The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  As she rode around the gentle curve, she could see scattered trees lining what might be a river off to the right, but the road curved back and continued south and parallel to the river toward the scattered dwellings that marked the outskirts of greater Synope.

  “Is that a river?” Anna pointed.

  “The Synor River. It never was very big, and it’s smaller now. Even with the dam, there’s barely enough water for the mills.” Daffyd fell silent.

  “What will your sister say about your showing up with a complete stranger?”

  “Every time I come, she says I should come more often. She doesn’t mind if I bring friends.” Daffyd smiled. “After all, I am her little brother.”

  That didn’t exactly reassure Anna. “Where does she live?”

  “On the east side, but not so far east as the hills where the mills are.”

  Anna glanced to the east and the low hills beyond Synope. The Ostfels were no longer visible on the eastern horizon and had not been since well before midday, which meant that Synope was farther from the mountains than Mencha was.

  “Does she have children … a husband, consort?”

  “She and Madell have a daughter. Ruetha is three, I think.”

  “What do they do? She’s not a player, is she?”

  “No. Madell’s father is a miller, but there hasn’t been that much milling lately.”

  They passed a small cot on the left side of the road. The door hung open, and one of the shutters lay on the ground beneath the window. The next cot had neither windows nor doors.

  Farinelli tossed his head and took a side-step.

  “I know. You’re a hungry and thirsty boy.” She patted the gelding’s shoulder, looking ahead to where a wagon stood outside a building. A youth carried a bench from the building to the wagon.

  “That used to be the woodworker’s place, but I never met him,” explained Daffyd.

  “How long has it been since you were here?”

  “Two years, I’d guess,” Daffyd admitted.

  The woodworker’s apprentice looked up at the two riders and their de facto packhorses. His eyes crossed Anna’s, and he took a long look before flushing and looking away. Then he scurried back into the shop.

  Anna pursed her lips, then moistened them. What had that all been about? Certainly, the young man had seen women before, even women on horseback. From what she’d seen in Erde so far, all women who rode wore trousers—none of the sidesaddle idiocy spawned by the English.

  Synope had a central square—of sorts—with a mélange of shops clustered around a dusty red stone platform standing in the middle of an intersection of an east-west road and the north-south road that had carried Anna and Daffyd into the town.

  Yuril’s proclaimed a faded green sign bearing two crossed candles. Under the sign was a shop with narrow and grimy windows. Beside Yuril’s was a larger building, from which projected a white-painted sign bearing only line-drawing outlines of a mug and a bowl.

  “The Cup and Bowl,” offered Daffyd. “Could be the worst food in Defalk, maybe in all Liedwahr.”

  A heavyset woman in frayed brown trousers and an overlarge tunic that had grayed from too many washings dragged her daughter away from the horses. Her eyes went to Anna, and then away, and she pulled the girl under the narrow porch beneath the sign for Yuril’s.

  Anna tried not to frown. She knew she was dirty, dusty, and probably had circles under her eyes that reached to her jaw, but when people looked at her and then ran, it wasn’t exactly encouraging.

  “That way.” Daffyd pointed to the left.

  Anna urged Farinelli around the red stone platform and its chipped sandstone balustrade that looked like a town bandstand without a roof. She couldn’t imagine a bandstand in Defalk, though.

  Two armsmen in soiled light-green tunics, trimmed with purple, stood in front of another shop—this one with a barrel displayed over the door. Neither looked away. Both stared at Anna. She ignored the pair, but could feel their eyes on her back until she and Daffyd were at least another hundred yards from the center of Synope.

  The few shops gave way to houses, almost all of one story, and most were finished on the outside with a plaster or stucco. Some were gray, others painted, but the paint on all had faded.

  “There it is,” said Daffyd, turning the mare down a short lane off the main thoroughfare—if a dirt strip ten yards wide constituted a main thoroughfare.

  The house to which the young player pointed was similar in shape to that of Jenny, the travel-sorceress in Mencha, if somewhat longer. The red dust had stained the outside white stucco or plaster walls a faint pink, and two weathered wooden benches stood on the warped planks that formed a porch under the overhanging eaves. The front door was closed against the late-afternoon heat, as were the four shutters, two on each side of the door.

