Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

  The terror on his enemies’ faces was no comfort to Corrain. After half a season’s journey, after all his ordeals, his lies and deceits, abandoning friends and allies because necessity outweighed everything else, after all that, he was too late.

  The baronial tower’s casements were swinging open. The rooms within had been looted. Whatever hadn’t been stolen had doubtless been despoiled. He saw threads of smoke trailing from the ground floor windows. Had that fire had been deliberately set or were embers blowing in from the burning great hall? It made no difference. Once Lord Halferan’s archive was burning, the insatiable blaze would consume Zurenne’s elegant apartments above.

  Unless magic could quench the fires. Corrain turned to beg for Anskal’s help when he saw a man emerge from the kitchen door.

  The cowering raiders looked to him for their lead. No wonder. Their captain’s head nearly brushed the lintel and he was broad as well as tall, massively muscled. He wore a steel breastplate of mainland manufacture as well as black leather armour in the Aldabreshin style. Where the rest went close cropped or clean shaven, his long black wiry hair was swept back with some hard-set grease. His beard was tamed with plaited gold chains.

  Amidst all the chaos, Corrain stood in a moment of clarity. Now he understood this destruction, the wanton devastation. This wasn’t calculated depredation to leave farms and villages with just enough to tempt the survivors back to hope and replant, a cynical trick to fill corsair galleys a second time.

  This was vengeance. This was a warning for any Caladhrian baron who dared to defy the Archipelagans. This showed them what to expect. Just as Lord Halferan had been murdered for refusing to give the corsairs his gold to save his people’s skins, and for trying to find a wizard to defend them.

  Corrain would have known the man with the chains in his beard in any guise from Tormalin to Solura. This was the corsair captain who had killed Lord Halferan. The man who had outbid him for Minelas’s treacherous services.

  Now he was here again, scant leagues from the marsh where he’d murdered the noble baron, where Corrain had seen his comrades slaughtered or enslaved. He stood in the manor courtyard as arrogant as any trueborn lord of this beloved place. While Corrain had come too late to make good on any of his promises to Lady Zurenne and her daughters or to anyone else in the demesne.

  All-consuming hatred overwhelmed Corrain’s reason. ‘Kill them!’ he screamed at Anskal. ‘Kill them all and burn their ship. Whatever gold they have stolen, you can keep it!’

  He was running, sword swinging to cut down any corsairs who dared to stand in his way. That bastard with the chains in his beard had ducked back inside the kitchen. The shit-licking coward!

  Before Corrain could reach the door, an icy blast of blue light swept over him. Seized with shivering so violent that he was forced to a halt, he could barely stay on his feet.

  At least the magic knew him for Anskal’s ally. Looking as insubstantial as gossamer, the wizardry slammed into the raiders, solid as a wall. It smashed them against the ravaged buildings. Men screamed as they fell to the cobbles, writhing with the agony of shattered bones. Some couldn’t even do that, their backs broken like a stamped-on rat.

  Laundry and bake house, brew house and kitchen, all loomed over the crippled men. With a slow rumble, the walls fell forward, crushing the corsairs’ cries.

  Some escaped the toppling buildings, blown off their feet by the magic to tumble down the paths that led to the storehouses beyond. A few were bold or desperate enough to scramble up and grope for broken tiles or shattered brick; anything they could hurl at the mage.

  Anskal laughed aloud as these improvised missiles hurtled towards him. His gesture sent them back crackling with azure magelight. The rubble struck indiscriminately lethal blows, breaking noses and cracking skulls.

  Corrain saw a handful of other raiders fleeing towards the far wall. Ropes hung from grapnels, showing how the scum had got inside the courtyard.

  That first wave of magic had got there first. Corrain could see the sapphire haze shimmering above the tiled coping. He’d wager all the gold in the Halferan strongroom that no ordinary man could break through that.

  He took a step, ready to run and nail the cowards to the bricks with his sword point. That same violent shivering stopped him and Anskal’s magic flared bright all around.

  ‘Hold fast,’ the mage warned.

  Corrain’s protest died in his throat as he saw what was happening by the wall. Better to stay well clear of that deadly sorcery.

