The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “He does a good job on fortifications,” pointed out the older man.

  “Only if he’s paid, Gelen. Only if he’s paid, and you know how little silver we have left. With the drought, the fall harvest won’t bring much, and even those bitchy usurers in Encora won’t lend me anything else.”

  “So … abdicate. Turn Defalk over to Behlem and his prophecies of music. Or petition the Traders’ Council of Nordwei to make Defalk a protectorate of Nordwei.” Gelen’s voice is ironic.

  “I can’t do that.” Barjim picked up the goblet once more, turning it in his fingers. “Behlem would have my hide—and have Jimbob turned into a castrato and sold to the Sea-Priests. The Norweians would just put me in command of the forces against Behlem—or the dark ones.”

  “Have you asked Alasia?” asks the gray-haired man.

  “I don’t have to ask her, Gelen. I certainly don’t. She tells me, and how can I not listen? Her father has no other direct heirs, but the holding would go to Ensil like that”—Barjim snaps his fingers—“if he thought I’d as much as indirectly criticized her.”

  “She is not stupid,” Gelen says levelly.

  “No. She’s brighter than I am, and all of Defalk knows it. Oh … what does she say? She says about what I just said, because I listen, because I’m smart enough to know that she makes sense.” The Lord of Defalk looks at the pitcher beyond the goblet and shakes his head. “Everyone needs an excuse—even me.”

  Then he stands. “Except I’ve got to live with myself.”

  14

  “Everything here is yours to use, or you may ride back to the hall. Make sure either Wiltur or Frideric accompanies you. All I ask is that you do not disturb me when the door to my workroom is closed.” With that, Brill had bowed and left her.

  The workroom was clean enough, and spacious, nearly the size of her bedchamber in Brill’s hall, with a window that viewed the distant hills—or mountains—to the east.

  On the stone table were a goblet, a pitcher of cool water and more of the dried apple slices and bread. Both a crude pencil and a quill pen and inkstand rested on the table beside a stack of light brown paper. The key-harp on the corner of the table was something like a miniature piano, except the volume was so low that it was clearly useless except as a composing or learning aid.

  Anna pulled out the chair and sat at the table. Was she just supposed to practice? What? Spells she didn’t know? Or was she supposed to create spells?

  As she’d told Daffyd, she wasn’t a composer. She was a singer.

  She filled the goblet half-full and took a deep swallow, then another. Her fingers strayed toward the bread, and she pulled them away.

  She touched one of the hand-harp’s black keys, and winced. Either the instrument hadn’t been used in years or Erde used a strange scale, and that didn’t seem possible. The music played the day before had been a simple polyphony, functional, but not out of tune. She looked at the tuning pegs, almost like levers.

  Her hand crept toward the bread again, and she pursed her lips. Eating because she was worried and stressed—one of her worst habits, and one reason why she was a size twelve instead of the eight she’d been four years ago. She shook her head and picked up the pencil, absently creating a series of fat-lined, interlinked loops on the top sheet of the brown paper.

  Anna tried to recall the general rules Brill had given—grudgingly—at breakfast. Sorcery didn’t work on the singer—except indirectly; if you caused something to explode you could get killed by the fragments. Spells worked best on ordered or semi-ordered nonliving materials. Spells had to have rhyme and what amounted to meter. Songspells worked best with solid accompaniment, and the more complex and involved spells didn’t work at all without that kind of support.

  Great! She put down the pencil, pushed back the chair, stood, and walked toward the door. Then she stopped. What would she do? Ride back to the hall and stew? Complain to the two guards? Or to the ever-attending Florenda? And about what? Being fed, clothed, treated like a lady? She wouldn’t even get sympathy.

  With a deep breath, she turned to the bookcase. Maybe the books would help. The handful of books in the case were leatherbound—hand-bound, she was certain. She scanned the titles—Boke of Liedwahr, The Naturale Philosophie, Proverbes of Neserea, Donnermusik. She pulled out Donnermusik, and opened it to the first page. Her eyes blinked.

  While what she spoke seemed close to what Brill and the others spoke, the words on the page before her seemed like a cross between seventeenth-century English and German—or maybe the way English would have been without the Norman invasion.

  Musik is the mathematik of sound … and sound the manifestation in Erde itself of the structure of musik that doth support all that be and all that be within Erde … .

  She struggled on for a page or so before she realized that the book wasn’t just about music, but a treatise on the musical theory behind storms. From what she could piece together, the writer was discussing how the harmonics of a storm were music-driven. She flipped through more pages, stopping occasionally and reading paragraphs.

  As lightning beginneth with a long note value, so must the music which calleth it forth … .

  Harmonic variants be most important as a musical consideration, for they must in truthe effect a change of musical resemblement though the constant repetition, with most suitable variants, of the bass pattern … through trommel … .

  The relationship between the thunder, and that needs must be represented by the falk horn, supplemented by a continuous bass provided by a trommel, and the lightning … must be joined by a melodic line of the violincello … .

  Anna frowned. The last phrase sounded like a sorcerer needed an entire symphony to deal with storms and weather, but Brill had been uneasy in talking about the weather, and he had certainly implied that the dark ones were the only sorcerers who did—and that they used massed voices because a single voice didn’t have enough power.

