The Saprano Sorceress

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  At least, Anna reflected, a few people respected her. There were always a few, but they never seemed well-placed enough, or powerful enough, to save her from her own straightforwardness.

  Farinelli whuffed, and she patted his shoulder. "Easy there, big fellow. Too bad more men don't have your soul."

  She could sense Daffyd raising his eyebrows, but she didn't care, not at the moment.

  97

  Wei, Nordwei

  Did you personally scry what she did to the dark ones?" Ashtaar glances toward the dark agate shape on the wood surface before her, but her hands remain on table, fingers steepled.

  "She buried most of Eladdrin's forces in liquid mud, and then she cast a flood over the rest. Perhaps two-score survived." Gretslen shudders. "The woman is a monster."

  "Do you think she must be killed, then?" The spymistress winces ever so slightly at the barrage of hammers and metal-working that the wind carries up from the harbor, where the rebuilding continues.

  "Is there any question, honored Ashtaar? Can we allow that sort of twisting of Erde's chords?"

  A frown momentarily flickers across the dark-haired woman's face, followed by a bland smile.

  "You think we can?" asks the blonde.

  "You question whether we should allow her that power and, yet, by suggesting that we curtail her use of it—does that not suggest equal arrogance on our part?" The spy-mistress's fingers reach out for the black agate oval.

  "We seek but harmony…"

  "For our tune," answers Ashtaar. "Let me ask you a question, Gretslen. What happens if we try—and fail?" She smiles brittlely. "And a second question. How comfortable will the Prophet be with such power at his elbow?''

  "Neither he nor his consort will be happy… if they survive."

  "Do we care?"

  "But she is a monster, and you do not care. I see now the wisdom of the strictures. How could anyone bury armsmen in liquid mud?"

  "You are young, and still innocent in some ways. Most died more quickly than from blade wounds. Is it more glorious to kill a man with a blade? Why? Is he any less dead?"

  Gretslen's eyes harden, but she does not speak.

  "No," Ashtaar continues. "Let others draw her wrath, and they will. The Evult has already visited his devastation upon Elhi and Falcor, and he is taking steps to rebuild."

  "The floods? The Evult? Kendr said nothing."

  "I bid her keep silent. When he saw the destruction of his armies, he released all the heat under the Ostfels west of Vult, and caused the storms to gather."

  "Monsters to the south of us, wherever we look," mutters the blond.

  "Each of them would say something similar about those to the north of them," notes Ashtaar. "Your job is to scry, and to report. To communicate and to follow orders."

  "Yes, Ashtaar."

  "You do not have to face the Council. Be thankful you don't." Ashtaar smiles self-deprecatingly. "And try to remember this conversation before you have to."

  Gretslen glances at the polished floor.

  "Now… send word to your 'influence' in Falcor that the dark ones killed the travel sorceress."

  "But…"

  "Who else knows the killers were ours? Let the Evult take the blame. Oh, and make sure that your friend knows about the massacre of Synek—and that the tale is told to the sorceress."

  "That was five years ago," observes the blond.

  "Do as I say. She feels as well as thinks. We must use that."

  98

  Not more than a dek to the river," Spirda observed. "Don't see the old toll booth," Daffyd added from where he rode near the right shoulder. "Some of the trees are down."

  From where she rode, almost directly behind the Prophet's guard, Anna couldn't see all that much directly ahead, although she recalled that the east bank was slightly lower than the west, at least where the bridge was.

  Before long, the vanguard slowed, and Anna peered through the heads and banners before her, using the advantage of Farinelli's height. She tried not to gape. The stone bridge across the Falche was no more. Only the foundation piers remained, and those massive blocks had been twisted in their bases. The river bed was nearly empty, an expanse of mud where, with the endless sun and heat, the stench of dead animals, vegetation—and people—was already beginning to rise.

  Anna swallowed, hard, looking across the devastation, as die lead lancers picked their way down through a trail already packed through the mud. Farinelli carried her after the Prophet and his guards, the gelding setting his feet almost delicately, if firmly.

