Free The Shadow Sorceress by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

for him, and Lord Robero not even here…”
    Secca kept her face emotionless. Anna had demanded that she not be paraded like a trophy in the event of her death, but laid to rest in the small mausoleum Anna and Secca had designed and created through sorcery on the hill overlooking the orchards.
    A small wizened woman stopped after viewing the coffin. Her bright brown eyes fixed on Secca. “You carry on like her, sorceress, you’ll be all right, and so will everything.”
    â€œThank you,” Secca murmured, not quite sure what else she could say.
    In the end, Secca had to stand before the casket and the catafalque on which it rested…and speak.
    â€œA score and a six years past, a tired woman appeared in a house in Mencha. She had been ripped from her own world. Shehad been separated from her own children. She was a sorceress who knew nothing of Defalk. She may have wept and raged. If she did, no one saw it. Instead, from the first moment, she did what she thought was right. For this, she was attacked. She suffered more wounds than most armsmen. For the first years she lived in Defalk, she was always attacked, if not by arrows and sorcery, then by words. Defalk was poor and starving and suffering from a terrible drought caused by sorcery. She destroyed the invaders and stopped the drought. Time after time, she almost died trying to put things right.
    â€œAlong the way, she helped people—a player here, a miller’s consort there, an orphaned child. I know. I was one of those orphans. Along the way, she became powerful. But she still helped people. She restored Defalk and gave a stronger land back to Lord Robero.
    â€œShe was not perfect. I will not say she was, but I will say that never has Defalk or Liedwahr had a ruler so powerful who was also so good. She came from another world, but she made Loiseau and Mencha and Defalk her home.” Secca paused. With each sentence, the words got harder, and her eyes blurred more.
    â€œBecause of her, we all have what we have. Because of her, we have seen nearly a score of years of peace and prosperity in a land that scarce knew weeks of peace before her.” Secca swallowed again. She had more to say, but there was no way she could express it all.
    â€œMy father said it best. The sorceress was a good woman. She asked more of herself than of anyone, and she never stopped trying to do her best. Because she never spared herself, others did more than they thought they could, and Liedwahr is a far better place…. May we all remember that. Forever.”
    Secca just stood before the coffin, the rest of the words she would have said choked within her, her eyes burning and unable to take in the hundred or so who had crowded into the foyer—or those who filled the courtyard outside, or even the holding’s staff and the guards who flanked her. Finally, she just bowed her head, then, after another long moment, turned and walked back toward the staircase.
    There, halfway up the steps, she stood, silently. Beside herstood Richina, equally silent. On the step below, one to each side, stood Kerisel and Jeagyn.
    As the mourners shuffled out into the bright fall sunlight, the four sorceresses watched. Secca stared almost sightlessly toward the front of the entry hall, her throat thick, her stomach knotted so tightly she could scarcely breathe, her cheeks streaked with tears.
    Outside, the high puffy clouds drifted westward—toward Falcor—in the light chill breeze.

14
Mansuus, Mansuur
    Kestrin, Liedfuhr of Mansuur, paces back and forth in front of the desk in the upper-level private study. On his left arm is a mourning band of black and maroon, standing out against the sky-blue velvet of his tunic sleeve. After a time, he stops and laughs.
    â€œAnd you used to tease your father for his pacing.” Murmuring to himself, he walks to the window behind the desk and stands there, looking out from the hillside palace at the wide river