In the sunlight of an early afternoon warmer than that of the past few days, Anna, Liende, Jimbob, and Kinor stood under the yellowing leaves of a tree that Anna didn’t recognize, waiting for Himar to join them. Anna’s tent was another ten yards westward, guarded by Fielmir, while Blaz and Bersan stood directly behind the Regent.
Perhaps thirty yards south, Himar, with his sketch board in hand, was sitting on a fallen log, sketching and listening to a scout who had just returned to the encampment. The redheaded Falar stood at his elbow.
“If you had more sorcerers or sorceresses, you wouldn’t need scouts, would you?” asked Jimbob.
“You’d still need scouts,” offered Liende. “Sorcery … you need names, that sort of thing.”
Jimbob looked at the Regent.
“Liende’s right,” Anna said. “Sorcery will let you display a map of something—if you know who or what you’re looking for. The more you know before you start, the less sorcery it takes. I knew that there was a darksinger somewhere in Defalk, but all the trouble we had was because we didn’t know enough soon enough … .” She let the words die away as she saw Himar walking past the cookfires toward them, trailed by Falar. Their dusty riding boots swirled the few handfuls of leaves that had already fallen from the trees on the gentle downslope to the west of the campsite.
“What have your scouts discovered?” Anna asked the overcaptain.
“The Nesereans have begun to build defenses. They have set a firm perimeter line,” Himar said. “There are even small trenchworks for sentries.”
Standing at Himar’s shoulder, Falar nodded in affirmation.
“In the middle of nowhere?” If Rabyn—or Nubara—had decided not to move his forces, but was apparently waiting for Anna to come to him, Anna wanted to know why.
“It would appear so,” responded Himar cautiously.
“We’d better try the mirror.” Anna ignored the nudge that Jimbob gave Kinor as she stood and returned to her tent to retrieve the lutar and the traveling mirror. Once inside, she paused, then ran through a set of vocalises. Sometimes—most times—they were easier without other people standing by and listening.
Then, she reflected, she’d gone from a singer struggling to get an audience on Earth to a sorceress and Regent everybody watched, seemingly all the time. She wondered how many watched to see if she would fail.
Anna brought the lutar and mirror out from the tent and set the mirror in a shaded spot not quite under the tree. Then, the sorceress began the spell, trying to ignore the all-too-many people watching the mirror. Among them was Falar, who stood almost behind the taller Kinor, as if the would-be lord were trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.
Mirror, mirror on the ground,
show the earthworks scouts have found
those of Rabyn and his men … .
While the mirror displayed eight different small images, of sentry posts with piles of dirt and deadfall logs, all those images did was confirm what Himar’s scouts had already reported.
“You see?” Himar nodded sagely.
“I see.” Anna let him nod, releasing the image almost immediately while she considered how to reword the spell to get a better view of the Neserean camp as a whole. “They’re definitely dug in and waiting.”
“What if we do not come to him?” asked Falar.
“Then we wait, and Defalk falls apart. He knows that,” Anna responded. In fact, Rabyn seemed to know far too much.
“Defalk is strong,” protested Jimbob.
“Not strong enough to allow two hundred—score armsmen to fortify a camp in its Western Marches,” Anna answered, her tone of voice dry.
“And how long will those in Dumar and Ebra heed her if she allows such to remain?” asked Liende.
Kinor nodded, barely, at his mother’s observation.
“Let’s see if we can get a better view.” Anna thought for a time, a time long enough that those around her were shifting their weight from foot to foot and clearing their throats before she lifted the lutar once more.
Mirror, mirror on the ground …
A second image filled the oblong of the mirror’s surface, this one a half-aerial view of an encampment set to the east of a hill that commanded the main road.
“You see?” Himar pointed. “These are the highest hills for deks along the road.” He frowned. “But I would not have set my men with their back to that bluff there.”
Anna followed his finger, trying to see what he was pointing out while concentrating on maintaining the image in the mirror. A large tent with a peaked roof and alternating blue and cream panels stood before a rust-colored cliff or bluff. Anna studied the area. The tent seemed to be on the easternmost edge of a broad shelf of grassy land, almost stagelike, below the cliff, which curved slightly so that the top projected more than the base.
