Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

  ‘Some food.’ The Forest youth nodded towards Deor who was now examining the vellum which Selista had given him. ‘That map will show him where to find the Mandarkin stores hidden in the forest.’

  ‘Rewarding her ally and leaving her enemy hungry.’ Corrain couldn’t fault the bitch’s tactics.

  He watched her directing one of her swordsmen to bind the naked Mandarkin captives’ hands behind their backs. Another man slipped a noose around each one’s head, tugging on the end of the rope to tighten the knot just short of choking them.

  ‘We have our coin.’ Kusint gave a saddlebag a resolute slap. Metal chinked. ‘And now we know for certain that the Archmage’s edict is no hindrance. If we head back to the river we can pick up a road heading north for Resdonar.’

  Corrain slid his stirrups down their leathers to hang against his horse’s rough-haired side. He recalled that map which Orul had scratched on the turf. Resdonar was the province to the north of Pastamar. ‘Any wizard there will be out hunting down Mandarkin just like these three.’

  ‘Then we can take a ferry back across the Great River,’ Kusint insisted. ‘There will be wizardly orders in Wardor and Usta, far less hard-pressed.’

  ‘How long will that take?’ Corrain broke off as the Soluran men-at-arms gathered around the pit which they’d dug.

  To his surprise and no little revulsion, he saw it wasn’t intended for the Mandarkin dead, to keep their shades lingering in torment, prey to Poldrion’s demons through the slow dissolution of their corpses by rot and worm.

  They were laying their own shrouded comrades in the ground with the care of a mother laying her babe in a cradle. A single man wielded a short shovel, the dry soil pattering on the cloth like rain, while the others ringed the pit, heads bowed. Another swordsman stepped forward to chant with low-voiced fervour. Once again, Corrain wondered what gods the Solurans worshipped.

  Such questions could wait. He turned to Kusint. ‘We could be half a season on the road before we find a mage willing to set aside his own concerns for our gold. We don’t have that time to waste. I thought we’d already be home by now.’

  What had been happening back in Caladhria while he was away? Was this journey going to prove an utter fool’s errand? These nagging fears sprang to the forefront of his mind as soon as he first stirred in the morning and kept him awake at night, long after he’d heard Kusint slip into sleep.

  The only way to drive away such doubts was to look to their objective. Returning with magic to drive off the corsairs was the only way he could ever go home with his head held high. So he must find a wizard, and quickly.

  ‘Then what do you propose?’ Kusint demanded, needled.

  ‘Hear me out.’ Corrain laid a hand on the Forest youth’s arm. ‘We know there’s another mage in these woods. We’ve seen his wizardry for ourselves. He’s surely powerful enough to hole a corsair ship at the waterline. To kill the steersman and the whip master. But for the present, that mage has no one left to defend him. He’ll have exhausted his wizardly strength. You heard what they said and I didn’t see any sign of him using magic to flee. You’ll be able to track him.’

  Kusint stared at Corrain, wide-eyed. Finally he spoke, his voice thick with revulsion. ‘The Mandarkin?’

  ‘Listen.’ Corrain gripped the youth’s forearm more tightly. ‘If we take him away from Solura, that’s a favour we’re doing them, aye and the Forest Folk. His magic won’t be used against them in this war—’

  Kusint wrenched his hand away. ‘Would you pay an Aldabreshin corsair to drive off the slavers who raid Caladhria?’ He ripped up his sleeve, baring his shackle galls and the scars of the burns he’d suffered in their escape. ‘The villains who left you marked like this?’

  ‘Yes.’ Corrain spoke without hesitation. ‘As long as I was convinced he could be bought and would stay bought. Now, as soon as they’ve moved off we can quarter this clearing for some hint as to which way the Mandarkin fled.’

  He stole a glance at the Solurans. The men-at-arms were settling their weapons and armour comfortably for the march while the wizards stood with Deor. He now had hold of both rope halters, so they were doubtless discussing what to do with the captives.

  ‘We can outstrip them on horseback if we can find the mage before they do.’ Corrain gathered up his horse’s reins. This beast was sturdy enough to bear a double load, for long enough to get them beyond Soluran bowshot anyway.

