Autumn Spells

The second book

in the Seasons in Sansward series

The Green mage Saisha and Hethan, a master swordsman, find themselves entangled in a dark dame's spells.

They are drawn together at a harvest festival.  They free a wounded Prica, a man cursed in the shape of a wolf.  Yet neither expects to see the other ever again.

Yet when Hethan returns to his home keep, a dark dame ensorcels him to track down a mage.  She wants to reincarnate herself in the mage’s younger body.

The dame’s dark spells bring them back together.

Can Saisha disentangle Hethan from the sorcery?  Or will she be trapped and turned into a wraith while the dark dame inhabits her body? 

Read on for the first chapter: 

 Prologue

In this life her name was Neehla.  Over many lives, she had lost some things, gained others.  Through them all, her sorcery remained tangible evil, woven from the elemental air and the incense of her spells.

Her fingers flew across the loom, weaving a snare for the unwary.  She snatched a spiral of smoke from the air and twisted it deftly before joining the sorcered strand to the thread on the shuttle.  As it shot across the warp threads on the loom, the gray smoke deepened, becoming as darkly hued as the power that shaped it.

The old woman’s lips voiced the spell, a susurration designed to entrap and bind.  Her words rustled around the room, their dark intent still as insubstantial as the air from which she wove her spell.

Once the spell was completed, once she released it on her prey, her intent would be as tangible as the iron chains that bound prisoners to the dungeon walls, as her prey would be bound to her. She worked in deepest night.  No one would overhear this work.  No one would suspect her dark intent.  She was the castle’s dame, sworn to help and heal.  No one knew she was a sorceress incarnated many times in bodies willing and unwilling.  Old in evil, Neehla had learned to hide her purpose so she could continue

As she would continue, once she had another body to use.

Madda stood guard outside the room although poor old fool did not know she kept watch for a sorceress.  Neehla laughed silently at that.  Should someone come—and who would come this late?—but should someone come, the old woman would give her mistress the few seconds she needed to make everything appear innocent.  No one would interrupt, though.  No one thought anything more about the keep’s old dame except that she was good for healing.  That would change.  Soon she would take control of Senric Keep, its people and its buildings.  Until that day, she must work secretly.

So she wove her ensorcelled blanket by dark of night.

Power darkened her fingertips as the shuttle flew across the warp threads.  Again a tendril of smoke, a twist to shape it, and the shuttle snapped back across the purple strands.  She worked with the colors of her powers, the staining purple and the abyssal black, strongest of the dark powers, hardest for her to wield.

Three lifetimes ago she had first thrust her hand into its inky depths.  She paid with the energy it drained from her body, but the toll was worth it.  Senric would be a name in these plains, a name to be feared, a name that the Watrani overlord must reckon with when his troops came to conquer northern Mullen, as he had conquered the southern keeps this past summer.

Aye, she’d rule three score years more.  With a new body, a strong young lord snared to her side, and a return to her great puissance, no foreign lord would dare unseat her, no matter what tamed sorcerers came at his side.

The shuttle flashed back.  She smoothed the blackened strands of smoke, as taut and strong as the thread.  Tonight, the blanket would be finished.  Tomorrow her years of planning and of hoarding her powers would be near their end.  Tomorrow she would await his return.

Chapter 1

Dowse swung his stew away from the fire’s heat.  “A moment, a moment.  A bowl.  I need a bowl.”  He found it and ladled up a serving which he then placed before Saisha as if it were a prize.

She had eaten Dowse’s cooking before.  It was no prize.

Across the planked table, Basmath grinned, knowing her dilemma.

Saisha shifted on the hard chair.  The distant toll of a bell gave her an escape.  “We surely have not been talking this long?  The morning’s half gone.  I intended to be back on the road.”

“Bide a while,” Basmath told her.  “You came in the day before yesterday.  You walked the town getting your supplies yesterday.  Today you leave?  Nyah.  Bide a while and talk before you return to the forest and that tower you call a home.  No home, not that lonely and deep in the Tangle.”

“Only ten day’s travel.”

“And a week of that heading straight into forest.  And no one for that week, at least.”

