The Saprano Sorceress

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  "Serento used to do that. I never have. I'll speak the words, or sing the pitches with nonsense syllables."

  Anna pursed her lips. "Could we try that with harmony?"

  "Not now." He shook his head. "If you had come sooner…"

  Anna doubted that somehow.

  "The players will be here." The sorcerer gestured to a space no more than five yards square on the western side of the watchtower, protected by the tower itself on the east, and the crenelated wall on the north. There were no protecting walls or rails on the inside, and the drop-off was more than twenty feet. "And I'll stand here." „ Anna nodded. Where should she stand? She still didn't exactly know what she was going to do, even though Brill acted as though she did, and she needed to practice, especially given his clear aversion to considering anything resembling harmony or joint spellsinging.

  After easing toward the outside parapet and stepping into the shade of the tower, Anna took off her hat, blotting away the sweat that had collected where the leather inside band had pressed against her hair and skin.

  "See anything?" The low voice came from above, and Anna looked up, but could see nothing except the crenela-tions of the watchtower.

  "Nothing, except some dust on the road to Mencha." A laugh followed. "I'm in no hurry to see anything coming down from Ebra."

  "You said it."

  Anna's lips quirked. Like the sentries above her, she wasn't in any hurry for the Ebrans, or whoever, to show up.

  "Where would be best for you?" asked the sorcerer.

  "I don't know. I need to practice."

  He nodded, and half turned to the west, almost as though he had not heard her, slowly walking along the parapet, then stopping, and leaning forward on the bricks of the wall, his eyes turned to the west.

  Anna put on her hat and followed him out of the tower's shadow, slowly, halting beside him.

  "Less than ten leagues, and Loiseau might be a world away."

  She looked westward, the morning sun at her back. The road climbed up the low hill they had come down the night before and then seemed to vanish.

  "Sometimes it seems that way with lots of things," she answered.

  "Sometimes."

  They stood silently for a time, and Anna could feel the sweat beginning to collect under the brim of her hat again, and her hand went to the water bottle at her belt as her eyes studied the barren terrain. Only a few stunted and twisted pines, scattered cactus, some sagebrushlike bushes in the hills, and a few patches of browned grass. Everything else was rock, sand, or bare dirt.

  The fort seemed to be almost in the middle of nowhere. The last hut or hovel Anna had seen had to have been a league back toward Mencha. The thinnest of dry streambeds ran along one side of the road that twisted into the mountains.

  The eastern gates of the fort were closed, and the wooden span removed, so that the road ended on the eastern side of the dry moat that encircled the entire fort. The western gates were closed, but the bridge spans were in place. The moat was wider on the north and south sides of the fort, nearly a hundred yards, and much deeper on the eastern side, with precisely fitted brick or stone walls.

  Anna studied the approach to the pass again. "Why didn't you build the fort farther uphill? It looks like this ridge wouldn't be that hard to ride up and circle away from the fort."

  "The slopes are sandy, and they slow down mounts." Brill said. "The ramparts are here because the ground seems solid, and because there aren't any higher cliffs that the dark ones could shake down on the walls. Or use to fire arrows into the fort."

  Anna supposed everything was a compromise, even warfare, and she nodded slowly as she looked farther to the northwest, catching sight of a patch of blue, a small lake that seemed so incongruous in the red-soiled and dry hills, nestled almost at the northern base of the long ridgelike hill that ran to within a hundred yards of the fort's walls.

  A lake? Why in the middle of nowhere?

  Then she recalled the comments about water gates, and studied the regularity of the moat on the east side. She studied the moat more closely, finally discovering a circular stone opening, more than ten feet high, on the south side of the northwest corner. She pointed. "How well will it work?"

  "Well enough, while the water lasts." Brill shrugged. "Even underground, there's not much here anymore." He straightened. "I need to gather the players together. We'll be practicing in the bigger room."

  "I think I'll stay up here. It's cooler." She gestured toward the shaded side of the watchtower behind her.

  "For now." Brill turned.