  Could they outrun magic? That was an entirely different question. Perhaps they should hold off, if they couldn’t find the Mandarkin without the Solurans knowing they had stolen their prey.

  Could they rescue the man once those three mages had captured him? No. The Solurans would surely whisk him away, just as Planir and that lady wizard Jilseth had used their magic to vanish from Halferan.

  They would take their captive to wherever Deor’s kinsman with his eerie Artifice would be waiting to wrest the truth from the fugitive wizard. Would the Solurans test whatever words could be wrung from him with whips and hot irons? Corrain could offer the Mandarkin a far more pleasant future.

  He turned back to Kusint. ‘You said you wanted to help Halferan, to repay the barony for all the people’s kindnesses. Have you forgotten that?’

  ‘I have mistaken your measure entirely,’ Kusint’s green eyes were shadowed with disillusion, ‘if you would make common cause with a Mandarkin murderer.’

  ‘I seek magic to save Caladhrian lives,’ Corrain retorted. ‘You call that man a murderer? When those other mages choked those men to death with a cloud of soil and broke the very bones inside their legs? Let them answer to Saedrin, each man in turn. I won’t pass judgement. Solura has no interest in our troubles so I have no interest in their quarrels.’

  ‘Mandarkin raiders burned my mother’s camp.’ Kusint could barely contain his fury. ‘That’s how she was orphaned.’

  ‘Haven’t you travelled with me to save Caladhrian children from the same fate, at the hands of the corsairs?’ Corrain challenged him.

  ‘I will never agree to this!’ Kusint’s voice rose to an angry shout.

  ‘Hush!’ Alarmed, Corrain turned to see if the Solurans were paying heed to this quarrel. Instead he discovered that the two of them were entirely alone in the glade.

  The mages and their men-at-arms had vanished into the woods, leaving only Mandarkin corpses littering the grassy lawn.

  A few crows had already appeared. Corrain watched one hop forward to stab at a dead man’s glazed eye with its vicious beak. How many Caladhrians had fallen while he was on this hunt? How many more would be abandoned to carrion eaters if the corsairs weren’t stopped?

  ‘I will not spend another season searching for some wizard who may not even be willing to leave his fireside,’ he snarled at Kusint, ‘when I can offer that mage those Solurans are hunting shelter from his enemies and coin besides, a thousand leagues beyond their reach.’

  ‘Then you’ll do it on your own.’ Kusint sprang into his saddle and spurred his horse, heading westward towards the river.

  Corrain was left standing there, wholly dumbfounded. His horse dropped its head to graze a little longer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Halferan, Caladhria

  9th of Aft-Summer

  JILSETH WATCHED ZURENNE’S maidservant set the broad washstand bowl on the withdrawing room’s table. The girl had been swift to fetch it and the matching ewer from a bedchamber down the hall. She’d even brought a towel.

  She wasn’t bred to such service, if Jilseth was any judge, but she was quick-eyed, quick-witted and devoted to her new mistress.

  The girl wasn’t alone in that. Jilseth watched the manor’s people going about their business, as she spent the afternoon kicking her heels on the bench beside the gatehouse. Zurenne had taken an unconscionable time to admit the magewoman to her presence.

  The manor was far busier than Jilseth remembered it. Listening to passing conversations she had learned that most of those living in the barony’s coa
stal villages had moved as far inland as they could. They were paying for their bed and board with friends and relatives with whatever food, goods and coin they’d brought with them, more than content to deny the corsairs such pickings.

  Any distress at such upheaval seemed more than counterbalanced by the good cheer prompted by any mention of burning corsair galleys. Jilseth had heard such conversations time and again throughout the afternoon.

  She also saw that even without the coin to buy them their festival feasting, the demesne folk looked to Lady Zurenne with loyalty and gratitude. She was far from the friendless widow whom Jilseth had first met in the spring.

  That said, Lady Zurenne was still penniless. As Planir had foreseen, Hadrumal yielding to her demands and Jilseth offering to restore Halferan’s fortunes was more than Zurenne could resist.

  Jilseth only hoped that Starrid, or more likely Minelas before him, hadn’t squandered the last of the barony’s coin on liquor, whores and gambling.

