Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (21 page)

‘Or I can use my magic to hold you all in thrall as I search for them at my leisure,’ Anskal offered, as Nifai and Ducah failed to answer him.

Hosh saw their shudder of revulsion. So the wizard had been paying attention when he had tried to explain the Aldabreshin dread of magic’s miasma.

‘Allow me to do you this service,’ Anskal urged, ‘and I will give you your ships once again.’

Were the Aldabreshi so desperate that they would make this deal? When the alternative was starving and worse, now with the unsuspected taint of magic among them? When as soon as they had rowed to some refuge, every galley and trireme, every oar and spar and scrap of rope and sailcloth could be taken to some deserted reef and burned into oblivion to rid them of the curse of sorcery.

Then Hosh would be safe, or as safe as he could be, imprisoned by this venal wizard. It wasn’t as if the corsairs would ever sail back to this harbour, not after Anskal had released them. Once word spread along the sea lanes and through the neighbouring domains, no Archipelagan would ever set foot on this shore again.

‘What say you?’ Anskal invited Nifai. ‘I will make good any damage which your ships have suffered.’

The overseer dragged his gaze from the magelight encircling Hosh’s arm to look hollow-eyed at Anskal.

‘No!’ Ducah bellowed, fists impotently clenched.

‘You mustn’t touch the ships,’ Hosh said urgently, ‘or no one will be able to set foot on them.’

‘I will put all this to the ship masters,’ Nifai said hoarsely. ‘I cannot answer for them.’

Even after all he had suffered, whatever Nifai’s guilty part in all that torment, Hosh’s gut twisted with unexpected anxiety. Would the overseer be able to explain before the half-crazed raiders killed him out of hand for merely talking to the wizard? Even weak with hunger enough of them attacking would overwhelm even Ducah’s fearsome strength. Especially now that the brute didn’t have a sword.

Anskal nodded, satisfied. ‘You may go.’

Nifai and Ducah stumbled down the black stone steps. Within a few paces they were running headlong from the deserted pavilions.

Anskal laughed as the fleeing corsairs vanished amid the burgeoning scrub on the path to the bloody hollow and the far side of the island beyond.

‘Let us eat and drink in more comfort.’ Not waiting for an answer, he went into the pavilion’s kitchen.

Hosh noticed faint cerulean radiance crackle through the falling rain. He recognised the magewrought defence that always enclosed whichever pavilion Anskal chose to sleep in.

So despite his show of confidence that he would get his way, the mage wasn’t taking any chance that the trapped Aldabreshi might look for a third side of the rune bone which he had just rolled for them and try killing him instead.

Hosh sighed. At least he was inside the wizardry, if Ducah decided to vent his spleen by trying to kill him instead of the wizard.

He contemplated the brute’s abandoned sword belts, scabbard and blade, before fingering the arm ring under his sleeve. Could the raiders have sorcerous weapons amid their unsuspected ensorcelled trinkets? Even if they didn’t know what they were or how to wield them? If they did, could Hosh get his hands on one? If he did, what good would that do him? There could be no way off this island for him short of some magic.

So he had better make himself useful to the only wizard he was likely to find in the Archipelago. ‘Master Anskal? Can I—’ Hosh walked through the door only to find the pavilion’s kitchen empty.

He went to look in the garden but there was still no sign of the Mandarkin. Puzzled Hosh searched the rest of the building; the kitchens at the rear, the audience chambers at the front and the bedchambers along the corridors that linked them.

He still couldn’t find the wizard. Finally he returned to the terrace outside the kitchen. He looked at the faint haze of magic shimmering in the rain. He would wager all the treasure the Aldabreshi had stolen that he wouldn’t be able to pass through it. So much as trying would most likely infuriate Anskal. What would be the point, anyway? Once Ducah and Nifai had told their tale, Hosh knew he would be considered irretrievably tainted by the Mandarkin’s magic.

All the same, a sword might come in useful, some day. Thoughtful, he looked around. If anyone had followed Ducah and Nifai to spy on what they were doing, Hosh could see no sign of them among the ironwood trees.

So Hosh stowed Ducah’s sword behind a long earthenware trough catching the rainfall from the roof. Imais had planted it with potherbs, now running riot for lack of tending.

Saedrin send he was unobserved. Was Anskal scrying on him, wherever the wizard had gone? Why should the mage bother? It wasn’t as if Hosh could go anywhere.

He grimaced at a sudden fearful thought. Wherever the wizard had gone, what would happen if he was killed? Would his magic die with him? Or would Hosh be trapped here, to starve slowly to death once he’d eaten whatever remained unspoiled in the pavilion’s cellars beneath the terrace?

Saedrin save him from such a fate, or Dastennin, god of sea and storm, or Talagrin the warrior’s guardian or any other god or goddess who might hear his prayer, or his mother’s entreaties in Halferan Manor’s shrine.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

Halferan Manor, Caladhria

14th of For-Autumn

F
OR AN INSTANT
, she didn’t know where she was. Then Zurenne felt the carriage body sway on its leather straps and opened her eyes to see the trees thinning on either side of the road. Now she knew they were heading down the final slope towards Halferan Manor. Soon they would reach the junction where the high road headed inland, marked by the barony’s gibbet so seldom used by her beloved husband.

