118
ENVARYL, DUMAR
Ehara paces across the room, at ten yards long and half that in width, large for the trading town. He goes to the third-story window and peers out from between shutters bleached white by sun and lack of oil at the gently rolling hills, dotted with irregular shadows cast from the scattered summer clouds.
Beyond the low yellow-brick walls less than a hundred yards from the window, nothing moves in the meadows and empty fields. A handful of armsmen walk the walls. Several carry bows already strung.
Two lancers in the crimson of Dumar ride to the front of the building, the trader’s mansion the Lord of Dumar has commandeered. Ehara straightens his tunic, brushes back his dark hair and waits.
At the single thrap on the door, he coughs, then answers. “Come in.”
The stocky lancer officer enters and bows. “The scouts have just returned, sire.”
Ehara waits.
“The sorceress’s forces have passed through Hasjyl, Lord Ehara.” The lancer officer bows again. “They ride toward the walls of Envaryl.”
“Does she ride with them?”
“They bear the banner with the crossed spears. They would not ride westward, save she were directing them.”
Ehara nods reluctantly. “I had thought for a time, when the sorceress stopped short of Hasjyl, that the Sea-Priest had succeeded.”
“None have seen him. A shepherd from Hasjyl said that harmony and dissonance clashed six morns ago, and that the ground shook.” The lancer adds apologetically, “That was all he could say, sire.”
“More like dissonance and dissonance,” mutters Ehara. He looks at the lancer. “Thank you. Would you have Captain Fional join me?”
“Yes, sire.”
Even before the door is fully closed, the dark-bearded Lord of Dumar returns to the window, gazing eastward. “Who would have thought it? One sorceress, and all of Liedwahr turned upside-down. A harmless ploy to gain territory in Defalk, and she invades Dumar. A mere attempt to kill her, and she pursues me like a harpy of dissonance. I have nowhere to turn, nowhere to go—nor does my son and heir. If I confront her directly, I will be turned to flames or spitted with arrows like a stag. If I die on the field against her, I honor her, and that I will not do . . . not now. For that, for that she must wait.” He shakes his head. “So little I have left. So little that I must content myself with making a sorceress wait. So little. . . . She does not understand Liedwahr, and we all will suffer.” Ehara laughs, a sound bitter and booming simultaneously, a roaring that fills the room for but a moment. “I will suffer most of all.”
119
Anna reined up on the low hillside to the southeast of the yellow-brick walls of Envaryl, walls that still lay more than a dek westward. In the seven days it had taken her to recover from the aftereffects of the Darksong used to save Jecks and to move her forces to within ten deks of Envaryl, Ehara had kept all his troops inside those yellow-brick walls.
As Farinelli tossed his head gently, Anna’s hand dropped to the open-topped shield carrier and the respelled round shield that had saved her life twice so far—and had failed to save Fhurgen or to protect Jecks. She couldn’t even make a gesture for Fhurgen, not even with cold gold. The black-bearded guard had never told anyone where he had come from, not even the most seasoned veterans from the volunteers who had followed Hanfor from the Prophet’s service to Anna’s. What had he fled from? And from where? She shook her head.
Alvar reined up on her right, Hanfor on her left. Rickel and Lejun eased their mounts forward of Anna, the protective shields up and ready. To her right, south of the rise, the river road wound along the Envar River for close to half a dek before turning more northward toward the main gates—those on the south wall. The heavy wooden gates were closed, and the crimson banner of Ehara flew from the right-hand gate tower.
From what Anna had found from her previous work with the scrying glass, Envaryl was enclosed by a pentagon of yellow-brick walls, each side roughly a dek in length. The town was one of the few walled ones in Dumar, possibly because it was an old town, and the western entrance to Dumar from both Mansuur and Neserea.
To the north, Anna could barely make out a dark line just above the horizon, the nearest mountains, those where the Mittfels and the Westfels joined to separate Dumar from Neserea.
In the early-morning light, the sorceress could see the length of both the south and the eastern walls, and the watchtowers on three of the five corners, but not any individual figures in the towers or along the walls.
