Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (36 page)

‘Planir gave Larissa the ring which Mellitha was talking about. It had once belonged to Otrick and to Azazir before him, though I don’t know who first ensorcelled it,’ Nolyen whispered, wide-eyed.

Jilseth looked at him with equal astonishment. Cloud Master or not, if half the tales told were true, Otrick had been one of Hadrumal’s most unruly mages. Azazir had been far, far worse; always among the previous generation’s wizards cited when conversation turned to those mages of legend driven to arrogance, madness and destruction by the intoxicating power afforded by their affinity.

Jilseth had been unpleasantly surprised to hear such tales, ancient and more recent, so commonly told in the mainland taverns, when she had been searching for Minelas last year.

‘I’m sure the Archmage had good reason to give her such a ring,’ she ventured.

Good reason beyond adorning his sweetheart with some token? Jilseth hadn’t entirely believed that Planir and Larissa had been lovers; the woman had a dual affinity after all and any such wizard invariably became the Archmage’s personal pupil. Discovering that Planir kept her funeral urn in his study had changed Jilseth’s mind about their intimacy but she still had no reason to doubt Planir’s integrity. Not so far, any way.

To her relief, Nolyen nodded. ‘Very good reason. Larissa and other mages besides, along with other folk from Tormalin, Ensaimin and elsewhere between, were risking their lives in Hadrumal’s service. Larissa wasn’t the only one who died.’ He looked faintly sickened and not by the swaying motion of the carriage through Relshaz’s streets.

‘Go on,’ Jilseth prompted with some apprehension.

‘There are Aetheric adepts of notable skills living in a swathe of islands in the northern ocean,’ Nolyen explained. ‘Akin to the Mountain Men and their
sheltya
. A handful or so years ago, they had ambitions to seize the Suthyfer islands and those new lands beyond the ocean besides.’

‘The lands which the Tormalin Emperor had claimed?’

Tadriol the Provident had initially claimed the unexplored expanses, Jilseth recalled, on the grounds of some ill-fated Tormalin nobleman’s expedition lost in the first years of the Chaos. Planir had intervened and invited the Emperor to think again, or so the story around Hadrumal went.

Whatever the truth of that, those unbounded lands were now open to anyone willing to risk the perilous ocean crossing. The vital stepping stones on that route, the islands of Suthyfer had become a self-governing fiefdom rapidly growing into a trading centre with ambitions to rival Ensaimin’s city states.

Nolyen was nodding. ‘Planir, Otrick and the Hearth Master led the first mages to defend the settlers—’

‘Kalion?’ Jilseth struggled to believe that. The Hearth Master was known to leave Hadrumal to be wined and dined by noblemen from Caladhria to Toremal but to suffer the indignities and discomforts of a settlement being hacked out of untamed wilderness?

But Nolyen was nodding. ‘There were several clashes between those northern adepts and the other mages in Planir’s confidence. Why else do you think he was so ready to allow Shivvalan and Usara to set up their new sanctuary for wizardry in Suthyfer?’

Jilseth frowned. ‘But that was after Larissa had died. And what has any of this to do with an ensorcelled ring?’

Nolyen raised a placating hand. ‘You know there are Aetheric adepts in Suthyfer, working with Usara and Shivvalan? Drawn from those who’ve studied medicine and other lore in Tormalin’s oldest shrines as well as scholars and mentors from the universities of Vanam and Col? It seems that they found some way to use that ensorcelled ring to help shield the mageborn from aetheric attack by these northern adepts.’

‘The adepts used the ring? But those who use Artifice cannot be mageborn any more than a wizard can learn these aetheric enchantments of theirs.’

Now Nolyen was shaking his head. ‘You do not have to be mageborn to benefit from inherent magic instilled into an object.’

Jilseth leaned back against the carriage’s velvet upholstery to consider this.

What was Planir thinking? If Artifice had somehow shielded those mageborn from aetheric attack, how might that rune land reversed?

She frowned. ‘Is he hoping to find some way of using these artefacts which this Anskal is hoarding to render him vulnerable to an adept’s assault, even when he’s not actively engaged in magecraft?’

‘I have no idea,’ Nolyen admitted.

As the carriage rumbled on through Relshaz, Jilseth had to curb her envy of Nolyen, so much deeper in the Archmage’s confidence than she was.

Deep enough to know something more of Velindre’s excursions into the Archipelago? A handful of years ago, Hadrumal’s gossip-mongers had peddled tales of dragons’ devastating magic scouring Aldabreshin islands down to the bedrock before the creatures had apparently departed as abruptly as they’d appeared.

Otrick had long been rumoured to have an interest in dragons while Azazir had been widely condemned, according to legend, for actually summoning up such a beast in hopes of bending its innate magic to his wizardly will. It was generally agreed that the dragon had eaten him instead, unanimously judged to be a fitting and well-deserved fate.

‘What did Velindre mean about crafting a warding against dragons across the Archipelago?’

‘I’ve barely heard half that tale.’

That clearly frustrated Nolyen. Jilseth tried not to let it comfort her.

‘Velindre definitely helped drive the beasts out of the islands,’ Nolyen asserted. ‘She learned that a dragon won’t linger where one of its own kind has been killed. So she and some others in the Archmage’s confidence spread soil stained with dragon’s blood throughout the Archipelago on the winds and the tides.’

