There could be no doubting his sincerity, his words coloured by no hint of rebuke.
‘Archmage.’ Canfor acknowledged Planir with a stiff nod.
Jilseth wondered that the tall wizard’s neck didn’t crack with the effort of it.
‘Who is to square our circle without the Hearth Master?’ Ely looked at Planir, doing her best to hide her anxiety.
‘Sannin.’ The Archmage smiled.
‘Yes?’ The elegant magewoman looked across the room. She and Rafrid were poring over a leather-bound tome so vast and weighty that the Cloud Master had brought it here in a lattice of magic complete with its own lectern.
‘You will work with Ely, Galen and Canfor.’ Courteous as Planir was, that was clearly an instruction, not a request.
‘Naturally, Archmage.’ Sannin smiled at Ely. ‘I think we’ll find our nexus all the better for a balance of two women and two men across the antagonistic elements.’
Troanna looked up from a faded scroll with a snort of derision. ‘I have never found any truth in such assertions.’
‘But you are exceptional, Flood Mistress, in this as in so much else,’ Planir observed.
Once again, his demeanour was wholly sincere.
Troanna smiled without humour. ‘Which is fortunate, given the circumstances.’
Kalion looked at Jilseth and Tornauld and at Corrain with Kusint standing uncertainly behind them. ‘Well?’
‘Lord Tallat begs for the honour of being of such service to Caladhria and to Hadrumal.’ Tornauld grinned. ‘And I think he’d welcome some help dredging the ditches in his low-lying pastures, if I have some time on my hands when we’re done.’
‘Congratulations, Archmage,’ Troanna said drily. ‘The mainlanders are indeed sufficiently reassured, if they’re once again willing to ask us to save their menials from honest labouring.’
‘I would like to think they’ll have cause to show us rather more respect when this day’s work is done.’ Kalion shot her an exasperated glare before addressing Planir. ‘So, we now have cohorts of guardsmen from Halferan, Tallat, Antathele and Licanin to carry to this island?’
Lord Licanin had shown no hesitation, when Corrain had explained how the wizards of Hadrumal were offering Caladhria the chance to put the last of the corsairs to the sword once and for all, to settle all accounts between them.
Jilseth had also been unexpectedly touched by the grey-haired nobleman’s concern for her own well-being. Was she fully recovered, he had asked, from her indisposition?
She was, she had assured him. She was, she told herself resolutely, as she had done countless times already today. She could not allow herself the slightest doubt; either that her wizardry would desert her or that some wild magic would run riot beyond her control.
Besides, Planir had said he was only betting on certainties. He wouldn’t be sending her to that island if he had any reservations about her abilities.
‘Quite so, Hearth Master.’ The Archmage smiled confidently at Kalion. ‘A simple enough task for the elemental nexus composed of the strongest and most proficient mages in Hadrumal.’
‘Where’s that map of the island?’ Rafrid looked at Corrain.
‘I—’ The Caladhrian looked at the table.
Jilseth couldn’t see any sign of the chart which he had so painstakingly drawn, complete with every detail that his soldier’s eye had noted during his enslavement. Planir had been more than ready to accept Corrain’s suggestions for the disposition of their troops as they planned this attack.
‘It’s here.’ Nolyen looked up from the far corner of the room where he sat at a small writing desk. An emerald glimmer challenged the clouded light coming through the window behind him. He had been scrying over the corsairs’ anchorage almost without pause for these past three days.
Rafrid took a step towards him, stopped and swallowed an oath. ‘Dastennin’s —’
Velindre appeared in the perilously limited space within the crowded room.
Even the placid Herion was startled into a cross exclamation. ‘What is so urgent—?’
‘This.’ Velindre gestured towards Nolyen. ‘By your leave.’
She didn’t wait for him to answer. Her swirl of azure magic carried the scrying bowl from his writing desk and set it on the carpeted floor in the centre of the room.
‘Mellitha has seen this.’ Velindre passed her hand over the bowl and jade magelight flickered wildly.
‘If you don’t mind,’ Troanna said tartly as every wizard in the room crowded around trying to see.
