Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis)

by McKenna Juliet E.

  Jilseth knew that Planir meant this Mandarkin wizard whom Corrain of Halferan had somehow persuaded to come south and drive out those cursed corsairs.

  The Archmage’s tone was so chilling that Jilseth wouldn’t have been surprised to see vapour rising from the water, like the mist from a pond in winter.

  ‘Can you—’ Kalion swallowed an obscenity as the water seethed and the magelight vanished.

  At least Jilseth could be sure it wasn’t her unruly magic disrupting the spell.

  Planir drummed his fingers on the table. That, or some unguarded resonance from his frustrated wizardry, stirred the stubbornly unreflective water.

  ‘Have you made any progress at all in finding a way through these veiling spells?’ he demanded of the Hearth Master.

  ‘Not as yet.’ Kalion flushed unbecomingly. ‘But I have been refining a new nexus working with Ely, Canfor and Galen.’

  ‘Galen is cautiously optimistic,’ Ely insisted.

  The Archmage glanced at her with a thin smile. ‘I would rather hear that you are optimistic, since scrying is a water magic. You should have as much confidence in your abilities as you do in Galen’s.’

  Ely couldn’t meet the Archmage’s eyes. She looked at Jilseth instead. ‘Has your nexus been considering this challenge?’

  Jilseth wished she could say yes. That she was weaving her elemental affinity with the earth into Merenel’s fire-born wizardry, to be further enhanced by Nolyen’s talent for water magic and Tornauld’s grasp on the elusive air.

  A single mage could add the other elements’ magics to their own affinity with sufficient study and application. A nexus of four wizards could double and redouble each other’s power to summon up quintessential magic. Such wizardry was far stronger and more durable than anything a solitary mage could achieve.

  Or so the Element Masters and Mistresses of Hadrumal had always thought. Now the whole city was speculating how this unknown northern mage could sustain such impenetrable magic all on his own.

  ‘We are considering it.’ That much was no lie. If she couldn’t join them in a nexus, her friends insisted that Jilseth share her gleanings from years of reading in Hadrumal’s libraries, in case something could possibly hint at some answer. Nolyen in particular was obsessing over the puzzle, like every water mage from Flood Mistress Troanna down.

  ‘We have no insights to offer.’ That was, alas, also the truth.

  ‘Have you learned anything from the Soluran Orders?’ Kalion asked the Archmage without much hope.

  Planir’s lip curled. ‘All the Elders whom I have sought to contact refuse to acknowledge my spells.’

  There was so much that the mundane populace didn’t understand about magic, Jilseth thought inconsequentially. A wizard’s ability to bespeak another across a thousand leagues was truly marvellous. It was also only useful if the bespoken mage deigned to reply.

  ‘Have you explained to the Solurans that we never invited this Mandarkin wizard to our waters?’ Kalion demanded. ‘That it was this Caladhrian ruffian Corrain who chose to travel beyond the reach of Hadrumal’s edicts to find a wizard prepared to sink the corsair ships? That it was only when the wizards of Solura rebuffed him that he allied with a Mandarkin mage?’

  ‘You think I should throw some blame their way?’ Planir raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘When looking for co-operation?’

  ‘Why won’t the Solurans share what they know of Mandarkin magic?’ Ely looked from Archmage to Hearth Master. ‘They have been at each other’s throats for generations.’

  Planir shrugged. ‘Silence is their prerogative. Happily there are others we can ask, who know something of those northern mountains and the magics used there.’

  Kalion narrowed his eyes with sudden suspicion. ‘Suthyfer?’

  ‘Artifice?’ Ely couldn’t hide her disbelief.

  Jilseth suddenly guessed who the Archmage meant. ‘Aritane has aetheric magic to use against the Mandarkin?’

  She should have remembered that Planir liked to consider challenges from unexpected angles and the Mountain woman had been born and raised in one of the scattered settlements in the valleys among the peaks separating the Kingdom of Solura and the Mandarkin realm. Aritane had also been one of the sheltya, the teachers, law-makers and judges governing the Mountain race’s miners and trappers. Until some folly that even Ely’s curiosity couldn’t discover had seen her banished from those uplands, forced to accept Hadrumal’s shelter.

