The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Eladdrin nods. “What about the river?”

  “How could you tell? It’s running water. Your darksingers didn’t feel a thing.” Ghurey pauses, then asks, “Can you say when we be heading out?”

  “Not long. Not long.” The Songmaster smiles, briefly. “Thank you.”

  “Sorry we found nothing.”

  “You did what you could.”

  “Thank you, ser.” The lancer bows, turns, and makes his way through the dim structure toward the heat beyond.

  After the other leaves, Eladdrin turns to the small mirror. basin he has set up in the corner, and after doing the necessary, studies the image in the waters again, but the shimmering waters only show the road up from the ford at Sorprat and the river bluffs that have not changed in years, only brown grasses and empty spaces to the east, only a farming valley to the west.

  The Songmaster shakes his head again.

  79

  Anna shifted on the stool as Garreth worked on the sketch.

  “Most sorcerers or sorceresses would not wish their likeness to be taken,” said the young woman, pausing to study Anna intently before dipping the fine-pointed stylus in the ink again.

  “I can see why.”

  “It’s so pleasant here,” Garreth said, glancing from Anna to the paper before her again.

  Anna nodded.

  “Virkan is even nice now.” Garreth paused. “Birke says that you bespelled him. Is that true?”

  “I put a spell on him that told him to be kind to people.”

  “It be unfortunate you could not do that to more souls.”

  “That would not be a good idea. I only did it because Virkan was hurting people. Doing it still bothers me. I don’t like meddling with people.”

  Garreth shook her head minutely, but dipped the stylus again.

  Anna wondered if the young woman disapproved of Anna’s qualms or Virkan. The sorceress suspected that Garreth would like more than a few people bespelled, as if that kind of sorcery would solve anything. It was only another kind of force, and force always led to force.

  “How soon can you be finished?” Anna asked after a time.

  “It is almost done—a poor likeness, but you had stressed speed, lady.”

  Anna walked over and looked down at the board. She couldn’t help smiling as she saw the face Garreth had drawn—almost a young face, yet one with character, with features carrying the refined sharpness of experience, the character that never showed in the faces of those truly young—but a face that was too thin.

  She shook her head ruefully.

  “You do not like it? I should have taken—”

  “No. You did a good job. Especially for just two sessions. You can take more time on another one, but I need this one sooner rather than perfect.”

  “‘Sooner rather than perfect’?” Garreth laughed. “When you speak suchly, it is easy to tell that you are a stranger.”

  Thunk.

  With the rap on the door, Anna crossed the room and opened it.

  Cens stood outside. He bowed. “Lady Anna, the Prophet has requested your presence at a more formal dinner honoring Lord Dencer this evening. He has requested that you attire yourself appropriately.” As the page finished repeating the words, his face reddened.

  “Thank you, Cens. The words aren’t yours, and I know that. You may tell the Prophet or Menares that I will be there.” Anna smiled.

  Cens looked at the stones of the landing, then looked up. “Thank you, Lady Anna.”

  She waited until he had turned and started down before closing the heavy door. She felt like slamming the iron bolt closed or screaming. Instead, she walked to the window and looked out at the heat of midday. Beyond the walls of the liedburg, Falcor looked dusty, even more deserted. A pair of crows flapped across the sun-bleached sky away from the river.

  Dress appropriately indeed! That was nothing more than a request that she look more feminine, and a not-so-subtle power play.

  “You look displeased,” offered Garreth.

  “I’m not exactly overjoyed to be ordered into what I wear,” Anna said wryly as she turned.

  Garreth’s face went blank.

  “I know, Garreth. It seems small enough to you, when you worry about being cast aside, or worse. But it’s not as small as it seems. What would you feel if the lady Essan told you she did not like what you wore?”

  “Oh …”

  “Lord Behlem likes to control all those around him. That can’t be a secret, can it?” Anna forced a grin.

  Garreth gave a quick smile, then dipped the stylus in the ink again as Anna sat back on the stool.

