She glanced back at the players, dismounted and tuning, and she waited. After what seemed an interminable time, Liende called, "We stand ready. Regent."

"'Then start the spellsong."

Anna timed the music and lifted her voice toward the silent keep.

"These arrows shot into the air, the head of each must strike Lord Sargol there-"

Anna dropped her hand, and sensed the release of the arrows.

"-with force and speed to kill him -dead, for all the treachery he's done and led."

Slightly light-headed, she watched as perhaps two dozen arrows flew over the walls of Suhl. Had she heard a slight clatter?

The walls remained as silent as before.

Anna turned toward Farinelli, and laboriously got out the lutar and the mirror. After tuning the instrument, she cleared her throat.

"Show me now and show me near Lord Sargol bright and clear..."

The gla.s.s was explicit enough. Sargol was clad in gray inside a stone walled room, one with iron shutters-iron doubtless because he thought it proof against sorcery or some such. And it had been proof against the arrows. Sargol's eyes glittered, but he was very much alive.

Anna took a deep breath, feeling Jecks beside her, also studying the gla.s.s before she cleared the image.

Now what?

Her eyes flashed toward the hulking brick and stone keep of Suhl, its gates barred, its lord raging. She shook her head and turned to Jecks.

"Now what do I do?"

"I do not know."

Why? Why...because it's the perversity of the universe. She turned and walked back to Liende.

The chief player watched as the regent approached.

"Liende, I'll need the flame spell-again.

"Lord Sargol still lives?" The chief player looked down.

"Unfortunately."

Anna waited as the players reorganized. Neither Jecks nor Hanfor said a word, though they exchanged glances- and kept exchanging them.

Finally, in the late afternoon silence, with the brick and stone keep brazed in golden flat light of a sun that hung over the low hills to the west, Anna gestured to Liende and the players, then let her voice rise.

"Those who will not be loyal to the regency, let them die, let them lie, struck by fire, struck by flame..."

This time, the chords of Harmony did shiver the sky, and the ground trembled. Then came a wailing that should have been a counterpointed chord, except that nothing matched, not intervals, not key or scale or anything-the closest sound Anna had ever heard to pure dissonance, again a sound that no one else seemed to hear.

Her teeth and jaw ached, and her eyes watered, first from the sounds, and then from the lines of fire that arrowed from the impossibly azure blue of the sky, endless line of fire after endless line of fire.

Anna shuddered as she could sense a few of the fire arrows slash into her own armsmen. Bad spell... How do you know all your own forces are loyal in their hearts?

Sweat burst out on her forehead, a sweat of fear. Was she that loyal, even to herself?

Even before the last chord, darkness had begun to gather around her, swelling, vibrating, alternating with light. Anna fought to hold on to consciousness, fought, and the darkness receded, ever so slightly, hanging at the corners of her eyes.

Someone held a water bottle, and she drank before realizing that Jecks stood beside her and held it. Then she ate, heavy brown bread, dry like sawdust in her mouth.

After that she sat down in the dust, unmindful of the sneezes that racked her, the fires in her eyes, and the knives that twisted in her stomach. Her eyes open in the late afternoon, she saw nothing. Her ears clear, she heard nothing. Too d.a.m.ned close to Darksong . . . far too close. Maybe it had been part Darksong?

It couldn't have been-no double vision. But that raised more troubling thoughts. She could destroy peo- ple-if the spell were worded correctly-but not change them? Walls could stop arrows, but not fire?

In time, Hanfor returned to where she still sat in the dust: "Lady... Suhl lies open to you." The arms com- mander bowed deeply. "None of those who survive gainsay your regency, nor that of Lord Jimbob. Even the two detachments of Dumaran lancers fell to the last man."

Anna shivered at his tone, at the blankness of face and expression, at the ill-concealed fear. "Thank...

you." After a moment, she added, "I didn't want it to be this way. I offered terms. . . . I did." The only ones I could....

Hanfor nodded, but she could sense his feelings that the choice had been hers, and it had been. Hers alone. She couldn't blame Dieshr, the music department chair at Ames. or Avery, or Sandy,. or the kids, or the economic pressures. She'd chosen the spells and used them.

She tottered to her feet and looked at SuhI, looked at the open gates, sensed the horror she had created.

The bodies-sprawling from the walls, seemingly lying everywhere-were the worst, with red-and- purple burns and blackened skin, with clothing scorched and seared.

The stench of burned meat was everywhere, carried by the light and hot breeze.

Anna forced the bitter bile back down her throat, with every breath. She slowly turned to a pale Jecks, who stood beside his mount.

"Well . . Lord Jecks," Anna croaked- "Was it worth it? To save., the delicate sensibilities of the northern lords?"

Jecks' face, white as that of a marble statue, paled even more, whiter than his hair.

With invisible starbursts flashing before her eyes, Anna could barely see, let alone stand. She let herself slump back to the ground and sat there.

"Lady Anna... here is a blanket." Rickel's voice was soft.

Mechanically. Anna shifted herself onto the blanket, then closed her eyes. The starbursts still cascaded across her now-dark field of vision, and she opened her eyes.

Fhurgen handed her a chunk of bread. She took a small bite. Then she twisted and retched across the dust, adding yet another stench to those of fire and death.

f.u.c.k Defalkan conventions! I'm not doing this again.

...Despite the violence of her thought, Anna wondered. In Liedwahr, with its emphasis on force, could she totally avoid the use of greater force? And how?

How...in the name of G.o.d or the harmonies ... or whatever?

45 Anna stood on the worn stones of the battlement of the front corner tower of Suhl, looking blankly over the valley. The surface of the mound Sargol had raised was bare, with no sign of the infernal crossbow.

