“None, save my own feelings.” Wendella offered a nervous laugh. “Yet I’d wager that feeling against all others.”
“So would I,” added Liende quietly in the momentary silence.
Alvar swallowed loudly enough to punctuate the chief player’s words.
“That will change,” Anna said. “The business about women, that is.”
“It changes already,” Jecks pointed out.
“True enough,” Anna interposed quickly. “But that’s enough about it.” Her eyes went to Wendella. “Lady Wendella, could you tell us, or me, since I know too little about Defalk, where you grew up and how you came to Stromwer?”
After a moment, Wendella began. “I am the youngest child, and the third daughter, of Lord Mietch. The oldest was Mietchel, and he now holds Morra. My eldest sister—that was Haerl—she was consorted to Arkad, but she died with child, and so did the child.”
“Was she his second consort?” asked Anna.
“His third.” Wendella paused. “When I was young, Morra was a happy place, with the rose trees always in bloom against the garden walls. My sire said the walls dated back to the days when Suhlmorra was great, when Defalk was a poor land but a sliver of its present demesne. . . .”
Anna leaned back slightly in the chair and listened as Wendella detailed her background.
“. . . And then I came to Stromwer to be Dencer’s consort when his first betrothed died of a fever in the year that the Falche flooded all the lowlands. You know the rest.” The dark-haired lady shrugged.
“Thank you. I wish we could enjoy this longer,” Anna said after a moment of silence. “I need all of you to join me and look at something.”
“All of us?” asked Wendella.
“Why not? It concerns all of you.” Anna rose, and the others followed her out of the hall and down the corridor to the stone steps. Hanfor ducked away briefly and rejoined the group carrying brown paper and the flat board upon which he sketched battle plans and maps.
Anna nodded to herself. Hanfor and Jecks knew what was coming.
Up in the guest chambers, the five watched, standing in a half-circle around Anna and the wall mirror, as she took out the lutar and retuned it.
Outside the half-opened shutter, there was the ter-whit of a bird that rose momentarily over the hum of insects.
Anna smiled at the lone bird call, cleared her throat, and then sang the spell.
“Mirror, mirror, show all to see
where Ehara and his forces be . . .”
The silvered glass of the wall mirror displayed a line of mounted armsmen heading toward a rocky defile, a long line of armsmen, behind the crimson banners of Dumar. Behind the horsemen were wagons and spare mounts. The road appeared to slope upward.
Wendella nodded. “That looks like the road to Dumar, though it cannot be far.”
“How might you know that?” inquired Jecks.
“I once rode with my late lord to Finduma—that is the first trading town inside Dumar. If my memory serves me, that part of the road leads to the Vale of Cuetayl.” She shrugged. “That was when first I came to Stromwer, though I think the road has changed little.”
Anna was grateful for Wendella’s knowledge. “It is clear that Ehara plans to attack.”
Yet the spell left so much undetermined. What could she do? In the silence, she launched into an improvised second spell immediately.
“Danger near the Vale, soon so near, show me that land bright and clear . . .”
The glass shimmered, then slowly rippled silver before fading into a map-picture, displaying a small hamlet and a river that seemed to run east-northeast—at least that was the way Anna interpreted it—toward a larger valley. The valley was divided into three sections by low Y-shaped hills.
“Those hills. . . . Cuetayl was a trading stop in the old days,” said Wendella, her voice shaky. “There was a town there, but Uhlan the elder razed it when he could not take Stromwer, and it was never rebuilt.”
Anna studied the maplike image in the large wall mirror, wondering where on the map might be Ehara’s forces. There was no sign of them. She looked more closely at the Vale of Cuetayl. The hills formed a Y that split the lower ground, mostly fields and meadows, into three distinct sections.
“The hills inside the valley control the road to Dumar,” observed Jecks, turning to Wendella. “Is there another road?”
“There may be tracks, but no roads that any have talked of.”
