The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  She took a deep breath. If the Evult hadn’t known that Anna was headed into Ebra, then he certainly would by now. That was the bad news. The good news was that they were only a day or two from where she wanted to be.

  I hope it’s the good news, she thought as she wiped the mist off the lutar and slipped it back into its case. Her eyes stabbed, and her stomach churned.

  “I’ll need something to eat.” As if she weren’t always eating, always stuffing herself, and always on the brink of starvation and/or collapse.

  127

  VULT, EBRA

  The image in the pool reveals an empty mountain road, almost like a stone shelf cut from the rock of a sheer cliff, that connects two sections of older, time-worn highway.

  The hooded figure studies the image for a time, then shakes his head, barely moving the dark hood.

  The faintest glissando shimmers across the strings of the harp on the pedestal in the mirror pool, then fades as the Evult lifts the bell.

  Shortly, another figure in dark robes, unhooded, appears.

  “We seem to have underestimated the foolhardiness of the sorceress,” rasps the Evult.

  “I feel the harmonies ring. What has she done?” asks Yurelt.

  “Repaired the rift in the old highway to Elhi. I am about to summon her image again, and I wished you to be here so that you may ready your forces, Songmaster.” The older man laughs, then cuts off the laugh and begins to chant.

  In the pool at his feet the white mists swirl and then disclose a woman in oiled leathers and a worn, floppy-brimmed hat, riding through a light rain that leaves the clayand-rock roadway glistening, slick looking.

  Another chant, and the mirror pool reveals a view, as if seen by a bird..

  “There—she has already reached the upper ponds. Three more days, and she could enter Vult.” The Evult pauses. “But she will not have three days.”

  Yurelt waits.

  “She must descend the ramp road to at least the third river falls for her voice, powerful as it is, to reach even the outskirts of Vult. Her voice may surprise us yet. You will take no chances. Set your traps just above the first valley falls. Not even the harmonies could touch Vult from there. I will move to the third falls. Think upon how you may best trap them, and we will meet again after evening meal.”

  “Yes, Evult.” Yurelt bows.

  “In her haste, she has opened Defalk to us.” The Evult laughs again. “Even by next spring, no one will have risen to challenge us. The traders of Nordwei and the cowards of Ranuak will grasp a few bones from the corpse of Defalk, but by next harvest we will hold both Defalk and Neserea. You see, our tradition and our ways are beyond the loss of great commanders. Patience and the way will triumph, unto the centuries.”

  Yurelt’s eyebrows rise fractionally.

  “Yes. She had no patience, and her haste was her undoing,” concludes the Evult. “Her undoing.”

  128

  “Vult shouldn’t be that far ahead.” Anna’s eyes went to the curve ahead, where there was a break in the scattered firs and pines that flanked the road on both sides.

  Despite the sunlight, a cool dampness filled the late morning. In the light breeze, she enjoyed the fragrance of the pines, the first time she had smelled them in ages. There hadn’t been any evergreens to speak of in Ames, and Defalk was so mummified that the trees had no scent at all. Even the withered berries on the few Defalkan junipers remaining had no scent.

  “We have been riding downhill for leagues,” Daffyd added from behind Anna and Alvar. “And the road is not that good.”

  “What do you expect from an abandoned highway? Also, the Ostfels are not exactly a small mountain range, friend player. Even Vult is in the middle, with leagues of rocky peaks to the east. You can see the taller peaks there.” Alvar gestured.

  “Too many mountains,” Daffyd said with a slight grin.

  “How are your players doing?” Anna asked. “It may not be too long before I’ll need them.”

  “They are ready, once we stop,” the violist answered.

  “Lady Anna,” said Alvar in a low voice, bending in his saddle toward the sorceress, “you have been saying that all morning.”

  “The maps aren’t as good as I’d like.” The sorceress flushed. She still hated not being certain of things—tike where she was—especially now that everyone looked to her. Yet, once again, she was partly at the mercy of someone else—Jecks’ scouts and maps—and she hated that, too.

