Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (13 page)

Jilseth cast the translocation spell to the four winds and let the elements reclaim the wizardry. Someone else’s magic was at work in this house. Jilseth looked around with the wizard sight that was Hadrumal’s first lesson for every newly-apprenticed mageborn. No, there was nothing here to cause her concern.

Walking through to the front room, she looked up at the ceiling. Overhead, in that upper chamber, some skulking mage was hiding. Some paltry, thieving hedge wizard; one of those who fled Hadrumal for the mainland, too ill-disciplined to sustain the study to make the most of their innate talents. Word must be spreading that Kerrit was finally succumbing to his injuries and this charlatan had sneaked in to scavenge.

Jilseth threw a dense web of elemental water around the entire building. In the next instant, she felt a surge of elemental fire attack her spell. The assault was stronger than she expected. Catching this villain unawares would require some thought.

He was doubtless waiting for her to come up the stairs. She studied the ceiling, using her wizard senses to assess the laths beneath the plaster, and the rafters supporting the floorboards above. Foiling such expectation would demand precise timing and an immediate switch between such antagonistic magics. Not so long ago she would never have dared to try it. Now she didn’t hesitate.

A surge of air took her halfway to the ceiling. As a second step thrust her upwards, Jilseth released the elemental air and summoned her earth affinity to pass through the upper floor as the last remnant of rising air faded away. Her feet landed solidly on the dusty boards.

‘Despin!’ Wizard sight showed her the shabbily dressed mage in a corner, vainly trying to hide himself within a swirling spiral of air.

‘I—’ He let his invisibility spell uncoil and fade away. ‘I came to pay my respects to Master Kerrit.’

‘He lies.’ Brother Tinoan said mildly from the doorway.

‘I don’t need Artifice to tell me that.’ Jilseth looked at Despin with incredulous contempt.

Kerrit’s table was strewn with scrolls and books, haphazard where everything had been so neatly piled before.

Despin folded his arms, bearded chin jutting. ‘Mind your manners, Madam Pupil. I am a member of Hadrumal’s Council. I do not answer to the likes of you.’

‘You can answer to Planir.’ She felt the surge of Despin’s wizardry attempt to carry him away. Once again, her magic web around the house held firm, even against the searing heat of his unrestrained affinity.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

Before Despin could answer though, Jilseth remembered sitting in the neat sitting room below not half a year ago. Kerrit had explained at frankly tedious length precisely how he proposed to search for any mention of ensorcelled artefacts in Relshaz’s temple archives. She remembered Velindre relating that conversation to Hadrumal’s Council in the first of the endless debates over what should be done with the magical loot won from the renegade Anskal.

‘You’re looking for lore on the wizardry of instilling spells into some object.’

‘Quite so,’ Brother Tinoan confirmed.

Jilseth couldn’t help a shiver of unease. Was the old priest prompting her memories as well as Despin’s unspoken answers?

The shabby mage clenched furious fists. ‘We have no more insight into those cursed artefacts than we did on that first day when we took them from the Mandarkin. The Solurans demand a price which we will never pay for their help yet Planir just folds his hands and accepts their arrogance and insults. Where will we find the secrets of crafting such things for ourselves? Nowhere—’

He broke off, his eyes widening, to thrust an accusing finger at Tinoan. ‘What are you doing to me? How dare you?’

Despin hurled elemental fire at the old priest. Jilseth threw up a cold wall of emerald mist to consume the vicious wizardry.

Her distraction gave Despin his chance. With a swiftness that swept books and papers from table and shelves alike, the bearded mage disappeared.

Jilseth would have followed him. Where else would he be heading but Hadrumal? But as she reached for her affinity, she felt the first tremor of weariness run through her wizardry.

‘You have done a great deal today,’ Brother Tinoan observed.

Jilseth spun around. ‘What did you do to him?’

The old priest shrugged. ‘I merely encouraged him to speak so that you would know what you were facing.’

‘What was he doing?’

This time Jilseth was asking herself but Brother Tinoan answered.

‘You heard what he said. More than that, he seeks advancement and acclaim for being the first mage to unravel the mysteries of these magical treasures. He is by no means alone,’ the old priest reflected. ‘If you thought that the renegade mage’s destruction would see an end to Archmage Planir’s troubles, think again. The echoes of such violent upheavals haven’t even begun to die away.’

‘Brother?’ Resnada opened Kerrit’s bedroom door. ‘I think he’s fading.’

Jilseth smoothed her skirts. Carrying herself back to Mellitha’s house would be less demanding than returning to Hadrumal. She could bespeak Planir, to inform him of Despin’s appalling behaviour and ask what he wished her to do.

Tinoan looked at Jilseth, his gaze penetrating with disapproval. ‘Can you not spare the time to sit with us as we see Kerrit to Saedrin’s threshold? To honour the price he has paid for Hadrumal’s sake?’

‘Of course, forgive me.’ Jilseth was ashamed to think that she could have even thought of being so callous. Kerrit deserved far better than that.

Nevertheless, as she followed the old man back to the blameless mage’s deathbed, she found herself beset by growing fears as well as distress at Kerrit’s undeserved fate.

