The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The gorge had enough space so that, if she dammed the Falche, there would be a deep lake, not inundated farmland. That was important. Of course, once the water reached the top of the dam, or the spillway, the river would flow again, but that would be several years away, and at least part of the Sea-Priests’ fleet would be grounded in the meantime, and Ehara and the Sea-Priests might just get the message to leave Defalk alone—without Anna having to slaughter innocents.

  Her eyes went back to the cliffs. They looked solid. Her sorcery had indicated that there was no better site. Still . . . would such a spell work? Could it work?

  She couldn’t know that until or unless she tried. She nodded to herself once more.

  77

  DUMARIA, DUMAR

  She has withdrawn her forces from Stromwer to Abenfel. That is where the messenger found her,” Ehara announces, setting aside the scroll and leaning back in the chair behind his writing desk. “So much for your plans to have her attack.”

  “She must be the one to attack,” says the Sea-Marshal.

  “You say that,” answers Ehara. “Yet those who have attacked her have perished. So have those who have waited for her attack. So, if you would be so kind, can you tell me how to ensure that she attacks where we would prefer and without turning our forces into cinders?”

  “Can you send messages into Defalk?” jerRestin asks. “Scrolls, rumors . . .”

  “What will rumors and speculations do?” Ehara sits up, and his sudden motion causes the flames from the five-branched candelabra on his writing table to flicker.

  “Incite her to anger. Anger precludes true thought and planning.”

  “For her? She is from the mist worlds. She has ice in her veins.” Ehara offers a sardonic short laugh.

  “Even ice boils if heated long and fiercely enough.”

  “What rumors do you wish planted?”

  “That you have decided to adopt the Sturinnese custom of decorative chains for consorts.” JerRestin pauses. “Or that you have pledged full allegiance to the Maitre. Or that Sturinn has pledged to send as many ships and armsmen as necessary to bring the sorceress down. . . .”

  “I prefer the latter,” says Ehara. “My own folk would drown me in the Falche if I pledged to any lord outside Dumar, and the chains business . . . well, I see why you find it expedient, and why it would incite her. . . . Perhaps we could add something that said I had rejected that . . . for now . . . unless the Matriarchy becomes too restive.” The Lord of Dumar laughs. “The bitches to the east won’t act on rumors; they never have, and they never will. It could help provoke the sorceress. . . .” His fingers touch the full black beard. “Now, my friend Sea-Priest, would you kindly explain—before I extend my neck further—just how you expect to defeat the sorceress.”

  “By devious enchantment.” Sea-Marshal jerRestin smiles. “She is not the sole sorcerer in Liedwahr. She is perchance the most powerful, but she is new to Erde. We lure her into a situation where she does not expect and cannot defend herself against sorcery. Without her, Defalk is powerless. Now.”

  “Correct me, if I am mistaken, but was that not what Lord Sargol attempted?”

  “Bah! He set his trap so that a female child could see it. The sorceress cannot defend what she does not see.”

  “And how can she not see it? She scrys everything, you have said.”

  “Simply put—if there is no enchantment until the moment before the trap is sprung.” The Sea-Marshal smiles more widely. “She cannot detect a trap that does not exist—until it does, and then it will be too late.”

  78

  Outside the unshuttered window, a bird twittered, one that Anna had not heard before in Erde, something like a finch. A puff of warm air brushed over her as she sat at the conference table in the room once used by another sorceress.

  Anna pushed away the pile of spell-noted papers and put her head in her hands. She just couldn’t use Brill’s spells. The tunes were essentially monophonic, and even if she varied the melody she sang, there just wouldn’t be enough harmony and varied textures to support the heavy sorcery she had in mind. She didn’t have the theory background to compose a polyphonic spell, not one where the separate melodies meshed strongly enough.

  She shook her head. Her eyes burned from trying to force her way through the awkward phrases and spellings Brill had used—awkward to her, but probably normal for Erde, she reminded herself.

  The finch twittered again.

