By late afternoon, heavy gray clouds had drawn across the sky, and a fine mist sifted down, carried by a light wind out of the south. Each fine droplet felt like a tiny point of ice on exposed skin. Secca had refastened her jacket and pulled the green felt hat from her saddlebags. Alcaren rode bareheaded, but Secca could see the redness from the damp and chill on the tips of his ears and on his cheeks.
The road itself was similar to the main highways in Defalk—stone-paved and straight, raised a half-yard above the plain through which it passed, and very slightly crowned so that rain would run off the broad and graveled shoulders. The thoroughfare was far, far older than any of the stone highways in Defalk, as the fine cracks and more than occasional replacement stones indicated. Those darker replacement stones were also much smaller than the massive slabs that represented the original paving.
Each of the scattered dwellings that flanked the highway was also of stone, with a slate roof. Stubble in the fields had long since been turned under, leaving neat rows. Although the dwellings varied in size, all were scrupulously kept, as were the outbuildings. Perhaps because of the cold, Secca saw few souls out, and those she did see paid little attention to the column of riders plodding westward toward Encora.
The column was less than two deks from the base of the ridge holding the city walls when Secca could make out through the mist both a crossroads coming directly from the north, and more than a score of riders reined up in two lines just beyond the crossroads.
Alcaren gestured toward the riders waiting at the crossroads ahead. “We have an honor escort waiting.”
“Let us hope they are just an honor guard,” replied Secca.
“Were they not, the gates would be closed, and there would be no guard at all,” suggested the Ranuan.
Secca debated taking out the lutar, then decided against it, since the rain would do it little good, and displaying it would only offer offense. She did begin a gentle vocalise.
Alcaren looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“I prefer not to ride into a strange city with no defenses at all, overcaptain.”
“You have a certain ability with a blade, lady.”
“It is not sufficient to make a would-be enemy hesitate, as you well know.” She paused, then said with a smile, “Your blade might, but not mine.”
“I would not wish to cross blades with you again, my lady.” As Secca turned, he added, returning her smile with one of his own, “Not if you were angry.”
Secca laughed gently, enjoying the moment of banter, but she continued to warm up until she had ridden to within a hundred yards of the riders beyond the crossroads.
The twelve lancers that Secca and Alcaren had sent as messengers waited, mounted, on the flat of the road below the inclined and paved road that wound upward through four switchbacks to the gates above. Behind the twelve were two companies of Ranuan lancers wearing pale blue riding jackets identical to the one worn by Alcaren—one company on each side of the road.
The overcaptain of the Ranuan lancers rode forward and halted her mount. “Lady Sorceress! The Matriarch welcomes you and your company to Encora.”
Secca reined up the gray and inclined her head. “Thank you. As you know, we come in friendship, and in hopes of finding a way to defeat the Sturinnese.”
Behind her, Richina and the other riders slowed to a halt.
“The Matriarch knows such and welcomes you as friend and ally. All Encora is open to you.”
“Thank you, and the Matriarch.”
“We are here to escort you to the guest quarters and barracks.”
“We appreciate your courtesy and grace.” Secca nodded again.
One company of the Matriarch’s lancers swung onto the road to lead the way up the road to the gates above, while the second waited and then brought up the rear.
Alcaren’s SouthWoman squad leader eased her mount up beside the Ranuan overcaptain. With her was Delcetta, the SouthWoman company captain.
“Overcaptain, ser?” offered Captain Delcetta.
“Yes?” replied Alcaren.
“The Matriarch has requested that we remain under your command until the problem with Sturinn is resolved. The South Council has concurred.”
“I appreciate the support of the Council,” Alcaren said.
So did Secca, especially after riding through Ranuak. The SouthWomen seemed more likely to support sorcery than many throughout the land.
With a nod, the captain and the squad leader turned their mounts.
While she rode up the inclined road toward the gates, Secca studied both the road and the walls as best she could through the mist. The road narrowed slightly, and indented stone rain gutters appeared on both the uphill and downhill sides, gutters that drained into stone channels at each of the four switchbacks. Once Secca neared the top of the ridge, the scale of the walls became even more apparent, ramparts of gray-white granite that towered a good fifteen yards above the rocky ground out of which they rose.
