Shadowsinger

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  with power to shatter all matter with its might…”

  As Secca launched into the second stanza, the clouds above Aroch began to glow with a white light. Even the darkest of the sorcery-created storm clouds from the first spell began to shred into foggy fragments, then white mists. A circle of dazzlingly clear sky appeared directly above and around the keep of Aroch.

  “Split harmonic whole into its smallest parts

  with greater power than the sun or dissonance’s arts…”

  Then, a beam of white light lanced downward from high in the heavens, growing wider and so intense that Secca had to close her eyes with the last few words of the spellsong. Even her closed eyelids provided little relief as she whirled away from the light that seemed to burn right through her entire body. Never…never thought it would be like this…

  With the light came a single chime, a single harmonic chime that shivered through Secca, through the dazzle-cleared skies, through the solid stones of the world, through…everything, as powerful and ear-numbing as the light was blinding—beyond blinding.

  137

  Aroch, Defalk

  From the northwest tower of the keep, where he sits upon a stool, the Maitre glances eastward toward where the sun would be, were there not clouds, then looks to jerClayne. “Darksong is high enough, though it would be better without the clouds. Far better.” He laughs and adds. “Not that the marshal or the sorceresses have given us the choice. Already, they gather behind their puny earthen ramparts on their hilltop.”

  Behind the Maitre and jerClayne are three younger Sea-Priest sorcerers, the last of the twoscore that had left Stura nearly a year before. Behind them are the players, and a double set of drums. Although the space on the top of the tower is large for a keep, there is scarcely a fraction of a yard in which to move, except for that area before the players and around the sorcerers.

  “It might be well,” offers the Maitre, with an imperious gesture toward jerClayne, “that you begin—before the sorceress calls upon her players and spells.”

  After stepping forward into position before the players and the drummers, jerClayne speaks clearly, “The firebolt spellsong, on my signal.” He raises his arm, then drops it in one abrupt movement. The players start the spell melody, followed a bar later by the drums, which begin as a low rolling and rise into a muted thunder.

  JerClayne’s voice joins them on the next bar, supported by the voices of the three younger Sea-Priests.

  “From heaven there beyond let fall the fireballs of might,

  fall in undying flame to turn to ash the enemy in our sight…”

  When the drumming and playing die away, and the spell is complete, jerClayne steps toward the parapet and leans against the stone, resting. One of the younger Sea-Priests has crumpled and lies on the stones of the tower. The other two drag him gently to a place beside the parapet wall.

  To the far north, beyond the overcast clouds, there is a dull series of thunderlike rolls, followed by a low rumbling that grows with every instant. The clouds to the immediate north of Aroch and beyond the gorge and the hills glow. Then comes a whistling, hissing shriek.

  From the low gray clouds four lines of fire burst, spraying away from the tallest hilltop and scattering across the hillside to the south of that hilltop, a hillside covered with bare-limbed trees. The walls of the keep vibrate, ever so slightly. Lines of smoke rise from the hillside nearly immediately, followed in places by tongues of flame, and then by lines of smoke rising into the morning.

  “Again!” snaps the Maitre.

  JerClayne straightens and steps back before the players. He gestures, and the players and drums repeat the spellsong accompaniment. The voices of the two remaining young sorcerers support him, but this time, when he finishes, his steps toward the parapet are close to a lurching stagger, and he breathes deeply as he leans against the stone rampart.

  Both of the other Sea-Priests have fallen, and there is no one to move them. One of the players looks at the two fallen sorcerers, and then at the Maitre, before licking his lips and remaining in his position with the other players.

  The firebolts once more spew from the northern skies and blast through the gray clouds that hang over the keep and the lands to the north, but once again they spray away from the hilltop where the Defalkan sorceresses have set up their berms.

  “Retune!” snaps the Maitre, rising from his stool. “Once more and their wards will fall.”

  After a long pure note from a violino, the players begin to retune.