  Is it right to do this? Is it right not to? Do you want to risk the chance that the Sea-Priests will put the women of an entire country in chains . . . and then all of Liedwahr? . . . But they might not. . . . And who will stop them?

  The arguments and counterarguments battled back and forth across her mind until she wanted to scream.

  Shaking her head again, she pulled out the crude orchestration she’d done for Daffyd based on “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” If she had to fight another pitched battle, the players could use it. In the meantime, could she write another set of words? One designed to build a dam?

  With a long sigh, she reached for the marker and a fresh sheet of the rough brown paper. After a time, she wrote. Then she rewrote. Then she rewrote that. Finally, she murmured the first lines aloud.

  “My words must start the damming of the river here below,

  with a building of the strongest stones from where the waters flow . . .

  Let the base be solid as the granite with no single flaw . . .”

  Anna scratched out the next words, and glanced to the window, rubbing her forehead. She was no poet, no composer, and words didn’t come that easily. What rhymed with “flaw” that would fit the note values?

  After a time of staring at the paper and then at the window, she reached for the goblet of orderspelled water.

  Could she use the modified chorus? After slowly, carefully dipping the quill in the inkwell, she wrote out the lines.

  “Glory, glory, halleluia; glory, glory, halleluia;

  glory, glory, halleluia, these stones will last and last!”

  The middle lines were too rough, and she needed a second verse. Still using strophic spells. “What else can you do? You’re not a composer.”

  One finch twittered, then another, as if in argument—like the damned lords of the Thirty-three.

  Anna stood. Time to find Liende, now that she knew it could be done . . . somehow. She still probably needed to refine her sketch of the dam as well, to ensure supports went well into the cliff walls and well below the sand and mud of the canyon floor.

  As she walked toward the door to the corridor, carrying the music, she glanced at the smaller writing desk in the bedchamber where another pile of scrolls lay. Earlier she’d read through close to a dozen. She heard from Lady Gatrune of Pamr that her sister Herene was on her way to Suhl to take on the guardianship and tutoring of Dinfan and her brothers, and .that was one piece of good news. The rivermen had petitioned again, and that wasn’t. Lord Tybel had requested that, since Hryding had died and since Anientta was Tybel’s daughter and since Arien and Synope adjoined, that the two domains be temporarily joined under his oversight. Tybel had also requested that Anna keep that request in confidence, which meant that he probably hadn’t. So she had another problem on her hands, another lord who either couldn’t stand a woman running the lands, or worse in this case, a woman in Anientta who couldn’t run the lands.

  She took a deep breath before opening the door.

  “Lady Anna,” offered Lejun.

  “Lady Anna.” Jecks stood in the hallway, where he had been talking to Rickel, the broad-shouldered blond guard, and one of the two on duty outside Anna’s door.

  “I’m going to find Liende.”

  “The players’ quarters are up a level and at the end of the long narrow hall.” Jecks gestured toward the staircase at the front of the keep.

  “How are their quarters?” Anna asked, feeling guilty that she didn’t know personally.

  “They are good. I look
ed.”

  “Thank you. Sometimes . . . I just feel like I can’t keep track of everything.”

  “Barjim and Alasia felt that way, and there were two of them,” Jecks said reasonably.

  “I could get the chief player,” offered Lejun.

  “Thank you.” Anna hadn’t really felt like running after Liende, but she also hadn’t wanted to ask someone directly. She found she had to ask too much as it was, and she’d never liked asking or ordering people around. And now you’re in a position where you have to. . . . How God or the harmonies have a sense of humor. . . .

  “I’ll remain,” said Jecks with a smile, “so that she has two guards.”

  Anna doubted she needed even one guard at Abenfel, but she hadn’t thought she’d needed any riding the grounds at Loiseau, and that had almost killed her when the Dark Monks had spitted her with a war arrow.

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Thinking. That is hard for an old warhorse like me.” Jecks laughed. “It is much easier to run one’s lands or fight battles. Even to discipline a grandchild.”

  “Old?” Anna shook her head. “You’re not that much older than I am.”

