Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (66 page)

Zurenne had been steeling herself to ask this question all morning. Ever since Jilseth and that other, unfamiliar magewoman had appeared outside the manor’s gates, asking courteously for admission.

Jilseth had introduced the tall blonde wizard woman as Velindre. Now she was talking to Hosh, sitting with him outside the shrine. Abiath perched on a third stool, leaning close to hear whatever her son had to say about all he had endured in his long absence.

That left Jilseth sitting on a bench beside the gatehouse, watching with interest as the master carpenter and his workmen tiled the great hall’s new roof.

Zurenne really hadn’t needed Lysha’s urgent prompting, when the girl had seen the approaching magewomen from her bedroom window up above in the gatehouse. She was as curious as her daughter to find out what had befallen the Halferan guardsmen and their allies. Or rather, what their wide-eyed tales of wizardry and confusion might truly signify.

Jilseth looked up with a polite smile. ‘Fair festival, my lady.’

‘Fair festival to you.’ Zurenne took a seat on the bench.

Before she could repeat her question, Jilseth asked one of her own.

‘When do you expect Baron Halferan to return from Ferl?’

Zurenne pretended to consider this. ‘It’s wise to allow six days for that road in all but the finest weather.’

Though given Corrain’s determination to reach the Parliament before its first sitting, she wouldn’t have wagered against him making that journey in the three days he’d had left to him. Even after spending three days and nights senseless and two more rounds of the manor’s new timepiece’s chimes so weak that he could barely get out of bed.

But he had been determined to go. Even more so after courier doves had brought him messages from Licanin, Tallat and Antathele. Kusint had gone with him, ready to tie him to his saddle if that’s what it took to keep Corrain on his horse and on the road.

Zurenne had read the messages brought by the doves after Corrain and the guard contingent had left. It seemed that the noble lords all agreed that the parliament must be told in no uncertain terms that there truly was no place for wizardry in warfare.

Not now those who’d gone to fight the corsairs had seen magecraft wreak such terrifying, unstoppable destruction. Not now that the corsairs’ island had been utterly sunk beneath the Archipelago’s seas. None among them, the barons were agreed, must ever consider enlisting such an ally for fear of facing such implacable annihilation by way of retaliation.

Never mind any of Hadrumal’s edicts. This must be enshrined in Caladhrian law, subject to the gravest penalties. Every power and fiefdom on the mainland must also learn this truth, from the trading cities of Ensaimin, through the newly fashioned Conclave of Provinces in Lescar to the generations-old Imperial throne of Tormalin. Though hopefully the Tormalins would remember that magic had been the cause of the chaos which had engulfed their ancient Empire.

Jilseth looked across the manor compound. ‘Hosh didn’t go with him to the parliament?’

Clearly the boy hadn’t, Zurenne was tempted to reply. But she understood what the magewoman was asking.

‘He wouldn’t leave his mother.’ She watched Abiath rest a wrinkled hand on the lad’s knee. His own fingers closed on top of his mother’s as he spoke to Velindre.

Jilseth’s gaze slid sideways to Zurenne. ‘Not to be honoured by the parliament for killing your lamented husband’s murderer? Or does Corrain take credit for that?’

‘No, he does not,’ Zurenne said indignantly.

It had been the first thing Corrain had said, that Hosh had avenged their lost lord, when he had finally opened his eyes to look with wonder at the gatehouse bedchamber ceiling.

Even before he knew that three of the other men who’d gone with him had already woken down in the roughly furnished barrack hall, to gasp out their terrified tale. Whatever else had been incomprehensible, the news of the black-bearded corsair’s death had raced around the manor before leaping the brook to the half-built village beyond.

Jilseth looked towards the kitchen buildings and the storehouses and servants’ dwellings rising anew. ‘The rebuilding proceeds apace.’

‘Even without Tornauld’s assistance,’ Zurenne agreed. ‘Where is he?’

She wasn’t going to sit here exchanging idle pleasantries with Jilseth. She wanted to know what had happened on that corsair island.

