Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (16 page)

‘What are you talking about?’ Zurenne swallowed growing misgiving. ‘The barony is safe from Karpis if the parliament has confirmed you as Lysha’s lawful husband. The corsairs have given up after their ships were sunk in the retaliation which you contrived with Tallat. If you couldn’t find a mage to help us in Solura, Jilseth was there when those last raiders arrived, Halcarion be thanked.’

Though Zurenne couldn’t think of a greater contrast than those scenes of slaughter and the light-hearted tales of games and dalliance usually involving the beauteous goddess of love and luck.

Corrain was staring unblinking at the crystal urn. ‘I did find a mage.’

‘What?’ This made no sense to Zurenne.

‘Planir must know.’ Corrain almost sounded relieved. ‘I’ll take whatever punishment he decrees as long as it doesn’t threaten Halferan.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ Zurenne’s unease was deepening to dread.

‘When we sailed for Solura, we didn’t find a mage to help us, not as Kusint hoped.’ Corrain stumbled over the name of his lost companion

‘As you told me,’ Zurenne reminded him. ‘When you finally returned to Halferan!’

Long after she and everyone else had given Corrain up for dead. Everyone save Ilysh.

‘That was no lie.’ He grimaced. ‘But it was far from the whole truth. We did find Soluran wizards pursuing a Mandarkin mage—’

‘Mandarkin?’ It took Zurenne a moment to recall the barren mountainous realm to the north of Solura. Its easternmost fringe had been marked on that chart where Madam Merenel had shown Lysha the barren wastes of Gidesta.

Kusint, the Soluran who’d escaped slavery with Corrain had said the Mandarkin tyrants had been foes of the Soluran kings for generations beyond memory. That Solura’s wizards were accustomed to wield potent magics to defend their land and its people. Kusint had sworn such magecraft would defeat the corsairs. Soluran wizards weren’t hamstrung by the Edict of Hadrumal.

Zurenne had given Corrain her blessing when he’d sworn to secure such aid for Halferan. She had used his devotion to safeguard the barony as far as she could. If he had died on that improbable quest, the protection of his marriage contract with Lysha would have given her a case to argue against Lord Licanin’s claim or Baron Karpis’s. If no one could prove that Corrain had died, she could have delayed submitting to a guardian with all manner of stratagems. Maewelin forgive her. She glanced guiltily at the Winter Hag.

‘I rescued him, the Mandarkin mage, from the Solurans since they wouldn’t help us.’

Zurenne realised that Corrain was addressing her dead husband’s ashes rather than talking to her.

‘He’s a starveling wretch—’ but the contempt in Corrain’s voice warred with fear ‘—he only wanted gold and food to fill his belly, fine clothes on his back. But he had magic the likes of which—’

Corrain shook his head, eyes closing on some lacerating memory. ‘The Soluran wizards called up dust storms to blind him and set their own guards’ swords on fire to cut through armour like it was wax. He still cost them two of their own before escaping all unseen.’

Now Corrain was pleading with the funeral urn. ‘The Solurans wouldn’t help us. I couldn’t come home empty-handed. We have no quarrel with Mandarkin—’

His face twisted with anguish. ‘He killed all the corsairs plundering Halferan Manor. He used his magic to find their anchorage through my ties to that cursed place. I thought he would kill them all, I swear it!’

Zurenne struggled to recall their conversation, when she had still been reeling from the shock of Corrain’s reappearance amid the ruins of Halferan. He had walked back in through the manor’s gates like the shade of a dead man fleeing Poldrion’s demons.

What was it the old wives said, as in the sewing circles sharing their wisdom of age with newlyweds? Be careful what you wish for. Eldritch Kin lurking in the shadows might hear and send that very thing, to spite the gods who know far better than you do.

‘You said that the corsairs had enough loot to satisfy ten mages.’ She grasped at a fugitive memory. ‘If this Mandarkin sought gold—’

‘He said he was claiming their whole island and would take all the corsairs for his own slaves.’ Corrain seemed oddly bemused. ‘He didn’t sink their ships. He just closed up their harbour with a wall of water. Then he sent me back to Halferan.’

‘What does all this mean?’ Zurenne’s voice was shrill with confusion and apprehension.

‘I don’t know.’ Corrain finally looked at her. ‘But you should know that I defied Planir of Hadrumal, like my lord. And I was betrayed just as he was.’

His voice was harsh though Zurenne couldn’t tell if he was condemning her dead husband or his own folly.

She seized on a far more vital question. ‘Are you saying we must still fear corsairs?’

Corsairs with a mage to call on? Magic such as Jilseth had used to slay those last raiders? That prospect was so truly dreadful that further words froze in Zurenne’s throat.

Corrain twisted the shackle around his wrist. ‘He swore there would be no raids on our shores as long as he ruled their island.’

‘You trust his word?’ Zurenne frowned at abrupt recollection of something her husband had once told her, of the southern barbarians’ ignorance and superstition. ‘But the Aldabreshi abominate magic. They kill all wizards on sight.’

Corrain nodded. ‘Perhaps that’s what we should pray for, my lady.’

‘That they kill him and reclaim this island you speak of? When that would leave the corsairs freed from his oath and his rule, to sail north and attack us again?’ Zurenne cried. ‘Corrain, what have you done?’

