Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (45 page)

Trydek’s Hall, Hadrumal

26th of For-Autumn

‘A
RCHMAGE.
I
WAS
pleased to learn of your return.’ Troanna swept into the study, a combative glint in her eye. ‘I take it you have some compelling reason for cramming us in here?’

Planir looked down, as though he could see through the floorboards to the spacious sitting room. ‘Herion, Ely, Sannin and Merenel are below collating lore on magecrafted artefacts gathered from our libraries. We should allow them some elbow room as they work.’

Troanna was unimpressed. ‘I gather we can expect no help from the Solurans.’

Planir smiled. ‘I thought I felt Canfor’s touch in the second nexus that was scrying after Corrain. He is quite correct,’ he continued briskly. ‘Not that I had any great hopes of the new baron persuading the Elders of Fornet. But now they know for certain that neither I nor this island had any part in bringing the Mandarkin south, thanks to the good sister adept.

‘More importantly they know without a shadow of doubt that this Anskal has amassed a hoard of ensorcelled artefacts from his Archipelagan treasure. They may yet change their minds, in the interests of defending themselves, or in hopes of securing such treasures for themselves. Hearth Master, you’re very welcome.’

Kalion nodded, his colour unflatteringly heightened after the exertion of climbing up the tower’s steps.

‘If the Solurans will not help us, I will not see them rewarded with the most meagre trinket,’ he growled.

‘Archmage.’ Nolyen appeared behind the Hearth Master. ‘Jilseth.’ He greeted her with muted relief.

‘I take it we are scrying after this Mandarkin again?’ Troanna barely acknowledged the younger mage’s arrival as she contemplated the table where a shallow bowl stood beside vials of perfumery oils and a bowl of crumbled bitumen, now mostly dust.

‘Once we have seen what Jilseth’s prize can tell us.’ Planir gestured towards a second tile-topped table bearing a tall-sided copper bowl.

‘Necromancy?’ Troanna shook her head, dismissive. ‘If you really believe there is anything of value to be learned from a dead man’s hand, you may proceed without me.’

‘A moment—if you please, Flood Mistress.’ Kalion’s belated courtesy did little to blunt the sharpness of his rebuke. ‘Archmage? Do you bring any worthwhile news from Suthyfer?’

‘Any aetheric insights into how we might deal with this Mandarkin?’ Troanna’s sarcasm was withering.

‘Unfortunately, no.’

Jilseth wondered if anyone else had noticed the Archmage’s infinitesimal hesitation before he answered.

‘Yet it took you four days to establish this?’ queried Troanna.

‘While Relshaz’s wizards have been forced to bar their doors or bring their families to shelter in Hadrumal.’ Kalion shook his head, jowls wobbling with disapproval. ‘If wizardry had greater standing on the mainland, more influence with the Magistracy and other such rulers—’

‘Who has been scrying after the Mandarkin while I have been away?’ Planir asked sternly.

‘Ely and Galen.’ Kalion squared his plump shoulders.

‘That’s one question answered then.’ Planir shared his displeasure between the Hearth Master and the Flood Mistress. ‘I wondered why I returned to find the wine shops humming with rumour and speculation.’

‘You think questions weren’t already scurrying around the city?’ Kalion was indignant. ‘Your absence has added far more fuel to those fires.’

‘I know,’ Planir assured him. ‘I have discreet ears listening for every whisper and ready to damp down any unruly blaze. At the moment I see no great cause for concern.’

‘Pupils and prentices may swap gossip as they wish from sunrise to sunset but the Council must be kept fully informed and soon.’ Troanna scowled.

‘So tell me what Ely and Galen have learned,’ Planir invited. ‘Unadulterated by wild surmise.’

‘Only that these mageborn have yielded to the Mandarkin’s teaching. Not that they have much to show for it as yet,’ Kalion admitted.

‘It takes a full season for Hadrumal’s mentors to channel a raw apprentice’s affinity into the most paltry cantrips,’ Troanna observed. ‘I cannot imagine this Mandarkin will work wonders in a handful of days.’

