"But... why . . .do such sorcery?"

"To let the Dumarans and the Sturinnese know I could halt the river forever. To persuade the Sturinnese to leave Liedwahr." You hope....

"They might not," Birke said. "My sire says they are like ants in a granary. You have to remove everything and kill them all before they will leave." He paused. "Would you do that?"

"Birke," Anna said slowly, "one day you will inherit your sire's lands. You'll be responsible for all of the holding. You know what the Sturinnese have done. They've conquered the Ostisles and now they have a fleet in Dumar. Would you like to see Lysara and Clayre in gilded chains? Or your own consort when you have one? What would you do?"

"They have often taken many years ... and you are powerful. They cannot defeat you."

Anna wanted to shake her head. She'd seen it in academia on earth, and in Erde among the lords ... and everyone else. If the problem wasn't immediate, ignore it and hope it will go away. "Birke... your faith in my ability is touching, but how long will I live? I'm older than your father, possibly older than Jecks. And I can be killed. It's almost happened twice." More like half a dozen times if you count the backlash of sorcery. "Then what?"

The youth's forehead furrowed. After a time, he answered. "Lady Anna, when you talk, nothing is quite the same. But it is hard. I remember when you bespelled Virkan. At first, I thought you were fearsome, and then Skent said something strange. He talks more like you, you know. He said that you had only spelled Virkan to do what a good person would not need a spell for." Birke glanced at the winding trail ahead, then looked back at the sorceress. "He said that you seldom spelled except to make things better for everyone." The redhead laughed nervously. "And he looked at me, and he told me that what was better for lords wasn't always better for every one else. I would have struck him except. . . he's bigger, and he seemed so calm."

Anna glanced over her shoulder. Birfels was talking quietly to Hanfor. "Birke. . Skent was right. What is good for one lord is not good for all lords, and what is good for all lords may not be good for all people.

You remember Secca?''

"The little redheaded fosterling. Lysara wrote me about her, but..."

'You had already returned to Abenfel. She has two brothers, one older and one younger. She is brighter than either. She is fairer and more determined than either. Would it be better for her to hold the lands or her brothers?"

Birke looked at the mane of the roan he rode. "The sons.... They have always been heirs..."

"Exactly. It's hard, isn't it? If you admit that Secca might be a better landholder, then wouldn't you have to admit that Clayre or Lysara might have that skill, too?" Anna laughed. "I'm not changing the succession laws, except in cases where the sons are incompetent or there aren't any sons." She paused.

"Isn't it better that Cataryzna hold her father's lands than some outsider?"

Birke nodded. "That... that is better."

"Well... that's the sort of thing I am changing. Nothing more." Not for a long time, anyway. That's enough to turn some of the older lords purple as it is.

Birke screwed up his face. "But you did not... I mean Dumar....and the Sea-Priests..."

"I didn't, did I?" The sorceress wiped her forehead. Despite the early-morning coolness in the hills, she was starting to perspire. Nerves? "I'm hoping that if I cut off the river to Dumar for a time, that will persuade Ehara to get the Sea-Priests to leave."

"But..."

"If they don't?" Anna shrugged. "We'll have to see. At least this way, I'm not using sorcery to kill scores or hundreds or thousands of people." If it works....She repressed a shiver. "Isn't that the narrows there?"

Birke stood in the stirrups. "Yes. There goes a buck! If I had my bow out, we'd have venison."

Anna watched as the big white-tailed red deer-was there such an animal?-bounded from the cleared area into the trees that climbed the hills to the east of the trail. She was glad Birke hadn't had his bow out and stung. She turned in the saddle. "Liende, I'd like the players to set up on that ga.s.sy spot on the ridge there, right below those bushes."

"Players!" Liende ordered.

Anna eased her water bottle from its holder and took a long slow swallow before replacing it. By then, Farinelli had carried her to the partly cleared ridge that overlooked the narrower section of the gorge.

Most of the mist had cleared from above the river, save for a few wispy strands drifting out of the shadows she couldn't see below her on the eastern side.

"Purple company!" called Hanfor. "Squads one and two back along the trail, up to the crest by that pine.

Squads three and four, ride down to where those two bushes sit by that fallen trunk."

As the armsmen followed the arms commander's orders and dust swirled across the high meadow, Anna dismounted, handing Farinelli' s reins to Lejun and then unpacking the folder with the spell and the drawings of the dam. Folder in hand, she stretched, then lifted her shoulders, walking in circles to get the stiffness out of her legs. Her steps took her down to the overlook, and she studied the gorge once more.

The Falche seemed wider than even the few days earlier, the silver ribbon twisting in the shade hundreds of yards below. As she watched the play of light and mist and shadow, she cleared her throat, then began her vocalises.

"Holly-lolly-polly-pop...d.a.m.n!" She coughed, trying to clear out her throat, then began again. It was going to take a long time to get clear. It did-four separate vocalises and a lot of mucus.

Only the faintest of mist streamers were left by the time she turned from her warm-up and view of the Falche. Jecks was waiting for her by Farinelli, water bottle in hand, after she walked back up the gentle slope through the knee-high brush.

"You're worried, aren't you?" she asked.

"I should not be." He shrugged. "I worry every time you attempt the impossible." A small laugh followed.

"You have made the impossible possible, time and again, but still I worry."

"This time even more?"

He nodded.

"You may be right. This is a very ambitious spell."

"Sometimes, my lady, you try too hard to avoid shedding blood."

"You all wanted me as regent. That's who I am." Anna laughed brittlely and shook her head. "No . . . you didn't want me, You wanted someone to preserve Defalk, and you got me. That's different, isn't it?"

"In these times, Defalk could not have a better ruler."