“Quiet for now,” observed Alvar. “It was not so yesterday. Watch for a moment.”
Anna watched. So did Hanfor, and so, Anna presumed, did the twoscore armsmen behind them.
Shadows from the summer clouds cast slow-moving shadows across the hills, across the empty fields, and the summer grasses that barely bent in the light breeze. Although the air remained damp, Anna appreciated the warm breeze, a relief after so many days of hot and sticky travel.
A movement caught her eye, and she glanced north where two figures sprinted from somewhere behind the corner watchtower away from Envaryl and in the general direction of the distant Mittfels.
“Yesterday was worse,” Alvar said from her right. “Jirsit’s scouts counted scores of them running away. The armsmen just watched, those that hadn’t thrown rags over their uniforms and joined them.”
“Ehara’s armsmen shoot deserters,” Hanfor pointed out. “Jirsit’s scouts saw that as well.”
“When they see them, ser,” answered Alvar. “Or when they are forced to use their bows . . . or crossbows.”
Anna gained the definite impression that Alvar disliked crossbows. She wondered what he would have thought of machine guns. “We could wait a day or two, or a week,” she suggested, “until Ehara had no armsmen left. Or fewer armsmen.”
“Lady Anna,” Hanfor said slowly from her left, “I seldom question your thoughts . . .”
“But you do this time,” Anna said. “What have I missed?”
Hanfor shifted uneasily in his saddle, turning to face the regent. “Ehara knows he cannot best your sorceries, or even your forces, now. He will wait, because that will make you seem weak and because he knows that you do not wish to use your power against the innocent. So he huddles among the poor folk of Envaryl. If you wish to end this war quickly, you must destroy Envaryl, or you needs must visit and spell-seek each and every hamlet and town in all of Dumar.”
Anna refrained from swallowing, Hanfor had always agreed with her strategies to minimize death, carnage, and general mayhem. Now, he was suggesting obliterating a town whose major crime was harboring the former Lord of Dumar.
“Every war must have a battle, preferably a great battle, to mark its end. We cannot hazard a battle, and so we must have great destruction, destruction so great that all in Dumar will understand the folly of crossing the sorceress of Defalk. There must be a single . . . destruction . . . a monument . . . so vast that none can deny your power.” Hanfor swallowed. “This I like little, but I have watched and I have listened. Men are not as we would like; they respect but force, and you must supply that force if you are to gain the respect you will need to enforce peace.”
As if to punctuate the arms commander’s words, a volley of a dozen arrows or so arched out from the walls, falling several hundred yards short of where the three—and Anna’s guards—surveyed the town.
Anna looked at the arrows falling harmlessly into the grass, then at Hanfor. “Lord Jecks said that, too, you know. Or something like that.”
“Lord Jecks has seen more of those in power than have I, lady. In that, I would respect him.”
“I have to respect your judgments, Hanfor, and those of Lord Jecks. I don’t like them, but I respect them.” Again . . . it’s back to force, violence, power. Not reason, not common sense, not decency . . . but power . . . force of arms, force of sorcery. . . .
Anna took another look at Envaryl, then glanced northward, but the pair of refugees h
ad vanished over the low hills. Finally, she nodded curtly. “Fine. Let’s get on with it. Summon the players. Ehara—and the lords of Dumar—and of Defalk—will learn.” Dissonance, will they learn . . . arrogant bastards. If you want force . . . you’ll see force.
Hanfor bowed his head.
“I’ll need something to eat and drink while the players and the rest of the armsmen gather. We can do it from here. There’s no sense in moving close enough for them to hit us with those arrows.” She looked from Hanfor to Alvar and back again.
Both veterans looked away from her.
Somehow, the way she felt, it didn’t surprise her. She turned Farinelli and rode back down to the depression on the other side of the hill where she dismounted. Rickel and Lejun arrayed the guards around her in a wide circle, deploying two on the hillside above as lookouts or scouts. Neither guard spoke as she handed Lejun Farinelli’s reins.
She patted the gelding. At least, he didn’t look at her in reproach.