‘So there really is no chance of a dragon biting this Mandarkin’s head off.’ Jilseth wondered if Planir would truly have resorted to such measures. Surely he was powerful enough to both summon up a beast and control it. But if that option was no longer open to them, there was no point regretting a cracked egg.

Still, it was reassuring to know that Hadrumal’s mages had proved they could best the wildest and most devastating untamed magic bred into a dragon’s very bones. The Archmage and the Council should surely defeat a single Mandarkin wizard.

The carriage trundled onwards. The two of them sat in silence.

Looking sideways under cover of her eyelashes, Jilseth watched Nolyen staring blindly out of the window. As he fiddled with the peridot studs at his shirt cuffs, she guessed he was contemplating whatever the Archmage truly expected of him in Suthyfer. Whatever he hadn’t told her.

Jilseth could take comfort from knowing precisely what was expected of her and her necromancy. Though she didn’t know how far they had to go to this fountain where the carriage would leave them.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

Nadrua Town, Pastamar Province, in the Kingdom of Solura

9th of Grelemar (Soluran calendar)

‘H
AVE YOU SEEN
him? His name is Kusint. He’s of Forest blood, though not of the Folk, as I think the saying goes.’

Corrain hadn’t realised until he’d started this quest that he had no idea of Kusint’s family name. Nor if the Forest Folk used such courtesies.

‘If you do see him,’ he continued doggedly, ‘tell him that I am here. That I will be waiting by the stone pillar in the market place every day at sunset.’

The bargeman nodded but he still didn’t answer.

Corrain persisted. ‘There will be silver coin for whoever gets my message to him.’

He didn’t make the mistake of patting a purse to show where he carried his money, jerking his head back towards the town instead, to hint at a safely stashed coffer and perhaps associates, for the benefit of any watching would-be thief.

The man simply nodded again. Corrain was less and less convinced that the Soluran understood him. It was time to move on, he decided. ‘Good day to you.’

The bargeman’s face brightened. ‘Good day,’ he said in heavily accented Tormalin.

Now it was Corrain’s turn to nod wordlessly before he walked away. He paused after twenty paces or so and looked up and down the wharves, searching for any ship whose crew he hadn’t yet spoken to.

A morning sitting idle in the inn where he’d found a lodging to spend the Archmage’s coin had been more than enough for Corrain. He’d spent these past four days, morning, afternoon and evening asking for word of Kusint. Asking as best he could anyway, not knowing any of the local tongue.

Regardless, he’d visited every merchants’ warehouse and made the rounds of all the taverns. Awake before first light today, he had come down to the river in hopes of news. He was intent on sending messages far and wide.

Because Kusint must have ignored that letter which Planir swore had been delivered to him. The Archmage had said the lad was in some village whose name meant nothing to Corrain but it was supposedly within a day or so’s travel of this town.

Well, Corrain wasn’t about to give up. Perhaps the lad could be persuaded to come and find Corrain if enough people told him he was truly here in Solura. Even if the Forest lad only wanted to punch his treacherous face so long and so hard that he’d still be dizzy at Solstice.

He paused to take stock. As far as he could tell, Corrain had approached all the sail barges currently tied up alongside the extensive wharves. If this town was no match for the port city of Issbesk down on the coast, where this apparently endless river flowed into the Soluran Sea, Nadrua was as big as Ferl or Trebin and profited from twice or thrice as much trade as either of those towns.

So Corrain had guessed that plenty of the boatmen would speak some Tormalin. The crew of the barge which he and Kusint had ridden northwards earlier in the summer had done so. Now he was beginning to think that the red-sailed barge and its men were an exception, deliberately sought out by Kusint. None of the river-going Solurans whom he had spoken to today knew any more of the Tormalin tongue than they might need to conclude a trade deal or a fist fight with merchants bold enough to make the long voyage from the lands of the Old Empire.

He shoved his hands in his breeches pockets as he contemplated the river. The iron manacle around his wrist pressed into his thigh. He had taken care to shove it up his forearm, buttoning his shirt cuff tight. He didn’t want the sight of the broken chain to deter anyone from helping him.

Maybe Kusint had done more than throw that letter into the nearest fireplace. This tributary, the Mare’s Tail, wasn’t even the main trade route hereabouts, for all that it could rival the river Rel on its own. It headed down from the mountains to join the still greater river of Solura’s eastern boundary here at Nadrua and further bolster the town’s wealth .

So there must be any number of boats which Kusint could have bought passage aboard, heading southwards, northwest deeper into Solura or northeast towards the mountains.

Or he could have crossed the river to go due east. Corrain looked across the fast flowing water, dark and mysterious, to the impenetrable forest running right down to the far river bank. Only a few grassy landings had been hacked out here and there for the flat-bottomed and shallow-sided ferries that hauled goods, animals and people back and forth, their ropes easily unslung to allow the broad-sailed barges to pass unhindered.

The Great Forest. Everyone called it that, here and in Ensaimin, each in their own tongue. No wonder. Selerima, the closest of Ensaimin’s great trading cities was two hundred and sixty leagues away, at the far end of the single road that cut through the trackless trees from west to east. From the southernmost tip of the long thrust of land separating the Bay of Teshal from the Soluran Sea, Corrain had measured anything from three hundred and sixty leagues to four hundred, depending on where he guessed the Forest proper might end and the Mountains begin, on the map which he had asked the Archmage for, which Nolyen the Caladhrian wizard had promptly fetched from one of Hadrumal’s libraries.