“People live in the forest.  I have neighbors only two days away,” she corrected with a gamine grin.  “And you have too many people in this town, Basmath.  I shouldn’t have come during festival.”

“Bide two days more, and you’ll have plenty of company on the road.”

“That is the reason I wanted an early start, before the road is deluged with people who have the same idea.  My old horse makes better time when he’s not being crowded off the road.”

“You’ll not bide, then?  We can offer you that little bed another night.”

She silently compared that short, narrow and musty-smelling bed to the one waiting her at Lannoge’s Tower.  In the attic space they’d given her, she had bumped her head countless times and scraped her shoulders squeezing through the narrow doorway with her parcels.  She hadn’t complained.  To reach her room, anyone would have to go through Basmath’s own room.  Since he ran a backstreet hole, serving up good ale in a rowdy atmosphere of strong spirits and smoky secrets, she hadn’t complained once.  She had felt safe in that little attic room.

“Don’t tempt me.  I know how hard it is to set aside a good bed during festival.  I must be going.”

Dowse stuck up a finger.  “A bit.  Just a bit.  Stay a bit.  I may have news.”  He darted from the kitchen into the taproom.

For the brief moment the door was open, the noise from the taproom roared in.  Then the door slammed shut.  Basmath looked at her and sighed.  He was a big man, with a grizzled beard that hung down his barrel chest.  He’d been a sergeant for her father and her brother, gruff but as rock-solid as the granite mountains.  Wounded in battle, unable to swing the axe he favored, he’d taken to other work for the Frenc overlord Sven.

His tavern at the crossroad town of Baien was part of that work.  Guardsmen drank his ale and sifted through street rumors.  Traders and journeymen kept ears pricked for any dregs that would turn a profit.  Towners came for both.  Some rubbed elbows at the bar, some sat at tables and harassed the serving wenches, some lurked in shadowy corners.  And Basmath scarfed up every word of sorties and schemes and secrets.

Six years into being a spy for Sven, Basmath had not been pleased when Saisha presented herself at his tavern door.  No place for you, he’d said.  What are you doing beyond the borders, with Summa’s soldiers ready to snatch up mages?  You’ll be a double prize, mage and sister to the overlord of Frenc.  He’d been shouting by the time he said the last.

Dowse had calmed him down.  Dowse had made a place for her in the attic and found a stall for the old grey in the little stable behind the tavern’s back garden.  By the time she’d come down to dinner, Basmath had been ready to talk in a normal tone of voice.  He’d given her the latest news about troop movements and lordlings’ machinations.  And he’d kept her from seeing the worst of what came to his tavern.

He ran a hellhole, her brother had once said, long before she ever thought about traveling south.  On good nights, a fight flowed as freely as the ale.  On the bad ones, the guards slung the dead out the door and onto the cobbled lane.  Saisha had been careful to stay out of the tavern room.

“I’d not have you leave with trouble between us.”

Basmath was remembering his shock at her appearance.  “No.  No, not that, my friend,” Saisha said gently.  She reached across the table and covered his beefy hand.  “There’s no trouble between us.  Never think that.  I’m late coming and early going, that’s all.  I told you that before.”

“I still cannot believe your brothers said nothing about your coming into the south without more protection.”

“They said plenty, believe me.  Dame Perahta said plenty.  But here I am.  And I have friends on the road and power to protect me.”

“Trouble has a way of coming at you edgewise, from angles you don’t expect, Saisha.  I’ve got the scars to prove it.”  After a heavy breath, he stood and stretched his bulky frame.  “You will not bide, then?”  She shook her head.  “You should make First Bridge before nightfall.  If you take the—.”

Dowse burst back into the kitchen.  “Have you told her of the red wolf?  Did he tell you?”

“A red wolf?  A prica, Dowse?”  She dropped her russet hood over the chair’s back and looked at Basmath.  “There’s a prica in Baien?  What have you heard?”

“I’d forgotten,” and his abashed expression gave credence to his words.  “A seller over by Watran Gate has got one.  That’s the rumor, at least.”

“A prica?  Are you sure?  Not a wolf dyed red?”

“Prica, for sure, for sure.  Let me get the man what was talking of it.  He can tell you.”  Dowse ducked back into the taproom.

