The Shadow Sorceress: The Fourth Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by Modesitt. Jr. , L. E.

  “I know.” Secca’s voice was low.

  “Is that what happened between you…” Richina did not finish the sentence.

  “No. It never got that far,” Secca replied. It never has. Is that because you have seen too many men back away?

  Another silence, cold as a still winter night, filled the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Secca said again.

  “There’s nothing else to say. Nothing.” Richina bent over the narrow cot bed and folded her spare riding trousers. She slid them into a saddlebag. Then she reached for the shirt she had washed in ice cold water two days before and folded it. She did not look at the older sorceress.

  Secca smiled faintly, sadly.

  81

  Secca looked southward, her breath white in the chill morning air, squinting against the glare of sun on snow. The road was already packed in the middle, where the snow compacted by hoofs and feet followed the contours of the ruts established far earlier. The only sounds were those of hoofs and the breathing of mounts, and the occasional jingle or clink of a harness.

  After three days on the road, they were still short of the river junction and the better road toward Elahwa that they would find there. If the road remained frozen they might make Rielte by the end of the day, which would provide some better lodging for the lancers—even if within warehouses.

  At some point, they would leave the snow behind, because the mirror showed the roads into Elahwa were only damp, not even muddy, but without better knowledge and names, Secca could not use the mirror to find where that might be, not without exhausting herself.

  For the time, Richina rode with Wilten, in front of Secca and Alcaren. Behind Secca were Delvor and Palian, and then the remainder of the players. Melcar rode farther back, with the Ebran lancers.

  “If both sun and chill prevail, without wind, we will be favored by the Harmonies,” offered Alcaren.

  “At least until we get out of the snow.”

  “I have been told that there is usually little snow south of where the rivers join,” replied the Ranuan overcaptain.

  “You seem to know a great deal about Ebra,” Secca said.

  “Far more than a overcaptain of lancers from Ranuak should?” A light laugh punctuated his words. “Is that the edge on your blade?”

  “Yes.” Secca didn’t feel like verbal fencing.

  “I was not intended to be an overcaptain. As I have told you, my mother wished me to be a trader. Such must learn all about the lands where they trade, and she would tell me all she knew, and then ask me.” Alcaren’s voice turned dry. “Often I ate but bread and water.”

  “If you didn’t learn?”

  “I was stubborn.”

  Secca smiled. “You learned. That is clear. And you are skilled and intelligent. So why aren’t you a sea captain, or an officer learning to be one?”

  Alcaren did not reply, and Secca turned in the saddle. “Overcaptain?”

  A crooked expression, neither grin nor smile, appeared on Alcaren’s face. “The sea and I…we did not agree. No matter how many voyages I accompanied my mother…” He shook his head. “I did not wish to do what made me most uncomfortable.”

  Secca suppressed a laugh. Somehow, the thought of the competent overcaptain as a seasick trader was so incongruous. “So…your mother let you become a lancer?”

  “No. She turned me over to my father, saying that if I were not fit to be a trader then I could at least learn to create beauty.”

  “He was a sculptor, you said. Did you make any statues?”

  “A few. Mostly, I bent chisels and destroyed good blanks of stone. He could scribe a perfect circle with a stick of charcoal, then cut it perfectly. I could not.” Alcaren shrugged. “I could make neither happy.”

  Secca had the feeling, once more, that Alcaren had left much unsaid. Far too much. “So you took up the blade, then?”

  “I had some skill there, and that seemed a better thing to do than attempt to be a miserable trader or an untalented artisan.”

  “I see. What else do you do?” asked Secca.

  “Like most good Ranuan men, I can play some on a mandolin, or my lumand, enough to provide pleasant dinner music.”

  She laughed politely. Again, true as the words themselves sounded to Secca, she still felt as though something were missing. “The more you say, overcaptain, the less I feel I’ve learned.” She paused. “Have you any brothers or sisters?”

  “A younger sister only. She will be the trader. Already, she thinks in terms of casks and kegs and barrels, and yards and spans, and golds and silvers, and whether there is drought in Ebra or ice monsoons in Pelara.”

