The Shadow Sorceress: The Fourth Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by Modesitt. Jr. , L. E.

  “How long?” asked Secca warily.

  “A week to make ready, two or three days for the crossing. You would still face a hard ride of three or four days.”

  “If it can be done…we would be most grateful,” Secca replied.

  “It will not be without cost.” Veria held up a hand. “Traders, even those of Elahwa, do nothing without recompense, but the Council will provide such.”

  “You expect something in return?”

  Veria laughed mirthlessly. “We will obtain much in return. Either you will defeat the Sea-Pigs, or you will occupy them for another few seasons or years. If you defeat the Sturinnese, we obtain freedom from their domination for many years. If you occupy them, while that occurs, we can recover our strength.”

  “I would hope we would do more than occupy them for a time.” Secca did not voice the thought that all that depended upon their reaching Encora at the very least.

  “So do I, but I must be prepared to justify the golds even under the worst of happenings.”

  Secca nodded, even as she wondered about a system where a leader had to justify every action in terms of its costs. Could one really put a price in golds on women not wearing chains? Or being able to reject an ill-chosen consort?

  “When will we know what is possible, and the timing?” asked the sorceress.

  “Late tomorrow, or early the day after. As soon as I know, so will you—or almost, although we have no magical ways to send scrolls.” Veria smiled and stood. “If we are to have you on your way soon, I must be finding those who can make this happen.”

  Secca stood and bowed. “We thank you.”

  “Thank me best by surviving and defeating the Sea-Pigs.”

  Behind the cool words, Secca sensed an old and cold anger. She recalled what Alcaren had told her. Had the counselor been tortured? Secca was not about to ask. “We will do our best.”

  “I am certain you will, and for that, I am most grateful.” Veria offered a last smile before Secca turned and slipped back out the door.

  With each echoing click of her boots on the polished blue marble floor as she walked back toward the front entrance, Secca felt more alone—even with two guards following her.

  95

  From the window of the guest chamber, Secca looked out into the midday drizzle. Her left shoulder still twinged, and she hadn’t even realized that she had pulled the muscles there when she had been sparring with Alcaren, not until a day later. The wet weather did little to help the soreness that had come from that sparring.

  It had been almost two days, and she had heard nothing from Veria. The rain of the previous days had stopped, but the clouds remained—featureless, dull gray. She shook her head. She missed the bright and clear skies of Loiseau. Finally, she turned and looked down at the table-desk, her eyes taking in the spells she had scrawled on brown paper.

  She stepped back and uncased the lutar, then tuned it. As she stood over the desk, looking down at the modified flame spell, she strummed the lutar and mentally tried to match the note values against the words on the page. After running through the spell melody twice, she set the lutar aside. The last line still bothered her.

  Before she could sit down with the paper and grease pencil, there was a thrap on the door. “Yes?”

  “A messenger for you, lady,” called Easlon from beyond the door. “From Counselor Veria.”

  “Have…them come in.” Secca wasn’t sure whether the messenger would be man or woman, not in Elahwa. She turned and waited.

  The young woman who stepped through the door was a taller and more slender version of the counselor, with short-cut dark hair, wearing the crimson tunic of a lancer of Elahwa. She bowed. “Lady Sorceress.”

  “Welcome.” Secca smiled. “Are you…related to Counselor Veria?”

  “Her daughter.” The lancer smiled. “I’m Averra.”

  “I’m sorry. You must be asked that often.”

  “Not so much any longer. She says that’s because her hair is so gray.” The lancer’s smile was warm and open, and Secca wondered if Veria had once smiled so.

  “I am sorry,” Secca apologized again. “You bring a message…perhaps about our travel?”

  “Yes, lady. She sent me to tell you that the Council has managed to arrange for enough vessels for four companies. We can attempt two trips, or we can send you and three of your companies and one of the SouthWomen…and then we would be pleased to escort the other two companies along the longer coastal route.”

