The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (25 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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Madell backed up more quickly, fumbled with the latch, opened the door, and slipped into the main room, leaving the door ajar behind him. Anna closed it slowly and pushed the saddlebags back into place.
For a long time, Anna sat on the pallet, trying not to shiver. Did she shiver because Madell might have assaulted her or because she knew, after the spell, clumsy as she was, that she could have killed the man?
What was she becoming? Did she have any choice? Why didn’t anyone leave her any choice? Why?
She wanted to scream. Instead, she slipped the knife and
truncheon under the pillow and lay back. Sleep eluded her for a long time, a long time filled with images of broken walls, and men flayed with fire, and Madell lusting and panting about “a real man.”
A
nna looked around the empty main room of the house. It didn’t seem that late, but she had slept at last, surprisingly, and longer than she would have thought possible after the night before. At least Madell didn’t seem to be around, for which she was thankful.
She walked across the wide plank floor toward the table. As Dalila had promised, a half loaf of bread lay there, along with something folded in cloth. Anna unwrapped the cloth—yellow cheese. Using her belt knife, she sliced off several chunks and ate them with an end of the bread. Then she sliced some more, and ate them. A third set followed. Why was she so hungry?
She hadn’t been that hungry when she was young the first time. Or was it the magic? She orderspelled the water in the pitcher and poured some into a clay mug. In the end, she ate more than half of both bread and cheese, and drank nearly three mugfuls of water—she’d pay for that later, with a trip to the little house in back.
After hearing humming from the doorway at the end of the house, Anna edged toward it. The door opened into a room—or addition to the house—the size of the guest room, and two steps down to a lower level, the ground actually, as shown by the packed-clay floor. Two big wooden barrels set above the packed clay floor on square stones filled the space. Ruetha sat beside the barrel closest to the outside door, and scratched lines—or a design or
picture—in the clay. Then the little girl threw down the stick and stood.
Dalila walked through the door and poured a bucketful of water into the barrel farthest from the door, then turned and walked out, not even looking toward the doorway.
On a crude long shelf on the wall were piled heaps of clothes. Outside, Anna could hear someone—Daffyd?—chopping or splitting wood. She stepped down and looked into the tubs. The one closest to the door was empty, the one farthest about half full.
“Laundry?” Anna asked as Dalila reentered with yet another bucket.
“Washing, aye. I hate it, and there’ll be more of it once there’s another.” Dalila looked down at her protruding abdomen.
“I never liked laundry that much,” Anna said quietly, stepping up to the end of the table and smiling down at Ruetha, whose face was already grimy.
The little girl smiled back, shyly, then buried her head in her hands for a moment.
Anna hadn’t thought about what washing would require in Liedwahr—one step above the riverbank—hot water to be heated on the stove, tubs to be filled, clothes to be hung on lines. Did Dalila heat an old-fashioned cast-iron iron on the stove, or were the clothes worn wrinkled?
“I didn’t know as ladies worried about laundry.”
“The ‘lady’ business is recent,” Anna said. “Sin—sorceresses are far more common in the mist worlds, and I did my own laundry, but we had magic machines—everyone did—that gave us hot water … and a few other things.”
“That would be nice.” Dalila sighed, and reached across the table to extract a work shirt from Ruetha’s grasp. “Could you sing magic like that here?”
“I don’t know.” So far, she’d never really used her magic for anything useful—except for the business of lighting candles and lamps or cooling and purifying water. “Let me think about it for a moment.”
Could she bring water to the two barrel-tubs? With a variant of her water spell?
Anna walked back to the guest room and retrieved the mandolin, still puzzling out alternative words for the water spell.
Finally, she stood in the wash room doorway, and sang.
“All day she’ll face the laundry’s tasks,
and she’ll need her casks
of water, clear, pure water …”
Despite the hokey words and the inadequate rhyme scheme, water splashed in both tubs.
Dalila stopped at the nearer barrel with her bucket in hand, a puzzled and worried look on her face. “Lady … I’d not ask … but … most times I have to heat the water for the one barrel.”
Anna should have known, but why not try again?
“Do you mind experimenting?” she asked.
“Experimenting? Is that a form of sorcery?” The pert brunette put down the bucket and picked up her daughter.
“Perhaps. Do you put soap in the tub with the hot water?”
“Aye.” Dalila nodded.
“And then you put in the clothes, and use the paddle there to stir and wash them?”
“Know ye another way?” Dalila’s tone was both interested and faintly sardonic.
“Let’s try. Put in the soap, and then the clothes.”
As Dalila glanced at Anna, a smile crossed her face.
“Perhaps you should put your clothes in?”
Anna looked down at the stained and dusty shirt and trousers, smiling in turn. “I should. Do you have a robe—or something?”
It was the younger woman’s turn to smile.
Before long, the white clothes—or those that had once been white or light-colored—were in the front tub, and Anna stood barefooted in the doorway wrapped in a light
linen robe. She hoped Madell didn’t show up too soon, but in the dry heat of Defalk, she suspected that her clothes would dry soon—assuming her sorcery worked.
For some reason, Blake’s
The Tyger
had kept slipping into her thoughts, and she found a way to use it.
“Water, water steaming hot,
in the confines of the pot.
Boil and bubble up to clean
the clothes as bright as ever seen.”
A wave of heat flared back from the barrel, followed by a wave of steam.
“Mummmy!” Ruetha shrieked.
Dalila swallowed and eased back from the barrel.
Anna wiped her forehead. Had she overdone it—again? She felt tired for a moment, and she sat on the step from the kitchen into the washroom. She also realized she was hungry—again.
“Are you all right, lady?”
“I’m fine,” Anna said automatically.
“I think not.” Dalila stepped around the sorceress into the main part of the house and brought back more of the bread and cheese.