Saisha glanced at the old sergeant.  “What do you think?”

“I’m wondering how anyone could come by a wild prica.  Cover yourself, would you, before he brings ‘im back.”

She gathered up threads of power.  “An illusion is a simp—.”

“No spells, Lady Saisha, not here.  You watch out for any use of power in Baien.  Even I can see the power streams that the illusions cast off.  The Watrani are all over the town, and they’re on the lookout for any power.  Talk is that they’ve got Gitane Witches to spot mages.”

“Gitane Witches?  Truly?  I had heard rumors.”

“Believe them.  I’ve seen some strange things since summer started.”

Saisha was pinning her cloak at her shoulder when Dowse sprang back in.  Mindful of her disguise, she jerked the russet hood on, hoping she had covered herself in time.  She turned as Basmath spoke to the newcomer.

Beneath a brown leather jerkin, the man wore all black, rather than a lord’s colors.  Mercenary, she thought, but no mercenary had a sword as fine as the one in harness on his back.  And another sword dragged at his left hip, a broadsword with a serviceable hilt wrapped in leather.  He was her height;  Basmath topped him by a head.  If not for her covering hood, she could look him eye into eye.

The man folded muscled arms and eyed her askance.  “Aye,” he drawled to Basmath’s question.  “The animal dealer brought the wolf in today.  What of it?”

Dowse flipped a hand at her.  “The dame, Dame Saisha, she wants to know about it.”

The swordsman looked at her head-on, and Saisha flinched.  A white-ridged scar crossed his right cheekbone, an inch under his eye.  A criminal’s mark, but lacking the accompanying brand.  Not an official sentence then.  Someone had scarred him to have everyone think first that he was a criminal.  Who had wanted him so isolated?

If he had noticed her recoil, he didn’t show it.  His eyes skimmed the length of her.  Enveloped by the long cloak, her shape was well hidden.  His gaze returned to her face, concealed by the shadowing hood.  “The prica’s over at Watran Gate.  But you’ll get no sport.  It’s half-dead.”

“It’s not sport I want, swordsman.”

Dark eyes swept her again, as if he saw through the material hiding her.  “What would you be wanting, Dame?”

The laconic voice managed to insinuate something more.  Saisha’s cheeks burned, making her glad of the hood.  Basmath stepped between them.  “Watch your tongue,” he snapped.  “You’ll not talk to Dame Saisha like that.”

“Basmath.”  The tall host looked at her.  She shook her head.  His mouth scrunched up, but he stepped back.

The swordsman raised an eyebrow at Basmath’s acquiescence then looked at her again, a re-assessment.

Saisha dipped her head slightly to let him know he was examined in his turn.  He was well-made, of no great height but corded from swordwork.  Dark hair matched his dark eyes, and bones chiseled his face.  Two swords, and a knife in his belt with another in his boot.  And she finally saw the blue-figured housebadge over his left breast.  The badge showed wear, as weathered as his leather jerkin.  Whatever household he was with, he had been in service there quite some time.  So, no mercenary, even though he dressed like one.

Her gaze rose to his.  She saw pride, curiosity—and something more, something barely discernible.  Without warning, foreboding coursed her spine, leaving the chill of danger.  She shivered and thrust the omen away.  And she was doubly glad of the hood.

He bowed, only a little, managing to convey insolence with the scant movement.  “My apologies, Dame.”

Dowse fairly bounced on his toes while Basmath grimaced.  Saisha held up her hand.  “What price did the dealer name, swordsman?”

He shrugged.  “I didn’t ask.”

“Where was this dealer?  Near the Watran Gate, you said, but what street?”

Again his gaze surveyed her, then he startled them all by offering, “I’ll take you.”

Basmath scowled.  “Dame, with the soldiers in the town, let me—.”

“No.  No, old friend, although I would be obliged if you would provide that extra night that you offered earlier.  And a quiet corner in your back garden for a wild prica.”

He rolled his eyes heavenward.  “As you wish, Dame Saisha.  You have only to ask, you know that.  Take care, and you,” he glared at the swordsman, “you see that she returns in one piece.”

He merely quirked an eyebrow then swept an arm out.  “This way, Dame.”

