The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (3 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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A
nna completed an uncertain step, swaying for an instant. The outdoor light of Ames had been replaced with something gloomier—and hotter. She stood in the middle of a room, smaller than the cramped living room in the condo. The walls were a dirty white plaster that was uneven and rough, and there was no ceiling, just open rafters. The faint light that seeped around ill-fitting shutters on the room’s two windows was the only source of illumination.
Where was she? How had she gotten there? Had she fainted? Her hand twinged, and the door key was somehow burning her hand. Anna slipped the key into the green leather purse, then squeezed her fingers together, pressing her thumbnail into her palm, stopping before the pressure became pain.
White spots flickered in front of her eyes, and she forced herself to take a deep breath, then another. What had happened?
“You did it! You did it!” exclaimed a male voice, interrupting her self-inquiries.
“A travel-sorceress I am. Give me a good spell and a decent tune, and I will bring someone from anywhere,” answered a woman. “You’d better hope she’s what you want.”
Wondering what the young man wanted, and fearing that she did know, Anna slowly turned from the hearth. On her left were the two shuttered windows, on her right a wall containing only a single wood-framed mirror and near the far end, a closed wooden door. In the middle of the room stood two figures. The man, black-haired and somehow both angular and round-faced, was barely out of youth. He
held what looked to be a viola and a heavily arched shed bow and wore faded blue trousers and an armless and collarless shirt fastened with oblong wooden buttons. The woman was several years older, square-faced, in short trousers and a baggy armless blouse.
Behind them was another wall, with an opening into another room.
“She is beautiful,” the man said as if Anna were not even present. Anna hated being referred to in the third person. It reminded her of all too many auditions, especially the year she’d been in New York.
“A sorceress has to appear beautiful, Daffyd. You do not know what she really looks like.”
Anna glanced down. She still wore the raincoat over her gown, and she was getting hot in the small and stuffy room. After a moment, she unfastened the buttons and the trench coat’s belt and stuffed the ends of the belt into the coat’s pockets. Then her eyes went back to the woman.
“I’m Anna. Who are you?” Her words sounded firm. Totally inane, but firm.
“I am Jenny, lady.” The brunette offered a slight bow.
Anna’s eyes went to the man.
“Daffyd.” His voice was defensive, and he didn’t bow.
Where was she? They spoke English, or she understood what they spoke, but it sounded like English.
“Could you tell me where I might be?” Another totally inane question—she was in a peasant cottage—or totally out of her mind. Had she been hit by a tornado, like Dorothy, and was she lying somewhere hallucinating? Or worse, had Sandy been right about parallel universes or worlds? She’d always believed that the world was the world. Another thought flicked through her mind, a thought that seemed to move so slowly—time travel?
“Why, you are in Jenny’s cottage,” answered Daffyd sardonically.
“That much I surmised,” snapped Anna, reacting to the teenaged-student tone she’d heard all too many times in her
life already, particularly from ungrateful students. “But where is Jenny’s cottage? And when?”
The two locals exchanged glances. Daffyd walked to the square table on the wall and slipped first the viola, then the bow, into a canvas case. He did not close the case.
Anna sighed, then stripped off the raincoat and folded it over her arm. The heat was making her feel faint, and the last thing she wanted was to collapse in front of total strangers in this unknown place. “Could you please tell me where we are?”
“We are in Mencha, and it is on the eastern marches of Defalk,” said Daffyd, as if the entire world knew the obvious.
That helped a lot, reflected Anna, before answering. “I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of Mencha, or Defalk, and I don’t know the name of your world.”
“It is the world, the earth,” answered the brunette. “Some of the sorcerers call it Erde.”
“Erde,” mused Anna. Germanic, but the two didn’t look especially Teutonic.
“Except for the worlds of the mist,” added Daffyd, “it be the only world.”
The only world? Anna felt flushed. “Might I have something to drink? It’s been a long trip.”
Again, the two exchanged glances, as if Anna had said something profoundly stupid, and she wanted to scream. That would have made matters worse; it always did. Then Jenny bowed slightly, turned, and walked through the opening in the wall to what might have been a kitchen, although all Anna saw was what seemed to be a brick stove and a table with a bench on one side. Her legs felt stiff, and Anna looked for a place to sit. There were two short benches and a higher stool.
Daffyd kept looking at her as if she were not quite real, the way her new students did after she’d done a recital, as if they couldn’t believe that she could sing, really sing.
Bother it!
