The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The too-small towels were scratchy, and her skin prickled in the cool of the robing room. Still, it was better than the heat she imagined continued outside the sorcerer’s hall. She laughed ruefully. Hadn’t that been the story of her life—difficult as things seemed, they were always better than the alternatives could have been?

  She also needed to find some clothes that would fit for riding. The green formal gown was definitely not designed for that. With a deep breath, Anna turned toward the open closets, where she found what looked to be a dressing gown. That helped with the chill.

  In among everything else—and Anna had to wonder just how many ladies Brill had prepared for—she found some soft green cotton trousers and a matching armless tunic, as well as a loose-fitting natural cotton blouse she could wear under the tunic. She frowned. Would both a blouse and tunic be too hot? She fingered the fabric of the blouse … or shirt—the buttons were on the right-hand side.

  The cotton underdrawers she found were either too tight or too baggy. Clearly, Erde hadn’t discovered elastic, either. She opted for comfort. Too tight might look wonderful in a fashion magazine, but she wasn’t in a fashion magazine. She was in some strange world where everyone else seemed to know what was going on. Finally, she shrugged off the dressing gown and pulled on the baggy underdrawers—softer, at least, than any other fabric she’d felt, and then the rest of the outfit.

  Shoes? She certainly couldn’t wear heels.

  On a shelf at the far end of the open were four pairs of boots, all in shades of blue, but nowhere could she find socks. Only one pair was large enough, and even those were a squeeze around her calves.

  When Anna had dressed and applied a little makeup and lip gloss, she studied herself in the mirror. She had to admit she didn’t look too bad. The faded green flattered her complexion, even with the minimal makeup she’d had and used, and—wonder of wonders—the trousers didn’t even accentuate her hips.

  She snorted. “A strange world, and you’re worrying about how your hips look.”

  Anna looked at the green handbag on the table in the bedchamber. She didn’t want to carry it, nor to leave it, especially some of the contents, like the lotion, the lip moisturizer. She doubted that any of the coins were worth anything, not since the U.S. had given up honest silver and copper. That brought another rueful look to her face. Who would have thought she’d be thinking about coins?

  While she had carried more than a few things in her purse, the handbag she’d carried had been stripped down to essentials—as she always did for functions. She offered a wry grin to the mirror. Too bad she hadn’t been headed for a theatrical performance with three bags full of stuff. For a moment, she wished she were one of those women who carried everything all the time.

  The trousers had no pockets, nor did the blouse, and the two patch pockets on the tunic didn’t feel like they’d hold much. So how did people carry things?

  She went back to the closets that seemed to hold everything and began to rummage, eventually coming up with something that looked like a cross between an overgrown wallet, a purse, and a leather pouch. The leather loops were clearly designed for a belt to fit through them.

  As she untied the leather belt—no buckles on Erde—and slipped the wallet-purse in place, she smiled ruefully. The meaning of the term cutpurse was a lot clearer. By carefully nestling items together, she could even fit everything that had been in her green handbag in the oversized wallet, except the brush. She set that on the table with the handbag. Then she looked at it again, finally picking it up and easing it into the left tunic pocket, bristles down. The handle stuck out, but the way things had been going, who knew where she’d be by evening?

  Her eyes went to the bedside table, and the jewelry and her watch. She walked over and picked up the watch that still showed the time as five-forty. That was another question. Why didn’t it work? Why had it and the key gotten so hot when she had been spelled into Erde—but not the necklace or her rings? Did the gold plate have anything to do with it? Finally, she strapped the watch on her wrist and the rings on her fingers, but the costume gold links went into the green handbag. If they vanished, so be it.

  Anna jumped at the knock on the outer door, then took a deep breath and walked to the door. “Yes?”

  “Lady … your breakfast is being served in the salon, and Lord Brill would greatly appreciate your company.”

  Anna fumbled with the bolt and opened the door. “Florenda, I will be there momentarily.”

