The Shadow Sorceress (24 page)

Before dawn, Secca woke with a start at hearing distant thunder, except the sound wasn't thunder, but something far more regular, more rhythmic.

“The drums…” she murmured to herself as she scrambled upright and pulled on her riding clothes, and jacket, and her sabre.

Not once as Secca dressed in the darkness did Richina stir.

Secca shook her head. The younger sorceress thought Secca had not heard when she had left and when she had returned. While Secca had cautioned Richina before they had eaten the night before, obviously the young woman had dismissed the cautions. Just as obviously, she had decided to try not to let Secca know.

By the time Secca was out of the tent, Stepan was already walking toward her through the darkness that was beginning to show faint graying above the firs to the east. The sound of the thunder-drums had already faded away.

“Do you know—” she began.

The older man, his face drawn and haggard, shook his head. “Fog…the thunder-drums have created a wall of fog. It fills all the valleys around their encampment. It is like a wall of darkness.”

“Your scouts?”

“They can see if anyone leaves the fog, but no one has. Otherwise, they are useless.”

Secca nodded abruptly. “Let me get my glass.”

When she returned to the tent, Secca did not make any attempt to be quiet.

“What…is it, lady?” asked Richina sleepily.

“If you hadn't been so besotted with Haddev and gotten some sleep last night, you'd know,” Secca replied tersely, just short of snapping. “As I told you before, he doesn't understand you. He just sees you as a prize, and if you give yourself to him, you won't be. You'll either bear more heirs than you can stand, or, if he's wise, he'll discard you. Either way, it's going to hurt. If you care for him, it will hurt even more.” She paused in the entrance to the tent. “Oh…the Sturinnese have used the thunder-drums to stop the wind and create more fog.”

She stepped outside, carrying the lutar she had not bothered to uncase and the mirror, realizing she shouldn't have been so curt with Richina—and also realizing that she should have started the younger sorceress on scrying the Sturrinese. She shook her head. Once again, her nature had gotten in the way of what she should have done.

Stepan's face was grave as Secca neared. He took the mirror from her, but he did not speak, although his eyes flicked to the tent.

“I suppose I was harsh, but she doesn't understand, and he certainly doesn't.” Secca laughed, without joy or mirth. “She will think I neither understand nor care.”

The arms commander nodded. “Few could consort with a sorceress. Fewer still should.”

The two walked through the damp chill to the campfire. To the south, wisps of dark fog swirled lazily into the graying sky, but the wind was even lighter than the afternoon before, despite Wilten's prediction that it should have strengthened.

Secca's fingers felt clumsy as she tuned the lutar, and it took her longer than usual—or it felt that way. Before she finished a pair of vocalises, Wilten, Palian, and Delvor had joined them. Haddev stood well back. Richina did not appear.

The scrying song was short.

The mirror obliged with an image of the Sturinnese camp from above, a camp strangely quiet, given the drums of earlier.
Cookfires were blazing with the early high flames that indicated a time before food would be cooked and served. Mounts remained unsaddled and upon tielines run from posts to trees.

Secca quickly tried another spell, one seeking the thunder-drummers. But they were clustered around a cookfire, warming their hands.

A third spell got her a Sea-Priest looking at a mirror.

As she released the last spell, all too aware of the daystars flashing before her eyes, she wondered if the Sea-Priest were watching her in his mirror. Her fingers shook on the lutar as she lowered it.

“You ate not this morning, did you?” asked Palian.

Secca shook her head, squinting against the flashes of light.

The chief player stepped away from the campfire.

“Lady…they wait, and they must have a reason for such,” offered Wilten.

“Either they wish to force us to attack in poor conditions, or they expect aid,” Secca suggested. “Or both.”

“How—”

“In a few moments, I will try the glass again,” Secca said tiredly.

“Lady…here is some bread.” Palian stepped forward.

“Thank you.”

After eating several chunks of bread and some yellow cheese just short of molding, and drinking nearly half a water bottle, Secca stood and lifted the lutar.

The mirror silvered, then displayed a line of lancers riding down from a hold on a bluff. A misty fog rose from the heated surface of the glass, momentarily distorting the image presented in the cold predawn light.

“The Sturinnese lancers at Dolov,” murmured Stepan, “Still, they are six days away, perhaps a week.”

“But they do not expect more help from the ships,” Palian pointed out.

“We have a little time for the fog to lift or be blown out,” Stepan said. “If it will…”

“Let me think,” Secca said slowly. As well as Stepan, she knew that the Sea-Priests could hold the fog for days if the weather remained calm.

