Shadowsinger

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

“I’m not of the many, as you may have noticed, my lady.” Alcaren grinned. “I have better taste.”

  “You are most rare, my dear.” Secca stood and walked to the corner, where she rummaged through the lutar case. She extracted several sheets of brown paper and a sheet of parchment. Returning to the table, she laid the parchment to the side, then looked at Alcaren. “While you sketch out your map, I need to draft a message.”

  “A message?”

  “You’ll see.” She pointed to the paper. “There’s some paper for your map.”

  “As you command, my lady.” Alcaren grinned.

  She snorted and picked up the grease marker.

  Secca was still writing—and scratching out phrases, and rewriting them—when Alcaren cleared his throat.

  “Yes?” she asked, looking up from the papers and the uneven surface of the table.

  “I have a map, one most rough, but a map.”

  Secca set down the grease marker she was using to draft her scroll. The final version would be in ink on parchment. Then she leaned forward as Alcaren set the two sheets before her.

  “Here is Mansuur, and Defuhr Bay. Then here are the Ostisles…”

  “How far from Landende?” asked Secca.

  “Close to a thousand deks,” Alcaren replied. “And it is another six hundred deks farther west before the border isles of Sturinn—here.” He pointed.

  “How fast can a ship sail, with the wind?”

  “Some can reach twelve deks in an hour, but that is rare and seldom lasts. Nor can a ship mistress always count on following winds.”

  “We could help with that,” Secca pointed out. She found a corner of the paper she had not used and began to figure. Even at eight deks, that’s but a week to reach the Ostisles…She shook her head, understanding truly for the first time the advantage in travel possessed by those with ships. In a matter of a few glasses a ship could travel more than most riders could in a day.

  “You are not…not thinking of sailing westward?”

  “Where else?”

  “We have no ships.”

  “Not yet.” Secca extended two sheets of the brown paper, heavily marked and corrected. “Here is what I had thought of sending to the Matriarch.”

  “Alya?”

  “Read it. It explains itself.” Secca tilted her head. “I hope it does.”

  Secca stood behind Alcaren and reread what she had written as her consort read it for the first time.

  Most gracious Matriarch:

  I am convinced that, unless Sturinn is dealt with in Sturinn, we will continue to face the threats of invasion and even greater use of sorcery in Liedwahr by the Sturinnese. Those threats will require the need for greater and greater use of sorcery merely for Liedwahr to repulse the Sea-Priests, and for the lands of Liedwahr to keep their freedoms and individual ways of life.

  There is a chance, I believe, that we can deal with the problem of Sturinn at its source. For that to take place, we will need several ships to carry us to the isles of Sturinn. While I could request assistance from the Council of Wei, I feel more comfortable requesting those ships from Ranuak…

  If this is agreeable to you and to the Exchange, I would suggest that we meet the ships in Narial two weeks after the turn of spring…

  Alcaren looked up. “That’s only three weeks from now.”

  “We can get there in three weeks. Who is likely to stop us?”

  “If you use sorcery, and if no one uses it against us,” he said, “but would that not exhaust you?”

  “There are three of us, if one is not too seasick.”

  “I can do spells, even when turned green.”

  “Then we shall have a speedy trip—if we can obtain vessels.”

  “You’re not taking everyone? What can they do at sea?”

  “I’d rather not,” Secca admitted, “but we will need all the players and some lancers for protection. What we do depends on how many ships there are and what we can work out with the mistresses…if we get them. I’d thought about having the others wait at Narial for several weeks and then set sail to join us. If we succeed, we could send a message when we depart from Sturinn.” Or what may be left of it. She paused. “But that way, they would have no protection, and if we did have to land somewhere, we wouldn’t either.”

  “You are most sanguine about this near-impossible venture.”

  “What else can I be?”

  Alcaren nodded slowly, finishing the scroll before looking up at her again. “Do you know whether the Council of Wei would offer you ships?” He smiled as he asked the question, as if he knew the answer.

  “If I told them that it would reduce the power of the Sturinnese warships and their control of the Western Sea, I think they would be inclined to offer at least a few. For them, it would cost very little.”

  “But you are asking the Matriarch.”

  “Ranuak has far more to lose,” Secca pointed out.

  “This is a most risky proposition. If you fail…”

  “I know,” Secca admitted. “There is no one but Jolyn to stop the Maitre and his drummers and lancers, and even with Anandra’s assistance, she is likely to fail.” She sighed. “I do not wish to spend the rest of my life repulsing the Sturinnese—or, like Anna, knowing that they will strike again once I am gone.”

  “You see that as likely?”

  “I see it as inevitable, if the Sturinnese are not destroyed in their own home isles. Nothing besides superior force deters the Sea-Priests. They care not for what any people wishes. They would impose—” Secca shook her head. “In a way, if I am successful, I will be imposing my wishes also.” She paused. “But what I wish is for all people to choose what they will in life, not just men, as in Sturinn, or women…as in…other places.”

  “You did not say Ranuak,” Alcaren said with a laugh. “You thought it, but you did not say it.”

  “How many years did it take you to become free to do as your talents would let you?” Secca countered.

