Darksong Rising (59 page)

darksinger’s deep voice.

Clearsong, sorceress, fall to the old,

bright voice still and songs grow cold.

Darksong, darksong, strike with might.

 
put the sorceress to death this night...

Farsenn glances up as he finishes the spell, sweat streaming down his face, while the triple-toned

drums roar out yet another pattern.

The night sky blurs, then shudders, as if the clouds are being shaken by an unseen hand, and then

a tinkling, yet penetrating chord blankets the land.

“No! No!!!!”
 
screams Farsenn, shaking his fist upward. “No!”

Silvered arrow-notes fly from somewhere east of the chandlery. arching into the dark sky and

then falling... and with each of those silver notes, the thunder-rumble of the drums is muffled,

more and more. Yet Giersan labors over the drums, even as their sounds die away.

“Dissonance! Clearsong cannot prevail! Never!” Farsenn’s bass is hoarse, as though the words

had come from a raw throat.

More of the silver-arrowed notes fall—striking bearded forms running westward, away from the

remaining riders, away from the silvered and shimmering figure that is the sorceress, away from

a voice whose clarity shivers through the shuttered town.

Farseun looks up once more. His mouth opens, but he cannot speak before the silver arrows

strike.

The drums blaze into flame, so quickly, and so violently that they might have been the driest of

tinder soaked in oils, but the drums do not blaze so brightly as the briefly shuddering forms that

topple from the porch of the burning chandlery.

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Arrows kept sleeting past Anna, striking armsmen, and in the background the heavy multitoned

and ominous rumbling thunder of the drums continued.

Sluggish as Anna continued to feel, with eyes sometimes almost feeling like she were looking

through a fog, with her armsmen dying around her, Anna had to act. She had lost the time to

think. All she could do was sing the one spell she knew... knew cold, changing but a few words,

for she knew her attackers were not armsmen in the regular sense:

Turn to fire, turn to flame,

 
those weapons spelled against my name

turn to ash all those spelled against my face

who seek by spell or force the Regency to replace.

Turn to fire, turn to flame...

Almost harplike, the night sky shivered... and Anna could not help but look skyward as visible

silver notes cascaded like arrows down across Pamr. Where each struck, a silver flame seared

like a flare, and with the sonic collision of drumbeat and harp note, silent screaming bolts of

sound shivered the town.

“Dissonance!” The single exclamation rode over the irregular hissing of the fire arrows.

For the first time, screams filled the darkness—short agonizing screams that ended almost as

they began.

Then... the night was silent, except for the panting of lancers, and the moans of wounded

Defalkan armsmen.

“Lady?” Jecks addressed Anna, but his eyes surveyed the darkness, going from one fallen torch

to another.

Anna’s stomach turned, for by those torches were charred figures, and each had been a man,

some woman’s consort, some girl’s brother, some child’s father. And all had been set against her

because, more than a year earlier, she had turned a chandler into ashes to stop him from raping

her. When he had tried to force her over her violent objections, and then kill her when she had

used gentler sorcery to dissuade him, she reminded herself. You didn’t use violence first… you

didn't

“My lady?” Jecks asked again.

“I’m here. . . .“ She looked at the guards who surrounded her, seeing again the empty saddle.

After checking faces, she asked, “Kerhor?”

Kinor, blood splashed across his dusty tunic, reined up beside Jecks, answered slowly. “He took

an axe, Lady Anna, and an old halberd.”

“I’m sorry." she whispered to no one in particular. “I’m sorry.

Behind her, a crackling sound began to grow. Turning, she saw the dwelling next toward the

center of Pamr had begun to burn. More than a hundred yards farther away, the chandlery was

already a bonfire reaching skyward toward the low clouds.

Anna and Jecks slowly surveyed the burning town... and the bodies strewn everywhere.

Unbidden, one of the stanzas from Britten’s On This Island song cycle pounded through Anna’s

mind:

Starving through the leafless wood

Trolls run scolding for their food;

And the nightingale is dumb,

And the angel will not come.

“The nightingale is dumb..." Anna whispered hoarsely.

“Lady Regent?” asked Himar. “We have lost near-on another twoscore lancers. What would you

have of us?”

