Free Shadowsinger by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Page A

thatattempt, even if you did not personally lift the blade.” Alya offers a wry smile. “Even so, I keep my word. It may be a week or two, but then you can return to your home.”
    â€œBut not to the Exchange, I wager.”
    â€œNo.” Alya shakes her head. “You have proven that you place the Ladies of the Shadows above your duty to Ranuak. That is not acceptable for the Assistant Exchange Mistress.”
    â€œDyleroy accepts this?”
    â€œIt was her decision, not mine. She is Exchange Mistress.”
    â€œFor mere golds you will destroy all we hold dear.”
    Alya’s eyes glitter, and a palpable chill issues from the dais.
    Santhya shivers, but says nothing, and her own deep-set eyes continue to view the Matriarch.
    Finally, Alya speaks, slowly, deliberately. “What we hold dear is the right to determine how we live. What we hold dear is for each woman to be mistress of her own body. Golds are one tool, but no Matriarch and no Exchange Mistress has ever subverted those principles to golds. You, and all the Ladies of the Shadows, fear the use of sorcery so greatly that you would return us to being slaves rather than see sorcery employed to keep us free. Through fear, you would enslave us.”
    â€œThrough sorcery,” counters Santhya, “you will destroy us.”
    â€œI doubt that.”
    â€œMatriarch…small as she is, well-mannered as she is, that sorceress will destroy all that is Liedwahr before the year is out. The Spell-Fire Wars will seem like nothing compared to what she will unleash in the name of protecting Defalk—and us—from the Sea-Priests. The oceans will turn to steam; the land will flow like water; and the handful of folk who survive will die barren.”
    Alya laughs. “In the time of the Mynyans, during the Spell-Fire Wars you mention so often and so well, there were scores of sorcerers and sorceresses. Today, Defalk has four, perhaps five. The Sea-Priests may have a score, possibly twoscore, after the score or so that the Sorceress-Protector Secca destroyed.”
    â€œThe Sorceress-Protector has the knowledge from the Mist Worlds, and none had that in the time of the Spell-Fire Wars.”
    â€œEnough.” Alya does not raise her voice, but the receiving room chills yet more, despite the morning sunlight angling through the eastern windows. “We do not agree. We will likely never agree. I have answered your inquiry, and you may go.”
    Santhya offers the slightest of bows, then turns without speakingand walks toward the door that opens as she nears it and closes after she passes through it.
    Alone in the receiving room, Alya does not rise from the crystal chair. Her eyes are dark, and her face remains drawn.

11
    With the sun barely rising over the port quarter of Encora, Secca and Alcaren dismounted on the pier where the ocean trader was tied. Secca still felt tired from having to do sorcery early in the morning to send the message tube to Lord Robero, but she hadn’t wanted to send it much before they left, and did not wish to send it later, when she might need all her strength to deal with the Sturinnese. As she turned, Secca glanced again at the wooden plaque below and aft of the bowsprit, where the spare script letters proclaimed Silberwelle .
    â€œYou don’t mind that it’s the Silberwelle , do you?” asked Alcaren.
    â€œNot so long as you don’t have any Darksong in mind,” Secca replied. Still, it had been disconcerting to find that the “flagship” of her small expedition was the same vessel from whose deck she had destroyed the Sturinnese fleet blockading Encora—and where she had nearly died.
    After unstrapping her saddlebags and lutar, Secca turned and looked once more at the Silberwelle . “I hadn’t thought…”
    â€œYou hadn’t thought what, Lady Sorceress?” came the question from the ship’s railing beside the upper end of the