Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis)

by McKenna Juliet E.

  ‘You were talking of defending Halferan, Lord Karpis.’ Corrain fixed the baron with a penetrating stare. ‘Yet the manor and its village lie in ruins, along with countless hamlets and farms between the demesne and the sea. You singularly failed to prevent that destruction.’

  Baron Karpis spread lavishly beringed hands. ‘I had no authority to stand between Halferan and the raiders. I had sought it, last Aft-Spring, after I had learned that Master Minelas had abandoned his responsibilities, and then again at this summer’s parliament, only to be denied in favour of Lord Licanin. Alas, entrusting Halferan to the care of a barony so far away proved a sad mistake.’

  Lord Licanin sprang to his feet. ‘You were happy to entrust Halferan to a scoundrel and a thief. You stood before our summer’s parliament last year and gladly assented to Minelas of Grynth’s guardianship on the basis of documents which we now know to be base forgeries.’

  His voice shook with fury and for the first time Corrain realised Lord Licanin was as angry with himself as he was with Baron Karpis, for taking so long to realise Zurenne’s true distress.

  Licanin strode forward, walking in a wide circle to command the whole parliament’s attention. ‘If we are to consider who has safeguarded Halferan, my faithful guardsmen fought and died when those corsair raiders last attacked, intent on razing the manor to the ground.’

  ‘While my men helped burn their ships when they came to shore.’ Lord Tallat rose slowly from his seat, sweating despite the thick stone walls shielding the hall from the lingering heat as summer turned to autumn. ‘Though this is little enough to set in Raeponin’s divine scales against my most grievous error in not questioning Master Minelas’s claims. To see him revealed as a fraud and a thief and worse—’

  As he broke off with a shake of his head, Corrain tensed. Had Tallat somehow discovered Master Minelas’s wizardry?

  Could the Halferan barony weather that storm, if the parliament learned that Master Minelas hadn’t washed up on Caladhria’s shore by accident? That Baron Halferan himself had suborned the man’s magecraft, both of them defying the Archmage and Hadrumal’s edict. Until Minelas had betrayed Halferan for the sake of the greater gold the corsairs had offered him. And Corrain had been one of the few men who’d known the baron’s secret.

  But that wasn’t what Lord Tallat was struggling to say.

  ‘I owe you a considerable debt, Lord Licanin, for rescuing the Widow Halferan from the unintended consequences of my dishonour. I can only beg forgiveness of the current Baron Halferan.’ The dark haired lord bowed awkwardly towards Corrain. ‘And if we are to consider who has defended Halferan most faithfully, there can be no doubt of his loyalty. His devotion has proved stronger than Aldabreshin slave chains!’

  As unexpected voices acknowledged that with loud approval, Lord Tallat’s nerve failed him. He sat down with a jarring thump.

  Baron Karpis wasn’t bested yet. ‘Yet Captain Corrain was nowhere to be seen when the corsairs last attacked. He had long since vanished on some mysterious journey which he still has not accounted for. Nor has he ever explained his miraculous escape from the southern slavers.’

  ‘More questions which have no bearing on the validity of this marriage.’ A soberly dressed lord rose from one of the middle benches.

  Corrain recognised him, as well as the barons to either side raising their hands to support his contention. Baron Saldiray, with the lords of Taine, Myrist and Blancass.

  They had been his dead lord’s allies. They had supported Corrain’s bold plan to demand aid from Hadrumal’s wizards, renewing Caladhria’s appeals to the Archmage themselves after the former Baron Halferan’s death.

  Even after the Archmage’s unwavering refusal had hardened the barons’ unease about dealing with wizards into outright dislike, it seemed they believed Corrain had somehow secured magic to defend Caladhria. So if they helped give him Halferan, he would be honour bound to give them such help if the corsairs returned.

  He could only hope they never discovered the true disgrace of his debt to wizardry.

  Baron Karpis snorted, this time with outrage.

  ‘My lords?’ Baron Ferl was on his feet, swift to read the mood in the hall. ‘Shall we vote? That will at least tell us if there is anything more to be gained by debate.’

  ‘I agree,’ Lord Licanin said promptly. ‘Let those approving this new Baron Halferan show their assent!’

