The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle (7 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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Her mouth full, Anna offered a nod. She was still hungry, more hungry than usual in the morning. Was it nerves? Or something about Erde?
“Well? Are you ready for your ride?” asked the sorcerer with a smile after she had finished the last of the bread. “Perhaps I can show you something of Erde, enough to stimulate your thoughts on how you might help us.”
Anna nodded, wondering why she should help Brill. The sorcerer hadn’t really given any good reason for her to help, and he had admitted killing Daffyd’s father over what seemed a trifling thing, and yet he was acting as if she would.
As Brill stood and turned, his hand brushed the crystal water goblet.
Anna lurched toward it, but was too late. The shimmering goblet seemed to fall in almost slow motion toward the polished stone floor—where it rang as it bounced … and bounced … and rang … and did not break.
“It’s all right,” Brill said calmly. “Serna will wipe it up.”
Anna tried to look away from the delicate-seeming crystal that still rolled back and forth on the light-blue stone floor. After a moment, she forced a smile. “Your crystal is rather durable.”
“I had thought so,” Brill answered with a smile. “I had thought so.”
What did he mean? Then she remembered. She had shattered one of the goblets with her botched spell. She wanted
to blot her suddenly damp forehead. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”
“Certainly, lady. I’ll meet you in the front entry.” Brill bowed, not quite sardonically, as if well aware of the confusion he had created, and picked up a cap from the side table.
Anna wanted to scream that she wasn’t slow, that she wasn’t stupid, that she’d like to see how he would do plopped into her world. He’d probably get run over in a parking lot in thirty seconds—especially in Ames. Instead, she pasted on a smile, and inclined her head momentarily. “I won’t be long.”
Ignoring Florenda, who had appeared as she left the salon and fluttered alongside her, Anna walked slowly back to her chamber.
In the robing room, Anna washed her hands mechanically, once, twice. How could this be happening? Every time she turned around there was another reminder that people thought she was something special, another hint that she had to do
something
.
How? She was just Anna Thompson Marsali, born Anna Mayme Thompson in Cumberland, Kentucky, a soprano not quite good enough, or lucky enough, to have made it to the Met, but good enough to place second or third in every competition she had been able to afford—before she’d given in to Avery and gotten pregnant.
She walked back into the bedchamber and stood before the window. The scene remained unchanged—the stone walls, the dirt roads, and the distant view of Mencha to the north … and the sun, already beating down on the dry countryside.
Anna went back to the closets, searching again, until she found a floppy brown hat with a brim wide enough to shade her face. At least she hoped it would.
Florenda waited in the corridor and followed her back down to the entry where, as he had promised, Brill waited, knee-length riding boots polished and glimmering.
Anna stepped out into the morning behind the sorcerer,
and felt herself begin to sweat almost instantly in the summer heat—worse even than Ames in August.
“This way,” Brill suggested.
They walked along the shaded north side of the main hall building, across more of the flat stones that paved the entire courtyard, and back into the sun, toward a low, blue-tileroofed structure.
The stable was like the rest of the hall—well designed and of finely finished stone. Like all stables, there was the odor of straw and manure, and of leather and oil.
“Morning, lord.” A short, white-haired man stepped from the dimness of an open and empty stall into the sunlit doorway, offering a perfunctory nod to the sorcerer.
“Good morning,” Brill answered, gesturing from Anna to the wizened man. “Quies, this is the lady Anna. We’ll be riding out to the south dome, but she’ll need a horse.” He added. “Quies is the stablemaster, and a fine one.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Quies.” Anna nodded at the wizened stablemaster, who scarcely reached her chin, although his shoulders were broad and his arms heavily muscled.
“How good a rider are you, lady?” asked Quies.
“Not very,” Anna admitted. “And I’m out of practice.”
Quies pulled at his stubbled chin as if to ask how anyone could get out of practice when riding was the only sensible way to travel. “Well … you’re a tall woman … and a sorceress …”
Anna held in a frown. Tall? She’d never thought of herself as tall, but on Erde, she seemed to be above average, especially for a woman.
“Maybe the palomino gelding …” Quies nodded as though he expected Anna to follow him.
She did, stepping into the stable that was cooler than the courtyard, and followed the stablemaster toward the rear of the long building. Her nose itched from the straw dust, and she rubbed it, hoping she wouldn’t sneeze too much.
“Here …” Quies opened the stall door and slipped inside. “I’ll saddle him.”
Anna looked toward Brill, but he had stepped to an adjoining stall. He nodded before turning back to Anna. They waited.
Finally, Anna asked, “Is there any magic to make riding easier?”
“Not that I know of, lady.” Brill offered the crinkled smile.
When Quies led the palomino out, Anna looked at the horse doubtfully, and even more dubiously at the saddle, something higher than an English saddle, but not as solid as a western one, and there was no saddle horn. The palomino swished his tail, but didn’t edge away as Anna stepped up toward him. She frowned at the fine tracery of lines across his shoulders, half concealed by his coat.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“Name?” Quies shrugged. “He belonged to one of the raiders out of the high grasslands. Barjim sold him at auction, and he was cheap because he was cut up.” The stablemaster looked to Brill.
The sorcerer shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard to heal him—minor darksong. He was strong.”
“Now he’s worth a good five golds—be thirty if the raiders hadn’t gelded him,” observed Quies.
Anna had the feeling that she and the palomino would be spending a lot of time together. Why she couldn’t say, but she’d learned to trust her feelings. So the horse had to have a name. What did one call a horse?
She laughed. “Farinelli!”
“What?” said Brill.