  “And what do you think about?”

  “I wonder now how I find myself talking to a sorceress on a snow-covered road in Ebra.”

  “I suppose that is strange,” Secca admitted, “but the Matriarch is a sorceress, it is said.”

  “She is, but not in the way that you are.” Before Secca could respond, the Ranuan rushed on, as if he had been waiting for an opening. “That sorcery…what you used to destroy the keep of Dolov…I did not know that two voices could do such.”

  “The Evult used massed voices, a score of years back,” Secca pointed out, certain that Alcaren had been sent as much spy as ally. “There are even old books about sorcery with many voices.”

  Alcaren, surprisingly, shuddered. “The old sorceries…like the evils of the Sturinnese…like the Spell-Fire Wars.”

  “Sorcery doesn’t have to be evil,” Secca said, thinking about the beauty and grace of Loiseau, wishing she were there, that she could be there. “We don’t have to repeat the evils of the past. Can we not avoid such?”

  “Can we? There are great temptations to make it so. The Matriarch has told so many that for so long, as did her mother.” Alcaren’s words were not quite cynical. “The Sturinnese offer great temptation.”

  “So you’re saying that I’ll be tempted into evil in order to stop them? Or that the other sorceresses of Defalk may be?”

  “Or someone. I suggest that it is possible. That is because the Sea-Priests did not suffer such as the Spell-Fire Wars and because they also believe what they do is right, as set forth by their great Sea-Father.”

  “And I suppose the Matriarch believes that we should do nothing, rather than risk some evil to stop a greater evil?” Secca could feel herself getting annoyed.

  Alcaren laughed. “No. Hardly that. She would avoid sorcery as she can, for the Ladies of the Shadows are strong in Ranuak, but she sees her choices are most limited. She learned from her mother, and her mother said that she had done much she came to regret, but even later could find no other course.”

  Secca nodded. She’d heard that enough from Anna.

  “Can she not use her sorcery against the Sea-Priests? In some fashion?” asked Secca.

  “She is not a sorceress like you.” As if sensing Secca’s irritation at his repetition, the Ranuan added, “She does not have the ability to meld with the players the way you do, or with drums as the Sea-Priests do. They can use sorcery on the water only with the strength of the thunder-drums.”

  Secca frowned. Were the massed lutars of the second players something like the thunder-drums? Would they work on or near the water? Could she adapt some spell to reach the Sturinnese ships off Dumar?

  “Lady?”

  “Oh…I was thinking. Is there a reason why the Matriarch cannot use players?”

  “She does not. None of the Matriarchs have done so.”

  “That is a most careful answer, overcaptain.”

  Alcaren shrugged, almost overdramatically, it seemed to Secca. “A Matriarch would not talk of such to a lancer, nor about such even around her personal guards.”

  “It sounds as though the Matriarchs have made a choice not to use sorcery backed by drums or players.”

  “That…I would not be surprised,” Alcaren admitted, “but no one has ever said such near me. Nor near any I know.”

  Those sentences stopped Secca, b
ecause the truth rang in every word. But why had Alcaren hedged so many other words and phrases? She rode silently, trying to sort out what she had seen and heard, and getting to no resolution, not one she could have voiced.

  “You did not follow Lord Robero’s orders, did you?” asked Alcaren, almost absently.

  “I had no orders,” Secca replied. “Lord Robero requested that I aid Lord Hadrenn and then do what I could to secure Dolov and assist the Free City.”

  “Doubtless in that order of priority,” suggested Alcaren dryly.

  His tone brought an inadvertent smile to Secca’s lips. “Would you have done otherwise?”

  “No…but then, I was likely to be one of those thrown against the Sturinnese in desperation had you not put them to flight. So I am most pleased that you acted as you did.” Alcaren paused. “I would much prefer to be riding and talking to you than lying in an unmarked grave somewhere.”

  “I am gratified that my actions please you, overcaptain.”