  Why? What had caused such a flood? It couldn't have been her sorcery, not unless there were links she didn't understand. The effects of her muddling with groundwater and whatever had died out long before Zechis. From her studies of the Defalk maps, the Fal River rose in the northeast, in the Ostfels between Ebran and Defalk, far from the Chean's headwaters.

  Had the legendary Evult raised the flood somehow in retaliation for her destruction of the Ebran army? Did that mean even more destruction and bloodshed? How much, and how soon? She tried not to shiver, despite the late afternoon heat.

  In the square beyond where the bridge had been, the pedestal' stood without its statue. Around the buildings on each side of the two streets closest to the river—of the five branching off the square—were piled branches and timbers and barrel staves and other debris, but a narrow way had been forced through the river road barricade.

  As she passed into the shadows where the dampness of mud and worse lingered, Anna looked to the left side of the street, where a barefoot woman in soiled trousers rolled up to the knees and a mud-smeared tunic dumped a basket of muddy water into the street where the open sewer had once been.

  Her dark eyes flicked toward the slow-moving column.

  "… western bastards… your fault…"

  Only a comparative handful of people toiled in the mud. As she rode past the cross-street beyond the trading quarter, Anna looked westward. The slight grade was enough that the buildings more than a few hundred yards west appeared untouched.

  "Just in the river plain," she murmured to herself.

  The liedburg, its eastern side buttressed by its rocky promontory, sat above a sea of cracked and drying mud that filled the depression between it and the city. The walls showed watermarks less than a yard high beside the portcullis gate. Armsmen struggled to brush off the mud from the collapsed tents and re-erect them on the flat. That indicated to Anna that the liedburg had only been touched by backwaters or something like them.

  Menares stood just inside the gate, in soiled trousers, supervising the squads of armsmen who continued to carry out baskets of mud from the courtyard.

  The column lurched to a halt as Behlem stopped and spoke to the counselor. Anna strained to hear the interchange.

  "Lady Cyndyth suggested I was in charge, and that I had best be out here." The heavy-set older man shrugged. "It was easier."

  "And quieter," muttered Alvar from his mount beside Anna.

  She turned. Alvar smiled blandly, as if he had said nothing.

  "What does Cyndyth look like?" Anna asked.

  "I have not seen her at close quarters, lady, but she has raven hair, and her lips are very red, and she is slender." Alvar's words were low, and he glanced nervously toward Behlem and the courtyard beyond.

  The sorceress was beginning to dislike Cyndyth, and she had never met the woman.

  After reining up when the Prophet's party entered the stables and blocked the doorways, she eased Farinelli toward the western wall enough to get into the shadow. Then she glanced sideways toward Daffyd. The player shrugged expansively and rolled his eyes.

  Not too much later, when Behlem had dismounted and paraded into the hall, followed by Menares, neither man looking in her direction, Farinelli carried Anna to the stables. She was glad the Prophet hadn't lingered, and from Alvar's sigh as the sandy-haired ruler had departed, she gathered she wasn't the only one.

  Anna dismounted by the doors, led th
e gelding into the stable, and half-smiled. The stable floors had already been cleaned and fresh straw laid. Tirsik fussed with two stable boys in a corner.

  "If it be taking a warren to muck out the corner stalls, then be taking a warren—" The wiry stable-master glanced toward Anna as she stopped with Farinelli, trying to stretch out the stiffness in her legs and thighs. "How is your beast,

  Lady Anna?" Tirsik's eyes remained on the sorceress.

  "He's in better shape than I am." Anna laughed, genuinely pleased to see Tirsik.

  "His stall is clean. I made sure it was one of the first. After those for the Prophet, of course," the stablemaster added as Spirda and Daffyd appeared behind Anna with their mounts.

  "Of course," said Spirda flatly.

  Anna looked sideways at Tirsik as Spirda led his mount toward the rear of the stable.

  "Poor lad," said Tirsik. " 'Tis hard to see your idols tarnished. I will wager he will recover."

  A strange look passed across Daffyd's face, and Anna wanted to nod.

  "You, too, Daffyd?" she asked softly. "Have I tarnished your images of what sorcery and sorceresses are all about?"

  "No… no."

  "I think that probably means 'yes.' I'm sorry."