  After the sorcerer left, Anna sat in the shady corner and began to try to work out some form of chording for her battle hymn. She knew the melody well enough, but trying to develop chords from scratch was another thing. She'd always had music to refer to, and so far, she hadn't seen any on Erde. If it existed, it was well hidden… for good reason.

  She eased the two folded papers from the belt wallet, unfolded them, and laid them on the bricks beside her.

  The mandolin was out of tune, and the tuning pegs wouldn't hold unless she jammed them sideways.

  She ran through several vocalises, but her voice was tired, and she felt clumsy, even as she kept at it trying to get clear, get warmed up'.

  Then, when she picked up the mandolin again, her fingers fumbled on the strings, and her mind skittered over the words.

  "I have loosed the fateful lightning so the darkling ones will die, My songs will strike them dead…"

  She paused and shook her head. It was all so insane. What was she doing? Sitting in a brick fort in the middle of a desert, trying to compose or arrange a song that would kill people she didn't know, except that those people had already tried to kill her.

  How long she spent, she didn't know, only that her voice was tired, and her fingers ached, and that the sun had almost reached noon and taken the last vestige of shade when she folded up her would-be spells and started down the steps, trying to ignore the low voices from the watchtower.

  "There she goes… sorceress…"

  "… almost turned one of the captains into charcoal… insulted her…"

  "… say she killed dozens of dark ones with an arrow through her shoulder, then rode all the way here…"

  Anna winced. Stories always seemed to grow. Then you were in trouble if you didn't live up to them, and you were in trouble if you refuted them.

  She eased her way along the upper ramp toward the small room with her gear.

  34

  Anna hugged the shade on the eastern side of the northwest watchtower, still struggling with the chords on the mandolin, trying to forget how hard the bricks she sat on were, or how much her nose itched from the dust raised in the courtyard below.

  "That doesn't sound like much of a melody." Daffyd stood there, viola in hand, grinning.

  "It would be easier if you'd been able to finish the lutar."

  "A melody's a melody."

  Abruptly, Anna realized what he was talking about. Players in Liedwahr played melody lines that stood alone, while she was working on supporting chords—the difference between the polyphony of Brill's players and the mostly hom-ophonic approach of, say, a Beethoven symphony—or a Britten song cycle. Idly, she wondered how Sophie Weiss or Nancy Evans might have done in Liedwahr, then pushed the thought away. She was here, and they weren't.

  "Lady Anna?" prompted Daffyd.

  "I'm sorry. Sometimes, I think about other things. How is the lutar—"

  "I can't do much here except work on the tuning pegs and smooth things."

  "Daffyd! We need to work on the battle song," called Brill.

  The viola player nodded and hurried back to the group.

  Anna set down the mandolin and uncorked her ever-present water bottle, drinking slowly as Brill conducted the eight players. Palian was taking Kaseth's place, and Daffyd seemed to hold the lead viola position. Liende carried the bass melody.

  After corking the water bottle, Anna went back to the chords, trying to
work out the chorus lines of her much-adapted "Battle Hymn of the Republic," shutting out as well as she could the off-notes of the players, and Brill's corrections.

  "What's that dust?" asked one of the lookouts in the tower above Anna. "It wouldn't be the Ebrans."

  "Not coming from the west, idiot. The scouts say that the dark ones are moving their lancers up the pass, and there are troops of archers on the trails headed down to us."

  "That has to be Lord Jecks, then, doesn't it?"

  "Look for a blue banner with a golden bear."

  A series of trumpet calls echoed from the west, reverberating off the angled sandstone cliffs east of the hills straddled by Brill's fort.

  "There's a blue banner, but it's all wrapped up."

  Anna stopped chording and eased to her feet. Between the sentries, the trumpets, Brill's players, and the heat, she couldn't concentrate anymore.

  "That's it," Brill announced. "Put away your instruments. We'll meet here in the morning, one way or another."

  "That's Lord Jecks," offered Daffyd, from behind Anna's shoulder. "He's always the last to bring in his levies."