Planir smiled. ‘Then my absence in Suthyfer is neither here nor there.’

‘We have no notion how the Mandarkin might train their mageborn,’ Kalion retorted. ‘Nor of these artefacts he has gathered up. And forgive me—’ he spared Jilseth a brief nod ‘—I fail to see what we may learn from the death of some unfortunate corsair in Relshaz.’

‘The more we know, the more complete narrative of recent events we will have to lay before the Council,’ Planir countered. ‘Hence the need for this necromancy.’

Kalion snorted with something perilously close to scorn. ‘Then why was this spell not worked when these two arrived?’ A gesture shared his ill-temper equally between Jilseth and Nolyen.

‘Necromancy is a demanding magic,’ Planir replied calmly. ‘Any stone mage would be ill-advised to attempt it without being fully rested.’

Jilseth did her best to look both refreshed and confident in her abilities. She had assuredly slept better here in her own bed.

Troanna opened her mouth but before she could speak, booted steps echoed in the curve of the stairwell.

‘Good day to you all.’ Rafrid appeared at the door, prompting the rest to advance further into the study. ‘Forgive me, Archmage. I had pressing business in Wellery’s Hall.’

‘We all have other pressing business as well as commitments to those mages who share our affinity and to all those pupils studying each element’s magic and the quadrate spells that combine them,’ Troanna snapped. ‘You may bespeak me when you’ve worked this necromancy, Archmage, and I will return to go scrying after this Mandarkin.’

Jilseth honestly believed that the Flood Mistress would have left the room if Rafrid hadn’t been blocking the doorway.

‘Or you could scry with the Hearth Master’s assistance,’ Planir suggested, ‘while Rafrid and I witness Jilseth’s spell?’

‘That seems eminently sensible,’ Kalion said instantly. ‘We must not let this Mandarkin go unobserved.’

‘Very well.’ Troanna shooed Nolyen out of her way and sat down at the scrying bowl.

Jilseth recalled Nolyen saying that Sannin had told him that Hearth Master Kalion was itching to try his hand at the bitumen-enhanced scrying.

The fat wizard quickly took a seat opposite Troanna, arranged the fullness of his mantle so the velvet wouldn’t crease, and leaned forward to peer into the empty bowl.

Troanna swept her hand in a swift circle. Jilseth heard the muted ringing of the silver as water flowed around it. Nolyen stood ready to hand over the perfume oils which Troanna might ask for.

Jilseth frowned to see how little bitumen remained. There had assuredly been a good deal more when she had left that dish in Relshaz. Had Ely and Galen been so profligate? But Planir had mentioned scrying after Corrain when the Caladhrian had gone to Solura. Had he taken some of the bitumen to Suthyfer to enable his mageborn allies there to see what was afoot in the Archipelago?

‘I’m glad to see you so fully restored,’ Rafrid said quietly as he joined Jilseth and the Archmage beside the tiled table.

Jilseth gathered her wits. ‘Thank you, Cloud Master.’

If she and Rafrid had been alone, or if only Planir had been with them, Jilseth would have admitted her qualms. She felt confident that she had recovered all her elemental strength but her control was wont to falter unexpectedly. Worse, she was forced to acknowledge that her affinity sorely lacked its former stamina. But she wouldn’t admit any such thing with Troanna or Kalion in the room.

‘So this is your prize from Relshaz.’ Rafrid looked into the copper pot with an involuntary shudder, though the dead man’s hand was barely visible through the viscous yellow rock oil.

‘You can work necromancy with a single finger bone?’ He looked at Planir, visibly steeling himself. ‘Shouldn’t we cut the thing up? To learn as much as we can from successive spells?’

‘I think not.’ Planir’s tone suggested he’d already considered this. ‘We already know how this unfortunate died. We want to look much further back, as far as we can beyond his few last days, if we’re to learn all we can from that galley’s progress through the Archipelago. The more substantial the remains used in the spell, the more chance Jilseth has of success.’

If the Archmage had no necromancy skills of his own, he was as well informed on the quirks of this magic as he was on every other.

