Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (34 page)

The Ensaimin mariner scowled. ‘What choices do we have, trapped here?’

‘You can sail a boat. We could escape,’ Hosh urged desperately. ‘If you are mageborn and from the mainland, the Archmage of Hadrumal is surely honour bound to help you.’

‘Where is he? This Archmage?’ The mariner cocked his ragged head. He and the rest had found some shears or knives to cut away the tangled locks that had marked them as slaves for all to see. ‘Do you have a boat to sail away in?’

Hosh nodded towards the wrecked trireme in the anchorage. ‘Surely we could make a raft?’

Though as he spoke, he wondered how they could possibly do that without catching Anskal’s eye. Unless the Mandarkin was content for them to paddle off and drown. He had let so many of these mageborn kill themselves after all.

One of the Lescari militiamen had stopped walking to look back, his attention caught by their conversation. He retraced his steps.

‘Hadrumal’s wizards only help their own,’ he sneered. ‘My home has been plagued by the dukes and their bloody quarrels for ten generations. No Archmage ever spared us a tinker’s curse.’

‘What did he give you?’ The Ensaimin mariner had a more pressing question now. ‘To save you from harm?’

Hosh’s hand strayed to the ring encircling his arm. ‘A trinket,’ he said slowly.

The Ensaimin mariner held out his hand. ‘Give it to me and I’ll help you make a raft.’

‘Build the raft,’ Hosh countered, ‘and you can have it when we reach the mainland.’

As he spoke, the silver gilt tightened around his upper arm. Gasping, Hosh sank to his knees, clawing at the thing with his free hand. His arm was throbbing. His hand was swelling, visibly darkening. Hosh felt as though his fingers were about to burst like overstuffed sausages. He tried to force the ornament down towards his elbow but he couldn’t get so much as a fingernail between the metal and his aching flesh.

The Ensaimin mariner muttered something under his breath and walked away. The Lescari waited for him and they went onward together, heads close in conversation.

Hosh slowly realised that the agony in his arm was lessening. The throbbing in his hand subsided and the terror twisting his bowels eased.

Reluctantly, he reached for the arm ring. The lightest touch left him whimpering, the flesh beneath was so viciously bruised. The only consolation he could find amid that dizzying agony was feeling the metal slip against the cloth. The arm ring was loose again.

Cradling the elbow of his aching arm eased the pain a little. As he contemplated the dull gleam of gold and crystal, he wondered blindly if this was Anskal’s doing or some magical property of the cursed trinket? Not that it made much difference.

He staggered to his feet and made his way back towards the Mandarkin’s pavilion. It was scant consolation to see that the mainlanders were all walking back to their own dwelling. They might not be ready to yield to Anskal without further deliberation but surely, as the mariner had said, what choices did they have?

As he climbed the steps to Anskal’s pavilion, sudden rage swelled in Hosh’s chest. He stormed through the open door and into the wide chamber beyond. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well court a swift and painless death.

The Mandarkin wizard was reclining on a heap of silken cushions, the bottle of palm wine in one hand as he laughed at the brightly coloured birds squabbling in a fig tree in the enclosed garden.

‘Those women are mageborn like you!’ Hosh shouted furiously. ‘Why did you leave them undefended against such abuse?’

Anskal smiled smugly up at him. ‘Magebirth is no measure of merit. I wanted to see who would be tempted to abuse the power which they thought they now possessed. Then the rest could see how such arrogance would betray them. Now they all know how much they need me to teach them, how much they all have to learn.’

‘You could have told them—’

‘Why waste breath warning a child against fire when the burned hand teaches best?’ Anskal retorted. ‘Now they will all come here, willing and eager to learn. Now they know that is the only way to save their own skins. Now the women know that any men who would have abused them here are dead.’

‘And if those women hadn’t fought back?’ Hosh demanded angrily.

Anskal shrugged. ‘Then the men would have fought over who might claim the whores. But all turned out much as I expected,’ he congratulated himself, callous. ‘I have seen how fiercely women fight when they have no other recourse.’

As the Mandarkin’s gaze turned inward, a shiver caught Hosh unawares. What had Anskal’s life been like to leave him so pitiless? What was he truly capable of?

‘See?’ Anskal looked smugly towards the open door.

Hosh could hear the first of the mageborn warily approaching. The Aldabreshi swordsmen, judging by their voices.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

The Esterlin Residence, Relshaz

22nd of For-Autumn

J
ILSETH HURRIED THROUGH
the marble-floored hallway. She didn’t wait for today’s handsome lackey to open the door to the salon overlooking the garden. ‘Madam Mellitha? Oh—’

She stopped short beside a rosewood lamp-stand. ‘Archmage? Good day to you,’ she said hastily, ‘and to you, Nolyen.’

‘Join us,’ Mellitha indicated the space beside her on the day bed.

Nolyen and Planir sat opposite on a silk cushioned settle with the low table between them.

‘You have news,’ the Archmage observed.

‘I do,’ Jilseth confirmed, ‘and unwelcome.’

‘You’ve been out since first light and it’s long past noon. You should eat.’ As Jilseth sat down, Mellitha handed her a gilt-edged plate.

With the tall windows standing open, the fine muslin curtains drifted towards the tray of savouries on the table. Smudged plates showed that the other wizards had already eaten their fill.