Anna stepped away from the unused hearth toward the stool. She set her purse on the dusty plank floor
and quickly folded the raincoat over the rough wooden stool, hoping that the trench coat would shield the gown from any splinters. As she sat, her nose twitched from the dust in the hot room, and she rubbed it gently, almost afraid to sneeze.
Jenny returned across the dusty plank floors, a brown earthenware mug in her hands. She extended the handleless mug to Anna. “Here, lady.”
“Thank you.” Anna stared at the water in the mug. It looked clean.
“I spell my water clean,” offered Jenny. “Most folks can’t, you know, and they won’t pay to get it done.”
Spelling water clean? What sort of place was this Erde—like a medieval pigsty? “Thank you.” Anna sipped the lukewarm water, then drank the mug down to the bottom. She’d been thirstier than she’d realized.
The two continued to study her intently, as if looking for some sort of sign.
“Why did you bring me here?” Anna reached down and lifted the green leather purse into her lap, rummaging through it for a handkerchief. She used the rumpled cloth to blot her damp forehead gently. The room was hot, hotter than the Colonial, and she had the feeling that it was even hotter outside. She looked down at the purse. The leather around the metal clasps was browned, as if it had been scorched or burned. She didn’t recall that, but she’d grabbed the purse in a hurry.
Daffyd looked down at the dusty planks.
“Daffyd needs a sorceress from out of the mists,” Jenny finally volunteered.
“A sorceress? You can’t be serious.” A sorceress? They thought Anna was a sorceress? What sort of nuthouse was this?
“You have to be a sorceress. Jenny couldn’t have brought you if you weren’t,” stammered the youth with the short and ragged black hair.
“Why do you need a sorceress?” Anna had trouble believing
she was behaving so rationally. Or was it irrational to talk sensibly in a lunatic situation?
Daffyd and Jenny exchanged glances.
“Well?”
“Lord Brill … he turned my da into red dust because he hummed during a wall-raising. He said Da ruined the spell, and that was why the gate was crooked, but Da never hummed in tunes. It was just an excuse.”
Anna moistened her lips. The more she heard, the worse it got. “What sort of wall?” Another rational-sounding question that made no sense.
“It was a whole fort—stone and brick. They’ll finish the roof later. You can’t handle wooden roof beams with sorcery, not unless you go to strong darksong, and that’s dangerous, even for a sorcerer like Brill.”
“They say he does a lot of darksong when no one’s around,” Jenny added. “Liende plays for him then.”
Daffyd looked at Jenny. “That can’t be.”
“I know what I know.”
Anna’s eyes flicked from one to the other. Both felt they were telling the truth—that was her feeling, and that meant something was wrong, very wrong. “Why is that a problem, Daffyd?” Her voice was as calm as if she were teaching her musical-theatre class, and that was wrong, too, because the more questions she asked, the fewer got answered.
“Liende wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.”
“I know what I know,” affirmed Jenny.
“Stop it!” snapped Anna. “Daffyd, you still haven’t told me why you wanted a sorceress. You haven’t said why it’s important enough to summon one from far away. You haven’t told me exactly how far this world is from mine. You seem to be why I’m here. I’d like some answers.” She licked her dry lips. “Try to make them clear.”
“Go ahead, Daffyd. It be your idea.”
The young man looked at the plank floor, then at Jenny, then back to the floor. His eyes did not rise to meet Anna’s.
“I wanted you to turn Lord Brill into red dust, like he turned Da into dust.”
Keep to the point, Anna told herself, whatever the point is. “How?”
“With sorcery, acourse.”
“You say I have to be a sorceress,” ventured Anna, pausing. The room was small and hot. “Why?”
“The spell called for a sorceress, and you’re here. Spells work, or they don’t. It worked. That means you’re a sorceress.”
Confused as she felt, even Anna could follow that logic, and she held in a shiver. Wonderful! She was either dead, dying, hallucinating, or truly in another world or time where they thought she was a sorceress. Anna pursed her lips. She didn’t like any of the choices. And she’d thought Ames after Irenia’s death had been bad.
I can handle this
, she told herself silently.
I can handle this
.
“Daffyd spelled for a strong sorceress,” Jenny added. “You must be very strong.”
“Could I have another cup of water?” Anna asked, wondering what she was supposed to do next. A strong sorceress who didn’t even know what sorcery was? She didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, or just break down and sob.
I can handle this
, she repeated,
whatever this is
.
MENCHA, DEFALK
A
single chord ending in a discordant minor reverberates from the silver harp that stands on the pedestal in the middle of the marble basin.