  The wood had once been painted a bright blue, but the paint had faded and peeled, giving the house a faintly disreputable look. Behind the house was a long shed, with an overhanging roof and one side without doors, showing six stalls. Five were empty.

  “Are you sure your sister won’t mind?” Anna asked again.

  “She’s always saying that I should come more often.”

  “But I’m an outsider.”

  “You’ve saved my life. That counts for something.”

  “When did I do that?”

  “When you talked to Lord Brill, and when you killed all those darksingers and Ebrans. Otherwise none of us would have lived. And you stopped the bandits.” The violist grinned briefly. “Three times ought to merit some hospitality.”

  Anna shook her head.

  Daffyd tied the mare and his packhorse to one of the two stone hitching posts, and Anna used the other.

  “Young Daffyd.” An angular and wiry man stepped out onto the narrow porch. “Your sister will be pleased to see you.” He looked at Anna.

  “Madell, this is the Lady Anna.”

  Madell bowed deeply, without looking Anna in the eye. “Lady …” He was barely taller than the sorceress. Despite the superficial respect, Anna distrusted Dalila’s consort, mate, whatever he was. He reeked of trouble.

  “Daffyd!” Dalila was pert, if stocky, and short, barely above Anna’s shoulder, and very pregnant. And she bounced off the porch and hugged her brother.

  A dark-eyed, dark-haired girl peered from the doorway.

  Daffyd hugged his sister carefully, then disengaged himself. “Dalila, this is the Lady Anna. She’s a sorceress. Fortunately, for you, and especially for me, she’s managed to save my life several times.”

  “Then we do indeed owe her. You’ve always needed a saving.” Dalila turned to Anna, and her eyes twinkled, as she gave a head bow. “You are most welcome to what we have, lady. It isn’t much, and certainly not fit for—”

  “This is a palace,” Anna said. “We’ve slept in the rocks, and before that in a tiny room with lots of people in a fort.”

  “But shouldn’t you be paying your respects to Lord Hryding?” The small brunette held out a hand, and the girl scurried across the porch and grasped it. “This is Ruetha.”

  “I don’t even know who Lord Hryding is,” Anna admitted. She smiled at the girl. “Hello, Ruetha.”

  The three-year-old buried her face in her mother’s trousers.

  “Lady Anna is from the mist worlds,” Daffyd explained, “and she hasn’t been here very long.”

  “The mist worlds, fancy that,” murmured Madell, openly disbelieving.

  “I summoned her,” Daffyd retorted. “Me and Jenny, anyway.”

  “Then she should surely see Lord Hryding,” said Dalila, stroking Ruetha’s dark brown hair.

  “She cannot do that now,” said Madell. “I know it for a fact that Lord Hryding is on his way back from Sudwei and will not be in his hall for at least two more days.”

  “And how might you know that?” asked Daffyd.

  “His saalmeister came to tell us that he would be bringing back Ranuan grain in his wagons for
us to mill.”

  Anna frowned. Wasn’t flour easier to transport than grain?

  “You see,” Madell expounded, “if we mix the hard winter grain of Synope with the soft grain of Ranuak, then the flour doesn’t spoil as quickly.”

  “And it doesn’t taste so bitter,” added Dalila.

  “Right now, I’d rather not deal with another lord,” Anna admitted.

  Dalila studied Anna for a moment, then smiled again, warmly. “I can be seeing that. Well … you’re welcome. You’re certainly welcome. It must have been a hard trip.”

  Anna nodded. So did Daffyd, but not, she thought, for exactly the same reasons.

  “There are bandits along the back roads, especially now, and you were carrying some fair-looking goods and horses. Did you see any?” asked Madell speculatively.

  “One group,” Anna said. “We managed to leave them behind.”

  Daffyd swallowed slightly and started to open his mouth. Anna looked at him, and he closed it. The less Madell knew about her abilities, the better.

  “There are matters you’re not talking about, but those are yours.” Dalila smiled.