  “Might I wait and accompany you, lady?” asked the dark-haired girl, her black eyes pensive.

  “That would be fine.” Anna could sense Florenda’s unease. Would the girl be punished if Anna failed to appear? Or was she politely trying to get Anna to hurry, but fearful of offending someone she thought might be a powerful sorceress?

  Anna left the door ajar as she studied the bedchamber, then turned. “I guess I’m ready.”

  Florenda bowed and turned. Anna followed her down the corridor and through the dimly lit rooms to the salon, where light poured through the bay window behind the table.

  Lord Brill rose from the small table and bowed. “Good morning, Lady Anna. I trust you rested well.”

  Anna returned the bow. “I appreciate your courtesy and hospitality, Lord Brill.” She looked down at herself. “I hope you do not mind my use of the clothing, but I did not arrive exactly dressed for …”

  “You may have anything you need, lady.” His mouth crinkled and his eyes smiled. “You will doubtless repay it manyfold through your talents.” He gestured to the table. “Please …”

  “Thank you.” Anna slipped into the chair across the table from him, trying not to think about repayment.

  The sorcerer wore blue, as he always did, Anna suspected, but the cloth was more functional, harder than the velvet of the day before. Shirt, tunic and trousers were all of a faded cotton like that of Anna’s green trousers. The circles under Brill’s eyes were even more pronounced than the evening before, and the brown-flecked green eyes were themselves bloodshot.

  “You must have stayed up awhile last night,” Anna observed.

  “Something like that.” He sat again and took a sip of the hot beverage in his mug.

  Anna followed his example, pouring the steaming yellow-green liquid into her mug and taking a small sip. While the warmth was welcome, whatever it was, it wasn’t tea, and it wasn’t coffee, and it was bitter, with a taste like boiled pine needles.

  She poured a goblet of water.

  Before her was another half melon, and in the middle between them, a loaf of bread, some sliced dried apples, some cheese wedges that looked like those she’d rejected the day before, and a jar of reddish preserves.

  She broke off some of the bread, dabbed some of the preserves on it, and took a bite.

  “You never did say much about your world,” Brill began slowly.

  “No,” Anna admitted after swallowing a mouthful of the tasty and chewy dark bread. “What would you like to know?”

  “Can you create any of the magics like the iron birds?”

  “No. Even on my world,” Anna said slowly, “to create one of them takes a long time and hundreds of special workers.”

  Brill nodded. “I thought as much. What about the magic staffs that throw fire?”

  Anna frowned. Magic staffs that threw fire?

  “People put them to their shoulders, and smoke and fire comes from the end,” Brill added. “Sometimes they kill people from a distance.”

  “There are two parts to that,” Anna said. “You need to make the gun, and then it needs ammunition, bullets, and that takes a special powder … gunpowder.” Avery probably knew the formula for gunpowder, but she didn’t. Anyway, would gunpowder even work on Erde? Slowly, she dabbed more of the berry preserves on another hunk of bread. She was hungry.

  “You look very doubtful, lady.” Brill set his cup on the table.

  “I don’t know enough about Erde to know what might work here, and what won’
t.” Anna tried to keep from pursing her lips. “It took thousands of people hundreds of years to develop the things you’re talking about.” She took another mouthful of bread and preserves, then cut a slice of melon.

  Brill frowned openly. “You make it sound as though magic is very difficult on your world. Yet my few glimpses in the mirror waters show many magic devices.”

  “Few?” asked Anna, stalling and trying to think of an appropriate answer before she was pushed into admitting something unwise, although everything she might say appeared unwise in some way.

  “It is dangerous to look more than infrequently,” answered Brill. “What about these magic devices? Why can you not spell some?”

  How could Anna explain? She sipped some water. Finally, she took a deep breath. “It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try. What you call magic in my world is called technology. People don’t make the magic devices through spells. They use machines to make them. First, hundreds of years ago, we had simple machines. We used them to make more complicated machines. Then people improved those machines.” Anna stopped, before adding, “It took lots of people a long time.”

