A pinpoint of white light kindled in the centre of the black globe. It exploded outwards and Jilseth felt a rush of incalculable wizardry unleashed. She laid her affinity open for Sannin to command—
The diamond magelight contained the cataclysm and the sphere vanished as silently and completely as a soap bubble.
Planir’s gloved hands thudded onto the polished wood on either side of the scrying bowl. Jilseth could see his arms shaking as he leaned his weight on the table. He stared into the frozen mirror framed by circling fire.
‘Now you have seen what Hadrumal can do,’ he snarled, venomous spittle flecking his beard. ‘Do you truly wish to make us your enemies?’
He pushed himself away from the table. Troanna flung a hand at the scrying bowl to unleash her water magic just as Kalion realised his stranglehold on the elemental fire. Jilseth felt the antagonistic elements clash, only to meet the deafening crack of Rafrid’s wizardry. Jilseth sensed the brutal sting whipping across countless leagues to lash the hapless Solurans with one last reminder of Hadrumal’s power.
Planir staggered away from the table, tearing off his cloak and letting it fall to the floor. He collapsed onto the settle by the fire, his head thrown back, eyes closed, his face gaunt.
Ely was the first to break the silence. ‘What will happen now, Archmage?’
Planir stirred himself to look at her with some semblance of a smile. ‘We wait for the Solurans’ answer.’
‘They cannot persist with this idiocy after seeing such a display of strength.’ Troanna frowned nonetheless. ‘But I don’t suppose they’ll use their own wizardry to divert the Jagai fleet. We had better consider which currents we can commit to sending the Archipelagans back to a safe harbour.’
‘Not anywhere in Caladhria.’ Jilseth hastily found her voice. ‘The people are still so fearful of corsairs, there will be uproar.’
‘An accidental bloodbath will hardly improve matters,’ Rafrid agreed. He looked across the table to Canfor and Ely. ‘Let’s see what wind and wave can achieve together, to send these poor dupes into Khusro waters. That’s the closest Archipelagan domain.’
‘Let me send word to Lady Zurenne, to tell Kheda, the Aldabreshin who helped us in Halferan,’ Jilseth said at once. ‘He may still have a Khusro courier dove, to let them know that this is no Jagai invasion.’
Doubtless he could find some explanation to suit the Khusro wives. Though Jilseth wasn’t overly concerned if the Archipelagans chose to enslave those mercenaries from Col. That would serve them right for taking Aldabreshin gold to take up arms against Hadrumal.
‘Very well.’ Troanna was already walking towards the doorway. Ely followed with Canfor only a few steps behind. Rafrid went after them, thoughtfully cracking his knuckles.
‘There are times,’ Planir remarked from his seat by the fire, ‘when I am sorely tempted to turn our honoured Cloud Master’s hands to stone.’
Kalion barked with sudden laughter. ‘I thought of giving him blisters.’
Sannin smiled. ‘What would you have us do now, Archmage?’
‘Keep watch.’ Planir heaved a long shuddering breath. ‘We’ve given the Solurans pause for thought but greed and pride can make fools of the wisest men.’
‘Until later then.’ Sannin inclined her head serenely and headed for the door.
Kalion paused on the threshold to offer Planir a wry smile. ‘I don’t believe you need to fear Troanna proposing that the Council dismiss you as Archmage.’
‘Quite so.’ Planir managed a weary grin.
‘I will leave you to rest, Archmage.’ Jilseth took a step towards the door. She wanted some solitude, to review this astonishing magic, to see what she might glean to improve her own wizardry.
‘I would appreciate your assistance.’ Planir’s request was more a command.
Jilseth wondered what he wanted her to do. ‘Shall I make you a black tisane?’
‘A very good notion, and while the water’s boiling, please renew this tower’s wards—’ he broke off to take a deep breath ‘—against any intrusion from some Soluran wizard who has guessed how truly exhausting unmaking that ring’s magic must be.’
‘Of course, Archmage.’ Jilseth hastily wove a cantrip to fill the kettle and stir the fire beneath it.
