The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (10 page)

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Authors: L. E. Modesitt Jr.

BOOK: The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle
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“Some healers know herbs and poultices, and there are some surgeons, but except for setting bones or sewing up wounds, most people heal better without them.”
Anna shook her head, and took another mouthful of bread. She ate slowly, her eyes heavy. The long day, and the heat, were catching up to her.
“Tomorrow, I need to work on a new spell,” Brill mused.
“For what?” Anna asked.
“That’s something sorcerers generally do not share, at least not until the work is done.” Brill took a sip of the vinegar wine that Anna continued to avoid. “You could use the other workroom.” The sorcerer’s words weren’t quite a suggestion.
“You’d prefer that I not ride anywhere alone, and that I not experiment with spells in the hall?” Anna tried to keep a smile from her face.
“I have great respect for your abilities,” Brill returned. “So might the dark ones, and they know you are here. Outside the walls, until you are more … accustomed to Liedwahr … .”
“Do you think people would come after me?”
Brill smiled sadly. “I know they will. What I do not know is how soon they will begin.”
“It sounds like you think I should work on sorcery to protect myself.”
“That is always a good idea, particularly now.”
Anna yawned. “I’m sorry. It’s not as though I’ve done that much today. Just ride and listen and look around. Maybe I’m still recovering from …” She spread her hands.
“That could be: I have never dared to try to transport someone from the mist worlds.”
Anna waited.
“It can be dangerous, and some sorcerers have been pulled there, rather than pulling objects or people here. Most times the objects or people carried are burned as if by fire.” Brill laughed, but his laugh died away. “For those reasons, hard as matters may be here, I prefer my own world.”
“So would I, but I wasn’t given much choice.” Anna finished the last of the water in the goblet and sat back. “How do I get back?”
“I do not know. I would worry about trying. It could kill you.” Brill spread his hands. “You are here, and a few others have come from the mist worlds. Likewise, there are records of older sorcerers traveling there, and records of those who arrived as charred corpses. I know of no one who has traveled more than one direction.” The sorcerer paused. “That does not mean it is not possible.”
Anna understood. Brill was not about to spend time on something that was impossible. He wouldn’t hinder her, but he had paying work to do, work that she had interrupted, and he was suggesting that she work on getting her own spellcasting in order—before too long. Like … starting tomorrow.
“If you don’t mind, Lord Brill, it’s time for me to turn in.” She stifled another yawn. “Time to get some sleep,” she added as she pushed back the chair and stood up.
Brill rose and bowed. “I will see you at breakfast.”
“I’m sure you will.” Anna inclined her head.
Florenda appeared and followed her up to the bedchamber.
After changing into the thin gown, Anna sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the covered windows, wondering how Elizabetta was doing, hoping that her daughter would be all right. Then, again, Avery would certainly step in. Yes, he would. Her fingers clenched.
Finally, she pulled back the covers and slipped between the sheets.
Neither her worries nor the lumpy mattress and pillows could keep her awake.
FALCOR, DEFALK
B
arjim looks into the pewter goblet, then across the table. “I shouldn’t have any more.”
“No one will tell you not to, lord,” offers the blocky gray-haired man.
“No one but my conscience, or the ghost of my father, or worse yet, that of my uncle. Or the headache I’ll have tomorrow.” Barjim’s hands curl around the goblet as if he would squeeze it into scrap before he forces his fingers to relax. “Everyone is watching every move I make. If I move troops from Denguic to Mencha or farther east, the Prophet of Neserea will have an army marching from Elioch. Oh, I forgot. He already marched it to his border station at the West Pass to ensure … What did he call it? The music of tranquility?” Barjim’s heavy, hooded eyes widen fractionally, and he sets the goblet down on the ancient table. “The dark ones are massing to overwhelm me through the Sand Pass, and I can’t raise enough levies and can’t buy enough troops to reinforce the eastern marches, and Brill’s got about as much backbone as a sand adder.”
“He does a good job on fortifications,” pointed out the older man.
“Only if he’s paid, Gelen. Only if he’s paid, and you
know how little silver we have left. With the drought, the fall harvest won’t bring much, and even those bitchy usurers in Encora won’t lend me anything else.”
“So … abdicate. Turn Defalk over to Behlem and his prophecies of music. Or petition the Traders’ Council of Nordwei to make Defalk a protectorate of Nordwei.” Gelen’s voice is ironic.
“I can’t do that.” Barjim picked up the goblet once more, turning it in his fingers. “Behlem would have my hide—and have Jimbob turned into a castrato and sold to the Sea-Priests. The Norweians would just put me in command of the forces against Behlem—or the dark ones.”
“Have you asked Alasia?” asks the gray-haired man.