  "I had best get her stalled," Daffyd temporized. "Others are waiting." He led the mare away.

  "I was not hinting of you with Spirda," pointed out Tirsik.

  "I know," Anna said as she led Farinelli toward his stall and as the stablemaster walked with her. "But the same is true of Daffyd. He created this image of the perfect beautiful sorceress—and I'm not. I don't fit his woman image or his mother image, and he's upset and doesn't know why." As she spoke, Anna wondered why she did, except that she had to tell someone, and Tirsik would tell no one. That she could feel.

  "Aye. You understand. Unlike some."

  "Stablemaster!" came a shout from the doors.

  "Take care of yourself and that beast." Tirsik nodded and walked quickly back toward the front of the stable.

  Anna unsaddled Farinelli, and carefully set the awkward bag containing the green recital dress over the stall wall, along with the saddle-bags. The lutar case went above the manger. Then she forced herself to take the time to groom Farinelli thoroughly.

  Once the gelding was as clean as she could get him, she lifted her gear, throwing the saddlebags over one shoulder, the wrapped gown over the other, and carrying the lutar case in her right hand. She struggled through the heavy horse traffic in the courtyard.

  "… stop pushing, Girsto!"

  "… easy with that beast…"

  "… way for the sorceress! Give way for the sorceress…"

  That might have been Fhurgen, but Anna couldn't see. Whoever it was, she was grateful as she slipped through the double column and made her way along the wall to the north tower of the hall.

  "Lady Anna… you… returned." Skent hopped off the stool and looked at the stones of the tower floor as Anna stepped inside the lower entry. "Oh… might I help you?"

  "Yes. The saddlebags." She kept the lutar and the gown bag.

  Her room was hot—like everything else in Defalk, but not so hot as when she had left. Perhaps fall was coming. And unlike the courtyard, the room didn't smell muddy— just dusty. Anna set the lutar on the narrow bed and glanced around, frowning after a moment. Although she couldn't say why, the room felt different, as if things were not quite where she had left them, as though everything had been examined and then replaced, not quite perfectly.

  She sighed. That somehow figured, and she couldn't do much about it immediately. The sorceress turned to the page. "Set them on the floor there. Can you get me some water—lots of it?''

  "Ah… the flood, the wells are bad," Skent said.

  "I don't care if it's dirty. Just not too muddy—and plenty. All right?"

  "Yes, Lady Anna."

  "How have things been?" she asked.

  "Quiet, mostly, except in the main hall."

  "The Lady Cyndyth?" guessed Anna.

  "She brought her own pages. They sent Resor here to the north tower. The others are cleaning a lot, like sculls. It be better here, I think." Skent looked down.

  "Cataryzna?"

  "She be fine, I think."

  "I take it you haven't had much chance to see her?"

  "Not since you left." Skent shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Best I get your water, Lady Anna."

  "All right." Something was bothering the youth—that was clear—but he wasn't ready to say.

  After Skent departed, Anna first hung out the recital gown, then looked through things. The writing paper, and some spells were arranged under the stone paperweight more neatly than she had left them, but all seemed to be there. Her gowns were hung off-center. The pallet on the bed had been shifted, not that she'd hidden anything there, but someone had checked.

  Was she getting paranoid?

  Thunk!

  "Lady Anna, I got two buckets." As he stepped into her room, his eyes went to the green gown hanging from the wall pegs. "Oh, that be beautiful!" Skent struggled in with two large buckets of water, which he set on the stone floor beside the wash table. "These be as clean as I could get. And I have to go because Virkan says all the pages have to get the big dining hall ready."

  "Thank you." Anna paused. "Ready for what?"

  "There's a big dinner planned for the night after tomorrow night. Virkan said it was a victory dinner." Skent brushed his longish dark-hair back off his forehead. "Cens told me that you destroyed the Ebrans all alone." The page lowered his voice. "Is that so?"

  "I had some help from Daffyd—and Spirda, and captain Alvar, and overcaptain Hanfor," Anna said.

  "But you did most of it?"

  The sorceress nodded reluctantly.

  "I don't understand—" Skent stopped, almost embarrassed.