“What now?” The resonant baritone voice is far more impressive than the slender and balding man who speaks. Circles ring his brown-flecked green eyes as he walks to the harp. His eyes drop to the ripples that disrupt the image in the silvered surface—that of a blonde woman in a brown cloak.
“I did not do it, Lord Brill, sir. Not me.” The youth in the short blue tunic backs toward the narrow door through which he has just hurried.
“You could not have done this, Gero.” Brill’s eyes study the vanishing image, taking in the green gown that shows from under the blonde woman’s cloak, the rough-walled cottage—and the brown-haired songstress.
“Jenny … oh, Jenny …” His eyes flick to the fading black-haired figure in the corner. “Daffyd … well, we’ll just have to do something about this. Yes, we will.”
Gero backs up until he shivers silently in the arch of the doorway.
“The cloak,” Brill murmurs, then reaches for the harp and strums it gently.
“Hold this image in my sight.
Keep it fresh; keep it bright … .”
He replaces the harp and watches for a time as the image in the mirrored water sharpens and as the woman removes the strange cloak with arms to display the magnificent green gown she wears. She also carries a large leather wallet that looks to be of green leather that matches the gown.
Brill frowns once more as the blonde woman sits on the stool and apparently begins to question Daffyd and Jenny.
After a time, he speaks. “Gero. Have my carriage made ready. I will need two guards.”
“Yes, ser.”
“You doubt that two will be enough?” Amusement etches the resonant tones.
“No, ser. But … is it not … not …”
“Dangerous to try to cross the mist barriers? Very—she could have been burned. She should have been burned. Those two innocent idiots have not the faintest image of what they have done. But she is here, and we will see.”
“Yes, ser.”
Brill’s eyes drop back to the images in the mirror pond.
A
nna tried not to sigh after she took another swallow from the earthenware mug. “Let’s get back to the point. Why couldn’t you have found a sorceress here on … Erde, is it?”
Daffyd looked down at the planks again, just like a student who hadn’t learned his music. Instead of answering her, he glanced at Jenny. “A mirror peek at Brill’s hall?” His voice was almost plaintive.
Jenny glared at Daffyd, but he just looked back dumbly, his big dark eyes wide and imploring. After what seemed an interminable silence, Jenny cleared her throat. “If you would not mind … lady …”
“Anna. No, I would not mind.” Maybe, just maybe, whatever Jenny did would shed some light on what these people called sorcery.
“Daffyd? The looking song?”
Daffyd turned slowly and lifted the viola out from its case. Then came the bow, and he lifted the instrument to his shoulder and tucked it under his chin. Then he stroked the bow across the strings.
Jenny turned toward the mirror and cleared her throat, then lifted her hand, and gave a rough tempo, then dropped the hand.
Daffyd began to play, and Jenny to sing.
“Mirror, mirror on my wall,
Show now me the Lord Brill’s hall.
Show it bright, and show it fast,
and make that strong view well last.”
The mirror shimmered, then filled with colors.
Anna swallowed and looked at the scene in the wall mirror. A blue carriage rolled through a gate in a tall stone wall, pulled by four black horses. The gates looked to be of heavy timbers, and there were turrets or guard towers on each side of the wall above the gate.
Sorcery—was it just the combination of words, song, and accompaniment? Just? Anna almost laughed. Jenny’s words, simple as they had sounded, had been perfectly pitched and matched to Daffyd’s equally simple melody. She doubted that many undergraduate students could have done that well, and that didn’t take into account the words.
“There be Lord Brill’s carriage on its way here, no doubt,” Jenny said dryly.
“Here?” Anna asked.
“He has a magic pool that tells him everything,” Daffyd said glumly, closing the viola and bow up in the canvas case. “We had best leave. You can go to my sister Dalila’s in Synope. Lord Brill can’t leave Mencha until Lord Barjim’s fort is done,” Daffyd said hurriedly.
“Why would I want to go to Synope?” Anna glanced from Daffyd to Jenny. “By the way, where is Synope?”
“You have to go.”
“I’d like to know why,” Anna persisted. Once again, it felt like all the people around her were making the decisions.
“You just have to.”
“Why?”
Daffyd looked to Jenny.
“You asked for a strong sorceress,” Jenny said.
“Young Daffyd, I’m not going anywhere just because someone says so,” Anna explained. “Why should I flee? Will this Lord Brill try to turn me into dust with a song?”
Daffyd winced. “That’s what he did to Da.”