"You're so careful, Jecks, but I understand. Thank you." She took the water bottle and drank, then handed it back.

The players stood on the cleared part of the ridge, stretching, coughing, clearing throats. The sounds of strings and the clarinet-like woodwind and the deeper falk-horn intertwined as the group finished its warm-up tunes.

"Your players stand ready, Lady Anna," Liende said.

"Thank you, Liende. I'm almost ready." Anna walked to where Hanfor waited, still mounted. "1 don't know what will happen, but it could spook the mounts."

"I have told the men that. They understand."

"Good:" She paused. "Thank you.

Hanfor touched his brow in an informal salute. "May the harmonies be with you, Lady Anna."

Anna glanced from Hanfor to Jecks, getting a brief smile from the white-haired lord. She took a last swallow and coughed gently, to make sure her throat was clear. Finally, she nodded to Liende.

"The battle tune. On my mark.... Mark!" The head player gestured. and lifted her clarinet-like horn, turning to join in the melody she had started.

Anna tried to stay focused and relaxed, letting her body and cords carry the music, her mind on trying to hold the image of the dam, her eyes on the drawings, attempting to project them in place in the narrow gorge below.

"My words must start the damming of the river here below Even from the first words, the sky seemed to silver, and to freeze-a silver-blue hemisphere frozen in time. From the players' separate parts-each note rang like a tiny bell, even the sweet singing of the strings, and the deeper ba.s.s of the falk horn.

Anna forced her thoughts back to the image of the dam and to the song. ...

"With a building of the strongest stones from where the waters flow..."

The melody from the players welled up around her, and the sorceress half smiled. Never had they sounded so good, so solid.

"...setting every block into the place that it must hold..."

The phrasing flowed, just as she had planned.

Just before the last chorus. Anna could sense an enormous pressure behind even the silver-blue sky, and she could feel her knees trembling. Even with all the help of the players, Anna had this feeling she wasn't going to make it. Lights seemed to flash around her, and the ground groaned and rumbled.

She hung on, concentrating on the last words and the notes.

"Glory, glory, halleluia; glory, glory, halleluia; glory, glory. halleluia, these stones will last and last!"

She slumped, panting. Never... so... hard.... Such a short song ...

THRUMMMMM!!!

The entire heavens pulsated with a series of chords, the chords seemingly unheard by any but Anna, and silver clouds that were mist and yet not mist, filled the gorge. Underneath the ground trembled, and shook.

Farinelli half whuffed, half screamed, then half reared, dragging Lejun and his mount uphill and away from the river.

"...dissonance!"

For a moment, utter silence, a blanket of silence that m.u.f.fled absolutely all attempt at sound, descended.

THRUMMMM!!!.

With the second chord, sound resumed, and the silver mists over the river rose and boiled away. The haze lifted, showing a picture-perfect arching dam of glistening gray stone. The spillway was even there.

Anna could sense tears welling up in her eyes. She tried to take a deep breath-and couldn't. Dwnned asthma....

The world turned red, and then black and swirled around her.

82.

DUMARIA, DUMAR.

The two lords, one of Dumar, one of Sturinn, sit on opposite sides of the low table which bears a large carafe of wine, a bowI of honeyed nuts, and one of dried fruit. Ehara lowers the scroll and looks at Sea- Marshal jerRestin. "And how far upsteam is the Falche dry?"

"Not a drop of water flows over the first cataract or the second. Your sorceress has stopped the entire Falche. Even I would not have thought it possible."

"She's hardly my sorceress, Sea-Marshal," Ehara says with a ragged laugh. "It was done, Sea-Priest.

Don't tell me how you would not have believed it possible. Half your fleet sits grounded in the mud below Dumaria. The waters of the Envaryl lap around their hulls. What of the other half?"

"They remain at Narial. The bay is tidal." JerRestin reaches for a handful of honeyed nuts. He eats them deliberately.

Ehara lifts the scroll he has been reading. "The sorceress has sent this. She has suggested that it might be better for me and my people if the Sturinnese fleet returned to Sturinn." He extends the scroll to jerRestin.

The Sea-Marshal reads slowly. "Behind the polite words, she is ordering you to dismiss us... and to pay her thousands of golds."

"It does not sound like such a bad idea, at least until the river is returned to us."

"You do not wish to pay all those golds. Nor do we wish that, either. The sorceress cannot hold back such a mighty river forever. It will not hurt to wait." The Sea-Marshal smiles. "In any case, the ships at Dumaria cannot sail anywhere."

''What if I requested you to leave?" asks Ehara.

"I would take your request, and then I would send it to the Maitre. It is on his orders that I am here.''

"I see."

"I think you do, Lord Ehara. Shall we have some of that wine while we wait for the sorceress to act? It may be some time. You know she is prostrate. The scroll might not even be her work. She reached beyond herself, and she may not recover. Often those who do such great works do not recover," JerRestin smiles. "Some wine?'' he repeats.

"Ah...of course."

83.

Anna opened burning and blurred eyes, slowly, painfully.

Jecks looked solemnly at her, propped up as she was by lumpy pillows in the high-backed bed. She met his glance for a moment, then closed her eyes against the pounding headache and the miniature starbursts that flashed before her.

When she opened them again, the white-haired lord sat in the chair by her bed.

"My lady...Lady Anna --- you cannot continue like this." Jecks extended a goblet. "It is wine, honeyed.

You must drink."

Anna drank. Then she closed her eyes for a moment "You must eat and drink more before you sleep."

Obediently, she forced her eyes back open and took another sip of the wine, far too sweet for her preference. She tried to get her eyes to focus on the white-haired lord, but one moment he seemed clear and the next a silvered fuzzy image.

''Another," he urged inexorably.