The sorceress wiped the sweat from her forehead, glad she didn't seem dizzy or light-headed. She glanced toward Hanfor, but the arms commander had his eyes on the carnage and the hills beyond the fields and the low hedge-rows.

Were they all so blind? Did Ehara have to spend every last man to prove he was lord? Anna gritted her teeth. Why were all the lords in Liedwahr like that? Or most of them? idiots!

Still seething, Anna glanced toward her chief player. "Liende? Have them rest for a bit. They'll have to mount up and do that spell again. Can you and the players manage it?"

"We can. Regent. Especially with a moment to catch our breath." Liende turned. "Players! You heard the regent. Make ready to ride. Then drink and get something to eat."

Before Anna turned, she saw the young Delvor nearly stagger toward his mount. Was she asking too much?

Hanfor rode to within a few yards of Anna. "Regent, most of their forces remain behind the hills."

Anna looked up. "Can we ride into the center of the hills there?'' She pointed. "And have the archers fire all their arrows at the same time?"

The graying veteran nodded. "We can. Will that destroy all of them?"

"I'm strong enough for another spell after that if it doesn't." And mad enough. if Ehara and the d.a.m.ned Sea-Priest want it this way, then they'll get it. Women barefoot and pregnant? Women in chains? Not while I'm regent.

"Will you...?" Hanfor laughed ruefully and broke off the question. "We follow where you lead."

They would, but did she have any right to lead them into such danger? The image of chains slipped through her thoughts, and her jaw tightened. Who else would take on the Sturinnese?

She forced herself to wait until the players had eaten before she flicked the reins, and Farinelli started forward.

Half the armsmen rode on each side of the players. Jecks, Anna, and her guards, down the road between the hills. The road was at least a haif-dek from the top of the hills that flanked it.

"Would that those hills were not so close," murmured Hanfor. "You chance much."

"They won't attack," Anna said, hoping she were correct, "not until we're in the center. Can you have the archers ready to fire their arrows, some in the direction of each hill? Once I start the first spell?"

"I will ensure that." Hanfor edged his mount away from Anna and toward Alvar. Shortly, commands flowed along the lines of armsmen as the Defalkan force neared the center of the low hills.

Anna licked her lips, shifting her weight in the saddle. Rickel and Fhurgen rode in front of the sorceress and regent, their eyes scanning the nearing hillsides. Jecks rode beside Anna, and Liende and the players close behind.

The wind had gotten stronger once the growing afternoon clouds had blocked the sun, and with the smell of earth came also the faint scent of burned meat, and occasionally the intermittent smell of smoke, gra.s.sy smoke.

Anna glanced around. "Here."

As the armsrnen circled to form almost a ring around the regent, the players dismounted and formed up on the road, facing westward. Anna dismounted, cleared her throat, and glanced at Liende. "We need to hurry."

"Half warm-up! Then the arrow song. The long one."

The sorceress nodded to herself and waited.

"At my mark!" commanded Liende as the warm-up ended.

Anna turned to Hanfor. "Have them shoot once I start singing."

"Archers! Arrows! Now!"

"Mark!" ordered the chief player.

Anna sang.

"These arrows shot into the air, make each head strike one annsmen there..."

Even before Anna completed the spell, the archers had released a second volley of shafts, and hors.e.m.e.n began to appear on the slopes above, galloping out of formation but straight toward the Defalkan armsmen.

Anna swallowed, ignoring the light-headedness she felt. Perhaps half of the charging figures in crimson were cut down by the last of the Defalkan arrows, but more than a thousand armed lancers poured over the hills toward the Defalkan force. At least, it looked like that many to Anna.

She looked back at the players. Delvor lay sprawled on the ground. Liende stood panting, exhausted, almost unable to lift her horn.

Jecks had his blade out and his mount shadowing Anna.

The sorceress sprinted to Farinelli and yanked out the lutar. s.h.i.t! s.h.i.t! s.h.i.t! No matter how you plan, it doesn't quite work....

The only spell she had down cold enough to rattle off that quickly was the short flame song. She forced a quick and rough strum/tuning of the lutar, and tried to match the pitch she wanted before she sang.

"Armsmen wrong, armsmen strong turn to flame with this song..."