  “Too many, and it would not have happened, save for a beautiful sorceress.”

  “At the moment, I don’t feel beautiful. I’m still tired, and we have close to two weeks riding ahead, and that is without certainty that we will even get assistance from the Matriarch.”

  “Denyst might volunteer even without encouragement.”

  “She might want to, but could she afford it?” pressed Secca.

  Alcaren shrugged.

  “All we can do is ride to Narial and see,” Secca said.

  “You gamble greatly,” he pointed out.

  “I do indeed. We could find ourselves in Narial with no ships and a long ride through Stromwer to Falcor—with the need to do mighty sorcery even to reach the borders of Defalk.” She offered a crooked smile. “Yet we cannot catch the Sturinnese by chasing them through the Mittfels. If we did, and if once more we destroyed another force, what would it gain us, save the need to ride northward farther to fight still another invasion force—and more sorcerers and drummers?”

  “But if you succeeded…who else would you have to fight?”

  “The Sturinnese in another handful of years.” When you’d rather be raising children in a peaceful land. “They have not stopped their conquests in a half-score of generations. Why would they stop now unless something stopped them? They fight until they wear down their enemies.”

  Alcaren frowned. “There is something else.”

  “There is. If we follow them, then we must fight more on their terms. If I go to Narial, what will they do?” Secca smiled. “The glass shows no more fleets in Sturinn or the Ostisles. So they must gather ships from somewhere, or send ships from that fleet against us—and they would be hard-pressed to catch us.”

  “They will have a thousandscore lancers and armsmen waiting in Sturinn.”

  “Let them wait.”

  “What is to stop the Maitre from sending a spell against you in the fashion you did against Belmar?” asked Alcaren.

  “That will happen, once it i
s clear where we head.” Secca smiled grimly. “So we must develop some spells to set wards before we ride tomorrow. I will have Richina send the message later today. That will give her some time to recover before we ride.”

  Alcaren shook his head once more.

  “Tell Wilten and Delcetta that we ride for Dumaria tomorrow. I’ll tell the players.”

  “We wager much…”

  “No. We wager far more if we do the expected.” If you can do all that you plan…if…Secca didn’t want to think too deeply about all that she planned beyond what she had told her consort. Some of it was too wild to put in words. Far too wild.

  60

  Encora, Ranuak

  Outside, a fine mist drizzles down across Encora, so fine and so thick that it is more like fog than rain. In his small study, Aetlen glances from one ledger to the next, shifting them carefully as he makes notes in a fine hand on the sheets of paper to one side. Absently, he scratches his head above his ear, leaving a smudge of ink amid the silver-and-blond hair.

  Silently, the Matriarch appears at the doorway to Aetlen’s small study. Her face is drawn, but she says nothing until he senses her presence.

  He looks up from the ledgers that surround him. “I was trying to balance the ledgers, my dear, and to see who might be shading the accounts.”

  “I know how tedious that is, and I would not disturb you, save that I wished you to see this.” Alya extends the browned scroll to her consort. “It arrived a short while ago. By sorcery, from the Shadow Sorceress.”

  “By sorcery? Then, it is most urgent.” He does not take the scroll.

  “I fear it is more urgent than we know, and yet…” A tight smile appears on her lips. “I will say no more until you read it.”

  He sets the quill back in its stand, then looks at his ink-stained fingers. He rubs them on the grayish towel until no more ink appears on the soft fabric. Only then does he take the scroll from Alya.

  She watches as he reads, her eyes studying his face intently.

  Finally, he looks up. “Will you send her the ships?”

  “If I must offer my own body,” Alya replies. “If I must sell all that we own. If I must grovel before the Exchange—”

  “I understand,” her consort says hastily.

  “You understand that I am distraught, and that you will say aught to calm me. What the sorceress wrote is disturbing enough, but what she did not write is even more so.” The Matriarch clears her throat, then continues. “You know what has occurred. She has used greater and greater sorceries, and so have the Sea-Priests. There is a truly mighty sorcerer in Neserea, perhaps even one as great as the Maitre himself. The Liedfuhr has hazarded too many lancers, and they will perish. Defalk has no defenses left to speak of, except two sorceresses and their assistants. The fleets of Wei are too far south to reach the Sturinnese fleet in the Bitter Sea, even were they inclined to give battle.”

  Aetlen waits, then speaks when he realizes that she wants words from him. “You fear that she may unleash some great sorceries from the great sorceress?”

  “I do indeed. Do you think that Secca is the type to ask for ships on a whim and to sail more than a thousand deks unless she has a plan and a thought of success?”

  “She could be mistaken.”

  “She could be.” Alya smiles wanly. “Consider this. The west of Liedwahr stands within the grasp of the Maitre. But there is a cost. For the first time in generations, most of the ships and lancers of Sturinn are well away from the home isles.”

  “But…how can she defeat them if they are not there?”

  Alya looks at him, her eyes unwavering.

  His face pales.

  “Exactly, my love,” she says. “Exactly. Yet…do we have any other choice?”

  He looks down at the scroll as if it bore the announcement of his daughters’ deaths.

  “Do we?” she asks again.

  He shakes his head slowly.

