He bounced almost against the stones.
"Now..." Anna said sweetly, "I could have turned you into a flame, but I didn't. Do you think I'm a sorceress or not?"
"Calmut!"
Anna. looked up. A silver-headed man, dressed in pale green, with a broad smile on his face, leaned out of the parapet above.
"Yes, ser?" The guard looked up.
"I would be most happy to receive the lady. I also think you need to help Sestor muck the stables later. I appreciate your checking on the lady's abilities, but I have to question your brains in trying to attack after she proves them." The green-clad lord added, "And I appreciate your forbearance, lady. Loyalty is hard to find these days."
Calmut stepped aside, then opened the door, his lips tight. "Take the stairs there, all the way to the top."
As Anna and Daffyd started up the wide stone stairs, the guard slowly retreated to the front door, shaking his head, and the water from his hair.
The silver-haired lord waited at the top of the steps, a smile upon his tanned face. "I am Lord Hryding."
Anna bowed. "I am Anna, and this is Daffyd." She felt that Hryding was honest, though she couldn't have said why.
"Let us go out to the roof garden, and you can tell me why you have chosen to honor an old man." Hryding gestured down a short arched hallway that showed greenery and sky at the end.
Anna stepped out of the arched corridor into relative coolness and shade. An awning stretched from above the arched doorway out to the roof garden, and a round-faced woman with frizzy, henna-colored hair sat at the round wooden table under the awning. She was younger than Hryding, in her early thirties, or younger, Anna judged, since life was obviously harder in Liedwahr than on earth.
The garden behind the table where the woman sat was small, four yards wide and a dozen long, bordered by brick-edged flower boxes filled with red and pink blooms, and containing several small palmlike trees.
Anna looked around. The third level of the hall consisted of rooms opening onto a tiled terrace that encircled and overlooked the central courtyard. Each room had both shuttered windows and a louvered door-probably for ventilation. Beyond the edge of the garden was a waist-high wall that also followed the terrace all the way around the hall's upper level, providing a barrier between the terrace and the two-story drop-off to the courtyard below. Some trees growing up from the courtyard's lowest level protruded above the wall, and a hint of moisture suggested to Anna that the lower courtyard might have a fountain.
"This is my consort Anientta. Dear, this is the lady Anna, and her player Daffyd."
"You are. young," said Anientta, nodding her head politely. "What brings you to Flossbend?"
Hryding picked up a small bell and rang it gently.. "Please be seated." He gestured to the chair beside Anientta, then looked at Daffyd and nodded toward the empty seat on his consort's right.
Anna slipped into the curved wooden armchair, surprisingly comfortable despite its lack of upholstery. "Thank you." She turned to Anientta. "I am new, to Liedwahr, and I wanted to pay my respects."
"New to Liedwahr..." mused Hryding. "Your words do have an odd flavor to them." He took the chair across the table from the three, looking up as a slim youth in a sleeveless pale green tunic and matching trousers appeared. "Nerio... some of the cold berry juice, if you please, for all of us."
The youth bowed and turned, then headed back through the archway.
"From where have you come? Far Sturinn? Or the Western Isles? Or cold Pelara? You look Pelaran with that blonde hair." Anientta smiled indulgently.
Anna forced herself to return the smile, even though she disliked the other woman's condescending tone. "Much farther "
"She is a sorceress," suggested Hryding. "I had to laugh when she doused poor Calmut with ice water. He was so angry he tried to jump her, but Lady Anna was merciful. She just bounced him back a few paces."
Anientta's frown was brief. "A sorceress? Are you perhaps looking for a patron?"
Anna shook her head. She hadn't even answered the last question. "No. I am very new here.
Do most sorcerers or sorceresses have patrons?"
"Some sorcerers do," Hryding said. "Most sorceresses do. I think the Lady Peuletar was the last independent sorceress, but she died when I wasn't much more than a boy. Lord Brill, the harmonies rest his soul, was independent..." His words stopped, and his eyes sharpened. "I am unintelligent. Are you the sorceress who was at the Sand Pass battle?"
Anna nodded.
"Is it true that you were summoned from the mist worlds?"
"Yes," Anna admitted. "You can see why I am not familiar with the customs of your world."
"It was said that you perished with Lord Brill."
"I had some difficulty," Anna said, hating to admit the weakness, "and Daffyd carried me out." She paused as the young server Nerio appeared with a tray, a pitcher, and four goblets.
As Nerio filled the pewterlike goblets, Hryding cleared his throat and lifted a goblet. "Would you honor us with your presence here at Flossbend, Lady Anna, for a few days?"
"I appreciate the offer, Lord Hryding, but it might be best if I did not impose upon your hospitality-not for long, anyway."
Hryding's face clouded, and he half lowered the goblet.
"I do not wish to offend you," Anna said. "But so far almost every lord who has offered me hospitality for any lengthy period is dead." That was true. Although Anna doubted she was exactly the reason, she felt staying at Flossbend would not be a good idea with Anientta's un- spoken hostility, although the lord's offer was certainly tempting, especially given the strain created by Madell.
"Surely, one day would not cause great problems?"
"For a day or so I would be most pleased and honored," Anna said, "but more than that would trouble my conscience."
"We should begin with a midday meal, then."
Anna grinned. "That would be no problem, and I deeply appreciate your warmth and hospitality."
Again, Anna caught the tinge of irritation or anger from Anientta.
Hryding lifted the bell, and before the echo had died away, Nerio had reappeared.
"The midday repast for all of us, and the children, and Gestatr and our guests. Tell Gestatr that I would greatly appreciate his presence. We will use the west awning."
Nerio nodded and slipped away.
Anna wondered what other people were hidden away- guards and the like.
"How do you find our land?" asked Anientta pleasantly.