Sitting at the table, she closed her eyes to concentrate on the warding magic pervading the tower. Though the wizardry was rooted in Planir’s own stone mastery, she carefully traced the intricate union of fire, water and air. Quintessential magecraft was poised to overwhelm any spell such as translocation, bespeaking or scrying born of one principal element.
She was unnerved to realise how brittle the warding had become. The Archmage had evidently been using all his strength on other things. This wizardry would still repel one malicious assault but with Planir so exhausted, some second attack might just succeed.
Jilseth drew on the abiding potency of Hadrumal’s rich dark earth, on the spring sun warming the moist soil and the gentle breezes stirring the budding twigs, to bolster the defensive spells. She couldn’t work this quintessential magic on her own but her skills with quadrate wizardry enabled her to renew it.
She looked at Planir, still sitting limp with fatigue, his eyes closed. Quintessential magic had destroyed the ensorcelled ring but he hadn’t been working with a nexus. He had done that alone. How had he achieved such an unprecedented feat?
She frowned. ‘Archmage...’
‘What is it?’ he asked with foreboding.
‘Something is wrong...’
At the very edge of her wizardly senses, Jilseth could feel the constantly renewed mists which cloaked the island. Hadrumal bred as well as mageborn, she had sensed this ancient wizardry even before her affinity had manifested itself. Now she felt arcane sorcery scattering that familiar union of water and air to the four winds.
Wizardry in the same vein was assailing the misdirections forged from fire and earth by Trydek’s first followers. These spells had long circled the island and its outlying reefs to confuse any compass carried aboard a ship. Further magic blending fire and air had hidden the sun from generations of mariners used to reading their course with cross-staff or quadrant. All this wizardry was being unravelled.
‘I believe we have the Solurans’ answer,’ Jilseth said grimly.
Quick feet ran up the stairs and Sannin appeared in the doorway.
‘Archmage—’ Clutching at the doorpost, her face twisted with pain. She tore at her high-piled hair, scattering garnet tipped pins.
‘Jilseth, bespeak Usara.’ Planir tried to rise from the settle and failed, his legs buckling under him.
‘No, wait,’ Sannin gasped. She held on tight to the door post for a long moment.
Jilseth watched blood trickle down the magewoman’s cheek amid tumbling locks of hair. Her varnished fingernails had dug deep into her scalp.
‘Artifice?’ Planir demanded.
Sannin nodded warily. ‘But only when I try to renew the wardings.’
Shouts of outrage echoed across the courtyard below, mingled with incredulity. Jilseth guessed that some other wizards had encountered the same aetheric magic as they sensed this inconceivable undermining of Hadrumal’s age-old defences.
‘We must have more wizards than they have adepts.’ Sannin’s lip curled, defiant.
‘How long for?’ Planir growled. ‘Do you doubt that they will start killing us if a mage refuses to yield?’
Recalling the Detich wizard woman’s arrogance in this very room, Jilseth was forced to agree. More than that, she knew how many of her fellow wizards would persist until their arrogance was the death of them.
‘Though they need not kill us themselves,’ the Archmage continued grimly. ‘Hadrumal will be just as easily overrun if they merely strike us senseless. When those Archipelagan ships arrive, who will defend the mundane born? When the mercenaries wander unchallenged through this city, who will stop their swords slitting our throats?’
The great tongueless bell over t
he Council chamber tolled.
‘You will have to tell them why this is happening.’ Sannin looked apprehensively at Planir. ‘Do you think that they will vote to surrender the artefacts to Solura? Once they remember what happened to Otrick.’
For the first time, Jilseth saw uncertainty flicker across the Archmage’s face.
‘Usara can bring Guinalle and her adepts to counter the Soluran Artifice.’ She summoned a taper from the mantelpiece with one air-woven cantrip and propped the empty scrying bowl on its rim with another.
‘Perhaps.’ Planir didn’t sound in the least convinced. ‘Sannin can do that. You must find Captain Corrain.’
Jilseth shook her head. ‘No one can find him. You said the sheltya are hiding him.’
‘Not from pendulum magic. Let’s hope so, anyway.’ Planir struggled to his feet and hauled open a drawer in a side table to find a map and a diamond teardrop on a silken thread. ‘You devised the pendulum magic that found him before. I know you can find him again.’
