Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

  He hadn’t really thought where his feet were taking him. What did it matter? Not a jot, once he’d walked out to Siprel Inlet and discovered that greedy Mandarkin, Anskal, had already used his magic to collect the treasure he’d cached in the mud. Corrain couldn’t even reclaim that fragment of his honour. He had hoped to share out the coin somehow, to salve Halferan’s hurts in their dead lord and lady’s names.

  He should have kept on walking northward, to Ensaimin and beyond until oblivion claimed him in some distant wilderness. What a fool he had been. If he had never come back, if no one had seen him, they could have believed him safely dead. There was no hope for that now.

  But Corrain couldn’t find it in him to resist as Fitrel led him inside the ruined manor. Incredibly, he saw Lady Zurenne and Lady Ilysh standing hand in hand close to the shrine door. He blinked, unable to believe the sight before him.

  ‘My husband!’ The girl’s triumphant cry rang back from the manor’s enclosing wall.

  Amid the stir around the courtyard which that claim caused, Corrain only had eyes for Zurenne. He walked slowly towards her. This felt like a dream. Surely he would wake to find himself cold and stiff in the marshes. Unless everything dissolved into the nightmares that pursued him as relentlessly as Poldrion’s demons, when he finally sank into exhaustion every second or third night.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Zurenne looked at him, mystified. ‘What have you done?’

  The words came unbidden. ‘My best. My oath.’

  Shocked to hear himself speaking, Corrain clamped his jaw shut. This wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t about to admit to all that he had done this summer.

  Not in front of a gaggle of mages studying him with keen interest. If the lady wizard Jilseth looked fit to drop, those other three looked as sharp as freshly honed blades.

  Corrain’s wits felt as dull as a jug handle. How utterly deluded he had been, to ever imagine he could outwit a wizard.

  ‘Where is your companion?’ Zurenne looked to see if anyone followed him. ‘Kusint?’

  ‘Gone back to his own folk, my lady.’ Corrain managed to force out that half-truth. Could he tell Zurenne the whole of it, once they were alone? He quailed at the thought of her disappointment and of her contempt when she learned what depths he finally had stooped to.

  Lord Licanin stepped forward, his gaze penetrating. Corrain hadn’t even registered his presence. ‘What of— your ambitious plans when you took that galley northwards? To save us all from the corsairs?’

  Licanin knew, Corrain realised. He knew that Corrain had promised to bring back a Soluran wizard, believing that Hadrumal’s mages were no more use than a broken reed.

  Corrain saw Zurenne colour as she looked apprehensively at Licanin. The grey-haired baron didn’t see. He was looking covertly at Lord Karpis. Karpis looked merely bewildered by this turn of events.

  Those wizards flanking Jilseth were regarding him with close interest. What did they know? Corrain had no notion, and why were they standing beside a whole stack of strong boxes? That was a puzzle and a half. Were they buying Lady Zurenne’s silence about all Hadrumal’s offences against her with the coin to rebuild Halferan?

  Corrain cudgelled his sluggish wits. If Karpis didn’t know of Corrain’s boastful intention to find a wizard and bring back salvation, then he must not betray Zurenne’s agreement to that foolhardy endeavour.

  ‘I did what I could, my lady.’ He stared into her eyes, hoping she would read something of his efforts into those lame words.

  ‘You told my captains how the corsairs ride the tides. You told them where to trap them.’ Lord Karpis spurred his horse forward. ‘That’s all well and good and we have chased them off for now, but the sailing season is far from over. What have you to say to that?’

  Corrain could hear the fear in the man’s voice. Much as he would have liked to leave him prey to doubt, he saw the same dread in Ilysh’s eyes.

  He managed a faint smile for the girl. ‘They won’t be back.’ Anskal had promised him that much and the Mandarkin mage did owe him his life, never mind any gratitude for the gold he’d won.

  ‘How can you be certain?’ demanded Zurenne.

  Corrain choked on the prospect of admitting what he’d done. Besides, with any luck, Anskal was already dead. He groped for another half-truth.

  ‘The rainstorms that come up from the south will reach their islands any day now, and besides—’ he broke off as Ilysh’s gasp of relief pierced him to the heart.