  “There’s a lot we’re not talking about,” Anna admitted. Including the coins and the weapons in our packs. “We were in the middle of a battle with the dark ones … .”

  “Aye, and the words come to Synope even.” Dalila turned to her brother. “The Prophet of Neserea has sent his forces to Falcor, and he is now traveling after them. Sasia was saying so at Yuril’s this morning.”

  “That’s all Defalk needs,” snapped Madell. “Another ruler to bleed us all dry.”

  “Do you think Lord Barjim was that type?” asked Anna.

  “He was better than most,” grudged Madell, “and look what happened to him.”

  “There is that,” Anna agreed.

  “Well … we’re talking, and your legs are most likely to be falling off, and you’d need to rub down your mounts and wash up, and then we’d be pleased to eat.” Dalila offered another warm smile.

  “Thank you,” Anna said. “I do appreciate it.”

  “You can have the one spare room. Reneil, she had it, but it’s been two years now, and I’d be guessing she’ll not be back. Afore long, it’ll be Ruetha’s, not that it’s large.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Anna.

  “After saving Daffy’s miserable neck, you deserve that and more.” The pert brunette gestured. “You be doing what you need, and I be getting back to the cooking.”

  Madell followed them out to the shed-stable. “Best four are the stalls in the middle. Good mounts you got there.”

  “Lord Brill’s finest,” Daffyd said ironically as he began to unsaddle the mare. “It was …” He broke off. “I’ll tell you all at dinner.”

  Anna swallowed. Of course. There were no telephones. No one knew that Daffyd’s and Dalila’s father had died. She went to work on Farinelli, more slowly.

  “Fine beast there,” observed Madell from the stall wall.

  “He was a raider horse, I was told. He likes women, but not men.”

  Farinelli punctuated her words with a whuffling snort.

  After she had him settled, she started on the pack mare, thinner and less well fed than the gelding.

  “Most people wouldn’t travel just in a pair these days,” said Madell, eyeing her from the back of the mare’s stall.

  “We didn’t have much choice or much time to pick up traveling companions with all the Ebran soldiers pouring through the Sand Pass.” She was sweating in the close confines of the stall, and had to wipe the salty dampness out of the corners of her eyes.

  Somehow, despite her tiredness, the saddle was easier to handle. Even the heavy saddlebags seemed lighter. Was she getting back into some semblance of shape? When she was finished with the horses, she lifted the saddlebags, putting a pair over each shoulder and struggling along with the last set in her arms, following Daffyd back to the house.

  “Strong woman, you are,” said Madell.

  “I do what I have to.” Anna liked the man less and less, but, again, she wasn’t exactly in a position to be choosy. She had the feeling that if she went to the local inn, as a single woman alone, things would be even worse. Damn! Why were there so many like Madell?

  “Here.” Madell gestured to the door to the small room.

  “Thank you.” Anna stepped inside and lowered the saddlebags to the floor beside the narrow pallet bed. The single window was shuttered.

  “I’ll be leaving you to wash up.” The wiry man smiled.

  Anna nodded.

  As the door closed, she laid the hat on the peg nearest the door and walked to the narrow dresser where the washing bowl and the pitcher stood. On the wall over the dresser was a mirror. Anna wasn’t sure whether she should even look, given the way she still felt, and the way so many of the people in Synope had looked at her.

  Finally, she stepped up to the mirror.

  A stranger looked back at her—a stranger with blonde hair, not dyed with streaks of white and auburn showing, but silvery blonde all the way to the roots; a stranger with firm cheeks and a chin without any signs of aging; a stranger with no wrinkles, either in the forehead or around her eyes. A stranger with a thinner face than she remembered ever having.

  The stranger looked sunburned, exhausted, and filthy, but the stranger was young, probably in her mid-to-late twenties. Anna shook her head, and the stranger shook hers.

  “No … no …” Yes … . You’ve paid for it … . But had she, really? Really?

  She put her head in her hands.

  44

  Anna tried to half lift, half shrug the damp shirt away from her sweaty body without being too obvious, then slipped into the end seat on the bench beside Daffyd. Madell sat at the single chair, at the head of the table and to Anna’s right. Dalila sat across from Anna, with Ruetha by her side and across from Daffyd.

