"I don't doubt that." Anna paused. Jecks had clearly smoothed things over. What could she say?

"Sometimes truth is harder to swallow than false tales, and my strangeness... the fact that I don't know Defalk as well as you do...that can lead to misunderstandings."

"Lord Jecks explained. I did not know how many arrows you have taken for Defalk and those you lead."

The swarthy lord shook his head. "You are not as you look."

"Lord Gylaron, I am much older. 1 didn't look for what happened to me." She paused, gauging his expression. "I have no heirs here on Erde. I never will."

"He told me that as well. That clears another fog." His face wrinkled. "Yet. . . why would you not add my domains to Lord Jimbob's?"

"Lord Jimbob will need more than Falcor, to raise the coins a leader of Defalk must have. He shouldn't ever have more than that, but especially not as young as he is. Too much power corrupts."

"You would judge that?"

"Is there anyone else who can?" Anna asked bluntly. "I can't pa.s.s anything on. I have no ties to anyone. I could be wrong, but I saw how Lord Barjim couldn't raise the coins or armsmen necessary to save Defalk.

I also saw how Lord Behlem squandered golds. I think a ruler should be somewhere between." She smiled. "What do you think?"

"I think. . . Lady Anna, that I am fortunate to retain my head and my lands. I will not trouble you more."

"Lord Gylaron..." Anna tilted her head slightly, wondering if that would be too flirtatious even as she did.

"I will always be here to answer honest questions. I will do my best to preserve Defalk. I make mistakes.

Even sorceresses do. If you have a question, if you have a concern, I will answer. I may not always agree, but I will answer."

"Lord Jecks told me how you spent golds to gain seed corn for the south. I would that I had known."

That, and Gylaron's opening words, were all the apology she would ever get, but they were enough.

"When you have pressing needs, let me know."

"I thank you, lady. And Reylan would thank you as well, were she here." Gylaron smiled. "We would see you at the evening meal."

'I will be there," Anna promised.

After Gylaron had left, Anna walked to the window. She didn't wait long before Jecks arrived.

"How did you manage that?" Anna asked warily.

"I did what Rickel suggested. I had him put on arms-man's greens. Rickel took him around. He talked to arms-men. Anyone and anywhere he wanted. Then he came back and we talked some more." Jecks smiled, and his eyes twinkled.

"So he doesn't believe I'm the b.i.t.c.h from dissonance any longer?" Anna walked toward Jecks, seeing the lines around the eyes, the fatigue.

"He has...a healthy...respect for you," Jecks answered.

"Like Birfels? He respects me, but can't stand what I'm doing."

"Gylaron is distressed that his world will be changed. I did persuade him, as did his consort, that his situation is far better than it would have been under anyone else. including Lord Ehara or the Liedfuhr of Mansuur. Or the Evult."

"I'm so flattered.'' Anna snorted.

"Lady Anna. . . nothing had changed in Defalk for generations. Then came the drought, and the Evult.

Everyone expected that, once the rains returned, so would the good days of the past."

"They weren't that good," muttered Anna.

"That matters not. For the lords, they think those days were good."

"So they're upset now?"

"Not all. Some see beyond their noses and fields." Jecks smiled. "Those like Clethner who live with their backs to Nordwei, or Nelmor, who sees the sun set over Neserea."

"I don't know. I'm not a very good politician. The older I get, the harder it gets to smile and pretend to be a good little girl. To pretend that it's all my fault that they don't understand. To pretend that I didn't make it perfectly clear when I spelled it out in words a five-year-old should understand." Anna walked back to the window and looked down at the courtyard, where several score of her armsmen stood or sat under the shade of overhanging battlements. "I never was that good."

"Give them time. Like Gylaron, they will see that all you bode for Defalk is good."

"Do I? Really? I wonder." She turned again. "You're tired, and what I did didn't help. Can you get some rest before supper, or dinner, or whatever?"

"Supper, here in the south," Jecks said.

"Will you get some rest?" she asked again.

"I will have some food sent to you," Jecks said. "You did not eat."

"I couldn't." She met his eyes. "Please take care of yourself and get some rest."

"As my lady commands."

"I don't command you," Anna said with a smile. "I doubt anyone's ever commanded you."

"Not until now, lady." Jecks bowed. "You're impossible."

''Just ancient.''

"You're not that, either. Now go get some rest, and let a poor sorceress think about how she can avoid swallowing her boots again."

Jecks bowed once more, and Anna shook her head, ruefully, as Jecks departed, graceful, muscular, and far more understanding than most of his peers. Most? How about all of them?

53.

MANSUUS, MANSUUR.

Rain rattles against the shutters of the large study, and a warm mist seeps in from the darkness outside and around the louvers. Konsstin paces back and forth in front of the wide desk table piled with scrolls, lit with a five-branched candelabra.

Thrap. The knock on the door is diffident, almost timid.

"Yes?"

The door opens, and Ba.s.sil peers in. "You sent for me, sire?"

Konsstin gestures broadly, his arm pa.s.sing so close to the candelabra that the flames flicker, twisting the vague shadows that fall on the paneled walls and the bookcases.

The door closes, and Ba.s.sil enters, straightens his maroon tunic, and pushes his dark hair back.

"So I woke you?"

"No, sire. I was reading over the dispatches."

"What reports from Defalk?" asks Konsstin cheerily.

"Your seers are overworked." Ba.s.sil bows, briefly. "The sorceress has subdued all but Stromwer."

"1 suppose she turned them all into abattoirs, or ash heaps." Konsstin forces a laugh.

