Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (13 page)

‘My thanks, Lady Zurenne,’ Planir bowed low, ‘for allowing me to do you this service.’

Zurenne could only nod and reply with a curtsey. Jilseth could see she was far too close to tears to risk words.

‘We will leave you to your devotions.’

Planir bowed a second time and Jilseth expected him to take her hand to translocate immediately back to Hadrumal.

Instead the Archmage stepped down from the dais and walked serenely down the length of the great hall. Jilseth was quietly amused at how fast the throng managed to melt away given the clutter choking the entrance hall.

The first whispers of awe-struck speculation were beginning among those now pressed back down the corridor to the kitchens as she and Planir left through the front porch, both doors hastily opened by the steward.

‘Master Rauffe,’ Planir acknowledged him politely.

‘Good day to you,’ Jilseth made sure to greet the lean man too, ‘and thank you.’

Not merely for opening the door. She owed him a lifetime’s gratitude for his skilled handling of their carriage and its team of panicked horses in that nightmare retreat from Halferan Manor’s destruction.

A hand plucked at her elbow before she could follow Planir out onto the threadbare grass.

‘My lady.’ Doratine the cook was proffering a napkin full of glazed ochre sweetmeats. ‘Eryngo toffee, my lady. Merely a token of my thanks. Eryngo’s a restorative.’ Doratine peered closer, all solicitude. ‘Are you quite recovered, my dear—that’s to say, my lady mage? From your swoon?’

A swoon. Of course. That’s what these Caladhrians would think had laid her low. Mage or not, she was a woman and thus subject, in their eyes, to vapours and hysterics at the slightest provocation.

Jilseth managed something approaching a smile. ‘Thank you.’

There was no doubting the cook’s sincerity and it was hardly the Caladhrian woman’s fault that she knew so little of wizardry. Or that it would take far more than some sweetmeats to restore a mage in her predicament.

‘You must excuse me.’ Jilseth hurried after Planir.

He was waiting beyond the carriage sweep. ‘What have you got there?’ He peered curiously into the napkin.

‘Eryngo toffee apparently.’ Jilseth wrapped the linen tight as Planir laughed out loud. ‘What’s so amusing?’

She had intended to ask something quite different. Why was the Archmage proposing to send Merenel to teach Lady Ilysh how to play white raven? What did he think the Tormalin magewoman might learn here? Or was she simply to be his spy? Before Jilseth could decide what to ask, that same pale haze swept them away.

The translocation spell didn’t stop the questions going through Jilseth’s head. Did Planir truly think that was the best use of Merenel’s considerable talents? Surely every mage of Hadrumal should be focusing all their attention on finding some magic to defeat the Mandarkin’s infuriating veiling magic.

Who knew what he might be getting up to, while they couldn’t see him?

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Black Turtle Isle

In the domain of Nahik Jarir

‘T
HIS IS ALL
very strange,’ Anksal pronounced.

‘Yes, it is,’ Hosh agreed, ‘but they believe in this heavenly compass absolutely, and in its earthly counterpart.’

Anskal walked around the beaten earth circle with the twelve stones equally spaced around the ditch that ringed it. He paused to study the symbols carved on each one. ‘These are for the stars?’

‘For the particular constellations that the Aldabreshi follow, yes.’ Hosh nodded.

He wouldn’t have brought Anskal here given a choice but his first attempts to explain how and why the Archipelagans traced such intricate patterns in the sky had ground to a halt in utter confusion.

As the Mandarkin had angrily berated him, Hosh didn’t need any omens to tell him how perilous his situation was. He was a dead man if Anskal concluded he was either lying or that he was simply too ignorant to be of continued use as a source of information about these islands.

So he had brought the wizard here this morning, to this sacrosanct hollow beyond the line of ironwood trees some way inland from the pavilions and the hut settlement. To his profound relief, these ancient stones had finally enabled the Mandarkin to grasp his meaning.

‘Each also marks an arc of this earthly compass, where they look for omens of any kind; birds, clouds, some unforeseen occurrence. To give them some answers as to questions of partnership, death, travel?’ Anskal marked out the first quarter of the circle with his pointing finger before cocking his head at Hosh. ‘But these stars are not anywhere close to these stones at the moment. What of that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Hosh hated to say so but there was so much he didn’t understand about the Archipelagans’ philosophies.

‘This is also where they test their slaves?’ The Mandarkin had lost interest, returning once again to the dark stains marring the trampled soil.

‘Yes.’ Hosh swallowed stomach-churning recollection of the slaughter he had seen here, when newly-chained captives had been set to fight each other. The corsairs had both wagered and read portents into who lived and who had died.

There were days when he still couldn’t believe that he had survived being hurled into such deadly combat. Followed by nights when he dreamed of the half-starved, half-witted unfortunate whom he’d had to kill to live. Hosh kept telling himself that the dead man must surely have been reborn, all unknowing by now. That Saedrin would understand he’d had no choice at all. That was scant consolation when he woke sweating, his heart pounding, his stomach heaving.

‘That is good.’ Once again Anskal was nodding.

Hosh couldn’t decide which was more disturbing; that the wizard so clearly approved of such brutality or that he had recognised these blood stains for what they were before Hosh had begun to explain. What was this distant homeland of his like?

