Darksong Rising (2 page)

thrown himself into the enchanted javelin hurled by the Sea-Priest of Sturinn. She still wasn’t

sure that she would have been able to do something like that to save someone else—to die

immediate and selfless way Jecks had done to save her. She moistened her lips at the memory.

Jecks had not been happy with her decision to leave Falcor— especially for the ten days it would

take, and he had been quite forceful. “I do not see why you insist on riding out to Sorprat... you

do not need a ford there. Not this year. What crops there are come from the lower valley, and the

peasants and farmers can use the bridge at Pamr. For another year or so, there will be little

enough trade with Ebra. What there is can take the old road on the south side of the Chean

River.”

Except that the old road adds almost two days travel to Mencha—and Ebra—and you may need

those days all too soon.
 
In fact, her own journey to repair the ford was on the old road, and even

pushing, it would take a day more—but she knew she needed to be on the south side to see what

she could do to undo the mess she’d made of the ford when she’d created a giant sinkhole to

swallow the Ebran invaders. And she felt that repairing the ford was necessary. She ignored solid

gut feelings at her own peril, and the ford’s destruction had been nagging at her for well over a

year.

As she rode across the high bluff on the south side of the river, Anna glanced to her left,

northward out across the river, across the green valley that—everywhere away from the irriga-

tion ditches—had been brown and dusty little more than a year earlier. She did not look forward

to revisiting the site of the battle with the Dark Monks of Ebra—except that it had been more of

a slaughter than a battle. Even under the hot sun of late summer, she shivered, recalling the

screams and the terrible grinding of the earth as her song-sorcery had churned the muddy waters

of the
Chean
River
over the trapped soldiers.

The column crossed the low rise in the road and started on the gentle downgrade toward the

point on the south bank of the river opposite the town of
Sorprat
—or what of it had been rebuilt

after the destruction wrought by Anna’s magic. It still astounded her that “good” or harmonic

song magic—Clearsong—could create such massive destruction, often with not too great a side

effect on Anna. Yet the smallest of Darksong spells—even those which would have obviated the

need for destructive Clearsong—could prostrate her, possibly threaten her life. Another

unfairness that you can do nothing about... because that’s the way this world operates. Period.

She put that thought aside and concentrated on the spell she would have to use shortly.

Before long, she reined up Farinelli short of where the high grassland ended—abruptly. Himar

gestured, and a trumpet signal echoed through the early afternoon. Behind them, the column

slowed and halted. Anna patted Farinelli on the shoulder, and the gelding nodded ever so slightly

as if to suggest that he indeed deserved some thanks.

Where the plateau ended, what had once been a sinkhole was now a circular and placid lake,

smaller than it had been, and cut off from the
Chean
River
by a low muddy rise barely three

yards above the lake’s surface. The water was still brownish. Below the sorcery-cut bluffs,

between the base of the bluffs and the water’s edge, instead of beaches, mud slopes angled into

the murky lake.

“It is peaceful now’ said Himar quietly. “One would hardly know that thousands perished there.”

 
Anna nodded. Ten thousand Ebrans. Dark Monks, she added mentally. “We’re close enough.”

Himar turned his mount and stood in the stirrups. “Stand down!”

As she thought about the Ebrans, Anna almost wanted to shake her head. Hadrenn, the Ebran

Lord of Synek, had beseeched her to accept his fealty. She had, and in making him one of the

thirty-three lords of Defalk, thereby effectively added a quarter of Ebra to Defalk.
 
And probably

ensured another war in Ebra. One way or another there would have been war in Ebra she

reminded herself, between Hadrenn and Bertmynn, the noble who had taken the title of Lord of

Dolov and sought to unite all Ebra under his rule. The difference was that Hadrenn had a

legitimate claim to lands that had been seized from his father, and sought only those lands, while

Bertmynn was willing to sell out to the Liedfuhr of Mansuur and the Sturinnese to rule all of

Ebra, And the Sturinnese chain their women.

Anna dismounted. Ear a moment, as she grasped the cantle of the saddle with one hand, she

wasn’t sure if her legs would hold. After site took the bottle that still held water, she drank

slowly. She recorked the battle and replaced it in the holder before walking slowly in the open

road before Farinelli to stretch her legs. Next came the vocalises to clear her cords of dust, and

the mucus from allergies that Brill’s youth spell had done nothing to remedy.