  "He does bring them, in person," said Brill as he walked up to them. "Unlike most of the lords, who only send captains."

  Anna looked at the sorcerer quizzically.

  "There is an obligation to send levies, but a lord of holdings does not have to come at every call." Brill shrugged. "Barjim could request their presence, but most of their captains are better commanders than they are—except for Jecks and Kysar." The balding man paused, then added, "I wanted to tell you that we are to eat with Lord Barjim tonight, again."

  "The food's better, but…" Anna spread her hands.

  "I doubt anyone will insult us." Brill laughed. "You made your point."

  "She always does, ser," Daffyd said quietly.

  "Yes, Daffyd, and I hope she can with the dark ones." The sorcerer looked into the low western sun, squinting to make out the oncoming riders, then turned and headed down the steps.

  "He's not happy," said Daffyd.

  "Would you be?" Anna wondered if she should have brought up the possibility of harmony again, before Brill had slipped away, but she had the feeling the sorcerer would always refuse that possibility.

  "I'm not. We'll be lucky to get out of here with our heads attached to our bodies."

  "So why are you here, then?" Anna asked.

  "My head wouldn't be attached to its body, lady, if I had not come. What about you?"

  "Did I have any choice?"

  The young man shook his head.

  "I have to get ready for this latest… command performance." Anna shifted her grip on the mandolin and started down the narrow steps, keeping to the inside and away from the unrailed outer side that overlooked the courtyard.

  By the time she reached her quarters, there were three buckets of water in the middle of the floor.

  "I had some buckets brought up to the room," Palian said. "I went down to the washroom." She shook her head. "They asked me who I belonged to. One of them pawed me."

  "They tried that on me, at first."

  "No one would touch you, now, Lady Anna," said the slender violinist. "There are so many stories…"

  "I know." Anna's tone was wry. "I killed dozens of darksingers with a war arrow twice my size through me after losing all my blood, and then I hopped on the biggest and nastiest beast in Defalk and rode here without resting."

  Palian laughed.

  "It's half true," said Liende from the doorway, where she eased the wooden door shut behind her. "You lost half your blood, and it was a full-sized war arrow with a barbed head, and they're more than a yard long."

  "Wait a moment." Anna looked at the buckets, then hummed, and sang the water spell gently.

  The water in all three buckets foamed, then subsided.

  "It'll be cool," she added as she pulled off the floppy-brimmed hat and the armless tunic. "I'm still glad you had the water brought up."

  Liende looked at the buckets, then bent and dipped a finger into the water and licked it. "It's almost a shame to waste such clean water."

  "I'll spell more later, if you want," Anna offered, "but I want to clean up."

  "So do I," said Palian.

  "It certainly couldn't hurt." Liende stripped off her faded tunic. "But I don't know how long we'll stay clean." She coughed at the dust from the garment.

  Anna had barely finished getting dressed and into a cleaner tunic when Brill rapped on the door.

  "Lady Anna?"

  "I'm coming." Her hair was pinned into a bun, although it wasn't quite long enough for that, and despite her best efforts she was slowly losing pins, and she was afraid it would come undone halfway through dinner.

  "You look most presentable," the sorcerer said when she stepped out onto the. third-level walkway.

  "Thank you." Anna wasn't sure whether that was a compliment, or a statement of appreciation that she had tried to look good but hadn't quite pulled it off.

  The dining area was the same low-ceilinged room, except the shuttered windows were open, and the faintest of breezes fluttered through them. This time, more than a dozen men, and Alasia, stood around the table when Brill and Anna stepped inside.

  "Lady Anna, who can set hearts afire—along with the rest of you." Captain Firis bowed, then grinned at her.

  Anna couldn't help but grin back at the impulsive young captain, so willing to kill one moment, and forgive the next. She could appreciate him without trusting him. "Captain Firis." She turned to the two others she knew. "Dekas… Sepko."

  Then she bowed ever so slightly in the direction of Barjim. "Lord Barjim, Lady Alasia."

  Barjim nodded to the sorcerer and sorceress, but continued to listen to the redheaded captain who had not turned.

