Part 48 (2/2)
”...can't breathe...”
Red dust, and more sandy red dust, swirled up from the main body. Anna pushed back the battered brown felt hat and blotted her sweating forehead. The gray square of cloth was once again a muddy red. Beside her, Jecks rode silently, his silver hair marked with blotches of red where sweat and dust had combined.
”A penny. .. copper,” she corrected, ”for your thoughts.” She s.h.i.+fted her weight in a saddle that had gotten progressively harder and less comfortable.
”You would have us travel a long way to avoid killing Dencer. Yet you dislike the man.” Jecks' words were slow, thoughtful.
”I don't have any problem with killing Dencer, necessarily.” she answered. ”I don't want to turn another keep into something like Suhl.” Anna shrugged. ”We can't get close enough to Stromwer to use sorcery- the kind that won't kill everyone-unless we do this.”
Jecks nodded, the kind of nod that told Anna he wasn't quite sure he believed her.
Did she believe herself-or was she overreacting to the disaster at Suhl? How much force is necessary in a place like Defalk? Is Jecks right? Would I be better off doing it the simpler way? Can I at least cast one more loyalty spell... to spare Defalk.
The sorceress took a deep breath. Or is this to ease your conscience? She winced at the thought.
As Farinelli carried Anna to the top of a low ridge, momentarily out of the dust, she could see the winding strip of green in the narrow valley ahead, green that showed the promised stream. On the other side of the stream, the trail wound back eastward, toward Stromwer.
Toward another set of gambles with spells, another effort to resolve violent feelings with as few deaths as possible. And for what? So you can ensure a marginally grateful twelve-year-old will inherit what his father wasn't strong enough to keep? So that you can't move without guards following every motion? So that everything you do is questioned?
Anna pushed away the thoughts and leaned forward to give Farinelli a solid thump on the neck. ”We're getting there, fellow. It won't be long.”
56.
Anna packed away the gla.s.s and strapped the leather bundle to the saddlebags once again. Then she re- mounted Farinelli, swaying slightly as she swung into the saddle.
”You must eat.” Jecks eased his mount beside hers and extended a chunk of bread.
”Thank you.” Anna nodded, took a bite of the bread, and chewed. ”Another dek. I'd guess.” She pointed.
”About halfway up that next section. By the clump of pines there.”
”Junipers,” Jecks corrected.
'Junipers, whatever.” She chewed another mouthful. Why didn't he understand that she hated being corrected over little things. What difference did it make whether it was a pine or a juniper? She'd just pointed out a clump of trees as a reference point. Were men everywhere like that? Avery had been worse, she had to admit, correcting everything. Then, he'd been king of the comprimarios, able to get any secondary role anywhere, but never the big roles.
Anna laughed to herself. She had the biggest role ever-sorceress and regent-and, fortunately and unfor- tunately, it was for real. She unstoppered the water bottle, her third for the day, and took another long swallow.
The dust puffed from under the horses' hoofs. The wind raised it around them and coated them all with fine red powder. Anna took another swallow of water and finished the bread. Without speaking. Jecks extended another chunk.
”Thank you.” Anna took it. She was being b.i.t.c.hy, in a way, but he wasn't the one who had to stand out there and wonder if the spell would be right, if fire would turn and kill them all or whatever. Or if she would fail. Sorcerers did fail. She'd seen Brill die from failing, and she'd overmastered the Evult. Who was to say that another sorcerer wouldn't show up with greater power? Like the Sea-Priest or the young man in brown with hate in his eyes. She'd tried to find out more from the gla.s.s, but all she could see was that he lived in a small town and worked in some sort of store, a chandlery, it looked like in the silver- mist visions.
Without thinking, Anna discovered she had eaten all the bread.
”You were hungry,” Jecks observed, as if that explained everything.
”Thank you. I was.” Anna let him think that she had only been hungry. She wasn't in the mood for explaining, and now wasn't the time. Instead, she studied the steep hillside to her left as Farinelli carried her closer to the pines-the junipers. she reminded herself-on the downhill side of the trail. Beyond the dry gorge to her right, the hills climbed into even higher peaks, with barren but not snow-covered summits, mountains almost like plateaus tilted slightly sideways.
Opposite the junipers, Anna reined up, then dismounted and handed Farinelli's reins to Rickel. She took out the gla.s.s, and unwrapped it again. Then she took out the lutar, and re-tuned it, not that it needed much work in traveling less than a dek.
Words drifted uphill as she touched a tuning peg.
”...hope we're wherever we're going...”
”Don't hope too much. You might have to fight, then.”
”...avoids fights when she can...”
”...lucky we are, there... not like Barjim or Donjim...”
Then, reflected Anna, clearing her throat for a vocalise, Barjim and Donjim hadn't been able to call on sorcery. Would her voice last? She pushed that thought back as well. Not the time for that.
Finally, her fingers touched the strings.
”Show me now and show me clear, where I stand to make a tunnel near...
In the gla.s.s, Anna stood perhaps a yard uphill of where the gla.s.s lay on the dust of the trail. The image in the mirror was crystal-clear, and the spell took nearly no energy at all, a confirmation of her closeness.
After quickly clearing the image from the mirror, the sorceress glanced at Hanfor and Jecks. ”This is the place.” She almost laughed, thinking of someone else's words in another canyon a world away and years past.
Careful. . . don't get punchy. You haven't even started. Worry? Fear?
”Best you hurry.” Jecks suggested. ”Their shafts could reach the ledge.”
”They can lift arrows that far?”
As if to answer her question, an arrow arched over the wall and clattered on the stone.
Rickel and Fhurgen lifted the s.h.i.+elds, and Anna turned and called down the tunnel. ”Players!”
”Players!” Jecks' heavier voice boomed against the stones.
Anna dropped to her knees, letting the wall s.h.i.+eld her, and took another look at the armsmen below. Two blocks of archers-one in tan, one in crimson-were loosing shafts rapidly. Was the tall figure on horseback beside the archers in tan Dencer himself? The Lord of Stromwer had to have had some warning, some scrying ability, to have gotten his men formed up so quickly. Anna could see Dencer had sheathed his blade and was drawing a bow from horseback. She ducked behind the s.h.i.+eld.
Another arrow clattered against the smoothed rock that reinforced the tunnel mouth, then dropped onto the stone of the ledge.
”Players!” Jecks boomed again, his fingers tightening on the hilt of a blade all too useless from where he viewed the valley.
A figure paused at the tunnel mouth.
”Stay there!” Anna didn't need to lose another chief player. ”Line up everyone right there inside the tunnel. They've got dozens of archers. I'll need the flame song for them.”
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