"All possible," admits the cloaked leader of the Dark Monks. "But she is more devious than that, I fear. She will strike at us, as soon as the roads clear in spring."
"She will not be ready. Defalk is in ruins. Falcor is a shambles. She destroyed the roads and the ford across the Cheor." Yurelt shakes his head.
"She will be ready, and we must be ready before her." The Evult smiles, but only white teeth show from under the dark hood. "I will melt the winter snowfall and cast down more floods—down both the Cheor and the Fal, and you will march even as those floods ravage Defalk."
"She is beautiful," says Yurelt.
"She is evil, and older than you. She may be older than I am. Do not be misled by appearances. She is resourceful." The hood turns as if he shakes his head. "It is too bad this has gone on so far, and we have few choices. I would almost like to see her take on the Liedfuhr. Would that not give the mighty Konsstin fits?" A harsh laugh follows. "Or those plotting fools in Wei."
"Why can you not wait?" asks the Songmaster.
"Because she has declared herself our enemy, and she will not believe any envoy we send. Besides…" The Evult does not finish the sentence.
"She is a woman?"
The Evult touches the harp strings, and ripples cross the pond, fragmenting the image of the blonde soprano. "I want your supply lists and your march plan for the spring two weeks from today. No later."
"Yes, Evult." Yurelt bows.
124
On the third morning after leaving Elheld, as Anna and her expedition rode first eastward, and then more toward the north, the dark smudges on the horizon slowly grew taller, and more distinct, until the outline of the Ostfels rose clearly above the brown and dusty hills of eastern Defalk. The riverbed dwindled to the point where it no longer dwarfed the thin line of water that wound down from the mountains, and scattered junipers began to dot the sloping banks of the Fal.
In time, Anna could see patches of brown where evergreens, or some trees, had died, almost like she imagined might be the impacts of acid rain. From each side of the river stretched deks and deks of browned and bent grass. Close up, Anna could see the grass consisted of clumps separated by reddish dirt, but the more distant grass appeared unbroken.
She shook her head. Even the grasslands were slowly dying. Her eyes lifted to the Ostfels. Were there clouds to the east of the tallest peaks? Anna squinted, but she could not see any. What she did see was that the peaks to the northeast were rocky and barren, while the taller peaks to the south bore some snow cover.
A faint smile crossed her lips. Had the Evult used warm rain or something to melt the snow cover to fuel the flood that had devastated Elhi and Falcor? Perhaps she wasn't so insane to try to strike now. By spring there would be more snow.
"We are going over those?" Daffyd asked again.
"Yes. According to Jecks there is a trail, an old road, but it's narrow." Anna upstoppered the water bottle and drank, then replaced the bottle and patted Farinelli on the neck.
"Had I not seen what you did to the Ebrans before, I would say this is foolhardy." Daffyd volunteered.
"It is foolhardy," Anna admitted. "Totally foolhardy. It's just that not doing anything is even worse. You've seen Defalk. The whole land is dying. I'm hoping to surprise the Evult in his lair… his den… whatever."
"Do you know he is there?"
"So far." When Anna had used the glass the night before, only briefly, very briefly, the shadowed figure had been in Vult, eating at a dark table, alone.
She also had the feeling that he would still be in his den, and she had to trust the feeling, not that she had any intention of getting too close to that den. The idea behind the battle hymn—rivers of fire, not water—that should let her spells create their havoc from farther away. She winced. If the spells worked, there would be havoc. If not… another kind of havoc. War, whether through technology or magic, created havoc, but she had to wonder why arms were regarded as more acceptable. Or are you self-justifying again?
She patted Farinelli absently. Why was it always so hard to figure out what was truly right—and still survive?
"I'm sore," said Iseen, one of the horn players, as she tried to stand in her stirrups. Then she called to Alvar, who rode to Anna's left. "Captain, isn't it about time to water the horses?"
Alvar grinned at Anna, who smiled back, then shrugged.
"In a while, lady player. We will need a more gentle slope down to the river."
"In a while, he says…" muttered Iseen, just loud enough for Anna to hear.
"All those silvers… too good to be true… now we know."
"Stop mouthing, Iseen. You were told you would travel. Did you expect a carriage?"
"They sound like lancers," observed Alvar. "Nothing is ever quite the way they would like it."
"Nothing ever turns out quite the way any of us would like it," Anna said dryly. "It's just that the young ones feel that they deserve it that way."
Daffyd frowned, but Anna ignored the expression. The chief player had found that out already, but he still didn't like it. Neither did she.
125
Wei, Nordwei
The spymistress steps into the tower room where Gretslen sits before a mirror pool, chanting. The blonde does not falter, but finishes the spell, and watches the clear waters gather white mist, before silvering and displaying an image.
Both women watch the image.
A long line of horsemen ride up a road flanked by woods filled with dry and dying evergreens. To the left of the column is a gorge, through which trickles the thinnest of streams.
"Where?" asks Ashtaar.
"The upper Fal, on the ancient road to Vult." Perspiration beads on the blonde woman's forehead. "They are nearing the outer pass, and the weather barrier set by the Evult."
"She is brave."
"Foolhardy!" Gretslen continues to study the image in the glass, her eyes on the palomino and his rider—who leads the winding column. "She risks everything."
"Perhaps… and perhaps not. Now, what has she to lose? A land that dies as she watches? Neighbors who speculate which bones to pick clean? Lords looking for allegiances elsewhere?"
Gretslen starts on her stool, and the image wavers and then dissolves in ripples. "You sound fond of this… sorceress… this abomination."