“We’ll go on to Lady Gatrune’s. There’s no one left here to harm us." Anna’s voice sounded as

dead as she felt inside.

“Bodies across their saddles! Leave no man who fought,” ordered Himar. ‘Then mount up and

ride out.”

Anna continued to hold the lutar with her right hand as she flicked Farinelli’s reins, her eyes

scanning the darkness to the west and north.

The sound of hoofs and the heavy breathing of mounts and tired lancers began to rise over the

crackling of dwellings burning and the scattered low moans of wounded men. Rickel and Lejun

continued to flank Anna, their shields held high.

Behind the Defalkan lancers, as they reached the center of Pamr and turned their mounts

northward on the road to Lady Gatrune’s hold, flames hissed and built to a roar, casting flicker-

ing shadows across charred bodies left on the bloodstained clay.

Anna swallowed and moistened her lips. “1 should have spent the time to find them.” She

wanted to shake her head. To think that…all those people dead because one oversexed chandler

wouldn't take no for an answer. Or because you couldn’t find another way out of the situation.

Were you just stupid, not realizing just how much Defalkan men regard women as property? And

too tired because you were pushing too hard to reach Denguic? “I should have.”

“I would wager that last spell of yours did so," suggested Jecks. “Could you tell such?”

“I think so. . . but I don’t know. I’ll check when we get to Lady Gatrune’s,” Anna answered,

looking into the darkness ahead. If you can... if you can sing another spell tonight.

“Torches! To the van!” ordered Himar. His voice lowered as he let his mount drop back, and as

he addressed the Regent. “I like this not. Were the holding not close, I would ask that you have

us make an encampment.”

“Should we stop? I’d rather have friendly walls around us,” Anna replied, “but I probably caused

this by wanting to go on." Probably? Definitely... it’s all on your head.

“I have sent scouts out, as if the land were not ours,” Himar said, “but I would press on, so short

is the distance, but with care. Great care.”

Anna decided to continue keeping the lutar ready.

“I also,” said Jecks. “Still, it is an ill night, without the bright moon."

Anna scarcely would have called the small white disc of Clearsong bright, not compared to the

bright moon of earth. “We couldn’t see it anyway.”

“Mayhap not, but the clouds oft roll in under the evil moon when it rises.”

Could that be? There’s still so much you don’t know. Dark-song rising… pitted against

sorcery... and where are the stars, the army of unalterable law? Her laugh was hoarse.

The torches shed only minimal light, and with Clearsong not in the sky, and the heavy low

clouds blocking even starlight, the column moved slowly northward.

Even after perhaps half a glass, no lights betrayed the hold, although Anna knew it was but a few

deks out the north road from Pamr. The air still smelled smoky despite the breeze out of the

north.

Smoke drifted toward the Defalkan riders, reaching them in waves, waves Anna could smell

more than see. The smoke came from dying fires, but with an odor both similar to and different

from that she had created in Pamr.

“Oh, no…" murmured the sorceress. “No…”

“Torches forward! Ready arms!”

There won’t be any need for arms.

Anna was right. The holding was silent as death, and the dim light of the torches revealed the

first bodies at the gates, bodies savagely hacked into near unrecognizability, mercifully cloaked

in the dimness of the dark night.

“An ill night, indeed, my lady,” Jecks said. “I am sorry. Most sorry, for I know the ties and

gratitude you bore all who were here.”

Anna held the lutar ready, though she knew she would need it no longer. Not tonight. Then, you

really didn’t think you’d need it coming into Pamr, either.

More bodies lay along the lane to the hold. A hold, that had burned, leaving the stone-and-brick

shell. From the ruins glimmered but faint coals.

“Purple company, check the stables. Green company, Yujul—check the barracks, over there. The

rest of you search the grounds. By company now...” When he finished directing the lancers,

Himar turned toward Anna. “Wait, if you would, Lady Anna.”

Anna reined up and waited in the darkness barely broken by the torches, surrounded by guards in

the ruins of a hold she had thought friendly and strong.

When the lancers confirmed that the grounds were indeed empty, Anna finally dismounted and

walked up the ash-strewn steps toward what had been the entry to Gatrune’s hall. At the