"Does not all great sorcery create problems?" Secca glanced toward the horizon, then shook her head. "I am sorry, Palian. Those were unkind words, and unkindly said. I am worried. What do you mean?"

"You are much more like her than you would admit, lady."

Palian would know. Of all in Liedwahr, she would know. "Others have said that, and perhaps because I looked up to her, I have become more like her than I would see."

"If your sorcery works, you will destroy Stura. That I know, for you would not risk close to a third of a season upon the open sea for anything less. If you succeed, every man on the face of Erde, saving your consort and the handful that know you, will wish you consigned to eternal dis- sonance. You will be required to use sorcery more than you ever wish for years to come, and after that, every accident and misfortune in Liedwahr will be laid to your name. Men will whisper your name to sons in hatred for generations."

Alcaren had turned from his all-too-common position at the railing and slid closer to the conversation in his quiet way, so unobtrusively that neither had noticed until he nodded sadly and spoke. "She is right, my lady."

"Because I use sorcery?" asked Secca, fearing she knew the answer, but wanting someone else to say it. "Or because I have not created death and destruction with blades and bows, or tilling salt into croplands? Or slaying the firstborn of my enemies with bloody blades?"

"Men hold great honor in using their strength to defeat other men," Palian said. "Some women also take pride in the strength of their men. With your sorcery, you make their strength of arms as less than the cries of a newborn babe."

Secca laughed, mirthlessly. "Anna said the same, if in different words. Yet it is honorable for a strong-thewed man to slay scores who had the misfortune to be born less endowed with strength and muscles, and dishonorable for me or Alcaren or Richina to slay with song. People take with great willingness the roads and bridges we have built, or the fords, and the wealth that has flowed from them. A sword builds no bridges and creates few golds. Nor will all the men and their blades or all those slain by blades build what we have built."

"I did, not say what people feel is right, my lady," Palian replied gently. "But from this day on, you can trust none you know not well, and perhaps not some of those."

"So I must follow in her footsteps in this as well?" asked Secca.

"Had you any choice, in truth?" replied Palian. "You would do what is right, but what is right accomplishes nothing in our world, save when it is backed with great force."

"A right venal world it is," Alcaren said, dryly, "and harmony unsupported is inadequate."

"You two are so cheerful," Secca said, forcing a laugh. "Yet you are right, and I will heed your observations, even as I wish it were otherwise."

"We all wish that, lady," Palian replied, "but wishes have not the weight of blades or spells.

Delvor also feels as do I, and we wished you to know that. So I think do Wilten and Delcetta, but they have not spoken to us so directly."

"You're right." Secca inclined her head. "Thank you. Thank you both."

"I need to ready my errant players." Palian offered a wry smile and a parting nod, then headed forward to the ladder and descended to the main deck.

"She is right, my lady," Alcaren said quietly.

"I know she is right," Secca admitted. "I told her that, but I do not have to like what is so."

"You will have to do great sorcery in Neserea as well. The remaining Sturinnese will fight beyond their death. They know that, if you live, Sturinn's way will die out in time. If you die, nothing will change, and in a generation, two at the latest, another Maitre will return to invade Liedwahr."

"There are other sorceresses," Secca .protested. "Jolyn is strong, and Anandra and Richina could also be most powerful in time."

"There are other sorceresses. There is none like you."

"You say that because you love me." She grinned. "Or lust after me."

"I do indeed," he replied with a smile, "but my words are true, and you know they are true."

"You believe them true," Secca admitted.

"Why do you have such trouble in believing them?" he asked. "Are there others who can raise storms and bridges or topple holds?"

"There are. Belmar did some of that. So have the Sturinnese. They use their drums to create storms and fog and raise great waves."

"They are many. You are one."

"As Palian just told me, that is going to be a problem." If you survive for it to be a problem. She smiled at Alcaren. "As you become more accomplished, it will be one for you as well, my love."

He nodded soberly. "Though I will never be able to do what you do."

"Do not say that yet." Secca took a swallow from the water bottle and replaced it in her belt holder, cleared her throat, and began a vocalise.

Alcaren stepped away and cleared his throat, following Secca's example with a vocalise she had crafted for his deeper voice.

One good thing about the salt air was that her cords felt clearer, and it took less time for her to warm up. By the third vocalise, she was as ready as she would be.

Alcaren still had trouble with warming up, since he'd had to learn the vocalises from Secca, and they were far from second nature to him, but he finally turned to her. "I am ready, my lady."

From the main deck rose the sound of the players beginning to tune. Secca glanced forward, listening for a moment, then looked back toward the large isle once more.

"Lady Sorceress?"

Secca turned to see Denyst standing there.

