Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (17 page)

‘So the Halferan cook said, when she gave me some sweetmeats,’ Jilseth informed him drily.

‘Eryngo toffee?’ Nolyen looked relieved. ‘Yes, that’s a treat for convalescents.’

‘And for those who haven’t been ill?’ Jilseth wasn’t about to let him off this hook.

A splash of emerald magelight bounced back from the brimming bowl as Nolyen set his hands on the table. ‘Men losing their potency between the bed sheets favour the candied roots,’ he said without looking up at her. ‘Any man whose wife is seen buying them can expect to be the butt of a good many jokes in his local tavern.’

‘Oh.’ Jilseth was surprised into a laugh.

‘Shall we discuss bitumen?’ Nolyen asked pointedly.

‘Not commonly used in scrying.’ Jilseth sat at the table.

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘but widely used for caulking ships, along all the mainland coasts and right through the Archipelago.’

‘Quite so.’ Jilseth supposed that a mage with a water affinity would know what barriers might be used against it.

‘We found Corrain in Solura because you thought of scrying for that metal shackle which he wears.’ Nolyen looked intently into the water though no magelight glowed in its depths. ‘I wondered if we might find the ships trapped within the corsair anchorage in similar fashion. Why should the Mandarkin mage veil those from our sight? Once we know where the anchorage is, we can direct a scrying there and see what’s afoot without encroaching on his own magic.’

‘How are we to find some corsair galley among all the countless hundreds that ply the Archipelago’s sea lanes?’

Jilseth felt a thrill of anticipation all the same. Nolyen wouldn’t have roused her so early if he didn’t think he had an answer. Or the possibility of one. He couldn’t be certain of his magecraft though, otherwise he’d have taken this to Flood Mistress Troanna or Archmage Planir.

‘We need something specific to draw our magic to those particular ships,’ Nolyen gestured at the lumps of bituminous rock, ‘which is precisely what we have here.’

‘Not so very specific, surely?’ Jilseth was puzzled by his certainty.

His smile widened with satisfaction. ‘According to Mellitha Esterlin, this particular pitch comes from the very shipyard in Relshaz where a ship known to have joined these corsairs was laid up for repairs and refitting the winter before last.’

‘Along with how many others?’ Jilseth protested.

Nolyen shrugged. ‘A good few, doubtless, but if we have to search through them all, we’ll be closer to finding this Mandarkin mage than if we scryed after every ship afloat.’

Jilseth was sorely sceptical. ‘These shipwrights haven’t replenished their stores? A boatyard must get through sacks of this stuff.’

‘Mellitha had her man scour the corners of the storage bins,’ Nolyen said stubbornly. ‘She’s confident that these are the remnants of that season’s deliveries.’

If that assurance had come from anyone else Jilseth wouldn’t have given it a moment’s credence. Mellitha Esterlin offered an entirely different quality of information. In addition, her understanding of scrying magic was acknowledged as second to none. It was widely whispered in Hadrumal’s wine shops that she could have been Flood Mistress, had she chosen to challenge Troanna.

There was no such agreement on the far more puzzling question of why she had chosen to leave Hadrumal and had established herself in Relshaz as a tax contractor for the Magistracy which ruled the port city. What was the attraction of such a humdrum life when she could have been a pre-eminent mage of Hadrumal?

Did she use her magic to spy on the myriad merchants, to read their ledgers through shuttered windows and inside locked storage chests? Opinion on that was as sharply divided, though apparently the Relshazri all believed it and thus saw no point in trying to cheat her.

That must make life easier for Mellitha, so the wine shop sages nodded over their goblets, both in delivering the revenue which she was contracted to deliver to the magistrates and in securing a handsome profit for her own coffers.

Jilseth wondered why it occurred to no one that Mellitha must surely be one of Planir’s chief sources of information about mainland affairs. News from every nook and corner of those lands formerly ruled by Toremal came along the roads and rivers with all the goods which the Relshazri bought and sold. The city also handled more trade with the Archipelago than any other port, so Aldabreshin news and rumour landed there, first and freshest.