‘Even if I can—’ Jilseth didn’t understand.
‘Translocate yourself there.’ Planir sent the map and the diamond skidding across the table to her. He sank into a chair. ‘You have the skills, even over such a distance. Trust me.’
Jilseth found the Archmage’s confidence as terrifying as his intensity. ‘What then?’
‘Either he’s with Aritane or the sheltya have them both. Either way, you must tell these Mountain Artificers to remember that we have Trydek’s magic.’
‘Trydek?’ Jilseth stared at Planir.
‘Have you never wondered why Hadrumal has no shrines? Every other land where the Imperial Tormalin ever settled or ruled worships their gods. Not here and not because scholarship and rational thought decry such superstition. Because Trydek and his first followers came from far beyond the Great Forest. Trydek was a Mandarkin.’
Planir smiled, gaunt as a death’s head.
‘Tell the sheltya that Solura’s adepts are helping the kingdom’s wizards to plunder all our lore. Remind them that Mandarkin invariably steals whatever sorcery Solura has within a handful of years. The consequences for the mountains will be bad enough, if the Solurans loot Hadrumal of these ensorcelled artefacts. What disasters will they see if all that Trydek’s magic has now become returns to the north?’
The Council bell tolled again. More commotion rose from the courtyard; incomprehensible questions answered with inaudible consternation.
‘Archmage,’ Sannin warned.
‘Scry for Corrain,’ Planir ordered Jilseth. ‘Truly, you are the only one who can do this.’
‘But this is quintessential magic,’ she protested.
Sannin looked up from a bespeaking burning scarlet around the silver bowl’s rim. ‘Canfor and Ely are on their way.’
Once again, Jilseth heard footsteps on the stairs, running this time.
‘Archmage?’ Canfor was shouting even before they could see him.
‘What’s happening?’ Ely’s face was wretched with fear.
‘Help Jilseth,’ Planir commanded.
Sannin was already spreading out the map. ‘We must each hold a corner.’
Ely and Canfor hurried to obey the lissom, scarlet clad magewoman.
Jilseth picked up the silken thread. As the diamond swung over the map, she felt the weight of its aeons-old existence. Using her affinity in that trivial fashion was as natural as breathing.
Now though, she cringed lest some murderous Artifice thrust itself into her mind. How many merciless Soluran adepts could be working hand in glove with the Orders, intent on foiling Hadrumal’s wizards’ attempts to defend their island and its innocent people? No, she could not succumb to such fears. Unruly emotion was fatal to wizardry.
Her hand shook as she extended it over the blue-inked blob marking Wrede’s lake on the chart. That’s where Corrain and Aritane had gone so that’s where she would start.
Canfor slapped the palm of his hand on to the back of hers. Ely and Sannin did the same, all of them standing awkwardly around the table, their other hands stopping the map curling up to hide its secrets.
Self-doubt assailed Jilseth as the diamond stayed obstinately clear. She couldn’t even summon up the quintessential spell that presaged such a search. The Archmage could say what he liked but his words alone couldn’t make her equal to this challenge. Unless this was some more subtle Artifice demoralizing her.
Jilseth closed her eyes and used a touch of air magic to muffle the irate voices rising from the courtyard. She had seen vastly more complex magic worked here in this very room today. How had that been done? By turning wizardly custom and practice on its head.
Unbridled emotion was the most deadly of menaces to the untrained mageborn. But she had long years of training as well as recent experiences that other wizards on this island could only dream of sharing.
Could she harness calculated passion to enhance her magic? Jilseth rejected fear in favour of iron resolve to frustrate these arrogant Solurans. She rejected anger in favour of burning determination.
The diamond glowed with amber magelight. Sapphire swiftly followed, then ruby and emerald as Jilseth bound the other mages into the spell. The diamond burned with white fire.
Trusting some sudden instinct, Jilseth drew on all the power which her earth affinity afforded her. The Archmage was right. Even without the manacle whose resonance Jilseth had bound into her magic before, she found that she could mould this seeking spell to Corrain’s very essence.