  “No maps are that good,” said Alvar.

  “They need to be better.”

  “Honored regent, if you live another ten centuries, you will still be attempting to improve the world.”

  The sorceress eyed the wiry captain, then grinned. “I suppose so.”

  As they neared the curve in the mountain road, the trees thinned. After slowing Farinelli, Anna eased the gelding to the left side of the road and over some low bushes out onto a rocky outcrop, perhaps five yards square, that jutted out from the road and the pines that clung to the steep slopes below the road.

  “Halt! Rein up!” ordered Alvar. Then he eased his mount almost up beside Farinelli, reining up slightly back to allow the sorceress an unobstructed view.

  For a time, Anna studied the valley below. While the river still followed the road, the water—easily five yards wide—was nearly fifty yards below the roadbed, and tumbled through the valley that was not quite a gorge. Less than two deks to the southeast and several hundred yards lower, the rushing water smoothed into an almost lakelike surface. Even farther east, hidden in the hills and trees into which the river wound, a waterfall of some sort existed, sending a mist of spray into the morning, a misty fog barely visible above the endless evergreens.

  Overhead, the scattered clouds were white and gray, scudding southward in a brisk cool breeze that ruffled Anna’s hair as she sat on Farinelli on the outcrop—a breeze much stiffer than the barely moving air that favored the tree-lined and uneven ancient road behind her.

  The sorceress attempted to match the terrain below with the small map she held, turning it and then comparing inked images to the reality of green, and brown and gray, that stretched out to the northeast.

  Two gray stone towers—barely pinpricks above the trees—stood near the fork where the river the road had followed joined another.

  “I think that’s Vult,” Anna said as Alvar reined up beside her.

  “Almost a day’s ride.”

  Anna shook her head. “We’re almost near enough now.” She folded the map and replaced it in her belt wallet.

  The lancer captain frowned, then leaned forward in his saddle. After a moment, he gestured to the south. “There are the armsmen of the dark ones,” added Alvar, pointing to the line of brown that rose from the valley floor, an exposed section of road no more than a league away.

  Anna had to strain to see the dark dots that represented a long column of horse winding upward along the lower sections of the old road that would eventually reach the Defalkan group. She glanced around. The outcrop where she had reined up was just about the only clear vantage point on the road—at least that she could see.

  Farther down the road, the trees thickened enough that she would be unable to see the Ebran forces until they were practically on top of the small Defalkan force.

  “How long before they get here?” she asked.

  “A glass,” opined Alvar. “Less, if they push their mounts. Should we make ready?”

  “Just a moment,” the sorceress temporized. What should she do? Was she close enough?

  An even colder wind gusted out of the north, accompanied by the faintest of brass chords. Anna glanced up, and, even as she watched, the scattered clouds began to darken, to expand, massing in the north above the sharp-toothed Ostfels. On the slope below the outcrop where she sat on Farinelli, the suddenly stronger wind whistled through the dark firs, bending the tops of their crowns.

  “It is not dry, like Defalk.” Daffyd eased his mare up beside Alvar. “Defalk w
as green like this once.”

  Anna hoped it would be again. Her eyes went to the Ebran horse, but they seemed no nearer, and then to the sky, her ears still on the rising wind.

  “Oh …”

  Alvar glanced up, following Anna’s inadvertent comment.

  The clouds, now all gray and darkening toward black moment by moment, covered more than half the sky. The late-morning sunlight dimmed as the spreading blackness cut off Anna’s view of the ice-covered peaks beyond Vult to the east.

  For better or worse, Anna decided, she had lost any real options. Besides, if the Evult’s magic could reach her, hers should be able to reach Vult. She hoped.

  “Players!” Anna snapped, turning Farinelli and riding back onto the road so that she faced her expedition, an expedition that seemed pitifully small compared to the endless lines of Ebran horse. “There!” She pointed back to the rocky outcrop that jutted out from the curve in the road, the spot where she had reined up shortly before and from where she had surveyed the valley. She hoped that the outcrop had a solid rock base, solid enough for what she had planned. But she had no more time, not the way the Ebrans were moving, and the black clouds massing.