  “Only four companies?” Secca frowned.

  “It is not the lancers, lady,” Averra said. “It is the mounts. For such a short trip we could take twice the number of lancers, but mounts are heavy and take more space. Also, we needed vessels with a crane and hoist.”

  Secca nodded. She just hadn’t thought about the size and weight of mounts. “Do you know why three of my companies?”

  “The counselor said that you would like most of your forces with you, but, should you leave Ranuak quickly, the Matriarch will need all the forces that can be mustered.”

  Secca’s lips quirked. She doubted that was the only reason. “When will the ships be ready?”

  “You will need to start loading no later than midmorning the day after tomorrow.” Averra bowed. “What shall I tell the counselor?”

  “We need the ships, but I need to talk to my overcaptains and players before I can say which arrangement we prefer.”

  “She thought you might.”

  “I can send a messenger later this afternoon,” Secca said. “To the Council building?”

  “She will await word, lady.” Averra bowed.

  “Thank you, and give her our thanks for all her efforts.”

  “That I will, lady.”

  Once Averra had left, Secca sent Dymen to collect the overcaptains, the chief players, and Richina. Then she took out the scrying mirror and set it in the middle of the conference table. She glanced out the window, but nothing had changed. The sky was still gray, but no rain fell.

  Secca picked up the spell she had been working on and studied the last line, but still had no better words when Palian—the first to arrive—stepped inside the chamber.

  “Delvor will be here shortly. He was repairing a lutar, and was setting the joins.” The gray-haired player smiled, then asked, “Have we word on ships?”

  “We do, and that is what we need to talk about.”

  The door opened, and Wilten, Alcaren, and Richina entered. Secca gestured to the table. “Please be seated. Our other chief player may be a few moments longer.” She took the chair with its back to the window. With the seemingly constant grayness of Elahwa, she didn’t mind not looking out.

  “How is Captain Drysel?” Secca asked Wilten.

  “Much bruised, lady, but recovering. He appreciated your note.”

  “I was sorry. It was an accident, but I’m sure it was painful.”

  “It cannot hurt him to learn that size is far from everything.” Wilten’s voice held a dry humor that Secca had not heard before.

  Alcaren kept his mouth from smiling, but not his blue-gray eyes.

  The door opened a last time, and Delvor slipped in.

  “I am most sorry, lady…”

  “Palian told me,” Secca said. “I would not have you hasten a repair to a lutar. We will need every lutar in the weeks and seasons ahead.” She waited for him to take a seat before she continued.

  “I have talked to Counselor Veria, as you know, and they have gathered enough ships to take us to a point on the south side of the Sand Hills. We can ride from there to Encora in several days. There is one problem.” Secca paused. “There are not enough vessels to carry all of us and our mounts at the same time. The most they can take is the players and perhaps four companies.” She paused. “The counselor also made it clear that they would prefer that one of the four companies be one of those commanded by Overcaptain Alcaren.”

  “Lady Secca…” Alcaren said, “that was not my doing.”

  “
I was led to believe that the Matriarch wants at least one, if not both, of the companies of SouthWomen back in Ranuak to be ready in case the Sturinnese attack there.”

  “And we are considering going there?” asked Wilten.

  “Does it matter?” riposted Secca gently. “We will have to fight them in one place or another. If we go to Ranuak, and the Sturinnese attack, we do not fight alone, and then, at the very least, that may slow the conquest of Dumar. Here, we do not even pose a threat to the Sea-Priests.”

  Palian nodded slowly.

  Delvor brushed back a lock of his lank hair.

  Alcaren shifted his weight in his chair, but did not speak.

  “What if we take the three companies and one of the Southwomen first,” asked Richina, “and then wait to determine if the ships can make a second trip? We can use the glass to see. If they can, we wait. If not, we start for Encora and wait there.”

  Secca looked at Wilten. “What do you think?”