  ‘You think that mumbled enchantments can prevail,’ Kalion scoffed, ‘where the united magecraft of Hadrumal cannot?’

  Loath as she was to agree with the Hearth Master, Jilseth found that equally hard to believe. For all that the mainland scholars who studied Artifice claimed that its adepts could influence and even invade another person’s thoughts, those whom Jilseth had encountered could do little more than listen through a distant person’s ears or see through their eyes.

  The marvels once wrought with Artifice were as long lost as the Old Tormalin Empire. Indeed, didn’t those same scholars say that the Old Empire had fallen because Artifice had failed them? That and the arrogant folly of the emperor known to history as Nemith the Reckless.

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps not.’ Planir shrugged again. ‘But Aritane knows far more of Mandarkin wizardry than we do, though she herself followed the uplands’ aetheric tradition of magic. She has shared what she’s seen of Mandarkin magecraft with Usara and Shivvalan.’

  Kalion grunted. ‘Have your pet malcontents some revelation to share?’

  Jilseth knew that the Hearth Master disapproved of the Suthyfer settlement. If he were Archmage, he would never have allowed those mages who chafed at Hadrumal’s customs and traditions to set up their own haven of wizardry in the distant eastern ocean.

  Kalion warmed to his theme. ‘How can an adept of Artifice contribute anything to an understanding of Elemental wizardry? They have no more hope of mastering the antipathy between the two magics than we have.’

  Jilseth knew that some mages felt personally insulted because no mageborn could grasp the most trivial aetheric enchantment. Kalion merely saw it as proof that Artifice was beneath his notice. Very few wizards like Usara and Shivvalan were fascinated by the challenge of understanding why.

  Kalion waved all this irrelevance aside. ‘What do you intend on doing about this Mandarkin mage?’

  ‘Until he does something that requires me to act, nothing.’ The Archmage looked expectantly at Kalion. ‘So I need to see what he’s doing, Hearth Master, and as soon as possible. Don’t let me detain you from further refining your new nexus.’

  ‘As you wish, Archmage,’ Kalion said testily as he rose to his feet. ‘Good day, and to you, Jilseth,’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘Good day, Hearth Master.’ Jilseth echoed Planir’s farewells. ‘Ely.’

  As the door swung closed behind them, Planir gestured to the vacated upholstered chair. ‘Why don’t you have a more comfortable seat?’

  Jilseth stayed where she was, struck by an unnerving possibility. ‘Archmage,’ she said hesitantly. ‘If my magic has truly deserted me, do you think that I could learn something of Artifice?’

  She had never visited Suthyfer but Merenel had spoken highly of the stone mage Usara and the Tormalin magewoman was not easily impressed.

  Jilseth would gladly flee to those remote islands in the eastern ocean, certainly before she returned to the placid village on Hadrumal’s southern shore where her parents farmed their small-holding, proud that their mageborn daughter had left them to hone her talents in the wizard city just as her mother’s brother and her father’s sister had done.

  ‘Your magic has not deserted you,’ Planir assured her.

  Jilseth stared at the hearth rug. She didn’t want to see pity in his eyes, or worse, false kindness.

  ‘Look at the fire,’ he chided her.

  ‘Archmage?’ She was surprised into looking up at him.

  He pointed at the hearth and she saw that the coals had been
utterly consumed.

  ‘That was your magic stirring,’ Planir observed. ‘Somewhat erratically, I must say, but Ely was being particularly provoking. Wild magic is not unusual in such circumstances so I tamed it. I didn’t think you’d relish the Hearth Master’s advice, however well-meant,’ he added drily.

  ‘Archmage—’ Jilseth couldn’t doubt Planir but she still couldn’t feel any wizardry within her.

  ‘Your magic has not deserted you,’ he repeated, unexpectedly stern, ‘but recovering it will be neither easy nor swift. If you can master this upheaval, you may well find yourself a far more powerful mage than you ever were before. Otherwise,’ he said with brutal frankness, ‘you will find your affinity as much of a burden as the rawest apprentice for years to come. You may even have to leave this city, for your own safety and that of others.’