"I only try to see things as they are, Gretslen, not as I wish to see them. This sorceress… this regent… whatever you wish to call her… she does not think as we do."
"Her thoughts will not stop the Evult from crushing her," points out Gretslen.
"She has lost everything dear to her, from what your influence reported. And even your source, you may recall, severed his ties with us—mostly politely, most reluctantly, but most firmly. He fears her power. Yet what restrains that power? All she has is her beliefs. She must do what she feels is proper… and with no children to protect… Defalk is her child… and she will gamble to ensure it survives long after her death." Ashtaar looks up from the pool that is now only clear water. "If her foolhardiness pays off, then Ebra may be the land suffering the long dry years indeed."
"She has overreached."
"That could be. We should hope so, but now that she is almost within Ebra, there is little enough we can do—or should. Keep watching, as you can." Ashtaar nods and turns.
"Yes, most honored Ashtaar."
Ashtaar's lips tighten, but she does not turn her head as she steps through the door and onto the landing above the stairs.
126
Anna readjusted the floppy hat and the unfastened oiled leather jacket and shifted her weight in the saddle. A cold mist—not quite rain—fell from featureless gray clouds that dwindled into nothing over the high pass that lay more than two days and a dozen leagues behind them.
The sorceress glanced back along the road that wound along the mountainside down from the pass, then at the gorge to her left. In the base of the gorge was a brook, already almost as wide as the diminished Fal had been at the point where A
nna and her expedition had entered the Ostfels. Above the brook were scattered firs and pines— healthy firs and pines, growing out of rocks and crevasses.
Her lips tightened, and she forced herself to take a deep breath, looking forward. Just ahead, the road curved right around a jutting spire of rock. Beyond the rock spire rose a sheer cliff, stretching at least several hundred yards straight up.
Beside the sorceress rode Alvar, bareheaded, but smiling. The road was little more than a rock-and-clay track scratched out of the mountainside and capable of holding but two horses abreast, even though Jecks' maps had indicated that it had once been part of the northern land route to Ebra in centuries past.
"The mist feels good," said the lancer captain.
"It feels cold," answered Daffyd from his mare.
Anna agreed with Alvar. "You've gotten too used to that dissonant heat in Defalk."
Farinelli slowed as he neared the tight curve around the red stone spire, and Anna peered forward, abruptly reining in the gelding.
"Halt!" ordered Alvar his hand in the air, and his voice echoing back along the rocky gorge. "Halt!"
"Now what?"
"No one said anything about rain…"
Anna stared at the sheer drop-off where the road ended. Near the end of the cliffs to the right, she could see where the road resumed, but there was no road, not even a pile of rubble, connecting the two points. The entire mountainside had peeled away, leaving just a vertical extent of rock connecting the two points.
"Now what?" asked Daffyd. "We'd have to go back leagues to find another road."
And that road won't lead where I need to go, thought the sorceress.
"The rock below is more than fifty yards down," added Alvar. "We might be able to lower horses and people, but there is no way to cross the jumble of rocks… no way to climb up on the other end."
"More sorcery," Anna sighed, hating the idea. Any sorcery she could use would be like setting an alarm and alerting the Evult. Then, he might already know, and retracing their steps and trying another route would certainly alert the Dark Monks' leader, if he weren't already waiting.
For a time, she sat on Farinelli, thinking. What song could she adapt? Not "The Long and Winding Road." A long and winding road was the last thing she needed. "On the Road Again"?
She smiled and began to formulate possible spells.
"What is she doing?"
"…just sitting there in the mist…"
"… nowhere to go, and she is looking into the sky?"
Anna ignored the players' comments. After a few more mumbled verses, or semiverses, she dismounted and took out the lutar, then handed Farinelli's reins to Alvar. "Would you?"
"If you can repair the road, I can hold reins." The swarthy captain's face showed no sign of humor, except for the glint in his eyes.
"Let's hope I can." She walked toward the point where the road ended abruptly, then stopped a yard short of the drop-off and looked down at the tumbled red rock. In places, weather-stripped fir trunks protruded, indicating that the avalanche had occurred some years earlier.
After tuning the lutar and running through several vocalises, she spoke the words slowly, trying to fix them in her mind. Then… she lifted the lutar and began to strum, adding the words of the spell, trying not to hear Roger Miller in her mind.
"Fix the road again…"
As the words and chords tumbled out, rock dust spewed from the cliff ahead, and the mountain beneath the road trembled. Anna finished the spell, and stepped back from the swirling dust.
The sense of a chord on a giant harp vibrated across the slopes, and a groaning rumble endured long after Anna's words had died away. A dull throbbing pounded at Anna's skull, and she closed her eyes. That didn't help. When she opened them, the misting rain had begun to strip away the curtain of rock dust.
Instead of ending at a sheer drop-off, the road now continued, easing to the right and following a newly-cut shelf that extended almost half a dek along the sheer cliff that had once seemed impassible, continuing the descent from the pass behind them.
"Dissonance!"
"… begin to see why she's regent…"
"You still want to complain, Iseen?"
Anna walked back toward Alvar and Farinelli.
"Most impressive—again—Regent Anna," offered the lancer captain.
"Thank you." She rubbed her temples with her left hand, still holding the lutar in her right, trying to massage away the worst of the headache, and understanding once more the strain involved in handling both words and instrumental support.
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 clay-and-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 l
eagues," 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—like 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.
The Saprano Sorceress Page 60
