Dangerous Waters (47 page)

Thunder shook the trees and a knife of lighting slashed open the cloud of earth. The Mandarkin mage sprang forward, leaving his two burly guards lying dead, soil filling their mouths, eyes and ears.

Four of those attacking the Solurans had already fallen victim to the burning blades. The Soluran wizard broke off from kindling his last defender’s sword and hurled a handful of fire at his foe.

A single step took the Mandarkin mage three long strides in the blink of an eye. The grass that had sought to trap him was left curling around empty air.

The Mandarkin flung a dart of lightning, his arm swift as a whip. Deadly sorcery pierced a Soluran swordsman’s eye. Blue magelight glowed through the links of his chainmail coif before he collapsed with his face blackened, the skin split to show the skull beneath.

The Soluran mage yelled. A voice answered from behind Corrain and Kusint.

Corrain spun around, his sword at the ready. ‘What did they—’

His words were cut short, but not of his choosing. He could feel the breath in his throat and knew his mouth and lips were moving but he couldn’t hear a thing.

He wasn’t the only one silenced. He saw Kusint shouting, exertion swelling the youth’s throat. No murmur escaped him. There was no birdsong to be heard, no rustle of the leaves overhead.

The Soluran men-at-arms continued valiantly defending their wizard. The remaining Mandarkin warriors hacked at them with renewed savagery. All in silence. Their antics might have been a masqueraders’ dumb show, though bladders of fake blood couldn’t hurl scarlet into the air as violently as the stump of a Mandarkin’s severed hand.

Kusint seized his arm and pointed. Corrain saw a second cloaked Soluran advancing through the woods, escorted by a handful of implacable men-at-arms.

Corrain raised his hands wide with his sword pointing downwards. He wasn’t about to relinquish the weapon so he could only hope that they would accept he was no threat.

A sideways glance showed him the Mandarkin mage flitting around the lawn flinging his lightning bolts at the embattled Solurans. Except their wizard had ringed the men-at-arms with sorcery of his own. The Mandarkin spells bounced off a shimmering shield as insubstantial as the haze rising from a sun-baked road.

The Solurans advancing through the woods ignored Corrain and Kusint completely. They only had eyes for the fight in the glade.

An errant shaft of lightning scored a burning gash in a tree trunk far too close for comfort. Branches all around the lawn were smouldering. His shirt sodden with cold sweat, Corrain’s every instinct urged him to drop to the ground or just run. Any sane man would flee ordinary arrows, never mind these enchantments.

He forced himself to stand. There’d be no hope of enlisting Soluran aid if they thought he was a coward.

The newcomers’ wizard strode forward, intent on the Mandarkin swordsmen and cradling ochre magelight in his cupped hands.

Corrain saw an attacker fall backwards. The man’s arms flailed wildly as he hit the ground. As his head arched back, his screaming face was visible within his helmet. Thankfully the unnatural silence saved Corrain from hearing his sickening agony.

A Soluran stepped forward to drive the point of his sword into the fallen man’s gaping mouth. The blade went so far that he must have driven it through the back of the man’s neck and into the ground beneath.

Kusint turned away, revolted. Corrain watched more of the Mandarkin fall, writhing in that same inexplicable agony. He saw their legs were twisted grotesquely beneath them, limp and useless.

‘Shit!’ Kusint clapped his hands over his ears so hard he nearly stunned himself with his own sword hilt.

Corrain had already dropped his weapon, shoulders hunched and hands cupped to defend his own hearing. Crippled and wounded men were screaming. Solurans yelled furious questions. Those few Mandarkin still alive shouted what must be appeals for mercy.

The wizard who’d just arrived bellowed at the mage who’d survived in the heart of the fight. A third cloaked figure appeared on the track leading from the clearing escorted by more men at arms. Her voice added a shriller note to the cacophony.

‘Where’s the Mandarkin wizard?’ Kusint looked wildly around.

‘He must have escaped them.’ If the Mandarkin mage had fled, that was of little concern to Corrain. Despite the noise making his head ring, despite his gorge rising at the stink of spilled blood and seared flesh, he smiled.

He only had to convince one of these Soluran wizards to bring such lethal magic to Caladhria.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

Trydek’s Hall, Hadrumal

8th of Aft-Summer

N
OLYEN CLEARED HIS
throat. ‘Do you suppose this is why Hadrumal’s Council prefers wizards not to wage warfare?’

Tornauld sat, his face cupped in his hands, and stared into the scrying bowl deep in thought.

‘Earth magic crippled those men.’ Merenel looked across at Jilseth. Like Nolyen, both magewomen had sprung to their feet, as startled as the other two to see such magecrafted violence.

Tornauld looked up, keen-eyed. ‘How?’

Despite her revulsion, Jilseth was equally intrigued. ‘I don’t know,’ she was forced to admit, ‘but my guess is that second wizard broke the bones in their legs.’

‘Those swords were shattered with elemental air, which required impressive concentration by the lad in the midst of that mêlée.’ Tornauld’s heavy brows knitted as he contemplated the vision floating on the ensorcelled water. ‘But the earth mage couldn’t see what he wished to break.’

‘I don’t know how he did it.’ Jilseth disliked repeating herself. ‘I will give it some thought.’

‘I take it that woman works with water, if she roused the grasses to snare them?’ Merenel sought Nolyen’s confirmation as he resumed his seat. The Caladhrian water wizard nodded.

‘You noticed that air mage could barely summon more than a handful of fire?’ Merenel murmured. ‘I’d like to see what a mage with true fire affinity might do in such a situation.’