  “Players!” reiterated Daffyd. “On the point, ready to play!”

  Anna motioned to the players, then turned to Alvar. “Get half the lancers down the road. I hope they won’t be needed, but—”

  “Purple company! Purple company! To the standard.”

  Anna hadn’t seen the regency banner unfurled, but it flapped in the gusting wind that blew colder with each moment, and the young armsman who bore it joined up with Alvar, then trotted down the road, followed by Defalkan lancers.

  At the edge of the road, the players struggled off their mounts, some moving stiffly, others more fluidly, all grasping for instruments.

  “Green company! Green company! Hold the uphill road! Hold the uphill road!” Alvar’s voice was strong and carried, despite the whistling of the wind.

  The mounts of the purple company clattered past the dismounting players.

  “Fhurgen!” ordered Spirda. “Get the players’ mounts up there! Out of the way. You too, Mysar!” The blonde subofficer rode toward Anna.

  As she dismounted, Anna handed Farinelli’s reins to Spirda, then hurried out toward the end of the outcrop, trying to clear her throat. Once again, she felt like she was being hurried, caught not totally prepared, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault but her own stupidity.

  You idiot! Of course, the Evult would just let you ride up and try your magic! Idiot!

  Behind her, Spirda started to ease the palomino after him back up the road, following Fhurgen and Mysar. Farinelli whuffled, then neighed, sidestepping but trailing the subofficer, who slowed, then stood in the stirrups and half turned toward the sorceress, shouting, “Do you want the lutar?”

  “No. Leave it on Farinelli.”

  Spirda nodded and gestured toward Fhurgen. “Tie the mounts there.”

  As her guards tethered the players’ mounts to a pine branch that extended along the downhill side of the road up from the outcrop, Anna stopped just short of the end of the point, running through a vocalise as she took another look at the valley and tried to clear her mind, easing the written spells from her wallet. She hadn’t wanted to trust her memory totally, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to look at the words, that she could focus her mind on the images she wanted to call forth.

  Even in the space clear of the evergreens that flanked the road, the day had turned more like twilight as the black clouds continued to spread and chum. The wind on the point was nearly a gale that lashed around her.

  Idiot! Talk about spellcasting with disruptions!

  The players scurried into position, their eyes straying toward the darkening clouds, their hair blown by the increasingly bitter wind. Iseen blotted an eye, as though dust or grit had lodged there.

  “Warm-up song! Warm-up song!” called Daffyd, struggling with tuning pegs even as he spoke.

  Anna turned from the group and tried not to wince, either at their sounds or at the sight of the Ebran forces trotting up the road. The Ebran van had vanished into the trees, but that meant the dark riders were just that much closer. She hoped—always hoping—that Alvar could hold them off until she did what she had to—and that it worked.

  The sorceress forced herself to take a deep breath, forced herself to wait as the discord behind her began to resemble music.

  “Warm-up song—one more time!”

  Cracccckk! A single yellow lightning bolt struck the road a dek farther downhill from Anna’s force, sending a faint vibration through the rocks and soil. With the lightning bolt came another of the underlying bass chords, so deep that the air groaned.

  The sorceress and regent hoped the Evult had struck his own lancers, but doubted she’d be that lucky.

  No casualties from friendly fire here. The fire isn’t at all friendly, not here.

  The sorceress turned to Daffyd. “The hymn! Have them do it once—that’s all the more warm-up we’ll have time for.”

  “The hymn … now!” Daffyd snapped, his voice rising slightly. “One and two … and …”

  The sound was ragged, but not too bad. Anna hoped—prayed—it would suffice as she turned her back to the wind, and, after clearing her throat, tried another vocalise.

  Crracck! The second lightning bolt was less than a half dek away, and the groans and rumbles were even more pronounced—and a deep, counterpointed chord, somehow harmonically dissonant, rumbled beneath everything.

