
“One abattoir, sire. That was Suhl. She did save the heirs and established some arrangement for them to keep the holding.”
“Clever. They can exert no power for years, and by then it won’t matter. Darkness, the woman’s devious. Worse than Cyndyth or Kandeth.”
“Worse, sire, perhaps. She is not devious. All the seers and all the dispatches report she is most direct. To date, she has always kept her word.” Bassil licks his lips in the dimness.
“Direct? That is even more devious. She keeps her word, but when will she break it? She does what she says, no matter how difficult. That makes it even easier, for who will oppose her, knowing she is a powerful sorceress and will not be turned? Dissonance, Bassil! If that’s not devious, I don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Do you wish me to ready those scrolls I prepared for you weeks ago?”
“Not yet. Not yet. Stromwer is a fortified mountain hold. Let us see how she does against the devious Dencer, with all his aid from Ehara.”
“You hope she wins there?”
“I must hope that, dissonance take them all.” Konsstin waves an arm generally westward, beyond the closed shutters and night-darkened balcony. “I have no love of the Sea-Priests. I’d hope they all go down—or up—in discord.”
“Do you believe this sorceress will defeat them all?”
“She will take Dencer. None but a fool would gainsay that. Whether she will turn his hold into an ashpit or find some way to preserve it is the sole doubt.” His fingers touch the silvering brown beard. “She is clever. Too clever by far, and should she gain another hold—”
“Gain another hold?” blurts Bassil. “She has gained none. Synfal went to the heir. . . .” He shuts his mouth as Konsstin turns.
“Bassil. At times you think. Tonight, you are tired. You must be tired. Do you not understand? Lady Gatrune holds her consort’s lands; so does Lady Anientta. Administrators or saalmeisters of the sorceress’s choosing hold Synfal and Suhl. She has bound Gylaron in some sorcerous fashion, and she will do some-such similar to Dencer. Lord Jecks will do as she wishes, as will Geansor and Birfels, for she holds their heirs, and those heirs of several other holdings as well. The lords Clethner and Vyarl are beholden to Jecks, and Lord Tybel will not cross the sorceress so long as his daughter Anientta administers the lands of Synope. Then, the sorceress holds Loiseau in her own name. Dissonance! Do you not see? How many holds is that?”
Bassil’s brow lifts as he calculates. “Just thirteen or fourteen. Out of thirty-three.”
“Bassil,” Konsstin says gently. “Bassil . . . Lord Barjim could count on five holds, at best. Lord Donjim controlled ten. This . . . usurper . . . she has a greater rein on Defalk than any ruler in generations. And she is a sorceress.”
Bassil swallows. “I am tired.”
“Not too tired, I hope, to understand what I have told you?”
“No, sire. I had not thought of it in quite that fashion.”
“Best we always think of power in that fashion.” The Liedfuhr gestures toward the door. “Get some sleep. We will talk tomorrow.”
Bassil bows.
Outside, the warm rain splats against the shutters. Inside, the candles flicker as the Liedfuhr paces.
54
Aware of the sweat beading on her forehead, Anna ignored it and studied the image in the glass again. At her shoulder, Hanfor continued to sketch. Jecks stood to Anna’s left, also surveying the view in the hazy silvered glass.
Dencer’s keep—a square assembly of gray stones—stood on a rise at the middle of a narrow valley that resembled a T. Behind and to the south of the keep was a small town. Mountains terminating their lower slopes in high cliffs flanked the keep on the east and west, cliffs less than a dek from the keep’s side walls.
Dencer or some previous Lord of Stromwer had cut away the slope both in front and in back of the keep, replacing it with two polished stone walls that glistened like shining water even through the glass. On top of those stone-tiled earthworks were walls, easily four yards high, so that the total smooth face was easily fifty yards in height from the cut base of the hill on both north and south to the top of the wall that stretched from cliff to keep and then from the far side of the keep to the other cliff.
