The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle (22 page)

Anna finished the last of her water and stowed the bottle back in the loops. “You’re sure?”

“Some of the thralls and peasants were smiling. Some of the others . . . you’ll see.” Alvar turned his mount back toward the keep, raising his blade, and gesturing for the rest of the column to follow.

Anna still glanced at the heavy dark gates apprehensively as they rode through the heavy brick walls and arch and into a courtyard below the main keep. Two more bodies lay in the courtyard, both purple-clad, like Fauren.

As Anna reined up, the two armsmen by the double oak doors to the keep prostrated themselves on the stones.

“Lady Anna . . . Lady Anna.”

“Impressive,” murmured Jecks.

Jimbob’s eyes went from the Synfal armsmen to Anna, then back to the armsmen. “I don’t understand.” The youth leaned in his saddle toward the sorceress. “You didn’t use a slaying spell, but some people died. Can you slay without asking for death?”

“That’s why I don’t like to use sorcery.” Anna took a deep breath.
Just one reason of the many I keep discovering
. “Jimbob . . . some people. They feel strongly. If I cast a spell that compels them to feel something against their nature, some will die rather than change their nature.”

“A good thing, too, young Lord Jimbob,” rumbled Fhurgen from where he sat on his mount directly behind Anna. “Anyone who’s so against you and the regent’s better dead.”

Once, Anna had wondered about anyone being better dead, but after seeing what had happened to Madell—and Dalila and her children—she wasn’t so sure if Madell wouldn’t have been better off dead. Certainly, everyone else would have been better off if he were. She absently
massaged her forehead. “Now what? I suppose I need to find Lord Arkad—if he’s alive.”

“We’ll find him,” Alvar affirmed. “You wait where you can be guarded.” He vaulted off his mount, gesturing for several armsmen to follow, and unsheathed his blade.

Anna glanced toward the walls, but while the handful of armsmen watched her, none seemed more than curious. Some had seated themselves in patches of shade afforded by the walls. Anna closed her eyes as she sat on Farinelli. That way, she didn’t see double, and the faint sense of nausea and vertigo that went with the double vision disappeared.

In time, Alvar reappeared with the armsmen.

Anna opened her eyes and looked at the captain, pleased that the sick feelings didn’t reappear, although the double vision remained.

“Lord Arkad is alive. He sits in his receiving chamber. He be alone.” Alvar shook his head.

“Is it safe?” Jecks asked, his voice so slow it almost rumbled.

“We found no armed men, and all the servants wish to please. Your sorcery was most effective, lady.”

Anna hoped so. Her head still ached, and seeing two images of everyone was a strain. She almost wanted to take a swig of the medicinal alcohol in her pack, but that wouldn’t have been the best idea. Perhaps Lord Arkad had good cellars and a decent wine. That she could use. Definitely.

“We will escort you both,” Alvar added.

Jecks nodded. Anna dismounted first, deliberately and carefully, fearing that her balance was not what it should be. The white-haired lord and Jimbob followed her example. After a moment, she decided to bring the lutar.

Jecks held the door as Anna entered the cavernous hall, an echoing chamber that held little but dust, and the odor of mold. They were greeted by a serving girl, thin and nervous, who bowed once, twice. “Lady Anna, Regent
Anna, this way to Lord Arkad’s chamber.” She bowed again.

Behind the hall was a corridor running perpendicular to the hall, and the serving girl turned right. Fhurgen stepped up beside her, blade unsheathed, his head turning from side to side.

Alvar walked on Anna’s right, Jecks on her left, both with blades out.

Anna frowned. The entire experience seemed almost surreal. Walking through an ancient castle or hold in dim light, surrounded by armed men, treating her like an ancient queen to be protected. Yet her sorcery had apparently turned the keep’s defenders into allies, unwilling or not.
And you can’t take a step without wondering if you’ll fall over
.

Her fingers tightened around the lutar, her thoughts skittering into the burning spell. She didn’t want to flay anyone with fire, but she could if the need appeared.
Correction. You hope you can
.

The serving girl stopped at the foot of the massive yellow brick staircase, turned, and bowed again. “He’s
up
the main stairs here, in the upper room, Regent Anna.”

Anna nodded, then followed the girl.

Fhurgen, Jecks, and Alvar kept abreast of her, with Jimbob lagging, his eyes darting from side to side. Close to a score of armsmen followed the group, but the only sounds were the echoes of boots on brick.