“I don’t have to ask her, Gelen. I certainly don’t. She tells me, and how can I not listen? Her father has no other direct heirs, but the holding would go to Ensil like that”—Barjim snaps his fingers—“if he thought I’d as much as indirectly criticized her.”
“She is not stupid,” Gelen says levelly.
“No. She’s brighter than I am, and all of Defalk knows it. Oh … what does she say? She says about what I just said, because I listen, because I’m smart enough to know that she makes sense.” The Lord of Defalk looks at the pitcher beyond the goblet and shakes his head. “Everyone needs an excuse—even me.”
Then he stands. “Except I’ve got to live with myself.”
“E
verything here is yours to use, or you may ride back to the hall. Make sure either Wiltur or Frideric accompanies you. All I ask is that you do not disturb me when the door to my workroom is closed.” With that, Brill had bowed and left her.
The workroom was clean enough, and spacious, nearly the size of her bedchamber in Brill’s hall, with a window that viewed the distant hills—or mountains—to the east.
On the stone table were a goblet, a pitcher of cool water and more of the dried apple slices and bread. Both a crude pencil and a quill pen and inkstand rested on the table beside a stack of light brown paper. The key-harp on the corner of the table was something like a miniature piano, except the volume was so low that it was clearly useless except as a composing or learning aid.
Anna pulled out the chair and sat at the table. Was she just supposed to practice? What? Spells she didn’t know? Or was she supposed to create spells?
As she’d told Daffyd, she wasn’t a composer. She was a singer.
She filled the goblet half-full and took a deep swallow, then another. Her fingers strayed toward the bread, and she pulled them away.
She touched one of the hand-harp’s black keys, and winced. Either the instrument hadn’t been used in years or Erde used a strange scale, and that didn’t seem possible. The music played the day before had been a simple polyphony, functional, but not out of tune. She looked at the tuning pegs, almost like levers.
Her hand crept toward the bread again, and she pursed her lips. Eating because she was worried and stressed—one of her worst habits, and one reason why she was a size twelve instead of the eight she’d been four years ago. She shook her head and picked up the pencil, absently creating a series of fat-lined, interlinked loops on the top sheet of the brown paper.
Anna tried to recall the general rules Brill had given—grudgingly—at breakfast. Sorcery didn’t work on the singer—except indirectly; if you caused something to explode you could get killed by the fragments. Spells worked best on ordered or semi-ordered nonliving materials.
Spells had to have rhyme and what amounted to meter. Songspells worked best with solid accompaniment, and the more complex and involved spells didn’t work at all without that kind of support.
Great! She put down the pencil, pushed back the chair, stood, and walked toward the door. Then she stopped. What would she do? Ride back to the hall and stew? Complain to the two guards? Or to the ever-attending Florenda? And about what? Being fed, clothed, treated like a lady? She wouldn’t even get sympathy.
With a deep breath, she turned to the bookcase. Maybe the books would help. The handful of books in the case were leatherbound—hand-bound, she was certain. She scanned the titles—
Boke of Liedwahr, The Naturale Philosophie, Proverbes of Neserea, Donnermusik.
She pulled out
Donnermusik,
and opened it to the first page. Her eyes blinked.
While what she spoke seemed close to what Brill and the others spoke, the words on the page before her seemed like a cross between seventeenth-century English and German—or maybe the way English would have been without the Norman invasion.
Musik is the mathematik of sound … and sound the manifestation in Erde itself of the structure of musik that doth support all that be and all that be within Erde … .
She struggled on for a page or so before she realized that the book wasn’t just about music, but a treatise on the musical theory behind storms. From what she could piece together, the writer was discussing how the harmonics of a storm were music-driven. She flipped through more pages, stopping occasionally and reading paragraphs.
As lightning beginneth with a long note value, so must the music which calleth it forth … .
Harmonic variants be most important as a musical consideration, for they must in truthe effect a change of musical resemblement though the constant repetition, with most suitable variants, of the bass pattern … through trommel … .
The relationship between the thunder, and that needs must be represented by the falk horn, supplemented by a continuous bass provided by a trommel, and the lightning … must be joined by a melodic line of the violincello … .
Anna frowned. The last phrase sounded like a sorcerer needed an entire symphony to deal with storms and weather, but Brill had been uneasy in talking about the weather, and he had certainly implied that the dark ones were the only sorcerers who did—and that they used massed voices because a single voice didn’t have enough power.
She looked at the book again. The writer certainly seemed to think that instruments could support weather spells. But the writer was hinting at something that amounted to harmony, and nothing Brill had shown her had demonstrated anything that was effectively complete harmony. She shook her head, and began to leaf through the pages again, but so far as she could see, the slim volume held no words for spells, and nothing resembling music, not even the flaglike medieval tablature she vaguely remembered from her graduate days.