She forced the image of Dumaran figures into the spell, and she had to sing the entire spell twice before fires crackled out of the sky, before the awful whips of fire raked the hillside Then, fires flared in front of her own eyes, and she couldn't even see Farinelli or Jecks. She tried to sit down, tried to cradle the lutar... half hoping she had managed that before blackness and flames lapped over her like tides of ice, tides of fire.

...ice and fire, fire and ice, and will the world end twice...

Whips of fire flayed men, except they were boys, boys like Mario, boys like Birke and Skent... just boys...

Horses screamed as flames burst from the saddles on their backs... and a hot fire rain fell on ashen valleys and low hills, hills and valleys that had been green, oh so green...

...fire and ice... ice and fire...mist and flame...

Some time later, when the sky was dark, Anna found herself wrapped in a blanket, sweating, on her cot.

Jecks sat on a stool, as if he bad been waiting.

Her head ached, and her stomach twisted. She struggled into a sitting position. Large unseen hammers pounded at her skull, and knives slashed at her eyes. She closed them. That didn't help. She opened them.

They still hurt.

"How fare you, my lady?"

"Like s.h.i.t," she rasped. "As usual, for this sort of thing."

The white-haired lord extended a bottle.

She sipped the warm wine, once, and swallowed. Then she took another longer swallow. "Maybe ... that will help."

"Your players are exhausted. The armsmen do not look this way." Jecks' voice was low and bleak.

''What happened?" Did they capture us? Where are the guards, then?

"Once again, you have utterly destroyed an enemy," Jecks said quietly.

"1... didn't plan it that way. They didn't give me much choice."

"You gave them less, lady." Jecks did not meet her eyes.

"Wait a moment," Anna snapped, sitting up and letting the blankets fall away. "Here we go again. Ehara sends golds and tries to grab some of Defalk. He sends lancers, and he won't admit it. He won't pledge to keep his hands off, and everyone sits around and says, 'Sorry, Lady Anna, you just don't have the armsmen to stop him.' So I try to make everyone happy and build a dam to suggest I have the power to stop Ehara.

"Now it's all my fault, and you're saying that I gave them no choices? I gave them plenty of choices.

They just weren't honorable choices. That's the problem with your great and 'honorable' Liedwahr, my dear Lord Jecks. If it doesn't involve lots of b.l.o.o.d.y killing, with dull swords and men on big horses, it's not honorable." Anna laughed harshly, and jabbed a hand at Jecks as he started to open his mouth. "No.

You have no right to judge me. Don't you dare to judge me. Every time I try to do something, it's going to offend the Thirty-three. You sit there and look away. Don't upset the lady Anna She might do something horrible. Don't get the sorceress-woman angry. Well, I am angry! I'm p.i.s.sed! Do you think I wanted to kill all those men? Do you think I like the smell of blood and burned flesh? You say I gave them no choices. I've given everyone a lot of choices. All my life. And you men, all of you, give me none. 'Do it our way. Do it the honorable way. You can't do it that way, Anna. That would displease someone. That would upset someone. What about me? I've saved your grandson's a.s.s, and your precious lords' a.s.ses, and it's never enough... Everyone looks sideways at me, like I'm going to... explode....

Well...you can see it. I'm exploding. I am the unreasonable madwoman. I'm the screaming, wild b.i.t.c.h-- sorceress! That's what everyone wants... to learn that I'm unreasonable. That I don't understand. Well... I don't. I don't understand why ... why..."

Anna found herself gasping, her head spinning, suddenly aware that the entire camp was silent. So silent that no one moved. She took one deep breath, and then another.

Jecks' eyes were on the ground.

Anna took the bottle he had set on the damp clay and swallowed deeply. Maybe she could drink enough that she could sleep. Whatever she said didn't matter. No one really listened. No one wanted to hear. She took another swallow.

Lord, she was tired. She sat, shaking from rage and exhaustion, on the edge of her cot, her head throbbing, her eyes seeing dark double images ... wondering what had set her off.

What choice had she had? She couldn't use spells that didn't kill-they were Darksong. Are you any better than any man aroused with bloodl.u.s.t? She'd gotten angry at the enchanted arrows or javelins or whatever, so angry she really hadn't thought.

Was Jecks right? That force was the only answer? Or that she had given them no choice? But had they given her any, really? Or was that just rationalization? But no one had ever given her any real choices, just choices that looked like they were real.