The tents had been struck, brushed clean, and stored in one of the keep's storerooms.

Three deep holes gaped in the ground-ma.s.s graves. Four wagons were scattered across the gra.s.s, each heaped with bodies. Under the watchful eyes of subofficers, arms-men stripped each corpse of weapons and valuables before lifting it onto the wagons.

Caaaw.... A large crow flapped its wings in settling onto the other corner tower. Nearly a dozen of the scavengers circled over the meadow, under the wispy thin clouds scattered across the morning sky.

Absently, Anna's hand strayed to the wound on her arm. It was still red and itched, if less than before.

Behind her, by the steps up from the lower wall, stood Rickel, his broad-shouldered form casting an even broader shadow. Another guard was at the base of the stairs.

Boots scuffed on the tower steps, and Anna turned as Jecks emerged into the hazy sunlight.

"Lady Anna, how do you feel?"

"Close to human, until I look out there."

"You did what had to be done." Jecks crossed the stones of the tower, then stopped next to the stone wall, perhaps two yards to her right. "Sargol would not have surrendered. He tried to kill you twice." He paused. "And he would rather have stopped his ears against your spells of obedience."

"I suppose so." She frowned. Obedience or loyalty spells were clearly Darksong. and her body and the harmonies were telling her their use was most definitely limited-if she wanted to survive. Yet. . . was the alternative slaughtering thousands? Did that make her any better than Sargol? Wanting to survive?

She looked down at the bricks of the rampart walk underfoot.

"You did what needed to be done. You showed mercy at Synfal, and that was first. You have shown what will happen to those who resist."

"What's left of Suhl? Besides ma.s.s graves filled with loyal armsmen?" asked Anna abruptly. "A handful of shattered souls? Serfs and women too frightened to think. Three idiots, and a dozen infants, a handful of children. Three of them were Sargol's." She laughed, bitterly. "At least, he had heirs. At least, I don't have to worry about finding someone else to make a lord of the Thirty-thee. At least, they'll be southern lords without delicate sensibilities."

Jecks' face went stony again, and Anna didn't care, or almost didn't care. Her eyes focused on the wagons and the armsmen dumping bodies into the pits in the meadow. The light wind carded the faint odor of death.

"You asked me how those lords would feel, lady. I told you." His voice was hard.

"You did, and you were probably right," Anna said quietly. "I don't have to like a situation where I must choose between letting Defalk disintegrate, slaughtering thousands, or dying tying to use Darksong."

Jecks did not answer, but stood by the battlement, turned so he faced neither toward her nor away from her. "My lord," she prompted quietly, but firmly.

"What would you have me, say?" The words sounded dragged from his lips. "That I did not know how terrible your sorcery would be? From me, who has seen battles for all his life? I did not know?"

Anna remained silent, and the methodical clank of spades and the dull sounds of teams moving wagons drifted across the tower. The wagons carried far too many bodies.

"You saw the Sand Pa.s.s."

"Those were dark ones, not Defalkans."

Anna felt less sympathetic to Jecks. "They were people, Lord Jecks. Just as those poor armsmen I slaughtered the day before yesterday were people. They loved; they hoped; and they died."

"Lady Anna. Think of your flame spells. Did you not direct them at those who rebelled. Only those who rebelled?" Jecks asked soffly.

"Yes," she admitted.

"Yet but a handful survived. What would you have? An entire hold seething in rage? This is not Synfal, where Arkad did not incite revolt, where no one raged against you. Arkad did not like the regency, but in his own way, he honored Defalk."

Anna forced herself not to answer, to consider his words first. After a time, she spoke, slowly. "Are you saying that so many died here because they violently opposed the Regency and Jimbob?"

"That is what I believe."

The regent and sorceress leaned on the warm worn stone, resting her head on her arms. Lord, Lord...

"Their ties are to these lands, to their lord, not to Defalk. They still think of themselves as Suhimorrans."

"You said the Suhlmorrans had not ruled here for centuries ... for hundreds of years."

Jecks shrugged, almost sadly. "Still, they call themselves Suhlmorrans.

"How can we ever..."

"You already have."

"No. Enough lived that they'll hate Jimbob and the Regency more."

"Not if you direct the heirs."

"Where will I get another administrator?" Anna asked.

"Who will hold the keep? We can't garrison it, not with Gylaron and Dencer left to deal with."

"You need not leave more than a handful of armsmen-the wounded among them. No one will dare attack here. There would be no advantage, either. You will declare that his infant son will be the heir, will you not?"

''Have I any choice, realistically?"

"No," Jecks admitted.

"Have someone draft up the statement, but don't make it too specific, only that his heirs will hold the land. Don't name names. I'll sign it, and have a messenger take it to Synfal and let Herstat have it copied.

He can send them to all of the thirty-three who haven't risen-and to Hadrenn." She hoped whatever reached her didn't need too many changes, but she was still too tired to think as clearly as she'd like. The harmonies help her if she ever had to handle large battles on two days running.

After another silence, punctuated with the clank of spades from the graves, Jecks asked quietly, "What will you with the golds in the storeroom?"

"The same as always." Anna laughed harshly. "The Regency gets some. I get a little. You get a little, and most of it stays here for Sargol' administrator and heirs."

"What of your armsmen?''

"You think they should get a bonus?"

Jecks frowned at the word.

"Something extra?" Anna corrected. "A silver each? Two? What would be customary?"

"Two silvers would be most generous, and appreciated."

Anna tried to calculate. Roughly two hundred lancers, and the players should get more. That worked out to... what? Forty golds? She wanted to shake her head. If that were expected with every battle, she'd be paying several hundred golds, maybe a thousand before the whole mess was resolved.