The Spellsong War: The Second Book of the Spellsong Cycle (41 page)

The wax seal remained that of Lord Hryding, and the signature read, “Anientta, administrator of Flossbend, for the heir, Jeron.”

Anna nodded and turned to Markan. “I accept your service. I take it that Onfel was not to your liking?”

Markan smiled so faintly the expression was not a smile. “Say, Lady Anna, that we were not exactly to his liking.”

“A picked guard of Lord Tybel?”

“Who could say? We felt that our . . . services might be better used elsewhere.”

Anna smiled. “We can use your services. Markan, this is Arms Commander Hanfor. I should have introduced you sooner, but I’m tired, and I’m not thinking very well.”

Both Markan and Fridric bowed.

“Honored, ser. We have heard much of note of you.”

“Honored,” murmured Fridric.

Hanfor shook his head. “Good men we can use.”

Anna looked at Fhurgen, still standing in the doorway. “Why don’t you have someone get them settled?” She glanced to Markan. “Then Hanfor will talk with you and we’ll see exactly how you can be best used.”

“Thank you, Lady Anna.” Markan smiled more widely.

After a moment, so did Fridric.

When the door had shut behind them, Jecks laughed. “You have not put down all the rebellious lords, and already they flock to you. A score—will not that help, Hanfor?”

“That will help.”

Jecks frowned. “Who is Gestatr?”

“Gestatr was Lord Hryding’s chief armsman. Fridric told me more than a season ago that he’d gone back to his home in Synek.”

“And Hadrenn holds Synek?” Jecks finished. “You think that is why you received that scroll from young Hadrenn?”

“Exactly.”

“You had a glint in your eye,” observed Jecks, “when you looked upon the older of those two.”

Jealousy?
wondered Anna. “I do. Markan is responsible and trustworthy. I was thinking about leaving him and Fridric here to run things.”

“You know this?”

“Markan was my escort from Lord Hryding’s to Falcor after the Sand Pass battle. He was the lead armsman at Flossbend after Gestatr left.”

Jecks nodded. “That is a horse of another color. One can place a lead armsman from one hold in another, and none will object, young as he may be.”

“Young . . . he “may be effective longer,” Anna pointed out, “and he understands guarding a lord’s household.”

“There is that,” agreed Jecks. “And he will favor you and Jimbob.”

“Exactly.” Anna rose and went to the door. “Fhurgen? Will you summon Markan and Fridric back? Or have someone do it, please?”

The black-bearded guard smiled. “You have a task for them?”

Anna nodded, her lips in a wry smile.

The head of her personal guard laughed softly. “I will get them.”

“While they’re summoning those two,” Anna told Jecks, “I’ll draft a scroll to Herene, and I suppose to Lady Gatrune, too, explaining why I need Herene.”

Jecks nodded, and Anna wondered what else she’d forgotten.

T
he woman in the mirror wore faded green trousers and tunic, and had a smudge on her left cheek. The blonde hair was cut short, shorter than a bob. The fine features were those of an older woman, but the lightly tanned and flawless skin, the trim and muscular figure, and the clear eyes belonged to an eighteen-year-old—except for the darkness behind them. Three days not on the road and regular nightly sleep had erased the worst of the dark circles.

Anna grimaced. So did her reflection in the near-full-length wall mirror. The wooden mirror frame’s wood was age-darkened so much that it resembled oiled ebony, and the shallow carved vines were nearly invisible.

The sorceress readjusted the lutar, ran her fingers across the strings, and then twisted one of the tuning pegs ever so slightly. She cleared her throat and began the spell.

Behind her, Jecks and Hanfor stood, uneasily watching the cloudy silver surface of the antique mirror as the notes echoed slightly in the cavernous bedroom Anna was using for her scrying.

“Mirror, mirror, in your frame,

show me Gylaron in his

fame,

where’er he may ride or be,

show him now to me.”

The mirror displayed Gylaron—swarthy, solid, but not quite stocky, with a trimmed and pointed black beard. He
stood in a surprisingly small wood-paneled bedchamber talking to a heavyset black-haired woman with a heart-shaped face and dark eyes.

“She does not appear pleased,” offered Hanfor.

“No.” Anna studied the images, first of Gylaron, who shrugged and signed dramatically as she watched, and then of the woman, apparently his consort, from the dark red velvet she wore. Tears rolled down the consort’s cheeks, but her hands remained folded in her lap.