‘In Hadrumal.’ Jilseth hesitated. ‘Our victory took a great deal out of him.’

‘Your victory over the Mandarkin wizard?’ Zurenne demanded.

Jilseth looked startled. ‘He told you about Anskal? Corrain did?’

‘Of course.’ Zurenne wondered why the magewoman should be so surprised. ‘But is the villain dead or merely defeated?’

Corrain had been unable to tell her. His distant gaze had fixed on some awful memory. All that he could say was he couldn’t imagine how anyone, man or mage, could have survived such an overwhelming magical onslaught.

But that was nonsensical as far as Zurenne was concerned. Corrain had survived, and so had every man gone with him. Even Hosh had been brought back from the distant Archipelago.

‘What happened?’ Zurenne repeated her question.

What had happened before the Tormalin magewoman Merenel had appeared in the manor compound? Hollow-eyed and tear-stained, she had shouted at them all to make ready to receive their injured men before vanishing just as abruptly.

Since Merenel had spoken of injuries, Fitrel had immediately begun shouting for linen and hot water, for whatever salves and stitching needles the carpenters and bricklayers might have in case of accidents and injuries.

Then the unconscious men had appeared, swathed in white mist and laid as gently on the cobbles as any mother might lay down her child. There had been no blood. Their sufferings looked more akin to someone who had been lost for days in the salt marshes through the height of summer.

Their faces had been reddened and peeling while their feet had been sodden and foul. Stripped and washed they had all been so bruised that they might have been beaten from head to toe with fence posts.

All except Hosh. He had looked like a drowned rat but once he’d spewed up a bucket of seawater, there hadn’t been a mark on him. Not beyond that shocking, ill-mended old injury to his poor thin face. Though he had been mute for two days before suddenly bursting into tears and begging pitiously for his mother.

Zurenne looked towards the shrine. She saw the lad reach into a pocket of his smart new tunic and take out something that shone bright in the autumn sun.

Velindre reached for it before suddenly withdrawing, her fingers knotting into a fist. A moment later, she held out her palm. Zurenne could see the tension in the tall woman’s shoulders as Hosh laid the thing on her hand.

‘He says there is magic in that arm ring.’ She twisted on the bench to look straight at Jilseth. ‘He says that it saved him. He says the wizard had a trove of such treasures. How do you know that some such thing didn’t save this Mandarkin?’

Her voice rose with her anger. She was angry because she was frightened. If half the mumbled tales from the barrack hall were true, the notion of that wizard surviving was truly terrifying. Now he would surely be Halferan’s sworn foe until his dying day. Zurenne had seen that very fear in Corrain’s bruised eyes, however much he insisted that the Mandarkin had perished.

‘Anskal is dead.’ Jilseth paused to choose her words. ‘The Archmage turned his magic upon him, and not only his own wizardry. When four mages join their affinities together into what is called a nexus, their strength is not merely the sum of their individual power. The first mage’s might is doubled, then their joint strength is redoubled by the third and that magecraft is doubled again by the fourth.’

‘I see.’ If Zurenne understood little about wizardry, this past season of tallying Hadrumal’s ledgers and accounts had taught her more than she ever expected to know of arithmetic. ‘And so they were stronger than Anskal? They were able to kill him?’

Jilseth hesitated again. ‘Anskal had secrets of his own. He had some means to steal another wizard’s strength, whether or not they were willing. He had gathered a number of mageborn to follow him and he didn’t hesitate to kill them in order to add their strength to his own. Then there were these artefacts and other, unexpected influences on our magic...’

She broke off with that same distant look which Zurenne had seen on Corrain’s face. Which she could see across the compound when Hosh’s eyes drifted away from Velindre as he answered whatever questions she had.

Abiath took his hand again and Hosh recovered his crooked smile. Zurenne wondered how long it would be before the poor boy truly recovered from all that he had endured. His neat, clean clothes, a shave and a close-cropped haircut could only be the first and most trivial of steps along that road.