‘The Archmage has sent Corrain, Baron Halferan, to Solura, as his envoy to the Elders of Fornet.’ Mellitha poured her a lemon-scented glassful from the frosted jug.

Jilseth nearly dropped the salted almonds she’d helped herself to.

‘You look as startled as he was.’ Planir’s smile came and went.

‘Let’s hope the Soluran Orders are similarly surprised, and sufficiently intrigued to give him a hearing,’ Mellitha said tartly.

‘Indeed. All the Hearth Master’s efforts to explain recent events to them have come to naught.’ Planir’s expression hardened.

‘Corrain agreed to go?’ Jilseth reached for a batter cake topped with spiced mushrooms. ‘What did he want in return?’

‘Punishment.’ The shadow behind Planir’s eyes belied his lightness. ‘Since his dead lord can no longer offer him redemption from all his calamitous mistakes by imposing suitable chastisement, I am more than happy to oblige.’

Jilseth had no idea how to answer that so settled for taking a roundel of cheese layered with pickled plums.

‘We can see if his confession will help us to mend fences with the Solurans,’ Planir continued more coldly. ‘If they flay the skin from his back for consorting with the Mandarkin, so be it. If they think one of their Aetheric adepts can riffle through his thoughts and find the secrets of quintessential magic, they are welcome to try.’

Jilseth had never imagined she would feel such a pang of sympathy for Corrain.

‘Halferan has neighbours who will make trouble,’ she ventured, ‘once they learn that the baron is absent again.’

‘Not with Tornauld there as my personal envoy to assist in the manor’s restoration,’ Planir assured her.

‘Of course.’ Jilseth continued to fill her plate and wondered what Zurenne and Ilysh would make of her brusque Ensaimin friend. He had probably already summoned up a whirlwind to scour Halferan clean for rebuilding.

The Archmage glanced at Mellitha. ‘He will be keeping a weather eye out for any more visits from Anskal. Our Mandarkin friend has threatened the Widow Zurenne and her daughters,’ he explained to Jilseth. ‘He sees those pendants which I gave them both as proof of Corrain’s deceit, and of some store of artefacts that he’s concealed.’

‘Tornauld should be a match for this Mandarkin,’ Nolyen said stoutly.

Jilseth could only hope that he was right. She remembered what they had seen of the mysterious wizard’s magic when three Soluran mages had been doing their utmost to kill him. Three mages well practised in using their magic with such lethal intent. Still, Tornauld had seen the same in the scrying nexus which she and Nolyen had worked with him and Merenel. Forewarned was surely forearmed.

‘Hopefully, he won’t have to prove that, though I’m sure he would like to try.’ Planir shook his head as though remembering what Jilseth knew must have been a lively conversation.

Mellitha waved that away. ‘What if the Solurans are content to quench their outrage in Corrain’s blood without offering up any lore on ensorcelled artefacts?’ However motherly her appearance, she clearly was more concerned about such an outcome than for Corrain’s possible suffering.

Planir nodded. ‘That’s why Nolyen and I are heading to Suthyfer.’

Mellitha’s precisely plucked brows arched. ‘That thrice-cursed ring has given Usara or Shiv some insights into ensorcelled trinkets?’

Jilseth looked at Nolyen to see if he knew what this meant. Rather than returning her blank look, he narrowed his eyes, warning her not to ask.

She settled for eating another roll of vellum-thin pastry, filled with spiced meat, honey and raisins in the Aldabreshin style. Mellitha was right; she had spent a long and hungry morning with the coachman Tanilo taking her from one address to another in search of Relshaz’s resident wizards, asking for any rumour which they might ever have heard about such artefacts, for any hint of lore that might have escaped Hadrumal’s libraries.

‘I’ve no idea what Usara has done with that ring, though Nolyen’s naturally welcome to enquire.’ Planir was answering Mellitha. ‘I am more interested in talking to Aritane. All the more so if the Solurans insist that we’ve brought this trouble on ourselves and still refuse to help. This Anskal must surely be expecting some elemental challenge but perhaps we could surprise him with Artifice.’

‘Aritane? She’s the
sheltya
woman from the Mountains?’ Mellitha looked thoughtful.

As Planir nodded, Jilseth looked at Nolyen and saw that, once again, he knew more of this than she did.

What little she did know chilled Jilseth. Not even Hadrumal’s most scornful wizards could deny that an Aetheric adept of sufficient skill and malicious intent could invade a mage’s thoughts. When the mage was intent on spellcrafting, such an assault could leave the victim comatose or dead. Hadrumal’s finest scholars of affinity could not yet fathom that mystery.

‘For the moment, how do matters stand in Relshaz?’ Planir looked at Jilseth. ‘You arrived like a hound with a hare in its mouth. What do you have to tell us?’

Jilseth cleared her throat with a swallow of the light metheglin. ‘Ereweth, Fyrne and Senthal all say that they’re being shunned by anyone doing significant business with the Archipelago though no one will explain why. Master Kerrit has been trying to find out—’

The salon’s door flew open, once again without the help of Mellitha’s well-favoured lackey. Velindre strode in. ‘The Aldabreshi know that there’s a wizard laired in the Nahik domain.’