"Not so much time as I'd thought. There's a reef." Denyst pointed to the left. "The line of breakers there. Looks to be not quite a half-dek offshore. The darker water to this side, that shows that there aren't any shallows, but those breakers directly ahead, that's where the reef turns. Comes out farther on the other side of the bight. Means you'll be closest on this end. I can bring us closer inshore here, but only for about a quarter glass, and then I'll have to run due north, near-on straight out to sea."

"Less than a quarter glass before the second turn after the first?"

"Give or take a bit."

"Then turn in, and we'll sing as soon as we can set up when the ship's steady."

With a nod, Denyst headed back toward the helm. "Two points to port!"

"Two to port. Coming port."

Secca walked to the railing overlooking the main deck, catching Palian's eye. "Time for a warm- up and one run-through. Then we'll do the spell."

"The warm-up tune!" Palian's voice lifted over the rush of the water against the hull of the Silberwelle and above the rustling and flapping of the sails above as the Silberwelle turned in response to Denyst's command.

Secca could discern, especially as outlined by the low southern sun that was about to set behind the headlands, the volcanic cone that formed the southern end of a half bay, the cone that was the most seaward of the line of volcanoes that ran across Stura from northeast to southwest.

As the sun was dropping behind the higher hills beyond the shoreline, Richina had come up on deck, perhaps to take in the cool of the late afternoon, and to watch the spellsinging, but the younger sorceress remained within a yard of Denyst, and well away from Alcaren and Secca.

Alcaren straightened and cleared his throat. "Are you ready?"

Secca nodded.

"Remember, my lady, your words, and notes, and thoughts, only on the spell. Only on the spell."

"Only on the spell," Secca repeated. Only on the spell-song . . .

"The fifth building song at my mark...Mark!" Palian's voice was calm and yet forceful.

Alcaren and Secca moved outward along the railing separating the poop deck from the drop to the main deck until they stood in the corner between the starboard-side railing and the poop deck railing, facing into the early twilight, listening to the players playing through the fifth building song. Secca concentrated one last time on the words and images.

When the players had finished the run-through, and checked tuning and their instruments, Secca considered the spell, wondering, far from the first time, how Anna had learned so much, and why so few in Liedwahr understood just how much her mentor had known about so many things.

She glanced at Denyst, then turned back to look down on Palian and the players. "Stand by for the fifth building song."

"Standing by, at your signal, lady," Palian returned. Secca took one slow deep breath, then a second, exhaling slowly. She looked toward Alcaren. He nodded.

The redheaded sorceress raised her hand. "At your mark, chief player." She lowered her arm and hand.

For that instant, Secca felt that all Erde paused ... as if to say that one time was ending, and another beginning.

Then, Palian's voice cut through the slowly fading light. "The fifth building song. At my mark . .

. Mark!"

From the first note, the players were strong, the notes clear, the energy focused, and the song lifted toward the shore, toward the isle of Stura, toward the volcanic cones that harbored hidden flame and fire.

Secca and Alcaren joined together, perfectly, with the first note of the third bar.

"Magma of the core, fire for Sturinn 's woe, rise and climb from the mantle deep below; explode in flame, and from the earth in fire flow.

Searing every river, hill and dale, and plain with gas and ash and lava till none remain untouched unstruck, and none escape the fire 's bane . . ." .

By the end of the first stanza a deep roaring and grumbling filled the air, and the waters between the Silberwelle and the white sand of the narrow beach below the steep bluffs shivered. The water calmed, unnaturally, and the spray and whitecaps that had marked where the ocean met the reef vanished. A flat and glassy stillness lay across the water like a blanket, and even the air seemed heavy, leaden.

Secca forced her concentration back onto the notes, the words, and the images of the second stanza.

"Lava rise, and lava flare, burst on all below; cover every town and road in fire 's glow, split the land and force the sea to fire know.

With heat and steam and molten rock bring to bear all destruction of the earth and sea to Sturinn fair till none remain, and none will know what is buried there..."

With the last note, a single off-key, two-toned note chimed through the air. Not as chord, but one note embodying, it seemed to Secca, all of harmony and all of dissonance.

Her head throbbed, and knives of fire stabbed into her eyes, accompanied by flaring daystars, but her vision was not doubled, as with Darksong-tinged spellsong. Still, seeing was painful enough that tears oozed from her eyes, and her skull ached as if pounded by unseen hammers.

The distant roaring grumble continued to rise. Small ripples flicked across the surface of the unnaturally flat bay, ripples running from the sandy shore toward and past the Silberwelle.

For a moment, Secca just stared at the isle, trying to see through the daystars across the dark waters toward the land. Gouts of liquid fire began to spray from the darkness of the shadowed land, from just behind the white line of the sandy beach to the cultivated hillsides and forests above. The fire fountains began to thicken, and the heat-even a dek offshore---began to increase. Within moments, the air was hot, almost like that just above an oven or a fire, so hot that Secca flung up her arm to shield her face.