  Corrain raised his head and squared his shoulders, standing in the middle of the flagstones. He looked at that far window as the lords muttered and argued among themselves. He dared not look as the first few hands were raised. He didn’t want anyone to look into his eyes and see how wholly unworthy he was to take his dead lord’s place.

  He had failed his liege lord utterly. His desperate efforts to make some recompense had come at the cost of further failure. He had abandoned that fool boy Hosh, even though he was one of Halferan’s own, all for the sake of escaping from the corsair slavers. Even though he knew full well the lad could never survive a slave’s brutal life without Corrain to defend him.

  It was almost enough to make him wish that he still believed in the gods, even at the cost of answering to Saedrin for all his sins. Then Corrain could have hoped that the wretched lad was already safely reborn in the Otherworld with all his injuries healed, every hurt that Corrain had failed to save him from soothed.

  But there were no gods and Corrain had failed Hosh. As badly as he’d failed Kusint, after all that the Forest-born lad had done. Helping him to escape the corsairs; Corrain couldn’t swim much less sail a boat. Telling him of Solura’s mages who owed nothing to Hadrumal. Taking him north in search of just such a mage. Then Corrain had repaid him by allying with the Mandarkin, no matter what Kusint had told him of that wicked race’s villainy. No wonder Kusint had abandoned him in disgust.

  The bright colours of the distant window blurred.

  ‘Very well,’ Baron Ferl said in measured tones. ‘We have our answer, my lords.’

  Corrain blinked hastily and looked to see what that might be. He felt abruptly weak with relief as he saw more than half the assembly’s hands were raised, though some of the lords were already heading for the door.

  ‘Good.’ A nameless, exasperated noble said to his companion. ‘Let’s hope we can get on the road before the fifth chime of noon.’

  Corrain didn’t care who had only voted in his favour in order to go home. He pushed his way through the shifting throng. He had to sit down.

  Lord Licanin caught his elbow and pulled him roughly to one side.

  ‘Have you bedded Ilysh?’ he hissed in an undertone. ‘I won’t betray her shame but I have a right to know! I know your reputation.’

  Corrain should have expected that. After he had joined the guardsmen’s barracks, he had rarely bothered to hide his dalliances with tavern girls and village maids. Why should he? They were willing and old Fitrel had shown him the uses of alum and beeswax so none ever arrived at the manor’s gatehouse with a swelling belly.

  He had grown a little more discreet in later years but only because his tastes inclined towards married women. Not discreet enough, when it had come to Starrid’s wife. Corrain had grown too used to cuckolded husbands too busy with their own pleasures to notice a straying wife or to play the hypocrite if they did.

  Halferan’s former steward had rolled the third side of that rune. He had beaten his hapless wife black and blue. There was no hiding that scandal so Corrain had lost his captaincy to ride as a common trooper. Of course Lord Licanin would have heard of that through his man Rauffe’s letters to his former home.

  So the grey-haired lord wasn’t about to stand idly by and allow Corrain to abuse a defenceless girl. Not when he had already failed Lady Ilysh once.

  All the same, Corrain owed Lord Licanin some measure of honour for the Licanin blood shed in Halferan’s defence. The truth was fit repayment.

  ‘No, I have not touched her, nor will I,’ he said low-voiced, ‘until and unless she is o
f an age and of a mind to make that choice for herself, and I don’t see that ever happening. Saedrin’s stones, my lord, I’m old enough to be her father.

  ‘Besides,’ he added frankly, ‘even if Lady Ilysh were ever willing Lady Zurenne would cut off my manhood before I laid a finger on her daughter. I’ve sworn to dissolve the marriage whenever Ilysh asks it and she will go virgin to a worthy husband.’

  He didn’t see any need to add that his manhood hadn’t so much as stirred at the sight or thought of any woman since he had returned to Caladhria. The corsairs might as well have gelded him as brutally as the Aldabreshin warlords who reputedly cut stick and stones entirely from the slaves attending their wives.

  Lord Licanin looked at him for a moment, his expression impenetrable. Then he rose without a word, to stalk away not looking back at Corrain.

  Corrain rubbed his hands over his face and wondered how soon he and his men could be on the road back to Halferan where so many fresh challenges awaited him.