  Wilten shook his head. “Against the Sea-Priests, four companies or six…it makes little difference. If your sorcery does not hold, then two companies will not change matters. I would favor Lady Richina’s suggestion, though, for if the ships can travel the inner gulf again, it will be far easier on the riders and mounts.”

  Secca hoped so, but sea travel was out of her experience.

  “Do you know where the Sturinnese ships are?” asked Alcaren.

  “I thought I would try to call their images in the glass, so all could see.” Secca eased from her chair and reclaimed the lutar, checking the tuning before beginning the scrying spellsong.

  “Show us now and upon the sea

  those ships near where we may be…”

  Even after the end of the spellsong, the mirror remained blank. Was that because the spell was faulty, or because there were no ships on the inner gulf between Elahwa and the southern end of the Sand Hills? Secca didn’t know. She tried a second version.

  “Show us now and in the light of day

  any ships that may oppose us on our way…”

  This time the mirror split into more than a dozen fragmentary images, each fragment showing a different ship, and all but two were white-hulled. Even before the others could really look at the images, Secca sang the release couplet.

  “What—” began Alcaren.

  “It showed every ship that could sail to the inner gulf,” Secca said. “The spell wasn’t right.” She lifted the lutar and tried a variation on the spell.

  “Show us now and upon the sea,

  vessels in the inner gulf that be…”

  Again the mirror came up blank.

  The fourth spell—the one that asked for vessels south of the inner gulf, showed five large Sturinnese warships and three smaller vessels, rigged as schooners.

  After letting everyone see the images, Secca sang the release couplet.

  “There are no Sturinnese ships in the inner gulf now…is that what the glass shows, lady?” asked Wilten.

  “It is.”

  Wilten turned to Alcaren. “How long will it take them to sail northward?”

  “Into the inner gulf? Several days.” The Ranuan paused momentarily before adding, “But the last part of the voyage will take us out of the shallows of the inner gulf.”

  “I would say that we take as many as we can on the first voyage, lady,” Wilten suggested. “Even have they scrying glasses, they will have to see us depart in such and then find us.”

  There were nods around the table.

  Secca was forced to agree that his suggestion made the most sense—and it agreed with the suggestion of Counselor Veria. “Then, that is what we will tell the counselor.”

  She still wondered about the SouthWomen—they seemed better disciplined than most lancers, and supposedly they fought well, but no one seemed to want them around, and that bothered her.

  96

  Secca glanced from the piers out into the harbor, empty except for the vessels tied at the heavy wooden piers. The morning was chill, made more so by the wind blowing off the dark gray water. There were five vessels of varying lengths at the piers—but the largest was perhaps sixty yards in length, the smallest little more than thirty. A line of mounts stretched along the pier. Secca watched as one was led up a gangway and onto the deck of the Foamsprite, the nearest vessel.

  “We’ll do what we can, Lady Sorceress,” offered Weyla, captain of the largest schooner, the Alycet. The captain was a wiry woman almost as tall as Drysel, and a good fifteen years older, but Secca would have wagered her golds on Weyla in any contest between the two. “Luck and Harmonies with us, and we’ll get well south of the Sand Hills. If not…” She shrugged. “We land you where we can.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Unless your sorcery can help.”

  “It’s possible. I’ll certainly try if we need it, but I’ve never tried it on a ship.”

  “Like you,” the captain continued, “I’d be wishing we could carry all on one crossing. The problem was not the lancers, but the mounts. Easy for a company or two, but six be a problem. Safer to make one crossing with five vessels than five with one.”

  “That’s what Counselor Veria told us,” Secca replied.

  “Take the morning to load, and then we’ll sail. Usually get a southwesterly by afternoon. Sweeps inland to the Sand Hills, especially this time of year. Small pier at Ilygot. We can’t get that far, and you’ll have to swim them ashore…won’t be bad…we don’t draft that deep…and the water here’s not that cold, not like up near Ostwye.”