  She looked at the book again. The writer certainly seemed to think that instruments could support weather spells. But the writer was hinting at something that amounted to harmony, and nothing Brill had shown her had demonstrated anything that was effectively complete harmony. She shook her head, and began to leaf through the pages again, but so far as she could see, the slim volume held no words for spells, and nothing resembling music, not even the flaglike medieval tablature she vaguely remembered from her graduate days.

  She closed the book and walked back to the window. The roads were empty, and the sun was higher, and hotter, no doubt. After a time, she turned and reseated herself at the desk-table.

  Part of the problem was the songs. She’d never realized how many dealt with love, and feelings. She needed a song that dealt with solid objects, or weapons, or something.

  Her mind was blank. With all the songs she’d learned over the years … Her mind was blank … not blank of songs. There was the jewel song, and all the arias from Bohème, and Barber, Don Giovanni, and even Lakmé. Delibes had some violence in Lakmé … . Were there some sections that could be used? She murmured the words, not singing them until she reached the section she sought.

  “Que le ciel me protège

  Me guide par la main

  Chasse le sacrilège

  Au loin de mon chemin!”

  “Sacrilège” wasn’t it. Could she use “les ennemis”?— that was a near rhyme even in French. But … the words wouldn’t do much except in a battle, and she didn’t expect to see one. At least, she certainly hoped she wouldn’t. Still, she wrote down the words, with the change, and the rough notes of the melody line. Would they be enough? She couldn’t write the whole score, and even if she could, could anyone read it? She hadn’t seen any written music. Was there any?

  She rubbed her forehead and took a swallow from the goblet, turning it in her hand. Why did she have so many questions? In novels, heroines or heroes just did things, but what was she supposed to do?

  She looked back at the key-harp. She might as wel
l tune it, even if it were only good for composing or learning. A piano would have been better. Why an underpowered harp?

  Then she nodded, almost ashamed at her slowness. If the strength of spells were determined by the combination of music and voice, and if most spells took twelve players or more, a sorcerer or sorceress had to be limited by what he or she could develop and teach. That meant that there couldn’t be that many sorcerers, not when it took talent, trained skill, the ability to read both language and music, and write both in a semi-literate culture.

  With a piano … or something like it … She shook her head. A good pianist and singer—or even a good guitarist and singer—would be the equivalent of … what? A guided missile, atomic weapons? She didn’t know … and she didn’t have a piano, or a clavier or a harpsichord.

  She strummed the strings, then counted—twenty-four—three octaves. It sounded almost like equal-tempered tuning, but not quite. Perhaps an early form, without the minute adjustments that made the system work smoothly? She hoped so as she reached for the tuning levers.

  After getting the key-harp in what she hoped was a rough tune, a very rough tuning, Anna looked at the short stack of paper and rubbed her forehead. Surely, surely … Surely she could come up with something.

  What about repeating her cool-water experiment, if only to prove she still had the talent? She had left the envelope with the last words in the green handbag. Shaking her head, she began to write with the greasy pencil, since she hadn’t even brought her one working spell with her. Some sorceress.

  The words were as awful as ever, but she scratched out “cold” and replaced it with “cool.” Then she ran through the vocalises quickly. Should she use the key-harp?

  She turned the chair and picked the harp up, resting it on her leg, and trying to duplicate the melody. She stopped after a dozen notes. Even using a one-note-at-a-time melody was laborious with the unfamiliar instrument. She set the harp back on the table. Maybe later.

  After clearing her throat again, she sang the words again, emphasizing “cool” and thinking about ice water.

  Surprisingly, the goblet didn’t split, but frost rimmed both goblet and pitcher, and the water was cool indeed, and a pair of ice cubes bobbed in the pitcher.

  Anna grinned, but the grin faded quickly. So she could chill water. That wasn’t going to do much of anything, let alone get her back to Ames and Elizabetta. With a deep breath she looked at the paper again.

  Love songs … . Why did almost every song she knew deal with love or something like it?

  Her eyes drifted to the road below the hill, and the single rider who headed up toward the hall, a rider wearing a sleeveless purple surcoat.

  There had to be some songs she could change … didn’t there? To what … for what? She shook her head angrily. No one was telling her anything, and she didn’t know enough to know what to ask.

  Could she do something with the candle-lighting spell? She wrote down the words and looked at the paper. After glancing around the room, finally wadding up a sheet of paper and setting it on the floor. She hummed through the tune and tried her improvisation.

  “Paper white, paper bright,

  flame clear in my sight.”

  The single sheet of paper went up in an instantaneous blaze.

  Anna wiped her forehead. Would it work with other items? She wrote out a set of lines to the same rhyme scheme, but pondered … . If every word were critical, what about armsmen? Would such a spell work on them? She took a deep breath, and penciled in another thought.

  She snorted. Great! She could turn paper into fire, and maybe an armsman or two, if she had time to sing, if she had some accompaniment.

  Her eyes went to the window once more, toward the clear hot day outside. Finally, she took another swallow from the goblet and reached for the Boke of Liedwahr. Maybe that would help with ideas … or something.

