Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (52 page)

Guinalle sat with her eyes closed, clasping Corrain and Usara’s hands. The Suthyfer mage stared into the green glow of his magecraft. A deep frown of concentration drew Jilseth’s brows together.

‘Where is he?’

As Hosh wondered aloud, the mossy haze thinned. Now they could see the man standing with a handful of others in an unfurnished room with windowless walls of plain, dressed stone.

All the rest wore plain grey robes. Their hoods were thrown back to reveal three men with shaven heads and two women whose blonde hair was cropped so close that they might just as well have taken a razor to their scalps.

The distant strangers turned, along with the man from Wrede, and looked through the circle of the cooking pot’s rim.

‘How very enterprising.’

Hosh heard a man’s voice inside his head, just as he did when Mentor Garewin encouraged him to revisit his childhood memories of home.

Usara snatched his hand back as though the metal had burned him. ‘Saedrin’s stones!’

The vision blinked into nothingness. Not even the green magelight remained in the water.

Guinalle opened her eyes. ‘Your friend from Wrede is s
heltya
.’

‘From the Mountain Men?’ Hosh remembered what Kusint had told him of those mysterious adepts.

‘What is their interest in this?’ Usara blew on his sore fingertips.

‘I suggest you ask Aritane,’ Jilseth said swiftly, ‘while I tell Planir.’

Usara looked at Guinalle. ‘Do you suppose she will tell us what she might suspect?’

The Tormalin lady adept hesitated. ‘We can ask but I don’t suppose she will say very much.’ She looked at Jilseth. ‘You must understand. Aritane has shared healing and other lore which the
sheltya
teach Solura’s adepts and the Forest’s wise folk and she has offered her insights into my own Artifice but she has never told us anything of the
sheltya
’s inner counsels or secrets.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Corrain demanded.

‘You two see if you can hobble the Archipelagans,’ Usara said decisively. ‘Guinalle and I will see what we can learn from our friend while you let Planir know everything that’s happened today.’ He looked at Jilseth. ‘Then we will meet at the Prefecture. Mentor Garewin told us what you agreed with him and his colleagues.’

‘Very well.’ Jilseth nodded and vanished.

Hosh looked at the bed. He was relieved beyond measure to see that the dead Soluran had disappeared along with the magewoman.

Usara looked at Corrain. ‘Do you want us to take you to the Spice Wharf?’

The captain shook his head. ‘We’ll find our own way there.’

As the Suthyfer mage and his lady adept disappeared, Hosh unbuckled Corrain’s sword and offered it back.

‘We do still have to get out of here unseen,’ he pointed out. ‘A little magic might prove useful there.’

He was secretly satisfied to see a moment of chagrin on Corrain’s face. He was even more pleased when the two of them managed to leave the rooming house without encountering the slatternly housekeeper.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
S
EVEN

The Terrene Hall, Hadrumal

33rd of Aft-Winter

A
S
J
ILSETH’S STUDY
appeared around her, she reflected that working necromancy with splintered bones or a withered scrap of flesh was a good deal more convenient than being burdened with an entire Soluran corpse.

It was also far less offensive. She looked at the limp body on the floor. The charnel stink was repellently strong. How much worse would the smell become if she left this carrion here with doors and windows closed? Even allowing for the chill weather Jilseth would wager good gold that the spreading reek would attract notice sooner rather than later. The hall’s servants would investigate such a stench as readily as the city’s rats, hungry in the depths of winter.

She stooped to lay a hand on the Soluran’s cold forehead. Resolute, she thrust all emotion away; her fear of this man and his allies, wizardly and adept alike. Otherwise her magic risked going awry and Jilseth didn’t wish to contemplate any unpredictable consequences with a dead man sprawled on her carpet.

Achieving such composure had been a great deal easier back in Col. She had been so focused on testing her newfound strengths through this unforeseen opportunity for necromancy. She had been so exultant at the far greater depth and breadth of her insights into the dead man’s life.

But what had her magic achieved? They had seen who conspired against Hadrumal but beyond the Detich magewoman and the Soluran, they didn’t know who those guilty men and women were. They couldn’t lay an accusation before the Elected in Col, to comfort Micaran’s grieving family. Would the city’s lawmakers even trust a wizard’s word with the dead Soluran’s lingering enchantments still poisoning their thoughts?

Would the Archmage deliver justice on Micaran’s behalf, when she told Planir what she had learned? What of the other questions that nagged at her? Did she have the right to demand answers of the Archmage?

First things first. Jilseth drew a deep breath and focused her mage senses on the body. She reached through her innate affinity to her command of all the elements and sought cold. Not the slow cooling of mortal flesh, not merely winter’s seasonal chill but the enduring, unchanging frost of the remote and frigid north.

Jilseth drove every last lingering glimmer of elemental fire from the man’s flesh, blood and bones. She warded his substance against the equilibrium of elemental earth which sought to bring every unliving thing to the same level temperature. She wove air and water deftly together to leave the corpse frozen as solid as the stone floor beneath it.

