Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (70 page)

As Sannin and Merenel swiftly joined hands with Allin, Jilseth looked at Canfor who was looking askance at the young Dalasorian.

Corristal grinned at him. ‘Scared?’

‘Cautious,’ Canfor snapped as he thrust out his hand.

Now Jilseth realised that Planir was looking at her. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders and took Galen’s other hand.

‘Oh!’ This was quite unlike blending her elemental strength with those affinities she wasn’t born to, balancing their sympathies and antipathies to create quintessential magic.

Jilseth realised that she had never wondered about other earth mages’ affinities. She had assumed their tie to the elemental earth was the same as her own. While she knew full well that some wizards had greater success with some spells than others, she had believed that personal interest and application governed such distinctions within elemental practice. How wrong she had been.

Usara’s mage senses were drawn first and foremost to metals; in every state from the rawest ores with barely a pennyweight of crystalline purity in a wagonload of rock through to the finest craftsmanship worked by every sort of smith.

Galen’s aptitude lay in understanding the slow processes by which shifting sand and mud became immutable rocks and shales, though at the moment, the stolid wizard’s mage senses reeled, as disordered as a man drunk on coarse spirits. Jilseth felt his grip tighten on her fingers as he regained a measure of elemental balance with her on one side and Usara on the other.

Someone took her other hand. She realised it was Planir. Planir the Black as his fellow apprentices had called him when he had arrived, a grimy youth from the coal-hewing valley where he’d been born in Gidesta. Jilseth hadn’t thought of that old joke in years. Did that explain why the Archmage’s affinity was with living things transmuted into rock through long aeons; trees into coal and diamond, sea-creatures into chalk?

She also sensed that the other three mages were seeing just as clearly into her affinity; into her facility for finding the most infinitesimal traces of minerals. Now Jilseth understood that no amount of study would have led to her mastery of necromancy’s secrets without that first quirk of her magebirth.

Before she could pursue that sobering thought, Usara spoke, his words echoing strangely through her affinity rather than in her ears.

‘Let’s be rid of these Solurans.’

He led the way just as Sannin had led their frustrated nexus. This time though their united magic travelled through the island’s rich dark soil until they reached the shore’s rock and gravels. As they reached out for the earthborn spite weighing down the warding, Jilseth felt more and more wizards joining in this unprecedented union. She couldn’t tell who they were, links in this chain increasingly far removed from her, but she could feel their strength and the variations in their affinities being added to this new synthesis of wizardry.

It was the work of a moment to strip the furtive dust out of the ancient mists. Whatever its origins; metallic, once-living material or inert mineral, some mage in this elemental communion had the precise affinity to command it. Jilseth and others with similar talents could focus their collective wizardry on the tiniest ensorcelled mote.

Now the assembled mages weighted the dust to make it heavier than lead. It fell out of the air and sank through the water unhindered, plummeting to the sea bed. They didn’t let it rest; forcing every last speck into the rocks so far below that Jilseth wondered why she didn’t feel the molten heat lurking in the uttermost depths. But she could no more sense elemental fire than water or air.

‘Quickly!’

Now Usara was pursuing the dissipating traces of the earthborn wizardry which had carried that dust across land and sea from Solura. With what felt like every earth wizard in Hadrumal behind them, they were easily outstripping the Solurans’ frantic attempts to retreat.

What was Usara going to do now? Apprehension gripped her more tightly than Planir and Galen’s strong hands. She could no more pull free of the Suthyfer mage’s control that she could have broken either man’s hold.

The Soluran wizards fled to their tower, seeking refuge within the elemental strength of the stone walls and the lead-sealed, slate-capped roof. Hadrumal’s earth mages shattered such ties with contemptuous ease. More than that, their collective might barred the panicked Solurans from the solace of any further union.

Jilseth winced as she felt those unknown wizards fighting in vain to draw on the elemental earth which had underpinned their affinity ever since their magebirth had manifested. Tears pricked her eyes as their strength failed one by one, their spells flailing, feeble and ineffective.

‘Usara!’ Planir said sharply.

‘I know.’ The Suthyfer mage calmly allowed the elemental barriers crushing the Soluran wizards to dissipate.

Jilseth felt her mage senses steadily withdrawing, returning to Hadrumal. That didn’t lessen the pain of knowing that those nameless wizards had been left as drained and uncertain as she had been after defending Halferan Manor. Would their magic return as hers had done or were they now condemned to a lifetime of impotent regret, or worse, erratic and uncontrollable demonstrations of the affinity they had once mastered?

Though even as she grieved for their anguish, a dispassionate thought noted that she had poured out her magecraft in saving innocents from undeserved and agonising death. These Solurans had turned their spells on other wizards to find themselves repaid in kind.

The elemental chain broke apart. Jilseth opened her eyes to see Galen looking thoughtful and unexpectedly hopeful.

‘I do believe,’ he said cautiously, ‘that has helped me.’