~ ~ ~

The dame nearly plowed into him when she emerged from the dim tavern.  Hethan had stopped just beyond the low eave.  She rapidly sidestepped.  “My horse and cart—.”

“We won’t need it.  It’s just a few streets,” and he set off.

He didn’t know what had made him offer to take this dame to the animal dealer.  And now the tapster had warned him to return her in one piece.  An hour wasted, maybe two.  He thought of what his half-brother Riste and some of the other men would be doing.  He thought of the diseases they risked.  Those were hours definitely wasted.

Besides, this dame intrigued him.  She had recoiled when she saw his scar.  Everyone did, even some who should have grown used to it.  She hid in that russet cloak.  When she remembered, she spoke with a snap that reminded him of Dame Neehla when she was angry.  She did not often remember.  Her voice was soft as honey.  Her lifted hand had revealed fine bones and a slender wrist.  And thus he knew that she was young and healthy.

A young woman disguised as a dame, traveling to Baien during festival.  And a tapster who wanted to protect her but could not.  But the big man owed her something, for he gave her a room when people were sleeping three and four to a bed, if they were lucky, and on the floor if they weren’t.  Hethan should know:  he was on the floor with the other guards from Senric Keep while Riste had the bed to himself.

Dame Saisha, he reminded himself as she kept behind him on the crowded street.  He parted a path between dawdling revelers and merchants hawking in front of their booths, and she slipped after him.  Her billowing cloak had finally annoyed her enough that she gathered the folds around her.  And that had given him a better idea of her shape.  Definitely young and healthy.  She was wise to keep cloaked in Baien, especially if she were traveling alone.

And why would a young woman be traveling alone?

Hethan paused at the corner beside a baker selling sausages and bread.  She came up beside him.  He heard her sniff at the aromas.  Without glancing her way, he started across the booth-lined street.  He didn’t look back, just forged through the throng, his head up to plan around the knots of hindrance ahead.  Yet he kept her in his periphery and saw her skip to keep up.  Aye, definitely young and healthy.  He wanted to see her face.

He stopped again at the next corner to get his bearings.  When she came up beside him, he grasped her cloaked arm, shifting his grip to her elbow.

“What are you—?”

“Get ready.”

She wiggled her arm.  He ignored it, watching the wagons and horses in the street.  Then he tightened his grip and propelled her into the street.  She gasped but kept up.  A heavy dray rumbled over the cobbles.  He towed her behind it and before the four horsemen trotting up the lane.  She had an eyeful of snorting warhorses and glinting armor, then they were across and squeezing between stalls.  Hethan dropped his hold and went ahead.  Rubbing her arm, she trailed.

He turned into a narrow alley.  He lost sight of her and turned his head.  She had stopped.  He stopped and came back a few steps.  Only then did he realize how close the buildings were.  The stepped-out upper stories almost met over the walkway, blocking out the light.  The confined space reeked of refuse and human waste.  A dark alleyway, dark as the deeds that were committed in them.

“You needn’t fear to pass these ways, Dame Saisha.  My sword is at the ready.”

Her breasts rose and fell.  He saw her shoulders straighten.  “I am not afraid, swordsman.”  A lie.  “Lead on.”

He waited for her to draw even.  “Why are you so interested in this prica?”  She looked up, but the hood still concealed her face.  “Do you have some dame’s brew that calls for prica blood?”

“What?”  Her shocked jerk nearly slipped the hood from her head.  She recovered, hastily drawing it back into place.  “A brew that calls for blood?  What kind of dame have you been dealing with?  That is dark power.  Evil.”

“Dark and evil?”  She had just described the dame at Senric Keep—although only he thought Dame Neehla was evil.  “If you don’t want it for a brew, what do you want with this prica then?  Sport?”

She snorted her distaste of that idea.  “I want to free him.”

“You will have to heal it first.  It’s been beaten and starved.  Doesn’t go for water.  Doesn’t even react when the dealer hits the bars with a stick.  You may buy it only to have it die on you.”