  Before they can complete the task, the faintest shiver shakes the tower of the keep, and jerClayne raises his head. His red-rimmed eyes survey the ground to the north. Then he squints and looks more closely.

  “Maitre! She is moving the entire earth against us. See how the ground ripples.” JerClayne’s words run into each other. He pauses, then lifts his hands to clasp and massage his forehead.

  The Maitre’s eyes take in the moving earth but for a moment, before he calls out to the players. “The short safety spell! Now!” His hand drops with his words.

  The players play, and the drummers drum, and the Maitre’s bass-baritone dominates both as he sings the spellsong he has called forth.

  “Shield us now in safety and for this glass

  till all sorcery against us will fail and pass…”

  Still holding to the parapet, jerClayne watches as the wave of earth rumbles, groaning, toward the walls of the keep. For a moment, the entire keep shivers, even as a shimmering white glow begins to enfold the tower, and indeed the entire keep. Then, the shivering halts.

  “That…will…stop her…” pants the Maitre. “That…will stop…any sorcery. Now…the firebolts against her. Both of us will sing. In a moment.” He walks slowly to the stool and laboriously bends to take a long swallow from the bottle beside the stool. Then he lifts the bottle and crosses the few yards between the stool and the parapet, where he hands the bottle to the younger sorcerer.

  “Thank you,” says jerClayne, before taking a deep swallow and setting the bottle on the battlement.

  The Maitre massages his forehead, then turns and addresses the players. His eyes appear as sunken red orbs in a sagging face, but his voice holds rage under iron control. “The full firebolt spell with the double drumming.”

  With a nod, the head player acknowledges the order. “On your signal, Maitre.”

  The Maitre clears his throat, once, then again, before glancing sideways at jerClayne.

  The younger sorcerer nods.

  The Maitre drops his arm, and both sorcerers join in the spellsong after the opening bars.

  “From heaven there beyond let fall the fireballs of might—”

  Abruptly, their words are stilled, not by their will, but by a single clear harmonic chime that lances through the tower almost like an unseen and invisible knife. So cuttingly powerful are the vibrations of its passage that both men are unable to utter a word for a long moment.

  Tiny flakes shiver from the battlements around them, falling like a stone rain around the feet of the Sea-Priests and the players. The strings of the players’ violinos vibrate, creating a strange and eerie accompaniment, and the drums groan, as if in protest, or in resistance to that sole harmonic note.

  JerClayne looks askance at the Maitre.

  “Damp your strings! Again! From the beginning!” snaps the Maitre.

  Even as he speaks, a circle of ever-brighter light enfolds the tower, rising from the intensity of noonday sun in the Dunes of Doom to a glare that cannot be measured, a knifelike light that cuts through clouds, through stone and white robes.

  Flames burst from the varnished and seasoned woods of the violinos used moments before by the players. The skins of the drums snap under the instant and violent heat, and tongues of fire leap from within those same drums.

  Steam erupts from the water bottle on the battlement stones beside jerClayne. Yet as that steam flares forth, the heat that has created it sucks all moisture from the Maitre’s
body, and from the bodies of all those on the tower, and their faces shrivel.

  “Abominations—”

  The Maitre’s words are seared from existence by the beam of heat and light so intense that everything—from the Sea-Priests and their players and their instruments to the very stone around them—is vaporized into a mist of fire that rises straight up, creating a white pillar of living flame that explodes skyward through clouds and rain, searing both from existence.

  The very stones of the tower become a glowing mist, a fiery death mist that envelops the entire keep. So swift is that envelopment that not one lancer within the walls has time for more than a single syllable, not before the entire keep and all around it explode into primeval flame.

  At the base of that pillar of light, where the keep of Aroch had stood, a lake of liquid molten rock forms, a lake of liquid fire containing the heat of the sun, a lake that, as crystal droplets fall from the fire pillar, is covered with molten silver glass.

