The Shadow Sorceress

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Back outside the tent, in the flickering light of the single torch, with Achar and Rukor standing back several paces, on guard, Secea began to eat, mainly the dry bread, with occasional bites of cheese. She tried to ignore the cramping and nausea, knowing that sorcery on an empty stomach would be a disaster, and also knowing that eating so early in the day in her present condition would make her even less comfortable.

  When she had eaten all she could force down, she took a last swallow from the water bottle and corked it. She knelt and checked the small bottles in the saddlebag once again to make sure the stoppers were firmly in place. She was almost finished when she sensed someone coming, and glanced up as a figure walked toward her.

  Stepan halted a yard away. Even in the uncertain light, Secca could see the circles under his eyes, and the hag­gardness in his face. She stood, wondering if she looked as tired as did the arms-commander.

  “Lady, the lancers and archers are preparing to mount.”

  “I’m almost ready.”

  “Best I lead the archers with my first company,” said Stepan quietly.

  “You don’t have to,” Secca protested.

  “And if aught happens to you, then how do I tell Lord Hadrenn or your lord?” asked Stepan.

  “Your watch will wake the players and Richina in an­other glass?’ Secca asked. “So they will be ready when I return.”

  “That they will.”

  "I'm ready.’’

  “I will have the men mount.” Stepan turned and slipped back into the darkness.

  After another long swallow from the water bottle, the red-haired sorceress picked up her gear and walked toward the tieline fifty yards behind the tent. There, the gray mare waited, lifting her head as Secca neared. Achar followed Secca, carrying a pitch torch he had lit from the one burn­ing outside the tent.

  As Secca saddled the gray in the flickering torchlight, she glanced to the east, but all she could see was the pur­pled blackness of night, and the brightest stars shining through a thin haze. To the west, Darksong hung just above the horizon. Secca shivered

  Once more, there was little wind, although the night was chill. She made sure both saddlebags were fastened tightly before strapping the lutar in place.

  She mounted and rode southward toward the open sec­tion of the ridge, Achar following on his mount with the torch. They reined up at the head of the column, where Stepan waited with a vanguard of a half-score of guards. Behind Stepan and the van were the archers, and behind them a company of lancers.

  In the dim light, Secca nodded to the older man.

  ‘Douse the torches!” ordered Stepan. “Down the trail. No talking. Words carry in the fog.”

  Slowly, the mounts of the vanguard began to move, over the ridge and onto the narrow trail. Once into the trees the fog thickened, so much that Secca could scarcely see more than a pair of yards before her, cutting off the small amount of light from the stars.

  “I’ll have to send scouts out once we reach the bottom,” murmured Stepan, as he leaned in the saddle toward Secca.

  “I know. But the closer to the trees on their hill the better.”

  “Not too close. A hundred yards?’

  “That’s fine.”

  In the clammy heavy grayness, the ride down the narrow trail was slow, far slower than the last time, and that had seemed to take forever. Secca listened, but all she heard was the breathing of mounts and the impact of hoofs on hard ground.

  Stepan said nothing, but Secca felt she knew what he was thinking, that she risked much with such a predawn effort in fog where no one could truly see. Yet the risks of not acting were so much greater. She took a slow breath and resettled herself in the saddle, trying to ignore the dull cramps and nausea that persisted, and attempting to warm up with a series of softer vocalises she hoped would not carry, or not too far.

  In time—how much later, she was not certain---the trail flattened, and then opened onto the browned and flattened grasses of the lowlands.

  Stepan hissed, and eight lancers eased forward from the van and out into the deep gray that swallowed them before they were three yards away.

  “Four will scout the trees, and four will form a line where we should halt. With luck we will find one of them.” Stepan’s soft laugh was rueful. “One hopes, at least.”

  So did Secca.

  The meadow grasses were coated with a silvery frost, yet another sign that winter was upon Ebra, and one that told Secca that she had little enough time to defeat the Sea-Priests’ forces, if indeed she could. She cocked her head, but the valley was silent except for the whuffing of the mounts and the occasional crackling of the more frozen and stiffer stalks of meadow grass.

  Before long, Secca could make out the figure of a single lancer, shadowy, appearing out of the mist. He did not speak until Stepan and Secca reined up. “I am the third, ser. The others are at the trees. They will call if the Stu­rinnese nears”

  As Stepan quietly reordered the lancers, Secca dis­mounted and handed the gray’s reins to Achar, then un­strapped the lutar and set it on the ground before opening the left saddlebag and extracting more than half the small bottles, She paused. She could hear nothing but the occasional whuff of a mount, or the creak of a lancer shifting his weight in his saddle. After unstoppering each bottle, she took the lutar from its case, and quickly ran through the tuning.