Hanfor kept sketching, his grease marker flying across the wide sheet of brown paper. “You can see where the road from Encora and from Stromwer enters the valley or the vale from the east here.” Hanfor’s marker ticked off a point on the right hand side of his sketch. “The hills are upthrust sandstone. They overlook the-road.”
“If Ehara and the Sea-Priest get there,” mused Jecks, “they could use the rocks for cover and blanket the road with arrows.”
“You could not see where they might place archers,” Hanfor said.
Anna nodded. Even she could see that the terrain would severely limit the use of sorcery—unless she wanted to destroy the whole valley—if she even could. There had been volcanic activity around Vult, already harnessed by the Evult. By comparison, to her amateur eye, the Sudbergs looked old and decidedly unvolcanic.
Abruptly, she strummed the lutar, trying another variation.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,
show us where Ehara’s attack will fall . . .”
The mirror remained blank.
Anna set aside the lutar and reached for the grease-marker and some paper. Improvising wasn’t making matters much clearer. After a time, she looked at the next spell, then picked up the lutar.
“Show us in great outline this day,
where Dumaran forces ride their way.”
The mirror obligingly displayed a close-up of riders in crimson, looking forward over a rider in white and one in red toward the same defile that the first image had displayed.
“That . . . that is the west entrance to the Vale,” said Wendella.
Anna sang the release couplet. As the image faded, she set down the lutar on the chest by the wall. “I need some wine.” She poured the dark red wine from the pitcher into the goblet on the writing table, then sat, sipping slowly in the growing twilight. No matter what she tried, there were clearly limits to what the mirror would show—or what she could get it to show. Ehara was headed to the Vale of Cuetayl, and it looked like he wanted to set up an ambush there.
“We’ll have to find a way to avoid whatever trap they have in mind, and then make them vulnerable.”
“How might that be, Lady Anna?” asked Hanfor.
I wish I knew. “That’s something I’ll have to think about. I can try another spell. After I rest for a moment.” She took another sip of wine, conscious that the others had remained standing, except for Hanfor who sat on the floor cross-legged, continuing to sketch something on the brown paper.
Wendella glanced from Anna’s drawn face to Jecks, then to Hanfor.
“Yes, Lady Wendella,” Jecks said. “Sorcery can be as tiring as battle. It can be more tiring. We have seen that.”
Wendella nodded, almost to herself.
No one spoke.
When Anna finally rose and took up the lutar, all eyes were on the mirror as the sorceress sang.
“Show me now and show me clear
a road or trail to avoid this danger near . . .
Like a vision, like a map or plot . . .”
Light strobed from the mirror, so brightly that Liende covered her eyes. Anna felt her own eyes watering as she saw vision after vision flash across the glass so quickly she could not even comprehend one of those images.
Crack! Glass showered out of the mirror frame, and the wood of the frame steamed.
Anna stepped back involuntarily.
“Oh . . .” murmured Liende.
“Are you all right, lady?” asked Jecks.
Anna looked down. Although silvered glass lay almost to her fe
et, none had apparently touched her. “I’m fine. Except I’ve ruined another mirror.”
Hanfor nodded, his face somber.
Wendella kept looking from the darkened and empty mirror frame to Anna and back to the wall.
“I’m sorry about the mirror,” Anna told Wendella.
“A mirror is nothing, Lady Anna.”
“I’m sorry,” Anna repeated. “I have this problem with mirrors.” She cleared her throat. “There seem to be many possible roads,” she continued, after a moment, trying to inject a dry tone into her voice. “That’s one good thing.”
“Many . . . ?” Alvar’s voice was shaking.
“That was the problem. The mirror was trying to show us all the trails we could use to avoid that danger.” Anna was glad to explain and felt her voice strengthening as she talked, even if she were uncertain of her explanation. “There were just too many things possible, and they flashed too quickly to see what any of them might be.”
Alvar’s face retained a puzzled expression.