  Brill nodded pensively. “The reflections show many people in the mist worlds, and your face shows you are telling the truth.” He sighed. “But it is disappointing. We have few people compared to your world, and little time. Is there not something from your world that we could use?”

  “I don’t think our worlds are quite the same, Lord Brill,” Anna offered. She pointed to her watch. “On my world, this tells time. Here it doesn’t even work.”

  “Perhaps the shock of crossing the mist barriers …” suggested Brill.

  “It doesn’t feel like it will ever work here,” Anna added. She pursed her lips before continuing. “Also, I can tell you that my songs have never been as powerful on earth as on Erde. That takes some getting used to.” What she said was true, if misleading, but she felt it wasn’t a good idea to admit she wasn’t a sorceress at all on earth. Not now, anyway.

  As Brill pondered her words, she cut and ate several more slices of melon and even had another sip of the pine-needle tea. Then she had more bread and preserves.

  “Hmmmm,” he said after sipping his own tea with far more relish than Anna could see reason for, “this bears more thought. You are a powerful sorceress here, and your mist world has many things that would seem impossible here. Both are true.” Brill laughed. “So we shall see.”

  Her mouth full, Anna offered a nod. She was still hungry, more hungry than usual in the morning. Was it nerves? Or something about Erde?

  “Well? Are you ready for your ride?” asked the sorcerer with a smile after she had finished the last of the bread. “Perhaps I can show you something of Erde, enough to stimulate your thoughts on how you might help us.”

  Anna nodded, wondering why she should help Brill. The sorcerer hadn’t really given any good reason for her to help, and he had admitted killing Daffyd’s father over what seemed a trifling thing, and yet he was acting as if she would.

  As Brill stood and turned, his hand brushed the crystal water goblet.

  Anna lurched toward it, but was too late. The shimmering goblet seemed to fall in almost slow motion toward the polished stone floor—where it rang as it bounced … and bounced … and rang … and did not break.

  “It’s all right,” Brill said calmly. “Serna will wipe it up.”

  Anna tried to look away from the delicate-seeming crystal that still rolled back and forth on the light-blue stone floor. After a moment, she forced a smile. “Your crystal is rather durable.”

  “I had thought so,” Brill answered with a smile. “I had thought so.”

  What did he mean? Then she remembered. She had shattered one of the goblets with her botched spell. She wanted to blot her suddenly damp forehead. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

  “Certainly, lady. I’ll meet you in the front entry.” Brill bowed, not quite sardonically, as if well aware of the confusion he had created, and picked up a cap from the side table.

  Anna wanted to scream that she wasn’t slow, that she wasn’t stupid, that she’d like to see how he would do plopped into her world. He’d probably get run over in a parking lot in thirty seconds—especially in Ames. Instead, she pasted on a smile, and inclined her head momentarily. “I won’t be long.”

  Ignoring Florenda, who had appeared as she left the salon and fluttered alongside her, Anna walked slowly back to her chamber.

  In the robing room, Anna washed her hands mechanically, once, twice. How could this be happening? Every time she turned around there was another reminder that people thought she was something special, another hint that she had to do something.

  How? She was just Anna Thompson Marsali, born Anna Mayme Thompson in Cumberland, Kentucky, a soprano not quite good enough, or lucky enough, to have made it to the Met, but good enough to place second or third in every competition she had been able to afford—before she’d given in to Avery and gotten pregnant.

  She walked back into the bedchamber and stood before the window. The scene remained unchanged—the stone walls, the dirt roads, and the distant view of Mencha to the north … and the sun, already beating down on the dry countryside.

  Anna went back to the closets, searching again, until she found a floppy brown hat with a brim wide enough to shade her face. At least she hoped it would.

  Florenda waited in the corridor and followed her back down to the entry where, as he had promised, Brill waited, knee-length riding boots polished and glimmering.