  Beside Alasia was a stocky, white-haired man, his leathers still dusty. Alasia motioned to Anna, and the sorceress stepped toward her.

  "Lady Anna, this is my sire, Lord Jecks." Alasia turned from Anna to the white-haired warrior. "Lady Anna is the sorceress from the mist worlds, the one who almost turned Firis into a cinder."

  "He still hasn't learned that much caution, it appears." Jecks bowed. "My daughter has told me about you, and I am pleased to meet you."

  "I'm pleased to meet you." Anna bowed.

  "Let us sit down and get on with the business of eating!" said Barjim, his voice carrying across the conversations.

  Anna followed the command and found herself second down on the right-hand side, with Lord Jecks on her left, Brill on her right, and another older man across from her.

  "Get the wine moving," Barjim suggested.

  Alasia smiled at Anna, then turned to the man on her left, the one across the table from Anna. "Lady Anna, this is Lord Kysar. He holds the strongholds and the lands around Pamr. Lord Kysar, this is the lady Anna. She is the sorceress from the mist worlds I had mentioned."

  Anna inclined her head. "I am pleased to meet you, Lord Kysar."

  "Just don't tell her she's useless, lord…" A sotto voce whisper crept up the table. Anna tried not to flush.

  "I believe I missed something there." Kysar's voice held the false heartiness that many big men cultivated, in Anna's opinion.

  "Rumors fly all over Defalk about you, lady," added Lord Jecks, kindly. "Is this another one?"

  "It is not a rumor, unhappily, Lord Jecks," Anna admitted. "When I arrived here, I was tired and not thinking too clearly. One of the captains made a remark, one I think now that was in jest, but it made me mad." She forced a shrug. "I overreacted."

  Jecks and Kysar looked to Barjim, who, with his mouth full of bread and lamb curry, nodded at Alasia.

  "The lady Anna turned his wooden goblet into a bonfire, and was starting on a spell to do the same to him," Alasia said. "But she was gracious, and so was the captain, after a few words."

  "And you, daughter, are diplomatically keeping everyone happy." Jecks laughed.

  "My lady Alasia is good at preserving my resources,
" boomed Barjim. "Get the wine down to my captains."

  "Lord Brill, I believe we last met in Falcor in the spring," offered Jecks.

  "I believe so." Brill poured some wine, first for Anna, and then for himself. "Did you have any luck with the dam?"

  "In fact, I did. It was a good idea, and there was water where you suggested, but it's taking longer to fill the pond." Jecks broke off a large chunk of bread, and took but a small sip of wine.

  "Without more rain, that will happen."

  "More disharmony from the dark ones." Jecks looked at Barjim, then lowered his voice slightly. "Now that the last of me levies are here, will they attack at dawn?"

  Brill frowned. "Not at dawn, but by late morning, I would guess. They are already moving the clouds westward. I could see the darkness over the Ostfels."

  "Be a long day tomorrow," Kysar interjected.

  Anna felt like every day had been long since she arrived in Liedwahr, but she nodded and took the smallest sip of wine.

  35

  Encora, Ranuak

  The matriarch settles her considerable bulk into the polished ebony chair under the awning. Her eyes focus beyond the balcony at the harbor below the hilltop residence. In the blue-green waters are anchored a handful of ships, while another handful load at the grain docks.

  "What else have you and Veria discovered?" asks the gray-haired woman after she settles in the oversized chair. "About the disharmonies?"

  "They continue, Matriarch," answers the slender brunette. "They center on the Sand Pass and the new sorceress."

  "She is not new, properly," says Ulgar from where he stands in the sun at the stone railing. "Merely a recent arrival to Liedwahr. And Lord Barjim will doubtless use her talents in his desperate efforts to fend off the dark ones."

  "Lord Barjim is an honest man," says the Matriarch cheerfully. "An honest man, a caring man, and entirely the wrong leader for Defalk in these days. His consort knows this, and she supports him."

  "As consorts often do," interjects Ulgar.