“We’ll see what happens as we near Dumar,” Anna said. “That’s all we can do.” She just hoped she happened to be right.
95
VALE OF CUETAYL, DUMAR
The Sea-Priest surveys the hills to the left and to the right, all crested with sloping red sandstone. He coughs and then wipes his forehead. Below him, to the south and overlooking the road, the white-and-green-clad archers set the reddish net blinds that will conceal them. JerRestin nods as the last of the nets are tied into place, and the archers seem to vanish, then shifts his weight in the hard saddle.
“Not so comfortable as on your fine ships, is it, friend?” asks Ehara with a laugh.
“Our ships are never this hot.” The Sea-Marshal continues dryly, “But I would take this heat to the cold of the frozen lands below Pelara. There, in winter, when one throws wine into the wind, it freezes before it can strike the ice.”
“You jest, of course.” Ehara’s eyes look northward from the ridge overlook where his own archers take their position behind the exposed sandstone. The flatiron-shaped stones crest the hills that control the flat on the north side of the valley.
“Sea-Priests never jest.”
“Your pardon, I beg. My deepest apologies for doubting your veracity.”
The Sea-Marshal turns in the saddle, and his cold eyes fix upon the Lord of Dumar as though he were but a junior captain of lancers. “Lord Ehara, listen carefully. The sorceress may call down her wizardry on my lancers or upon yours. I have insisted on the separation so that she must use great powers. My sea-captains know what to do if the wizardry falls upon you. If it falls upon my lancers, you must wait only until the sorcery ceases. Then you must attack immediately, before she can regain her strength.”
Ehara frowns. “You speak as though you will not be with your lancers or with me.”
“No. I will be concealed near the entrance to the Vale. Even the sorceress will not discern me. If I am successful, she will not have the chance to work any wizardry. If not, you must know what to do.”
“What if she does not come? Or arrives by another route?” asks Ehara.
“There are no other routes,” states jerRestin.
“There are always other ways.” Ehara laughs easily.
“She could take a game trail and have her armsmen strung out like an unraveled net, where they could be picked off at every turn by archers.” The Sea-Marshal shrugs. “She would still have to attack our armsmen from below, and her wizardry is limited to two or three mighty spells. That is why our forces are on separate hills.”
“She has used mighty sorcery before,” points out Ehara.
“And every time she has been laid low for weeks, if not longer. She will attempt to avoid such sorcery because she wishes to conquer Dumar, not destroy it.”
“You seem to know a great deal about her.” Ehara chuckles. “Does she appeal to you? You know of what I speak.”
JerRestin shakes his head, with a slight body shudder. “The woman appalls me. She is an unnatural creature from the mist worlds. I would not have her in chains or in any other fashion. She must be defeated, destroyed if that is possible.”
“I might like her in chains,” muses Ehara.
“Only with her mouth gagged,” responds jerRestin. “She turned Lord Behlem into ashes with but her voice.”
“That was no great loss.” Ehara scans the hills to the north side of the Vale again, then nods. His archers have seemingly vanished into the red boulders, and his lancers are well sheltered under the natural overhangs and out of sight of the road.
“Except to Neserea.” A grim smile plays over jerRestin’s lips. “I must go to instruct my officers on how to put an end to the sorceress.”
“The harmonies be with you.”
“And with you, friend and ally.”
The two horsemen separate, one heading down the ridge to the east, the other to the north.
96
The gelding whuffed once, and then, a dozen paces later, once more.
“We’ll be stopping for water before long.” Anna glanced ahead along the curving road that descended into another narrow valley and toward a line of trees. A stream? She hoped so as she leaned forward in the saddle and patted Farinelli. “Just hold on, fellow.”
Her light green shirt was plastered against her shoulders with sweat raised by the summer sun beating down from behind, and the back of her neck was going to be even more sunburned. Even with the return of the rains, Anna reflected, Defalk was just plain hot, hotter than Iowa in summer, more like Georgia or Alabama or south Florida away from the water—except hotter.