  “Not so much as I,” responded the Ranuan in a tone that seemed just a shade more than amiable.

  Or was that because she wished it so? Rather than reply, Secca studied the narrow fields beyond the road, rather than the woods behind them. Were the grass stalks protruding from the snow an indication that the snowfall was lighter as they rode south, and that they would be in warmer parts before long? She hoped so.

  82

  Two days after leaving Rielte, and a day after splitting away from Melcar, Secca and her much smaller force rode through a fine mist that was not quite rain. Although they could not see the sun, it was close to midday, and the clouds overhead were almost luminous, as if the sun were trying to break through. The road clay was damp, but not slippery, and the red-haired sorceress could but hope that the cold mist would dissipate as they continued southward.

  Strangely, Secca had felt relieved to see the Ebrans go, and that bothered her. Melcar was a far better commander than Wilten. Alcaren, for all that she had tried to get to know him better, and understand him, remained very much unknown. She had less than half the lancers she had commanded a glass before. And she felt relieved?

  She shook her head and looked at the road ahead. According to her scrying glass, the maps, and Alcaren, they were about a day and a half from Elahwa. Secca rode beside Palian, while Richina rode with Delvor, before Secca. Alcaren rode at the head of the column, just behind the standard bearers, with Wilten.

  Secca glanced at Palian. “What do you think about Overcaptain Alcaren?”

  Palian glanced forward, frowned, then lowered her voice. “He has watched the players practice, and once I thought I saw his lips move to the spellsong.”

  “Do you think he would try sorcery?”

  “I know not, save he knows more than he reveals. He would offer himself as an overcaptain of lancers as payment for your rescue of Elahwa. Yet his two companies are SouthWomen, and never have such been led by a man.”

  “They’re not SouthWomen?”

  Palian shook her head. “They are indeed SouthWomen. The SouthWomen trussed one overbold bravo like a pig for slaughter and dumped him, gagged into silence, by the cookfires…so silent they were that none saw or heard, and he will not yet speak of it.”

  “Hmmmm…Yet they accept Alcaren’s orders.”

  “They accept orders from their captains, who are women. The captains accept orders from him,” Palian pointed out.

  “He said the same thing,” Secca replied. “He did not hide that, yet it remains strange.”

  “He rides well, like a lancer born, yet there is…something.”

  “A spy from the Matriarch?”

  The chief player shrugged. “I think not. The Matriarch would welcome knowledge. That is certain of any ruler. He spars with his captains, and they are better than most of our armsmen. He is better than they. Melcar said that he carried his blade like a lancer, not as a bravo.”

  “Someone to seduce me?”

  “But why, Lady Secca? It would be far easier to seduce Richina, to learn anything from spells to secrets. And, though you are Sorceress-Protector, you are not a regent as was Lady Anna.” Palian looks at Secca. “The man listens not as to flatter, but to learn.”

  “That’s why I thought he was a spy,” Secca pointed out.

  The chief player shook her head again. “I think not. He watches what I do, but makes no gesture to reassure me, nor to flatter these gray hairs. Nor does he court you or Richina. He is not here for our purposes, but what purposes he is here for…those are deeper, perhaps deeper even than he knows.”

  “The Matriarch has a plan for him that he knows not?”

  “That would be my guess. He is a man, and he has been offered a freedom to act few men in Ranuak receive. She believes that freedom to act will benefit her and Ranuak.”

  “But will it benefit us?” questioned Secca.

  “Over a score of years, the Matriarch has not acted to harm Defalk or Lady Anna. I do not know her mind, but years of actions speak more clearly than words.”

  Secca nodded, considering the other side—the Sturinnese, and the Ebrans of Dolov, whose actions had always been against Defalk…and women. Perhaps she had not been so wrong to level the keep of Dolov, or not so wrong as she had felt at the time and afterward.

  After a time, Secca spoke again. “Yet I worry. There is so much I know not, and so much I have not seen, and I do not seem to be the only one who has not seen it. The Sturinnese have planned what they do for years. That is clear. Have the Matriarchs of Ranuak planned their counter for years as well? And what of the Council of Wei? The Liedfuhr?”