A single stone road ran the length of the valley—from the north southward and up an inclined ramp through the hill cut to a fortified gate at the crest of the modified hill and then around the walls of the keep itself on the east side and then through another gate, and down the second stone tiled berm and to the town. The space on the rise on either side of the keep had been kept cleared and in pasture, and the buildings of the town did not begin until almost a half-dek to the south of the keep, well south of the southern stone berm.
On the southernmost end of the valley was the east-west road, running along a stream that seemed to flow downhill from the west. Anna frowned. She would have thought the keep would have been at the south end of the valley to protect the town.
“The road to the west winds up into the Sudbergs and travels to Dumar,” noted Jecks.
“And I suppose the one of the west goes to Ranuak?” Anna rubbed her eyes, glad that the double-imaging from her last foray into Darksong had finally disappeared.
“To the port of Sylwa.”
Farther to the north the valley constricted into a gorge, the same narrow defile that Anna’s earlier scrying had revealed as the site of Dencer’s other precautions—netted rocks and boiling oil.
The mirror frame began to smoke, and Anna released the image with one of the release couplets she’d developed.
“Let this scene of scrying, mirror filled with light,
vanish like the darkness when the sun is bright . . .”
Her eyes flicked away from the burned square on the wall beside the mirror that represented the firing of the first mirror in the chamber when she hadn’t released the spell quickly enough.
After a moment she walked to the narrow window of the guest chamber and let the warm wind blow around her, cooling the perspiration that long scrying efforts seemed to bring.
“The keep has three layers of defense,” observed Hanfor. “None of the others in Defalk have such.”
“Once it was needed,” said Jecks. “The Suhlmorrans wanted Stromwer. So did the ancient Matriarchs, and so did Lord Ehara’s ancestors.”
“And none of them got it, I assume?” asked Anna. “No Uhlan the elder lost an entire army trying to annex it to Suhimorra.”
“Why?” She turned from the window, her eyes on the rosewood antique high bed that had given her a headache to spell for vermin.
“Now, with the fast ships, it makes less difference. Still, Stromwer stands on the shortest land routes between Dumaria and Sylwa and Encora, and between all of southern Defalk and Dumar.”
“What about Sudwei?” Anna pursued. “I thought Geansor held the access to the South Pass.”
“He does, and that is an easier route from the east and middle of Defalk, but the easiest way to transport goods to Dumar was to use the Falche down to north of Abenfel, and then take the roads through Stromwer.”
Anna tried to summon up her mental map of Liedwahr, concentrating. Finally, she nodded. Her eyes went to Hanfor. “Any ideas of how we can get close to the keep?”
“The road is the only entrance to the keep,” Hanfor
said tiredly. “Unless one travels through Ranuak or Dumar.”
“We cannot approach within deks of the walls,” added Jecks. “Not unless we wish to be bathed in oil and buried under boulders.”
Both men looked at Anna, as if she were supposed to find a solution.
I’m not the military type. I’m a singer, for heaven’s sake. Anna stepped past the low chest at the end of the bed, where the lutar rested, and looked down at the table, at the map Hanfor had sketched from session after session with the glass.
“I don’t want to turn Stromwer into another flaming mass.” Why not? You did that to Vult, and Suhl wasn’t much better. “That’s why,” she muttered to herself. As she saw the puzzled expressions on the faces of Jecks and Hanfor, she added hurriedly. “Talking to myself. . . .”
Her throat was dry, and she refilled the goblet with orderspelled water, taking a long swallow. “Would you like some?”
“No, thank you.”
Jecks shook his head.
Anna glanced at the map on the table and then away. Two days of scrying, and sketching, and talking, and they still couldn’t figure out how to get close enough to the keep to use sorcery to affect those within. She could bring the walls and town down, but she couldn’t find a way to take Stromwer without massive force. The way the valley and keep were set up, any force massive enough to destroy Dencer’s outer defenses would flatten town and keep. At least, any force she knew how to use.