  Jecks studied her, blatantly, for a moment before touching the silver-gray hair behind his temple theatrically and grinning. “It would not appear so.”

  “You are an impossible and lecherous warhorse, not an old one.”

  “I defer to your judgment, lady, regent, and sorceress.” Jecks bowed. “My bones, in their wisdom, would beg to differ.”

  At the sound of steps, both Anna and Jecks turned as Lejun returned with Liende.

  “Thank you, Lejun. I appreciate it.” Anna faced the red-haired player. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Lady Anna, we are your players.” Liende smiled.

  “Liende, Lord Jecks . . .” Anna gestured toward the door to her chambers.

  Once the three were seated around the conference table adjoining the reflecting pool, Anna handed Liende the sheets that bore her notated versions of the “Battle Hymn.” Old Professor Thomson would have cringed, but the crude orchestration had worked for Daffyd, and Liende had more experience than Daffyd had had.

  “I’d like you all to work on this.”

  Liende glanced across the notation.

  Anna repressed a sigh. “Let me hum it for you. Then I’ll do it like a vocalise.” Sometimes it was a pain, not ever being able to match words and music except when casting an actual spell.

  All in all, Anna went through the melody almost four times, and the cobbled-together bass twice before Liende nodded.

  “I have it.” The player pursed her lips. “This is more difficult.”

  “It will have to be. Is it possible to get this-together in the next three or four days? I’ll come to the rehearsals—just let me know when.” Anna smiled.

  “Everyone is here, Lady Anna.” Liende glanced at the notes again. “We could begin in a glass.”

  “I’ll be there.” Anna paused. “There must be a space somewhere.”

  “There is a large storeroom that Hanfor obtained for us, up on the fourth level. We have been working on the other spells.”

  Anna rose. “Thank you.”

  “In a glass, lady.”

  After she had escorted Liende out, Anna returned to the conference table. Jecks displayed a bemused half-smile.

  “You look amused.”

  “This spell will take mighty sorcery. . . .” Jecks ventured.

  “Oh?” Anna didn’t feel like admitting much. Besides, after humming and vocalising the “Battle Hymn” six times, she had a headache, and there wasn’t any equivalent of aspirin or ibuprofen, unless she wanted to chew willow bark, and that cure was probably worse than her headache.

  “You have given your chief player music that will have all of them looking darkly and grumbling, once you are not around. There are stacks of paper all about you, and you have requested more. You have ink on your fingers, and your eyes are worried.”

  “I’m not a composer. I’m not even an arranger. No one around here has dealt with harmony in a couple of centuries, and the whole concept of homophony seems beyond everyone.”

  Jecks’ eyes glazed over, and he shook his head. “I would think that I might understand. Then you speak, and the words mean nothing.”

  “I’m sorry.” There you go, apologizing again. You are the regent . . . but a year doesn’t change a lifetime of apologizing. “I need spell music that is more complex than anything Brill developed. I was not trained in writing that kind of music. That’s composing. I did all right in theory, but composing’s way beyond that.”

  Jecks smiled almost grimly. “For what do you need such music, music so . . . so . . . intricate . . . or mighty . . . that mere words cannot explain?”

  “Lord Jecks,” Anna said slowly, “there are more than forty ships from Sturinn in Dumar. Half the time I use the glass to see Ehara, there’s that Sea-Priest sorcerer with him.”

  “He is a sorcerer?”

  “That’s what the glass says.” Anna didn’t mention the other sorcerers, the blonde Norweian woman and the young man in brown. Her spell efforts hadn’t shown much about him, except he was in a small town of some sort, in Defalk, which bothered her. Her efforts to refine a spell to find out exactly who and where he was hadn’t come to much, and neither had her inquiries to Menares and Dythya, not that she knew yet.

  “A sorcerer from Sturinn serving Ehara. Hmmmm. . . . Even dense as I be, that is not good.”