Before Jilseth could ask what he meant, the broad-shouldered mage was forcing a path to Ely’s side. Planir’s sitting room was so crowded that was no easy task even for such a burly man.

Still more mages were lining the stairs and voices in the courtyard below were exclaiming in wonder and triumph. Jilseth wondered how many of Hadrumal’s wizards had thrown their different strengths into this last defence.

‘It seems that very few of our colleagues were prepared to defy Baron Corrain, even without a sword in his hand.’ Planir was amused.

Jilseth didn’t feel like smiling as she watched the Suthyfer mages gather by the fireplace, heads close together as they conferred. There didn’t seem to be any question that they had succeeded. Merenel and Sannin were congratulating each other while Canfor was looking as thoughtful as Jilseth herself.

She turned to the Archmage. ‘So we have proved that we can defeat their attacks on our wardings and further, we can belabour their individual mages with our collective strength until their affinity is exhausted. We still have the artefacts they covet and we still refuse to share the quintessential magic which they lust after. How long before these Orders or some other Soluran wizards devise some new means to attack us, outright or through some new proxy? Will we retaliate with some still more deadly magic? How soon before wizardry destroys itself entirely, saving the
sheltya
the trouble?’

Planir’s smile turned rueful. ‘Those are good questions. So few solutions ever turn out to be as final or decisive as those relying on such bold strokes believe. We need only look at Baron Corrain’s misadventures to see that.

‘Let’s hope we have sufficient respite to find the answers. But first,’ he said, heartfelt, ‘let’s find some wine. Perhaps that will inspire us as we plan our next move.

‘What?’ he challenged Jilseth. ‘Surely you’re not one of those who believe that I have some overarching masterful plan for every eventuality? I merely do the best I can as events unfold.’

‘What do you think will happen next?’ she demanded.

Planir looked thoughtful. ‘I believe we will have to take the initiative, though that’s always a risk when dealing with wizards, especially those so accustomed to conflict.’

As confronting Anskal had proved so calamitously, Jilseth thought with a sinking heart.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
S
IX

Halferan Manor, Caladhria

27th of For-Spring

A
S A NEW
bride, Zurenne reflected, she had cherished hopes of welcoming Caladhria’s greatest lords to the manor as guests and friends. Now she had seen Hadrumal’s Archmage, an Aldabreshin warlord’s wives, Tormalin nobles and visitors from distant Solura under her roof within a year. If the price hadn’t been her beloved husband’s death, she might have felt honoured. As it was, she simply longed for tranquillity so she could secure her daughters’ future in this wider world which had opened up before her.

She looked up from her embroidery as Corrain entered her private sitting room.

‘How are our guests?’ Tense, he rubbed the scars around his wrist in unconscious anticipation.

‘Recovered.’ There was, Zurenne had found, nothing excessively daunting about a noblewoman descended from ancient Emperors or an elderly adept from a House of Sanctuary when they were both laid low by wracking nausea.

Corrain was relieved. ‘The Soluran mages will arrive at noon. Do the household know to keep clear of the great hall?’

‘They do and I will keep Ilysh, Neeny and Raselle here with me.’ Zurenne set her scissors on the low table beside her silk covered settle with a sharp snap as Corrain turned to go. ‘A moment, if you please.’

‘My lady?’ He regarded her with some surprise.

‘I would have preferred that you ask my permission, or Lady Ilysh’s, before inviting these strangers into our home,’ she said with measured calm. ‘I would have preferred to hear the Archmage’s assurances that this will truly be an end to our trials, for myself.’

‘My lady.’ Corrain ducked his head.

Zurenne waited for him to offer some justification, to repeat his insistence that Halferan was the only neutral ground on which the Solurans and Hadrumal’s advocates would agree to meet.

He didn’t speak. She concluded that his silence was the only apology she would get. It would suffice, for the present. She was sure there was more that he wasn’t telling her but that rune showed two sides. She had secrets of her own.

‘Are you sure that the Archmage isn’t coming? No Hadrumal mages at all?’ At least Zurenne could hope that reduced the chances of wizardly conniving, if none of them were actually present.

Corrain shoved his hands in his breeches’ pockets. ‘That’s what they’ve sworn and I don’t see Planir breaking his word or allowing anyone else to. Not with these Mountain adepts keeping an eye on them.’

Zurenne couldn’t help a shiver. ‘Are these
sheltya
truly so perilously powerful?’

Hearing the tale of Hosh’s healing in Col, she had thought of Artifice as a gentle, kindly magic. Kusint’s stories of the Forest Folk’s aetheric magic were similarly benign. Then Corrain had related what he had seen in the far north.

Zurenne remembered standing in the manor’s shrine before Saedrin’s statue, after the elemental cataclysm had destroyed the corsair island. She begged for reassurance that wizardry’s destructive might could somehow be stopped. Be careful what you pray for, so the old warning went.

Corrain surprised her with a grin. ‘They are assuredly powerful but I have been wondering how quickly a mage could defeat one by just taking them fifty leagues with a spell.’