“We haven’t heard any response to our request that he put down his arms, have we?”
“I doubt that we will,” Hanfor answered. “The scroll was delivered. We know that.”
The lack of response from Dencer brought the question back to force. Is there any other way in Defalk? She cast in her mind for another approach, then frowned.
“I don’t understand how Barjim managed to get Wendella as a hostage.” Anna turned to Jecks. “He certainly couldn’t have taken her by force.”
“Alasia captured her on her way from her brother’s.”
Her brother? Anna tightened her lips. Remembering all the names was still hard for her. Mietchel! That was it; he was the Lord of Morra. The sorceress grinned. “Did she put on finery to do it?”
Jecks’ brows knit in momentary puzzlement. Then he laughed. “I wager she did, though she talked little of it. She said it needed to be done. Barjim was not wholly pleased.”
Anna bet he hadn’t been.
The moment of humor didn’t solve the problem.
In her mind, she almost saw two images, but not Dark-song images—that of the near-impregnable Stromwer, surrounded on three sides by step cliffs and canyons and the heavily fortified entrance and that of the ripped and sundered hills of Appalachia in her childhood, the results of strip and deep mining.
Why the two images? Was her subconscious trying to tell her something?
Mining? What did that have to do with it? Ditches, holes, tunnels . . . “Tunnels! That’s it.”
Now all she had to do was find somewhere that a short tunnel would reach a cliff or flat spot overlooking Stromwer. Or where she could create one. All . . . ? Are you sure you want to do this?
She inhaled slowly, then let her breath out, as she realized both Jecks and Hanfor stood waiting for her to explain.
55
Anna coughed, then spat clear the mucus and inhaled dust. Farinelli whuffed, with the slightest hint of a head toss, as he carried her along the back trail that headed west away from the main road. Eventually the trail would circle back along the heights of the low mountains on the west side of Dencer’s keep. Eventually.
Farinelli whuffed again.
“I know. It’s hot and dusty. There’s a stream somewhere ahead.” She felt guilty as she took a drink from her water bottle.
“How far?” asked Jecks.
“According to the glass, two or three deks, if I remember right.”
“Horses could use the water, lady,” Fhurgen said from behind her.
“I know,” she repeated. “But I can’t bring the water closer.”
Despite the rains she had brought to Defalk, there hadn’t been any moisture in nearly a week. Several hundred horses were enough to churn up dust, especially with slow riding up steep and narrow roads. The light wind out of the north was just strong enough to carry the dust of the main body up and around Anna and those in the van.
The first two days out of Lerona hadn’t been bad. An almost straight road south, flat, and they’d made good time through the bean fields and meadows. Then they’d reached the low hills that signified the beginning of Dencer’s holding.
Of course, she’d received no reply to her scroll—one way or the other. He can’t even conceive of dealing with a woman regent . . . or those lancers from Dumar aren’t letting him . . . or . . . ? She didn’t know. All that was certain was that she had a rebel lord on her hands who, for whatever reason, seemed inclined to respond only to force. So what else is new?
She also had a score of Gylaron’s armsmen. She hadn’t thought she would need any, but Jecks had pointed out that taking some armsmen would ease matters with Gylaron. His pride, mainly. And she could always call for a fewscore more if she needed them.
Anna brushed more dust off her sleeves. The main road had gotten narrower, and even dustier. The trees had gotten shorter, with more low evergreens and less broadleafs, and consequently less shade.
“. . . wish she’d find a better way . . .”
“. . . we took three keeps now . . . lost maybe a score . . . wager ‘gainst that if you want . . . eat dust all summer. . . .”
“. . . can’t breathe . . .”
Red dust, and more sandy red dust, swirled up from the main body. Anna pushed back the battered brown felt hat and blotted her sweating forehead. The gray square of cloth was once again a muddy red.
Beside her, Jecks rode silently, his silver hair marked with blotches of red where sweat and dust had combined.
