Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (23 page)

‘Hosh?’ Ilysh gasped. ‘Abiath’s Hosh?’

‘He is safe—for now.’ There was no mistaking the Mandarkin’s threat.

‘I will—’ Zurenne stammered.

‘Oh, no, pretty one—’ The Mandarkin lunged forward, his hand clawing at Lysha’s rune sigil.

In the blink of an eye, Zurenne saw that the girl had been about to touch the silver pendant. To summon the Archmage’s help?

Lysha screamed and recoiled, tearing free of her mother’s grasp. Quick as a whiplash Zurenne slapped the Mandarkin mage’s face. She staggered backwards, her hand stinging. She wondered frantically what had possessed her to do such a foolhardy thing.

The mage stood motionless for a moment before bursting into chilling laughter.

‘I should know better than to threaten a mountain cat’s kitten. Very well, my pretty one,’ he said to Ilysh, ‘keep your guardian’s trinket for the moment. I will know how to find you when I want it and I can fathom its secrets once I have taken you both.’

He rounded on Zurenne. ‘Tell your man Corrain to give me what I seek or I will seize every last thing which he values and leave him ruler of a wasteland strewn with his dead.’

In the next instant, the terrifying man vanished.

‘Mama?’ Lysha whispered fearfully.

Before Zurenne could answer, the outer door to the shrine flew open. Young Reven stood there, Sergeant Fitrel behind him.

‘You cried out?’ Reven only had eyes for Ilysh.

‘My lady?’ The grizzled guardsman searched the room before pausing by the open door to the dais.

‘Something fell and startled my daughter.’ Zurenne had herself ruthlessly in hand. She shot a warning look at Lysha and was pleased to see her daughter obediently silent. ‘Where is Baron Halferan? I will speak with him now.’

‘He’s seeing what’s to be done with the forge.’ Reven explained as though that meant Corrain couldn’t possibly be interrupted.

‘Kindly tell him that I must speak to him without delay. I will be with Lady Ilysh in her tent,’ Zurenne said firmly.

‘At once.’ Fitrel ushered Reven through the outer door.

‘Mama?’ Ilysh asked in a small voice. ‘What did that man want? Where did he go?’

‘I don’t know.’ Zurenne hastily corrected herself. ‘That’s to say, I think I may know but we need to talk to Corrain.’

She gazed through the open door into the ruined great hall. ‘I think we may need the Archmage’s assistance with more than clearing fallen timbers.’

If the price of her daughters’ safety was surrendering Corrain to Hadrumal’s justice, so be it.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Trydek’s Hall, Hadrumal

14th of For-Autumn

‘T
HAT IS ALL
very well, Archmage,’ the Hearth Master said testily, ‘but there is only so much we can infer from what this pestilential Mandarkin has not done or where he hasn’t been. We need to know what he is doing on that island. Then we might have some hope of divining exactly what he seeks.’

‘It must be something significant,’ Cloud Master Rafrid murmured, ‘for him to threaten Lady Zurenne so. How long do you think he will wait before he returns to Halferan?’

‘Or before he makes good on his threat to send the corsair raiders north again,’ Troanna added grimly.

‘What do you suppose he might do, when he realises that Captain Corrain cannot give him what he’s seeking?’ Kalion demanded. ‘Because he has no more notion what that might be than we do! Archmage?’

As the Masters and Mistress of Element fell silent, Jilseth and Nolyen stood as motionless as those statues of the Archmage’s predecessors set in the niches around this spiral stair. Only motes of dust moved in the shafts of sunlight falling through the deep-silled windows.

Above them, through the open door to the spacious sitting room, they heard Planir’s voice.

‘I don’t believe that the corsairs will do any wizard’s bidding,’ the Archmage said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think we need fear more raids.’

‘I’m sure that will comfort Halferan,’ the Flood Mistress said acidly, ‘when the Mandarkin vents his spleen by levelling their rebuilding and kills them all for good measure.’

‘Do we know what interested him so about Lady Ilysh’s pendant?’ Rafrid asked, more perplexed than hopeful.

‘Have we had any word from Solura?’ Troanna asked.

‘From the Elders of Fornet?’ As Planir paused, Jilseth could picture him shaking his head. ‘Alas, no.’

‘I have heard something from the Order of Raine, through the good offices of a mutual friend in Col, a mentor at the university.’ Kalion’s irritated sigh floated down the stairwell. ‘They might be willing to share something of what they know of Mandarkin magic, if we are willing to share our insights into quintessential magic.’

Rafrid’s loud objection met Troanna’s outrage in a rare moment of accord between the two pre-eminent mages.

Jilseth looked at Nolyen to see if this meant anything to him. He could only shrug his shoulders in mute mystification.

In her apprentice and pupil days, Jilseth had often imagined presenting some notable discovery to Hadrumal’s most senior mages. To prompt their congratulations and to persuade them to share fresh insights into her magic drawn from their far greater experience. She hadn’t envisaged eavesdropping on them like some sly-faced maidservant.

Planir laughed wearily. ‘We should admire their audacity.’

‘Have we had any word from Suthyfer?’ Now Cloud Master Rafrid sounded uncharacteristically impatient. ‘Any insights from Usara or Shivvalan?’