‘We hope that aetheric magic might offer some hope of relieving Hosh’s disfigurement,’ Jilseth said with discreet pity. ‘We have an ally, a healer called Aritane, in the Suthyfer islands—’

‘What happened to him? To Anskal?’ Zurenne realised she had very nearly been lured into changing the subject. No, she would not stand for that. ‘Did the Archmage’s magic prove stronger or not?’

Once again, Jilseth chose her words carefully. ‘The union of four affinities helps the wizards in a nexus reach for higher magecraft. Quintessential magic. Anskal had no such spells and so his answer was merely more violent and brutal attacks as he murdered his followers for the sake of plundering their magic. As he killed so many of them so swiftly, the Archmage saw the very real danger that he could outstrip Hadrumal’s master nexus.’

The magewoman shuddered so suddenly that Zurenne was startled into a shiver of her own.

‘So the Archmage wrought a still greater nexus.’ Now wonder coloured Jilseth’s words. ‘There were already two more such quartets working higher magic as part of our plan to defeat the corsairs.’ She nodded towards Velindre. ‘She was there with another mage and they called on two more to square a fourth circle. Planir drew them all into his magecraft.’

Zurenne did her best to understand this. ‘And so that first higher magic already summoned by the Archmage, it was doubled and redoubled and doubled again?’

She couldn’t do that sum without pen and ink but surely that must mean Planir had amassed magic to equal every wizard in Hadrumal.

‘Anskal didn’t expect this? He had no answer?’

‘He was so utterly crushed beneath the Archmage’s wizardry that the very elements making up his flesh and bones, his blood and brain were scattered asunder. There was nothing left of him larger than the smallest grain of dust.’

There was no triumph in Jilseth’s voice, only awe and more than a little shock.

‘None of us expected the Archmage to do such a thing,’ she added grimly. ‘We didn’t know that he could do such a thing. It was—a draining experience. More so for some than for others.’

She forced an unconvincing smile. ‘But it lent us the strength to save your men and their allies.’

Zurenne thought of those cryptic messages carried by the courier doves. ‘Is the corsairs’ whole island truly destroyed?’

Was that really possible, even with wizardry as potent as Jilseth had described?

‘It is.’ The magewoman shivered again. ‘Caladhria need never fear such raids again.’

Zurenne suddenly remembered the noble-born Caladhrian wizard who had so reassured her in the past. ‘What of Master Nolyen? How is he faring?’

‘He’s well enough and recovering his strength in Hadrumal.’ Jilseth’s mood visibly lifted at that thought.

Zurenne caught sight of Lysha and Neeny walking back towards the gatehouse. They had been to collect the eggs from the hen houses currently standing on the plot that would be a new herb garden.

She was so relieved that the guardsmen had not returned with gaping wounds and gashes and not only for their own sakes. Zurenne knew that it was selfish and she had sought Drianon’s forgiveness but she was thankful that her children, especially Neeny, hadn’t had to endure the sight of more bloodshed.

‘It really is all over?’ She hesitated between a question and hopeful wonder.

‘For Halferan? Let’s hope so. For Hadrumal?’ Jilseth shook her head. ‘We cannot say. There were Archipelagan ships on the horizon. They will have been close enough to see unbridled wizardry destroying that island. The warlords will take that very ill.

‘The Archmage has retrieved Anskal’s trove of artefacts.’ She looked over at Velindre with a wry twist to her mouth. ‘There are a great many wizards who will claim an interest in such treasures and a good number of those live beyond Hadrumal’s shores and do not bow their head to the Archmage’s authority.’

‘But none of that is Halferan’s concern,’ Zurenne persisted.

‘I have no reason to think so,’ Jilseth allowed.

No reason to think so. Zurenne hugged that reassurance close. ‘Then we can put all this behind us and look to the future.’

Once he returned from the Autumn Parliament in Ferl, Corrain could cut his own hair and lay aside that broken shackle that he still wore. Whatever oath he had made on those tokens must surely be fulfilled by now.

Though, for some reason, Zurenne thought of Kusint. The first thing that the Forest lad had done, as soon as he recovered his senses, was beg for a bag of runes.