Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (63 page)

Jilseth wondered if he was regretting his jealousy of mages whom he believed were learning wizardly secrets denied to him. Be careful what you wish for, lest you get it. She should have remembered such age-old wisdom herself, pacing her room in Col, burning with frustration.

‘Hadrumal can survive my loss if this wizardry escapes me,’ Planir continued calmly. ‘Then it will be up to you and the halls to defend this island, if the Solurans can somehow make good on their threats of attacking us by means of this Jagai fleet and its mercenaries.’

‘We understand, Archmage,’ Sannin said, resolute.

‘Flood Mistress,’ Planir invited.

Troanna smiled with such malicious anticipation that Jilseth could have believed ice-born magecraft had sent that sudden shiver down her spine.

The Flood Mistress focused her attention on the silver bowl. The water glowed with bright emerald magelight, though this was no steady green glow but a riot of shifting flares and flashes.

Jilseth felt elemental water magic being drawn into the room from some unimaginable distance. More than that, it wasn’t summoned here in service of Troanna’s wizardry but compelled by the Flood Mistress’s spell. The bowl blazed. Desperate shafts of green magelight erupted to writhe and dissolve into showers of emerald sparks.

Troanna’s smile didn’t falter as she stared at the bowl. The emerald wizardry hardened. Solid radiance lay across the bowl like a layer of ensorcelled ice.

‘I have captured their scrying,’ the Flood Mistress said with vindictive satisfaction.

‘Rafrid?’ Planir nodded at the grizzled wizard.

The Cloud Master cracked his knuckles one by one, looking intently at Troanna’s spell imprisoning the Soluran wizards’ impertinent spying.

Azure magelight glowed deep within the frozen green. The turquoise shimmer spread and Jilseth felt elemental air force its way into the subjugated magecraft. The unmistakable resonance of a clairaudience spell thrummed against her wizard senses, the invisible threads of sorcery extending far beyond this tower room. Now she truly understood the pre-eminence of Rafrid’s mastery. His spell was cleaving through the winds which buffeted waves and land alike to fly, true as an arrow, across five hundred leagues and more.

This spell was compelling the Soluran mages to hear what happened in Hadrumal, just as Troanna’s mirrored scrying now forced them to see it. Faint tremors struck Jilseth’s affinity as those distant wizards fought in vain to free themselves.

‘Hearth Master.’ Planir remained by the mantelshelf as Kalion spread his hands.

The fire mage’s plump lips thinned, his eyes narrowing, as he applied himself to this unprecedented working. At first, Jilseth could barely sense the subtle breath of fire circling the frozen and interwoven scrying and clairaudience spells. It was easier to feel the rigid boundary which the Hearth Master created to circumscribe the fickle, evanescent element.

As his spell strengthened, Jilseth recognised a bespeaking, a comparatively simple working. So the Archmage had a message for the Solurans beyond challenging those vainglorious wizards with this display of equally pretentious garb.

Bespeaking might be a straightforward spell but matching this magecraft to the first two spells was demanding all Kalion’s expertise. This wizardry must follow the same elemental conduit to those distant towers but if even this modest fire magic was to brush against Rafrid or Troanna’s wizardry, then everything would be undone. Jilseth had no doubt that more was at stake than humiliation for Hadrumal.

‘Are we ready?’ Planir drew on a pair of grey gloves, ornamented and armoured with black leather reinforced with that same eerily ambiguous metal.

‘We are.’ Troanna confirmed.

As the two Element Masters echoed her, Planir took something from the high shelf above the fire place and looked at the four mages as yet unengaged in wizardry.

Sannin cleared her throat. ‘We are ready, Archmage.’

Jilseth tried to echo her but could only utter a hoarse whisper. Canfor’s assent was barely any louder and Ely simply nodded, mute, her eyes white-rimmed.

Planir came over to the table and extended his hand above the silver bowl. The swirling circle of elemental fire a finger’s width above the frozen scrying glowed brightly as he used the bespeaking spell.