Anna released the spell and took a deep breath.

“He looked worried,” said Jecks.

“A man about to attempt a desperate venture,” suggested Hanfor.

Anna swallowed, then checked the lutar’s tuning, even as she mentally rearranged the spell she’d used earlier to scry danger.

“Show from the south, danger to fear,
Gylaron’s threats to me bright and clear . . .”

The words were cramped to that melody, but she hoped it wouldn’t matter too much.

The mirror remained blank, then swirled into a featureless silver, and finally showed an image not of Lerona, but of a mountain hold.

“That be Stromwer,” Jecks said.

Anna frowned. Had her spell failed? Or did Lerona truly pose no dangers? With a sigh, she set aside the lutar and went to the spell folder on the table. With the grease marker, she drafted another version of the spell.

Once she had it in mind, she lifted the lutar and offered it.

“Show me bright and show me clear,
threats from Gylaron for us to fear . . .”

The silver swirling repeated, this time remaining featureless.

A
snap
filled the silence, and Hanfor looked down disgustedly at the broken marker in his hand.

Anna shook her head.

“Maybe there’s something going on with Dencer.” She distrusted Dencer more than she had Gylaron, or Sargol, even if she couldn’t have explained precisely why.

Jecks shrugged.

“We still haven’t seen Gylaron’s keep,” she said disgustedly. Sometimes, even scrying was dissonantly imprecise.
Sometimes?
What about most of the time?
You’re exaggerating
. Still, she’d overkilled bandits, gotten images she hadn’t really wanted, killed singing dark monks instead of armsmen, and nearly killed herself a half-dozen times.

She’d just have to use a direct mirror spell. She strummed the lutar and readjusted the peg for the top string. Then she cleared her throat. She really needed something to drink.

Hanfor held up a hand. “A moment, Lady Anna?”

“When you’re ready.” Anna couldn’t help grinning as the Arms Commander used his belt knife to sharpen the grease marker he used for sketching. Setting down the lutar, she took a sip of the wine from the pitcher on the table, although she really wanted water.

Then she walked to the window and pulled the shutters wide. The fresh air, warm as it was, helped. The fresh earth over the mass graves reminded her of wounds . . . or scars. Would it always be like that?

Hanfor coughed. “Lady Anna.”

“Oh.” She turned and crossed the stone floor to reclaim the lutar.

“Show me now, bright and fair,
Gylaron’s keep as it stands there . . .”

Gylaron’s liedburg rose out of the town of Lerona itself, on a small hillock to the north of the center of the town.
The walls were low, no more than five to six yards high, and the gates were wide open.

“No defenses,” murmured Jecks.

Hanfor shook his head. “Some form of treachery?”

Anna released the spell and set aside the lutar. “I don’t think so. The mirror showed us Sargol’s treachery. I just didn’t understand what it meant. Three different spells, and we get nothing. That means that Gylaron isn’t trying anything.”

“Or there is a greater wizard?” asked Jecks.

Anna took a deep breath and went back to the table and spell folder. After a time, she scrawled out another variation of the mirror spell.

Again, she faced the mirror and sang.

“Spells and wizards show me bright
those who aid Gylaron’s fight.”

What filled the antique mirror was a silvery mist, seemingly mixing with a faint steam from the mirror frame. Hurriedly, Anna released the spell. Then she took a hefty swallow of the red wine, followed by another. She sank onto the hard chair, glancing around for something to eat. There was only the pitcher of wine and three pewter goblets.

“Satisfied?” she asked, still holding the goblet, debating whether she should have more wine so early in the day.

Jecks looked down at the sharpness of her voice.

Anna felt both ashamed of her pettiness and angry.
Don’t they understand this is work? Why would they? No one on earth understood that an hour and a half recital was work. No one understood the energy it took to teach lessons hour after hour. Why would things be different on Erde?

If she destroyed something . . . that was work. She forced her jaw to unclench and sipped some wine—very slowly, very deliberately.

“Would you like something to eat?” Jecks asked, walking toward the door.

“Yes, please.”

Jecks slipped out of the room.

Anna sat quietly, drawn into herself, knowing her blood sugar was nonexistent, knowing that she’d regret anything she said, waiting.

Hanfor sat on one of the chests against the stone wall, sketching something, a rough map, perhaps.