She closed the book and walked back to the window. The roads were empty, and the sun was higher, and hotter, no doubt. After a time, she turned and reseated herself at the desk-table.
Part of the problem was the songs. She’d never realized how many dealt with love, and feelings. She needed a song that dealt with solid objects, or weapons, or something.
Her mind was blank. With all the songs she’d learned over the years … Her mind was blank … not blank of
songs. There was the jewel song, and all the arias from
Bohème,
and
Barber, Don Giovanni,
and even
Lakmé.
Delibes had some violence in
Lakmé … .
Were there some sections that could be used? She murmured the words, not singing them until she reached the section she sought.
“
Que le ciel me protège
Me guide par la main
Chasse le sacrilège
Au loin de mon chemin!
”
“
Sacrilège
” wasn’t it. Could she use “
les ennemis
”?
—
that was a near rhyme even in French. But … the words wouldn’t do much except in a battle, and she didn’t expect to see one. At least, she certainly hoped she wouldn’t. Still, she wrote down the words, with the change, and the rough notes of the melody line. Would they be enough? She couldn’t write the whole score, and even if she could, could anyone read it? She hadn’t seen any written music. Was there any?
She rubbed her forehead and took a swallow from the goblet, turning it in her hand. Why did she have so many questions? In novels, heroines or heroes just did things, but what was she supposed to do?
She looked back at the key-harp. She might as well tune it, even if it were only good for composing or learning. A piano would have been better. Why an underpowered harp?
Then she nodded, almost ashamed at her slowness. If the strength of spells were determined by the combination of music and voice, and if most spells took twelve players or more, a sorcerer or sorceress had to be limited by what he or she could develop and teach. That meant that there couldn’t be that many sorcerers, not when it took talent, trained skill, the ability to read both language and music, and write both in a semi-literate culture.
With a piano … or something like it … She shook her head. A good pianist and singer—or even a good guitarist and singer—would be the equivalent of … what? A guided missile, atomic weapons? She didn’t know … and she
didn’t have a piano, or a clavier or a harpsichord.
She strummed the strings, then counted—twenty-four—three octaves. It sounded almost like equal-tempered tuning, but not quite. Perhaps an early form, without the minute adjustments that made the system work smoothly? She hoped so as she reached for the tuning levers.
After getting the key-harp in what she hoped was a rough tune, a very rough tuning, Anna looked at the short stack of paper and rubbed her forehead. Surely, surely … Surely she could come up with something.
What about repeating her cool-water experiment, if only to prove she still had the talent? She had left the envelope with the last words in the green handbag. Shaking her head, she began to write with the greasy pencil, since she hadn’t even brought her one working spell with her. Some sorceress.
The words were as awful as ever, but she scratched out “cold” and replaced it with “cool.” Then she ran through the vocalises quickly. Should she use the key-harp?
She turned the chair and picked the harp up, resting it on her leg, and trying to duplicate the melody. She stopped after a dozen notes. Even using a one-note-at-a-time melody was laborious with the unfamiliar instrument. She set the harp back on the table. Maybe later.
After clearing her throat again, she sang the words again, emphasizing “cool” and thinking about ice water.
Surprisingly, the goblet didn’t split, but frost rimmed both goblet and pitcher, and the water was cool indeed, and a pair of ice cubes bobbed in the pitcher.
Anna grinned, but the grin faded quickly. So she could chill water. That wasn’t going to do much of anything, let alone get her back to Ames and Elizabetta. With a deep breath she looked at the paper again.
Love songs … . Why did almost every song she knew deal with love or something like it?
Her eyes drifted to the road below the hill, and the single rider who headed up toward the hall, a rider wearing a sleeveless purple surcoat.
There had to be some songs she could change … didn’t there? To what … for what? She shook her head angrily. No one was telling her anything, and she didn’t know enough to know what to ask.
Could she do something with the candle-lighting spell? She wrote down the words and looked at the paper. After glancing around the room, finally wadding up a sheet of paper and setting it on the floor. She hummed through the tune and tried her improvisation.
“Paper white, paper bright,
flame clear in my sight.”
The single sheet of paper went up in an instantaneous blaze.
Anna wiped her forehead. Would it work with other items? She wrote out a set of lines to the same rhyme scheme, but pondered … . If every word were critical, what about armsmen? Would such a spell work on them? She took a deep breath, and penciled in another thought.
She snorted. Great! She could turn paper into fire, and maybe an armsman or two, if she had time to sing, if she had some accompaniment.
Her eyes went to the window once more, toward the clear hot day outside. Finally, she took another swallow from the goblet and reached for the
Boke of Liedwahr.
Maybe that would help with ideas … or something.

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