  You can’t have harmonic dissonance, insisted part of Anna’s mind. Except in modern music, and that doesn’t count here. She pushed away the thoughts.

  A blackish yellow pallor, darker than twilight, cloaked the valley, almost as though a dome had capped the area. In the deepening gloom, the long lines of mounted Ebrans continued to ride up toward the pitifully small Defalkan contingent.

  The wind cut through Anna’s leathers like a knife, and ripped her hat off her head as she turned back to the players. Her eyes followed the battered felt as it fluttered out beyond the outcrop.

  Craaacckkk!!! The blinding yellow bolt struck less than two hundred yards below the outcrop, and the hiss of stream from the river momentarily drowned out the whistling of the wind and the creaking of the firs as they bent in the wind, a wind that smelled metallic, foreign, sorcerous.

  Anna blinked away the glare and the momentary blindness and cleared her throat. “The hymn. Now!”

  “One …” shouted Daffyd, easing his viola under his chin and gesturing with the bow.

  The raggedness cleared after two bars, and Anna sang, sang as though it were the Met or Carnegie Hall or Covent Garden, with all the years of training that had never been fully utilized.

  “I have sung the terror of the power of all sounds,

  I am bringing forth the magma from the deeps where it resounds,

  I have loosed the fateful tremors of the plates beneath the grounds.

  My songs will smash the earth.

  Glory, glory, halleluia; glory, glory, halleluia;

  Glory, glory, halleluia; my songs will smash the earth!

  “In the terror of the tremors, death is freed from all its locks,

  with a slashing through the hillsides that flattens trees and rocks.

  As I spelled to keep men free, let us see Vult fall in shocks.

  My songs will smash the earth.

  Glory, glory, halleluia; glory, glory, halleluia;

  Glory, glory, halleluia; my songs will smash the earth!

  “With the rising of the waters, streams are loosed from all their banks,

  and their torrents through the hillsides will drown the darkest ranks …”

  Even before she had finished the last chorus—strophicspell, some part of her mind insisted—that great harp behind and within the world had vibrated with a frequency so deep it felt like her bones had been jellied—harmonic, yet disharmonic.

  Crracck! The bale-yellow lightn
ing slammed the mountainside less than a hundred yards away, and Anna started to put her hands to her ears to shut out the pain.

  Yet, powerful as the lightning was, painful as the blast of sound and energy was, she could sense a finality, a desperation. She blinked and turned back to the players.

  Daffyd held his viola and bow, staring past her toward the still-swirling and dying clouds, as if he expected the world to end.

  Iseen’s mouth hung open, her horn almost dangling from her hands, and, beside her, Ristyr’s eyes bulged.

  In the background, Anna could hear blades ringing, and shouts, as if through a muffled curtain. Were the Ebrans upon them?

  “The fire song! The fire song!”

  Daffyd looked blank.

  “The fire song, damn it!” Anna shrilled.

  “The fire song!” Daffyd repeated.

  The notes were more ragged, but they would have to do. There was no more time, not with all the mounted Ebrans hacking at Alvar and his lancers.

  Anna sang—sang as if it were the last song.

  “Armsmen brown, armsmen black,

  not flame nor ashes shall you lack …

  from the strings, from the sky,

  fire flay you till you die!”

  Crackling bolts—golden red—nared like snapping harp strings from the still-dark clouds, whipping across the evergreens, a line of endless down-pointed fireworks raking the long road down to the valley. A second line of fire followed the first, and then a third, and fourth … until the sky seemed hatched with lines of fire.

  And yet the ground beneath heaved and groaned, and the rocks shrieked.

  Anna’s arms fell to her sides, as she stood there dazed. Too battered even to wince at the screams that seemed to go on and on, too stunned to cover her ears, too flashblinded to see what she had unleashed.

  Before her, Daffyd staggered, and two others staggered and went to their knees, as the ground rumbled and shuddered, with a shrieking grinding from deep beneath the rocks that went on and on and on.