  Then she began to play and started the first spell—the poison for the officers and thunder-drummers.

  “Seek and carry through this night’s air.

  crystals strong to all drummers, camped up there.

  Take this heavy stuff; infuse through song,

  within the blood and sinew strong,

  within the brain and heart to dwell

  so no other battles will they live to tell.

  Then distribute all the rest

  through the blood of captains best...”

  When the last sounds of the spell and accompaniment died away, Secca paused, straining to see if she could hear some-thing...anything.

  There was not a sound beyond that of the mounts of her force, nothing, not from the encampment up the hillside, nor from the scouts.

  After a moment, she cleared her throat, then called softly, “Elfens?”

  The archer appeared out of the misty gray. “Yes, lady?"

  “When I begin the next spell, have your archers loose as many shafts as they can, in a high arc toward the trees to the south—that’s the way I’m facing. Keep loft­ing them up until I stop singing.”

  “That we can do. Give me a moment to have them ready.”

  “Call when you are ready.”

  “Yes, lady.”

  Secca squared her shoulders, her fingers touching the strings of the lutar, her eyes looking into the featureless gray before her, trying to visualize what she wanted the arrowheads to do.

  “Archers ready!” came the soft call.

  Secca’s fingers touched the strings, and she sang forth the second spell, the one for the drums and drummers.

  “Heads of arrows, shot into the air,

  strike the drumskins, straight through there,

  rend the drums and those who play,

  for their spells and Darksong pay!”

  She ran through the same spell twice before lowering the lutar and taking several deep breaths. Then she quickly recased the lutar and strapped it behind her sad­dle before remounting the gray.

  “Are you finished?” asked Stepan.

  “For now. From here.”

  “Lancers. . . return to the ridge. Pass the order,” the older officer called softly. “Bring in the scouts.”

  As the hissed orders passed through the fog, Secca and Stepan led the way back through the fog and across the brown-grassed meadow, following the traces of their earlier passages.

  “You used different spells, but both were directed at the drummers.” Stepan’s words were not quite a question.

  “Without the drummers, our sorcery should work.”
<
br />   “It has before,” Stepan agreed in a low voice. “It must now, for I fear they have more lancers than we have counted.”

  “How many?”

  “That...your glass does not show, but the smoke from the cookfires and the expanse of their encampment...perhaps as many as forty companies.”

  In spite of herself, Secca winced. “Why did you not tell me this earlier?’

  Stepan shrugged. ‘Would it have made any differ­ence?’

  “You were afraid I would leave?” Secca could feel the anger building.

  “No. I feared that too many lancers would vanish. I had seen what sorcery can do before you came. None of the lancers have.”

  Secca wasn’t sure she believed Stepan, but, at the moment, as he had said, it made no difference, except that she would probably have to be ready to perform more sorcery later in the day. Ignoring, once more, the cramping, she forced herself to eat a few more mouth­fuls of dry bread, interspersed with the cheese.

  After a long silence, Stepan asked, “You have said nothing. Are you angry that I did not tell you?’

  “Some,” Secca admitted, “but you were right. It only means we must fight now.”

  In the silence that followed, Secca kept listening, but could hear nothing from the south, and that worried her more than if she had heard sounds of pursuit or trumpets of alarm. She continued to nibble at the bread and cheese she had brought while she rode upward on the narrow trail. So far, she was not seeing flashes, but she still had much to do, even more, she feared, from what Stepan had said.

  The climb was slower back up the trail, and with each yard that they covered in near-silence, Secca felt her stomach tightening more. In her condition, she needed that tension not at all. By the time the rocky edges of the ridge were visible, there was a slight gray­ing of the sky above the trees to the east.

  Perhaps a quarter of a glass later, the mare carried her onto the ridge, where in the faint gray light, the players were lined up, tuning gently. In columns behind them were the bulk of the lancers, headed by Wilten.

  Richina sat in the saddle of her mount---stiffly----in front of the players. As she saw Secca, a faint smile crossed the younger sorceress’s face, and Secca could see a certain relief. The older sorceress offered a smile in return. When she reined up beside Richina, Secca inclined her head to the south. “Have you seen any­thing?”

  “Just the lights of cook-fires, lady. There have been no trumpets, and no signals?”

  “None at all,” added Wilten, glancing from Secca to Stepan. “The quiet worries me.”

  “It worries us all, I think,” replied Secca. “Best I disperse the fog.” She dismounted, handing the gray’s reins to Achar, and stepped toward Palian.

  “Still the second building spell, Lady Secca?” asked the chief player.

  "The second building spell,” Secca affirmed. “After I do a vocalise.”

  Her voice only cracked once and after the second time through, her cords felt clear. She nodded to Palian, and then, to Delvor. “I am ready.”