  In time, the young artist set aside the stylus and corked her ink bottle. “That be what I can do this way.”

  Anna uncramped herself from her perch on the stool and stood, stretching. “Thank you.”

  Garreth eased the small drawing off her board and laid it gently on one of the few clear spaces on the bed. “This should dry for a time.”

  Anna studied the images again, amazed at how closely the woman resembled her, and yet how different the sorceress was from the singer she had been. Then she turned and fumbled in the belt wallet until she came up with a pair of silvers that she pressed into Garreth’s hand. “These aren’t enough, but I hope they help.”

  “Lady … I could not.”

  “Garreth, your work is worth that. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Save the silvers until you need them. I hope you don’t, but I doubt that either Lady Essan or I stand highly in the Prophet’s liking.”

  “He respects you, lady. All know that,” protested the artist.

  “Respect and liking are not the same.” Anna’s eyes flicked to the picture. “I like it.”

  “I be glad.”

  “Me, too. Now, I have to worry about appropriate attire.”

  “You could use a maid, lady.”

  “I probably could,” Anna answered, ignoring the implication, “but that’s something that will have to wait.”

  Garreth bowed.

  “I’ll put you first, if you still want it, when the time comes,” Anna added as the younger woman’s hand touched the door. “I’m not making too many long-range plans at the moment.”

  “Thank you, Lady Anna.” Garreth’s voice was warmer.

  After the girl left, Anna went back to the bed and studied the picture. The ink needed to dry a bit, but it would do. As she had requested, Garreth had drawn her sitting on a stone bench on the tower roof, with a sketchy view of Falcor behind. Now … if Anna’s planned sorcery worked …

  She glanced to the door, then to the two gowns hanging from the pegs in the corner. “Attire yourself appropriately!” Chauvinist pig!

  After a deep breath, she slipped out into the heat of the landing, and began to climb the stairs. When she reached the upper level, Anna knocked on the door. Synondra opened it fractionally, started to speak, then stopped as she recognized Anna. “She … was resting, Lady Anna, but I will see if she will take company.” The door shut, then reopened immediately.

  “Anna … come in, if you don’t mind a rumpled old lady. Synondra, go play for a bit.”

  Synondra looked at Anna and mouthed, “Not too long.”

  “I saw that, Synondra. I won’t keep Anna that long, but she be a stranger here. She will listen because I have not yet bored her to death.” Essan waved toward the door again.

  Synondra bowed. “I will be back before long, ladies.”

  “A stubborn woman she be,” groused Essan. “Stubborn.”

  Anna smiled. To deal with Lady Essan required stubbornness and then some, she suspected.

  As the door closed, the older woman looked at Anna. “What need ye?”

  “I’ve been summoned to a more formal dinner as sorceress and who knows what else because a Lord Dencer is here.”

  “Behlem cannot awe him with his own power.” Essan nodded. “Dencer lords Stromwer, and those are the southernmost holdings in Defalk. If need be, he could pledge to Ranuak, and tha
t would give the Ranuans a foothold west of the Ostfels.”

  “I have been requested to attire myself appropriately.” Anna slipped into the unoccupied chair.

  “What did you do to Behlem?” asked the older woman. “Pretty as you are, he only has you in his company when your power is vital, and Behlem has bedded every pretty skirt in the hall.”

  “He could not bed me,” said Anna ruefully, “except by great force.” And maybe not even then, I hope.

  “So … he does place his power above his bed,” cackled Essan. “At least, sometimes. He should listen to his counselor more often.” She shrugged. “If he did, he would be stronger still.”

  Anna wondered. Menares was playing a deeper game, but for whom she did not know, not yet. “I wore trousers to his last dinner.”

  “Ha! Sorceress girl … I would wager that he did not like. Like as to telling him you were equal to any man. No, he would not be pleased.” Essan laughed again. “Anna, I like you. A woman such as you could rule Defalk, and far better than those dunces, save perhaps Jecks, and he is wise enough to know he cannot hold Defalk by mere skill at arms.”