‘You will recognise this ring,’ he said conversationally. ‘It has a climbing spell imbued within it. You or your fellow conspirators were scrying when I demonstrated to my colleagues how impossible it is to destroy such an ensorcelled trinket with even the most intense focus of any single element. I’m sure that you found that reassuring. Watch closely and think again.’

Planir tossed the ring up into the air. He didn’t catch it as it fell towards the scrying. Instead he cupped his hands, the width of the bowl apart. Coruscating quintessential magelight crackled from his fingertips, as brilliant as diamond struck by sunlight and glittering with every colour of the rainbow on the very edge of seeing.

A sphere of quintessential magic captured the tumbling ring. Darkness filled the globe, hiding the ring from view. Quintessential magic continued to stream from Planir’s fingertips into the sphere. Bright tendrils escaped it, edged with violet radiance which Jilseth had never seen in any magecraft.

As this eerie magelight touched the tower room’s floor, the windows or the table, that unknown wizardry dissipated to surrender its magical potential to the natural blend of the elements surrounding them.

In this instant before each tendril vanished, the sensations were intoxicating. Jilseth’s affinity told her that she could unmake Hadrumal itself, unaided and as easily as the Archmage’s nexus had destroyed the corsair isle, if she dared to command such power.

Except she had no doubt that any attempt to harness such catastrophic magic would destroy her utterly. Canfor took a hasty sidestep to avoid one of the crackling violet tendrils and Jilseth didn’t blame him. She had no wish to risk the dire consequences of such a touch.

All Planir’s attention was focused on the sphere of black shadow rimmed with diamond brilliance. Somewhere deep inside, Jilseth could sense an elemental cataclysm unfolding. Her wizardly senses ached with the recollection of the Mandarkin Anskal’s death. He had been ripped so utterly asunder, body, blood and bones, that not even dust remained, when his uncontrolled affinity had been unleashed within the adamantine prison which Hadrumal’s Masters and Mistress of Element had crafted from their united elemental might.

White-hot light glowed in the heart of the black sphere. Now Jilseth could see the ring caught within the annihilating spell. The radiance was so bright that it was painful to behold but she couldn’t look away.

Black smoke escaped the spell; a single wisp but soon thickening, as opaque as ink. Drifting up to the ceiling, it spread across the full width of the room without ever seeming to thin. Jilseth shivered as she felt the excess of elemental magic which had so thrilled her being sucked into the obliterating darkness.

‘Sannin?’ Canfor was ashen with apprehension but Jilseth saw that he wasn’t looking at the ominous darkness spreading above them. He had seen flakes of shattered stone falling from the sphere in a cascade of that violet magelight.

Jilseth answered him. ‘No, that’s devoid of wizardry.’

Whatever else was happening she could sense these broken fragments were no more than common shale. The frail stone crumbled further as it fell. Before the smallest speck could have struck the frozen scrying, the once-ensorcelled ring was reduced to motes smaller than any eye could see. Smaller than even the most precisely crafted Aldabreshin lens could ever find.

‘Your attention, please!’ Sannin said sharply.

Jilseth felt the magewoman reaching out with her fire affinity to determine how much wizardry she could command without risking the slightest intermingling with the spells woven around the scrying or, more perilous still, any chance of intersection with the elemental oblivion looming overhead.

She saw sweat matting the Archmage’s cropped steel-grey hair. His face glistened in the eerie magelight and a vein in his forehead pulsed. Effort deepened the creases around his eyes and moisture beaded his lashes as his face contorted.

The darkness swirling around the ceiling began to glitter, speckled with all the colours of the elements. The annihilating wizardry which had nullified the magic instilled in the ensorcelled ring now sought to consume any other element which impinged on its shadowy boundaries.

Jilseth established an elemental union with Trydek’s tower, ready to draw on the strength of its stones and the foundations reaching down into Hadrumal’s bedrock. She could sense Canfor summoning storm clouds from leagues around. Ely had the greatest challenge to surmount; linking her affinity with the waters lapping the wizard isle’s shores. Jilseth was both astonished and relieved to feel how swiftly the pale magewoman did so.