  Anna stepped out into the morning behind the sorcerer, and felt herself begin to sweat almost instantly in the summer heat—worse even than Ames in August.

  “This way,” Brill suggested.

  They walked along the shaded north side of the main hall building, across more of the flat stones that paved the entire courtyard, and back into the sun, toward a low, blue-tileroofed structure.

  The stable was like the rest of the hall—well designed and of finely finished stone. Like all stables, there was the odor of straw and manure, and of leather and oil.

  “Morning, lord.” A short, white-haired man stepped from the dimness of an open and empty stall into the sunlit doorway, offering a perfunctory nod to the sorcerer.

  “Good morning,” Brill answered, gesturing from Anna to the wizened man. “Quies, this is the lady Anna. We’ll be riding out to the south dome, but she’ll need a horse.” He added. “Quies is the stablemaster, and a fine one.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Quies.” Anna nodded at the wizened stablemaster, who scarcely reached her chin, although his shoulders were broad and his arms heavily muscled.

  “How good a rider are you, lady?” asked Quies.

  “Not very,” Anna admitted. “And I’m out of practice.”

  Quies pulled at his stubbled chin as if to ask how anyone could get out of practice when riding was the only sensible way to travel. “Well … you’re a tall woman … and a sorceress …”

  Anna held in a frown. Tall? She’d never thought of herself as tall, but on Erde, she seemed to be above average, especially for a woman.

  “Maybe the palomino gelding …” Quies nodded as though he expected Anna to follow him.

  She did, stepping into the stable that was cooler than the courtyard, and followed the stablemaster toward the rear of the long building. Her nose itched from the straw dust, and she rubbed it, hoping she wouldn’t sneeze too much.

  “Here …” Quies opened the stall door and slipped inside. “I’ll saddle him.”

  Anna looked toward Brill, but he had stepped to an adjoining stall. He nodded before turning back to Anna. They waited.

  Finally, Anna asked, “Is there any magic to make riding easier?”

  “Not that I know of, lady.” Brill offered the crinkled smile.

  When Quies led the palomino out, Anna looked at the horse doubtfully, and even more dubiously at the saddle, something higher than an English saddle, but not as solid as a western one,
and there was no saddle horn. The palomino swished his tail, but didn’t edge away as Anna stepped up toward him. She frowned at the fine tracery of lines across his shoulders, half concealed by his coat.

  “What’s his name?” she asked.

  “Name?” Quies shrugged. “He belonged to one of the raiders out of the high grasslands. Barjim sold him at auction, and he was cheap because he was cut up.” The stablemaster looked to Brill.

  The sorcerer shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard to heal him—minor darksong. He was strong.”

  “Now he’s worth a good five golds—be thirty if the raiders hadn’t gelded him,” observed Quies.

  Anna had the feeling that she and the palomino would be spending a lot of time together. Why she couldn’t say, but she’d learned to trust her feelings. So the horse had to have a name. What did one call a horse?

  She laughed. “Farinelli!”

  “What?” said Brill.

  “That’s his name. Farinelli.” She really didn’t know if the original Farinelli had been blond, but it didn’t matter. The name felt right.

  Brill and Quies exchanged a look that said, “If you say so.”

  She studied the palomino once more—a lot taller than a mule or even most of the broken-down horses she’d climbed on for her handful of trail rides when Elizabetta had gone through the horse-loving phase. She swallowed. Her redheaded baby—except Elizabetta was scarcely a baby, not after a year at Emory. But what had she thought when she had come home from her job at Fransted’s and found her mother missing?

  “Lady Anna? Is this horse … ?” Brill asked solicitously.

  “It’s not the horse,” Anna said. “My thoughts wandered.” She looked back up at the gelding, who whuffed. Riding Farinelli couldn’t be too much worse than riding old Barney had been, and she’d managed Barney bareback. Then, she’d been a lot younger, and her grandfather had been more than a little upset.