  ‘We need something that belonged to Starrid.’ Jilseth wasn’t going to attempt this scrying without something to anchor the spell.

  Teaching the new searching and scrying spells to Galen and the nexus which Planir had appointed had taken until long after midnight. Time and again the magic had unravelled when Canfor sought to thread air through the three other blended elements. Jilseth had struggled to see how the white-haired wizard was going awry. Air was so antagonistic to her own elemental affinity with earth even when she wasn’t tired. Arrogant as ever, admitting no lack in his own understanding, Canfor had been openly contemptuous of her deficiencies while visibly resenting her success in devising the wizardry in the first place.

  Despite sleeping until noon in Hadrumal, Jilseth had needed to bathe and to breakfast before she was sufficiently rested to both translocate to Halferan and to make good on the promises which Planir’s letter offered Lady Zurenne, guaranteed by his seal and signature.

  Zurenne might have thought she was teaching the magewoman a lesson in humility, keeping her waiting like that. Jilseth had been glad of the respite, sitting on the bench in the shade, enjoying the summer afternoon.

  ‘Raselle?’ Zurenne looked to her maid. ‘Go and see what Mistress Rauffe can find.’

  The new steward’s wife, Jilseth recalled. She poured water and set the ewer down on the table. Taking a seat she cupped the white bowl between her hands and looked into it.

  What was Corrain doing today? They had learned nothing useful from finally finding his solitary lair in a leaf strewn hollow the night before. Even with the Greater Moon at full and the Lesser at half, barely enough light pierced the dense summer leaves to show them his drowsing, hobbled horse. Wielding magic powerful enough to see over a thousand leagues and the mighty wizards of Hadrumal were as dependent as some benighted peasant on the grudging illumination of the heavens.

  They could see that Corrain was heading east. Galen had confidently stated that the Caladhrian must be coming home by land rather than sea. They had all seen the Soluran wizards rebuff him, although to Tornauld’s severe embarrassment, the clairaudience spell which Planir had spun had unwound just as the Soluran magewoman confronted Corrain. Nevertheless, if they couldn’t hear what caused that falling out between Corrain and his Forest companion, they saw that the Caladhrian was left without a guide. No wonder he wasn’t retracing his steps to Solura. What could he hope to achieve there now?

  Jilseth stirred the water with a thoughtful touch of mossy magic. She wasn’t convinced that Corrain would give up so easily, if he’d gone all the way to Solura in his search for magical aid. She would have liked to know if Planir agreed. She would trust the Archmage’s judgement over Galen’s from solstice to equinox and back again, but he had been locked in private conversation with Kalion, Rafrid and Flood Mistress Troanna since first light.

  Meanwhile, he had sent her here to learn everything she could of Corrain’s plans. What might the volatile swordsman try next? Why would he head for Ensaimin? True, there were a great many wizards scattered among those independent fiefdoms and city-states. Lord Halferan had found one mage prepared to abandon his allegiance to the Archmage and Hadrumal. Had Corrain heard rumour of another such renegade? Would Lady Zurenne know?

  ‘Can you find Corrain?’

  Jilseth was so taken aback that she stared at the noblewoman. It was as if her own thoughts had prompted the question.

  ‘Once you’ve found Starrid,’ Zurenne added quickly. ‘You must find him first and recover my daughters’ inheritance. You must force him to hand back Halferan’s coin, to the very last cut-piece.’ The noblewoman peered into the water-filled bowl although there was nothing to be seen.

  ‘Indeed.’ Jilseth wondered at such vehemence, at odds with that earlier delay.

  Had Zurenne been truly in two minds about accepting wizardly help or had that merely been a ploy, to show Jilseth and, through her, Planir, who was truly mistress here?

  Of course, Zurenne wasn’t Halferan’s mistress and they both knew it. Jilseth wondered where Lord Licanin was on the road journeying south from Ferl. He would be slowed by the entourage and baggage he had needed for the festival, to display his barony’s peace and prosperity to his fellow lords. But he would send swift riders on ahead, carrying his letters in all directions.

  Jilseth had seen such a horseman arrive not half a chime before she’d been finally been summoned from the bench beside the gatehouse. She could see a substantial pile of letters on a side table here in Lady Zurenne’s sanctuary. It seemed several had been screwed up in a rage only to be salvaged from the log basket. The costly paper had resisted attempts to smooth out those creases.