‘Who are these men who attacked them?’ As Nolyen laid his hand on the scrying bowl’s rim, the water shimmered and the emerald radiance strengthened.

‘If you please, master mage.’ Tornauld grinned, looking up. ‘The spell held true. Let’s not overlook that.’

‘Indeed.’ Jilseth allowed herself a moment of euphoria. This was a splendid new achievement for their nexus.

‘We must show Planir.’ Merenel said decisively.

‘How we worked the spell or what we’ve scryed through it?’ Nolyen frowned.

‘Let’s watch a little longer.’ Tornauld contemplated the aftermath of the carnage in the glade. ‘These are Soluran wizards, wouldn’t you say? Fighting among themselves?’

Nolyen looked more troubled. ‘What do you suppose this man Corrain wants with them?’

Merenel snapped her fingers and a perfect circle of scarlet flame appeared above her hand. Fire mages had no need of candles or mirrors for their bespeaking. ‘Archmage? Please join us as soon as possible. We have made some important discoveries.’

Jilseth found her mouth unexpectedly dry. Planir would surely wonder why they hadn’t consulted him as they explored her new theory. In his role of Stone Master if not as Archmage.

On the other side of those scales, now she had another wholly new spell to her name fit to be recorded in Hadrumal’s libraries. She looked at the scrying bowl. Two more spells, one could argue.

‘What is so important?’ The Archmage appeared at her side, as silently and unobtrusively as someone stepping through an open door.

Nolyen and Tornauld immediately began talking, gesturing at the bowl, at the map of distant Solura.

‘We’ve devised a means of finding the man Corrain and then tying that spell into a scrying—’

‘These are Soluran mages. That greybeard works earth magic while the younger man has an air affinity—’

‘The woman seems born to water—’

Planir looked at Jilseth. ‘Please explain,’ he invited.

She couldn’t help clearing her throat. ‘I was thinking about pendulum magic, Archmage, after working with the Hearth Master’s nexus and trying to find Corrain by dowsing with a diamond. Though such efforts have been unsuccessful, that prompted me think about the lodestone magic which we devised to hunt Minelas. To follow him in particular,’ she amplified, ‘rather than just finding any magic being wrought, as the former spells could.’

She paused, expecting Planir to comment. The Archmage simply looked at her, silently expectant.

‘Corrain wears that manacle around his wrist.’ Jilseth pointed at the bowl. ‘We found a way to search for him with a modified version of the diamond magic and using a lodestone pendulum focused on that specific piece of iron.’

They would never have been able to do that if she hadn’t encountered the man back in Caladhria. As it was, it had taken her a sleepless night to recall the precise resonances of the manacle whose presence she’d barely registered with conscious thought. But her affinity with earth and stone had noted the metal’s properties, born of the ore that made it.

Planir inclined his head. To Jilseth’s apprehensive eye, that merely indicated his understanding. She had yet to win his approval.

‘And this scrying?’ The Archmage looked at the bowl.

‘Nolyen said something interesting when we were discussing lodestones.’ Jilseth smiled at the water mage and hoped he realised that she sought to share credit rather than blame. ‘We were talking about the rare earths contained within rocks. Some respond to his innate affinity with water even when he’s working with stone magic just as others speak to Merenel’s sense for fire.’

She caught Tornauld’s scowl. Did he think she would deny him his due? It was unfortunate that his innate magic had played no direct part in these new spells; Air and Earth were too fundamentally opposed. But they could not have worked the nexus without him. The Archmage would know that.

‘What did Nolyen say?’ Planir prompted.

‘He remarked on the oils to be found in black shales. We’d already been experimenting with ground oils and scrying,’ Jilseth explained, ‘to see if that offered any new prospects of scrying over such a great distance. Not with any success, I’m sorry to say. But then I recalled that red shales can have fragments of lodestone within them.’

Which Planir knew full well. She hoped he didn’t think she was trying to school him. Jilseth blushed, talking quickly.

‘We found a shale with traces of both oil and lodestone. Once we had successfully used such a pendulum to find Corrain, we drew the oil out of the stone and into the water and managed to scry for him through that.’

It sounded so simple in summary. Planir would surely appreciate the endless deliberation and trial and error it had taken the four of them to achieve this. When they had been putting the first shale pendulum into the water with Merenel’s magic warmly resonant within it, the thing had exploded, showering the room with searing splinters. Without Tornauld’s quick thinking and quicker magic sweeping up the fragments in a quenching curl of fog, one of them could have lost an eye.

Planir smoothed his beard with lean fingers. ‘Ingenious.’ His tone fell far short of congratulation. ‘So what have you learned of Corrain’s purpose on his journey?’

Jilseth exchanged a glance with the others. ‘Nothing as yet,’ she admitted.

‘Those are Soluran mages,’ Nolyen ventured.

‘Killing Mandarkin.’ Planir leaned over the bowl, his sharp features hawk-like. ‘Ever their favourite use for magic.’

Jilseth wondered at the faint contempt in his voice. ‘They seem to have spells which I don’t recall seeing in Hadrumal.’

‘How do you know the dead are Mandarkin?’ Tornauld demanded.

‘I’m the Archmage. I know a great many things which I seldom have reason to share.’ Planir looked up from the vision ‘I take it the Mandarkin wizard escaped?’

‘I confess that surprises me.’ Tornauld sat back, folding his arms. ‘After the Solurans’ proficiency in the fight.’

‘Did you assess his affinity?’ Planir looked round the table. ‘The Mandarkin mage’s?’