Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis)

by McKenna Juliet E.

  The wizards looked at him with varying degrees of pity and contempt.

  What hadn’t he told these wizards that might have tipped the balance? A great deal, Corrain realised guiltily. He had said nothing of Minelas’s treachery or of his own determination to see Hadrumal humiliated by way of return for their callous disregard for Caladhria—

  ‘Ah.’ Now understanding dawned in the old woman’s dark eyes. Understanding and pity.

  Corrain coloured furiously and tried to crush every fear and feeling of inadequacy at ever living up to his dead lord’s example—

  ‘No matter.’ The aged sister folded her hands at the rope girdle knotted around her waist.

  Corrain felt his faint headache ease. Artifice? If that’s what it felt like, he’d know it again. He stared at the old woman. Let her know that for a certainty.

  She studied him for a moment, a faint smile curving her withered lips before she looked at the woman in golden velvet, deadly serious. ‘What he says of ensorcelled artefacts is also true.’

  The assembled wizards exchanged glances, swiftly reaching some unspoken accord.

  ‘Our business here is concluded.’ Gaveren rose to his feet. ‘We acquit you of malice and your stupidity looks likely to bring its own punishment down on your head so that will suffice. Return to Planir and tell him that we will deal with this Mandarkin as and when he should come north again. Hadrumal’s travails and your own in the meantime are no concern of ours.’

  ‘What—?’

  Before Corrain could think what to say to this abrupt, disastrous dismissal, he was blinded by a brutal flash of light.

  He found himself standing on the muddy turf outside the castle’s gate where they had first entered. Kusint was staggering beside him.

  ‘What—?’

  Before the Forest lad could frame his question, azure magelight dazzled them both a second time and the burly Ensaimin mage stepped out of the emptiness.

  ‘Let’s get your gear and go home.’ Tornauld said grimly.

  ‘They gave us a hearing but—’ Corrain began.

  ‘We know.’ Tornauld cut him off. ‘We were watching.’

  ‘Watching? From Hadrumal? Aren’t you supposed to be standing guard over Lady Zurenne and Lady Ilysh?’

  ‘They’re safe and well,’ Tornauld said testily.

  ‘Planir cannot blame me,’ Corrain asserted, ‘for the Soluran wizards’ refusal to help him.’

  ‘No, he can’t,’ Tornauld agreed. ‘Now—’

  ‘I fulfilled my part of the bargain.’ Corrain wasn’t about to be brushed off by any more wizards today. ‘Now the Archmage must keep his word and rescue Hosh.’

  ‘All in good time.’

  Before Corrain could ask what Tornauld meant by that, magecraft enveloped them a third time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Halferan Manor, Caladhria

  25th of For-Autumn

  ‘I WOULD NOT have thought it possible, my lady. It’s a marvel, truly.’ Raselle sounded a trifle uncertain all the same.

  ‘Thanks to Master Tornauld.’ Zurenne knew how the maidservant felt but would never be so discourteous as to betray her own misgivings regarding the wizard.

  She scanned the courtyard but the sturdy Ensaimin man was nowhere to be seen. Reassured, she turned back to the Halferan gatehouse. It seemed like a dream, to see the entrance to the manor safeguarded once again.

  It would assuredly not have been possible without Tornauld’s magic. First he had lifted up the posts and planks for the scaffolding so that all the men had to do was lash them securely together. Then the outer walls had risen ever higher day by day with the wizard bringing stacks of bricks and buckets of mortar to those labouring to build them.

  With that flick of his hand and a sapphire glimmer, the wizard did a gang of lads’ work as easily as Esnina carried her little bag of wooden blocks from their tent to the shrine or wherever else Zurenne might be setting up her folding table and writing box, to tally up her accounts, to deal with her correspondence from the increasingly curious wives of the neighbouring barons, to manage all the demesne’s affairs which inexorably continued amid all the bustle of renewal and rebuilding.

  To her surprise, Zurenne found this daily round of ledgers and letters, mixing ink and trimming pens oddly soothing. The busyness all around proved far more heartening than the distraction she might have expected it to be. Sharing the tasks with Ilysh and explaining the true breadth of a noble lady’s duties had brought Zurenne closer to her daughter than they had been since murder and treachery had first wreaked such havoc in their lives. Uncovering the intricacies of a noble lord’s customary obligations had been an education for them both.