“It doesn’t matter, Daffyd,” Jenny said. “Lord Brill’s carriage is already too close, and your mount couldn’t outrun it carrying double.”
Daffyd sighed.
Anna wanted to sigh as well. Had her insistence on trying to figure out the situation just made it that much worse? Was her life always going to be like that—a choice between reacting blindly, not knowing the situation, or trying to figure out the unknown rules and finding she was hopelessly behind by the time she did figure them out?
“Let’s go and meet him,” she suggested. Much as she hated confrontation, she’d learned long ago that running from it only made things worse.
Again, the other two exchanged the kind of glance that confirmed they thought she was truly out of her mind.
Anna stood, folded the unnecessary trench coat over her arm, and picked up her purse. She walked toward the door she hoped was the right one.
Daffyd stepped forward and opened the heavy wooden door, and Anna could sense the ovenlike heat outside. No wonder everyone wore such light clothes. She stepped out onto the porch. Despite the shade provided by the overhanging eaves, the air seemed to scorch her, almost taking her breath away, and, under her gown, she could feel the near-instant perspiration building. The sun seemed high in the sky—it certainly wasn’t late afternoon, as it had been in Ames. She glanced at her watch—the hands showed five-forty, and she didn’t think they were moving. She looked again. The brass of the watch looked tarnished, somehow. It was an inexpensive watch, a cheap replacement for the one her father had given her when she’d gotten her master’s. The graduation watch had broken beyond repair the same week Irenia had been killed.
Anna swallowed, trying to ignore the fact that her new watch had stopped, that her daughter was dead, that … that … all too many things—and the heat—by studying what she could see of Mencha.
Perhaps a hundred feet from where she stood was another cottage—low and thick-walled with stucco or plaster peeling away from the crosswoven stick frame in places. A few browned stalks drooped in a square stone-ringed space that had once been a garden. To her right, across a rutted dirt
lane, was another cottage, one whose plaster appeared intact, and whose small garden was green, rather than brown.
Daffyd joined her, carrying his viola case. As Anna looked at the young man, she realized that she was almost as tall as he was, and that she towered over Jenny. At five-four, she wasn’t that tall, either. Was everyone on Erde short?
“How big is Mencha?” Anna asked after a moment.
“Maybe two deks across.” Daffyd turned toward the dirt lane.
“What is a dek?”
“Ten furls.”
Patiently, Anna asked the next question. “How long is a furl?”
“For a sorceress, you don’t know much.”
Anna asked again. “How long?”
“Ten rods.”
“How big is—” Anna began.
“Ten yards in a rod.”
“And a yard is about this long?” Anna approximated thirty-six inches with her hands.
“Something like that,” Daffyd answered, looking from her back toward the lane.
“How many people live in Mencha?”
“A hundred households, perhaps,” answered Jenny, as she closed the door to the cottage behind her.
Anna wanted to scream. Trying to find out anything would take
forever
! And by the time she did, everyone would think she was a dizzy blonde. “How far away is Lord Brill’s palace?”
“He has a hall, not a palazzio,” snorted Daffyd. “Only the Nesereans have palazzios.”
“I’d like to see how well you do in my world,” Anna snapped. “His hall can’t be far, not if his carriage would catch us immediately.”
Daffyd gestured toward the cottage wall, as if pointing through the structure. “It’s on the hill, overlooking the Synope road. That’s less than three deks.” He added, as if
anticipating a question, “That’s not quite half a league.”
“A league?”
“Ten deks.”
Anna’s thoughts swirled with the unfamiliar measurements, but she guessed that Brill’s hall was south of Mencha, assuming that directions weren’t as strange as everything else on Erde. What should she do? Daffyd hadn’t wanted her to meet Brill, yet he seemed resigned.
“What should I watch for with Lord Brill?” she asked.
Daffyd’s mouth opened, then closed.
“Go on,” she said. “You don’t trust him, but you seem to think that I’ll do what he wants just because I wouldn’t do what you wanted.”
“He talks fine, lady,” Jenny said. “They say he’s a fine wit, and offers a right good table, but many folk leave his hall changed.”
“Changed?”
“Or with the wind, like dust.” Daffyd bit off each word and spat it out.
“They think he’s a right fine lord, when they didn’t when they went to sup,” Jenny said.
“Sorcery?” Anna asked.
“What else?” answered Daffyd.
“Speaking of the Lord Brill, that dust’d be his carriage,” Jenny offered, pointing past the yellowing oak and beyond the lane.