She recased the lutar, and picked up the traveling mirror, then walked slowly back toward her tent.

Richina stood before the tent, fully dressed. She bowed. “I am sorry I displeased you, Lady Secca.”

The formality of her tone showed more anger than contriteness to Secca. The older sorceress motioned for Richina to follow her into the tent. There Secca slid the lutar and mirror onto the ground cloth under the cot. She straightened, then sat slowly on the cot, before gesturing to the younger woman to sit on her own cot.

After a moment of quiet, Secca sighed and looked at her charge. “Richina…” Her voice was soft, gentle, sad. “Do you think that I am not a woman? Do you think I have never felt what you feel? Do you think that I do not see how comely Haddev is? Or how warm was the smile of Lythner?”

Richina did not reply. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, but Secca was uncertain whether those tears were more of anger or of unhappiness.

“Do you think I do not care about you?” asked Secca.

“You sounded so angry.”

“I suppose I was. I wished to spare you from what will happen with Haddev, and you did not listen…but we do not spare ourselves. Sorceresses and women do not.” Her laugh was half-gentle, half-ironically self-mocking. “Why should you be any different from me, or from Lady Anna? Or Clayre…or Jolyn?”

“You…I thought…”

“You think I do not favor men?” Secca shook her head. “I do not favor men who would use me, or hide their fear of me with a smile. I do not favor men who seek me only to provide an heir or lands they could not get otherwise. And for me…then whom does that leave?”

“Oh…lady…” Richina swallowed. “You sounded so cold…I am sorry.”

“You think it not, but I would spare you what I can. I suppose none of us can spare another, not as we would wish…”

“He is gentle, lady, and has asked nothing of me.”

“That may be.” Secca hoped that was true, for all of their sakes. “You cannot afford to give of yourself, not until we have done what must be done. Remember what one road spell cost you.”

Richina paused. “I know.”

“He is handsome, but there is more to life than handsome.” Secca paused, massaging her neck for a moment.

The younger sorceress asked, “What of the thunder-drums?”

Secca leaned forward from where she sat on the edge of the cot. “They have used them to build a wall of thick fog around their encampment, and they do not prepare for battle.”

“What will you do?”

“For the day, we will wait and watch. Our lancers and players and mounts can use the rest.”

“If it continues…?”

“I worry about that. I worry greatly.” Secca massaged her forehead. “Their Sea-Priest at Dolov has seen what we do and is sending those lancers south. They cannot reach us for nearly a week, but…”

“But?” prompted Richina.

“If the weather remains mild, then they can continue to hold the sorcerous fog. If it should storm, then we will be at a great disadvantage. I will need your assistance in scrying and perhaps in much more. Much more.”

Richina fell silent, her eyes not meeting Secca's.

The redheaded sorceress, who suddenly felt far older than she was, stared sightlessly at the time and travel-worn silk side panels of the tent.

From the saddle of the gray mare, Secca looked out across the valley, again in the early dawn, once more at another thick layer of fog that separated her forces from the Sturinnese encampment. Behind her were Stepan, Wilten, Haddev, Richina, and the two chief players. All were mounted and looking southward across the gray that blanketed the valley below. If the valley were narrow—like a river gorge—Secca might have considered building a bridge, but no sorceress could song-build a structure spanning nearly three deks—and even if she could…she and the players would be exhausted and worthless for weeks.

“The fog is thicker than before,” Wilten said. “We cannot wait and wait.”

“Not for long,” agreed Stepan. “Yet to attack through it would be foolhardy. Even scouts would lose their way, and could be slain or captured by any Sturinnese waiting there.”

Above Secca, the sky was cloudless, the air still, but cold. Clearsong's pale white disk was at the zenith, while Darksong would be at its zenith near midnight. Secca glanced again at the fog that shrouded the valleys to the south. With such weather, she feared the Sturinnese could create and hold their fog for days, if not weeks. All the scrying glass showed was that the Sturinnese forces maintained their sentries and picket lines, practiced arms and thunder-drums…and waited.

“Let us see where the Sturinnese lancers from Dolov are. Then we will see what we must do.” With a nod at Wilten and Stepan, she turned her mount and rode the gray back along the ridge and toward her tent.

Once back in the encampment, she dismounted and extended
the reins to the lancer guard. “Achar…if you would…I won't need her for a while.”

“Yes, lady.”