  She looked down at her younger child. Esnina was standing in front of Zurenne, her shoulders pressed against her mother’s skirts as they stood with Raselle contemplating the gatehouse.

  To Zurenne’s inexpressible relief, Neeny had proved content to sit quietly beside her mother’s stool and build her own little walls to shelter the wooden animals which the village men had carved for her from scraps of lumber, so generous with the scant time they had for themselves and their own families.

  The animals now had their own lidded basket which old Fitrel, the sergeant at arms, had woven as he sat supervising the Halferan guardsmen as they loaned their muscles to the rebuilding of their own barrack hall. The former wooden-walled building would be replaced with brick walls and a tile-hung roof and far greater comforts for the guardsmen within.

  Zurenne could hear the incessant sound of sawing beyond the manor’s wall. When she had taken Neeny out for a morning walk beside the brook, they had seen the sawdust lying thick as snow on the turf despite the swirling breeze. She must remember to write to Lady Antathele today, she reminded herself. To thank her for persuading her lord and husband to sell Halferan such a substantial stock of well-seasoned timber.

  ‘Mama?’ The little girl looked up. ‘Where will mine and Lysha’s bedchamber be?’

  Crouching down, Zurenne encircled her daughter in loving arms. ‘Up there, on the same side as the barrack hall. See?’ She pointed to the roofless upper storey where the master joiner and his new apprentices were measuring the apertures for the window frames beneath the cloud-dappled sky.

  Esnina nodded and smiled. Zurenne breathed that silent prayer of thanks which she must surely repeat ten and twenty times a day now; to Drianon, to Maewelin, to every goddess who might claim a share in the fragile peace of mind which Neeny had regained with each successive night’s sleep here.

  Though of course that rune had its reverse. Neeny’s innocent assumption that she and her sister would continue to share a bedroom had carried clearly across the courtyard thanks to that penetrating tone Drianon had chosen to bless small children with. Zurenne didn’t need to look around to see a handful of their household studiously avoiding her gaze, to avoid any hint that they might raise the awkward question that everyone was tacitly ignoring.

  Where would Lady Ilysh sleep once her lord and husband had returned from his present journey about the manor’s business, whatever that important though unspecified task might be precisely?

  Zurenne would spin that wool when the sheep had been shorn. She was more concerned that Corrain would return with definite news of that vile wizard’s death. It made no odds to her if the man died at the Halferan swordsman’s own hands or if they ended up owing that debt to Planir.

  She looked into the gatehouse’s shadowed archway. The studded and banded wooden doors had been hung the previous evening, after days of the reek of hot iron from Sirstin’s forge and the ringing of hammering echoing across the compound. Today she could see the blacksmith fitting the locks and bolts which he had made to secure the gateway more surely than ever before.

  That might reassure the household’s lackeys and maidservants and those villagers sheltering within the manor’s walls while they doggedly rebuilt their homes over beyond the brook. Zurenne could not be so sanguine. Walls and gates were
no defence against magic. As long as that vile wizard drew breath, he could step out of the empty air at any moment to threaten her and her children.

  She hoped she need not fear him as long as Tornauld was here but what of the future when the restoration was complete and the wizard returned to Hadrumal? Zurenne looked around again. Where was the burly mage?

  ‘Do you suppose we’ll truly be able to move in there before the Equinox?’ Now Raselle sounded wholly disbelieving, gazing up at the gatehouse.

  ‘So Master Tornauld says,’ Zurenne reminded her.

  ‘Master Tornauld says so?’

  Zurenne tensed at the sound of Master Vachent’s voice behind her. It took a moment for her to compose herself with a suitably unrevealing expression. She turned her head to greet him with cool courtesy. ‘Master mason, good day to you.’

  She braced herself for yet another exhaustively detailed report on the progress of rebuilding the storehouses and servants’ accommodations beyond the shell of the baronial tower. Vachent claimed her attention twice or thrice daily with such information, all of which he clearly expected her to dutifully convey to Corrain in his role as Baron Halferan. All delivered in a tone that somehow combined obsequiousness with infuriating condescension.

