Ashtaar laughs, and the laugh is hard and cruel. "You would have failed long before now. You are neither ruthless enough, nor compa.s.sionate enough."

Gretslen does not respond.

"Since you will not ask, I will tell you." The spy-mistress's fingers caress the black agate oval again. "She will do what must be done, because she has suffered enough, and knows the consequences if she does not.

She suffers because she knows too well how hard her actions fall, and she will struggle to balance them, and she will fail. Yet she will struggle well enough that most of the people she rules will forgive her and .follow her. Those who do not.. ." Ashtaar shrugs. "They will essay her destruction, and perhaps one will succeed. You have great ability, and you believe that force always succeeds. It does, but not all force is obvious." She smiles. "Thank you. You may depart. Please keep me informed."

"Thank you, Mightiness. We will do our best." Gretslen's voice is even, and she rises, and bows, then turns and walks gracefully to the door.

109.

DUMARIA, DUMAR.

The Sea-Marshal glances up from the drums as Ehara steps into the small room off the armory. Heavy wrappings cover his arms, and his dark hair is short and frizzled. One of the burns on jerRestin's cheeks oozes a reddish fluid.

"Yet more sorcery?"

"What else would you suggest, Lord Ehara? My own iron quarrels burst into flame. Iron-flaming--- before I could even approach the b.i.t.c.h. Yet she used no sorcery to seek me."

"She is braver than most lords." Ehara's voice holds a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt "She rode into a trap, and turned it on us.

"You and your men did not move quickly enough."

"Neither did you. Sea-Priest, but you escaped. Most of my men did not, and another score who did drowned in trying to cross the Falche."

"It took all my sorcery to hold off the sorceress's fires." JerRestin looks at his arms. "I was not entirely successful even so. I did lower the waters at the ford."

"Yes. Not enough."

'Enough to leave the sorceress on the eastern side. She will not risk the river with such a small body of armsmen."

"Her twenty-fivescore no longer look so insignificant, and I am confident she will find her way across, if she has not already." Ehara looks pointedly at the drums. "You labor at more sorcery?"

"We have lost more than forty fine ships to the first attack of the sorceress. I have lost over three thousand of the best lancers, dying in agony. A handful of us remain, and I can never return to Sturinn. Not with such disgrace. I can but atone.

Ehara's heavy eyebrows lift.

"The sorceress will die. She has power, but not cunning. She must live to succeed. I must die to succeed."

"Then you had best die soon, and Well, Sea-Marshal, for my armsmen are few and thin." Ehara' s booming laugh rings hollow. "She has foiled you twice. What will be different a third time?"

"She has used her gla.s.ses before attacks. This time, I will be along the line of march, well away from any battle site, in the most innocent of settings. You will be farther westward "I should retreat... leave Dumaria defenseless, and open to those barbarians of the north?"

"She will not sack a defenseless city. She has never done that. She will pursue you-and me."

"My Siobion? My heirs?"

"Leave them. She has yet to kill an heir."

Ehara frowns. "1 should listen to a man who is already dead?"

"You can listen or not." The Sea-Marshal binds the last of the drums into the framework. His lips are tight together between words, as though each movement, each word, is agony. "You cannot defeat Defalk while she lives. After I die, one way or the other, you are no worse off."

"That is the first true statement from you since you came to Dumar." Ehara's lips twist.

"Watch how you call upon tnith Lord Ehara. The harmonies have a way with those who would make truth their handmaiden." The Sea-Marshal's eyes glitter. "I, above all, have learned that. So will the sorceress."

110.

Anna glanced up through the rain that continued to fall, and then down at the swollen Falche, as it swirled around and over the piles of rock and masonry that had once been bridge abutments and piers. Despite her jacket, and her sodden felt hat, she was soaked through, and the wind had turned cooler, if not cool enough to chill her-yet.

Downhill from where she sat on the big gelding, Hanfor received another scouting report. Beside her on his mount sat. Jecks, stolid and silent in the late-afternoon damp, silent as he had been since the slaughter in the hills.

Anna turned in the saddle and glanced at the white-haired lord, then turned away.

''Lady Anna?"

She turned back. "Yes."

"Perhaps I should return to Falcor... if you find my presence so distasteful."

"I don't find your presence distasteful. I'm just tired of being judged when I'm the only one doing anything and everyone else is coming up with reasons not to do things."

"I did not presume-"

"Lord Jecks... you did presume, and you have presumed all along. Not so much as the other lords, but you have judged, and I hate being judged that way." Anna met his eyes. "I shouldn't have yelled at you, and I'm sorry I did. But I was tired." She paused. "I know you were tired, too. Let's leave it at that. We still have a lot to do."

"As you wish."

I don't wish. I just wish you'd stop silently judging me.

Hanfor finished listening to the scout, then turned his mount and rode back up the road to Anna.

"The scouts can find no bridge, not within fifteen deks north or south of Dumaria." reported Hanfor. "The river is too high to ford."

You don't think I see that? "Then we'll have to make a bridge," Anna declared.

Jecks glanced at her through the light rain.

"We're going to rest, and eat, and then we're going to build a bridge. I'm not crazy, my dear Lord Jecks."

Anna gestured downhill at the swirling gray-blue water of the Falche where it lapped at the end of the road and the ruins of the old bridge. "We're going to lose armsmen if we have to ford that." And my swimming isn't much better than a dog-paddle for survival.

"We could wait," suggested Hanfor.

"For what? Rain lasts forever here. Besides, then we'll have to chase Ehara farther. I want to get this mess over. Lord-the harmonies only know what problems have happened in Defalk." And whose fault is that, with your chasing Ehara?

Anna ignored the self-recrimination, wiped water off the back of her neck, and turned Farinelli back eastward until she covered the dozen or so yards separating her from the players. Fhurgen, Rickel, and Jecks followed.