“Thank you.” Secca offered a smile, then hurried into the tent to reclaim lutar and mirror. She brought out the mirror and began to retune the lutar, going through a vocalise as she did so, hoping to be ready by the time the others had taken care of their mounts.

Still, the others had gathered and were standing in a semicircle around the mirror as Secca finished her third vocalise. She cleared her throat and launched into the short spell.

As her words died away, the glass turned a blank silver, then misted over before the swirling mists dissolved and revealed an image. The white-clad lancers who had been at Dolov were breaking camp, forming up into columns once more. On the left side of the image was a river.

“The river is not so wide there. I would judge another four days, three if they ride hard, before they reach the River Syne,” Stepan said.

“How long can they hold that fog?” asked Wilten.

“For days,” Secca replied, “if the weather remains as it has.”

“There is no sign of change,” observed Delvor.

For a time, no one spoke.

Finally, Secca said, “There may be a way. I will work on it and let you know.” She smiled at Stepan, and then Wilten. “If your scouts will keep us informed…”

“That we will.”

“Yes, lady.”

After all had left but Richina and the lancer guards, Secca recased the lutar.

Richina picked up the mirror and carried it into the tent behind Secca, replacing it in its case and sliding the case under the narrow cot.

Secca slid the lutar beside the mirror.

“Can I help, lady?” asked Richina.

“If you would get me some water…I need to think.”

Richina nodded and slipped out of the tent.

Secca sat on the cot, in the middle, where she wouldn't tip it over.

The problems were simple enough. The lowlands that were filled with fog were too wide for her spells to carry across and too deep for casual winds or breezes to disperse. So she couldn't sneak up in the night the way she had with Mynntar. She couldn't get the archers close enough to attack the drums or drummers without going into the fog itself.

So…she had to get rid of the fog…somehow.

Wind? Could she raise a wind to disperse the fog? She got wind when she did the mining spell.

She pulled out several folded sheets of paper and the grease pencil and began to jot down phrases.

In the grayness and almost still air before dawn, Secca and Richina—and Wilten, Stepan, Haddev, and the two chief players—looked out from the high ridge at the fog below. That fog had begun to thin enough that the higher ground, such as the tree-lined rise below, was intermittently visible, although the hillside opposite them, more than a dek away, remained swathed in the heavy gray mist.

Haddev glanced at Richina, then at Secca. Richina did not look at the heir to Synek.

“If…if the wind blows away the fog…” Secca glanced to Stepan, “can we take that rise there quickly?” She gestured.

“It is closer to us than to them. If they are not waiting…” Stepan shrugged.

“The glass shows that they remain in their encampment,” Secca replied.

“That is lower than their camp, but it is the highest ground. We could charge from there if they tried to attack.” Stepan looked at Secca. “Your players will need to be ready to play.”

“They can play a spell here, and then remount and ride down,” Palian affirmed. “It will not take long.”

Delvor just nodded at Palian's words, then brushed back the lank brown hair that always seemed to fall across his face. His eyes were clouded, Secca noted, as if he were considering a fingering, or a chord progression, the way he did before he came up with something new for his lutarists.

“There is little fog on this side of the ridge,” Stepan said. “Will it harm us or disrupt your spell if we begin to ride down?”

“No. It could get windy, but that's all.”

“Wind we will take, if we can gain position.” Stepan glanced at Haddev. “If you would use your lancers to guard the sorceress and the players?”

“That we can do.” Haddev nodded, then turned his mount back toward the black-clad lancers of Silberfels.

“We will follow Stepan, if you will permit,” added Wilten. “We can offer greater protection if we are well before you.”

“Thank you, Wilten.” Secca offered a smile she did not feel and dismounted, handing the gray's reins to Achar. She cleared her throat, then stepped forward to the most open point of the ridge.

“Dismount and quick-tune!” commanded Palian as she dismounted, and then unstrapped her violino from behind her mount.

“Dismount…” followed the order from Delvor.

The first players formed a core, and the second players drew up in an arc around them.

Only the faintest hint of a breeze flowed from behind Secca, scarcely enough to matter, one way or the other. The vagrant breeze died away even as she began a quick vocalise.

Behind her rose the sounds of tuning. To her left, the double column of riders began to angle down a narrow way that was more animal track than trail.

When Secca finished the first vocalise, Richina extended a water bottle.

“Thank you.” Secca took a swallow, then glanced at Palian.

“We stand ready, lady.”