  And there was no magic for him to call on, to lessen that distance or lighten those burdens.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Wizards’ Physic Garden, Hadrumal

  3rd of For-Autumn

  ‘GOOD MORNING, JILSETH.’

  ‘Archmage!’ She stiffened, sitting upright on the weathered bench as she opened her eyes.

  He took a seat beside her and contemplated the neatly tended beds of herbs and other potent plants. Some had already been harvested, others were waiting out the season. A few wouldn’t be touched until For-Winter brought the first possibility of frosts to the island along with swathing mists which owed nothing to the concealing sorcery that habitually hid the wizards’ sanctuary.

  The whole garden was surrounded by the high walls supporting the densely fruiting canes and the artfully shaped trees whose boughs were laden with pears, apples and quinces. Those would supply syrups to sweetly disguise the apothecaries’ harsh nostrums.

  ‘Do you find a cure for what ails you here?’

  Jilseth didn’t imagine that Planir thought that she hoped for some pill or potion to miraculously restore her magic.

  ‘To some degree.’

  What she had particularly come in search of was peace and quiet and a complete absence of curious eyes. Whenever she went from her rooms in the Terrene Hall to one of the city’s libraries, she felt the weight of so many gazes; some sympathetic, some barely concealing their callous amusement, all avid to know if her affinity showed any signs of returning.

  Even when she closed her door on them all, to sit alone at her workbench littered with tools and spirit lamps, with cracked or molten specimens of rock and ore, she was painfully aware of the wizards living in the accommodations beside her own and up on the floors above.

  Calm and self-control was essential to the proper exploration of magic. Jilseth had been told that by every mage who had ever taught her. Any excess of emotion threatened precisely the untamed and damaging eruptions of affinity that saw the mainland mageborn so hastily sent to Hadrumal.

  That was all very well but what lay on the reverse face of that particular rune bone?

  ‘Archmage,’ she said abruptly. ‘You told me to be wary of chaotic magic as my affinity returns. But what if I am too wary? What if my apprehension is stifling my mageborn instincts?’

  She wouldn’t have imagined such a thing was possible when she had been an apprentice but that was before she had encountered that Mountain Man Sorgrad. His magebirth had gone unsuspected by the disapproving sheltya, the Aetheric adepts and lawgivers of the uplands, because the scoundrel had been able to keep his affinity in check through sheer unadulterated stubbornness.

  Planir nodded. ‘That is, unfortunately, possible.’ He shifted on the bench, resting one elbow on the carved back as he looked at her. ‘Perhaps a complete change of scene might help take your mind off your troubles. I want to visit the Widow Halferan.’

  ‘Archmage?’ That certainly startled Jilseth out of her preoccupations. And explained why Planir was dressed as soberly, in long-sleeved black tunic and breeches, as some Ensaimin merchant’s head clerk. A very prosperous merchant’s clerk.

  He looked easterly, as though he could see through the artisans’ houses surrounding this garden, all the way down the road leading to the harbour and across the seas beyond. ‘I suspect it would be considered more seemly if you accompanied me.’

  ‘But Archmage—’ Jilseth began, somewhat hesitant.

  She had heard the increasing whispers of friction among the Council of Wizards’ higher echelons, for all that she was currently spurning Hadrumal’s wine shops and cook houses in favour of scouring musty archives for any mention of past mages who’d suffered something of her calamity. Tornauld, Merenel and Nolyen were proving their worth as her friends as well as fellow seekers into the intricacies of quintessential magic, bringing her food and drink spiced with the distractions of the latest gossip.

  Surely the Archmage himself should be leading the search for some way to break through this impertinent Mandarkin’s veiling. So the wine shop sages said to each other. How was sustaining such a spell possible for a wizard from such an obscure and impoverished tradition? How dared the Soluran Orders hold themselves so infuriatingly aloof? What was the Archmage doing to answer these questions?

  Planir’s face hardened as he smiled. ‘I am at no one’s beck and call, not even the Flood Mistress or the Hearth Master. Shall we go?’

  ‘Yes, Archmage.’ Jilseth was suddenly filled with longing for some time spent where no one could find her, not even those with the very best of intentions.