‘All the same, very strange.’ Anskal shook his head in wonderment before turning back to Hosh. ‘Now you will go and talk to those who fled across the island.’

The Mandarkin nodded and turning his back, began walking back towards the shady trees, heading for the huts and the pavilions beyond overlooking the curve of the beach at the head of the anchorage.

Hosh watched him go. The bastard clearly didn’t doubt for an instant that he would be obeyed.

Because the wizard wasn’t wrong, he thought unhappily. As wretched as his life was, Hosh wasn’t yet so tired of life that he’d defy the Mandarkin outright and die in some magical agony before he’d so much as closed his mouth on the words.

But wouldn’t that happen regardless, if he came back from the island’s far shore with some message of rejection from the corsairs and their slaves? Because Hosh couldn’t think how he could possibly persuade them to listen to any wizard’s proposal.

He contemplated the stained earth. The blood shed here wasn’t only from captured slaves. The corsairs had clustered in the hollow, seeking desperately for omens in the first terrified days after Anskal’s arrival. Fear and anger had seen them turn murderously on each other. Hosh had seen Ducah kill a double handful of men and more, for no reason beyond his own impotent fury.

He felt for the silver-gilt and crystal arm ring hidden under his tunic sleeve. It seemed a horribly flimsy protection against a corsair horde’s fury. He could only trust that it was proof against however many blades he might face. Surely Anskal wouldn’t knowingly send him to his death? Hosh wished he could be sure of that. He began walking regardless.

As he left the bloody hollow, he looked up at the blue sky streaked with the clouds of the rains that would come shortly after noon. He had bought himself a few days by insisting to Anskal that if he was to get any hearing at all, they must wait for the most favourable alignments of the heavenly jewels.

Just at present, as any Aldabreshin would know, day or night, all the most significant coloured stars and both the moons were in the same quarter of the sky. Apart from the Sapphire which took seven years to traverse a single arc, if Hosh had understood Imais the slave cook correctly, and the Topaz which crossed those invisible boundaries only once a year, thus marking the calendar for the Aldabreshi some time in For-Spring by the Caladhrian almanac.

Hosh shoved his way through a flourishing thicket of fringe tree saplings. It was remarkable how the island’s greenery had returned without the corsairs’ greedy blades hacking everything down for firewood and after half a season of the island’s drenching rains.

The Amethyst for calm and humility floated serene with the Pearl that supposedly soothed unruly emotion and promoted intuition. It was also a talisman against magic and with the Lesser Moon waxing, Hosh could only hope all that would count against these jewels being in the compass arc for omens of death. The stars there were the Mirror Bird and that was another talisman against magic, wasn’t it?

Didn’t that mean they could at least listen to him without being stained by wizardry’s corruption? Hosh only hoped he’d get the chance to make that argument. If he could only find Nifai.

Of all the
Reef Eagle’s
crewmen, the overseer had been the keenest to trade his share of their loot to maximum advantage. That was one reason he’d saved Hosh’s life; to learn more of the Tormalin tongue, in order to deal with mainland merchants in person without losing a portion of his gains to some more fluent middleman.

A thicker tangle blocked his path and Hosh had to cast back and forth to either side before he found a gap he could squeeze through without risking the knotted vine’s vicious spines. The slightest scratch from those could fester so vilely in this place. He’d seen enough men die to know, deliberately lashed with the things for some corsair ship master’s entertainment.

Perhaps he should have asked Anskal if he could have a hacking blade, to cut himself a path? No, Hosh concluded with a sigh as he retraced his steps yet again to avoid a wall of red canes with razor sharp leaves. Asking the wizard for anything that might be used against him was surely as good as cutting his own throat.

Besides, was there anything else here that he might need to defend himself against? Hosh paused and listened but could barely hear a trill of bird song. There hadn’t been much by way of animals left on this island with the corsairs’ ever-hungry slaves ready to catch anything that moved. Now he guessed that the raiders themselves had been driven to eat that same poor fare in place of their plundered feasting. Well, Hosh supposed he could thank Raeponin for that small measure of justice.

He toiled up a long, long slope, rehearsing yet again the arguments which he hoped to make. He could point to the Ruby, jewel for courage and moreover in the arc of Travel and Learning alongside the Opal for truth and good faith. And if the Greater Moon was unhelpfully waning, that gemstone was also another talisman against wizards and the stars of the Bowl in that same arc advocated sharing. Surely that should mean he should at least get a hearing?

After a tiresome struggle to find a way through the broken gullies marring the island’s highest ridge, he eventually realised he had begun the gradual descent towards the far shore.

Hosh began to feel increasingly nervous. He was much less certain about the Diamond. Granted it was a sign for clarity of thought and purpose and currently rode alongside the slow-moving Emerald, token for growth and peace. But those gems were together in the arc on the eastern horizon where omens for marriages were most commonly sought. Hosh vaguely recalled Imais saying that omens there also counted for any dealings between two individuals and no more, but mostly he remembered the more brutal corsairs joking about whatever they saw there as a guide to the women whom they’d seize and violate when they were making ready for a raid.