Rafrid stood up straight, the rim of the bowl blocking his view of the grisly contents. ‘Can I be of any assistance?’

‘Look for any detail in the necromantic visions which you think I might miss?’ Planir suggested with a wry smile.

‘As you command, Archmage,’ Rafrid answered with a grin.

‘Whenever you are ready, Jilseth,’ Planir invited.

She could already see the emerald glow of Troanna’s scrying across the room. Nolyen’s back was to her so she couldn’t see his expression but Kalion’s face was avid as he peered into the spell’s broad reflection. The Flood Mistress’s expression was coldly intent, revealing nothing of Troanna’s inner thoughts.

Warding her affinity against any hint of that rival spell, Jilseth laid her hands on either side of the copper bowl. She focused all her wizardly instincts on the rock oil within it. In some remote corner of her mind, she observed that she was concentrating more thoroughly on working this necromancy than she had done since she had first perfected these spells, in that season after she had advanced from her apprenticeship to her first pupillage.

She promptly dismissed that thought lest it prove a distraction in itself. Within a breath, the oil began to stir. It came to a boil as though a fire had long since been lit beneath it. Ensorcelled smoke and steam rose from the seething surface though the copper bowl was merely warm against her palms.

The dead corsair’s calloused hand in the depths of the oil was now completely obscured. No matter. Jilseth did not need to see it. Reaching through the copper and through the oil, her earth affinity found the infinitesimal traces of everywhere this dead man had been, of everything which he had encountered, all now part of his blood and bone and skin in a manner beyond mundane sight and sense.

Dull amber magelight began to shimmer through the mist rising from the bowl. Jilseth raised her hands to gather the swirling opacity between her clawed fingers. The threads of magelight brightened to vivid gold as she shaped and reshaped the unruly vapours into a churning globe.

Now her wizardry drew every key to the puzzle of the nameless oarsman’s life out of his dead flesh. She lifted those intangible wisps up through the oil to be woven into the glowing haze. Though this was only the beginning and barely one in ten earth mages ever mastered even so rudimentary a skill.

Now Jilseth had to send true necromantic magic through the interstices of every trace drawn from the dead man’s hand. She had to find those arcane resonances woven betwixt and between the physical memories embodied unseen in his remains. Only then could her spell extract some reflection of whatever had happened to this hapless Archipelagan.

The first such remembrance already lay within her reach. Jilseth ignored it, concentrating instead on the fainter reverberations behind it. She stretched her magecraft further. Now she was questing ever deeper into this unseen realm of infinite space bounded by the essences of elemental matter too seemingly insignificant for any but wizardly senses to comprehend.

There it was, she realised; the most remote recollection that she had any hope of grasping. Try to go any further and she risked losing control of this entire spell. Such a disaster didn’t bear contemplating. Her hands shaped the swirling greyness with quick resolve and the magelight wove itself into a lattice of golden threads.

A vision appeared caged amid the haze above the bowl, as tiny and as perfect as the most skilled artist’s miniature work. Except where a painter could only offer a vision as flat as a scrying, this image was as complete from all angles as the finest sculpture.

The dead corsair was standing on a crowded shore, the battered galley listing behind him. It was one of a host of ships anchored close together along the broad sweep of this bay. Archipelagan men and women thronged round the gaunt, hollow-eyed mariners. Their expressions were concerned and their outstretched hands welcoming.

Jilseth felt her affinity attuned to the necromancy as never before. The vision caught in the heart of the wizardry grew clearer, the distant voices louder. A necromantic spell needed no clairaudience to enhance it.

‘This is their first landfall.’ Fluent in the Archipelagan tongue, Planir picked the most vital information out of the riot of questions and pleading. ‘On one of the Nahik domain’s trading beaches.’

Despite her firm intentions, Jilseth yielded to a silent moment of pride in her own achievement. She had become accustomed to drawing out the last moments, the last day of some unfortunate’s life and death. Going back this far, tracing the fleeing corsairs’ fate almost all the way back to their galley’s frantic departure from the prison which the Mandarkin’s magic had wrought for them? This was an achievement worthy of Hadrumal’s most celebrated necromancers.