  Anna just looked at the wrinkled countenance.

  “Some device you might need, but,” Essan shrugged, “you could do it. And if ever you have the chance, woman, you take it, or the harmonies and I will haunt you eternally.”

  “I doubt I’ll ever have a chance like that.”

  “You being here says the times are changing and the tunes are new.” Essan refilled her goblet with the strongsmelling brandy. “You use your skills to see your children?”

  “It was hard. I may not be able to do it many times.” Anna nodded. “Yet … I worry.”

  “A mother you be not, if there is no worry. They will endure, though, without you, and if they could not, you could not save them, like as we would that it were other.”

  Anna still worried.

  “An’ ye still worry. That be always the lot of us who bear. Not that worry helps.” Essan took a deep swallow from the goblet. “Not that it helps, sorceress woman, not that I need tell you.”

  The sorceress agreed there.

  “Ye be here now, and here be where ye must stand. Poor Barjim. Always was he wishing it were otherwise. Otherwise it is never, and we must live the melody played. Even you, sorceress. Even you.” Essan fell silent.

  “The melody played …” mused Anna, in the silence that followed.

  The door creaked, and Synondra peered in. “Lady Essan … you needs must rest.”

  “Rest? Rest be all I have left.” She winked at the sorceress, then added. “Visit an old woman again.”

  “I will,” Anna promised as she stood. “I will.”

  As the sorceress walked back down to her own room, she felt the tower shudder, as if the ground beneath were a string vibrating in sympathy with a massive chord plucked from the depths of Erde. Sweat beaded instantly on her forehead, and her hand went out to the stones of the wall. The wall was warm and firm.

  She paused on the stone steps for a moment, but all was hot and still, without a trace of motion. Had she imagined the tremor?

  She shook her head. She had felt something, even if she couldn’t identify it.

  80

  Anna set down the pen and capped the ink bottle, laying the sheet aside to dry. As the note lay on the table, she read the note once more, her eyes skipping across the words.

  Elizabetta—

  This will not seem believable, and I do not know how else to reach you—magic here works through song, but it is strange … .

  I can send this, but I cannot send myself. Sometimes, I can watch you, in a sort of magic mirror—like the time you sat on the deck of the New Hampshire house and told your father—I think—that I wouldn’t willingly leave you. I wouldn’t, and I didn’t. I was summoned by a sorceress … and now I am stuck here. So far, I have found no way to return … .

  I love you and Mario, and I miss you both terribly, and I do not know if this is the right thing to do. I do not know if I can ever figure a way back from here, and it is a terribly savage place in many ways. Yet I can’t just let you think that I left you willingly. I don’t know if this will reach you, but I must try.

  For whatever reason, I cannot seem to see Mario. My “magic window” does not show everything I wish, and I may not be able to do this much longer. Please tell him that I am well, and that I love him, as I love you.

  I leave it to you whether you tell your father. I worry that if you do tell him he will accuse you of being irrational and making it all up because you could not face my disappearance, but you must do what you think is best for you … .

  If this letter does reach you, and if I can see it … I will try again, but if I do not, it will be because I cannot, not because I have not tried.

  Once she was certain the ink was dry, Anna folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope, along with the gold and silver coins, her watch, and the small drawing of her on the tower.

  Then she took out the lutar, and began to sing the mirror song.

  All that appeared in the mirror was a towel on the lake beach, and the mirror frame began to smolder. Anna closed off the spell hastily, and sank onto her bed.

  She sighed. She hoped Elizabetta was swimming, or water-skiing, or whatever, although she had the sense that it should be fall in New England, or close to it. For whatever reason, the spells did not show matters well around water, which Anna found abstractly amusing since she could use spells to purify and cool water.

  She slipped the envelope under her pillow. While there was really no place in her room safe from search, she didn’t want to leave it out in plain sight, either.