  Instead the master mason wagged a reproving finger at Raselle. ‘Master Tornauld has no business offering any such assurances. Those walls must be left to dry slowly and thoroughly.’

  He glanced at Zurenne. This was, she noted, as close as he dared come to rebuking her along with her maidservant.

  ‘Otherwise the mortar binding those bricks will shrink or crack,’ Vachent continued. ‘You must cultivate a little patience, my dear girl, no matter how eager you may be to quit your draughty tent. Because the lime—’

  ‘Then let us ask Master Tornauld what he meant.’ Zurenne interrupted before the mason’s insatiable urge to air his knowledge overcame his conviction that such matters should not concern women, even those few capable of understanding a workman’s mysteries.

  ‘Or Madam Merenel,’ Neeny piped up.

  ‘My lady?’

  Vachent’s surprise turned to wary indignation as Esnina pointed to Sirstin the smith opening the porter’s door that had been cut into one of the new gates. The amiable Tormalin magewoman had paused to exchange a brief word and a chuckle with Sirstin.

  ‘You’ll excuse me, my lady—’

  ‘You are not dismissed.’ Zurenne cut the mason’s hasty bow short with implacable courtesy. ‘Madam mage!’ She raised a hand to greet Merenel.

  As the wizard woman approached, she smiled at Esnina. Though the little girl pressed close to Zurenne, she didn’t hide her face in her mother’s skirts as she had done for the first handful of days after their arrival.

  ‘My lady, good day to you.’ Merenel brushed a drift of sawdust from her skirt and curtseyed with measured politeness.

  Zurenne returned the compliment, at the same time relieved to see the magewoman in skirts rather than the breeches she had worn on her first visit to the half-rebuilt manor. She smiled brightly.

  ‘Raselle hopes we can move into the gatehouse in time for the equinox. Do you think that is possible?’

  Zurenne did her best to ignore all the other concerns which besieged her at the thought of the approaching festival. If she could have given every man, woman and child of Halferan village and the demesne five full days of feasting, that would still be inadequate reward for all their hard work. As it was, she couldn’t see how she was to offer them anything remotely fitting for the season.

  How was she to supply the richly flavoured and foaming ale to properly celebrate Ostrin’s gifts of barley and yeast without a brew house? Where were the ovens to bake the plaited loaves of bread and the spiced cakes thanking Drianon for her gift of wheat? The manor’s kitchens remained no more than an expanse of cracked tile where awnings sheltered the temporary open hearths providing rough and ready meals to fuel all this hard work.

  ‘You will be hanging your garlands on your shutters well before festival eve,’ Merenel assured her.

  ‘I hardly think so,’ Vachent protested in strangled tones. ‘It will be days yet before we can think of burdening the walls with rafters. The walls cannot be plastered until the roof is complete and it will be well after festival before we can consider whitewashing—’

  Merenel shook her head with a confident grin. ‘I will have the mortar dry before this evening and we can make a start on the roof tomorrow. The plaster within will dry enough for painting inside a handful of days.’

  Vachent looked as though he would like to dispute that but like everyone else in the manor or out in the village these days, he dared not challenge a wizard on matters of magic. Not now that tavern tales had proved to be such an inadequate and inaccurate source of information.

  Not that such ignorance stopped certain of the maidservants muttering disapproval behind their hands of such unnatural goings on. Zurenne was sure that a number of the labouring men shared similar unease along with their meagre evening tankards of small beer.

  ‘All the same, I take your point about the weight of the roof trusses on soft mortar.’ Merenel inclined her head courteously to the mason. ‘By your leave, Lady Zurenne, I’ll go and see what’s what before the first timbers are raised.’

  She turned but before she had taken a handful of steps, daylight shone through the gatehouse arch. Sirstin the blacksmith had hauled open both doors, catching up his bag of tools as he retreated.

  Horsemen rode into the courtyard.

  ‘My lady?’

  Zurenne was startled to see a crackle of white light edged with scarlet cupped in Merenel’s hand.

  ‘If this is some unwanted intrusion,’ the magewoman offered, ‘I can persuade these ruffians to turn tail as readily as Jilseth ever did.’