  The corsairs had grabbed at the dangling ropes only to find the hemp doing Anskal’s bidding. Coils twisted around their arms, hauling the raiders upwards. None were so foolish as to exult. There was no escape for them now.

  Nooses looped around their necks, killing some men as swiftly and surely as any hangman. Others were flailing in vain with their limbs tugged out to full stretch. As the ropes pulled harder and harder, one by one their cries died and the ropes went limp.

  Remembering the mage’s weariness after the battle at the forest lawn, Corrain looked at Anskal. How much more magic did the Mandarkin have in him?

  ‘Ware behind!’ he yelled.

  A trio of corsairs had appeared from the manor’s shrine door. Each cupped something in a hand and Corrain smelled the pungent fumes of sticky fire.

  Earthenware globes were already soaring through the air. Anskal contemplated them as if he had half a season to decide what to do.

  ‘They’re—’

  Corrain had no time to explain as earthenware shattered in mid-air. He recoiled, though that would do no good if the clinging fire splashed him. He couldn’t retreat or even dodge, held in place by Anskal’s sorcery. Could the wizard’s magic smother those vile flames before he was burned to death? Saedrin save them both.

  The flaming gobbets never landed. Like the arrows and bricks, they flew straight back to the men who’d thrown them. In the blink of an eye the men were shrouded in flames that flashed from yellow to wizardly scarlet. In the next breath, the magefire vanished to leave only a smudge of pale ash on the cobbles.

  ‘You wanted them all killed.’ Anskal rubbed his hands together and for the first time he took a step away from the saddlebags. ‘I believe I have fulfilled our bargain.’

  There could be no doubt of that. Corsairs lay dead wherever Corrain looked. With barely one brick left on top of another around the manor courtyard and the great hall a roaring inferno, there was nowhere left for them to hide.

  Anskal looked expectantly at Corrain and the magic that held him yielded. Corrain swayed. He hadn’t realised how hard he’d been pressing against those invisible bonds. He took a step to be sure of his balance.

  ‘My thanks.’ That hardly seemed adequate acknowledgement of the mayhem Anskal had wrought.

  The wizard was already searching the pockets of the closest corpse. He looked at Corrain, his eyes hardening ominously. ‘You promised me gold. This man carries none.’

  It would, Corrain realised, be a grievous mistake to let Anskal suspect that he’d been cheated. He pointed at the burning tower.

  ‘The strong room is below ground, underneath there. What coin is there, it’s yours. If the raiders have already taken it, we’ll find their ship and take it back.’

  ‘Very well.’ Anskal didn’t look entirely pleased with that prospect.

  He gestured and the tower’s swinging windows vanished in a shower of glass and wooden splinters. As the smoke cleared, Corrain saw the fire had been blown out as well. Even the blaze in the great hall had been blasted into oblivion.

  ‘Show me,’ Anskal commanded him.

  ‘Wait.’ Corrain couldn’t bring himself to see who might lie dead in the baronial quarters.

  Who else had died beneath these broken buildings? What of the village beyond the brook? He walked towards the gatehouse to get a clearer view.

  He had told himself to expect it. The reality still hit him like a fist in the gut. Halferan village had been reduced to a wastel
and of burned and ransacked buildings.

  What had happened to Hosh’s mother? The unbidden thought choked Corrain. Had Abiath burned alive in her little thatched cottage or had her throat been cut by a corsair sword? What about old Fitrel?

  As he turned away, heartsick, he saw that wasn’t nearly the worst of it. The road leading north from the gatehouse was strewn with discarded possessions. Further on, up towards the trees, the corpses of horses lay swollen with rot in the summer’s heat. Wagons, abandoned askew in panic, blocked the highway completely.

  The thought of what lay among them was unbearable. The bodies would be unrecognisable after they had lain in the sun like this, gnawed by foxes at night and pecked by crows in the day.

  Had they had any warning that the corsairs were coming to kill them? Could Zurenne have ever been persuaded to leave Halferan? Even if she had, could she have escaped the raiders? From the carnage on the high road, it was clear that whoever had tried to flee had left it far too late. And she would have been the last to flee. So Corrain’s quest for vengeance wasn’t nearly done. Slowly, fury began to burn through his despair.