  "Understand what?"

  "Oh, nothing, lady. I guess I do." Skent glanced at the floor. "I needs must be going."

  "You mean why Lord Behlem gets the victory dinner?" Anna laughed. "Isn't that always the way it goes?"

  "Lord Barjim was fairer." Skent's eyes do not meet Anna's.

  "He probably was. He seemed straightforward. I liked Lady Alasia, too."

  "She kept Jimbob trued to the stone." Skent's eyes drifted toward the door, and he added, "I will be late."

  "Go ahead. I won't tell anyone you told me about the dinner. It was supposed to be a secret, wasn't it?"

  "You… thank you." Skent flashed a grin of relief and edged toward the door.

  "Go."

  So she wasn't supposed to know about the dinner. What else wasn't she supposed to know?

  After unpacking the saddlebags and stacking them in the corner—the tower room lacked closets, the closest thing being the wall pegs and hangers that were sufficient only for her two gowns—Anna looked at her smudged visage in the wall mirror. Lord, she was a mess.

  Thunk!

  Now what? Anna resignedly walked to the door and opened it. "Lady Essan…"

  "Might an old woman trouble a young sorceress for a moment?"

  Anna had trouble not grinning, and stood aside as Essan swept into the room wearing her purple trousers and a light purple shirt. Anna shut the door and turned.

  "You have obviously been undertaking items of a less than lady-like nature." There was a twinkle in Essan's eyes. "Otherwise, the liedburg—the staff, I mean—for proper people would not stoop to such gossip—would not be buzzing so about the blonde sorceress. To think that your burying all those awful Ebrans in mud deprived the Prophet of a glorious victory, and that you did not fall to your knees and beg forgiveness. Well," mock-huffed Essan, "I am but an old woman, but you mark my words, there will be trouble, not that anyone listens to an old has-been who rattles around the distant north tower and only listens to what the pages and maids say." Essan settled herself into one of the chairs.

  "People will talk," Anna agreed, sitting down across from the older woman.

  "And Nelmor, Ga
trune must have told you about him, he was kind enough to send his boy Tiersen as a messenger. You know, Nelmor's daughter Ytrude, she is the water's own image of Gatrune. Tiersen, I was talking of him, he said that his father—that's Nelmor, and he has holdings at Dubaria—why Nelmor said that he was a dutiful lord and pledged to the Prophet, seeing as how Lord Behlem held the liedstadt. Tiersen told me his sire hoped someday that Defalk could be proud again, and, imagine this, that he would even rather see a woman or a stranger who had laid his life on the sword's sharp edge for Defalk than one who claimed his power by lineage or by consortship." Essan shook her head. "Imagine that, the widow of Lord Donjim being told such. And a widow who had pledged to Lord Barjim."

  "Imagine that," echoed Anna, her mouth dry.

  "There be others that feel that way, too. Strange times, Lady Anna, these be most strange times." The older woman's eyes grinned behind the somber facade. "Then, too, they have been inspecting the towers. Some folks, servitors of the Lady Cyndyth, I would imagine, peered through every room, like as not so she can reorganize it all. Changes everywhere. They even took my poor Garreth, not even telling me for what, just that the Lady Cyndyth needed her, and I have not seen her since." Essan's eyes were cold, but she continued. "I would be hoping that they would not turn out an old lady, or worse, but who have I to turn to? I came down the stairs soon as I heard you are returned, and I prattle on, and you have not even had a chance to prepare yourself for all that will come with the victory."

  Anna wanted to wince at the slight hardening in Essan's last words, but she only nodded. Clearly, these walls had ears, or the lady thought they did, as did Skent. "I've enjoyed your company, and your insights from the beginning, Lady Essan, even if I am a stranger and a woman. I do feel for the land, and it was hard for me when I saw the destruction from the river." She bowed her head momentarily. "I had not thought… about all that has befallen you, the widow of a great lord, and I feel blessed that you have shared your thoughts with me." How could she get across what she was trying to say without giving it totally away?

  "I must leave you to… whatever… whatever sorceresses do." Lady Essan rose, her face blank, and Anna knew she had to say more, somehow, even as she stood.