Hosh looked aghast at the woman who’d been raped. Had she yielded to such violation for the sake of getting close enough to the mercenary to gut him with that knife? In order that his companions would be so rapt at the sight that her house sisters’ attack could surprise them?
The implacable resolve in her unswollen eye convinced him she had indeed traded her body’s immediate sufferings so that those three brutes could be taken unawares.
Mainland born brutes. Hosh could be certain that Saedrin would bar the door to the Otherworld while Poldrion’s demons savaged them for an eternity. Though he decided against offering that consolation to these women.
‘All of you, heed me now!’
As Anskal’s words echoed oddly, Hosh saw the mainlanders and the slaves on their distant terraces stiffen. He guessed more magic was carrying the Mandarkin’s words to their ears.
Anskal tossed an embroidered leather pouch to the woman with the melon knife.
She untied the drawstring and shifted the pouch in her hand for a better view of the contents before looking up at the wizard. ‘Is this recompense?’ Anger choked her.
‘No.’ Anskal gestured and the fallen cleaver spun through the air towards Hosh.
He couldn’t help flinching as it rebounded from the arm ring’s magic.
‘You may be mageborn but you know nothing of magic. You cannot so much as defend yourselves against fools with knives. So I will give you a little such bound magic to protect yourself, for the moment.’
He gestured towards Hosh and smiled as the woman’s expression turned to wary comprehension. She took a fine silver gorget on a chain from the pouch. Dropping her knife, she fastened it around her neck.
Anskal grinned and sent a twist of sapphire magic to hurl the cleaver at the woman. Hosh gasped along with everyone else as the heavy steel crumbled into rust before it came within a handspan of her cringing shoulder.
‘I have more such valuable trinkets. Their magic differs in strength and effect.’ Anskal’s smile turned sly. ‘The first to submit to me will be given the choicest. You know you need me to teach and guide you, if you are not to be as easily killed as these blind fools!’
As the Mandarkin gestured, contemptuous at the dead mercenaries, his challenge rang back from the walls of the distant pavilions.
Before anyone else could speak, he vanished in another blinding flash of light. An instant later the same bright blue radiance flared inside the furthest pavilion. No one need doubt where Anskal was waiting for their homage.
The women retreated into their pavilion, into the chamber beyond the entrance hall to close an unsplintered door on the slaughter. The raiders disappeared as promptly into their own bolt-hole and the slaves hadn’t yet got half way so they scurried back to their lair.
The mainlanders stood gathered together below the pavilion’s steps. Their conversation was too low-voiced and too swift for Hosh but their decision was soon apparent.
They came up the stairs and four went into the entrance hall to retrieve the headless corpse and the gutted rapist’s body. The remaining two Ensaimin grappled with the dead man below the window. Throwing all three off the terrace to begin with, the men then went down the steps, retrieved the bodies and began carrying them away.
Hosh followed them to the headland on the southern side of the anchorage. He spared a wary glance for Anskal’s pavilion as they passed by but there was no sign of the wizard.
As the mainlanders approached the headland, reef eagles and yellow-eyed gulls began wheeling overhead, eager to feast on the carrion. The sweating men threw the dead mercenaries into the breaking waves instead.
If they had been Aldabreshi, they would have waited to see if sharks or sea serpents appeared to feast on the windfall. Ensaimin and Lescari alike had no interest in such portents.
‘What do you want?’
The last of the men to pass him as they headed back stopped to stare at Hosh.
‘I—’ Hosh didn’t have an answer so he asked a question of his own. ‘Do you want to be subject to that man?’ He gestured towards Anskal’s pavilion.
The Ensaimin mariner scowled. ‘What choices do we have, trapped here?’
‘You can sail a boat. We could escape,’ Hosh urged desperately. ‘If you are mageborn and from the mainland, the Archmage of Hadrumal is surely honour bound to help you.’
‘Where is he? This Archmage?’ The mariner cocked his ragged head. He and the rest had found some shears or knives to cut away the tangled locks that had marked them as slaves for all to see. ‘Do you have a boat to sail away in?’