  “I have to do something,” Anna added. “That’s the way it feels.” Your big problem is figuring out how to make that something happen. “I’m going to try to block the Falche, and then suggest to Lord Ehara that his reaction wasn’t wise or in the best interests of Dumar.”

  “Your spells will do this?”

  “I think so.”

  “I do not know. Lord Ehara is proud. He will not suffer, but his people will, and they will blame you.”

  “That could be,” Anna admitted. “But I’d rather try it than try to march into Dumar and fry every armsman sent against us until they’re either slaughtered or I am.”

  “You do not have to fight Dumar,” said Jecks slowly.

  “No. I have to fight Sturinn. The only choice I have is when.” Anna moistened her lips. “If I dry up the river, that would ground their ships, some of them, anyway, and it wouldn’t kill lots of people.”

  “The Sea-Priests would not like that. No, they would not.”

  “I could suggest to Ehara that the Sea-Priests should leave Dumar and Liedwahr.”

  “A show of force.” Jecks shrugged. “With some . . . it might work. Ehara, I do not know.”

  “I think it’s better than waiting for the Sturinnese to turn Dumar into their puppet.”

  “If the Sea-Priests overthrew Ehara now,” agreed Jecks, “even the Liedfuhr might join you in an attack.”

  “If something like that happened,” Anna mused, “then would the Thirty-three be so upset if I used sorcery?”

  “They would not be displeased if you used sorcery before that—so long as it did not affect them.”

  Anna laughed. “How could any sorcery not affect them, one way or another?” She reached for the pitcher and filled two goblets. “I have to think about how to do this more.” Do you ever!

  “Thinking will not halt the need to act,” Jecks said dryly.

  “I know that, too.” She offered a crooked smile. “Have some wine. It’s pretty good.”

  He lifted the goblet. So did she.

  79

  Anna waited until the group struggled through the “Battle Hymn” spell again. “No . . . it’s too slow. The tempo has to be . . .” She sang the melody like a vocalise. “Da DAH da . . .”

  Delvor shook his head slowly, limp brown hair flopping.

  “Three separate melody lines at once, and one not exactly a melody line . . . playing such a spellsong is hard,” offered Liende.

  Anna repressed a sigh, not bothering
to explain that the accompaniment was not three separate lines. That would have been polyphony, and what she’d written was scarcely that. “Hard makes better spells, unhappily,” she finally said.

  “You have proven that, lady,” admitted Liende. “We will work harder.”

  “Thank you.” The sorceress nodded. “I’ll check back first thing in the morning.”

  She ignored the whispered “Tomorrow morning?” as she stepped out of the converted storeroom and onto the landing where Lejun and Rickel waited. Then, she walked slowly back from the storeroom and down the narrow steps, half conscious of Rickel’s boots on the steps above her.

  Would her damming of the Falche really motivate Ehara to push out the Sturinnese? Or just force them to conquer Dumar? Or something else? What can you do? You just can’t march into another country and turn their armies into ashes. And you can’t wait until they’ve got enough ships and men and sorcerers to take over all of Defalk.

  “Did Napoleon and Hitler think that way?” she murmured. But so many more people got killed when rulers and governments did nothing—like six million Jews and millions of others, a million or so Armenians, five million Cambodians, who knew how many Kurds, Bosnians, Africans . . .

  Face it. No matter what you do, it will be wrong.

  Shaking her head still, she entered the chambers Birfels had set aside for her and went straight to the writing desk beside the reflecting pool. Before she sharpened the quill, she poured a small goblet of wine and took one sip.

  She sat and began to draft the scroll. Lord, she hated writing things. It took forever! After a good two glasses, and as the sun began to lower over western Sudbergs, she finally had something. She read over the phrases slowly.

  . . . I encountered two companies of Dumaran lancers in putting down the rebellion at Suhl. Another two companies opposed our efforts at Stromwer. One would hope that you, as a lord of a land, would recognize the authority of a ruler or regent to address rebellion without outside interference . . . yet you have responded to my inquiries with defiance and arrogance . . . and a demand for tribute. . . .