Shortly, the door opened again.

“Mayhap, this will help, lady.” Jecks set the basket with the still-warm loaf of dark bread on the table before her.

“Thank you.” She forced a smile, then broke off the end and slowly began to eat.

No one said a word until Anna had eaten for a time. One shutter creaked and swung partly across the window with a brief gust of warm air.

“Gylaron has not paid liedgeld . . . yet he makes no plans,” mused Jecks.

“That be not quite so,” suggested Hanfor. “The glass shows that any plans he makes present no danger. We must still approach Lerona with care.”

Anna nodded, chewing on another chunk of the moist and dark bread, before speaking. “We need to see what Dencer plans.”

“Especially after your glass has shown Stromwer,” agreed Hanfor.

After she had finished most of the loaf, Anna stood and lifted the lutar.

“Lord Dencer, show me then and now,
what he does ‘gainst me and how,
show the scenes both far and near
and show us what one should fear.”

Four scenes appeared, two side by side on the top of the mirror, the other two below. In the top right-hand
vision, Dencer stood in his private study, his angular frame looking down upon a younger officer in the crimson uniform of a lancer of Dumar. In the top left side was an image of a group of men digging a large pit. Sharpened stakes were stacked at the side of the excavation.

The third image held no people, just a view of a small circular fort containing a large iron caldron. Below one side of the caldron was a circular stone basin from which ran a polished stone trough. The trough ended in a circular opening in the wall of the small fortress overlooking a narrow gorge.

The last scene, the one on the bottom right of the ancient glass, showed men working to fill nets with rocks. The thick hemp nets were braced with huge round timbers—rough-smoothed treetrunks—and extended over a rocky escarpment overlooking a road. Several sets of the netted rocks were visible. Hanfor sketched and jotted furiously. Jecks’ eyes flicked from image to image. Anna just studied the last three images in turn, until the mirror frame began to smoke and steam. Then she released the image, set the lutar on the chest by the wall beside the mirror, and took a deep breath, finally walking to the window and stepping up to the open air, pushing back a shutter that had swung halfway closed in the light breeze.

The morning air was less fresh, and warmer. After several breaths, she stepped back toward the other two. “Dencer understands sorcery and its limits.”

“All of those defenses are the kind that have an effect from afar, like Sargol’s giant crossbow,” added Hanfor.

“Isn’t there a way to get around those?”

“From what I remember,” mused Jecks, “the town is in a mountain valley, and the keep guards the roads to the valley. The main roads east and west enter the town right under the keep’s walls.”

“It all makes sense,” Anna said. “He could swear allegiance to either Dumar or Ranuak.”

“Not Ranuak,” said the white-haired lord. “They
wouldn’t have him. Ehara would. That was a Dumaran lancer Dencer was talking to.”

“So Ehara tries to gain Dencer’s allegiance, and Sturinn supports Dumar.” She shook her head and sat at the table, picking up the last of the bread. Had she eaten an entire loaf? She snorted, thinking that she probably should have eaten more.

“The Sea-Priests would add all Liedwahr to Sturinn’s rule,” said Jecks.

Hanfor nodded.

Not if I can help it
. “The big pot?” Anna asked after swallowing a mouthful of the bread.

“To boil oil, and the stone pipes spray it out over the ‘road that leads to the keep,” said Jecks. “Stromwer is at the foot of the Sudbergs.”

“We’ll have to find a way around those defenses,” Anna offered, “but that will wait until we deal with Gylaron.”

“Will other sorcerers help him?” asked Hanfor.

In for a copper, in for a gold. Anna stood and retuned the lutar.

“Again?” asked Jecks.

“I’d like to see what other sorcerers are working on.” Anna took a deep breath and strummed the strings, then tightened the bottom tuning peg, and restrummed.

“Of those with power of the song
seek those who’d do me wrong
and show them in this silver cast
and make that vision well last.”

She studied the images in the glass. They were the same as the last time she’d used the spell—the blond seer from Nordwei, the hawk-faced Sea-Priest, and the young black-bearded man.

The Sea-Priest—if he were the same one—sat across a table from Ehara, his eyes bright even through the silver of the glass. The hatred that burned on the faces of both
the Sea-Priest and the unknown young man still disturbed her. Were the Sea-Priests that fanatically against women in power?