  “Why couldn’t we get that far? The Sturinnese?”

  The weathered captain nodded. “We can go shallow along the Sand Hills. Know the waters and the shoals. South of that, the shallows narrow, and they can get to us unless we hole up in one of the shallow bights. There we’d have to hoist the mounts clear, and you’d swim ’em in. Probably not more than a hundred yards—fifty in some places.”

  “Let’s hope we can get to a place with a pier,” Secca said. “Maybe sorcery can help.”

  “We’d prefer such, lady,” replied the captain. “Faster for us, and it will let us make a second run without the Sea-Priests havin’ time to bring in one of those patrol schooners that can go where we do. ’Course, better here than in their lands. They got slave galleys there, and with thunder-drums and oars, and shallow draft…best you not be anywhere close.”

  “They don’t have anything like that here, do they?” asked the sorceress.

  “Only the smaller schooners, but they take Dumar, and it won’t be long before Dumuran captives’ll be rowing galleys.” Weyla inclined her head. “Be seeing you on board.”

  Secca bowed. “I’ll be there shortly:” She watched as the weathered captain walked down the pier toward the seaward end where the Alycet was moored.

  As she watched, Alcaren and Wilten appeared from behind a group of sailors in pale blue trousers and jackets and walked up the pier from where they had been overseeing the loading of the SouthWomen’s mounts on the Foamsprite.

  “How is everything going?”

  “It’s not the loading I’m worried about, lady…” Wilten coughed, then fingered his chin. “The captain there…she said…we might have to swim the mounts to shore.”

  “So did the captain of the Alycet,” Secca replied. “I don’t know that many of our lancers can swim.” Secca wasn’t that sure she’d do well in the water, either.

  “That be true, lady,” admitted Wilten.

  “All they have to do is hang on to the mounts,” Alcaren offered. “The water isn’t that deep except in the center channel.”

  That was easy enough for Alcaren to say, Secca reflected. “Can you both travel on the Alycet with me and the players? We need to have some time to talk over things.”

  “My captains would not object, I do not think,” said Alcaren.

  “Nor mine.” Wilten shrugged. “They cannot go off somewhere on their own.”

  Secca nodded. “I’ll tell Captain Weyla.” She looked toward the Alycet, hoping
again that she wouldn’t have to swim her mount from the ship to a strange shore.

  97

  With the sea spray misting around her, whipped by the brisk wind, Secca walked forward, along the right side of the Alycet, her hand not all that far from the heavy wooden railing, trying to adjust to moving on a surface that slowly pitched with the long rolling and following swells.

  To her right, to the west, she could just make out a long and low dark smudge that one of the crew had said was land—swampy wetlands that were still a part of Elahwa. South of the swamps were higher and far drier bluffs, and south of the bluffs—well out of sight—were the Sand Hills.

  Stiff as the wind was, with the full late afternoon sun falling on the schooner, Secca felt warmer than she had at the piers in Elahwa that morning. She eased up to the railing where Alcaren leaned on the polished but worn wood, looking to the southwest.

  The Ranuan did not turn as Secca joined him. “We might just get to see a hint of the Sand Hills before sunset.”

  The wood on which Alcaren’s hands, overlarge for his frame, rested was battered, but buffed smooth and varnished. The Ranuan followed Secca’s probing eyes. “You have to keep the wood sealed. It splinters and rots, otherwise. Doesn’t matter so much on the rails here, except for you and me, but anywhere the sails could touch, you don’t want splinters or sharp edges—put a rip in the canvas, and then where would you be?”

  “In some sort of trouble. Why did you say the rails didn’t matter except to you and me?” Secca frowned.

  “Real sailors scarcely ever touch the rails.”

  As if to make that point, the Alycet pitched forward more steeply. Secca had to grab the railing. The ship then rode the following swell, still maintaining a southwest heading, or so it seemed from the position of the sun.