She stroked a piece of the bitumen with a fingertip. Her wizardly senses, dull as they were, felt the rock’s distant kinship with the ivy growing around the windows.

Like coal, this curious substance had been formed from plants growing in some remote age far beyond hope of memory. Before it had been sunk deep into the earth by the shifting mountains and sinking seas, to be transformed over aeons through slow and subtle alchemical processes born of crushing and heat.

That elemental understanding gave her affinity mastery over it. That was to say, it always had done. After so many recent failures and disappointments, Jilseth was growing reluctant to try the simplest magecraft.

She handed the lump to Nolyen. ‘Can you feel the essence of the plants within this?’

Mages with a water affinity were by far the most adept at manipulating growing things. Even wood felled generations ago remembered the sap that had once flowed through it, offering a conduit for their emerald wizardry.

‘I can.’ He grinned.

If Jilseth’s elemental senses had been blunted, she had her wits. ‘You’re hoping to weave your hold on that essence into your scrying.’

Nolyen nodded. ‘Just as you combined the lodestone fragments in the shale oil into our scrying for Corrain’s shackle.’

‘That was a very different working.’ Jilseth frowned as she recalled using the unseen magnetic fragments to direct the searching magic for that singular piece of metal. Could she ever hope to craft such wizardry again?

‘What would you like in your tisane?’ She rose and went to the fireplace to swing the singing kettle away from the flames.

‘Whatever you’re having.’ Nolyen peered closely at the lump of bitumen in his palm and it began to crumble.

By the time she returned with two glasses of hot water and steeping lemongrass, she had herself in hand. ‘Surely an enhanced scrying would be better tried with a full nexus of mages?’

Saying so nearly choked her but the search for the renegade Mandarkin was too important to risk her own inadequacies hampering Nolyen.

‘If you can light that fire under your kettle, you can melt this stuff for me,’ he said firmly. ‘I can’t, not once it’s in the water, not and have any hope of scrying. That’s all I need from you. Once the bitumen’s melted, we can see if it’s sufficiently distinctive to be worth pursuing. Then I can direct a nexus in a quintessential search for the ships trapped in that anchorage.’

‘I see.’ Jilseth nodded.

Of course he wouldn’t be trying to work the full spell with her unreliable assistance. Of course he would find any fire magic nigh on impossible to work within his own element of water. Jilseth found the volatile magics of Air the most elusive and challenging of all, so far removed from her earth-bound instincts.

And if this all proved to be a delusion born of desperation, only she and Nolyen would know of it and he could trust in her discretion for the sake of their friendship.

‘Let me melt the pitch.’ She cupped her hands around the cool scrying bowl.

The pure metal’s familiar touch soothed her fraught emotions. Jilseth realised she had forgotten how calming silver could be. That was a worthwhile reminder, whatever else might come of this dawn experiment.

Nolyen dropped a few chips of bitumen into the water.

Jilseth searched for the memory of heat born of crushing deep within the black essence while denying the water’s desire to drain all such warmth away. To her delight, that proved easier than she had expected. Bitumen in its natural state was a liquid after all, albeit one that commonly flowed more slowly than the thickest treacle.

Its vapours would be far more insidious than the scent of Lady Zurenne’s cook’s toffee. Jilseth took care to keep the lead and quicksilver seeping out of the melting blackness contained within the scrying water. Painters might choose to poison themselves with orpiment for the sake of vivid yellow in their sunsets but mages tolerated no such hazards.

She looked across the bowl to Nolyen. ‘Can you feel the metals leaching out and their alchemical balance within the bitumen?’

His chances of success through the quintessential scrying would depend on that. If Mellitha was correct and the caulking the corsairs had used on their boats had truly included pitch from this particular source.

Any earth mage could distinguish between candlesticks wrought from silver from two different mines though they might be identical to the non-wizardly eye. Had Nolyen learned enough of such wizardry? Jilseth could hope so; water magic had more sympathy with earthborn spells than with either of the other two elements.