"One abattoir, sire. That was Suhl. She did save the heirs and established some arrangement for them to keep the holding."

"Clever. They can exert no power for years, and by then it won't matter. Darkness, the woman's devious.

Worse than Cyndyth or Kandeth."

"Worse, sire, perhaps. She is not devious. All the seers and all the dispatches report she is most direct. To date, she has always kept her word." Ba.s.sil licks his lips in the dimness.

"Direct? That is even more devious. She keeps her word, but when will she break it? She does what she says, no matter how difficult. That makes it even easier, for who will oppose her, knowing she is a powerful sorceress and will not be turned? Dissonance, Ba.s.sil! If that's not devious, I don't know the meaning of the word."

"Do you wish me to ready those scrolls I prepared for you weeks ago?"

"Not yet. Not yet. Stromwer is a fortified mountain hold. Let us see how she does against the devious Dencer, with all his aid from Ehara."

"You hope she wins there?"

"I must hope that, dissonance take them all." Konsstin waves an arm generally westward, beyond the closed shutters and night-darkened balcony. "I have no love of the Sea-Priests. I'd hope they all go down-or up-in discord."

"Do you believe this sorceress will defeat them all?"

"She will take Dencer. None but a fool would gainsay that. Whether she will turn his hold into an ashpit or find some way to preserve it is the sole doubt." His fingers touch the silvering brown beard. "She is clever. Too clever by far, and should she gain another hold-"

"Gain another hold?" blurts Ba.s.sil. "She has gained none. Synfal went to the heir..." He shuts his mouth as Konsstin turns.

"Ba.s.sil. At times you think. Tonight, you are tired. You must be tired. Do you not understand? Lady Gatrune holds her consort's lands; so does Lady Anientta. Administrators or saalmeisters of the sorceress's choosing hold Synfal and Suhl. She has bound Gylaron in some sorcerous fashion, and she will do some-such similar to Dencer. Lord Jecks will do as she wishes, as will Geansor and Birfels, for she holds their heirs, and those heirs of several other holdings as well. The lords Clethner and Vyarl are beholden to Jecks, and Lord Tybel will not cross the sor ceress so long as his daughter Anientta administers the lands of Synope. Then, the sorceress holds Loiseau in her own name. Dissonance! Do you not see? How many holds is that?"

Ba.s.sil's brow lifts as he calculates. "Just thirteen or fourteen. Out of thirty-three."

"Ba.s.sil," Konsstin says gently. "Ba.s.sil. . . Lord Barjim could count on five holds, at best. Lord Donjim controlled ten. This... usurper...she has a greater rein on Defalk than any ruler in generations. And she is a sorceress.

Ba.s.sil swallows. "I am tired."

"Not too tired. I hope, to understand what I have told you?"

"No, sire. I had not thought of it in quite that fashion."

"Best we always think of power in that fashion." The Liedfuhr gestures toward the door. "Get some sleep.

We will talk tomorrow."

Ba.s.sil bows.

Outside, the warm rain splats against the shutters. Inside, the candles flicker as the Liedfuhr paces.

54.

Aware of the sweat beading on her forehead, Anna ignored it and studied the image in the gla.s.s again. At her shoulder, Hanfor continued to sketch. Jecks stood to Anna's left, also surveying the view in the hazy silvered gla.s.s.

Dencer' s keep-a square a.s.sembly of gray stones- stood on a rise at the middle of a narrow valley that resembled a T. Behind and to the south of the keep was a small town. Mountains terminating their lower slopes in high cliffs flanked the keep on the east and west, cliffs less than a dek from the keep's side walls.

Dencer or some previous Lord of Stromwer had cut away the slope both in front and in back of the keep, replacing it with two polished stone walls that glistened like shining water even through the gla.s.s. On top of those stone-tiled earthworks were wails, easily four yards high. so that the total smooth face was easily fifty yards in height from the cut base of the hill on both north and south to the top of the wall that stretched from cliff to keep and then from the far side of the keep to the other cliff.

A single stone road ran the length of the valley-from the north southward and up an inclined ramp through the hill cut to a fortified gate at the crest of the modified hill and then around the walls of the keep itself on the east side and then through another gate, and down the second stone filed berm and to the town. The s.p.a.ce on the rise on either side of the keep had been kept cleared and in pasture, and the buildings of the town did not begin until almost a half-dek to the south of the keep, well south of the southern stone berm.

On the southernmost end of the valley was the east-west road, running along a stream that seemed to flow downhill from the west. Anna frowned. She would have thought the keep would have been at the south end of the valley to protect the town.

"The road to the west winds up into the Sudbergs and travels to Dumar," noted Jecks "And I suppose the one of the west goes to Ranuak?" Anna rubbed her eyes, glad that the double-imaging from her last foray into Darksong had finally disappeared.

"To the port of Sylwa."

Farther to the north the valley constricted into a gorge, the same narrow defile that Anna's earlier scrying had revealed as the site of Dencer' s other precautions-netted rocks and boiling oil.

The mirror frame began to smoke, and Anna released the image with one of the release couplets she'd developed.

"Let this scene of saying, mirror filled with light, vanish like the darkness when the sun is bright..."

Her eyes flicked away from the burned square on the wall beside the mirror that represented the firing of the first mirror in the chamber when she hadn't released the spell quickly enough.

After a moment she walked to the narrow window of the guest chamber and let the warm wind blow around her, cooling the perspiration that long scrying efforts seemed to bring.