  ‘When I have found Starrid for you, I expect you to tell me what’s going on here.’ Jilseth pointed at the heap of correspondence. ‘I want to know whatever you know of Corrain’s alliances with the other coastal baronies’ captains, of these attacks on the corsairs which their lords know nothing about.’

  Zurenne shrugged. ‘What little I know.’

  ‘What of Corrain’s journey to Solura?’

  The noblewoman looked Jilseth in the eye, unblinking. ‘I’ve no idea where he is or what he might be doing.’

  Which was doubtless true, albeit very far from the whole truth. Jilseth would wager good coin on that.

  She contemplated the water in the white basin and considered how she might shake the full story from Zurenne. Well, she could start with the gaudy magecraft that Planir had suggested, much as she disliked such theatrics, worthy of some apprentice too ill-disciplined or ineffectual to keep pace with more diligent pupils, turning instead to a life of playing the charlatan at the mainland’s festival fairs.

  ‘Shall I ring for a tisane tray?’ Zurenne suggested.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Jilseth was content to sit and wait and see if silence provoked Zurenne into saying something unintentionally revealing. The tactic worked for Planir often enough.

  Not this time. Not before quick feet sounded on the stairs from the great hall. Raselle returned, pink-faced.

  ‘Forgive me, my lady.’ She bobbed a second nervous curtsey at Jilseth. ‘My lady wizard. Mistress Rauffe says that the men from the guard hall helped themselves to whatever Starrid left after they whipped him from the gate. When she cleared out the house, she slung the rest of his rubbish onto the midden beyond the walls.’

  Zurenne turned back to Jilseth. ‘Can you still work the spell?’

  She had paled. There was more at stake here than she was admitting, that made it all the more important that Jilseth’s spell didn’t fail. Swift success would definitely put Zurenne in Jilseth’s debt.

  ‘If there’s nothing of use where he lived, where did he work? Starrid must have kept your husband’s ledgers and managed his correspondence.’

  ‘Downstairs.’ Zurenne was on her feet. ‘In the muniment room.’

  ‘Lord Licanin has the keys.’ Raselle looked stricken.

  ‘Not all of them.’ Zurenne didn’t reach for the household keys hang
ing from her chain girdle. Instead she slid a hand through the seam of her skirts into a hidden pocket. ‘I’ll go. Stay here.’

  Jilseth smiled at Raselle. The girl bobbed another uncertain curtsey and busied herself with lighting the oil lamp, though it was hardly needed. The long summer evening was far from dusky.

  Nevertheless Raselle trimmed the wick, fetched the spark maker and pressed the handles together, once, twice, a third time. Jilseth found the sound of toothed steel rasping on flint so grating that she almost snapped her fingers to light the lamp with a fiery cantrip. Then Raselle caught a spark with the woven tow.

  ‘Where is my lady mother?’ Ilysh’s appearance in the doorway startled them both. They hadn’t heard a whisper of her soft slippers on the hallway’s polished floorboards.

  When she’d finally been summoned, Jilseth had seen the girl at her lessons beside her sister at the long table on the great hall’s dais. Their older maidservant had seemed more interested in her knitting than in their copybooks.

  Now she saw Ilysh’s gaze taking in the heap of letters, the bowl on the table and most particularly Jilseth’s own presence. There was something deep in the girl’s eyes. Defiance and some secret satisfaction, just like her mother.

  Before Jilseth could think how she might tempt the girl into sharing confidences, they heard Zurenne returning. Ilysh vanished back down the hall. Jilseth heard a bedchamber door close a moment later.

  Zurenne evidently suspected nothing as she returned to the withdrawing-room with assorted writing implements and accoutrements. She dumped them on the table, heedless of inky flakes soiling the embroidered linen.

  Jilseth spoke before the maid could betray Ilysh’s appearance. ‘That pen-knife if you please.’

  Zurenne picked up the hollow brass handle. ‘Should I fix one of the blades?’ Those would be stored within for shaping and trimming quills, to be poked through the screw cap and secured as it was tightened.