He was born of Halferan, bred and raised within a stone’s throw of the manor whose walls she had reshaped to repel the corsairs. He had eaten beasts reared in the fields where she had thrown up turf-covered ramparts to block the Archipelagan raiders’ path. He had drunk ale brewed from the water in the brook flowing past the village and so had she.
The diamond tugged at the thread and she let it lead her to a point on the chart far into the Gidestan mountains.
‘I’ve found him. He’s in a cave.’
Somehow Jilseth’s affinity told her that Corrain was lying in complete darkness. More than that, the immensity of a mountain surrounded him.
‘You cannot translocate there.’ Sannin was adamant. ‘Following a scrying is dangerous enough but to try finding a cavern underground with no more guide than a pendulum—’
A distraught wail below was swiftly followed by a bellow of anger. A lightning bolt split the clear blue sky with wizardly rage. The Council bell tolled on.
‘I can do it if I can draw on your strength.’
Jilseth saw that Planir understood what she was asking.
‘No,’ Sannin said sharply. ‘Let me. Translocation is more closely tied to fire—’
The Archmage struggled to his feet and clamped his hand on top of the four of them making the nexus.
Jilseth focused on the elemental tie between Corrain and Hadrumal now focused through the diamond. She wove the magic which would carry her to his side, doggedly warding her magecraft against any elemental upheaval. As far as Artifice was concerned, she could only summon up her scorn for Solura’s deceitful enchantments.
The astonishing breadth and depth of Planir’s affinity bolstered her spell. The room in Trydek’s tower dissolved into white magelight. She felt herself carried across the emptiness between the island and the mountain more swiftly and surely than she had ever been transported before.
She sensed cool stone beneath her feet as the translocation faded to leave her in utter darkness. Jilseth fought against sudden panic and it wasn’t the lack of light which concerned her.
In that last instant, she was left abruptly bereft of the Archmage’s strength. Sannin had ripped her own magic away, leaving Jilseth’s fingers seared through skin and flesh to the bone beneath. What had panicked the serene magewoman into losing command of her wizardry so violently?
No, that must wait. Now she had to find Corrain, wherever he was in this darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Izmor Descava
, Gidesta
14th of For-Spring
‘BARON HALFERAN! CORRAIN! Captain!’ Her shouts struck him like blows.
Another nightmare? No, he was done with them. Corrain rolled away, hiding his head in his arms.
‘Corrain!’ A hand seized his shoulder and shook him. ‘Wake up!’
He ignored it. Whatever this illusion was, however these unseen sheltya bastards wished to torment him; he would have none of it.
The hand grabbed at his hair. Despite his recent efforts to husband his strength, refusing to yield to the desparing rages which left him exhausted and changed nothing, Corrain’s anger stirred. He flung out a fist with a warning growl.
‘Corr—’ The shouting woman broke off with a cough as his knuckles struck cloth over yielding flesh.
His hand encountered another arm. Fingers grabbed at him. He crushed the hand in a brutal grip.
The woman’s scream of agony left his ears ringing. A flare of golden magelight stabbed at his eyes before he was plunged into darkness again. It was enough to show him a glimpse of the newcomer.
Corrain scrambled to his feet. ‘Madam Jilseth?’
Was this more sheltya deceit? Or could this possibly be real?
He heard strangled sobs of pain. A moment later a hiss of indrawn breath cut the gut-wrenching weeping short. A faint yellow flame kindled, no bigger than a thumbnail.
Corrain saw magelight flickering at the tip of Jilseth’s upheld forefinger. Below he saw the gashes seared across her fingers and palm, bone deep. No wonder she had screamed when he had grabbed her hand. If those were real wounds.
Why present him with such an illusion? Surely the sheltya were done with him? As best he could reckon, they had emptied his head of every last recollection of wizardry three days before.
That was as close as he could reckon the passing time from the rhythm of his hunger and bowels. He’d had six meals of barley porridge flavoured with shreds of meat and stringy dried leaves since he’d woken to find his clothes on the floor beside him along with a ewer of water and a chamber pot. There was no sign of his weapons or gear but that was far too much to hope for.
Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) Page 44