"Hot. . . very dry," Anna said. "I am told that the dark ones have caused the dryness.
"So say the sorcerers, and, I must admit, I do not recall any years since my boyhood that were as dry as the last four or five," Hryding said slowly. "It is hard to believe that they have such power."
"They do," replied Anna, thinking of the massive storm clouds and the lightnings that had smashed the fort.
"How is it-" began Hryding.
"And the people, what of them?" asked Anientta. "Are we so different?"
"I have not met that many people besides sorcerers, players, and armsmen, but those I have met seem like people anywhere." Anna turned to Hryding. "You were asking, lord?"
"Oh. . . it will wait." The older man smiled pleasantly.
"Are you really from the mist worlds?" asked Anienitta.
"Not all of them, if there are more than one. My planet is called earth."
"You were a sorceress there, also?" pursued Anientta.
"Sorcery is not quite the same there, but, yes, I used singing to make my way."
"'Make your way' ... that is an odd way of saying it. Are not sorcerers respected there?"
Anientta raised an eyebrow.
"Sorcerers and sorceresses are not as powerful as the technology wizards, not in my land,"
Anna said carefully. "Our worlds are very different in that way. The technology wizards build steel, birds. . . that carry hundreds of men thousands of leagues in the air, or they can destroy whole cities in the blink of an eye."
"Could not you have brought such magics here? Rather than uncertain sorcery?" asked Anientta.
"Such technology magic does not work here. I brought a few things, but they are useless."
Anna forced a smile, repeating, "Our worlds are different."
Anientta opened her mouth, then closed it as a square-faced man with short-cut black hair walked up and stopped short of the table. His leathers were worn, but clean, and he wore a pale green sash. A blade hung from the left side of his worn and broad belt, matched by a knife on the right. "You sent for me, lord?"
Hryding rose. "I did. Might I present you to the lady Anna? This is my captain Gestatr."
Anna stood also. She had seen the man before, although she did not know where, but it had to have been at the Sand Pass fort, since it could have been nowhere else.
"Lady." Gestatr inclined his head.
"Captain. Did I see you at the Sand Pass?"
"Yes, lady." Gestatr looked at Anna. "Lady.., you are the same. . . and different, but I cannot say how."
"Battles have a way of changing things," Daffyd suggested.
"That they do, master player. That they do." The captain slipped into the chair that Nerio had brought. "But the lady appears... more rested.. . younger."
Anna and Hryding sat down.
"You were in charge of Lord Hryding' s forces.... ventured Daffyd.
Gestatr glanced toward- the lord, then nodded. "There were not many of us there. Synope has one of the lower calls." He laughed, almost bitterly. "That was what saved us. We were marshaled above the stables, to provide assistance to larger groups. Afterwards, Captain Firis- he was some lord's captain-just told us to head home, that our lord would need us in the days to come." Gestatr laughed. "So we did. No one seemed to want us, and there wasn't much point in throwing away less than twoscore lives."
"Your call was only twoscore?" asked Anna. Lord Jecks had been required to bring ten times that.
"Unhappily.... . . no. We had fourscore. Twoscore is what I brought back, and reckoned us lucky for that after the thunderbolts and the Ebran archers."
Nerio reappeared. "The table is ready, ser."
"Good." Hryding stood.
So did everyone else.
Anna and Daffyd followed the lord and his lady out from under the high awning and into the sunlight, along the terrace wall. Gestatr walked on Anna's left.
In the courtyard below was a central plaza surrounded by a miniature park, with grass, trees, flowers, and the fountain Anna had predicted. The group walked halfway around the upper level of the hail until they stood under a second awning almost directly across the courtyard from where they had been sitting. The long table, covered with a pale green cloth, was set for seven, a place at the head, and three on each side.
Hryding stopped behind the head chair and gestured to the place at his left. "Lady Anna."
Then to the place beside Anna. "Ser player."
"The children?" asked the lord, still standing.
"I hear them," answered Anientta.
The ubiquitous Nerio arrived, following a boy and a smaller girl, almost as though the servitor were a rear guard.
"This is Kurik." Anientta smiled at the sandy-haired boy. "He's ten. His older brother Jeron is out riding with my sire today."
Kurik was a square and stocky boy with a too-round face and a spoiled look about him that Anna didn't like. His smile was perfunctory, and his bow more so.
Standing at the corner of the table was a petite red-haired girl with bright green eyes. Like her brother, she wore a pale green armless tunic, trimmed in silver, and trousers. She was barefoot, while Kurik wore boots. That bothered Anna. So did the fact that Kurik plopped himself into his chair beside his mother's place without even a glance at either his father or mother.
"This is Secca. She is my youngest." Anientta' s smile was marginally tighter.
The redheaded girl nodded, and bowed to her father.
"You may sit," Hryding said. "Everyone ... please."
Anna was glad of that. She'd not drunk much of the berry juice, and her head hurt. Hunger did that to her, and she'd been a lot hungrier of late, a lot hungrier. She slipped into the high-backed wooden chair, following Hryding's example.
Secca reminded Anna of Elizabetta, and the sorceress's eyes filled. Anna swallowed, and looked down. "She's precious...." the sorceress said huskily, and looked down.
"You are upset by a child?" asked Anientta, drawing her chair up to the table.
"No-not upset, not that way. I was summoned here... and my children. . . they. . ." Anna tightened her lips and shook her head. Battles she could handle, and lecherous men, and riding, and wounds-but not children.
"You are so young... so very young."
Anna ignored the condescending tone and blotted her eyes, hating herself for revealing the pain. "My oldest daughter would have been almost as old as you, Lady Anientta. My son is twenty-four, and my youngest daughter, who looked like. . Secca here. . . she is eighteen."
Hryding was the one to swallow. 'Even for a sorceress that is hard to believe. ... Your seeming youth.