“That’s his name. Farinelli.” She really didn’t know if the original Farinelli had been blond, but it didn’t matter. The name felt right.
Brill and Quies exchanged a look that said, “
If you say so.”
She studied the palomino once more—a lot taller than a mule or even most of the broken-down horses she’d climbed on for her handful of trail rides when Elizabetta had gone through the horse-loving phase. She swallowed.
Her redheaded baby—except Elizabetta was scarcely a baby, not after a year at Emory. But what had she thought when she had come home from her job at Fransted’s and found her mother missing?
“Lady Anna? Is this horse … ?” Brill asked solicitously.
“It’s not the horse,” Anna said. “My thoughts wandered.” She looked back up at the gelding, who
whuff
ed. Riding Farinelli couldn’t be too much worse than riding old Barney had been, and she’d managed Barney bareback. Then, she’d been a lot younger, and her grandfather had been more than a little upset.
After she took the reins from Quies, she patted Farinelli on the shoulder again. The gelding
whuff
ed again. Then she led him toward the front of the stable.
Brill paused by the other stall, opening the door. Shortly, he followed, leading a black mare, already saddled.
Outside the stable, back in the dry, dusty heat of the morning, Anna looked up at Farinelli, trying not to swallow. Finally, she grasped the saddle and levered herself up.
“Doesn’t need a mounting block …” Quies observed.
Anna turned to see a frown cross the sorcerer’s forehead, then vanish. Quies seemed to ignore the expression as Brill swung up into the mare’s saddle.
“Just be firm with him, lady,” Quies added, “and if he tries to nip, clout him on the nose. Once is enough.”
Anna let Farinelli follow Brill’s mare along the side of the hall toward the front gate. Brill reined up at the main hall entrance, slid out of the saddle, and used the braided, blue-corded bellpull. Anna remained in her saddle, waiting. After a moment, the door opened and a brown-haired youth appeared.
“Yes, ser?”
Brill turned to Anna. “Gero, this is the lady Anna. She is a sorceress, and to be respected and obeyed.”
Gero bowed. “My lady.”
“Gero is my assistant. He’s perfectly tone-deaf, which saves us both a great deal of misunderstanding.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Gero.” Anna said politely.
Gero bowed again.
“We’ll be riding for a time, Gero. I’d like you to tell Kaseth to gather the players, at the ninth glass.”
“At the dome, ser?”
“That would be best.” Brill nodded and climbed back into the mare’s saddle.
“Yes, ser.” Gero bowed again. “At the ninth glass, ser.”
The sorcerer remounted without looking back, although Gero remained standing stiffly by the door, and turned the mare toward the hall gates.
The twenty-foot-high gates stood open as they rode into the morning sun. Despite the floppy-brimmed hat, Anna had to squint against the glare as the horses’ hoofs clipped against the stone pavement that stretched for a few hundred feet beyond the gates.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“First, I’ll show you the dome building. There.” Brill pointed to the small and heavy-walled building on the hilltop. “That’s where I work on new spells. While I certainly wouldn’t wish to impose, Lady Anna, I thought you might find one of the workrooms … useful, at least for a time.” Again, the sorcerer offered the friendly crinkled smile, although Anna didn’t feel the undercurrent of alarm she had before.
So
…
he’s being honest? Why? Because he doesn’t want you trying to figure out things and damaging his beautiful hall?
Brill turned the mare onto a narrower dusty lane that wound down the hilltop where the hall sat, and then up toward the dome building.
Dust rose with every step Farinelli took, some of it seeping into Anna’s nose. After a time, she sneezed.
“It is dusty,” Brill said. “It’s been that way for the past few years.” His arm stretched eastward, encompassing the low brown hills, some with scattered trees, others with a handful of dead and leafless trees. “I can remember when all that was green, and the taller hills were filled with
trees.” He shrugged. “Then we began to hear more of the dark ones, and the summers, and the winters, got drier and drier.”
Anna cleared her throat. “Hasn’t anyone tried to do something about them?”
“The Ebrans were warlike before the dark ones. No one has ever conquered Ebra—unlike Defalk,” he added sardonically, “which has been conquered and reconquered. The Norweians lost several thousand troops under their last Council, and the Ranuans have always relied on the protections of the Sand Hills and the Whispering Sands.”
“Isn’t there anyone else?”
“The only three countries that border Ebra are Nordwei, Ranuak, and Defalk.”
Anna lurched forward as Farinelli reached the bottom of the trail and started back up the winding way toward the dome house. She grabbed the front rim of the saddle and steadied herself. “That doesn’t sound good,” she temporized, reading Brill’s face as much as his words.
“It is not good. Lord Barjim cannot even defend Defalk, much less consider attacking Ebra. So the dark ones will move on us first.”
“Why are you still here?” Anna blurted.
“I intend to show you why, Lady Anna. That may take some time.” The sorcerer reined up halfway up the hillside and pointed eastward. “Those are the Sand Mountains, and a bit to the south is the Sand Pass to Ebra.”
“How far is the pass?”
“Somewhat less than ten leagues.”
Anna tried to remember what Daffyd—had it been Daffyd? —had said about measurements. Ten deks were a league, and a dek was almost a kilometer, and that was something like six-tenths of a mile, and that meant … less than sixty miles from the border with Ebra?
“You look disturbed.”
“I hadn’t realized Ebra was so close.”
“It’s a good two days’ ride to the Sand Pass, and another half day beyond that to the true border.” Brill frowned.
Anna shook her head. She’d forgotten that sixty miles or ten leagues or whatever was a long way on horseback. She needed some perspective. “How far is the border with the country to the west?”
“Neserea? I suppose it is around sixty leagues.”

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