Flames burst from the varnished and seasoned woods of the violinos used moments before by the players. The skins of the drums snap under the instant and violent heat, and tongues of fire leap from within those same drums.

Steam erupts from the water bottle on the battlement stones beside jerClayne. Yet as that steam flares forth, the heat that has created it sucks all moisture from the Maitre's body, and from the bodies of all those on the tower, and their faces shrivel.

"Abominations-"

The Maitre's words are seared from existence by the beam of heat and light so intense that everything---from the SeaPriests and their players and their instruments to the very stone around them---is vaporized into a mist of fire that rises straight up, creating a white pillar of living flame that explodes skyward through clouds and rain, searing both from existence.

The very stones of the tower become a glowing mist, a fiery death mist that envelops the entire keep. So swift is that envelopment that not one lancer within the walls has time for more than a single syllable, not before the entire keep and all around it explode into primeval flame.

At the base of that pillar of light, where the keep of Aroch had stood, a lake of liquid molten rock forms, a lake of liquid fire containing the heat of the sun, a lake that, as crystal droplets fall from the fire pillar, is covered with molten silver glass.

138.

Secca staggered under the double impact of both the harmonic chime and the column of brilliant and burning light. Under the force of both, she found her feet carrying her backwards, where she stumbled into the trench, then dropped flat onto the uneven surface. The clay there was cold and damp despite the searing intensity of the light above her. Her head throbbed, and her eyes burned, and daystars flashed across eyes that also burned long after she had closed them tight against the unrelenting glare.

She had been lying in the trench but instants before she found herself shielded by Alcaren's body. His figure blocked the worst of the unyielding light, but she had to squirm sideways to move to where his weight did not squeeze her chest against the clay so that she could breathe more easily. A crackling flared somewhere in the sky, blazing through even her closed eyelids, and a wave of heat cascaded over the part of her shoulder unshielded by her consort.

She could sense that at least one other besides Alcaren was in the trench, but when she tried to open her eyes just the slightest to see who, the glare was so intense that it sent needles through her eyes, and she had to close them. She could only hope that Jolyn was with them, and that the players had all managed to scramble into the pit behind them.

Was this necessary? Did you need such a terrible spell-song? Even as she asked herself the question, she suspected the answer was that she had no choice---but that, if she survived the terror she had created, the question would come back to haunt her for the rest of her days. If you even survive to be haunted.

Anna had written cautions, but cautions and warnings were nothing compared to the terrifying reality of the blind-ing light, and the shivering harmonic chord that had run through her. Nothing at all. Secca had thought the destruction of Stura was terrible, but the blinding intensity of the pillar of light was also terrible-and it had happened in Defalk.

The warmth of Alcaren beside her helped some, but Secca felt buffeted by light and heat from above and damp and cold from below, and by the unseen crackling sound that half hissed through the skies far above. The glare waxed and waned, even through her closed eyelids, although the waning was merely uncomfortable, while the waxing was excruciating painful.

How long she lay there, Secca had no idea, only that when the glare finally faded, and she opened her eyes, she could barely see. Everything was silvered, silver against silver, all shades of silver . . . and colors were barely visible. Against that silvered background, daystars flashed, each one like a bright needle playing counterpoint to the throbbing headache that made Secca simply want to curl up in the trench, cold and damp as the soil was.

Finally, she eased herself into a sitting position and watched through squinting and slit eyes as Alcaren struggled to do the same.

She swallowed, "Can you see?" she finally whispered to her consort.

Alcaren blinked, his eyes not quite focused on her as he turned in the narrow trench. "It's . . . all silver."

Jolyn levered herself up in the trench. "Never saw anything so bright Did you bring the sun down?"

Secca looked at Jolyn. "Can you see?"

"Mostly. Everything has a shiny silver cast," replied the older sorceress. Her eyes seemed to widen as she looked at Secca.

"What is it?" asked the redhead.

"Your eyes. Somehow . . . they're amber, like always, but their centers are dark silver, almost like quicksilver." Jolyn turned and leaned to look past Secca at Alcaren. "So are yours."

Secca glanced at the sky, no longer glaring bright white, but totally clear. "All the clouds- they're gone."

"They're mostly water," reflected Alcaren. "The light must have burned them all away."

"We need to get out of here and over the hilltop," Secca said. She just hoped she was strong enough to walk or run the hundred yards or so. She cleared her throat "Don't look back."

She could not have said why, but she felt that. "Don't look at Aroch. Not now."

Alcaren boosted her up the back wall of the trench, then helped Jolyn out before levering himself up.

"Players!" Secca called. "To the other side of the hill. Don't look back! Don't look back." She hoped everyone would obey. Her legs felt unsteady, and she was glad that Alcaren took her arm as they walked toward the low rise that marked the hilltop.