  Anskal grabbed his arm. ‘There is no gold and little silver.’

  Corrain hadn’t realised how long he’d stood there, as devastated as the scene before him. He saw that the Mandarkin had used his magic to rip up the cobbles beside the baronial tower. A gaping hole in the ground made a mockery of the strong room’s iron-barred stairs and bolted door.

  ‘Where have they taken the coin?’ Anskal shook his arm.

  Corrain began walking towards the ruins of the kitchen. ‘That man,’ he said slowly. ‘The one with the gold chains in his beard. He was their leader.’ He was walking faster. ‘If your magic can learn where he’s been in the past few days, you can find his ship. Your coin will be on it.’

  If it wasn’t, Corrain didn’t care. He turned to grip Anskal’s narrow shoulders.

  ‘After that, I will help you find his anchorage in the southern seas. He has allies there who’ve preyed on this coast for years. Kill them and you’ll have more treasure than you could ever wish for.’

  These corsairs had destroyed his life and now they had destroyed his home. He would see their cursed haven obliterated. He would see every last galley sunk to the sea floor and that blind bastard’s trireme splintered to kindling.

  He let Anskal go and hurried onwards. Corrain tore at the splintered laths and crumbled plaster of the ruined kitchen, heedless of broken brick ripping at his fingers. ‘Once we find his body, your magic can find his home.’

  He wasn’t going to let Halferan’s destruction stand as a monument to the corsairs’ dominance. He would cut off that murderer’s head and stick it on a pole by the ruined gatehouse. Then he would take Anskal to the anchorage and stick the blind corsair’s head on the stern post of his burning trireme. Let the Archipelagans read an omen in that.

  ‘I can do this,’ Anskal chided.

  Corrain found himself picked up and set down ten strides from the ruined building. Debris flew in all directions, bodies tossed this way and that, limp as rag dolls. None of them the one that they sought.

  Anskal narrowed his eyes. ‘You said they had no magic.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Corrain didn’t understand. Where was the black-bearded corsair’s body? The magic had cleared the wreckage of roof and walls down to the kitchen’s tiled floor. ‘He must have escaped through the back.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Anskal said thoughtfully.

  ‘If not, he’s somewhere in there.’ Corrain waved at the looted storehouses and the corpses dangling on the wall beyond. ‘Or strung up yonder.’

  He was not going to be denied his revenge, even on a dead man.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Trydek’s Hall, Hadrumal

  11th of Aft-Summer

  ‘WELL.’ PLANIR LEANED back in his chair. ‘What do you suppose the Council will make of that?’

  ‘They can be thankful we’re the only witnesses.’ Troanna’s tone implied that this was hardly comfort.

  ‘So that is Mandarkin magic.’ Kalion was peering into the broad silver bowl. Intrigued, he looked across at Rafrid. ‘I take it his affinity is with the air?’

  ‘That’s his principle element.’ Rafrid’s thick brows knotted. ‘I suspect he has a double affinity, given the speed of his instincts with water magic. Flood Mistress?’

  Troanna nodded. ‘I believe we’ll find that’s so.’

  Jilseth looked covertly around the room. Did anyone else find this scene incongruous? The four most powerful wizards in Hadrumal had woven their magic together in this scrying nexus but no outsider would know them for what they were. Only Kalion in his scarlet silken robes looked like some balladeer’s notion of a wizard. Planir wore his usual threadbare breeches and a ragged shirt while Rafrid could have been any workaday merchant strolling along Hadrumal’s high road with his tunic unbuttoned in the heat.

  ‘As to what the Council makes of this,’ Troanna continued, looking more severe than ever, ‘that will very much depend on what this pestilential pair do next.’

  ‘What are the other corsairs doing?’ Rafrid asked. ‘Those horns will have carried the alarm some distance.’

  ‘Let’s follow their calls and see.’ Troanna didn’t need to reach for the scrying bowl for the emerald magic to flicker beneath her gaze.

  ‘They’re all running,’ Rafrid said with amusement. ‘Like rats who’ve heard a hunting dog. I believe they’ll be rowing away before the noon chimes sound.’