At the top of the stairs, under a huge portrait of a man in unfamiliar armor on a white horse, they turned right, down another brick-walled corridor for perhaps twenty yards to an open doorway.

The time-stained door was open into a square and high-ceilinged room nearly ten yards on a side. At the right end of the room was a raised wooden dais. On the dais was a carved chair, nothing more. An old, white-haired figure sat on the chair.

Jecks slowed slightly, gesturing for Jimbob to do the same.

Anna, flanked by Fhurgen, stopped short of the dais, squinting in trying to make out Arkad. Her nose itched. Mold? Dust?

“Pay homage to the regent,” growled Fhurgen.

Arkad looked up from the carved chair at Fhurgen, then to Anna. “I honor you, Regent. I honor you. I honor you.” Tears seeped from the rheumy eyes, disappearing into the food-stained and tangled white beard.

Anna paused. Something didn’t feel right. She lifted the lutar slightly, her fingers feeling for the strings.

“I honor you,” cackled Arkad, a line of saliva drooling out of the left corner of his mouth. The Lord of Cheor tottered erect and bowed his head. “I honor you.”

Anna glanced toward Fhurgen momentarily. Did Arkad seem as . . . mad . . . as she thought?

The ancient figure stumbled down from the dais toward Anna. “Honor you!”

With the flash of silver Anna threw up her right hand and jumped aside, trying to protect the lutar and herself from the blade. A line of fire grazed the side of her hand.

“Bastard!” Fhurgen’s bare blade slashed, and the knife clattered on the stones. The guard’s second effort threw the tottering figure onto the bricks.

Arkad did not move, and blood began to pool on the stained yellow floor bricks. Then the ancient figure twitched once and was still. Anna knew he was dead.

After a moment, Anna looked at the gash on the side of her palm. “Good thing you brought the alcohol,” she murmured to herself.

“I am sorry, Regent.” Fhurgen’s voice almost broke.

“It wasn’t your fault, Fhurgen. I was careless.” She shook her head.
Sorcery doesn’t protect you if you don’t use it . . . or if someone’s so twisted and mad that the spell has no effect . . . or if you’re seeing double and don’t react
.

“There’s a bottle wrapped in green cloth in my saddlebags. Would you send someone for it?” She looked back
down on the emaciated white-haired figure in the stained maroon tunic lying in already-drying blood.

Fhurgen nodded to the blond armsman behind him. “You heard the regent, Rickel.”

Jecks looked to Anna.

“I’ll be all right. It’s not much more than a scratch.” She shook her head. “What a mess. What a fucking, dissonant mess.”

E
hara swings into the saddle of the roan, glancing from the stable back at the white limestone of the palace, then urges his mount toward the parklike preserve that stretches from behind the white stone building to the top of the bluffs overlooking the Falche River three deks to the east and to the north gate little more than a dek away, where the road winds down the steep hill past the mansions of the wealthy traders.

The gray-haired lancer officer spurs his mount to catch up with the Lord of Dumar.

“You’re a lancer, Overcaptain Keasil. It took you long enough to catch me.” Ehara’s voice booms across the turf that leads to the woods.

“You are known as an excellent horseman, sire.” Keasil’s voice is lower than Ehara’s as he settles his mount into a walk beside Ehara. “You asked me to accompany you?”

“Away from the palace and the ever-listening ears. I’m sure you understand.” Ehara urges his mount into a trot.

Keasil manages to react quickly, and the two men ride side by side toward the tended woods.

“Keasil . . .” Ehara turns in his saddle and grins.
“Send a token of our appreciation to Lord Sargol in Suhl. You can select something from the chest, a diamond or two, I think, when you come to my study later. Siobion prefers the pearls and rubies. I will have a scroll ready for you shortly after I return to my study. I’ll send for you.”

“Lord Sargol? Not Lord Dencer?” Keasil’s bushy gray eyebrows lift in inquiry.

“Lord Dencer would be our agent. He has made it quite clear how he would be both agent and overlord in southern Defalk.” Ehara shakes his head, in mock sadness. “That is why Captain Gortin rode to Stromwer. He looks younger than his years, and that was not by accident. I am not fond of agents. They place their interests above mine.”

“That can be so.”

“It is so. Remember that.”

