The Shadow Sorceress

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Secca nodded, but did not speak immediately as she seated herself.

  Wilten gestured toward the single serving woman. “Something hot for the lady.”

  “Cider be all we got”

  “Fine.” Secca’s voice cracked on the single word. “And some bread and cheese, please.”

  “You be wanting any mutton, lady?”

  “No . . . I think not. Thank you.” Even the thought of mutton sent cramps through her stomach. She waited until the serving woman turned. “How is everyone this morning?”

  “All the lancers that got saved are fine, lady,” Wilten replied. “Good thing as the ocean is warmer here, though. Some were pretty chill, and a lot of bruises, but only two were hurt beyond that---one got a broken arm and another a slash across the shoulder. We used the elixir on both and set the arm.”

  With a thunk, the serving woman set a tall mug of steaming cider on the plank table. “Here ye be. Two cop­pers.”

  Secca fumbled for her wallet, and Alcaren slipped a pair of coppers onto the table, coppers that vanished into the large hand of the woman.

  “Thank you,” Secca said.

  “Best you not be opening that wallet here,” murmured the Ranuan.

  The Sorceress nodded and then sipped the hot cider slowly. After several small swallows, she broke off a chunk of the warm and moist dark bread. As she ate, she could feel some of her headache recede. She still was see­ing occasional dayflashes.

  “Captain Weyla said it could be six to eight days before she’d be able to return with the last two companies,” Al­caren volunteered after a time of silence. “Especially to bring more mounts.”

  Secca ignored the fact that Weyla had told her the same thing the night before, and looked at Wilten.

  “I can wait here for the other two companies, Lady Secca,” offered the older overcaptain.

  “You wouldn’t mind that?”

  “Lady Secca, I’d just as soon be here as in Encora. I’m not a town lancer, not in a large town, anyway.”

  And not in a city run by women, either, Secca suspected. “You’ll need to keep one company.”

  “The one without mounts is fine. Won’t have to worry much about feed,” he replied. “You should leave as soon as you can.”

  “Why do you think so?” Secca repressed a frown. Wil­ten had been the one who had been most opposed to trav­eling to Ranuak. “It’s likely to take several glasses to straighten matters out”

  “The Sturinnese are after you, Lady Secca. They might well send vessels here if you linger. If they believe you to be heading to Encora, then the last two companies will find sailing less . . . disputed . . . and we will have more lancers when we need them, whether that be in returning to Defalk or in going on to Dumar.”

  Secca took another swallow of the cider. While it had a deeper clove taste than she would have preferred, the hot liquid was definitely easing the tightness in her throat.

  “And, begging your pardon, lady, you are not looking up to great sorceries in the next days,” Wilten added.

  Her overcaptain was definitely right about that. She turned to Alcaren. “Should we not send messengers ahead to request the Matriarch’s permission to come to call upon her?"

  He nodded. “Only four initially, I would suggest.”

  "Two SouthWomen, and two lancers?"

  “That would be best.”

  “They can depart when we do.” Secca frowned. She’d have to give them golds for lodging, and she was begin­ning to doubt that the hoard of coins she had brought, extravagant as the amount had seemed when she had left Loiseau, would see her through the coming weeks, let alone an expedition into Dumar.

  She took another mouthful of bread and cheese, won­dering what she could really do in Encora. Would she just have to wait until spring to travel overland to Dumar? Or would Dumar be completely in the hands of the Sturinnese by then?

  She lifted the mug.

  100

  Encora, Ranuak

  The winter mist collects on the window beyond the Matriarch’s study, gathering, and then oozing down the ancient glass in slow rivulets. Inside, in the glow of the oil lamps set in white bronze sconces on the white walls, Aetlen sets down the mandolin and looks to the woman who sits behind the flat table desk. “You look like you are listening, but your mind is elsewhere.”

  Alya says slowly, “The glass tells me that the shadow sorceress fought a sea battle with the Sturinnese south of the Gulf. She destroyed four ships with storms and the fifth with fire."

  “Upon the open ocean?” asks Aetlen.

  “Upon the open ocean. She is riding south from Ilygot with two companies of her lancers and one of South-Women. She will arrive here in three days.”

  "Is Alcaren with her?”

  “He is. I cannot say what transpires between them, save he is acting as overcaptain for both her lancers and his.”

  “It could be worse.” He leans forward and sets the man­dolin on the polished wood of the table-desk, then leans back, his eyes still on the Matriarch. “Using Alcaren so . . . you risk much."

  “Not so much as not using him. At worse, he guards our ally. At best, he will learn enough to help her...and us."

  “That is a frail reed,” Aetlen points out.

  “As my mother said, it is the only reed we have, except trust in the Harmonies.”

  “You both have had this habit of assisting the Harmo­nies."

  Alya shrugs and smiles. “Where I can...”