  “The second building song. On my mark...Mark!” Secca tried to let the song come, flow out with full but unforced volume, riding both the melody and the deeper chords of the heavy lutars of the second players.

  “Bring us wind both fierce. and strong

  to sweep this fog to the south along..."

  As with the last time she had dispersed the fog, an almost inaudible’ low rumbling issued up from the ground beneath her feet, then passed well before Secca finished. The sky, whose dark purpled gray had begun to lighten yet more, immediately darkened, seemingly turning back the time toward night. The wind moaned, building behind Secca’s back, quickly, ripping at her hair and jacket. Secca thought it was far colder than the one she had raised three days earlier—far, far colder. Colder---and stronger. Within moments, the upper lay­ers of the ground fog were shredding like rotten cloth.

  She shook herself, trying to forget the intensification of the cramps, and turned to Palian. “Best we mount up and ride down."

  She and Richina and the players were ready even as Stepan rode toward them.

  Riding back down to the site of the battle three days previous, Secca was still feeling slightly nauseated, but forced herself to eat slowly, mouthful after mouthful of dry bread washed down with water. Every so often, she added a bite of cheese or cold mutton taken from the provisions bag hanging from her saddle.

  With each step that her mount took downhill, the day­flashes that sparkled before her eyes were subsiding, but not totally vanishing.

  She could hear Richina warming up, but the notes of the vocalise sounded distant, so distant, even though the younger sorceress was but three yards behind her, riding beside Wilten, and in front of the players.

  Patches of fog still clung to the lower and more shel­tered spots on the hillside out away from the trail down­ward, but the frost that had looked a dull gray began to sparkle as the sky lightened. Secca would have appre­ciated the beauty more under other circumstances, and she wondered if Anna had felt the same way—or if her mentor had ever had to fight fog and huge numbers of Sturinnese. Or were Secca and the others in danger of failing because they were in a position where they had allowed the Sturinnese such a foothold?

  Secca shook her head.

  “Are you all right, lady?” asked Richina.

  “I’m fine,” Secca lied. “Just keep warming up. Don’t push it, but you won’t have much time when we reach the middle of the valley.”

  The dawn sun was touching the far western side of the lowlands when they rode from the trees, and a sec­ond misting fog was rising from the grasses touched by the sun, but that mist, too, was being whipped away by the chill north wind.

  Secca kept studying the tree-covered hillside to the south, the hillside and the intermittent woven fir barri­ers, but she saw no Sturinnese. It was not until the col­umn neared the rise in the center of the valley that a series of trumpet calls echoed over the lowlands, faint against the wind, but coming from the hillside to the south.

  Stepan gestured, and two companies of lancers gal­loped by Secca and Richina toward the rise, forming a line at the southern crest.

  Secca turned in the saddle. “Dismount and quick-tune as soon as we reach that knoll. The same one.”

  Palian gave a brusque nod.

  “Yes, lady,” called Delvor.

  While riding along the eastern section of the middle of the rise, Secca glanced southward again. Amid the trees and the shadows, against the angled glare of the rising sun, she could barely make out splotches of white where there had been none before, and those groupings of white were descending rapidly.

  “We need to hurry!” she snapped, easing the gray into a quick trot toward the knoll she had picked out. The players followed.

  Once there, Richina and Secca dismounted hurriedly. The players scrambled from mounts and began to tune.

  Orders echoed around the sorceresses and players as Stepan and Wilten lined up the lancer companies.

  Richina stood at the front of the knoll and began a full vocalise.

  The lower section of the hillside still in shadow looked as if it were blotched with white snowdrifts un­der the dark trees. A trumpet triplet blasted out across the morning, and the white began to move, resolving itself into men in white spurring mounts forward across the shadowed and still-silvered frozen meadow that sep­arated the trees from the rises

  Secca watched...waited.

  Richina glanced from Seeca to Palian, then back to Secca.

  Finally, when the leading Sturinnese riders were less than two hundred yards away, Richina looked almost desperately at Secca.

  Secca nodded.

  “The flame spell!” Richina ordered, her voice firm.

  “The flame spell! At my mark...“ rang out Palian’s command. “Mark!”

  Strong and direct was the spell melody, with a solid chorded backing from the second players, and Richina’s voice was unforced and true.

  The f
irst of the white riders neared the base of the rise and started up. Secca’s eyes flicked from Richina to the mass of white lancers charging the rise, then back to the young sorceress.

  "...turn to ashes, turn to dust . . .”

  Even before the last words, the gray morning sky darkened, and lightnings began to flash out of the sky. The first riders were within yards of the Defalkan lancers on the eastern side of the rise when, like trees struck with instant flame, they flared into instantly blackened figures…