  61

  Outside the small dwelling, the wind whispered, not quite wailing, but never subsiding, strong enough at times to send darts of chill air through the shutters and into the cottage. Inside, under the light of the single oil lamp in the hamlet—one Delcetta had brought all the way from Encora—Secca looked once more at the lines on the paper before her.

  “From all sorcery near or far, keep us free,

  that any spell we can or cannot hear or see,

  rebounds full force against whoever sang its cast,

  and make sure that this effect will fully last…”

  Secca rubbed her eyes, stifling a yawn. The idea was good, and the rhymes matched, but there were too many words, and the note values were another question. She looked at the words again and sighed.

  “Do you need to do this tonight, and so late, lady?” asked Richina from where she lay in her bedroll on a narrow straw pallet on the far side of the hearth from the larger pallet where Secca’s and Alcaren’s bedrolls were laid out.

  “I should have done it, and cast the spell, before I sent that poisoned tube to kill Belmar. The Sea-Priests have a spell like it, I would guess, from what you have discovered.” Secca swallowed another yawn and handed the sheet with the spellsong words to Alcaren, who had seated himself across the table from her. “Would you look at this?”

  He took the sheet and began to read. “The lines are long…”

  “I know that. Can you think of any way to shorten them?”

  Alcaren finished reading through what she had handed him, then thought, and finally spoke, slowly and distinctly.

  “Keep us free from another’s spell

  all sorcery turn and repel…”

  He broke off and shook his head. “Yours is better.”

  “It’s too long,” Secca reiterated.

  “How about this,” suggested Alcaren,

  “From all sorcery, keep us free,

  any spell sent by friend or enemy,

  and send it back full force to slay

  any with intent…”

  “What comes next?”

  “I don’t know,” confessed her consort. “I thought you might have a way to bring it to a close. You are the Sorceress Protector.” He grinned, half-apologetically.

  “It’s your spell, my love,” Secca said.

  “I am a beginner at this, my lady. Do have mercy upon me and my words.”

  Both stopped speaking as the wind rose to a whistle and then died to a moaning, before rising to a shrill whistle again.

  She looked at Alcaren, his face warm in the golden lamplight. “I want you to sing this one with me in the morning, with all the players. If I finish it.” She stopped, then added, “When I finish it, and finish it I will. Tonight.”

  “As you wish, my lady, although I am not near so accomplished as you.”

  “Remember how much stronger the spellsong was against the Sturinnese with more voices?” asked Secca.

  “Would you like me, also?” Richina inquired from her pallet, her voice sleepy.

  “I would like that, but it would not be good for you. Or for the rest of us, either,” Secca said firmly.

  “I can—”

  Secca held up a hand. “You sing well. But this spell is a draining spell, and it takes strength all the time from those who sing it. One of us should not be drained, and because you know more spells than does Alcaren, you must be free to sing those spells should we need them.”

  “Oh…” Richina smiled shyly in the darkness of her corner, but the shyness carried into her voice.

  “I am placing a burden on you, as well as on us,” Secca said. “Yours is but a different burden.” She smiled. “You can do little now. Best you try to sleep.”

  “I am…tired.” There was a hint of a yawn in Richina’s reply.

  Secca looked down at the sheets of brown paper, then turned one, and then another to find a vacant space on one side. It took her three sheets to find one with enough space to write. She picked up the marker and wrote three words, then three more, before scratching o
ut the last, and frowning, then sighing.

  Alcaren winced, but said nothing.

  Richina rolled on her side in her bedroll.

  The wind whistled beyond the walls.

  62

  Despite the wind of the night before, the air was hushed and still in the orange light of early morning as Secca swung up into the saddle of the gray mare. She glanced back to the western end of the hamlet, where the players were strapping their instruments behind their saddles. Beyond them milled lancers—both the SouthWomen and those from Loiseau.

  With a faint smile, she looked eastward out along the river road that would lead to Dumaria, and then to Narial. The one advantage of what the Sturinnese had done in blocking the passes to Neserea was that they couldn’t easily turn back and chase Secca or do any more damage in Dumar. Not that they hadn’t already done more than enough.

  Secca half stretched as she settled into the saddle. The warding spell—if that were what it happened to be—had gone well enough, but Secca supposed she wouldn’t know just how effective it might be until or unless the Sea-Priests tried sorcery against her. She glanced around.

  Alcaren had already mounted, but had ridden to the western end of the hamlet to talk with Wilten and Delcetta. Richina was mounting, and another rider—gray-haired—was walking her mount toward Secca.

  Palian nodded to Dymen as she drew up beside the sorceress. “How long do you think the ward will hold?”

  “I don’t know,” Secca admitted. “A few glasses…a few days…a few weeks. It could be any.” She smiled crookedly. “It might not work at all.”

  “It will work. I could sense…something…drawing together.”

  “Let us hope so.”

  Palian gestured toward the players. “All are ready, except Bretnay.” She turned her mount. “Perchance…someday she will learn.”

  The two women laughed. A vaguely puzzled expression crossed Richina’s face as she reined in her mount beside them. Before either Palian or Secca could speak, Alcaren joined the three, his mount moving at a walk, with Wilten and Delcetta following him.