Anna could see a smudge of brown beyond several huts or hovels. Compared to them, Jenny’s cottage was palatial. Anna wanted to shake her head. Instead, she used her handkerchief to blot her forehead, gently. For what it was worth, she didn’t need smeared makeup on top of everything else.
“Has to be,” said Daffyd. “’Sides Essoles, he’s got the only carriage in Mencha, and Essoles sent his wife to Wei. She took the carriage.”
Anna looked at Daffyd, wishing he would explain.
The young man saw her look. “You wouldn’t know that. Some say the dark ones are going to send their gray legions through the Sand Pass before winter. That’s why Lord Barjim’s
here. He paid Lord Brill solid silver to raise that fort. Last fall, in the dry months, not that they have not all been dry, he had Brill raise a dam just beyond the pass road. Elwiss told me that there’s a moat there where they can open a water gate and wash away anyone below the wall.”
“’Gainst the dark ones, it won’t be enough,” offered Jenny.
The sound of hoofs on hard soil, and the faint rumble of iron tires, announced the arrival of the coach. Anna turned back toward the lane as the carriage rolled across the parched ground almost to the porch of the cottage, where the blue-clad driver reined in the four blacks. The carriage rolled to a halt. The blue-lacquered finish gleamed in the hazy afternoon sunshine, and the door flipped open. A slender and balding man attired entirely in blue velvet stepped out.
Without a word, the sorcerer or whatever he was stepped onto the porch. In her heels, Anna was slightly taller than he was, but he doffed his velvet cap, and bowed. “You do us honor, noble lady. I am Lord Brill.”
Despite the kindly appearing smile and the faint twinkle in his eye, Anna didn’t feel quite right about the sorcerer.
He didn’t call her a sorceress, Anna noted. Did that mean he wasn’t sure, or was he being polite? What should she do? With a curtsey, the affected kind all the Met sopranos used, she replied, “You do
me
the honor, lord.”
“I would like to do you greater honor, lady, by offering my hall as your residence for so long as you find necessay.”
“You are indeed kind as well as honorable.” Anna didn’t quite choke on the words. Just think of it like university politics, she told herself. Just more politics. “Most kind.” How honorable Brill might be was another question.
“Might I inquire as to how you prefer to be called?”
“I am Anna.”
“Lady Anna,” mused the sorcerer. “Neither the pools nor the books offer guidance for that name, and that may prove most … liberating. We all could use some freedom
in dealing with the dark ones.” He smiled again. “But I stray from your comfort.”
Anna offered a smile, the polite, political kind that wasn’t quite automatic.
“Well, young Daffyd,” said Brill cheerfully, turning to the black-haired young man. “Like always, you’ve done the right thing for the wrong reason. And both you and Lady Anna were lucky, most lucky. And so were you, Jenny. Great works from innocents. Still, the dark ones are on the move, and Lord Barjim would give his left leg for a true sorceress. I trust you’ll be back in your quarters before supper.”
“Yes, ser.” Daffyd bowed.
“As for you, Jenny … we may be needing you as well.” Brill smiled and added pleasantly. “I wouldn’t be traveling too far.”
“Yes, Lord Brill.” Jenny inclined her head.
The sorcerer turned back to Anna, his eyes and mouth smiling. “If you would … Do you need assistance?”
“I’m fine.” Anna took the two wooden steps off the porch and walked across the dirt that seemed to grab at her high heels. She paused at the iron step to the carriage, marveling at the details, from the scrolled ironwork to the velvet upholstered seats and the brass impressed panels above the seat backs.
“You will find it quite comfortable, I’m certain,” Brill said reasonably. “I apologize for the long step up, but one doesn’t find mounting blocks everywhere.”
“I’ll manage.” Anna took a slightly deeper breath and, holding the right-hand railing, also lacquered in blue, pulled herself up and into the carriage. As she sat down, more heavily than she intended, she could almost feel the carriage flex.
Brill stepped up into the carriage and closed the lacquered metal door, sealing the heat in with them. He sat on the side seat opposite Anna, his back to the driver. Without explaining, he hummed for an instant, then sang:
“Cool this space and chill the air;
keep us healthy, fresh, and fair …”
When the sorcerer finished, the heat receded, almost as though the carriage were air-conditioned. He wiped his forehead, and took a deep breath. “That will not last long, but long enough for us to reach my hall. It is a far more suitable place for a lady such as you.” The brown-flecked eyes twinkled as the balding man boldly studied Anna.

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