She had hoped that they would reach Halferan the previous evening but the full of the Lesser Moon alone couldn’t make the roads safe enough to drive the horses on into the clouded darkness. They had been forced to stop, though Neeny hadn’t finally yielded to sleep until well after midnight’s chimes. No wonder all three of them had fallen asleep in the carriage this morning.

Rubbing at the vicious crick in her neck, Zurenne looked out of the window to see the gaunt hanging tree approach. No bodies swung there to amuse the crows and to warn off miscreants. There had been no rule of law in Halferan since her husband’s death. Master Minelas had shown no interest in such things and Lord Licanin had been arguing his case to stand as the manor’s guardian at the last summer parliament.

Would Corrain have cause to condemn anyone at the Autumn Equinox assizes? What would he sit on, to sit in judgement on those who had been so recently his equals? Zurenne tried to stifle an unexpected, almost hysterical laugh. Her husband’s great carved and canopied chair, the hereditary barons’ formal seat, must have been reduced to splinters and charcoal as the corsairs’ raging fires gutted the great hall.

Opposite, Raselle stirred and opened her eyes. ‘My lady?’ She hurried to sit up straight.

‘No—’ Zurenne held out her hand.

Too late. Esnina’s eyes snapped open. She wriggled free of Raselle’s comforting embrace and scooted across the velvet upholstery to peer out of the carriage’s window.

‘We’ll be seeing Lysha today, Neeny,’ Zurenne said brightly. ‘Won’t that be nice?’

For a long moment, Esnina’s plump lower lip quivered. Zurenne braced herself for a fresh bout of screaming.

Back at Taw Ricks when Zurenne had told her their destination, Mistress Rauffe had been forced to carry Neeny, kicking and sobbing, to the coach. There had been tantrums whenever they had halted on the road and every single time they resumed their journey.

Now, Drianon be blessed, Esnina simply looked defeated. Drawing her half-booted feet up onto the seat, she curled into a ball, burying her face in the crook of one elbow to deny everybody and everything.

‘She’s so tired.’ Raselle looked guiltily at Zurenne, patting the child’s rump in a helpless attempt at comfort.

‘As are we all.’ Zurenne managed a smile to reassure the maidservant.

It wasn’t as though Raselle had anything to feel guilty about. Zurenne had no doubt that everyone they had encountered on this unwelcome, unnecessary journey had been looking straight at such an unruly child’s mother.

The goodwives in those villages were doubtless passing judgement on her as they hemmed and embroidered in their sewing circles. They would be telling each other till midwinter that they had never realised what an ineffective mother their late baron’s lady had been. Perhaps that explained her elder daughter’s scandalous flight from Taw Ricks to her unsavoury husband’s side.

They passed the mercifully empty gibbet. Zurenne noted by the hanging post’s shadow that the sun had not quite risen to mid-morning. They had made very good time. Then again, the recent days had been mercifully free of rain blowing up from the south and the sea. So they had travelled speedily along dry roads between the wheat fields full of diligent men and women reaping whatever could be salvaged for harvest.

Now the road curved towards the devastated village. Zurenne caught sight of the manor. She sat up straighter. ‘Oh!’

‘My lady.’ Raselle twisted to try and see without disturbing Esnina’s stubborn immobility.

‘They have cleared so much already.’ Zurenne saw the gatehouse had been reduced to a footprint of knee-high walls. Salvaged bricks were stacked to one side and a circle of old men and young boys were busy with trowels, knocking away the last fragments of old mortar and plaster. As the coach drew nearer, Zurenne saw a diligent pair attacking a more stubbornly intact lump of fallen brickwork with hammers and chisels.

Older youths on the verge of manhood were at work outside the manor wall and within, alongside their fathers and uncles. Robust grandsires trundled barrow loads of hopelessly broken rubble to a growing mound on the other side of the entrance.

Beyond, blackened and broken timbers had been laid out on the turf. Carpenters were shaping freshly felled trees to the original measure of the wreckage, to rebuild the guards’ barrack hall or perhaps the stables. The cracking of wood riven by wedges and mallets offered a counterpoint to the rhythmic ringing of trowels and chisels. The fresh scent of newly sawn timber rose above the lingering stink of char.

A rider appeared alongside the coach window. Zurenne unhooked the strap to let the glass slide down into the body of the door.

‘Where to, my lady?’ Reven called out wearily. Well he might, after riding this road thrice in barely twice that count of days.

‘Inside the walls.’ Zurenne could see the creamy sailcloth of tents through the gaping void where the gatehouse had stood.

Cheerful hails greeting their carriage were raised ever more loudly. Esnina shifted her crooked arm, revealing her flushed, perplexed little face.

‘Now, Neeny,’ Zurenne warned hastily, ‘there’s a great deal of work to do, before we can come home.’

‘But we will come home, my pet,’ Raselle insisted, unbidden.

Esnina silently uncoiled herself from her sulk and went to look out of the window.

The coach rattled over the cobbles, halting beside the windowless shell of the baronial tower, beside the gutted great hall. The coach rocked jerkily as the horses fought with the coachman’s reins, displeased at confronting so much commotion.

Zurenne welcomed the moment to compose herself. If Corrain had been furious at Lysha’s arrival, as the letter he’d sent back with young Reven had made so icily plain, she didn’t imagine he’d be much happier to see her and Neeny.