Nolyen laid his hands carefully on the rim of the bowl and concentrated. ‘Yes, I have it.’

Green magelight suffused the water. Oils escaping the oozing pitch shone iridescent.

‘You’re scrying?’ Jilseth was surprised.

He grinned across the table at her. ‘We might as well see if any ships in Hadrumal’s harbour used that Relshazri shipyard around the same season.’

Jilseth withdrew her hands and the liquid bitumen yielded to its natural desire to drift upwards in sluggish gobs.

Nolyen hissed as the emerald radiance faded to a jaundiced hue. ‘This is no good.’

‘Never mind.’ Jilseth tried to offer encouragement as well as consolation. ‘Perhaps with a nexus—’

‘I don’t need a nexus.’ Nolyen shook his head, impatient. ‘I need you to keep the bitumen pooled in the bottom of the bowl.’

‘As you command, master mage.’ She cupped her hands around the bowl again and herded the black blobs together.

Nolyen was too intent on his scrying to notice her sarcasm. As the bitumen slid back down to the bottom of the bowl, the green magelight grew clearer. Then it grew brighter, taking on a golden hue. The radiance strengthened inexorably.

Jilseth felt her own magic surge upwards from the swirling pitch to weave itself into his wizardry. Even with only Nolyen’s magic to bolster her own, this sensation was akin to working within a nexus. Every elemental instinct told her that this scrying could go far beyond her usual reach. Only she wasn’t directing it.

‘What are you doing?’ Nolyen demanded, alarmed.

‘It’s your scrying,’ Jilseth protested.

Images slid across the surface of the water, like reflections glimpsed by someone running down a street of windows. Oared galleys patiently followed wooded coastlines. Fat-bellied merchant galleons wallowed out in the open seas, plump sails hauling their cargo onwards. A flurry of fishing vessels were rigged with the Archipelago’s distinctive triangular sails.

‘Jilseth!’ Nolyen stared at her and then back down at the bowl.

Golden magelight burned deep inside in her hands, bright enough to outline the bones within her flesh. The unbidden magic flowed from her fingertips, gilding the scrying bowl completely.

Pale haze cloaked Nolyen’s hands. He grimaced and tried to pull away. He couldn’t. The haze darkened to an amber nimbus.

Now the floating reflection showed them a narrow strip of sand crowded with Aldabreshin traders. Galleys were beached in the shallows while watchful triremes prowled off shore.

Jilseth couldn’t withdraw from the magic. She could no longer tell where her flesh ended and the silver bowl began. It was as though she cupped both water and liquid bitumen in her own hands. Her wizardly senses showed her every secret that would unlock the spell which Nolyen had groped for. She could find the elemental essence of this bitumen as surely as a compass needle could find north.

‘There!’ Nolyen gasped, as the scrying shifted again.

‘Yes.’ Jilseth had no doubt of it.

The stretch of water was longer than it was wide. It stretched inland between two headlands towards a spread of expansive houses built of coarse black rock and tiled with green ceramic. Ramshackle huts had been built all around them though all the dwellings from highest to humblest looked as deserted as the listless ships swaying at anchor—

They had found the corsairs’ anchorage. There couldn’t be another harbour in the Archipelago blocked by such an unnatural wave.

‘Please stop—’ Nolyen broke off with an agonised whimper.

With a shock of horror, Jilseth realised that this unbidden magic was reaching deep into Nolyen’s bones. She could already trace its path as far as his wrists.

She fought to draw the wizardry back into the silver of the bowl. That was a struggle in itself but after a long, tense moment, Nolyen was able to pull away with a heartfelt oath.

‘Talgrin’s hairy arse.’ Grimacing, he curled his red and swollen hands against his chest.

Jilseth was striving to feel her own flesh and bones again. At present she couldn’t distinguish them from the silver of the scrying bowl. Her elemental affinity thrummed with every unique resonance of the metal. The effect was so unexpectedly sensual that she was reluctant to withdraw her hands. Never mind that some remote, dispassionate voice of reason was telling her this unknown magic could do her irreparable damage.