  ‘Thank you.’ The girl held out her hands.

  She looked so like his dead lord that he couldn’t bear it. Corrain sank to his knees. His legs could no longer support him. He pressed Ilysh’s soft hands to his forehead and wept.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Trydek’s Hall, Hadrumal

  25th of Aft-Summer

  ‘IS HE A broken man?’ Planir’s query wasn’t without compassion.

  ‘That remains to be seen. He is mightily humbled.’ Jilseth was waiting for the Archmage to ask if she were a broken wizard. Not that he’d ever be so tactless, but she was increasingly convinced that was the essence of her situation.

  Planir leaned back in his comfortable chair. They were in the Archmage’s private sitting room. Jilseth had no doubt that any rumours about the two of them spending time behind closed doors now would have nothing to do with him tumbling her.

  She’d put her money on Ely if anyone was taking bets on who exactly had betrayed her current distress to the fascinated gossips of Hadrumal’s wine shops.

  ‘There’s no rumour in Caladhria of any magic being used against the corsairs.’ Elbows on the chair’s arms, Planir steepled his fingers. ‘Rafrid, Tornauld and Canfor haven’t heard so much as a whisper, not even in Halferan.’

  ‘Corrain hasn’t even told Lady Zurenne or her daughter what he did. He says he went to Solura but claims that he couldn’t find a wizard to help him.’

  The pendants were enabling Jilseth to listen to every conversation which Zurenne or Ilysh might have. So far she had heard a mind-numbing quantity of tedious irrelevance about the defects of the Taw Ricks hunting lodge and infuriating indecision about precisely how the ruins of Halferan manor should be made good again.

  Jilseth wasn’t about to protest to the Archmage. For now, this was all she was good for. Until her magic returned to its former strength, unless her magic returned in any significant measure, she was reliant on her nexus support to work the most trivial wizardry.

  Even her own element seemed to have failed her. Before, she would have revelled in unravelling the earth-wrought spells which Planir had crafted into those silver pendants. Now she had no more hope of doing that than Canfor.

  ‘If we do hear any such rumour, we’ll have to deny that Hadrumal was involved,’ Planir smiled with bleak humour, ‘naturally in such a way to make everyone think entirely the opposite. As many problems as that might cause for us, with everyone from the Emperor of Tormalin down, it will probably be preferable to the mainland powers and princes knowing the truth.’

  ‘There are those who know the truth.’ Jilseth was troubled by that. ‘The Forest lad who was travelling with Corrain, and those Soluran wizards. They must suspect that he’s responsible for the corsairs disappearing from Caladhrian waters so completely and unexpectedly. At worst, they will have been scrying after him and seen what he’s accomplished in the Archipelago,’ she concluded with disgust.

  ‘I am beginning to suspect the worst,’ Planir admitted. ‘Neither Hearth Master Kalion nor I can get any of the Elders of Fornet to agree to us paying a visit, even before we tell them what we would like to discuss. Not that we would have very much to discuss. I imagine they will see anything short of us ousting this Mandarkin wizard as a direct insult.

  Jilseth nodded. ‘The last Soluran alchemists left on this morning’s tide, taking ship for Col.’

  They had been unhelpfully vague about exactly how and when they had been summoned home.

  ‘Which means we’re waiti
ng for the Elders of the Soluran Orders to make the next move.’ Planir’s eyes strayed to the white raven game table over by the window. ‘Or their king.’

  ‘Unless the Mandarkin acts first.’ Jilseth readied herself to stand up. She was still so unutterably weary that even such commonplace actions took their toll.

  ‘A moment longer of your time, if I may.’ Planir was looking at the mantel shelf over the hearth. ‘You say that Lady Zurenne ordered that all the funeral ash from the shrine be swept into one reliquary. I’ve been thinking I could devise some magecraft to separate those remains, so that she might set an urn in her shrine for Lord Halferan once again. Do you think she would welcome such an offer?’

  Jilseth could see that Planir was looking at Larissa’s funeral urn and remembering his own dead lover. She told herself that he didn’t intend any cruelty, reminding her that her most prized talent, her necromancy, was as lost as the rest of her magic.