Standing by Farinelli, who had lowered his head to sample the lush grass, she pulled out the provisions bag and searched for some of the less-aged yellow brick cheese they’d picked up in one of the towns along the river road. Had it been Jusuul? Or Pemlirk? Or Genwal? Or another town whose name she hadn’t even noted?
She bit into the hard cheese savagely. After several mouthfuls, she broke off a crust of bread, a dry ryelike bread that scattered crumbs everywhere. Two bites of bread, and she had to moisten her mouth with a swallow from the water bottle.
Anna turned as Liende rode up and halted beside Rickel. The sorceress licked her lips of the crumbs and took another swallow of water.
“Good morning, Lady Anna.” Liende dismounted, but remained holding her horse’s reins when she faced the sorceress.
“Good morning, Liende. Well . . . it’s morning, anyway.” Anna cleared her throat. “We have work to do.”
“Will you wish the flame song, or the armsman-seeking song?”
Anna shook her head. “Today . . . today I will need the battle hymn.”
“We have not played that spellsong in weeks, Regent.” Liende’s face blanked.
“I know. You can gather your players, and practice for a time—on the hilltop there.” Anna offered a grim smile as she pointed westward toward the top of the slope she had ridden down. “I hope it will be the last time we have to use it.” You hoped that the last time, and here you are . . . again. How many more times?
“You are regent, Lady Anna, and we are your players.”
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Anna said. Does it? Does it really? “But Ehara began this war with blood and treachery.” The regent shrugged. “I can’t offer him mercy—nor those who still follow his treachery.”
Liende nodded, a nod that was acknowledgment, but not agreement. “We will make ready.”
“Thank you.”
“We are your players, lady and regent.” Liende inclined her head.
Anna nodded. “You may go.”
After Liende remounted, Anna finished the last of the hard yellow cheese, and the bread. Another swallow from the water bottle, and she replaced the water bottle and began to warm up.
“Muueee, mueee . . .”
After three notes, she coughed up some mucus. She resumed the vocalise, but only for another handful of notes before her voice cut out. She cleared her throat, and tried again, pushing back the battered brown felt hat. It was going to be a long warm-up, not surprisingly, because she was agitated, and agitation and tenseness didn’t help the asthma that Brill’s youth spell hadn’t removed either.
Anna felt as though the warm-up had taken her nearly a glass by the time her cords and throat were clear. She remounted slowly, her eyes going toward the west, where the clouds continued to build. Rickel and Lejun eased up beside her as she rode back to the low hillcrest, the intermittent sun falling on her back, nearly a score of mounted guards around her.
At the top of the rise, she slowed, then reined up, her eyes on the walls to the west. Envaryl remained the same, the gates closed, the town apparently still, the crimson banners billowing now and again in the gusting winds. Ehara remained barricaded inside the yellow-brick walls, waiting for the worst, unwilling to surrender, unwilling to flee.
The players, standing on the grass to Anna’s right and facing the town, were in the middle of the warm-up song. None looked in Anna’s direction.
Hanfor eased his mount beside Anna, and Rickel and Lejun moved forward, their shields up. Anna touched the small ensorcelled shield in the holder by her knee, trying to sense any draw of sorcerous power from her, then straightened in the saddle.
“Arms Commander,” she said.
“Lady and Regent.”
Hanfor’s eyes met hers, and Anna could see the darkness behind them. She wondered if her own eyes held that blackness, and feared that they did, and that the darkness would only increase over the years.
“Lord Ehara will not come forth,” Hanfor said quietly. “That would give you honor.”
“And if I destroy Envaryl?” she asked. “Will that dishonor me and Defalk?”
“No.” The arms commander shook his head. “You will triumph by force of might, and all will understand.”
Anna wanted to scream in frustration. To save lives she was going to have to butcher a town. To save women from chains, she was going to have to kill some of those same women. So why should you be different? Military leaders had made those decisions for centuries. “Because,” she murmured under her breath, “I didn’t want to be a military leader.” You still chose, and you have to pay. Lord, she was always paying, and if she said anything out loud . . . well, everyone would think that the regent was self-pitying and self-indulgent.