The glittering menace subsided. The darkness swirled, plain black with no hint of magelight. As the shadow thinned to grey Jilseth sensed the elemental ebb and flow within and beyond Trydek’s tower returning to a natural balance. Nothing now escaped the sphere hovering between Planir’s hands; neither the ominous magic nor the remnants of crushed shale.

A pinpoint of white light kindled in the centre of the black globe. It exploded outwards and Jilseth felt a rush of incalculable wizardry unleashed. She laid her affinity open for Sannin to command—

The diamond magelight contained the cataclysm and the sphere vanished as silently and completely as a soap bubble.

Planir’s gloved hands thudded onto the polished wood on either side of the scrying bowl. Jilseth could see his arms shaking as he leaned his weight on the table. He stared into the frozen mirror framed by circling fire.

‘Now you have seen what Hadrumal can do,’ he snarled, venomous spittle flecking his beard. ‘Do you truly wish to make us your enemies?’

He pushed himself away from the table. Troanna flung a hand at the scrying bowl to unleash her water magic just as Kalion realised his stranglehold on the elemental fire. Jilseth felt the antagonistic elements clash, only to meet the deafening crack of Rafrid’s wizardry. Jilseth sensed the brutal sting whipping across countless leagues to lash the hapless Solurans with one last reminder of Hadrumal’s power.

Planir staggered away from the table, tearing off his cloak and letting it fall to the floor. He collapsed onto the settle by the fire, his head thrown back, eyes closed, his face gaunt.

Ely was the first to break the silence. ‘What will happen now, Archmage?’

Planir stirred himself to look at her with some semblance of a smile. ‘We wait for the Solurans’ answer.’

‘They cannot persist with this idiocy after seeing such a display of strength.’ Troanna frowned nonetheless. ‘But I don’t suppose they’ll use their own wizardry to divert the Jagai fleet. We had better consider which currents we can commit to sending the Archipelagans back to a safe harbour.’

‘Not anywhere in Caladhria.’ Jilseth hastily found her voice. ‘The people are still so fearful of corsairs, there will be uproar.’

‘An accidental bloodbath will hardly improve matters,’ Rafrid agreed. He looked across the table to Canfor and Ely. ‘Let’s see what wind and wave can achieve together, to send these poor dupes into Khusro waters. That’s the closest Archipelagan domain.’

‘Let me send word to Lady Zurenne, to tell Kheda, the Aldabreshin who helped us in Halferan,’ Jilseth said at once. ‘He may still have a Khusro courier dove, to let them know that this is no Jagai invasion.’

Doubtless he could find some explanation to suit the Khusro wives. Though Jilseth wasn’t overly concerned if the Archipelagans chose to enslave those mercenaries from Col. That would serve them right for taking Aldabreshin gold to take up arms against Hadrumal.

‘Very well.’ Troanna was already walking towards the doorway. Ely followed with Canfor only a few steps behind. Rafrid went after them, thoughtfully cracking his knuckles.

‘There are times,’ Planir remarked from his seat by the fire, ‘when I am sorely tempted to turn our honoured Cloud Master’s hands to stone.’

Kalion barked with sudden laughter. ‘I thought of giving him blisters.’

Sannin smiled. ‘What would you have us do now, Archmage?’

‘Keep watch.’ Planir heaved a long shuddering breath. ‘We’ve given the Solurans pause for thought but greed and pride can make fools of the wisest men.’

‘Until later then.’ Sannin inclined her head serenely and headed for the door.

Kalion paused on the threshold to offer Planir a wry smile. ‘I don’t believe you need to fear Troanna proposing that the Council dismiss you as Archmage.’

‘Quite so.’ Planir managed a weary grin.

‘I will leave you to rest, Archmage.’ Jilseth took a step towards the door. She wanted some solitude, to review this astonishing magic, to see what she might glean to improve her own wizardry.

‘I would appreciate your assistance.’ Planir’s request was more a command.

Jilseth wondered what he wanted her to do. ‘Shall I make you a black tisane?’

‘A very good notion, and while the water’s boiling, please renew this tower’s wards—’ he broke off to take a deep breath ‘—against any intrusion from some Soluran wizard who has guessed how truly exhausting unmaking that ring’s magic must be.’