  “Do the Ladies of the Shadows know the Sorceress ap­proaches?” asks the sandy-haired consort.

  “I would think not yet, but within glasses they will.” Alya sighs. "Best we make ready the guest quarters and barracks, and put on extra guards.”

  “You expect them to act that soon?”

  Alya laughs. “I would be most surprised if they did not. A true great sorceress within Encora? One who has no scruples about using her powers?"

  "I would say she must have some.”

  “She uses them. To the Ladies of the Shadows, that means she has none.”

  Aetlen winces. “They would die rather than be chained, as are women in Sturinn, yet they would kill one of the few hopes of holding off the Sea-Priests.”

  “The Sea-Priests have already lost fleets and more than a hundred score lancers to the sorceresses of Defalk, and Defalk has no interest in exerting power beyond Liedwahr. Yet the Sea-Priests persist Who is more foolish?"

  Aetlen laughs, his tone bitter. “And we are caught be­tween those who will not use sorcery to save us and those who will use it to enslave us.”

  “Ever it has been, dearest. Those who are blind slaves to principled belief would claim virtue while murdering for their beliefs. Yet they claim that they are exalted above those who profess no such principles at all, even as the bodies pile up.”

  “It is indeed a pity that you cannot say such openly.”

  “That . . . I cannot do. Not while the dismal swamps yet dot Ranuak, or the Sand Hills shift across the north, coy­ering towns and uncovering others to reveal mummies of mothers still holding babes in arms.”

  “I know.” Aetlen’s voice is soft. “I know. So, again, we must put our trust in the Harmonies, and in others.”

  “And post guards." Alya says dryly. “And train sorcer­ers whom we cannot avow.”

  Both laugh, half in irony, half in bitterness.

  101

  Dark gray clouds loomed over the valley to the west of the road, clouds so dark that the early afternoon felt more like twilight. The road, while not paved, was of a firm clay and just wide enough for two wagons to pass side by side. The valley itself was split by a narrow river. To the east of the river, below the road, was an ancient-looking conifer forest, although the trees displayed a col­oration that held as much black and purple as green.

  Beyond the river to the west were small ponds fringed with yellowish reeds and linked by patches of sickly greens and orangish-browns. From amid the browns protruded leafless polelike
trees. Secca could see not a single dwell­ing in the entire valley, which stretched a good fifteen deks from northeast to southwest, and more than ten in breadth.

  A light mist drifted across the riders heading along the ridge road to the southwest. Secca and Alcaren rode near the front of the column, behind a small vanguard of four lancers, and in front of Richina and Palian. With the mist came a sickly bitter odor from the valley, not quite like burned meat, nor like swamps, nor like rotten fruit, but reminding Secca of all three.

  Not a pleasant place, she said quietly.

  “No," Alcaren admitted. “These are the Great Dismal Swamps of the north. They say that once the entire valley was like the western side.”

  “What caused them?" Richina’s voice drifted up from behind Secca and Alcaren.

  “The Spell-Fire Wars." Alcaren replied. ‘There are many valleys like this throughout Ranuak.”

  “From sorcery?” Richina’s voice carried a tone of dis­belief.

  "From sorcery,” Alcaren affirmed. “You have seen a battlefield blasted black by Lady Secca, have you not? Do you think she or the Lady Anna were the first to harness such power?” He glanced at Secca.

  “We have blackened the land in a few places,” Secca admitted. “But nothing I have done would turn a valley into something like this—even after scores of generations. Nor did Lady Anna create any destruction such as this.”

  “I would hope not, lady.” Alcaren’s voice was calm. “Yet this was the price for the freedom of both Wei and Ranuak from the Mynyan lords. These valleys once held hamlets and towns, and the sorcery of the Mynyans turned them into spell-blasted holes that filled with water and be­came poisoned bogs and swamps. The Sand Hills are where the ancient Matriarchs turned the once-fertile bor­derlands of Mynya into desert heaped with sand. When the spring storms shift the dunes, folk still find hamlets where lie the bodies of those poor folk buried under the sand in those long-ago days.”

  “Are you sure that the dunes date back that far?’ asked Richina. “I thought the Evult used sorcery to move the Sand Hills to block the Sand Pass.”

  “He moved the Sand Hills.” Alcaren turned in his sad­dle. “He did not create them. The first Matriarchs did that through their sorcery.”

  Had sorcery done all that? Secca glanced to the dark and misshapen trees, and then to the sickly greens of the bogs and swamps. After a moment, she considered the contents of the notebooks locked behind iron at Loiseau . . . and shivered.

  Alcaren did not remark upon her reaction, but continued to ride beside her. Secca looked ahead, where the road followed the ridge line toward the southwest . . . and En­cora.

  102

  Secca shifted her weight in the saddle, glad for the morn­ing’s sunshine; hazy as it was. She rode between Palian and Delvor, and behind Alcaren and Richina. The road followed the northern bank of a small river that wound through low rolling hills generally covered with scattered grasses and scrub bushes. At times, Secca had seen small flocks of sheep in the distance, but the size of the flocks suggested that the grazing was indeed poor.