"To the rear," called Palian. "Keep your instruments, but don't look back. You could burn your eyes. Don't look back."

Secca wasn't sure about that, but it was a good idea to give a reason, and she hadn't been able to think of one. By the time they reached the crest and started down, Secca could feel heat radiating from behind her, and smell the smoke of woods and grasses burning.

She nearly stumbled, but Alcaren caught her.

"Aren't you feeling weak?" she murmured.

"I've felt better, he admitted. We just have a little farther to go. Just another fifty yards, I'd wager. Just a little farther."

The tone of his voice told Secca that he wasn't in much better shape than she was, but his arm felt sturdy supporting her.

"A few more yards," Secca called out, hoping her voice would carry back to Palian and the players who followed.

"Lady Secca says we have but a few more yards," Palian repeated. "Take care with your instruments."

Secca hoped that they would not need those instruments anytime soon. She certainly wouldn't be spellsinging for a time.

As they began to walk down from the back side of the hillcrest, through the scrub oak and scattered junipers, Delcetta was the first to ride toward them. There were others behind her, but Secca could not make them out with her silvered vision.

"Are you . . . can you . . .?" Delcetta didn't seem to want to complete the question.

Secca wondered if she looked that bad.

"The Lady Secca will need some assistance," Alcaren said.

Secca felt as though his voice were deks away, and it faded and then roared in her ears, and the daystars before her vision rushed toward her and then receded. She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other . . . one foot in front of the other.

"The ground rumbled," Delcetta declared, "and then it was brighter than if there were a score of suns in the sky. Those suns blazed away the clouds as if they did not exist. Now"---she gestured southward---"smokes rises as if all Aroch were aflame."

Secca turned and looked back over the hillcrest, feeling that would be safe enough, since she could not see Aroch itself. Even through her silvered vision, she could make out the immense pillar of swirling smoke that rose into a clear sky---an otherwise totally clear sky.

Abruptly . . . suddenly, Secca could feel her legs begin to shake.

She started to sit down, helped by Alcaren, but a wave of silvered blackness swept up over her.

139.

Secca woke with darkness all around her. Her eyes opened slowly, and daystars flashed before her, silver-tinged flashes that made it nearly impossible for her to see anything. She was almost afraid to move, but she let her eyes travel to her right, where she could make out the embers in a hearth, red embers also tinged with silver. She seemed to be lying on her bedroll in the same small cot where she had struggled to get sleep the night before. Had it been the night before? Just the night before?

She tried to roll over because her shoulder was both burning and stiff. With that motion, her entire face turned into flame. "Ohhhh."

"Here, lady. You must drink," said Richina, easing a water bottle to Secca's lips. "The water will help."

Secca drank, but the water seemed so cold that she shivered as it eased down her throat, and the drops that spilled on her face were like ice.

"You must have more," Richina insisted, easing the bottle back to Secca's mouth.

Secca took the water, until she was shivering all over and could drink no more. Then she asked, "The wards. What of the wards?"

"Lady Secca," Richina offered softly, "there is no one left who can cast sorcery from a distance-- -save you. Do you not remember?'

"Alcaren?" Secca's voice was raspy, hoarse.

"He sleeps now, almost beside you. He is better than you," murmured the younger blonde sorceress, "though his face is also flushed and painful. That is true of everyone who sang or played the last spellsong, but yours is the most flushed. The Lady Jolyn suffered less than you two."

"What . . . of the players?'

"Palian and Delvor are much like Lord Alcaren, but I would say they will recover, as will most of the players."

"Most?"

"Bretnay and Rowal . . . they did not seek shelter as you ordered. The light . . ." Richina's voice broke off, as if she did not wish to explain.

Secca did not wish to force her. That the two had died, she regretted, as with all the deaths of those who had helped and followed her. In a sense, how the two died did not matter, save that she would have willed it otherwise, and she hoped it had not been painful or lengthy. Yet, with the Sea-Priests bent on taking Liedwahr, could the war have been fought without deaths? Secca doubted that but had there needed to be so many?

It could have been, had you studied more when Anna lived. Or had you considered better spells.

But, by the time she faced the Maitre, Secca had had no other choices. The whole point of shadow singing was to avoid having to use great and terrible sorcery, and Secca had not fully understood. She had thought that terrible spellsongs and shadow sorcery were simply different tools, and that shadow sorcery could at times preclude terrible spellsongs. She had not un- derstood how closely the two were linked, as if they were two sides of the same coin. If one side were not used, the other had to be. Sometimes there might not have been a choice, but Secca feared she had erred all too many times in not seeing the opportunities. And you will always wonder . . . as did Anna.

Secca yawned in spite of herself, and the yawning sent fresh waves of fire across her face, and a deeper throbbing through her skull.