“Holly-lolly-pop...”

Behind her, horses sidestepped, and the armsmen murmured m voices so low that the sound was

mare like locusts than men. She shook her head, then began another vocalise, hoping that getting

her cords clear would not take forever.

"Quiet!” snapped Himar and the murmuring died away.

When Anna felt her cords were clear, she walked back to the gelding and extracted from the left

saddlebag the sketch of the ford she had drawn from memory back in Falcor. Once she unrolled

it, her eyes flicked from the drawing to the terrain before her and back to the drawing, comparing

the two.

The sketch showed almost a wide and flat stone shelf like structure that would spread the river

into a shallow and wide expanse, similar to the clay flats and gravel shallows that had existed

before Anna had destroyed the bend in her efforts to annihilate the Ebran forces. She’d also

sketched out what amounted to a gradual spillway that would funnel the river back into the

deeper channel that existed below where the ford had been.

While she could have used sorcery to construct another bridge, the ford had worked before, and

she was reluctant to change what had worked, especially since the northern side of the river was

so much lower than the south and there was little enough stone beneath the bluffs.

Finally. Anna lowered the scroll, turned, and motioned to Liende, who stood before the players.

Anna waited until the red-and-white-haired woodwind player eased forward.

“If you would bring the players up here. Face them toward the river, not the…lake,” the

sorceress said. “We’ll use the long building spell. Warm up and run through it a few times while

1 finish getting ready!’

“Players to position, here.” Liende motioned for the others to gather in a semicircle.

Anna walked forward a few steps, before stopping and looking at the sketch of the ford and

attempting to reconcile it to the reality of crumbling bluffs and mudflats split by a turbid river

perhaps thirty yards wide in a deep channel.

While the falk-horn, the woodwinds, and the strings tuned behind her, she sang the notes of the

spell, using “la” instead of real words, and worked at visualizing the ford.

“We stand ready," Liende announced.

Anna turned to the chief player. “I’d like one run-through to fix the spell and words, please!’

“At my mark,” Liende ordered. “Mark!”

Anna tried to mesh the visual image, the words, and the melody, all without actually singing the

spell itself. Halfway through, she stopped and shook her head. “I’m sorry. Could we try that

again?”

Alter the second run-through, Anna took another sip of water, squared her shoulders, and nodded

once more at the chief player.

“The long building song—for the spell,” commanded Liende. “At my mark... Mark!”

Anna concentrated on just the spell and the image of the stone-footed ford the spell was designed

to form, ignoring the heat, ignoring the fivescore armsmen mounted and ranked behind the

players, using full opera voice to set the spell.

... replicate the blocks and stones.

 
Place them in their proper zones....

Set them firm, and set them square

weld them to their pattern there...

Bring the rock and make it stone....

The bluff underfoot shivered, and kept shivering. Anna had to step sideways, but managed to

keep her voice open, strong, and clear. The lightning; marking her use of the harmonies, and

unseen to any but her, or so it had seemed; flickered in the bright blue southern sky. The haze

that formed would turn into clouds, clouds that would dissipate within a few hours— glasses, she

corrected herself mentally.

As the song ended and the shimmering haze lifted, Anna smiled raggedly. The bluff to her right

had been trimmed into a stone-paved inclined road down to the river, and the murky waters of

the Chean formed a glistening sheet nearly a hundred yards wide across the newly created stone

ford. On the far side, a second stone causeway rose out of the ford to join the road through the

dozen huts that represented the rebuilding of Sorprat.

“Most amazing, Lady Anna," offered Himar.

Murmurs from the armsmen ranked behind the players were louder.

“see?"

“...not many others who can do that.”

“Not many, Nirweit? How about none.”

"...hope the peasants appreciate it.”

The dizziness that accompanied strenuous songspell-casting again left Anna light-headed, but

she stood firmly on the ground that shifted under her. Every spell she cast—or so it seemed—left

her weak, if for varying periods. That she had to eat like a glutton to maintain her strength was

something she still had trouble accepting.