  Palian shrugs. “We do not know.”

  We do not know—what Secca had not known had already caused her to make mistakes, and those mistakes had killed all too many.

  “I fear we will need far more sorcery,” Secca said. Trite as her words were, they were also true, she knew.

  “That I have already told the players.” Palian glanced over her shoulder. “I can see a disagreement brewing behind us…if you would excuse—”

  “Go,” said Secca with a laugh.

  “Delvor!” called Palian.

  The two chief players rode back along the column, and Richina slipped her mount back alongside that of Secca.

  “Are you angry with me, lady?” asked Richina.

  “Harmonies, no.” Secca paused. “Because I have taken time to ride with others?”

  “I did not know.”

  “Palian has much knowledge and experience, and she is one of the few who has been on a campaign such as this before. I wished to hear what she had to say.”

  “Did you talk of Alcaren?”

  “Some,” Secca admitted with a smile. “We know little of him, handsome as he is.”

  “You admit he is handsome?” Richina grinned.

  “How could I not? But he is also mysterious and unknown, and that is not all to the good when one must fight alongside such.”

  “He will fight for us,” Richina said.

  While Secca felt the same, she did not know it, and that worried at her. Did she feel what she felt because it was true, or because she wanted to feel that Alcaren was to be trusted?

  83

  The Black Kettle—the inn in Sudstrom—was twice the size the Copper Pot in Hanlis had been, and the innkeeper had actually seemed happy to see Secca and her guards.

  “We heard of your victory, lady, and most pleased we were,” said the beefy, red-faced man.

  “I’d wager the girls and I were far happier, Tyras,” added the equally hefty woman who stood to his left. “Sturinnese kill women like as look at ’em, and chains are not something any of us would wear with joy.” She bowed to Secca a second time. “The big chamber…it has a large and a small bed. We would be honored.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And a wash stand as well.”

  “Richina and I could use that.” Secca looked at the innkeeper. “We also need lodging for the players and the lancers. We have somewhat les
s than six companies, and the players.”

  The innkeeper pulled on his earlobe. “There be ten small rooms, and two other large ones. Be some room in the barn and the stable. Might check with Afgar…he’s the grain merchant.”

  In time, Wilten and Alcaren had left the inn proper, with arrangements made for two companies to stay at the inn, while Secca and Richina had headed up the wide stairs to the second floor, and the main guest chamber.

  Though probably even older than the inns at Hanlis and Rielte, the Black Kettle had one significant improvement—real glass windows, at least in the chamber where Secca and Richina found themselves. While Secca greatly missed the bath chamber of Loiseau—and even the one in Hadrenn’s run-down palace—the basin of warm water, water she reheated with a short spell, and the towels resulted in her feeling far better and less bedraggled.

  Once Secca was in cleaner riding clothes, while Richina was washing up, the older sorceress opened the door slightly and called, “Achar?”

  “Yes, lady?”

  “Could one of you find Overcaptain Wilten and Overcaptain Alcaren—and both the chief players—and tell them we have some matters to discuss at an evening meal with them in the public room here?”

  “We can do that.” The young guard smiled back.

  Secca closed the door, then went to the window and opened the shutters enough to study the muddy main street of Sudstrom. As she watched, she could see Achar hurrying along the board walk in the dim light of dusk toward the chandlery, and the grain merchant’s barns beyond. She took a deep breath, not wanting to think too long or too deeply about the comparative luxury of her quarters. While she could tell herself that she could not do sorcery without rest and food, she still fretted and felt guilty.

  She closed the shutter and turned. Richina was brushing out her sandy hair.

  “Do you feel better?” asked Secca.

  “Some. I’m hungry.”

  “So am I. We should wait a few moments, though, before we go down. I just sent Achar to get Wilten and Alcaren.”

  “Do you think we will be welcome in Elahwa?” asked the younger woman, seating herself on the end of the smaller bed.