The Flood Mistress snapped her fingers and emerald light blazed in the shallow bowl. A vision floated high above the rippling water. Not merely the usual reflection that a scrying spell carried from some distant place. This was a fully realised image, complete with depth and detail.
Far more akin to the images drawn forth by necromancy, Jilseth instantly realised. What spells had the Flood Mistress been working on with Ely and Galen?
‘Aldabreshi ships?’ Kalion was staring at the vision, puce with indignation. ‘Why did Mellitha not see these earlier? I thought that she was scrying those neighbouring warlords.’
‘She has been watching the domains who sent that first attack. These have come up from the south.’ Velindre looked at Planir. ‘We knew that the Aldabreshi would renew their attack. The southerly warlords have moved sooner than we expected.’
‘Driven on by some omens or merely the stars?’ Kalion seemed to be taking this as a personal affront.
Planir contemplated the ships. Was he trying to tally them up? As far as Jilseth could see, those galleys must surely carry a considerably larger force than the first Archipelagan assault.
‘As you say,’ he said after a long moment, ‘while this is unwelcome news, it is hardly unexpected. However inconvenient its timing, we cannot let this deter us.’
‘Archmage!’
Every wizard in the room turned, startled, to look at Corrain.
Nodding at Kusint’s final whisper, the Caladhrian squared his shoulders. ‘We can kill those corsairs, as long as you keep Anskal and his newfound wizards off us. But we cannot fight that number of Aldabreshi.’
‘Then you had better defeat the corsairs,’ Canfor told him curtly, ‘before these Archipelagans arrive.’
‘It would be better yet,’ Planir rubbed a thoughtful hand across his bearded chin, ‘if these Archipelagans don’t arrive until we have all completed our business with these corsairs and their wizards.’
‘Archmage?’ Galen answered Planir’s swift glance.
‘I have a new task for your nexus.’ The Archmage nodded at the vision of the scores of unexpected ships. ‘You’re to set the tide running against these vessels as soon as night falls. Moreover, I want them so thoroughly cloaked in mist that they have no chance to take their bearings from land or sky.
‘This must be a subtle working,’ he warned. ‘Nothing to make them think that anything more than contrary winds and currents are holding them back. I don’t want them suspecting that there’s any more magic at work in these islands than whatever self-inflicted folly is going to rid them of this Mandarkin and all his followers, at least as far as they are concerned.’
‘That won’t win the Caladhrians much time,’ Velindre observed, ‘if the magic is to be so subtle.’
‘Then we’ll work fast,’ Corrain growled from his corner by the door.
‘Such a working will need to be led by water magic,’ Canfor said sharply.
‘Quite so.’ Planir smiled at Ely.
‘Archmage.’ She couldn’t help an apprehensive glance at Galen.
The stolid earth mage gave her hand an encouraging squeeze.
‘You are more than capable, Ely,’ Troanna said with asperity.
‘But what of the Mandarkin’s captive mageborn?’ Merenel asked. ‘If that second nexus is not here to receive them—?’
Planir looked around the assembled wizards, his face grave. ‘That option is no longer open to us.’
‘Archmage?’ Herion voiced the gathering’s growing concern.
‘To confine each of those mageborn in turn, with the nexus on the island suppressing their affinity—’ he nodded at Jilseth ‘—before translocating them here against their will to be held by more quintessential magic—’ he gestured towards Sannin ‘—that will take time which we no longer have. Not if this business is to be concluded before those Archipelagan ships arrive.
‘So we will offer them a more straight-forward, if more brutal choice,’ he said coldly. ‘We will confine their affinity and press them hard. If they yield, we will bring them here and we may hope to convince them of Hadrumal’s benevolence and offer them sanctuary in Suthyfer. If they struggle against us, they will most likely destroy themselves.’
He looked at Corrain and Kusint. ‘If any should survive, you may put them to the sword. That will be a mercy,’ he assured the Caladhrian and the Soluran, ‘rather than leaving them to the Aldabreshi’s skinning knives. They will have lost all their wits along with their affinity.’
The two of them nodded with what seemed callous indifference to Jilseth. The prospect nauseated her.
