Read Online The Shadow Sorceress by L. E. Modesitt Jr. - Free Book Online

would be.”
    â€œMy uncle Keithen…he wanted Suhl.”
    â€œI know. He tried to kill your mother, and then poison her. She never asked Anna for help.”
    â€œNot until I came along.” A faint smile crossed Richina’s lips. “She cared not for sorcery in the hold.”
    Secca nodded. “Are you unhappy to be here?”
    â€œNo. I’m thankful. I know enough to know I’d be unhappy without the Harmonies. Jyrll…he loves the land and the people. He’ll listen to me, if it comes to that, but he wouldn’t do anything to hurt people, except to stop a greater hurt.”
    Secca wondered if Richina hadn’t just summarized ruling—do no harm except to stop a greater evil. “You’ll be all right.” Secca rose.
    â€œI know.” Richina smiled wanly. “Thank you, lady.”
    After Secca closed Richina’s door, she walked farther down the lower corridor—away from the entry hall—and stepped out the side door into the cool night air that had descended upon Loiseau and brought a chill into the courtyard. Above her, the liedburg loomed, seemingly lightless, for all the lamps and candles within.
    Her feet carried her toward the gates. Above the near-silent hold, in a clear sky, the stars shone bright—and cold. Secca shivered, despite her green leather riding jacket, and her hand brushed the hilt of the sabre—another gift of sorts from Anna.
    The white disk of the moon Clearsong shimmered near its zenith, and Secca was grateful that the red point of light that was Darksong had not yet risen. She stopped in the space between the open gates of Loiseau, looking to the east, not quite sure why. Neither the stars nor Clearsong offered any answer to her unvoiced questions. To her right, to the south, lay the domed work building, dark and empty.
    In time, she turned and walked back up the stone steps and back into the soaring space of the entry hall. Neither guard looked at her as she passed, her steps slow as she neared the center of the spacious foyer and what awaited her there.
    She looked up to the brass chandelier, its white candles still dark, for a moment before her eyes skipped over the blue-tinted stone blocks of the walls and dropped to the polished black and white interlocking triangular floor stones. Finally, the red-haired sorceress lifted her eyes to the shimmering bronze catafalque that held a simple and ancient oak casket, one that had once been meant for Lord Brill’s sire, three generations back, polished so that it shimmered under the light from the candles of the single four-branched sconce set behind the catafalque.
    There…against the green velvet of the open silvered coffin, lay the body of the woman who had transformed Defalk, the woman who had saved Secca time and again, who had taught her music and sorcery…and life.
    Anna’s face was drawn, but she looked almost as young as when Secca had first seen her more than twenty years before, and Secca wondered if, perhaps, her body would remain incorrupt forever, like a statue. Anna still looked young, her features too drawn, too fine, to be beautiful without the fierce spirit that had animated them. But she was dead, perhaps because she had demanded too much from herself, in life, in sorcery…and perhaps because she was tired.
    Lord Jecks had died nearly a half-score of years before, his heart bursting as he had been instructing young armsmen at hisown hold of Eldheld. Anna had been quieter, more withdrawn, since Jecks’ death, leaving more and more of the day-to-day sorcery to the trio, only occasionally traveling to Falcor. After Lord Jecks’ death, Anna seldom had seen or conferred with Lord Robero, and when she had, neither had been particularly happy, not from what Secca had overheard and seen, although Robero had always taken Anna’s advice.
    Secca shook her head.
    She doubted that Robero would care that much personally about Anna’s