She stopped, and Hethan stopped and faced her.  “I am a dame.  I will heal him.”  Her words carried force, and he thought she might be the only person in Baien who could heal the poor creature.  “And if I cannot, at the least I can give him some dignity and comfort before death.  Do you not think a prica deserves that little?  Or are you like the most of the people here in the south, thinking all pricas should be killed?”

He thought he could see the creamy curve of her cheek, but she turned away and stalked ahead of him before he could be certain.

“I think,” he said as he caught up to her, “that I should lead since I know the way.”

Her step faltered as they walked into deeper shadow.  “I am sorry if I offended you.  I thought all plainsmen hated pricas.”

Hethan knew then that she was from Frenc.  Her earlier comment about “in the south” had hinted of it.  This last comment made it clear.  And she was a fool to be alone in Baien, the tip of southern Mullen, bordering Watran.  A Frenc woman, a dame, would be a prize for a Watrani guard to take to his captain, his captain to take to his commander, and that commander to his marshall, until she wound up in cold cell deep inside Watran’s borders.  She was even more incautious to announce that she could heal and would try to heal a creature as near death as he had described.  A Frenc and a dame with healing power:  she would be a ripe prize for the Watrani.

No wonder Basmath had worried.

His silence had lengthened, and he knew he needed to respond to her comment.  “Let’s just say I have some knowledge of cages.”

He increased his stride, going ahead of her and ending that conversation.  The alley opened into a sunlit lane.  The air reeked of hides and dyes and oils.  The signs swinging above shop doors unnecessarily proclaimed this was Tanners’ Street.  Huddling together across the way were soldiers wearing the black-slashed orange tabards of Summa, new overlord of Baien since his Watrani soldiers had conquered it last spring.  Hethan headed for them.  Dame Saisha’s step faltered, but she stuck to his heels.  He cut around them and turned into another alley.  Once out of the soldiers’ sight, he dropped his hand from the hilt of his broadsword.

She gave a relieved sigh.  “I am glad you are no Watrani follower.”

“I am not, but it isn’t wise to say so, even when you think no ears could possibly hear.”

As dim as the others, this alley worked deeper between the houses and shops, squaring off into several twilight turnings.  He took the first left turn before doubling back at the next, threading a maze that flashed on corners admitting light and the noise of the festival.

The alley brightened.  At its end, glaring like the mouth of a cave, was a lane.  From it they emerged into the crowd and the riotous colors of the fair.  Hethan stopped behind the stalls of rival clothiers, their vivid silks and linens pegged to rope and flapping like flags.  The dame walked past him and past the stalls to view the streets.

The wind teased at her hood, giving Hethan hope that it would toss it back and finally give him her face.

“I can smell the river.”

He came up beside her.  “Look to your left, above the houses.  That’s the town wall.”

“And behind it the river that used to separate Mullen from Watran.”

“Now nothing does.”  He took her arm and turned her, helping her get her bearings.  He pointed to a nearby tower with a white and blue pennant flying.  “The Protectorate cloister.”

“Aye.  We are very near the gate, aren’t we?  You got us here very quickly.  I would have taken the streets and the lanes and still been far away.  You know Baien well.”

He bowed, much as he had in Basmath’s kitchen.

She huffed.  “My thanks for your assistance, swordsman.”  Annoyance had flattened her voice.  “I believe I can find the animal dealer from here.”

“His stall’s at the end of Stithy Lane.”  Even as he spoke, a counter breeze washed the unmistakable odor of confined animals down the lane.  He felt and saw her reflexive jerk.  “I’ll go with you.”

“There’s no need.  You can return to your business.”

“No, Dame.  I’ll go with you.  Say it’s atonement for my earlier rudeness.  This way.”

She shrugged and led out.  They crossed to the other lane.

The animal dealer’s banner fluttered over the heads of the crowd pressed close around the booth.  A wall of bodies hid the cages, but the animals’ whimpers and squawks sounded over the talk and laughter.  Even Hethan sensed the backwash of thirst and hunger.  The remnant gift from his mage mother chose awkward times to appear.  He swallowed nausea.  If the dame were truly a powerful healer, then the tide of animal minds must be swamping her.

She squirmed her way into the crowd and worked toward the front.  Hethan plowed behind her, not certain how she might need him but determined to stay close.