Hosh nodded towards the wrecked trireme in the anchorage. ‘Surely we could make a raft?’
Though as he spoke, he wondered how they could possibly do that without catching Anskal’s eye. Unless the Mandarkin was content for them to paddle off and drown. He had let so many of these mageborn kill themselves after all.
One of the Lescari militiamen had stopped walking to look back, his attention caught by their conversation. He retraced his steps.
‘Hadrumal’s wizards only help their own,’ he sneered. ‘My home has been plagued by the dukes and their bloody quarrels for ten generations. No Archmage ever spared us a tinker’s curse.’
‘What did he give you?’ The Ensaimin mariner had a more pressing question now. ‘To save you from harm?’
Hosh’s hand strayed to the ring encircling his arm. ‘A trinket,’ he said slowly.
The Ensaimin mariner held out his hand. ‘Give it to me and I’ll help you make a raft.’
‘Build the raft,’ Hosh countered, ‘and you can have it when we reach the mainland.’
As he spoke, the silver gilt tightened around his upper arm. Gasping, Hosh sank to his knees, clawing at the thing with his free hand. His arm was throbbing. His hand was swelling, visibly darkening. Hosh felt as though his fingers were about to burst like overstuffed sausages. He tried to force the ornament down towards his elbow but he couldn’t get so much as a fingernail between the metal and his aching flesh.
The Ensaimin mariner muttered something under his breath and walked away. The Lescari waited for him and they went onward together, heads close in conversation.
Hosh slowly realised that the agony in his arm was lessening. The throbbing in his hand subsided and the terror twisting his bowels eased.
Reluctantly, he reached for the arm ring. The lightest touch left him whimpering, the flesh beneath was so viciously bruised. The only consolation he could find amid that dizzying agony was feeling the metal slip against the cloth. The arm ring was loose again.
Cradling the elbow of his aching arm eased the pain a little. As he contemplated the dull gleam of gold and crystal, he wondered blindly if this was Anskal’s doing or some magical property of the cursed trinket? Not that it made much difference.
He staggered to his feet and made his way back towards the Mandarkin’s pavilion. It was scant consolation to see that the mainlanders were all walking back to their own dwelling. They might not be ready to yield to Anskal without further deliberation but surely, as the mariner had said, what choices did they have?
As he climbed the steps to Anskal’s pavilion, sudden rage swelled in Hosh’s chest. He stormed through the open door and into the wide chamber beyond. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well court a swift and painless death.
The Mandarkin wizard was reclining on a heap of silken cushions, the bottle of palm wine in one hand as he laughed at the brightly coloured birds squabbling in a fig tree in the enclosed garden.
‘Those women are mageborn like you!’ Hosh shouted furiously. ‘Why did you leave them undefended against such abuse?’
Anskal smiled smugly up at him. ‘Magebirth is no measure of merit. I wanted to see who would be tempted to abuse the power which they thought they now possessed. Then the rest could see how such arrogance would betray them. Now they all know how much they need me to teach them, how much they all have to learn.’
‘You could have told them�
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‘Why waste breath warning a child against fire when the burned hand teaches best?’ Anskal retorted. ‘Now they will all come here, willing and eager to learn. Now they know that is the only way to save their own skins. Now the women know that any men who would have abused them here are dead.’
‘And if those women hadn’t fought back?’ Hosh demanded angrily.
Anskal shrugged. ‘Then the men would have fought over who might claim the whores. But all turned out much as I expected,’ he congratulated himself, callous. ‘I have seen how fiercely women fight when they have no other recourse.’
As the Mandarkin’s gaze turned inward, a shiver caught Hosh unawares. What had Anskal’s life been like to leave him so pitiless? What was he truly capable of?
‘See?’ Anskal looked smugly towards the open door.
Hosh could hear the first of the mageborn warily approaching. The Aldabreshi swordsmen, judging by their voices.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Esterlin Residence, Relshaz
22nd of For-Autumn
JILSETH HURRIED THROUGH the marble-floored hallway. She didn’t wait for today’s handsome lackey to open the door to the salon overlooking the garden. ‘Madam Mellitha? Oh—’
She stopped short beside a rosewood lamp-stand. ‘Archmage? Good day to you,’ she said hastily, ‘and to you, Nolyen.’