  138

  Secca staggered under the double impact of both the harmonic chime and the column of brilliant and burning light. Under the force of both, she found her feet carrying her backwards, where she stumbled into the trench, then dropped flat onto the uneven surface. The clay there was cold and damp despite the searing intensity of the light above her. Her head throbbed, and her eyes burned, and daystars flashed across eyes that also burned long after she had closed them tight against the unrelenting glare.

  She had been lying in the trench but instants before she found herself shielded by Alcaren’s body. His figure blocked the worst of the unyielding light, but she had to squirm sideways to move to where his weight did not squeeze her chest against the clay so that she could breathe more easily. A crackling flared somewhere in the sky, blazing through even her closed eyelids, and a wave of heat cascaded over the part of her shoulder unshielded by her consort.

  She could sense that at least one other besides Alcaren was in the trench, but when she tried to open her eyes just the slightest to see who, the glare was so intense that it sent needles through her eyes, and she had to close them. She could only hope that Jolyn was with them, and that the players had all managed to scramble into the pit behind them.

  Was this necessary? Did you need such a terrible spellsong? Even as she asked herself the question, she suspected the answer was that she had no choice—but that, if she survived the terror she had created, the question would come back to haunt her for the rest of her days. If you even survive to be haunted.

  Anna had written cautions, but cautions and warnings were nothing compared to the terrifying reality of the blinding light, and the shivering harmonic chord that had run through her. Nothing at all. Secca had thought the destruction of Stura was terrible, but the blinding intensity of the pillar of light was also terrible—and it had happened in Defalk.

  The warmth of Alcaren beside her helped some, but Secca felt buffeted by light and heat from above and damp and cold from below, and by the unseen crackling sound that half hissed through the skies far above. The glare waxed and waned, even through her closed eyelids, although the waning was merely uncomfortable, while the waxing was excruciating painful.

  How long she lay there, Secca had no idea, only that when the glare finally faded, and she opened her eyes, she could barely see. Everything was silvered, silver against silver, all shades of silver…and colors were barely visible. Against that silvered background, daystars flashed, each one like a bright needle playing counterpoint to the throbbing headache that made Secca simply want to curl up in the trench, cold and damp as the soil was.

  Finally, she eased herself into a sitting position and watched through squinting and slit eyes as Alcaren struggled to do the same.

  She swallowed. “Can you see?” she finally whispered to her consort.

  Alcaren blinked, his eyes not quite focused on her as he turned in the narrow trench. “It’s…all silver.”

  Jolyn levered herself up in the trench. “Never saw anything so bright. Did you bring the sun down?”

  Secca looked at Jolyn. “Can you see?”

  “Mostly. Everything has a shiny silver cast,” replied the older sorceress. Her eyes seemed to widen as she looked at Secca.

  “What is it?” asked the redhead.

  “Your eyes. Somehow…they’re amber, like always, but their centers are dark silver, almost like quicksilver.” Jolyn turned and leaned to look past Secca at Alcaren. “So are yours.”

  Secca glanced at the sky, no longer glaring bright white, but totally clear. “All the clouds—they’re gone.”

  “They’re mostly water,” reflected Alcaren. “The light must have burned them all away.”

  “We need to get out of here and over the hilltop,” Secca said. She just hoped she was strong enough to walk or run the hundred yards or so. She cleared her throat. “Don’t look back.”

  She could not have said why, but she felt that. “Don’t look at Aroch. Not now.”

  Alcaren boosted her up the back wall of the trench, then helped Jolyn out before levering himself up.

  “Players!” Secca called. “To the other side of the hill. Don’t look back! Don’t look back.” She hoped everyone would obey. Her legs felt unsteady, and she was glad that Alcaren took her arm as they walked toward the low rise that marked the hilltop.

  “To the rear,” called Palian. “Keep your instruments, but don’t look back. You could burn your eyes. Don’t look back.”

  Secca wasn’t sure about that, but it was a good idea to give a reason, and she hadn’t been able to think of one. By the time they reached the crest and started down, Secca could feel heat radiating from behind her, and smell the smoke of woods and grasses burning.