‘Any revelations from their Aetheric adepts?’ Kalion asked waspishly. ‘Any Mandarkin mysteries uncovered by the Mountain woman Aritane?’

‘Not as yet,’ the Archmage answered over Troanna’s tsk of irritation. ‘So let us see what we might learn from scrying across the corsairs’ anchorage.’

He raised his voice. ‘Nolyen, Jilseth, please join us.’

That left them with no option but to climb the remaining stairs.

‘You did ask us to come here at the sixth chime,’ Nolyen began explaining as they crossed the threshold.

‘Indeed,’ Planir reassured him. ‘There was an unexpected occurrence in Halferan this morning.’ His gesture explained the presence of the other senior mages accordingly.

Troanna turned all her attention to Nolyen and Jilseth. ‘The Archmage says that you may have devised something to help us scry for the corsair anchorage where this renegade Mandarkin has his lair?’

Jilseth reminded herself that the thickset, gap-toothed woman habitually looked and sounded so stern that newly-arrived apprentices had been known to burst into tears and flee her audience chamber in the Seaward Hall.

‘We’re at your disposal,’ Planir said easily.

Jilseth might have been more reassured if the Archmage wasn’t dressed in a high-collared black doublet and broadcloth breeches. Had he come from some formal gathering or was he to attend one later in the day?

Speculation along Hadrumal’s high road was growing ever more avid. The senior wizards of every hall and elemental discipline wanted to know what was to be done about this northern mage so insultingly and so improbably hidden away in the Archipelago.

Planir’s face gave nothing away. He sat along with Kalion, Rafrid, and Troanna around the polished table big enough to accommodate the twenty or so other chairs set back against the walls. This sitting room took up the whole breadth of this tower below the private rooms traditionally granted to the Archmage. Planir was accustomed to teach his own pupils here, to instruct or to admonish those sent to him by the principal mages of Hadrumal’s other halls.

There were also comfortable upholstered settles closer to the hearth. The Archmage generally preferred to welcome envoys from the island’s merchants and yeoman, or from the mundane populace of the mainland, in less daunting surroundings than Trydek’s Hall, that most ancient sanctuary of the mageborn.

Nolyen was setting out their scrying bowl and summoning water to cover the slick of bitumen already melted in the base.

As Nolyen nodded, the water glowed a heartening green. ‘We have managed to tie this pitch to several ships in the corsairs’ anchorage and now we have that link, it’s far easier to find them a second time.’

‘Show us,’ Troanna commanded.

Jilseth took a chair from beside a window and sat opposite Nolyen. He didn’t dare look at her and risk losing his focus on his spell. She rested her fingertips lightly on the rim of the bowl and concentrated on channelling his scrying through the alchemical pull of the bitumen; like calling to like in the black pitch sealing the wooden seams of those distant ships.

These past two days of concentrated application had enabled them to craft this magic without undue incident, she reminded herself firmly.

‘We have it.’ Nolyen’s voice cracked with relief.

The image of the anchorage floated across the ensorcelled water.

Kalion was on his feet at once. As he stood beside Nolyen, he clasped his hands behind his back to avoid any temptation to touch the bowl. As he bent for a closer look Jilseth saw the tension in his rounded shoulders.

‘Can we identify this place? How deep does this island lie within the Archipelago?’

‘We cannot draw the scrying sufficiently far from the shore to find any other islands which we might recognise,’ Jilseth was forced to admit. ‘Though we believe that it’s little more than sixty or so leagues from Cape Attar and on the westerly side of the Archipelago’s northernmost string of islands.’

‘These raiders must lair with reasonably easy reach of the mainland coast and ideally where they can navigate uncontested sea lanes.’ Cloud Master Rafrid came to stand at her shoulder. ‘The more warlords’ domains they must cross, the greater their chances of losing their loot to some affronted ruler’s triremes.’

Kalion was calculating distances. ‘Then this renegade could be no more than a hundred leagues from Hadrumal!’

‘Which domain was giving the raiders sanctuary?’ Planir looked thoughtful as he remained seated at the head of the table. ‘Was the warlord coerced or is he somehow complicit in their thievery?’

‘Either way, he’ll rue the day he chose not to stand firm against such parasites.’ Rafrid’s face hardened as he hitched up his midnight-blue tunic to shove his hands in his breeches pockets.

The Flood Mistress circled the table to stand on Nolyen’s other side. If Rafrid was dressed like any merchant on Hadrumal’s high road, Troanna’s mossy gown suggested some briskly practical grandmother.

She leaned forward to study the emerald-framed vision of that foaming tongue of water curling up between the headlands. ‘You’ve managed to work this scrying despite such intense water magic at work there.’

Jilseth guessed that was as much congratulation as Nolyen could hope for. Did the Flood Mistress have any idea of his struggles these past few days, to assert control over the scrying when that wave continually sought to compel his affinity like a lodestone skewing a compass? Jilseth could only hope so.

Troanna was still studying the ever-shifting, unyielding wave. ‘We must unravel his spells in such a way that we can learn exactly how they are wrought, not merely smash through his wizardry.’

Kalion nodded firm agreement. ‘Absolutely.’