She sat in the twilight and looked through the open tent flaps at the embers of the fire. Her head throbbed still, and her eyes burned, and, double hot and cold images danced before them.

Jecks sat on the stool equally silent, eyes still averted.

Inside, Anna continued to seethe. Don't judge...You have no right to judge me....

Outside, only the faintest of murmurs filled the damp night.

Finally, Anna reached for the blankets, knowing she would collapse if she did not lie down again, wondering if she had pushed Jecks too hard... wondering ...

107.

The warm rain, slightly heavier than a mist, fell around the Defalkan riders as they continued westward out of the valley, out of yet another valley of dissonance, chaos, fire, and death.

Anna took a breath, of damp air. The rain had deadened the odor of burned meat and death. She glanced ahead at the churned hoofprints in the mud of the road, far less dense, far fewer than when Ehara had fled the Vale of Cuetayl.

Hanfor rode next to her while Jecks rode behind, not surprisingly, since Jecks had not spoken to her since the night before, and she wasn't about to speak to him.

"On to Dumaria," she murmured, more to herself than to Jecks or Hanfor.

The sorceress glanced over her shoulder past Lejun and Rickel to where Liende rode before the players, all looking as tired and bedraggled as Anna felt.

So much for your ideas of not having Liende play for battles... so much for so many ideas. She took a slow deep breath. You've got to relax some. Then she shrugged her shoulders and bent her head forward, trying to stretch out the tightness.

"We will need to cross the river somewhere," Hanfor said, "to reach Dumaria."

You don't think I know that? Anna bit back her first retort, then swallowed before speaking. "One way or another, we'll manage. We always do." Anna supposed she could use her marvelous sorceiy to build a bridge-or find a ford. She felt like laughing, but held back the feeling, knowing it was close to hysteria.

"Ehara has to find the ford or bridge he used."

"If he does not," added Alvar, riding slightly ahead of Anna, "then he must face us again, and now our forces outnumber his."

"He will find a ford," predicted Hanfor, wiping away the rainwater collecting on his brow.

Anna glanced down. The lower part of her trousers and her boots, where not protected by the leather of the stirrup guards, were mud-splattered once more. The sky seemed to lighten, and she hoped that meant the rain was pa.s.sing. Then, the way things were going, it could mean a lightening before a heavier rainfall.

Her eyes went to the road ahead, the one taken by Ehara. She had defeated his forces twice. Close to five thousand Dumarans were dead. The two major cities were flood-ravaged wrecks...and she still had to keep pursuing and fighting.

Won't it ever end? Do I have to destroy every last chauvinist in power on the f.u.c.king planet? And if I do that, will I turn every one of their sons into a fanatic? But if I stop now...nothing's resolved....nothing at all, for all the deaths.

Was that how all conquerors felt, rationalizing killing with more killing?

She still felt like yelling at Jecks-or breaking down and sobbing. Neither would help. Instead, she took another deep breath and looked at the muddy road ahead.

108.

WEI, NORDWEI.

Ashtaar's fingers run over the oval of black agate briefly before she steeples her fingers on the polished surface of the desk and waits for Gretslen to seat herself in the straight-backed ebony chair that has replaced the older chair.

The blonde seer sits, clears her throat gently, then begins. "My congratulations on your selection to the Council."

"Thank you, Gretslen. The sorceress?"

"The sorceress has destroyed the last of the lancers of Sturinn, and all save one of the Sea-Priest sorcerers.

She has chased Ehara out of the northeast of Dumar. Ehara has less than twentyscore armsmen from more than ten times that number"

"They are dead? Or wounded? Or deserters?"

"All of them are dead. Kendr and I could not discern any deserters through the reflecting pools. There could be a very small number."

''You are cautious. Good. Where is the sorceress now?"

"On the eastern bank of the Falche, north of Dumaria. She cannot cross the Falche without risking her forces. The rains have swollen it mightily, and her earlier sorceries ripped away the bridges."

"Gretslen?" asks Ashtaar deliberately. "Why do you dislike the sorceress so much that you blind yourself to what she can and cannot do?"

"Mightiness?"

"You heard me. Why do you hate her so much? Because you think you could do so well in her boots?"