  Now Jilseth was wholly lost for words. She could only stare wide-eyed at the Archmage. He looked steadily back at her.

  ‘Do your utmost to hone your affinity afresh,’ he advised her. ‘I don’t think that we need look for omens and portents as the Aldabreshi do, to know that Hadrumal will need wizards of your insight and ability to curb this Mandarkin mage’s ambitions, when he finally decides what to do with this island he has claimed for his own.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Black Turtle Isle

  In the domain of Nahik Jarir

  WAS IT THE turn of the season from Aft-Summer to For-Autumn? Hosh looked at his tally marks scratched in this sheltered angle where the black stone steps ran up to the broad terrace that served as the deserted building’s foundation.

  If he’d recalled the Caladhrian almanac correctly. If he’d kept his own count right. Was it tomorrow? Maybe yesterday. He frowned and recounted on his fingers before abruptly giving up.

  What was the point? The Aldabreshi didn’t consider the solstice or the equinox as any more significant than any other day and they certainly paid no head to the divisions between the seasons framing those days, as decreed by the different mainland authorities, so often differing by a day more or less.

  Hosh gazed up at the darkling sky. Why should the Aldabreshi heed the mainlanders with their almanacs and calendars constantly needing adjustment when their count governed by the moons slipped out of true with the sun’s aloof tally? The Archipelagans could trace and predict the path of every constellation as well as of the solitary coloured stars charting their own course through the heavens, named for the jewels which their colours recalled.

  An Aldabreshin compass was an intricate marvel; an engraved disc overlaid with a pierced swirling lattice dotted with enamels and gemstones and revolving around a central pivot. Navigating the hundreds of domains in the Archipelago, the thousands of islands, barren islets and hidden reefs, was simplicity itself to a ship’s master who knew how to read one.

  A Caladhrian compass was a box with a single needle pointing north. That was all the aid any traveller could hope for, from the Tormalin Empire in the east, where the mainland met the ocean, all the way to the Great Forest in the west, a trackless sea of trees by all accounts.

  Every Aldabreshin child grew up watching the skies. This wasn’t only the business of scholars. Everyone from the lowliest slave to the Archipelago’s fabled warlords with the power of life and death over thousands knew where the stars and the heavenly jewels would be and how to read the portents seen in the different arcs of the heavens.

  The best that Hosh could do was scratch marks on a wall and the mainlanders had the arrogance to dismiss the Aldabreshi as shoeless barbarians. He looked down at his toes squelching in the black mud. Didn’t anyone on the mainland know that going barefoot in these Aft-Summer rains was the only way to avoid foot rot? That could cost a man his leg if it didn’t kill him outright?

  He looked warily around the anchorage to reassure himself that all the pavilions were truly deserted. No movement caught his eye and he breathed a little more easily.

  Once the luxurious dwellings for some Aldabreshin noble family, the houses offered wide windows to catch the sea breeze in the punishing dry season heat and broad eaves offering shelter from the torrential rains which swept back and forth across the island since just after the Summer Solstice.

  Then corsairs had seized this anchorage, slaughtering any who didn’t flee before them. Hosh had seen the splintered bones in the scrubby woodland. But now the corsairs had fled, abandoning both the pavilions which their galley and trireme masters had claimed and their rough-hewn settlement of huts built from driftwood, sailcloth and crudely shaped branches.

  Hosh looked at his tally marks again. It was seventeen days now since he’d seen any of the raiders or their slaves. At first they had retreated to the trees, watching fearfully as the glow of magic showed them this unknown wizard searching their abandoned dwellings.

  Some had tried to summon up the courage to attack that magical barrier. Such daring had rapidly failed for lack of encouraging omens. Some had waited, tense, for the wizard to send some word.

  Nifai, Hosh’s former overseer at his slave oar aboard the Reef Eagle, and Ducah, the sword-wielding brute who backed him, had stayed close to Hosh at first. The wizard must be a mainlander, Nifai had reasoned, and so they would need a mainlander to act as their go-between. Whatever else he might be, Nifai was no fool.

  But no summons had come and some portent or other had deterred Nifai from sending Hosh to open negotiations. So one morning, the overseer and the swordsman had simply been gone.