"You must sleep, Lady Secca."

" . . . don't . . . want to. . ." She had so much she needed to consider, and so much she wanted to tell Richina, for fear that she could not, that she would sleep and not wake.

"Tell us tomorrow, lady. You can tell us then."

Secca's eyes closed.

140 Under a clear and cloudless sky, Secca rode eastward through the morning on the paved main road that would lead her to Falcor and Lord Robero. She wore the green felt hat pulled low across her forehead, not because the spring weather was cold, but to shade her too-sensitive eyes, eyes that, after four days, still showed her the world tinged with silver, if not quite so heavily silvered as right after the terrible sorcery.

She turned once more in the saddle, looking back toward the spot where Aroch and the town had been-now a fused expanse of silver glass, glass that from a distance appeared to be a circular silver lake. Kinor and Tiersen had promised to set up warning stones on the roads that led to the ruins of town and keep-when they had time after returning to their demesnes. Secca had promised Kinor that she or Richina would return to help rebuild Westfort with sorcery.

Following Anna's instructions, Secca had not been closer than five deks to the ruins since she and her forces had escaped the heat and devastation. Even from that distance and after four days, she could feel the heat.

While she felt no sympathy for the Maitre and the Sturinnese, who perished within Aroch, the cost to Liedwahr had been dear, dearer than any could have foretold-except the Ladies of the Shadow. So many Secca knew had died, and one of the last had been the unfortunate Ruetha, who had accepted a consorting with a weak lord out of fear of being poor and abandoned, as her mother had been before Anna had rescued her. Is that a lesson of sorts? Secca shook her head.

No one should be punished for weakness. But the strong and the thoughtless so often do punish the weak...

With a sigh, Secca turned back in the saddle to face the road ahead.

"You cannot change what has been," Alcaren offered from where he rode beside her. "Nor should you regret what you did." He laughed softly, warmly, and yet ruefully. "Yet you will, for all the days of your life. That I know."

"How can I not regret all those who died?" Secca gestured to the vanguard riding before them and then swung her arm to encompass those who followed. "Stura is destroyed. The north of Neserea is devastated. Nearly two-thirds of the SouthWomen died to follow us. I have less than half the lane-en who rode out from Loiseau little more than two seasons ago . . ."

"Let us say, my love," Alcaren offered calmly, "that you had been able and ready to use shadow sorcery on the Maitre the day you discovered he was in Neserea "That would have been too late."

"So . . . you are faulting yourself for not knowing all that happened in the world? When no others did?" Alcaren's silvered eyes twinkled. "You would fault yourself for what you could not have known?"

Secca shook her head, knowing that, in the use of words, she could not overcome Alcaren's logic, and while what he said made sense, it also made no difference, because too many people had died. She could not have accepted women in chains, and the Maitre could not accept them free of chains. Secca could justify her actions because she had not been the one to attack and force her way on others, but could there have been another way?

At the time it all had begun, after Anna's death, it had probably been too late. Secca's lips tightened. But now . . . now she had to make certain that another such conflict did not arise---not in her life, and perhaps beyond.

"Lord Robero is still in Falcor," Alcaren said, his voice neutral.

"He was this morning."

"You do not intend to send him any messages except the one you dispatched two days ago?"

"No. He knows that the Sturinnese and the Maitre have been destroyed. That is enough until we meet."

"Will he meet with you?"

Secca shrugged. "How can he not?"

"He fears you."

As well he should . . . as well he should. Secca smiled.

"Yet even he does not know how strong a sorceress you have become," Alcaren added. "Nor do you."

"Because I have done terrible spellsongs? Does that make me stronger? Or just more cruel?"

asked Secca.

"You know you are stronger in what spells you can sing. So am I, and so is Richina. That is good for Defalk and Liedwahr."

But is it good for me . . . for us? "Perhaps."

"What will Lord Robero do, do you think?" asked Alcaren, clearly understanding that Secca was uncomfortable in talking about her strength as a sorceress. "I know him but through your eyes."

"He will blame me for his misfortunes, and for the deaths and destruction. Perhaps he will say he had no choice. He should not have threatened to take Loiseau from me."

"It means more to you than Flossbend?"

"In a way. I earned Loiseau, and it was given with love." Even thinking of Loiseau, of Anna, Secca could feel the emptiness, wondering again if that would always be with her.

"Perhaps he will reward you."

"It's too late for that. Defalk deserves better." Are you the one to provide it? But who else is there? Secca took a long and slow breath, then leaned forward and patted Songfire on the shoulder.

Behind them, Jolyn rode, talking with Palian, and the two younger sorceresses told Valya about Falcor. Secca looked eastward, silver-tinged eyes slit against the brightness of the day, and against the decisions she had made and would have to carry out.