"Hard starboard! Steady on due north."

"Coming starboard."

Before the ship had even heeled slightly into the turn, a rushing gust of hot air struck Secca, so hard that she staggered. Above her sails cracked in the abrupt gust, and a long ripping sound followed. A huge thundering crash, as though a mountain wall had fallen, reverberated in Secca's ears.

The Silberwelle heeled farther, and Secca clutched for the railing to keep her feet. But her eyes remained on Stura. Openmouthed, she watched, frozen at the railing, as cloud of glowing ash surged downhill from the volcanic cone, as trees flattened and burst into flame almost simultaneously with the wind that preceded the avalanche of ash. Then the houses on the lower slopes vanished under the luminous ash.

As the Silberwelle turned, crew scrambling through the rigging, and shifting to catch the wind from a different angle, Secca turned away and took a stumbling step toward the ladder that would take her below, out of the heat that she had created. Didn't know . . . it would be like this...

To the northeast, far into the distance, the sea continued to flatten and take on an ominous and deadly silvery shimmer.

"Everyone below! Everyone below!" The frantic energy in Denyst's voice was all too clear.

Secca's legs felt like lead, her arms as if she could not lift them, but lift them she did, turning at the top of the ladder. Halfway down the ladder another blast of wind ripped through the Silberwelle, slamming Secca against the ladder.

"Bring her round another point! Into the sea! Into the sea!"

The sails flapped in the rising hot winds that gusted round the Silberwelle, first blowing from the land, then swirling back southward.

Secca winced as several pinpoints of fire fell from the sky and jabbed at her hands and neck, and she scrambled down the lower part of the ladder, landing with a jolt on the hard planking of the main deck. Her eyes went to the mass of players.

"Into the fo'c'sle!" Delvor's voice was the one that rose above the clamor on the main deck.

Secca took a last glance backward. Above Stura rose an enormous plume of fiery ash, glowing and radiating heat far more intense than any sun Secca had ever felt Looking upward, Secca could see Alcaren half-helping, half-dragging Richina to the ladder, and she stopped at the bottom of the ladder to help the younger sorceress, hurrying, and then pushing her into the passageway. Alcaren scrambled after them.

The narrow passageway was far cooler than the deck outside, but Secca did not stop to enjoy the comparative comfort, but staggered into the captain's quarters, half-pushing, half-urging Richina into the nearest chair, and taking the one beside her, grateful once more that the chairs were firmly bolted to the deck.

Secca glanced toward the open wooden bin fastened to the bulkhead, where the cased lutar and wrapped scrying mirror were stowed, glad that the net covering was tied in place.

Alcaren shut the door and scrambled into the chair next to Secca.

"Why . . .?" stammered Richina.

"Why did she want us below?" asked Alcaren. "Because the spell conjured another great wave.

We might be far enough to sea not to be dashed onto the rocks---if it's not too large a wave, or there aren't too many. I hope there aren't."

Secca hoped so as well, recalling both the damages she had seen from such waves and knowing Alcaren's discomfort with sea travel.

The Silberwelle's timbers shivered with a deep bass rumbling, not something of sorcery or harmony, but a sound any could hear, and the ship heeled and then righted herself.

"She's got her headed into the wave," Alcaren said. "Now . . .if we have enough time and enough sea . . ." His eyes flicked toward the forward porthole.

From where she sat, and with the continued stabbing pain in her eyes, Secca could see little, just smudges of darkness and an eerie red glowing. The ship seemed to settle, almost coming to a halt in calm waters.

"Hold on. Hold tight!" said Alcaren, gripping the arms of the chair in which he sat.

In spite of knowing what was coming, and having been through it before, Secca's mouth still opened wide as the deck tilted and the forward bulkhead of the cabin rose more than a yard above the rear one. The bow dropped with a lurch, and a shudder ran through the Silberwelle, from stem to stern "Didn't break her back" muttered Alcaren. His hand went to his forehead, and he massaged his temples.

The cabin went dark as water surged past the portholes. Then there was a glimmer of grayness, before more water covered the tinted green glass. The Silberwelle half cork-screwed, heeled, then righted herself once more.

Secca realized that the air in the cabin had become noticeably warmer and damper, not quite steamy, but hot and sticky. She swallowed as she realized that the heat was coming from her, especially from her face. She put her fingertips to her cheek and then her forehead . . . and winced at the pain.

Alcaren pulled himself out of his chair and, one hand on the chair, and then on the end of the bunk, made his way to the porthole, where he watched for a long moment.