A low rumble of thunder echoed in from the west, and the breeze stiffened. The crimson banners above the closed south gates of Envaryl flew free in the wind.
To her right, the players started the battle hymn, raggedly at first, and then with greater intensity, as if the stirring music helped focus them.
When they finished, Anna glanced at Hanfor, nodded and rode toward the waiting players.
Liende inclined her head. “We stand ready, Regent.”
“Liende, the battle hymn.”
“There is a storm nearing . . . Lady Anna.” Liende looked at Anna, almost pleading.
“I know, chief player. Have them play the battle song.” There won’t be enough left of Envaryl or Ehara to . . . To what? Does it matter? “It has to be this way.” She shook her head. “Just have them ready to play the battle hymn when I signal.”
“Yes, Regent.” Liende looked down.
With a barely concealed sigh, Anna dismounted and handed Farinelli’s reins to one of the newer guards—Junert. The armsman took them without meeting her eyes. The sorceress walked to the open space in front of the players. A drop of rain spattered against Anna’s cheek.
Rickel and Lejun already waited, shields and eyes facing the yellow-brick walls of Envaryl. Standing between them in the narrow space pointed toward Ehara’s last stronghold, Anna began another vocalise. Between the hill and the yellow-brick walls, the rain intensified, the heavy droplets flattening individual blades of grass in waves.
Anna turned.
“At your command, Regent.”
Anna looked toward the doomed town, toward the yellow-brick walls set in green grass, toward the crimson banners that, streaming in the quickening wind, shivered as the rain struck the fabric.
“Ready,” Anna said.
“The battle hymn. On my mark . . . Mark!” Liende gave a sharp gesture then turned and lifted her own horn.
With the strains of the music, Anna sang, sang the song she’d hoped never to use again.
“I have sung the glory of the thunder of the sky,
I am bringing forth the voltage so the bolts of death can fly.
I have loosed the fateful lightning so Ehara’s men will die.
My songs will strike them dead.
Glory,
glory, halleluia; glory, glory, halleluia;
glory, glory, halleluia, my songs will strike them dead!”
Out of the darkness came a violent gust of wind that whipped Anna’s battered felt hat off her head and into the storm somewhere. She kept singing, ignoring the little voice that said, It’s only a strophic spell . . . only a strophic spell. She concentrated on a mental image of storms, earthquakes, and lightning—all flattening and annihilating Envaryl and Ehara, turning the town into a wasteland.
“In the terror of the tempest, death is brought between
the hills,
with a slashing through the bosom that flattens as it
kills . . .”
The clouds swirled, their mottled white-and-gray turning night-black well before the end of the spell. The wind’s whistle mounted into a howl, and Anna found herself bracing her legs against the force of the wind as she finished the last words.
Flashes of strobelike intensity flickered within the building stormclouds. From out of the clouds over Envaryl white globules fell, hammering at roofs and walls, enormous white projectiles—hail. Hail such as Anna had never seen as she stood, panting, horrified.
The ground itself rumbled, once, twice, and the grass flattened in circular waves rippling away from the walled town. Then, chunks of the brick walls began to tumble, outward, a cascade of bricks fragmenting, exploding, as the walls slumped into heaps of broken and shattered yellow chunks, darkened with the sheets of rain that swept over Envaryl.
Anna held her breath as a deep thrumming chord plucked the dark sky, and a wave of blackness swept like a silent wind out of the night clouds. For an instant, silence held the rolling hills and doomed town.
The first bolt of lightning was almost hesitant, like Anna had felt, forking down at the south gate towers, slashing into the timbered gates themselves, splitting the left gate, and throwing the right gate wide. A second bolt followed the first, farther west, lashing down somewhere behind the yellow brick walls that had turned green in the stormlight.
After the third, sunlike, slash of fire, the lightnings rained on the tumbled buildings of Envaryl so quickly that a garish arc-lamp illumination lit the hills, casting strange, elongated shadows, shadows that shifted instantaneously, fluctuated.
The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 61
