Part 47 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+fting 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 abroad shelf of gra.s.sy 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 gra.s.s began.
”Darksong' She nodded. ”It's like a sh.e.l.l 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 setbefore 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, arid 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 sh.e.l.l- 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.
82.
NORTH OF FUSSEN, DEFALK.
The alternating blue and cream silk panels of the tent flutter in afternoon breeze, then subside. From where he sits beside the small table covered with blue linen, Rabyn sips from the silver goblet, then sets it down and delicately lifts a single candied nut to his lips. A second nut follows the first, handled equally delicately.
Because there is but a single chair, Nubara stands on carpet that serves as the floor, his eyes looking at the interlocking design of blue and cream triangles.
”The accursed sorceress knows where we are, yet she has not moved since the night before last” Rabyn's lips move into an expression not quite a pout ”She has a scrying mirror. She uses it, but she will not move.””She is gathering her forces-those of her arms commander and the handfuls of armsmen offered by those few lords loyal to her.” Nubara swallows, then continues. ”Overcaptain Relour inquired about the screams last night He suggested... ah... temperance.”
'I was temperate, Nubara, let the girl go. I would have whipped her, were we still in Esaria or most places in Neserea. Here... I but slapped her and gave her a gold. That stopped her wailing quickly enough.” Rabyn sneers. ”Golds always quell the objections of the peasants, even the pretty ones.”
”That was most... appropriate.” Nubara nods. ”Had you whipped her or slain her, honored Prophet, the lancers and armsmen would have been angered, for they would have seen that as a waste.”
”There are always more peasants” Rabyn's voice is matter-of-fact.
Nubara opens his mouth, then closes it.