What manner of man had she shackled her innocent daughter to? What bargain could she possibly strike with the Archmage now, to save them all from the corsairs’ return?

What would Planir do, to punish Corrain? What could he do beyond that, to curb this unknown wizard’s ambitions, whatever they might prove to be?

C
HAPTER
N
INE

The Terrene Hall, Hadrumal

8th of For-Autumn

‘J
ILSETH
?’ N
OLYEN’S KNUCKLES
rapped on the oak.

She hurried to open the door. ‘Keep your voice down!’

Living cheek by jowl was convenient for wizards eager to share their knowledge but it could prove cursed awkward with a close neighbour who was a light sleeper.

Jilseth looked warily across the quadrangle as Nolyen pushed past her into her study. Thankfully she saw no sign of Simne stirring. The austere mage would be like a bear roused from its winter torpor to be woken so soon after dawn. He rarely closed his own shutters before midnight.

‘What has you coming here so early and in such haste?’

She opened the shutters to allow the pallid daylight through the ivy cloaking these walls and encroaching on her windows.

Nolyen paused in loosening the drawstring of the leather sack he had dumped on her table. ‘What’s keeping you from your sleep?’ he asked, looking at her critically.

‘Apart from your arrival?’ Jilseth snapped. ‘Excuse me while I dress.’

At least her current incapacity hadn’t reduced the privileges her wizardry had already won her. She enjoyed one of the Terrene Hall’s most coveted apartments with a separate bedchamber as well as a spacious study well supplied with bookshelves.

She closed the connecting door with an emphatic snick of the latch rather than a slam to relieve her anger and to annoy those still asleep above her. Pulling her linen nightgown over her head, she found the chill in the air raised gooseflesh on her naked skin. Summer was definitely passing.

Nolyen had arrived too early for her to ring for one of the hall’s resident maidservants in hopes of a kettle of hot water. Well, a swift wash in the cold water of her basin’s ewer chased away some of her weariness after another broken and troubled night. She dressed swiftly in a fresh chemise, stockings and a plain grey gown. Perhaps Nolyen had brought something to distract her from more fruitless musing.

Returning to the sitting room, she saw that he’d lit the lamps in the sconce by the door and on the table by the fireside chair where she was accustomed to sit and read. Their glow burnished the carved stone figurines arrayed along the front of every bookshelf; animals, buildings, men and women, as varied in style and craftsmanship as the rocks they had been made from. Every line had once told Jilseth some secret of their substance or of their shaping.

She contemplated the items which Nolyen had laid on the table; a shallow silver bowl and lumps of black rock seamed with sandy stone. Bitumen. The hardest, purest kind from a ravine in remotest Gidesta kept a close secret by the miners who profited from it. Jilseth didn’t need her mage senses to recognise such a specimen so intriguing to any earthborn wizard.

Nolyen’s amiable face reflected his chagrin at his foolish question earlier. ‘I would have asked you to join me in my chamber but I thought we would do better with more space.’

Jilseth judged that was the closest she would get to an apology. She decided to accept it. ‘That’s true enough.’

Nolyen had only recently quit the room which he had shared as a lowly apprentice. Now he had a cramped chamber in the noisy courtyard where the Seaward Hall ran alongside Hadrumal’s high road. Flood Mistress Troanna did not believe in cosseting her pupils with featherbeds and hip baths like Hearth Master Kalion.

Nolyen grinned. ‘I’ve been wondering how to go scrying for the Mandarkin without actually scrying for him.’

‘All night?’ Jilseth queried. His eyes looked as shadowed and heavy as her own felt. ‘It’s too early for riddles. Let me make a tisane.’

She crossed the room to the small fireplace, reaching for the mantel where she kept her glasses and herb jars.

The small blaze she had lit for comfort the evening before had long since died. Cool though the morning was, no one would cover their embers to keep them smouldering overnight until the turn of For-Winter.

Jilseth could not countenance reaching for steel and flint, not with Nolyen in the room, for all that his back was so tactfully turned. Throwing a handful of kindling onto the ashes, she concentrated all her wizardly strength on summoning a spark of elemental fire. To her profound relief, a cheerful yellow tongue licked at a frayed twist of bark.

Jilseth set the kettle on its hook and turned to ask Nolyen what herbs he’d favour in a tisane. As she did so, she caught sight of the muslin bundle from the Taw Ricks lodge. She had left it on the windowsill, well away from the fireplace in case of undue stickiness.

Nolyen was Caladhrian, from some northern barony, and noble born besides. A third or fourth son, if Jilseth recalled correctly. Not the eldest and heir anyway, which must have made the revelation of his magebirth and the necessity of sending him to Hadrumal easier for his parents to bear. With his quick wits and love of learning he would surely have been destined for the university at Col regardless.

‘Nol, what do you know about eryngo?’ She made sure to pronounce the curious name as Doratine the cook had done.

He was wringing water out of the empty air to fill the scrying bowl. ‘Eryngo? Why do you ask?’

‘Why are you blushing?’ Jilseth couldn’t decide if she was more entertained or perturbed by that.

‘It’s a—’ Nolyen stroked his neatly trimmed beard to a point ‘—restorative herb.’