Secca held herself ready to use sorcery, even without the lutar, should it be needed, but those massive walls held no guards, nor were any evident near the gates. The single gate opening was but four yards wide, and framed with massive stone pillars, two on each side. Each pillar had been cut as a single unit. Between the pillars were the edges of the gates, each nearly a span in thickness. Each gate was designed to slide out from between the pillars, and the city walls behind them, along stone channels more than two spans deep and across the gate opening, one before the other, so that when the gates were closed there were two thicknesses of timber, each tightly anchored in stone on three sides. Where the channels crossed the roadway, they were covered with thin oak planks to ensure neither horses nor people broke legs in them.
Secca studied the stone of the walls as the gray mare carried her past the unguarded gates. She nodded.
“Lady?” asked Alcaren.
“The stone work was accomplished with sorcery.”
“You recognize the method?”
“I have some familiarity with it. I don’t think those gate pillars could have been put there any other way. Not that I know of, anyway.”
“That may be, but it might be best if you did not voice that too widely.”
Secca snorted. “Use the fruits of sorcery, but do not mention it?”
“You have seen what sorcery has done to this land.”
“Like any tool, it can be used for good or evil. One should not blame the tool.”
“Blaming the tool is far easier, especially when the user may have had little choice.”
Secca did not reply. She understood Alcaren’s point, but also felt that those who restricted what tools could be used often deserved the results that befell them.
Once through the gates, the Ranuan lancers turned slightly right and began to follow a gray stone boulevard that, within fifty yards of the wall and gate, arced downhill through a grassy park toward the dwellings and structures of the city below. For the first time, in the park, Secca saw hardwoods and fruit trees, rather than the endless conifers that had seemed to populate the land of Ranuak all the way from Ilygot.
“Are there many such parks in Encora?” she asked.
“One cannot go a dek in any direction without finding a large park, and less than that for small greens,” replied the overcaptain.
To the southwest, Secca thought she could make out long stone piers at the edge of the dark circle of water that formed the harbor, and seawalls to the east of the piers. At least two vessels were tied up at the longer pier, and there might have been others, but the taller structures near the center of the city blocked a full view of the wharfs and piers.
Below the park, the boulevard straightened, pointing like a quarrel toward the harbor, and settled into a gradual decline toward the water. Raised stone sidewalks flanked the boulevard, and the dwellings on each side were generally of two or three stories, built of stone, with covered balconies looking out in front, and over rear garden courtyards.
Less than four blocks from the base of the park and toward the harbor, Secca glanced up at the topmost balcony of a three-story dwelling on the left side of the boulevard. There stood a figure in a dark hooded cloak, the face lost in the hood and the gloom of the growing twilight. A Lady of the Shadows?
Why?
To warn Secca against sorcery?
For the first time since they had begun to ride through Ranuak, Secca noticed people who actually looked at her, and at the others, although indirectly. No one seemed to stare or study the column intently, but they were not traversing the city without notice.
The guest quarters and barracks lay just on the northwest side of the boulevard less than half a dek from the harbor. They were so similar to those in Elahwa that they might have been designed by the same person, save that the walls of the structures were of the whitish-gray granite, and that a wall a good five yards in height surrounded the entire compound. The blue-painted iron gates were swung back and locked open. When the Ranuan honor guard swung through the gates, the stone walls threw the echo of their hoofs on the stones of the drive back at Secca.
The drive was flanked on both sides by a low boxwood hedge that did nothing to mute the echo of hoofs, and before the guest house itself was a circular rose garden, one whose roses had long since been cut back to ready them for the spring still many weeks away.
Standing on the steps at the rear of the guest quarters was a tall and squarish woman in the pale blue of the Ranuan lancers, but with a single red rosette embroidered upon each shoulder of her riding jacket.
Alcaren reined up and bowed. “Commander.”
“Overcaptain.” The commander smiled at Secca. “On behalf of the Matriarch, Lady Sorceress, I bid you and all those with you welcome to Encora. The Matriarch offers her hospitality and support, and assures you that you will lack for nothing as you prepare to deal with the Sturinnese invaders.”
“We are pleased to be here and greatly appreciate your support and that of the Matriarch,” replied Secca.
“We are even more pleased to welcome you.” The commander bowed deeply. “Once you have rested, the Matriarch looks forward to meeting you.”
“As I do her,” Secca replied, wondering how long before the meeting would actually take place.