‘That is now our nexus’s task, once we’re on the island?’ Merenel looked equally sick. ‘Confining their magic?’
‘No.’ Planir shook his head. ‘Disciplining the mageborn thus, any mageborn, is the burden of the Archmage and Hadrumal’s Element Masters and Mistresses. The oaths of our offices forbid us to delegate such onerous duty to any wizard of lesser rank.’
‘Then no wizard of lesser rank can ever have the temerity to attempt such fell magics.’ There was no hint of mercy in Kalion’s eyes. Then he grimaced with frank distaste. ‘So we are to expand the working we’re directing against the Mandarkin.’
‘Expand it and refine it.’ Rafrid looked inward, contemplative.
‘Is this wise, Archmage?’ Troanna asked with uncharacteristic hesitation.
‘The alternative is to condemn all these mageborn to the same fate as Anskal.’ Planir’s expression was unreadable. ‘Are we willing to do that? Masters? Mistress?’
For a long moment no one moved. Jilseth wasn’t sure if anyone in the room was still breathing.
Troanna shook her head, in almost the same instant as Kalion and Rafrid.
‘Then we are agreed,’ Planir said grimly.
Canfor cleared his throat. ‘Then, forgive me, but surely there is no need for the second nexus to go to the island at all?
Jilseth caught the veiled look of triumph that he directed at Merenel. ‘By your leave, Archmage,’ she interrupted.
‘Yes?’ he invited.
‘I have been thinking,’ she explained, ‘about additional aid that magic might offer the Caladhrian troops.’
When she had visited Halferan Manor, and then Antathele and Licanin, she had been besieged by memories of the men she’d seen cut down when the corsairs had attacked Zurenne and her daughters. The bloody deaths on the road as she tried to shield their retreat with her magecraft. The final agonies of poor fat Captain Arigo, pulled from his horse and hacked to pieces.
Jilseth had asked herself time and again what more she could have done. What more she might try, if she ever found herself in such straits again and Archmage Trydek’s Edict be damned.
Now the Archmage’s plans had changed and the Caladhrians would surely need every possible advantage, if they were to prevail before the Aldabreshi arrived to put every last one of them to the sword. Or a far worse fate, if they condemned any wizards’ allies in the same fashion as wizards themselves.
Planir raised his brows. ‘Black blade?’
‘Indeed.’ Jilseth ignored Nolyen’s look of shock. ‘And more besides.’
Tornauld had a very different glint in his eye. ‘There’s a good deal we could do. My magic could fracture doors and shutters before Jilseth could reduce that remaining pavilion’s walls to dust. Nolyen can warp and split their ship’s hulls as easily as Merenel can melt any blade that a corsair reaches for.’
‘We need no such assistance.’ Corrain stepped forward. ‘Caladhrian valour will prevail against such foes. You take care of those mageborn and we will deal with the corsairs. Besides,’ he added bitterly, ‘I thought that wizardry has no place in warfare. I would prefer not to stand before the Caladhrian Parliament and tarnish our victory with lies.’
‘That Edict has historically only applied across the lands of the Old Tormalin Empire,’ Kalion said firmly.
‘Then will you accept our assistance after your battle?’ Jilseth challenged Corrain. ‘Do you want your dead carried home to each barony for their funeral pyres to be lit in Caladhria? Will you allow Hadrumal’s wizards to carry the wounded beyond Aldabreshin reach? We could save more of them if you accept the Hearth Master’s wisdom and permit us to rescue the fallen from the midst of the fighting.’
She gave him a brief moment to contemplate the possible carnage.
‘Or would you perhaps prefer to bring all your men safely home? We have the spells to help you do that.’
‘You are entirely at liberty to decline such assistance, my lord baron,’ Planir said mildly. ‘But perhaps you might like to know what you are refusing, for yourself and your men. By way of magecrafted protection,’ he added sternly, with a warning look for Tornauld in particular. ‘That is as much as I will sanction.’
Jilseth met Corrain’s hostile stare. She could see that he was torn between his desire to accept as little wizardly help as possible and his guilty wish to see all his men kept whole.