The morning sun was already hot, and Anna could feel the sweat oozing down her back as she glanced to the players, arrayed well back from the wall across the middle of the fields to the south of Synfal, to the straw figure on the wall a good hundred yards away, and then to the archer standing beside Hanfor.
“Liende?”
“We stand ready, Regent.”
She gestured to Hanfor. “When I drop my arm . . .”
“Yes, Lady Anna.”
She could sense Jecks standing perhaps a yard behind her, waiting to see what the results of her demonstration might be. Beside him stood Jimbob, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Go ahead.” Anna looked to Liende.
The sound of strings, woodwinds, and the falk horn rose over the fields, joined by Anna’s voice.
“Arrowhead once in the air,
turn and strike the target there—”
Anna dropped her hand, and the bowstring sang.
“—Strike the target on the wall,
strike and make the target fall . . .”
With the last of her words, she watched the wall, having lost sight of the arrow that she’d directed be aimed slightly away from the target to ensure that the spell would indeed change the arrow’s course.
Abruptly, the straw figure toppled off the wall, transfixed with the heavy shaft.
Anna smiled inadvertently. The spell worked; she could direct arrowheads, and the shafts followed. More important, Anna had neither headache nor double vision. So . . . she could use spells directed only at inanimate objects, even if they affected animate objects.
You’re rationalizing like a lawyer. . . . She didn’t want to think too much about that, though she knew she would, sooner or later. She always did.
Jimbob closed his mouth as Anna turned.
“I’m just working out what was used on me,” she said, suddenly conscious that the wound on her chest still ached slightly, probably from tension.
“You have that reckoned,” said Jecks with a slight laugh.
“Now, for the second test.” Anna looked at Jecks.
“The forging one?”
“I’d like to know exactly what we can count on—or can’t.” She turned toward where Fhurgen held Farinelli’s reins. The gelding whuffed as she neared, as if to tell her that he’d be just as happy to get out of the sun. His tail flicked at a fly that buzzed past Anna.
“Do you think one test is enough?” Jecks inclined his head toward the wall where an armsman reclaimed the target.
“For that, yes.” She nodded as she climbed onto Farinelli, waiting for Jimbob and Jecks to mount.
The three rode slowly back to Synfal, trailed by Fhurgen and Rickel, and a squad of armsmen.
Bielttro, the thin-faced ostler, was waiting outside the stable when they reined up inside the keep. “How was he, lady?”
“He was fine. I should have ridden farther, but that will come.”
“He seems disappointed when you do not ride.”
“He’s been disappointed a lot lately.” Anna laughed gently.
“You may take care of our mounts, Jimbob,” Jecks said quietly to the red-haired boy.
“Yes, ser.”
Anna dismounted and led the gelding to his stall. There she handed the lutar to Jecks, who set it aside. The muscles across her upper chest and shoulder definitely twinged as she reached for the saddle.
“My lady . . . you are not that recovered.” Jecks stepped past her and lifted the saddle, moving gracefully and quickly to rack it.
Farinelli turned his head, but did not protest.
Anna did give her mount a quick brushing before leaving the stable and heading for the armory and the adjoining practice yard. Jecks carried the lutar, and Anna didn’t protest.
Hanfor was waiting in the shade of the eaves before the armory door, an unsheathed blade in hand.
Anna took it, and almost dropped it, so much heavier was it than it looked. “Is this a good blade?” She looked to Hanfor.
“It is a good blade for the average armsman.”
Anna felt the weapon for a time, studied it, and finally returned it. Then she reclaimed the lutar and began to tune it.
“It would be good if we could obtain blades,” said Hanfor. “Yet I know of no sorcerer who has created blades.”
“There are many things she has created not seen before in Liedwahr.” Jecks smiled ironically.
Hanfor laughed.
“I’m ready. Can you lean the blade against the wall there?”
The arms commander carefully propped the blade against a niche in the bricks and stepped back.
Anna strummed the lutar, since she hadn’t been able to create a spell that went with the songs that the players already knew.
“With iron, carbon, and heat be met,
metal heat and steel be set;
forge this steel into a blade,
as good as the finest ever made . . .”
Even before she finished the spell, a gray haze appeared beside the first blade, a haze that solidified into a second blade, one appearing nearly identical to the one Anna had modeled it from, except that the hilt was metal, rather than leather wrapped over a tang.
Hanfor lifted the new blade, hefted it. He frowned. “It doesn’t feel quite right. I cannot say why that might be.” The arms commander turned to Jecks. “Perhaps we could spar—just the blades against each other.”
“That might be best.” Jecks lifted the original blade, leaving his own in his scabbard at his waist.
Anna watched. While she couldn’t tell the moves, she could listen, and Jecks’ big blade rang almost in its own true key, while the one she had spellforged sounded somehow flat.
Abruptly, the new blade shattered, and chunks of metal rained across the practice yard, and Hanfor staggered back, a line of red across his cheek.
Jecks lowered his blade, brow furrowed, and stepped forward.
“Hanfor!” Anna ran toward him.
“It’s just a scratch.” The gray-bearded arms commander held up the hilt with a smile. “I fear, Lady Anna, that your other spells are more effective.”
“It looks that way.”
Theoretically, there was no reason why her spells couldn’t forge a blade. Maybe she didn’t know enough about sword construction or smithing to visualize the blade correctly. Or metallurgy . . . or any one of a thousand things.
But why could she build bridges? Because stone was more forgiving? Or because she’d seen enough bridges? Or because of her design classes?
Again . . . background knowledge seemed to play an important role in the effectiveness of visualization . . . and spells. And, again, she really didn’t know enough, not by a long shot.