Raw boulders sat near the base of the bluff. Anna squinted. The first fifty yards from the base of the cliff was smooth and bare rock. Then within a yard of the clear rock, nearly immediately, the grass began.
“Darksong.” She nodded. “It’s like a shell there.” That barely grown boy did that? He had to have shaved away the hillside.
Himar’s eyebrows lifted in puzzlement.
“That’s a curved hard surface that throws the sound farther.”
“It is a pity that you have nothing that will do the same.”
Nothing that will do the same … the words echoed in her mind … nothing that will do the same. Something nagged at her, but she couldn’t pin it down, and the more she tried to concentrate on the idea, the more elusive whatever her thought was. That would have to wait; it would come to her. You hope.
“We need to see one more thing.” Anna sang the release couplet for the second image, and reached for the water bottle that Kinor extended, much as Jecks had usually done. She wondered if the white-haired lord had taken Kinor aside. “Thank you, Kinor.”
“My pleasure, Lady Anna.”
After drinking, Anna glanced around, then repressed a sigh. If she asked anyone to leave, those feelings would be hurt. “It’s going to take a little while for me to get ready for the next spell. If you want to walk around, that’s fine, but anyone who stays near me will have to be quiet while I think”
Kinor nodded at Jimbob, and the two young men stepped into the sunlight and walked toward the nearest tieline, where Farinelli and their mounts were tethered.
Himar nodded. “I will be back, Lady Anna.”
Liende stepped away and into the sun, as if to get warm. Anna half smiled. She’d forgotten how much cooler Earth had been, so much that mildly cool weather was chilly to many Defalkans.
Coming up with the spell she wanted for the drums took even longer, but she wasn’t a composer or a poet.
Once she picked up the lutar again, though, people appeared as if by sorcery, including both Lejun and Rickel, and she waited until her audience had gathered and quieted before beginning the spell.
Show us those singing drums so strong
that raise the Prophet’s coming Darksong …
The mirror obediently displayed three drums, each under an awning of sorts, each bound with copper strips.
At first, Anna could see nothing unusual about the drums, except that each was mounted in a wooden frame that allowed it to swivel. Then she saw the wagon in the background. Each drum had to have taken an entire wagon to transport it. Admittedly, the wagon beds were small—no more than a yard and half wide—but any drum built like that had to have a lot of volume and carrying power—and when set before an angled cliff of hard stone … She nodded. Young as Rabyn was, cruel as the stories reported he was, stupid he was not. He—or someone—had thought out both his abilities and the logistics to support them. And that worried Anna.
“Those are large drums,” Himar announced.
“Very large,” Anna agreed. She sang the release couplet, then blotted her forehead before squatting to replace the lutar in its
case. Kinor gently packed the mirror in its case. Anna stood and picked up the lutar.
“Pale … she is,” murmured Bersan to Lejun.
“Sorcery be hard, hard work, friend,” answered the more experienced guard. “Seen enough I have that it’s a guard I’d rather be.”
Bersan’s comment about her paleness prompted Anna to walk toward her tent and the food pouch that was waiting there. Would she spend the rest of her life worrying about her blood sugar and energy levels? Probably, and if you don’t, that life will be a short one.
Kinor followed with the mirror in its leather case.
A golden leaf fluttered down in the cool and light breeze, curling almost into a cone shape before dropping to the dusty ground.
“A megaphone … you idiot! That’s it.” And you could make it out of copper or something that wasn’t living. She shook her head—a megaphone wasn’t it, because she’d end up squeezing her voice, but why couldn’t she build her own shell—something parabolic behind her and the players. She didn’t want to exhaust herself with sorcery to make it, and it had to be light enough to go on the handful of wagons they had. Aluminum? She had the feeling that aluminum took too much energy. Another idea that seemed great at first.
“Ah, Lady?” asked Kinor.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll take the mirror now. Thank you. I was thinking.”
Kinor smiled, then handed her the mirror case before bowing and returning to the others.
Inside the small and increasingly dingy tent, Anna reached for the hard crackers and harder yellow cheese, hoping she could think through things after she ate. Or think through them more clearly.