Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (11 page)

So the grey-haired lord wasn’t about to stand idly by and allow Corrain to abuse a defenceless girl. Not when he had already failed Lady Ilysh once.

All the same, Corrain owed Lord Licanin some measure of honour for the Licanin blood shed in Halferan’s defence. The truth was fit repayment.

‘No, I have not touched her, nor will I,’ he said low-voiced, ‘until and unless she is of an age and of a mind to make that choice for herself, and I don’t see that ever happening. Saedrin’s stones, my lord, I’m old enough to be her father.

‘Besides,’ he added frankly, ‘even if Lady Ilysh were ever willing Lady Zurenne would cut off my manhood before I laid a finger on her daughter. I’ve sworn to dissolve the marriage whenever Ilysh asks it and she will go virgin to a worthy husband.’

He didn’t see any need to add that his manhood hadn’t so much as stirred at the sight or thought of any woman since he had returned to Caladhria. The corsairs might as well have gelded him as brutally as the Aldabreshin warlords who reputedly cut stick and stones entirely from the slaves attending their wives.

Lord Licanin looked at him for a moment, his expression impenetrable. Then he rose without a word, to stalk away not looking back at Corrain.

Corrain rubbed his hands over his face and wondered how soon he and his men could be on the road back to Halferan where so many fresh challenges awaited him.

And there was no magic for him to call on, to lessen that distance or lighten those burdens.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

The Wizards’ Physic Garden, Hadrumal

3rd of For-Autumn

‘G
OOD MORNING,
J
ILSETH.
’

‘Archmage!’ She stiffened, sitting upright on the weathered bench as she opened her eyes.

He took a seat beside her and contemplated the neatly tended beds of herbs and other potent plants. Some had already been harvested, others were waiting out the season. A few wouldn’t be touched until For-Winter brought the first possibility of frosts to the island along with swathing mists which owed nothing to the concealing sorcery that habitually hid the wizards’ sanctuary.

The whole garden was surrounded by the high walls supporting the densely fruiting canes and the artfully shaped trees whose boughs were laden with pears, apples and quinces. Those would supply syrups to sweetly disguise the apothecaries’ harsh nostrums.

‘Do you find a cure for what ails you here?’

Jilseth didn’t imagine that Planir thought that she hoped for some pill or potion to miraculously restore her magic.

‘To some degree.’

What she had particularly come in search of was peace and quiet and a complete absence of curious eyes. Whenever she went from her rooms in the Terrene Hall to one of the city’s libraries, she felt the weight of so many gazes; some sympathetic, some barely concealing their callous amusement, all avid to know if her affinity showed any signs of returning.

Even when she closed her door on them all, to sit alone at her workbench littered with tools and spirit lamps, with cracked or molten specimens of rock and ore, she was painfully aware of the wizards living in the accommodations beside her own and up on the floors above.

Calm and self-control was essential to the proper exploration of magic. Jilseth had been told that by every mage who had ever taught her. Any excess of emotion threatened precisely the untamed and damaging eruptions of affinity that saw the mainland mageborn so hastily sent to Hadrumal.

That was all very well but what lay on the reverse face of that particular rune bone?

‘Archmage,’ she said abruptly. ‘You told me to be wary of chaotic magic as my affinity returns. But what if I am too wary? What if my apprehension is stifling my mageborn instincts?’

She wouldn’t have imagined such a thing was possible when she had been an apprentice but that was before she had encountered that Mountain Man Sorgrad. His magebirth had gone unsuspected by the disapproving
sheltya
, the Aetheric adepts and lawgivers of the uplands, because the scoundrel had been able to keep his affinity in check through sheer unadulterated stubbornness.

Planir nodded. ‘That is, unfortunately, possible.’ He shifted on the bench, resting one elbow on the carved back as he looked at her. ‘Perhaps a complete change of scene might help take your mind off your troubles. I want to visit the Widow Halferan.’

‘Archmage?’ That certainly startled Jilseth out of her preoccupations. And explained why Planir was dressed as soberly, in long-sleeved black tunic and breeches, as some Ensaimin merchant’s head clerk. A very prosperous merchant’s clerk.

He looked easterly, as though he could see through the artisans’ houses surrounding this garden, all the way down the road leading to the harbour and across the seas beyond. ‘I suspect it would be considered more seemly if you accompanied me.’

‘But Archmage—’ Jilseth began, somewhat hesitant.

She had heard the increasing whispers of friction among the Council of Wizards’ higher echelons, for all that she was currently spurning Hadrumal’s wine shops and cook houses in favour of scouring musty archives for any mention of past mages who’d suffered something of her calamity. Tornauld, Merenel and Nolyen were proving their worth as her friends as well as fellow seekers into the intricacies of quintessential magic, bringing her food and drink spiced with the distractions of the latest gossip.

Surely the Archmage himself should be leading the search for some way to break through this impertinent Mandarkin’s veiling. So the wine shop sages said to each other. How was sustaining such a spell possible for a wizard from such an obscure and impoverished tradition? How dared the Soluran Orders hold themselves so infuriatingly aloof? What was the Archmage doing to answer these questions?