“Yes, sire.” Keasil frowns as he guides his mount clear of the marble walled fountain that sits alone in the grass.

“You look displeased.”

“Oh, no, sire. It is just that . . .” He pauses and guides his mount closer to Ehara’s. “Your pardon, lord, but if I am to act properly . . .”

“Yes?”

“Would it not be wise if I had a general idea of what message I am to convey?”

“A scroll to Lord Sargol.” Ehara reins up short of the first line of trees.

The officer inclines his head to Ehara. “I will do my best, ser.”

“I will
probably
convey my felicitations. A good word, felicitations. My felicitations about the situation in which he has been placed. I might suggest I sympathize with his uncertain condition, mentioning in passing a sorceress unfamiliar with his particular situation as a regent for a boy whose forebears were scarcely distinguished. That might be viewed as unsettling, even without having neighboring
lords with loyalties regarded as close to rebellious by such a regent. And I will offer him friendship.”

“That is all?”

“That is what you need to know, Keasil.” Ehara smiles. “The scroll will be spelled. Don’t try to read it.”

“Yes, ser. No, ser, I won’t, I mean.”

“I know what you meant.” Ehara smiles. “No more talk of scrolls and messages. Let us ride.”

A
fter Fhurgen walked through the chamber, blade out, Anna glanced around the guest quarters—a large room with an adjoining bath chamber. Like everything else in the hall, they smelled, as if the bath chamber had never been used, but they smelled less than either Fauren’s quarters or those of the late Lord Arkad.

The walls were yellow brick, covered with plaster that had once been whitewashed and now looked more like dirty yellow, either from the brick showing through or from an accumulation of dirt, smoke, and grease. The light from the two narrow windows was further darkened by heavy brown drapes that drooped from wrought-iron brackets set above the casement and by inside shutters. Two wooden armchairs were pushed against the outer wall.

A double-width bed, with a dirty brown quilt and two lumpy pillows, a bedside table with a candle and smudged glass mantel, and a writing table with a wooden straight-backed chair completed the bedchamber furnishings.

The regent’s boots scraped, as though on sand, as she crossed the brick floor to the nearest window and pulled back the drapes and opened the shutters.

“Khhhchew!”

Anna rubbed her nose, then sneezed twice more, before opening the shutters of the second window. “Damned dust . . . bed’s probably worse.”

Fhurgen had retreated to the half-open door, watching as Anna studied the room, one hand touching the full black beard momentarily.

She turned as another set of boots echoed down the corridor.

Jecks stepped into the room, followed by the redheaded Jimbob. “We have inspected the strong room and the lower levels.”

Had it taken her that long to disinfect the wound and inspect the top floor of the keep?

“How be the hand?”

“It hurts.” Anna shrugged, her eyes going to the dressings. “Other than that . . . Other than being stupid . . .” She shook her head. “This place stinks.”

“No worse than many,” Jecks said.

“I’ll have to have it cleaned up to sleep here.” She eased herself into a straight-backed chair.

Jecks nodded. “There is much to be done here.”

Anna had the feeling Jecks wasn’t talking about cleaning. “Does Alvar have the hold under control?”

“Your spell did that. Your armsmen hold the gates and the ramparts, but the servants are obeying willingly. So are the few crafters.”

“Good.” Anna started to rub her forehead, to massage away the headache, but doing it left-handed felt subtly awkward.

“Lady Anna?” Jimbob’s voice was uneven.

“Yes, Jimbob.”

“Might I ask . . . ?”

“How Lord Arkad managed to lift a knife against me?”

“Yes, lady.”

“It’s simple and it’s complicated,” Anna said tiredly. “Spells like the one I cast on the holding only work on
a mind that’s healthy. Lord Arkad was not well. I don’t know if he was spelled or old or insane, but he didn’t know that what he did was against the spell.”
And you didn’t cast it to make an attack physically impossible
.

“Everyone talks about how your spells stop people or kill them.” The youthful face screwed up in puzzlement.

Jecks started to open his mouth, and Anna shook her head, then took a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts. She really needed something to eat. “Jimbob . . . someday you will command, an army. It might happen that a lord will refuse to pay liedgeld. I hope not, but these things can happen. He has an army—many armsmen, and many other people behind his walls. What will happen if you use all your armsmen—or sorcery—to kill that lord and all his armsmen and people?”