Riding beside her, Jecks looked over, but did not speak.
She knew his unspoken question, and she still had no clear answer in her mind, except that they couldn’t take the main road into the valley where Ehara was sure to set up an ambush. She hoped that, once they were closer to the Vale of Cuetayl, her sorcery would provide a clearer view of the options open to her.
The sorceress and regent looked toward the arms commander. “Hanfor?”
“Yes, Lady Anna?”
“Will we be stopping to water the mounts at that stream?” Anna brushed aside a pesky horsefly, once, twice.
Farinelli’s tail swished as the horsefly buzzed around the gelding’s hindquarters.
“The scouts have said that the road toward Dumar remains clear for the next five deks,” answered Hanfor. “I had thought we would water our mounts and let the men stand down. Have you a problem?”
“Oh, no. I was going to try the mirror again.”
“The players could use a rest also, Lady Anna,” Liende added.
Anna laughed. “Everyone gets a break.” Except you. You have to do sorcery. She stood in the stirrups for a moment, ignoring the tightening muscles in her thighs, then eased back into a saddle that was getting harder by the dek for the ride down to the stream.
“Does the shield spell draw too much from you?” Jecks asked quietly.
“No. I can feel it, like a spiderweb or the faintest brush of something against my skin . . . but so far . . .” Anna shrugged, looking down at the shield in the case by her . . . knee.
“Good.” Jecks nodded.
The trees by the narrow river were some form of willows growing so thickly that the vanguard had to ride two-thirds of the length of the short valley to find a clear approach to the water.
“Purple Company . . . take your mounts downstream from where water bottles are filled. Down by the gray rock.”
“Green Company! Wait for Purple . . . I said, wait, Mykli! You want to fill every water bottle in the company . . .”
“. . . don’t push, Distek . . .”
“. . . enough water for everyone . . .”
Anna let Farinelli drink, then guided him back to a grove a dozen yards north of the stream, where she dismounted and tied him to a sapling. By the time she had the mirror unpacked and the lutar tuned, she had been joined by Hanfor, Jecks, and Liende.
“Danger in the Vale, danger near,
show Dumar’s armed danger bright and clear . . .”
Anna lowered the lutar and took a deep breath.
The glass turned to a map-picture of the Vale of Cuetayl and the Y-shaped hills, centered on the spot where the road from Stromwer entered the west end of the valley. A small hill flanked the road, and then dropped away to a flat. The Y-shaped hills were farther back.
“That hill—if there is an attack against you, it will come from there,” said Jecks.
“Me?”
“You remain the force of Defalk,” the lord pointed out. “I know little, except there are books that say the Sea-Priests have enchanted javelins—much as the enchanted crossbow bolt of Sargol’s. The javelins are barbed. Sometimes they smear the barbs with the poisons of fish.”
“Lovely,” said Anna. The more she heard about the Sturinnese, the worse it got, and no one seemed to think that much about it—except her. Was she overreacting? Again? Avery had always claimed she overreacted to everything. “Let’s see if the mirror can show us another route into the Vale.”
From behind Jecks’ shoulder, Liende nodded. Hanfor held his portable sketching gear, his face blank. Jecks watched Anna, concern in his hazel eyes.
Anna took out the spell folder and rechecked the words, the small changes she’d made in the spell; hoping to avoid a repeat of the mirror-smashing in Stromwer. Before, the mirror had flickered through images so rapidly that none of them had been able to see anything—except that there were clearly many possible solutions, so many that they couldn’t be sorted out, even by sorcery.
At the time, Anna had wanted to scream. She hadn’t been able to think of one decent solution, and she still couldn’t, except in the general sense that she needed a way to flank the armsmen waiting in the Vale.
She cleared her throat, then lifted the lutar once more, and sang.
The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 51