Secca glanced across the valley, then at the lancers descending. All she could see moving were her forces. She looked back at Palian and nodded.

“Prepare to play. The second building spell,” commanded the chief player.

“Prepare to play,” echoed Delvor. “The massed harmony for the building spell.”

The first bars of the accompaniment echoed out past Secca, somehow almost eerily in the lightening gray that preceded dawn, and then it was time to sing the spell, against the bright melody and the deeper chords of the heavy lutars of the second players.

A low grumbling reverberated from the ground, then passed, even before Secca was well into the words, but the sky began to darken immediately, and the wind began to build behind Secca's back.

Within moments, the light gray of the sky had turned blackish, and the wind was whipping Secca's jacket around her and her hair against her forehead and cheeks. The gusts of wind, ever growing, seemed to rip at the gray fog in the lowlands below, tearing chunks away. A faint pink-orange light began to creep from behind the trees to the southeast.

Secca stood there for a moment, half-amazed that the spell had worked. It should have, for it was pure Clearsong, but she had not known if it would.

“Lady,” suggested Richina, “we need to ride.”

Secca shook her head and turned to Achar, taking the gray's reins from the young lancer and mounting.

As Secca settled herself in the saddle, Richina extended a chunk of bread and a wedge of cheese. “Eat as you ride.”

Secca took the bread and cheese.

“Players!” ordered Palian. “Remount and ride! Follow the sorceress.”

“Silberfels!” came Haddev's order above the sound of the still-rising wind. “Follow the players! Blades at the ready. Watch the sides of the trail.”

Secca and Richina were almost at the head of the second column, with only Achar and Dymen riding before them on the trail that angled downward. The wind was cold, and it half-moaned, half-howled around Secca's ears as she rode and tried to chew and swallow the dry bread and hard cheese.

Once in the birches and firs, Secca could only catch glimpses of Stepan's and Wilten's lancers. She swallowed, hoping that she could reach the rise on the far side of the valley before the Sturinnese could gather. The descent seemed to take a glass or more, with the wind moaning and howling and misty fog shreds obscuring her view, and then passing, with yet another segment of the disintegrating fog bank taking the place of the last…and again passing.

By the time she had finished the bread and cheese, the section of the trail which she followed had eased into a gentler decline, and most of the fog seemed to have cleared from the valley.

“It's longer than it looked,” said Richina quietly.

“Yes.” Too much longer, thought the older sorceress. “We'll have to hurry when we get to the rise.”

As soon as Secca was out of the trees and on the grassy flat, she urged the gray forward, into a quick trot. She didn't need to be caught on low ground. Neither did the players.

As she rode, she swallowed again. She hadn't realized just how much lower the valley was. Yet…if she turned, she'd be abandoning Stepan and Wilten and their lancers. Better that she do her best from the low rise ahead. Changing even a poor plan in midstream would probably be worse than carrying it out. That's what you hope, she told herself.

A glance to the south showed no Sturinnese…not yet.

As she rode up the gentle slope onto the rise, running through a vocalise to keep her voice ready, Secca could see that the entire north slope of the hill she faced was nearly bare of the concealing fog. She could also see movement at the top of the hill,
figures in white, she thought, although the firs obscured any clear images.

A series of trumpet commands rang out from the south, echoing off the ridge behind the Defalkan and Ebran forces.

Secca glanced around the ridge, then turned in the saddle, looking back at Palian, before gesturing. “The knoll there. Set up and ready the players.”

Stepan had clearly marked the area, because his lancers had left a semicircle there, and a clear path.

The sorceress reined up the gray and swung down out of the saddle, walking quickly onto the slightly higher ground on the south side of the rise.

A dull rumbling rose, and then died away.

“Dismount! Quick-tune!” Palian's voice cut through the morning air.

The players reined up, and at that moment, the sun seemed to rise over the eastern side of the valley, flooding it with an orange light. The last shreds of fog rose into the sky, dark blots that thinned and then vanished.

White specks appeared among the birch trunks, white splotches that moved downhill, almost like a breaking wave.

“They are less than a half a dek away, lady,” Stepan called.

Secca shook her head, forcing her thoughts back to what needed to be done, calling up the spell she needed to use.

The quick sounds of tuning died away, and the red-haired sorceress turned toward Palian.

“We stand ready.”

Secca looked back to the south, where two hundred or so yards of brown grass separated the bottom of the rise where she and her forces waited from the trees on the north slope of the hill held by the Sturinnese. The brown meadow remained empty of lancers or mounts.