As Anna ate, wondering why such a short spell of singing should take so much energy, Dalila went back to the front tub. There, with the wooden paddle, she lifted out one sodden shirt, holding it as water vapor steamed away from it. She squinted, then moistened her lips as she carried it over to the rinsing barrel, where she dunked it before lifting it out and hand-wringing it. Then she carried the shirt out to the rope-line hung between two posts behind the kitchen door where she smoothed it before stretching it and fastening it in place with a wooden clothespin.
Dalila studied the shirt for a long moment, then walked back into the washroom.
“There were stains, lady, but they aren’t there now, and I never could get them out.”
Anna looked up. “I’m sorry.” As she said it, she wondered why she was apologizing. She’d done the best she could, but her head hurt. Was she still tired from the Sand Pass battle? Or had she done something wrong?
Dalila scooped up Ruetha and sat on the floor near Anna’s feet. “Madell was angry this morning … . He tore off some bread and he left. He was saying he was worried about the grain, but he was angry.” Dalila tightened her lips. “I’m not fancy the way you are, and I’m not a player like Daffyd, but I’ve eyes to see … .” The young mother looked imploringly at Anna.
Anna took a deep breath. “Your Madell thought I was something I’m not.”
“Aye. I saw the looks … but you … it was plain you were not.”
“Some men—” Anna broke off.
“Why was he so angry?”
“Because I told him to leave me alone … and he wouldn’t … so I cast a spell to keep him from touching me.” Anna looked down at the table. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I should go.”
“You’re still tired, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Anna admitted.
“But you used your magic to help me?” Dalila gestured to the tubs.
“I wish I could do more. The song magic here in Liedwahr is new to me.” Anna glanced down at the three-year-old, who looked back with steady eyes for a time.
Dalila offered a wan smile. “Best I finish these clothes, and put the others in.”
Daffyd looked in from the doorway between the washroom and the kitchen end of the main room. He held the ax loosely. “I thought you needed wood to heat the water.”
“The lady Anna heated it,” Dalila said, bending down to disengage Ruetha’s hand from the washing paddle that Dalila had momentarily leaned against the barrel as she wrung out a shirt. The three-year-old grabbed a dangling lock of hair and pulled, but her mother disengaged her
daughter’s grip with a gentle movement and a smile.
“You mean that I chopped this all for nothing?”
“No. It’ll be used, little brother. After you and your sorceress friend leave, there will be many weeks where I need wood.” Dalila forced a smile. “Please, would you split some more?” Dalila added, “Please?”
“As you wish.” Daffyd looked from one woman’s face to the other. “As you wish.” He picked up the ax and retreated, shaking his head.
Anna slowly finished the remainder of the bread.
“Are you interested in Daffyd?”
Anna’s mouth dropped open. “You …” Then the sorceress realized that Dalila did not see Anna as Anna saw herself. “I had better explain, Dalila. I am older than I look. I have a son older than you are, and a daughter who is Daffyd’s age. I did have a daughter who was even older, but she died several months ago.”
“Months?”
“Seven or eight weeks ago.” Had it been that long? “Daffyd can tell you. I looked older when I came to Liedwahr, but some magic in the battle changed me. It was a surprise to me.”
“A not unwelcome one, I wager,” Dalila said.
“I don’t know. Had I looked the way I did, Madell would not have been so interested. I wonder if any man will take me seriously.”
Especially in this culture
.
“I had not thought that way.” Dalila frowned. “Having Ruetha was not easy, for all that Hersa said it was a good birth. To raise children, and then to have one die … and have the chance to start again …” She shook her head, then offered a brief smile as she reached for another shirt—Anna’s.
“I can wring that out.” Anna stood.
“Ye be sure of that?”
“I’m sure.”
Ruetha began to whimper, and Dalila looked at the barrel still filled with warm water and clothes.
“You feed her,” Anna said, taking her shirt. “I can manage
this.” She added, “Enjoy your daughter.”
That got a smile of sorts as Dalila retreated to the kitchen.
The mechanical work of lifting out each article from the hot tub and rinsing it, then wringing it and carrying it out to hang, was almost a relief to Anna.
As she finished the last of the whitish items and dropped the darker clothes into the hot tub, Daffyd appeared at her shoulder, looking toward the kitchen area where Ruetha sat at one side of the table chewing on more of the dark bread, then back at Anna. He smiled as he looked at the ground.
Anna had to smile, too, thinking about walking around in a gown with boots, but she had neither sandals nor slippers.
“What did ye do to Madell?” asked Daffyd, again glancing toward the kitchen.
“He tried to overpower me last night,” Anna said quietly. “I managed a spellsong, one that demanded that he trouble me no more.”
“He hates you, and he’ll be telling tales to Dalila, if he hasn’t already.”
“We’ve talked about it, in a quiet way,” Anna said.
“Madell won’t be any trouble to me.” She wondered, though, how much trouble the miller would cause for Dalila. Anna liked the pert brunette. The problem was that using spellsong led to using more song. Wasn’t there any end to it? Anna tried not to sigh. “I should go back to Mencha.”
“That’s where the dark ones will be, as I stand here.”
“Stand back,” Anna said before repeating the laundry spell. Then she retrieved a pair of trousers and rinsed them, then wrung them.
“I can do that,” said Daffyd.
“So can I. But I can’t finish that lutar, and I suspect you’re better at chopping and splitting wood than I am.”
“You should go to Falcor,” suggested Daffyd, “or, better yet, Elhi. Lord Jecks would help you.”
“I don’t know,” Anna said. “That doesn’t feel right.” She didn’t even know why it didn’t feel right, but things felt unfinished in Synope, although she knew she shouldn’t stay.

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