“A penny . . . a copper,” she corrected, “for your thoughts.” She shifted her weight in a saddle that had gotten progressively harder and less comfortable.
“You would have us travel a long way to avoid killing Dencer. Yet you dislike the man.” Jecks’ words were slow, thoughtful.
“I don’t have any problem with killing Dencer, necessarily,” she answered. “I don’t want to turn another keep into something like Suhl.” Anna shrugged. “We can’t get close enough to Stromwer to use sorcery—the kind that won’t kill everyone—unless we do this.”
Jecks nodded, the kind of nod that told Anna he wasn’t quite sure he believed her.
Did she believe herself—or was she overreacting to the disaster at Suhl? How much force is necessary in a place like Defalk? Is Jecks right? Would I be better off doing it the simpler way? Can I at least cast one more loyalty spell . . . to spare Defalk.
The sorceress took a deep breath. Or is this to ease your conscience? She winced at the thought.
As Farinelli carried Anna to the top of a low ridge, momentarily out of the dust, she could see the winding strip of green in the narrow valley ahead, green that showed the promised stream. On the other side of the stream, the trail wound back eastward, toward Stromwer.
Toward another set of gambles with spells, another effort to resolve violent feelings with as few deaths as possible. And for what? So you can ensure a marginally-grateful twelve-year-old will inherit what his father wasn’t strong enough to keep? So that you can’t move without guards following every motion? So that everything you do is questioned?
Anna pushed away the thoughts and leaned forward to give Farinelli a solid thump on the neck. “We’re getting there, fellow. It won’t be long.”
56
Anna packed away the glass and strapped the leather bundle to the saddlebags once again. Then she remounted Farinelli, swaying slightly as she swung into the saddle.
“You must eat.” Jecks eased his mount beside hers and extended a chunk of bread.
“Thank you.” Anna no
dded, took a bite of the bread, and chewed. “Another dek, I’d guess.” She pointed. “About halfway up that next section. By the clump of pines there.”
“Junipers,” Jecks corrected.
“Junipers, whatever.” She chewed another mouthful. Why didn’t he understand that she hated being corrected over little things. What difference did it make whether it was a pine or a juniper? She’d just pointed out a clump of trees as a reference point.
Were men everywhere like that? Avery had been worse, she had to admit, correcting everything. Then, he’d been king of the comprimarios, able to get any secondary role anywhere, but never the big roles.
Anna laughed to herself. She had the biggest role ever—sorceress and regent—and, fortunately and unfortunately, it was for real. She unstoppered the water bottle, her third for the day, and took another long swallow.
The dust puffed from under the horses’ hoofs. The wind raised it around them and coated them all with fine red powder. Anna took another swallow of water and finished the bread. Without speaking, Jecks extended another chunk.
“Thank you.” Anna took it. She was being bitchy, in a way, but he wasn’t the one who had to stand out there and wonder if the spell would be right, if fire would turn and kill them all or whatever. Or if she would fail. Sorcerers did fail. She’d seen Brill die from failing, and she’d overmastered the Evult. Who was to say that another sorcerer wouldn’t show up with greater power?
Like the Sea-Priest or the young man in brown with hate in his eyes. She’d tried to find out more from the glass, but all she could see was that he lived in a small town and worked in some sort of store, a chandlery, it looked like in the silver-mist visions.
Without thinking, Anna discovered she had eaten all the bread.
“You were hungry,” Jecks observed, as if that explained everything.
“Thank you. I was.” Anna let him think that she had only been hungry. She wasn’t in the mood for explaining, and now wasn’t the time. Instead, she studied the steep hillside to her left as Farinelli carried her closer to the pines—the junipers, she reminded herself—on the downhill side of the trail. Beyond the dry gorge to her right, the hills climbed into even higher peaks, with barren but not snow-covered summits, mountains almost like plateaus tilted slightly sideways.
The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 36