Finally she wove a shroud of quadrate magic to baffle any Soluran scrying. Doubtless they knew that their man was dead but let them wonder where his remains had disappeared to. Of course, Artifice might have some means of finding the dead but Jilseth could do nothing about that. She decided to bespeak Usara and ask if Guinalle could conceal the corpse from questing aetheric magic, once she had spoken to the Archmage.

If Planir wanted her to work any further necromancy, Jilseth knew that this wizardly cold would prove no hindrance. She’d worked such spells on pathetic remnants from the depths of Relshaz’s harbour and heads recovered from an executioner’s spikes in Parnilesse.

She still shuddered at the thought of the corpse on her floor as she locked the door behind her and hurried across the quadrangle. If Planir committed the Soluran to a funeral pyre, Jilseth would gladly fling her rug into the same flames.

She walked quickly to Trydek’s Hall. The door to the tower was closed, which was unusual. However as Jilseth raised her hand to knock, the ancient oak swung open. She climbed quickly up the stairs. The door to Planir’s sitting room opened with similar swiftness.

The Archmage was reading by his fireside. At first glance it looked as if he hadn’t moved since she’d last been here. Then Jilseth noted that the stacks of books and papers from Relshaz were markedly reduced.

She also feared that the Archmage looked correspondingly weary. Was there no one who could help him with this research? Or was he refusing to allow anyone to help, for fear of some discovery being used against him in a Council meeting?

A tisane glass stood within the fender, half full of black dregs. How long could that sustain him before he was forced to take some proper rest? What would happen then, Jilseth wondered with growing misgiving. What mischief could the Flood Mistress and the Hearth Master contrive while their Archmage was sleeping, oblivious, high in his tower?

Planir smiled and set his book aside. ‘Usara has told me what happened in Col.’

‘Good.’ Jilseth spared a moment to admire the mild faced mage’s swift presence of mind. Most wizards would have allowed themselves a little respite after carrying two people as far as Suthyfer and back again, never mind working another demanding spell like that scrying.

‘I hadn’t expected to find the
sheltya
so interested in lowland affairs,’ Planir remarked. ‘I will be very interested to learn what Aritane thinks might have prompted them to send an enquiry agent south from Wrede.’

‘The
sheltya
are no great friends to wizardry.’ Jilseth recalled that those Mountain brothers she’d encountered in Lescar had been exiled on account of Sorgrad’s magebirth, long before embarking on their notorious careers as scoundrels and thieves.

Planir considered this. ‘I would say rather that they’re no great friends to any arrogant or unrestrained magic, aetheric or elemental. That’s why they drove the Elietimm into the eastern ocean, refusing to let them rule the Gidestan mountains through Artifice. They hold the mountain passes against Mandarkin attacks whether the skirmishers’ efforts are bolstered by the tyrants’ wizards or by adepts.’

‘But they don’t generally involve themselves with affairs beyond their own mountains.’ Jilseth knew that exiles such as Sorgrad and his brother, and Aritane, had the
sheltya
’s self-imposed boundary to thank for their lives and liberties.

‘That we know of,’ Planir pointed out. ‘Who’s to say what this man from Wrede has done before now with none of us the wiser?’

He waved that away. ‘For the present I’ve seen no evidence he’s done anything more than gather information, beyond levelling the scales for Corrain when the Soluran would have killed him. Let’s see what Aritane thinks the
sheltya
will make of that intervention.’

Jilseth was more concerned with adepts and wizards closer to hand. ‘What should we do about this Soluran conspiracy between these Orders and the Houses?’

Planir looked thoughtful. ‘We may well be best advised to do nothing.’

‘But he wasn’t working alone, Archmage. Shouldn’t we track down his allies in Col? I caught glimpses of his drinking companions’ faces as I searched back through the echoes of his life. If I work some further necromancy to uncover his more recent endeavours, I can show Lady Guinalle by means of her Artifice—’

‘To what purpose?’ Planir queried. ‘To publicly accuse university mentors of malice towards Hadrumal, when they are merely this Soluran’s dupes? That will hardly put a shine on wizardry’s already tarnished reputation in Col. Besides, even with Lady Guinalle’s aid, it would simply be our word against theirs.’

He raised a hand before Jilseth could object. ‘Lady Guinalle has already set her own enchantments searching out the Soluran’s malevolence. I’ll make sure she knows of your offer as she devises some Artifice to draw the sting of his venom. It may help her to see the faces of those he’s subjected to aetheric influence.’

‘How long will that take, Archmage?’ Jilseth quickly related what Corrain had learned before Micaran had died. ‘We can expect to see Archipelagan ships in Hadrumal’s waters in under twenty-five days.’

‘What do the Solurans hope to see then?’ Planir mused. ‘Our island’s warding magics driving these ships onto the rocks or out into the western ocean for their hapless crews to die of hunger and thirst? Or do they imagine that Hadrumal’s mages will start slaughtering the Aldabreshi? Do they hope to turn still more of the Archipelago’s warlords against us, whenever word reaches them of Jagai dead washing up on Caladhria’s beaches? Perhaps they will try warping the western sea’s currents to wash the broken remnants of their triremes and galleys all the way back to the islands.’