  ‘That makes sense.’ Kalion contemplated the bowl. ‘They know there are wizards on the mainland, even if they don’t know what we may—’ he looked sourly at Planir ‘—or may not do to defend the innocent.’

  ‘If that particular signal is a specific warning of wizardry being used against them,’ Rafrid mused, ‘we could send the coastal winds to mimic those horns whenever a corsair galley approaches the coast. That could well deter them.’

  ‘The sight of their own galleys burned to the waterline hasn’t put them off landing again,’ Troanna pointed out.

  The Flood Mistress had been summoned from her garden, so Jilseth judged from the soil staining her fingers and the sackcloth apron protecting her plain green gown. She looked as dumpy and unremarkable as any other woman in her middle years, twice married, twice widowed and many times a mother.

  Was it true, Jilseth wondered, that a woman lost a tooth for every child? If so the gaps in Troanna’s teeth would give a tally of her children, but that answer would be a long time coming, given how seldom the Flood Mistress smiled.

  Jilseth closed her eyes. Her wits were wandering again. How long before this giddiness subsided?

  She felt a hand on her knee and opened her eyes to see Nolyen regarding her with concern. ‘Are you alright?’

  Though he kept his voice to a murmur, Canfor shot them both a penetrating look from the far side of the room. Jilseth managed a serene smile. Let him make what he liked of that.

  ‘Do you need some water, or some wine?’ Sannin leaned forward. She was sitting on the far side of Merenel, who sat subdued beside Jilseth.

  Who was the curly-haired magewoman more in awe of in this gathering? Sannin or Troanna? Jilseth couldn’t decide. But she mustn’t let these idle thoughts distract her.

  ‘No, thank you, madam mage.’ She forced a smile.

  Curse them for their concern, well-meant though it was. Now everyone was looking at her; the pre-eminent mages seated round the table and everyone else in the chairs that loosely ringed the room. Tornauld sat on the far side of Nolyen with Herion at his other elbow. Galen and Ely sat opposite, flanking Canfor beside the Archmage’s white raven table.

  For the first time that she could remember, the door to this sitting room in Planir’s tower was not merely closed, it was locked. The first nexus spell that the Archmage and the Masters and Mistress of Element had worked had been an impenetrable defence against scrying.

  Then they’d used her shale magic t
o follow Corrain through the Forest and to find him in Halferan when the Mandarkin mage had translocated them both there. She felt a glow of pride at that.

  ‘Jilseth!’

  She sat up straight. ‘Flood Mistress.’ Not that Jilseth wanted to answer questions from anyone but Planir. Not until she felt a good deal more sure of herself.

  ‘Are you recovered?’ Troanna’s manner was so stern that it was hard to tell if she enquired out of genuine concern or mere courtesy.

  ‘I am recovering,’ Jilseth answered carefully.

  Not nearly fast enough for her peace of mind. If she was asked to work any magic or, worse, to join in a nexus, her weakness would be mercilessly apparent.

  Rafrid turned in his seat. ‘This is the first time your magic’s outstripped your endurance?’

  ‘It is, Cloud Master.’ Jilseth couldn’t help a blush of embarrassment. Arrogant apprentices usually suffered such humiliations, and were the butt of jokes for half a season.

  ‘An unpleasant experience. I remember it well.’ Rafrid’s sympathetic smile offered her some comfort. ‘Don’t fret. Your strength will soon return.’

  ‘We can hope so. Not everyone is so fortunate.’ Troanna stripped such reassurance away.

  Kalion drummed his fat fingers on the table. ‘It won’t be long before we get word from the Caladhrians. We should consider our response.’

  ‘Do you imagine they’ll be indignant that we plucked one of our own out of mortal danger,’ Planir asked pointedly, ‘while we left Halferan’s mundane populace to the corsairs’ mercies?’

  ‘There are limits to what even this nexus can do,’ Kalion snapped.

  ‘Quite so,’ Planir shot back, ‘as I have long pointed out.’

  ‘Enough!’ Troanna spoke before the fuming Hearth Master could reply. ‘You two can debate the wisdom of meddling on the mainland at the next Council meeting.’ Her relentless gaze returned to Jilseth. ‘Where you will have a great many questions to answer, madam mage.’