  ‘No!’ Zurenne spoke more sharply than she intended but she had felt Neeny shrink with fear and heard her daughter’s whimper at the sight of Merenel’s magic.

  ‘No,’ she repeated more calmly. ‘Those men wear Lord Licanin’s livery. My sister’s husband is always most welcome here.’

  All the same, she wondered who had betrayed Corrain’s absence to Licanin. Master Rauffe was back at Taw Ricks but the steward had known of Corrain’s departure before taking to the road himself. Had he sent some message to his supposedly former master? Zurenne was obscurely disappointed. She had truly thought that the steward’s loyalties lay with Halferan now.

  The Licanin troopers reined in their mounts in front of the half-built barrack hall. Halferans from all across the courtyard were laying down their tools and calling out heartfelt greeting to men whom they had fought alongside to escape the corsairs. Just as Lord Licanin had risked his own life for her sake and that of her daughters, Zurenne reminded herself. He had seen his own loyal swordsmen die for Halferan. Bonds of blood shed in common cause would link the two baronies for a generation.

  ‘My lord, you are most welcome.’ She stepped forward to greet him as he turned his horse’s head towards the stable boy making haste to hold his bridle.

  ‘My lady.’ Before Licanin dismounted, his shrewd eyes took in every detail of the rebuilding. ‘I am delighted to see that you’re making such strides towards Halferan’s restoration.’

  Zurenne would have said that astonishment outweighed his pleasure by some margin.

  ‘May I make known to you Madam Merenel of Hadrumal?’ She gestured to introduce the magewoman to the baron. ‘Wizardly assistance has been helping us make such progress.’

  ‘Indeed?’ After acknowledging Merenel with a courteous nod, Lord Licanin hesitated.

  Merenel grinned before addressing Zurenne. ‘If you will excuse me, my lady, I have mortar to examine.’

  Lord Licanin surprised them both by raising his hand. ‘May I beg a moment of your time, madam mage?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked expectantly at the nobleman.

  Licanin hesitated yet again before speaking. ‘What can you tell me of the current tu
rmoil in Relshaz?’

  ‘What turmoil?’ Zurenne demanded.

  Once again Licanin apparently found the words which he sought elusive. Merenel explained instead.

  ‘Aldabreshin hatred of magic has washed ashore in the city in the past handful of days,’ she said, grim-faced. ‘It’s been spilling onto the streets.’

  ‘How so?’ Zurenne was confused.

  ‘Wizards have attacked, their homes and their businesses threatened,’ Merenel said curtly. ‘Two mages have been killed by mobs.’

  ‘Killed?’ Zurenne was appalled.

  Almost as swiftly, she was mystified. How could wizards be murdered with their devastating magecraft at their fingertips?

  Fear crowded hard on the heels of that thought. If wizards could be killed by the non-mageborn, was Tornauld or Merenel’s presence here truly the safeguard she was trusting her children’s lives to?

  Merenel cocked her curly head, eyes bright. ‘What’s your interest in this, my lord?’

  ‘I—’ The grey-haired nobleman looked away, a sweep of his hand taking in the courtyard. ‘I would hate to see Halferan taken unawares.’

  ‘You think to see such hostility here?’ Merenel queried. ‘When Halferan has such very good reason to value magecraft?’

  ‘Let us hope not,’ Lord Licanin said stiffly.

  Merenel stood for a moment, expectant. When Lord Licanin stayed silent, the mage bowed to Zurenne with a smile so fleeting that she thought she might have imagined it.

  ‘My lady, by your leave, I’ll go and examine that mortar.’

  This time Licanin said nothing to stop the magewoman leaving.

  Once she was out of earshot, Zurenne rounded on the nobleman. ‘What did you mean by that?’

  Licanin looked startled and not a little affronted by her brusque demand. ‘I simply wished to know that this wizard you have here is aware of recent events in Relshaz.’

  ‘Did you have reason to doubt it?’ Though as she spoke, Zurenne realised she hadn’t spared much thought for Tornauld’s communications with Hadrumal. He had received neither letters nor messages by courier dove, so she had assumed he conversed with his fellow wizards through some magical means. She assumed he was keeping the Archmage informed as to their progress rebuilding the manor.