  The sorceress smiled at the dark-haired little girl, but Ruetha leaned over and hid her head behind her mother’s arm.

  A tantalizing aroma of spices and hot meat circled up and out from the large earthenware crock in the middle of the trestle table, but everyone sat quietly.

  Anna waited. Something was going to happen.

  “In the name of harmony, let this food pass our lips.” Madell nodded as he finished, and Dalila offered the basket that held a warm loaf of dark bread to Anna.

  “Thank you.” Anna broke off the end chunk and then offered the bread to Daffyd. She still felt hot, even without wearing the overtunic.

  Madell frowned ever so slightly, but smiled when Anna turned and presented him with the basket.

  “There’s the cider in the pitcher, Lady Anna,” said Madell, a slight emphasis on the word “lady.”

  Anna half filled her earthenware mug, then sipped the slightly fizzy amber liquid. It was cider, relatively hard cider. “Good.”

  Dalila smiled, then added, “And the stew in the big crock is my special.”

  “It is good,” Daffyd added.

  Madell ladled out some for Anna, Dalila, and Daffyd. before filling his own crockery platter.

  “There was something you were to tell us,” prompted Dalila. “I do not think it was good, but I would hear it.”

  “It’s about Da,” Daffyd began slowly. “The gray mare was his, a gift from Lord Brill.”

  “He’s dead.” Dalila nodded to herself. “He’s dead.”

  Anna glanced from Dalila to Daffyd. They might have been talking about two different men, from their reactions.

  “Yes, he’s dead,” choked the young player. “Is that all ye have to say? He’s dead. Is that all?”

  “Daffyd … I know you loved Da …” Dalila spread her hands, then put her arm around her daughter. “Be gentle. Ruetha would not understand.”

  Daffyd shook his head. “I thought you would be sad.”

  Dalila handed a small piece of bread to Ruetha, who began to eat.

  Madell wore a cynical smile, and helped himself to ano
ther chunk of bread, then some of the stew.

  Anna took a small mouthful of the steaming stew, using the carved wooden spoon by her plate. The stew was more peppery than she would have liked, and there was a trace, but only a trace, of something like cilantro, not enough to spoil it for her. She took another mouthful, then stopped.

  “I am sad. I am sad for you, Daffyd. Da was good to you.” Dalila took a swallow of cider.

  “I never understood,” Daffyd said. “You said it was better when Mother … and you left as soon as you could … but … you never said.”

  “No. Mother asked me not to before she … left.”

  “Some family stories are best left untold, are they not, lady?” said Madell in a quiet voice, leaning his sandy haired head toward Anna.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not.” Anna edged ever so slightly along the bench toward Daffyd.

  “Da was good to me,” Daffyd said.

  “He was, and it’s best left that way. None of us be changing the past, now,” Dalila said firmly. Then she offered a soft smile and, with her free hand, reached across the table and touched Daffyd’s wrist. “You be remembering him as he was to you. No one can take that.”

  The emotional undercurrents tugged at Anna, and she finally looked back at Ruetha. This time, the girl didn’t hide, but looked solemnly back at the sorceress.

  “Ah … you were saying about the Prophet,” Madell finally interjected into the silence.

  “Sasia said that his armsmen had reached Falcor, and that he was claiming Defalk in order to stop the dark ones.”

  “What about young Jimbob? He didn’t die in the battle,” pointed out Madell. “He’s the heir.”

  “Sasia was sayin’ that the young lord was too untried to rule, and besides, his grandsire made off with him, and that meant the lords had abandoned the liedstadt.”

  Madell snorted and took a gulp of cider, large enough that Anna winced, then swallowed and turned to her. “Did you see how Lord Barjim died?”

  “The dark ones destroyed a tower around him with their thunderbolts,” replied Daffyd. “They sent thousands of armsmen, and archers—”

  “Could we be talking of something more pleasant, for now?” asked Dalila, pointedly glancing down at the wide-eyed Ruetha. “How do you find Defalk, Lady Anna?”