  15

  With the rap on the workroom door, Anna glanced up. “Would you care to accompany me back to the hall for the midday meal?” asked Brill.

  Anna looked at the half loaf of bread and the empty platter that had held apple slices. She was still hungry. How could she be? “Yes. Unfortunately. I seem to be hungry all the time.”

  “Magic is hard work,” Brill offered. “There are few weighty sorcerers.”

  That might be so, but Anna hadn’t been doing that much sorcery. She was still trying to figure out the basis for a few verses or adapt a few songs that might possibly be converted to the magic of Liedwahr—she hoped. She’d figured out a way to cool water—safely—and burn paper. Neither was particularly inspiring. “I haven’t been working that hard.”

  Brill glanced at the dark spot on the stone floor.

  Anna flushed. “I burned some paper. The spell worked.”

  “Why paper? Paper is hard to come by, lady.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that.”

  “There are a number of objects and materials in the closet,” Brill inclined his head toward the closet door Anna could not see.

  Anna donned the floppy hat, following the sorcerer out to the horses—and the two guards—who waited outside in the shade offered under what amounted to a portico. Gero stood behind the guards, eyes downcast.

  “Is all well?” asked the sorcerer.

  “We’d not be seeing anything strange,” offered Wiltur, the older guard, one hand still on the blade at his waist. “’Cepting a messenger.”

  “Messengers do not bode well,” Brill said lightly, “but we all know that.” He laughed gently.

  Anna smiled briefly at the two men, then untied Farinelli, and climbed into the saddle, trying to ignore the blazing sun and dust as she rode beside Brill and toward the hall. Gero and the guards followed.

  “To the northeast there,” said the sorcerer with a gesture to the hills that hugged the eastern horizon, “lies Lake Aulta. Vult is the home of the dark ones, and it lies some thirty leagues north of the lake through the mountains.”

  Anna concealed a frown. Why were the dark ones attacking some thirty leagues to the south? Or were the distant mountains so impassible that they made direct travel difficult? She smiled to herself ruefully, thinking about horses and foot soldiers crossing the Rockies—or the Appalachians. Cumberland Gap had been the gateway to Tennessee, and that had been less than two hundred years earlier. But it was still hard to believe she was stranded in a place where such considerations were necessary. “I take it the mountains are impassable for an army?”

  “For a large force,” Brill conceded. “And clearsong sorcery does not work that well there, except where there are no trees.”

  Anna rubbed her nose, to try to keep from sneezing, then shifted her weight in the saddle.

  Farinelli whuffed, and she patted his shoulder. “Easy there … good boy.”

  That got her a snort.

  Even the chickens were silent in the midday heat as she reined up before the stables, and by the time Anna had walked from the hall stables, she felt like a morning glory subjected to the South Dakota badlands in August. She shivered, recalling the time Avery had dragged them all camping and Elizabetta had come down with roseola in the middle of nowhere.

  The cool of the hall was welcome, and she stopped for a moment in relief, pulling off the floppy hat.

  Brill bowed and said, “I will meet you in the salon, Lady Anna, shortly.”

  Anna started up the stairs, followed by the ever-present Florenda. Anna pursed her lips. She hated being followed. That was one thing that Mario had done as a preschooler that had driven her crazy. She’d cross the family room, and he’d follow. Then Avery had used the same tactic, as things were falling apart, following her from room to room, except he’d kept saying, “We just have to look at this logically. You’re feeling, Anna, and you need to think about it.”

  At the top of the steps, Anna turned to the serving girl. “Florenda?”

  “Yes, lady.”

  “Are you to do my bidding?”

  “Yes,
my lady.”

  “Good. Follow me.” Anna marched to her bedchamber and into the robing room.

  Florenda tagged along. “You wish some help in robing?”

  “No. I need some more clothes. In this whole place there are two pairs of trousers that fit, and two shirts, and not much more in the way of gowns and drawers.”

  “Drawers?”

  “Underclothes, smallclothes, the stuff you wear under your trousers or dresses.”

  “Yes, lady?”

  Anna turned and glared. “I don’t need help. I don’t need you following me around. What I do need is more clothes. I’d appreciate you taking care of that, rather than following me around.”

  The girl swallowed. “But Serna … and Lord Brill …”

  “Tell Serna I’ve told you what I need. If she has a problem with that … then she can talk to me.” Anna smiled. “And you can also tell Serna that I will be very displeased if I find out that she is even thinking about punishing you for carrying out my wishes.”

  Florenda swallowed.

  “And I will punish her if you are replaced.”

  That got a tentative smile, tinged with hidden amusement. Anna wanted to sigh, hoping she’d covered all the possibilities. “Now … get on with finding me some clothes. You can still wake me in the morning or announce meals, and you can check with me when I come back to the hall—but otherwise, get me some clothes that fit.”

  “Yes, Lady Anna.” Florenda remained standing in the middle of the robing room.

  Anna pointed to the dusty outfit she had worn before. “Take that and go. Now.”

  Florenda backed out. When the door closed, Anna took a deep breath. “I hope it works.”