  She nearly stumbled, but Alcaren caught her.

  “Aren’t you feeling weak?” she murmured.

  “I’ve felt better,” he admitted. “We just have a little farther to go. Just another fifty yards, I’d wager. Just a little farther.”

  The tone of his voice told Secca that he wasn’t in much better shape than she was, but his arm felt sturdy supporting her.

  “A few more yards,” Secca called out, hoping her voice would carry back to Palian and the players who followed.

  “Lady Secca says we have but a few more yards,” Palian repeated. “Take care with your instruments.”

  Secca hoped that they would not need those instruments anytime soon. She certainly wouldn’t be spellsinging for a time.

  As they began to walk down from the back side of the hillcrest, through the scrub oak and scattered junipers, Delcetta was the first to ride toward them. There were others behind her, but Secca could not make them out with her silvered vision.

  “Are you…can you…?” Delcetta didn’t seem to want to complete the question.

  Secca wondered if she looked that bad.

  “The lady Secca will need some assistance,” Alcaren said.

  Secca felt as though his voice were deks away, and it faded and then roared in her ears, and the daystars before her vision rushed toward her and then receded. She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other…one foot in front of the other.

  “The ground rumbled,” Delcetta declared, “and then it was brighter than if there were a score of suns in the sky. Those suns blazed away the clouds as if they did not exist. Now”—she gestured southward—“smokes rises as if all Aroch were aflame.”

  Secca turned and looked back over the hillcrest, feeling that would be safe enough, since she could not see Aroch itself. Even through her silvered vision, she could make out the immense pillar of swirling smoke that rose into a clear sky—an otherwise totally clear sky.

  Abruptly…suddenly, Secca could feel her legs begin to shake.

  She started to sit down, helped by Alcaren, but a wave of silvered blackness swept up over her.

  139

  Secca woke with darkness all around her. Her eyes opened slowly, and daystars flashed before her, silver-tinged flashes that made it nearly impossibl
e for her to see anything. She was almost afraid to move, but she let her eyes travel to her right, where she could make out the embers in a hearth, red embers also tinged with silver. She seemed to be lying on her bedroll in the same small cot where she had struggled to get sleep the night before. Had it been the night before? Just the night before?

  She tried to roll over because her shoulder was both burning and stiff. With that motion, her entire face turned into flame. “Ohhhh.”

  “Here, lady. You must drink,” said Richina, easing a water bottle to Secca’s lips. “The water will help.”

  Secca drank, but the water seemed so cold that she shivered as it eased down her throat, and the drops that spilled on her face were like ice.

  “You must have more,” Richina insisted, easing the bottle back to Secca’s mouth.

  Secca took the water, until she was shivering all over and could drink no more. Then she asked, “The wards. What of the wards?”

  “Lady Secca,” Richina offered softly, “there is no one left who can cast sorcery from a distance—save you. Do you not remember?”

  “Alcaren?” Secca’s voice was raspy, hoarse.

  “He sleeps now, almost beside you. He is better than you,” murmured the younger blonde sorceress, “though his face is also flushed and painful. That is true of everyone who sang or played the last spellsong, but yours is the most flushed. The lady Jolyn suffered less than you two.”

  “What…of the players?”

  “Palian and Delvor are much like Lord Alcaren, but I would say they will recover, as will most of the players.”

  “Most?”

  “Bretnay and Rowal…they did not seek shelter as you ordered. The light…” Richina’s voice broke off, as if she did not wish to explain.

  Secca did not wish to force her. That the two had died, she regretted, as with all the deaths of those who had helped and followed her. In a sense, how the two died did not matter, save that she would have willed it otherwise, and she hoped it had not been painful or lengthy. Yet, with the Sea-Priests bent on taking Liedwahr, could the war have been fought without deaths? Secca doubted that, but had there needed to be so many?