  “Is there a better way to set up the players if we must offer spells from a ship again?” she asked, looking first to Palian, and then to the lank-haired chief of second players.

  “The sound of the instruments might carry farther from the rear deck,” offered Delvor. “They would from the front deck, but there is much spray, and damp strings lose their tuning in moments.”

  “Do you think we will need to use ships against the Sea-Priests?" Palian frowned.

  “I cannot see them bringing their fleet into a harbor so that I can sing a spell over it,” Secca replied.

  “Did not the Lady Anna. . .?"

  “She destroyed one of their fleets by building the giant dam on the Falche, and letting it gather water for seasons. When she tilted the dam with sorcery, the flood destroyed the fleet because it was anchored in the harbor at Narial. That was because the Sturinnese held the city,” replied Secca. “They don’t hold Encora.”

  “I doubt there’s a river that big flowing through En­cora." Palian nodded to the narrow stream flanking the road.

  “Or that the Sturinnese will anchor somewhere like that without watching the river through their glasses,” added Delvor.

  “We won’t have that much time, either," Seeca pointed out.

  Silence fell over the three for a moment

  "What is that?” Richina’s voice contained such curiosity that Secca looked forward and followed the gesture of the younger sorceress. The hilltop a good five deks to the north of the road glistened black in the hazy morning sunlight.

  “It is called The Last Encampment,” Alcaren said. "It is said to mark the farthest advance of the Mynyan lords into Ranuak. There the first Matriarch cast the first true Dark-song spell and turned all of the Mynyan forces there into stone, but the spell was so violent that even the stone figures melted like wax.” Alcaren pointed farther west. “That smaller hill there, do you see it?"

  “It’s black, too,” Richina observed, “but smaller.”

  "That was where the Matriarch stood. The spell recoiled upon her and those around her.”

  Secca winced at that thought. She cocked her head. Thinking exactly about his words, about the spell recoiling upon the first Matriarch, and about the feeling behind those words.

  “Lady?" asked Palian.

  “I’m fine. Just thinking.”

  “Have you ever been there?” Richina pressed.

  “Only to the lower part of the hill,” Alcaren replied. “Nothing lives where it is black, and often animals still die if they spend much time among the shining black stones.”

  “Have you seen that?’

  Alcaren nodded. The hair falls from their fur in clumps, and they bleed from all over their skin. If they live for more than a few days, all their hair vanishes and their teeth fall out. Any animal that eats the flesh of one of them also dies.”

  “After all these years?’ asked Delvor, his voice skepti­cal

  “None will stop you if you wish to test what I have said,” replied Alcaren. “But none will touch your body or aid you, either.”

  Delvor shuddered.

  Palian nodded, sadly and reflectively.

  Somehow, reflected Secca, the concerns of the Ladies of the Shadows did not seem quite so strange, not if a fraction of what Alcaren had said happened to be true . . . and she had yet to hear a word from him that she knew to be untrue.

  103

  As the gray mare carried Secca to the crest of the road that passed between two hills almost tall enough to be very small mountains, the sorceress could see a broad plain spreading before her, filled with winter-turned fields edged with stone walls and interspersed with infrequent wood-lots, also marked by stone walls. Every morgen of land seemed to be in use, either for homes or fields or barn­yards—and the trees in every woodlot or orchard ran in neat rows.

  To the south, perhaps ten deks from the road, lay the dark blue-gray expanse of the Southern Ocean, empty of either sails or whitecaps that could be seen from that dis­tance. A dark smudge appeared on the horizon to the southwest--- the island that sheltered the port.

  A good fifteen deks to the west was a second set of low ridges, topped with lines of white stone walls that shim­mered in the midday winter sun.

  “There! Those are the northern and eastern walls of En­cora.” Alcaren gestured toward the ridge hills.

  “Walls?” While Secca had seen more than a few walled keeps in Defalk and in Ebra, she had never seen walls around an entire city—or even parts of it.

  “They are older than the city. They have never been used for defense, but they were built in the generations after the Spell-Fire Wars.”

  “I suppose there are seawalls as well?’ asked Secca,

  “Of course.” Alcaren nodded. He did not smile. “Even all the fleets of the Sea-Priests would have difficulty in taking Encora from the sea."

  “There don’t seem to be any ships out there,”
ventured Richina, from where she rode behind Secca.

  “The Sturinnese would have to be either to the southeast or much farther to the southwest. Except for a few narrow channels, those waters are too shallow for most of their war vessels.” Alcaren smiled. ‘We have never marked the channels, and they change often.”

  “They cannot scry the channels?” asked Richina.

  Secca winced.

  “Lady,” Alcaren’s voice was patient.

  “Oh..."