‘Join us,’ Mellitha indicated the space beside her on the day bed.
Nolyen and Planir sat opposite on a silk cushioned settle with the low table between them.
‘You have news,’ the Archmage observed.
‘I do,’ Jilseth confirmed, ‘and unwelcome.’
‘You’ve been out since first light and it’s long past noon. You should eat.’ As Jilseth sat down, Mellitha handed her a gilt-edged plate.
With the tall windows standing open, the fine muslin curtains drifted towards the tray of savouries on the table. Smudged plates showed that the other wizards had already eaten their fill.
‘The Archmage has sent Corrain, Baron Halferan, to Solura, as his envoy to the Elders of Fornet.’ Mellitha poured her a lemon-scented glassful from the frosted jug.
Jilseth nearly dropped the salted almonds she’d helped herself to.
‘You look as startled as he was.’ Planir’s smile came and went.
‘Let’s hope the Soluran Orders are similarly surprised, and sufficiently intrigued to give him a hearing,’ Mellitha said tartly.
‘Indeed. All the Hearth Master’s efforts to explain recent events to them have come to naught.’ Planir’s expression hardened.
‘Corrain agreed to go?’ Jilseth reached for a batter cake topped with spiced mushrooms. ‘What did he want in return?’
‘Punishment.’ The shadow behind Planir’s eyes belied his lightness. ‘Since his dead lord can no longer offer him redemption from all his calamitous mistakes by imposing suitable chastisement, I am more than happy to oblige.’
Jilseth had no idea how to answer that so settled for taking a roundel of cheese layered with pickled plums.
‘We can see if his confession will help us to mend fences with the Solurans,’ Planir continued more coldly. ‘If they flay the skin from his back for consorting with the Mandarkin, so be it. If they think one of their Aetheric adepts can riffle through his thoughts and find the secrets of quintessential magic, they are welcome to try.’
Jilseth had never imagined she would feel such a pang of sympathy for Corrain.
‘Halferan has neighbours who will make trouble,’ she ventured, ‘once they learn that the baron is absent again.’
‘Not with Tornauld there as my personal envoy to assist in the manor’s restoration,’ Planir assured her.
‘Of course.’ Jilseth continued to fill her plate and wondered what Zurenne and Ilysh would make of her brusque Ensaimin friend. He had probably already summoned up a whirlwind to scour Halferan clean for rebuilding.
The Archmage glanced at Mellitha. ‘He will be keeping a weather eye out for any more visits from Anskal. Our Mandarkin friend has threatened the Widow Zurenne and her daughters,’ he explained to Jilseth. ‘He sees those pendants which I gave them both as proof of Corrain’s deceit, and of some store of artefacts that he’s concealed.’
‘Tornauld should be a match for this Mandarkin,’ Nolyen said stoutly.
Jilseth could only hope that he was right. She remembered what they had seen of the mysterious wizard’s magic when three Soluran mages had been doing their utmost to kill him. Three mages well practised in using their magic with such lethal intent. Still, Tornauld had seen the same in the scrying nexus which she and Nolyen had worked with him and Merenel. Forewarned was surely forearmed.
‘Hopefully, he won’t have to prove that, though I’m sure he would like to try.’ Planir shook his head as though remembering what Jilseth knew must have been a lively conversation.
Mellitha waved that away. ‘What if the Solurans are content to quench their outrage in Corrain’s blood without offering up any lore on ensorcelled artefacts?’ However motherly her appearance, she clearly was more concerned about such an outcome than for Corrain’s possible suffering.
Planir nodded. ‘That’s why Nolyen and I are heading to Suthyfer.’
Mellitha’s precisely plucked brows arched. ‘That thrice-cursed ring has given Usara or Shiv some insights into ensorcelled trinkets?’
Jilseth looked at Nolyen to see if he knew what this meant. Rather than returning her blank look, he narrowed his eyes, warning her not to ask.