Planir’s face hardened as he smiled. ‘I am at no one’s beck and call, not even the Flood Mistress or the Hearth Master. Shall we go?’

‘Yes, Archmage.’ Jilseth was suddenly filled with longing for some time spent where no one could find her, not even those with the very best of intentions.

Planir’s smile softened as he took her hand and the garden disappeared in a soft white haze. When the mist cleared a moment later, Jilseth found herself standing in front of a sprawling, ornate building, most notable for the severely Rational wing added at a sharp angle to the end, its harsh orange brick barely softened by winter weathering.

‘Taw Ricks hunting lodge.’ Planir grinned.

Jilseth nodded, unable to speak. Their translocation had been so smooth and swift, woven of air and fire in a fashion any Cloud Master would envy. Yet again, this evidence of the Archmage’s mastery both astonished and oppressed her. Would she ever regain command over so much as her own inborn affinity for the earth?

‘Oh! My lady! That’s to say, Madam Jilseth!’

‘Good morning to you, Doratine.’ Jilseth startled out of her preoccupation at being so abruptly addressed by the Widow Halferan’s cook, hurrying out of what must be the door to the servants’ hall.

‘I am Planir of Hadrumal.’ The Archmage offered a courteous nod.

‘Saedrin save us.’ The woman twisted her bony fingers around each other. ‘Is there news? From Ferl?’ Then she clapped a hand to her mouth, horrified. ‘But that’s not for me to ask. My lady Zurenne—’

‘Is she receiving guests?’ Planir began walking along the dusty path where hobnailed boots had worn away the grass separating the lodge from the carriage way that cut across the front of the building before curling around to the stable yards. ‘Perhaps you could ask? We can wait.’

‘Of course.’

As the cook hurried away through the floridly carved porch, Jilseth was reminded how awestruck the mundane populace were by magic. Though of course Doratine had seen the wizardry that saved Halferan and few on the mainland would ever have seen the like of that. Then again, Jilseth mused, those magics which she had wielded had been simple enough spells compared to the magecraft within Planir’s reach. Did these people have any idea of wizardry’s true scope?

As she concluded that, no, they really didn’t, Zurenne’s personal maid appeared.

‘Raselle.’ Jilseth smiled at the girl.

‘Madam mage. Archmage.’ Raselle looked wide-eyed at Planir.

Jilseth noted the maid was clenching her jaw tight shut, presumably to keep herself from asking if there was any news from Ferl. Hadn’t Planir realised that’s what everyone would ask, as soon as they appeared here?

She took the opportunity to study the Archmage’s expression as they followed Raselle through the lodge’s entrance hall, so cluttered with boxes and bundles that the aisles crossing it from front to back and from side to side were barely wide enough for two people to pass each other. Planir’s face gave nothing away.

The maid opened one of the two doors side by side in the hall’s rear wall and ushered them into a sitting room not only crowded with original furnishings and salvaged chattels but also boasting a startling selection of frivolous new accoutrements.

Planir inclined his head courteously to the slightly-built, dark-haired woman standing by the fireplace. ‘Lady Zurenne.’

Jilseth had noted the maidservant’s apron and cap were recently hemmed from a bolt of new linen. Lady Zurenne was wearing a fine silk lavender gown trimmed with fresh lace. The widowed noblewoman had been quick enough to spend the Archmage’s coin, whatever grudges she might hold against Hadrumal. Grudges she had good reason to bear, Jilseth reminded herself.

‘Archmage.’ The Halferan noblewoman wasn’t precisely unwelcoming but she couldn’t hide her surprise swiftly followed by apprehension. ‘Madam Jilseth.’

‘I was wondering,’ Planir stepped forward before she could continue, ‘have you had any news from the parliament?’

‘From Ferl?’ Zurenne stared at him. ‘You haven’t come to tell me...?’

Her words trailed off in confusion.

‘We have no business with Caladhria’s parliament.’ Now it was Planir’s turn to look mildly puzzled.

Zurenne was provoked into an uncharacteristically sharp retort. ‘Then why are you here?’

Planir looked around the room before answering. ‘Lady Ilysh tells me that you’ll be dedicating a shrine today.’

‘Lysha?’ Lady Zurenne’s hand went to the silver rune sigil on the black ribbon around her neck.

Had she not realised, Jilseth wondered, that the girl would use the pendant which she too had been given, for her own purposes? In the next breath she wondered what else the child had told Planir.

Zurenne’s dark eyes, shadowed with weariness, promised a reckoning with her elder daughter. ‘She should have told you that is to be a purely household affair.’

‘She did,’ Planir assured her. ‘However I realised that I can do you a particular service in advance of those rites.’

‘What service?’ Now Zurenne was wary as well as mystified. Before Planir could speak, she turned to Raselle who was hesitating in the doorway.

‘Tisane for our guests, if you please!’ she snapped.

The girl shut her mouth, bobbed a curtsey and shut the door. Jilseth heard her boots pattering away on the flagstones. She’d half expected the girl to listen at the keyhole.

Planir looked steadily at Zurenne. ‘I was most grieved to learn that your husband’s ashes are now mingled with those of his ancestors.’