Part 37 (1/2)
PAMR, DEFALK.
A man races through the twilight and onto the porch of the chandlery. On the porch, one brown-haired figure straightens from behind the largest of the drums arrayed there. The runner looks past the drummer to the taller bearded figure of the chandler standing in the darker shadows. ”She returns, mighty Fa.r.s.enn. And her players have not even their instruments out.”
”She returns to Pamr... but never to Falcor.” Fa.r.s.enn laughs in his deep ba.s.s voice and looks to Giersan. ”Ready your drums.” Then he turns back to the bearded messenger. ”Summon our mighty warriors. The archers go behind the hedges near the first trees-as we practiced. Keep them in the shadows. Have no torches lit until you hear the drums. Then the torches and the arrows.”
'As you command, mighty Fa.r.s.enn.” The man turns and hurries into the darkness, ringing the handbell that he carries.
”Yes... yes ... Today and tonight will be long remembered in Pamr,” Fa.r.s.enn says as he looks along the main street,. toward the east and the approaching sorceress.
”Best we finish the task, or it will not be recalled as we wish,” suggests Giersan.
”Taking down the b.i.t.c.h Gatrune was scarce a task at all. None had seen the power of Darksong.” Fa.r.s.enn strains as he looks eastward.
Shutters close, and lights and lamps vanish. Seemingly within moments, the town of Pamr is dark and silent, and even the ringing of the handbell is gone.
Shadowy figures move toward the eastern side of the town, arranging themselves in the dimness behind the hedges.
”Now?” asks Giersan.
”No. They have not reached the hedges.” Fa.r.s.enn waits silently, then raises his hand. Finally, he drops it. ”Now!”
The drummer's mallets caress the skins of the drum set, and a low rolling thunder rumbles out.
”The muddling song. Three, two... mark!” The rolling sound of thunder switches into an almost-staccato beat to accompany Fa.r.s.enn's dark and deep voice.
Take their wits and hold them fast, so their actions cannot last.
Take their eyes and make them slow, so they know not where the time may go....
From somewhere to the east a torch flares, then another: ”Now! Men of Pamr! Strike!” With the command, the bearded figures surge from the hedges toward the line of riders.
The triple-toned drums shake the ground around the chandlery, seemingly more intense than thunder.
Against the clang of metal, the intermittent whir of arrows, and the grunts of men fighting, the single scream of a mount pierces the night air.
”Now!” calls Fa.r.s.enn. ”Tbe death song.”
The big drums s.h.i.+ft their rhythm again, and the tones form a simple melody that melds with the 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...
Fa.r.s.enn 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 Fa.r.s.enn, 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 m.u.f.fled, more and more. Yet Giersan labors over the drums, even as their sounds die away.
”Dissonance! Clearsong cannot prevail! Never!” Fa.r.s.enn's ba.s.s is hoa.r.s.e, 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 s.h.i.+mmering figure that is the sorceress, away from a voice whose clarity s.h.i.+vers through the shuttered town.
Fa.r.s.eun 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.
64.
Arrows kept sleeting past Anna, striking armsmen, and in the background the heavy mult.i.toned 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 s.h.i.+vered... 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 hoa.r.s.ely.
”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.