  She paused to look out the window. To the west rose a high plume of dust, whipped higher by the late summer—or was it early fall?—winds. No, Falcor certainly wasn’t in Iowa—or Kansas.

  Her cool-air shield/spell protected her room, but she could hear the whistling of the rising winds, and see dust and small pieces of wood swirling through the courtyard below.

  She watched for a few moments as the dust turned the late-afternoon sun red, nearly blood-red. Then her eyes went back to the gowns in the corner. Two, and once she had had dozens. Yet the dozens had not brought her control of her own life.

  She shrugged. Neither had the two, and she needed to eat. She hated having to eat all the time, even more than she’d hated never being able to eat without gaining pounds.

  Why was life like that—always on the extremes?

  81

  WEI, NORDWEI

  The dark-haired woman stands at the window to the north, its shutters drawn back despite the chill of early fall, and looks down from her hillside vantage point at the swirling brown, debris-filled water that surges into Vereisen Bay and has flooded the dock district and the warehouses.

  At a discreet cough, she turns.

  “Honored Ashtaar? You requested my presence?” asks the heavyset Kendr.

  “I did. Please come here.”

  “As you wish, your mightiness.” The seer with the plaited muddy-brown hair waddles forward on thick legs.

  Ashtaar opens her mouth, then closes it, and waits for Kendr to reach the window.

  “This wasn’t normal.” Ashtaar gestures through the open window to the expanse of water that covers the lower sections of Wei. “I sent you a message.”

  “Yes, honored Ashtaar. I received it.”

  The spymistress gestures to the armless chair that sits on the far side of the high table she uses as a desk. “Sit down.” She closes the shutters before seating herself.

  Kendr waits.

  “Did you find out how it happened?”

  “It was the Evult, I think,” offers the seer. “The ice is gone from the peaks above the headwaters of the River Ost.”

  Ashtaar’s fingers slip around the polished finish of the dark agate oval. “How did this happen without a warning?”

  “The sorceress from the mist worlds.”

  The spy
mistress shakes her head. “What does that have to do with the Evult?”

  “The sorceress is powerful, and many of her spells shake the harmonies, even the earth deep beneath. She has done something to the Chean River, I think, but I cannot see what that might be.”

  “The Evult?” prompts Ashtaar.

  “We cannot trace every great sorcery … not and obey the duties the Council has laid upon us.”

  “Why not?”

  Kendr pales and her mouth moves silently. Finally, she stutters, “I … none … of us … is that strong.”

  “Do we need more seers?”

  “We have needed more seers for seasons, your mightiness.”

  “I know. I know.” Ashtaar waves away the comment. “You say you are not strong enough. How does this excuse your failure to discover that the Evult was planning mischief?”

  “The blonde sorceress had sung many spells—she was trying to see the mist worlds, we think—and when another blow to the harmonies rang through the waters, I had no strength …”

  “And you thought, foolish seer, that it was the blonde sorceress again?”

  “Yes, Ashtaar.” Kendr looks to the floor.

  “Then, you feared to tell me?”

  Kendr does not answer.

  Ashtaar’s fingers tighten around the black agate oval, and her lips clamp together. She stares at the seer, but the heavyset woman does not lift her eyes to the spymistress.

  “Kendr?”

  “Yes, your mightiness?”

  “We all get tired. We all can make mistakes when overtired. If you ever let your fear of one failure lead you to make another or fail to tell me in a timely fashion, you will indeed learn that I am ‘your mightiness.’ Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, honored Ashtaar.”

  The spymistress looks toward the door, her fingers still tight around the black agate oval.

  Kendr backs out of the room.

  82

  After struggling through yet another medieval-style sponge bath, where she wondered once more about using sorcery to create a bathroom, Anna studied herself in the mirror. In addition to the youthfully idealized mature face, still too thin, she also had little body hair, except in the more obvious places, and what she had was fine and so blonde it was almost transparent. She’d originally thought that might have been a temporary result of the youth spell, but only the hair on her head grew.