  Slowly at first, and then more and more of them day by day, the Archipelagans had crept away. Because for all their wisdom in mathematics and alchemy and so many other skills, the Aldabreshi were as terrified of magic as some infant crying for fear of the dark.

  At least Hosh knew better than that. Granted, wizards were frightening and certainly not to be trusted. He had learned that lesson in the hardest fashion imaginable from his one encounter with that treacherous bastard, Minelas, the renegade mage who’d so vilely betrayed Lord Halferan.

  But he’d heard enough barrack hall tales before that to know that the mages were men and women much the same as any other. Except for their uncanny talents with air, earth, fire or water. Was that blessing or curse? Hosh had never really considered the question with the wizard isle so comfortably remote. There hadn’t been anyone mageborn in Halferan village in his lifetime.

  But he certainly didn’t share the Archipelagan conviction that even a wizard’s presence irrevocably contaminated and corrupted the natural order and thus all the portents, from the flights of birds to the rhythms of the sea, that so wholly governed their lives.

  That said, Hosh had to admit that the view down the long anchorage offered intimidating evidence of wizardly might. First there was the ravaged heap of stones that had once been the corsair leader’s pavilion. The terrace, the walls, the shutters and doors of oiled wood, the tiled roof, everything had been reduced to splinters and flinders by a single strike of magical lightning. The seething cloud of dust that followed had reached out with tendrils crackling with wizardry to murder any survivors trying to flee.

  Then there was the impossible wave rearing up between the distant headlands of the anchorage’s entrance. Hosh had had no notion that a wizard could do such an astonishing thing. Taller than the baronial tower back in Halferan Manor, that curve of green water was topped by an ever-changing flurry of foam but the wave itself had remained constant for the past twenty-seven days.

  It confined every ship within the anchorage; every raiding galley rowed by chained and lashed slaves, as Hosh had once been, and every fighting trireme with its oars manned by those eager to prove themselves worthy to join the ranks of the corsair swordsman and share in their plunder, as Hosh had sworn he never would.

  Surely the incredible sight of that wave was proof that Captain Corrain had truly found his way back to the mainland? More than that, it showed that the captain had somehow secured a wizard’s aid even if the Archmage of Hadrumal was too callous or too cowardly to d
efend innocent Caladhrians.

  Only wizardry could hold that watery barrier firm and no Aldabreshi could ever have woven such spells. Archipelagan superstition condemned any mageborn to being skinned alive, so Hosh had heard. Only their spilled blood could wash away their taint.

  So Halferan must be safe at last and every other village along the Caladhrian coast who had suffered the corsairs’ raids this past handful of years.

  Sweet as that consolation might be, Hosh couldn’t set aside his bitter self-castigation. If only he’d kept his wits about him, when Corrain had provoked such chaos on that Archipelagan trading beach, starting a brawl along with that Forest man, Kusint. If he’d only been that bit quicker on his feet, maybe Hosh could have reached home too.

  Then he’d be celebrating the turn of this season with his beloved mother. It would be the two of them as it had been for so long but there’d be roast pork and foaming ale on their humble table at For-Autumn’s sunset. The turn of each season had its special meal. Sweetcakes and flower cordial with the For-Spring sunrise. Bread fresh from the oven and creamy cheese at For-Summer’s noon. Though Hosh had never been too keen on salt beef and pickles at midnight, he always welcomed the token of Maewelin’s pledge to see prudent households through For-Winter’s hunger.

  If today really was the turn of the season, Hosh guessed his mother would be praying to the Winter Hag, even if For-Autumn was rightly sacred to Dastennin— and that was a good question, wasn’t it? What did the god of sea and storms make of that impossible wave?

  But Maewelin was the goddess of mothers and of widows and Hosh’s father had died so long ago that he barely recalled him.

  His throat ached with the threat of tears. He couldn’t set aside his fears and doubts. His mother would be praying for him only as long as she still lived. If the Halferan barony hadn’t been utterly laid waste by the vile corsairs who’d murdered their lord in the For-Spring of the year before, who had enslaved the few guardsmen who survived that slaughter.