Whether or not through means of his Artifice, Brother Tinoan had been right. Jilseth had assumed that the Mandarkin’s death would see Hadrumal’s customary serenity restored. There would be no more disputes over Planir’s authority in the Council Chamber, especially now that even the most contentious mages had the puzzle of these ensorcelled artefacts to fascinate them.

Beyond the wizard isle, there would be no more challenges to Hadrumal’s hegemony prompted by Corrain of Halferan’s infuriating obstinacy and his unshakable resolve to find magic to save his people from the corsairs, never imagining what unforeseen disasters would follow.

So she had blithely assumed. Jilseth was no longer so certain. None of them, not her, Velindre or Mellitha had foreseen the murderous attack which was now proving the death of poor Kerrit. What further unanticipated consequences might yet unfold?

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

The Merchants’ Exchange, Duryea, Caladhria

Winter Solstice Festival, 3rd Evening

W
AS THERE ANY
chance of achieving what he had come here to do before this parliament ended? How soon before someone called for a recess tonight? Whoever it might be, Corrain couldn’t blame him. He would have emptied his own purse for a breath of fresh air. The atmosphere in this room was somewhere between stale and stifling at the end of this tedious day.

Four hundred and more Caladhrian barons had journeyed to Duryea, fulfilling their sworn duty to attend at least one quarterly parliament a year. They sat on benches at long tables on either side of the aisle running from the lectern beneath the great chamber’s north-facing window to the double door in the southern wall. Twenty tables, each one set with flagons and fine goblets for twenty lords and at the moment, at least twice that number were trying to talk, every one intent on having his say without listening to anyone else’s opinion.

This vast chamber easily accommodated them. Duryea’s merchants’ exchange was larger than any other in the realm. This most northerly of Caladhria’s market towns prospered whatever the season or the weather’s vagaries, thanks to the east-west high road carrying trade between the independent fiefdoms and towns of Ensaimin and the wealthy princes ruling the great houses of Tormalin. Lesser roads brought goods from Dalasor, and still more northerly Gidesta. Duryea had separate market places for linen and dyestuffs, for raw wool and leather, for livestock still on the hoof and for the wheat, oats and barley harvested from these Caladhrian barons’ fertile fields.

And none of these wealthy lords had been willing to spare a copper cut-piece to defend the coastal baronies from the corsairs.

Corrain took care to hide his abiding resentment as he sat on a chair an arm’s length from one of the middle tables claimed by a coterie of barons who held lands around Trebin. The local lords had needed to send lackeys to fetch extra seating on the festival’s first morning. The number of barons attending this midwinter parliament was unprecedented.

Corrain and his allies had worked hard to make sure of that, drawing on Lord Saldiray and Lord Taine’s detailed knowledge of the barons’ countless factions, some united by location and common interests and others divided by personal dislikes and enduring rivalries.

‘My lords! It is clear that no one will prevail this evening!’ Standing at the lectern by right of his local pre-eminence, Baron Gyrice shouted, hoarse and exasperated.

The assembled Caladhrian nobles were so startled that silence swept through the room. Those barons still intent on arguing were hastily hushed by their neighbours. Those who had been dozing belatedly stirred, trying to pretend that they had merely closed their eyes in contemplation.

Corrain would send such dullards to keep a night watch with their own barony’s guard troop. They could learn the skills of staying alert and unwearied from first chime to last. Then they might appreciate the discipline required of the men who defended their homes and families, always ready to make obedient haste and fulfil any liege lord’s request.

‘Thank you, my lords.’ Baron Gyrice took a sip of water from a goblet on the shelf of his lectern. ‘Let us adjourn to observe Souls’ Ease Night’s rites. A show of hands?’

Corrain was on his feet. He ignored the outraged faces, more than one lord ready to rebuke him for resuming this endless wrangling.

Other lords looked bemused. He knew they considered a jumped-up guardsman had no right to be heard, even if some disgraceful contrivance had annulled Baron Licanin’s rightful guardianship of the Widow Halferan, sister to his own wife.

Corrain spoke quickly to forestall any interruption. ‘My lords, we are debating this proposal to enshrine in Caladhrian law a complete and eternal prohibition on the use of wizardry in warfare by any baron using force of arms on behalf of the Caladhrian populace against enemies from beyond our borders...’

He spoke slowly and clearly, for the benefit of Lord Matase who was proving his worth as a scribe, though the noble baron could not have imagined this undertaking when he had volunteered on the parliament’s first morning. Customarily the official archive only needed summary notes of those attending and of the show of hands should a vote be called.

But today the noble lords of Saldiray, Myrist, Taine and Blancass had proposed this ban on wizardry throughout Caladhria. For the past two days, Duryea’s taverns had heard terrifying tales of wild magic from those guardsmen of Licanin, Tallat and Antathele who had returned home from the Archipelago.

They had expected Hadrumal’s spells would merely carry them to the corsairs’ anchorage so they could put the villains to the sword. They had agreed to help the Archmage because Planir had told them that the corsairs had amassed a collection of ensorcelled items which they would use to renew their attacks on the mainland. Since Hadrumal’s ancient edicts forbade the use of wizardry in warfare, the Archmage had a duty to stop such abuses of magic.