She settled for eating another roll of vellum-thin pastry, filled with spiced meat, honey and raisins in the Aldabreshin style. Mellitha was right; she had spent a long and hungry morning with the coachman Tanilo taking her from one address to another in search of Relshaz’s resident wizards, asking for any rumour which they might ever have heard about such artefacts, for any hint of lore that might have escaped Hadrumal’s libraries.
‘I’ve no idea what Usara has done with that ring, though Nolyen’s naturally welcome to enquire.’ Planir was answering Mellitha. ‘I am more interested in talking to Aritane. All the more so if the Solurans insist that we’ve brought this trouble on ourselves and still refuse to help. This Anskal must surely be expecting some elemental challenge but perhaps we could surprise him with Artifice.’
‘Aritane? She’s the sheltya woman from the Mountains?’ Mellitha looked thoughtful.
As Planir nodded, Jilseth looked at Nolyen and saw that, once again, he knew more of this than she did.
What little she did know chilled Jilseth. Not even Hadrumal’s most scornful wizards could deny that an Aetheric adept of sufficient skill and malicious intent could invade a mage’s thoughts. When the mage was intent on spellcrafting, such an assault could leave the victim comatose or dead. Hadrumal’s finest scholars of affinity could not yet fathom that mystery.
‘For the moment, how do matters stand in Relshaz?’ Planir looked at Jilseth. ‘You arrived like a hound with a hare in its mouth. What do you have to tell us?’
Jilseth cleared her throat with a swallow of the light metheglin. ‘Ereweth, Fyrne and Senthal all say that they’re being shunned by anyone doing significant business with the Archipelago though no one will explain why. Master Kerrit has been trying to find out—’
The salon’s door flew open, once again without the help of Mellitha’s well-favoured lackey. Velindre strode in. ‘The Aldabreshi know that there’s a wizard laired in the Nahik domain.’
The Archmage shifted to the edge of his seat. ‘What do the Aldabreshi intend to do?’
‘As yet, I don’t know,’ Velindre said grimly. ‘But whatever they might do, I can tell you that they will act this side of the thirty-eighth day of this season. That’s when the heavenly Emerald shifts into the arc of Death when the Diamond and the waxing Pearl will be waiting there to greet it. The Opal will be waning through the arc of Foes and then shifts to that of Life. Add the voids which that leaves in the heavenly compass and no Archipelagan will r
isk challenging a wizard under such skies.’
Jilseth saw Planir and Mellitha both understood how serious this was, for all that the blonde magewoman’s words left Nolyen baffled as she was.
‘The Emerald will linger in that same heavenly arc to weight every omen and portent until the third For-Spring from now,’ Velindre continued, sombre. ‘It’s inconceivable that any warlord will tolerate such corruption staining the islands for so long, in a domain commanding such a vital sea lane. They will act, most likely when the Diamond shifts into the arc of Death though some will argue for waiting until the Amethyst joins the Ruby in the arc of Honour and Ambition.’
‘When will those particular days fall, according to an almanac?’ Planir queried.
‘The Diamond shifts on the twenty-seventh of the season and the Amethyst on the thirty-first.’ Velindre sat on the foot of Mellitha’s silken day bed.
‘Who will be the first warlord to act?’ the older magewoman wondered.
‘Jagai Kalu.’ Velindre spoke without hesitation. ‘I’ve no doubt he’s settling his differences with Miris Esul as we speak. A crisis such as this should even get Khusro Rina down from his observatory.’
‘His wives will already be busy,’ Mellitha agreed.
Once again, Jilseth saw her own frustration reflected on Nolyen’s face. There was so much they didn’t fully comprehend here.
‘If we hadn’t been so cursedly thorough with that warding across the Archipelago, we could have summoned up a dragon to be the death of this Mandarkin.’ Velindre ran a hand through her cropped hair, leaving herself crowned with golden spikes. ‘No beast could resist the lure of so many ensorcelled artefacts. Doubtless the creature biting this Anskal’s head off would cause commotion among the northern reaches but at least we’d have an end to this strife.’
‘Otrick would be proud of you.’ Mellitha smiled without much humour.
Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) Page 23