  ‘I believe she would, Archmage.’ Jilseth allowed herself a small glow of triumph. If she couldn’t control her magic, she could still control her voice.

  Planir remained lost in thought, his brow creased. ‘I think I will bespeak Usara and Shivalan.’

  That startled Jilseth out of her own preoccupations. ‘In Suthyfer?’ What could anyone in those remote islands have to offer? Halfway across the ocean on the far side of distant Tormalin, they were stepping stones to those wild lands which the Emperor was so keen to see colonised in order to enrich his people.

  ‘There are precious few wizards of Hadrumal with any direct experience of using their magic in battle. Planir sat up straight. ‘Even fewer who survived the experience,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Those who drove off the Elietimm?’ Jilseth had wondered if she’d ever hear that story but that wasn’t her most immediate concern. ‘You really think we will have to fight this Mandarkin mage ourselves? To placate the Solurans? Is it so vital to mollify them?’

  For a sickening instant, she felt relieved. As long as her magic hadn’t returned, she wouldn’t be one of those wizards called upon to attack the Mandarkin mage. She wouldn’t have to risk the humiliation of being found wanting.

  Or run the risk of succeeding and having to live with the knowledge that her magic had wrought more death, as it had on the road from Halferan. No, Jilseth thought savagely. Not even that was worth the price of living the rest of her life without wizardry.

  ‘The Solurans aren’t my concern. Not yet. But this Mandarkin is bound to make trouble sooner or later. Once he’s grown tired of indulging himself with whatever he’s found on that island, he will need to release those corsairs he’s got penned up, to find him more food and wine or whatever other entertainments he fancies.’

  Planir shook his head, his exasperation coloured with grudging respect. ‘I don’t hold out much hope of us getting wind of his plans in advance, not given how effectively he can hide himself from even a nexus scrying as well as from all those Aldabreshin who’d love to sneak up and cut his throat in his sleep.’

  Troanna, Ely and Nolyen were taking that as a personal insult. Jilseth could have been amused if it hadn’t been so serious.

  ‘It must be a perilous life,’ she observed, ‘to be a wizard where he comes from.’

  Planir nodded. ‘I’ll ask Usara to pass my compliments to Aritane and see what she can tell us of Mandarkin.’

  ‘Aritane?’ The name meant nothing to Jilseth.

  ‘The sheltya woman?’ Planir raised his brows in surprise when Jilseth shook her head none the wiser.

  ‘They’re akin to priests among the Mountain Men, as well as law makers and enforcers of those laws through their unparalled command of Artifice,’ the Archmage explained. ‘We offered this woman Aritane sanctuary in Suthyfer after she had offended against her own people’s strictures on using aetheric magic for personal gain.’

  He waved a hand. ‘In truth, the whole affair was considerably more complicated and so we were glad to offer Aritane a refuge, for the sake of her knowledge of sheltya Artifice which she could share with Lady Guinalle and the other adepts in Suthyfer.’

  Because the proper study of mages is magic, and as Jilseth was realising, this Archmage saw no reason to limit his studies to elemental wizardry.

  She nodded. ‘I remember.’ Or more accurately, now she knew enough to go and ask the rest of her nexus what they knew of this woman and her history. She was puzzled nevertheless.

  ‘Do the Mountain Men have much to do with the Mandarkin?’

  ‘More than anyone further south,’ Planir said frankly, ‘and I would like to hear other opinions to set in the balance against Soluran hatreds.’

  As he broke off, Jilseth was sure he’d been about to say something further.

  ‘The islands of the Archipelago are far closer than those of Suthyfer,’ she observed. ‘You don’t think that the Aldabreshi will move against the Mandarkin mage themselves?’

  ‘Let us hope so,’ Planir said frankly. ‘If I knew of a way to encourage that, without seeing my own hide nailed to a gatepost, I’d be sailing from domain to domain myself and offering a reward. Though that doesn’t address the problem of how anyone gets a knife into the Mandarkin’s throat while he weaves such complex spells of protection all around himself.’

  ‘Merenel said—’ Jilseth hesitated. ‘I believe Hearth Master Kalion is trying to devise some way of unravelling another wizard’s magic through a nexus scrying.’