Liende inclined her bare head as the regent reined up.

"Liende? Do the players recall the building song, the one we used for the bridge at Cheor?"

''Once we have learned a spell, Lady Anna, we can always recall it." Liende paused. "But... with the rain.

"We have one tent-mine. You'll have to huddle together, but I trust it can be done."

Liende nodded. "With cover, we can play."

"Good." Anna turned in the saddle. "Fhurgen, we need to set up my tent beside the road, with the front facing where the bridge was."

''Yes, Lady Anna," answered the ba.s.s-voiced and dark-bearded guard.

''It's not for me. The players need shelter so that we can sing a spell to build a bridge. That might get us out of this rain."

"Yes, lady." The guard grinned. Beside him, so did Lejun. Behind them, Kerhor, bare-headed with black hair plastered against his skull, nodded.

"You would spend sorcery on Dumar?" asked Jecks slowly, evenly.

"Why not? We need the bridge, and I did destroy the one that was here." Anna laughed, holding it to a chuckle, rather than yielding to the hysterical shriek she felt like loosing. "I said Liedwahr needed better bridges."

"You did say such," Jecks admitted.

"I would have liked to do more in Defalk, but things have a way of getting out of hand." Like life... and would you stop questioning everything I do that's different?

"They do, my lady."

Anna nodded, then watched as Fhurgen and Rickel quickly began to erect the tent, whose once-white panels now appeared tan-and-pink, depending on which dust from where had worked its way into the fabric. The tan-and-pink turned dark where the rain streaked the silk.

Beside her, Jecks watched impa.s.sively, his eyes straying toward Anna occasionally.

Once the panels were in place, the players crowded under the silk and began to extract instruments and tune. b.u.mping into each other with almost every movement. Yet no one complained.

Was that because she watched? Or because musicians on Erde were less spoiled than the students of earth?

Fhurgen found another pole and strapped the front flaps to it, creating another oasis free of rain. He gestured, and Anna dismounted.

As the players tuned in the crowded confines of the tent, water dribbling off the silk, Anna stood under the extended front flap and sang the melody, using nonsense syllables, but thinking the words.

As the players completed their warm-up, she cleared her throat gently, eyes on the roiling water at the base of the hill where the road vanished under the muddy torrent. On the far side a causeway began in midair and extended across flooded fields to a gap in the bluff-the same bluff that, some twenty deks south, bordered the upper part of the city of Dumaria.

"We stand ready, Regent." offered Liende.

"Anytime," Anna answered.

"On my mark... Mark!"

Anna used full concert voice, helped by the humidity of the gentle rain, letting the words flow forth.

"... replicate the blocks and stones.

Place them in their proper zones...

Set them firm, and set them square..."

The ground on which she stood shifted as she completed the first verse. Strophic spell, the thought came again, and she wondered if she'd always think of versed spells that way. Then, she couldn't afford the luxury of through-composed spells, with no repet.i.tions of the melody throughout the entire song.

The gray clouds darkened as she wound up the second verse, and the rain began to fall even more heavily.

A white-glared bolt of' lightning flashed across the blackened western sky, and the very hillside shifted once more, with rumbling from the ground to match the rumbling from the sky. Dust puffed into the rain-momentarily, before it was dampened out of existence.

Another lightning flash seared across the heavens, revealing a shimmering mist that thickened, then cloaked. the river where the old bridge had stood. The sorceress, miniature flares exploding across her field of vision, staggered. A chord, then two paired chords, strummed on that unseen gigantic harp, shivered the silver fog covering the Falche, a fog of sorcery, steam, and rock dust.

The river boiled, becoming even more turbulent, and the fog seeped up from the ground where the rain around the tent struck puddles or damp ground. Anna's eyes burned, although the light flares before her were subsiding. Because you did the spell in the rain...? An archway of gray-and-red stone emerged from the heavy gray fog that the roiling waters of the Falche carried downstream in patches.

Anna staggered and grabbed for one of the poles holding up the flap, and Jecks caught her other arm, supporting her.

"You will need that tent on the other side. And some food and drink." His voice was slightly hoa.r.s.e.

"Do we have any?" Anna tried to grit her teeth, tried to ignore the flashes of light before her eyes.

"Enough. No one will gainsay your food or rest when you have ensured none die in crossing the river."

And who decided they needed to cross the river? "I suppose not." Anna felt embarra.s.sed that she had to lean on Jecks, but her legs were like water. "1 suppose not. Let's get that tent down and get over the river."

Jecks practically lifted her into the saddle.

"Thank you."

"Thank you, my lady. I did not relish swimming that river or waiting in the rain." He flashed a smile, and Anna wondered, again, why things seemed so possible with the handsome lord at times, and so impossible at others.

She pushed away the judgments and urged Farinelli downhill and toward the stone bridge-another structure that would doubtless outlive her, and her name.

Jecks rode beside her, and she was glad he did.

111.

Anna wiped her forehead. The hot midmorning summer sun searing through a clear sky had already turned the rains of the previous days into humidity resembling that in a steambath. "This is worse than summer in Defalk with no rain."

Absently, she wondered if all went well in Defalk. How could she know, now that the flow of scrolls from Menares and Dythya had stopped? She scarcely had enough energy for the business at hand, let alone scrying Falcor and elsewhere in Defalk for who knew what.

"It's hot." She said, realizing she was repeating herself "Even my old bones find it hot," admitted Jecks.

"Your bones aren't that old," said Anna. "Not that much older than mine."

"Yours look to be much younger, much younger," the white-haired lord pointed out.

"It's what's inside that counts." Anna reached for her water bottle again. The water helped some, but not so much as it had in the drier heat of the Sudbergs.