Secca waited.

The fog had vanished, but wind was lighter, as if the effects of her spell had died away.

Another series of trumpet calls issued into morning air from the south, then echoed from the hillside behind the players and the lancers. Mounts
whuffed
, and someone coughed, but the air
became even more still. The brown meadow to the south of the rise remained vacant.

Secca swallowed, still waiting.

Abruptly, like a thunderclap, the roll of drums began, a triplet of trumpet notes sang forth, and a sea of white-clad lancers charged from the trees, forming into four wedges as they galloped toward Secca.

Secca swallowed, then ordered, “The arrow spell!” She shouted to Elfens. “Make ready with your shafts!”

“The arrow spell!” echoed Palian. “Mark!”

“Stand ready to nock arrows!” Elfens' voice trumpeted over the howling moan of the winds.

“The arrow spell! At my mark…” ordered Palian. “Mark!”

Singing as strongly as she could, yet trying to be open and not to force her voice, fighting the urge to push and strain against the thunder-drums, the spells they carried, and the wind, Secca sang the spell.

Even toward the end of the spell, strong as her voice felt, she could hear and feel the pressure of the thunder-drums, a pressure that tried to contain, to push back the impacts of her words and the music of her players. With that pressure came a strong wind, blowing out of the south, carrying the scent of damp and moldy meadow grass to Secca, a wind seemingly directed at her, grit flaying her face and eyes.

As she finished, she watched open-mouthed as more than half the heavy arrows curved, fighting against the wind, and perhaps against sorcery, before diving into the damp grasses of the meadow near the woods.

There was a lessening of the drums, a raggedness, and a momentary faltering, but the drumming continued.

Secca glanced at the wave of white-clad horsemen thundering toward her too-small force. A second arrow spell might stop the thunder-drums totally, but would she have any lancers left?

“The flame spell!” Secca ordered.

“The flame spell! At my mark…” ordered Palian. “Mark!”

The tone from the players remained strong and true, and the heavy-chorded harmony from the second players was solid.

Secca sang:

The drums and the wind rose, along with the pounding hoofs of the Sturinnese mounts, now less than fifty yards from the base of the rise, yet when Secca's last words died away, the sky flashed, and the flame lightnings flared—but only across the first lines of the charging Sturinnese. Horses and men went down in charred heaps, and the scent of burnt flesh flowed back to Secca, seemingly instantly. Nor did the lightnings reach all of that first rank.

The white wedge of riders to the west, toward the river and farthest to the right, seemed almost untouched as the lancers surged up the rise—and were met by Stepan's lancers, who had managed a short charge downhill.

The lightnings died away, and from the hillside to the south, the pounding of the thunder-drums rose once more, not quite so loudly. With that rhythmic thundering came fiercer winds, howling, ripping at Secca's jacket and hair, pelting fine grit into her face and eyes.

She squinted out across the lowlands. Through her watering eyes, she could see that the remaining Sturinnese lancers had turned their mounts back toward the cover of the birches and firs. Even those who had attacked Stepan's lancers on the flank were falling back and turning their mounts. But though they had turned, the pounding of the thunder-drums continued.

“The arrow spell! Again!” Secca turned and shouted to Elfens. “Make ready more shafts!”

“The arrow spell!” echoed Palian. “Mark!”

“Nock arrows!” Elfens' voice again rose above the winds.

Secca turned into the grit-bearing wind again, squaring her
shoulders, then trying to relax her body. As the first bar of the players' spelltune echoed across the lowlands between the rise and the firs and birches that the lancers had retreated into, the dull rumbling of the drums intensified once more.

Secca offered the second arrow spell.

With her words, the wind rose, seemingly directed at her, more grit slashing across her cheeks and toward her eyes—and once more, the majority of the heavy arrows were turned by the winds. Not all—some must have struck a drummer or two, because the drumbeat faltered…but only for a time.

Secca could barely stand, daystars flashing across her vision, but the drums continued to beat, and heavy fog began to form in the lowest and dampest part of the meadow below the rising, streaming upward even as Secca watched through her dayflashed vision.

“Lady!” An Ebran captain in green rode toward Secca. “The arms commander would have us ride back to the high ridge.”

“Back to the high ridge,” Secca shouted back. “We will join forces there.” She stumbled toward the players, stopping short of Palian. “Remount…we must ride back to the high ridge before they regroup.”

“Players mount…back to the high ridge. Reform there!” ordered Palian.