  She wasn’t telling tales like Ely. Kalion wouldn’t be working on something so outrageous without Planir’s full knowledge and consent. Jilseth wanted to see if Planir shared her own misgivings at the thought of such a thing.

  Instead, he grinned. ‘The Emperor of Tormalin told me some seasons ago, how the challenges of all this exploration over the ocean is driving advancements in metalworking, in shipbuilding, in almost any craft you can name, clear across the realms that once made up the Old Empire. Do you suppose he imagines the same will be true of wizardry, if this Mandarkin mage does decide to challenge us?’

  ‘So you think he will?’ Jilseth asked, uneasy.

  ‘We may hope not, but we’ll plan for every eventuality.’ Planir regarded her over his steepled fingers once again, his grey eyes opaque. ‘Since, as I think we’ll discover all too soon, this business is very far from over.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Black Turtle Isle, in the domain of Nahik Jarir

  26th of Aft-Summer

  AS HOSH PICKED his way through the ironwood stumps, he realised that an Archipelagan was coming towards him. Not heading for the bloodstained circle of stones where so many of the terrified corsairs were seeking omens amid all this unforeseen calamity. The man was heading directly towards Hosh, his expression intense.

  ‘You there, broken-face slave,’ the stranger rasped, one hand on the hilt of his curved sword. ‘Stand!’

  What else could he do? Hosh stood motionless. As he waited he wondered who this man might be, other than a raider from one of the galleys trapped in the anchorage by that impossible wave.

  Hosh thought that the wave was beautiful. Not only because it was keeping all the corsairs penned up and unable to rob helpless Caladhrians. Where it caught the sunlight, it shone like the emerald necklace which he’d once seen Lady Zurenne wear, a festival gift from Lord Halferan.

  The ever-changing foam at the top reminded him of the pearl studded bracelet which his long dead father had given his beloved mother on their wedding day. Marsh pearls of course, small and irregularly shaped. Nothing like the smooth and lustrous pearls from the southern reaches of the Archipelago. Like the one the raider who was approaching him was wearing on a chain threaded through one ear.

  ‘What do you want with him?’

  That was Ducah’s bellow, hostile as ever. Where was the brute? What had Hosh done to enrage him? Nothing that he could think of but that made no real difference if Ducah had chosen his victim for the day.

  Then Hosh realised with a shudder of relief that Ducah wasn
’t hailing him. The brute was striding towards the strange corsair; a copper-skinned Aldabreshin with angular scars gouged into each arm.

  ‘You have some quarrel with the Reef Eagle?’ Ducah’s sword was already drawn.

  Once again, that was no surprise. Hosh had lost count of how many men he’d seen Ducah kill.

  The scarred man sneered. ‘My master’s business is no concern of—’

  Ducah swung a lethal blow at his head. The scarred man recoiled, snatching for his own hilt. Ripping his blade free of its scabbard, he blocked Ducah’s stroke, just barely. That did him no good.

  For such a massively muscled man, Ducah was both light on his feet and deft with his hands. He turned his rebounding sword with an agile twist of his wrist. The blade swept back in low to bite into the scarred man’s thigh.

  The newcomer staggered backwards, his riposte robbed of its strength. Ducah swatted his curved sword aside before thrusting his blade deep into the scarred man’s belly.

  ‘No!’ As he gasped with futile denial, the unknown Aldabreshin let his sword fall unheeded. Sinking to his knees, staring down in disbelief, he clutched at Ducah’s blade in some last desperate impulse to deny his own fate.

  The brute ripped his sword away, slicing one of the dying man’s fingers clean off. That wasn’t an end to it. Ducah drove the tip of his blade into the hollow of the raider’s throat. The dead man’s eyes bulged, blood gushing from his mouth. He choked voicelessly, his windpipe severed.

  Ducah wrenched his sword free one last time to hack the dead slave’s head from his shoulders. It bounced past Hosh before the rest of his corpse toppled forward to hit the ground beside him.

  Hosh had already dropped to his own knees. Now he pressed his forehead to the sandy soil. There was no point in saying anything. If Ducah had decided to kill him, then he was already dead.

  Ducah grunted with satisfaction and edged the point of his sword under Hosh’s sparsely bearded chin. ‘Who is your master?’