  Planir’s smile softened as he took her hand and the garden disappeared in a soft white haze. When the mist cleared a moment later, Jilseth found herself standing in front of a sprawling, ornate building, most notable for the severely Rational wing added at a sharp angle to the end, its harsh orange brick barely softened by winter weathering.

  ‘Taw Ricks hunting lodge.’ Planir grinned.

  Jilseth nodded, unable to speak. Their translocation had been so smooth and swift, woven of air and fire in a fashion any Cloud Master would envy. Yet again, this evidence of the Archmage’s mastery both astonished and oppressed her. Would she ever regain command over so much as her own inborn affinity for the earth?

  ‘Oh! My lady! That’s to say, Madam Jilseth!’

  ‘Good morning to you, Doratine.’ Jilseth startled out of her preoccupation at being so abruptly addressed by the Widow Halferan’s cook, hurrying out of what must be the door to the servants’ hall.

  ‘I am Planir of Hadrumal.’ The Archmage offered a courteous nod.

  ‘Saedrin save us.’ The woman twisted her bony fingers around each other. ‘Is there news? From Ferl?’ Then she clapped a hand to her mouth, horrified. ‘But that’s not for me to ask. My lady Zurenne—’

  ‘Is she receiving guests?’ Planir began walking along the dusty path where hobnailed boots had worn away the grass separating the lodge from the carriage way that cut across the front of the building before curling around to the stable yards. ‘Perhaps you could ask? We can wait.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As the cook hurried away through the floridly carved porch, Jilseth was reminded how awestruck the mundane populace were by magic. Though of course Doratine had seen the wizardry that saved Halferan and few on the mainland would ever have seen the like of that. Then again, Jilseth mused, those magics which she had wielded had been simple enough spells compared to the magecraft within Planir’s reach. Did these people have any idea of wizardry’s true scope?

  As she concluded that, no, they really didn’t, Zurenne’s personal maid appeared.

  ‘Raselle.’ Jilseth smiled at the girl.

  ‘Madam mage. Archmage.’ Raselle looked wide-eyed at Planir.

  Jilseth noted the maid was clenching her jaw tight shut, presumably to keep herself from asking if there was any news from Ferl. Hadn’t Planir realised that’s what everyone would ask, as soon as they appeared here?
<
br />   She took the opportunity to study the Archmage’s expression as they followed Raselle through the lodge’s entrance hall, so cluttered with boxes and bundles that the aisles crossing it from front to back and from side to side were barely wide enough for two people to pass each other. Planir’s face gave nothing away.

  The maid opened one of the two doors side by side in the hall’s rear wall and ushered them into a sitting room not only crowded with original furnishings and salvaged chattels but also boasting a startling selection of frivolous new accoutrements.

  Planir inclined his head courteously to the slightly-built, dark-haired woman standing by the fireplace. ‘Lady Zurenne.’

  Jilseth had noted the maidservant’s apron and cap were recently hemmed from a bolt of new linen. Lady Zurenne was wearing a fine silk lavender gown trimmed with fresh lace. The widowed noblewoman had been quick enough to spend the Archmage’s coin, whatever grudges she might hold against Hadrumal. Grudges she had good reason to bear, Jilseth reminded herself.

  ‘Archmage.’ The Halferan noblewoman wasn’t precisely unwelcoming but she couldn’t hide her surprise swiftly followed by apprehension. ‘Madam Jilseth.’

  ‘I was wondering,’ Planir stepped forward before she could continue, ‘have you had any news from the parliament?’

  ‘From Ferl?’ Zurenne stared at him. ‘You haven’t come to tell me...?’

  Her words trailed off in confusion.

  ‘We have no business with Caladhria’s parliament.’ Now it was Planir’s turn to look mildly puzzled.

  Zurenne was provoked into an uncharacteristically sharp retort. ‘Then why are you here?’

  Planir looked around the room before answering. ‘Lady Ilysh tells me that you’ll be dedicating a shrine today.’

  ‘Lysha?’ Lady Zurenne’s hand went to the silver rune sigil on the black ribbon around her neck.

  Had she not realised, Jilseth wondered, that the girl would use the pendant which she too had been given, for her own purposes? In the next breath she wondered what else the child had told Planir.