Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis)

by McKenna Juliet E.

  ‘Since that option’s not open to us, shall we consider our other choices?’ Planir invited tartly.

  This time Jilseth saw that Nolyen could make more sense of those cryptic allusions.

  ‘The Archipelagans might cut through this knot.’ Though Velindre didn’t sound overly hopeful. ‘If they can kill this Mandarkin before the skies turn against them.’ She sighed. ‘Meantime all the Aldabreshi merchants here are refusing to do business with anyone whom they know to have dealings with wizardry. I have had a double handful of sea-captains send me sincere notes of regret, dispensing with my services. They would rather risk some unexpected squall than the certainty of Archipelagan hostility.’

  ‘How long do we suppose this enmity towards us will persist?’ Mellitha wondered.

  ‘Once the Mandarkin Anskal is dead?’ Velindre pursed her mouth. ‘With good portents and a following wind, such fears should fade over a couple of winters.’

  Planir raised a hand. ‘Let’s look back before we look forward. That might help us see our path more clearly. We know that the Aldabreshi here slaughtered the escaping corsairs. Had those ships made landfall anywhere between the Nahik domain and here? What word might have come from the Archipelago to prompt such merciless bloodletting?’

  ‘We can ask.’ Velindre shared a glance with Mellitha. ‘Discreetly.’

  ‘We will have to pass our requests from hand to hand and all round the city to disguise their origin.’ The plump magewoman grimaced. ‘Not a swift business.’

  Jilseth studied the skirt of her mother-of-pearl gown. No trace remained of the mist of blood which had stained it on the dockside, thanks to those trifling cantrips that the rawest apprentices learned in Hadrumal.

  If only she hadn’t been so keen to relieve Mellitha’s laundresses of the challenge of cleaning the costly cloth. There were always hints of a man’s travels in his blood.

  She drained her glass of lemon metheglin and briefly wished it was the darker kind, brewed as much for intoxication as refreshment. A little courage born of liquor wouldn’t go amiss.

  ‘I might be able to learn something more useful more quickly.’

  ‘How?’ Velindre demanded.

  ‘If we could recover some remnant of a corsair who died on the docks—’ Jilseth couldn’t restrain a shiver at the memory of that mayhem.

  ‘—we can see what necromancy tells us,’ Planir approved.

  Velindre looked more doubtful. ‘The docks have been scoured clean with salt and boiling water. A slave was accidentally scalded to death. The taverns and tisane houses are full of it.’

  ‘The stones may have been cleansed but I saw more than one body fall off the dockside,’ Mellitha observed.

  ‘How—?’ Before Nolyen could ask his question, the salon door opened a third time.

  The lackey advanced with a silver tray bearing a twice sealed reed-paper letter.

  ‘Thank you.’ Mellitha snapped the wax discs, unfolding the letter to read swiftly as the servant waited for her instructions.

  ‘I’m summoned to the Magistracy,’ she said briefly as she rose from the day bed, ‘in terms that make it unwise to delay.

  Velindre was shocked. ‘They can’t turn on you.’

  ‘Not if they want the taxes to keep their watchmen paid,’ Mellitha agreed as she smoothed her viridian gown over her hips. ‘But I’d rather not give them pause for thought when they award next year’s contracts.’

  Velindre stood up too. ‘I will set my own enquiries in hand.’

  The Archmage looked at Jilseth and Nolyen. ‘I take it you two can be suitably discreet retrieving some carrion from the docks? I will go on to Suthyfer.’

  Mellitha addressed her servant. ‘Tell Tanilo to take Madam Jilseth and Master Nolyen to the Pewter Rose fountain and then come back here to take me to the Magistracy. Naturally I will attend them today but they need not think that I’m entirely at their beck and call.’

  As the salon door closed behind the lackey, she sketched directions in the air for Jilseth and Nolyen. ‘Tanilo had better not take you all the way. If someone recognises him or my carriage, that’ll be sufficient to associate you with wizardry even if no one knows who you are. Follow the Whitesmith’s Lane towards the sea from the fountain square. Head westerly from the Cup of Secrets tavern and the main thrust of the road will bring you to the eastern breakwater of the Archipelago dock.’

  ‘I understand.’ Jilseth studied the glowing lines.

  ‘Watch your step and use as little magic as possible,’ Velindre advised. ‘The slightest suspicion of magelight could draw unwelcome attention and not only from the Aldabreshi.’ She looked at Planir and Mellitha. ‘Shall we all meet here at sunset to see what we’ve learned?’

  As everyone nodded she headed for the door without another word.

  ‘Till later then.’ Mellitha followed her.

  Planir looked at Nolyen and Jilseth. ‘Is there any further guidance you need from me?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Nolyen sprang up.

  Jilseth set her plate and glass down. ‘Archmage.’ She settled for a brief nod of farewell and followed Nolyen out into the hallway.

  The door closed softly behind them. Naturally. Planir had no need of lackeys.

  ‘Leave that,’ she advised as Nolyen reached for his cloak hung on a branch of the carved ebony tree by the white stairs. ‘Relshazri rarely wear them.’

  Beyond that, his sober garb shouldn’t draw curious eyes. A man’s breeches and doublet only differed in the detail of buttons, collar and cuffs from Tormalin’s ocean coast to Selerima in western Ensaimin. Every such variation could be seen on Relshaz’s streets and thanks to Mellitha’s seamstress, her own dress was of impeccably local cut.

  She opened the outer door to see if Tanilo and the carriage were approaching.

  ‘He can work that bitumen scrying alone now.’ Nolyen was looking back towards the salon.

  Jilseth recognised her friend’s expression all too readily; admiration overlaid with urgent desire to emulate Planir’s mastery, undercut by a hint of fear that his own affinity, his understanding, or both would prove unequal to the challenge.

  ‘He is the Archmage,’ she reminded Nolyen.

  All the same, she wondered what Flood Mistress Troanna or Hearth Master Kalion made of Planir perfecting that spell for his own personal use. If they even knew.

  Jilseth had always known that Planir kept a great many secrets closely guarded. That was an obligation of his office. But since she had arrived in Relshaz, she had come to suspect the Archmage did a great many things which Hadrumal’s Council learned little or nothing about.

  Did the Element Masters and Mistress know that Planir was here in Relshaz? That he intended going to Suthyfer?

  Well, it seemed the Archmage had taken Nol into his confidence on some things. As Mellitha’s coach horse appeared, Jilseth was glad to have this chance to talk to him.

  She had barely pulled the carriage door closed before rounding on him. ‘What does the Archmage hope to learn in Suthyfer?’

  Nolyen hesitated, gathering his thoughts rather than trying to evade an answer. ‘You know that scholars have found aetheric lore in the oldest shrine annals?’

  ‘Of course,’ Jilseth said impatiently as the courtyard gates opened to let the carriage leave.

  Master Kerrit had been tediously eager to relate his researches among the archives tucked in the cubby holes behind Relshaz’s great temple’s altars.

  ‘Some suspect there’s more lore woven into chimney corner tales and tavern songs,’ Nolyen explained, ‘especially about the Eldritch Kin.’

  ‘Truly?’ That seemed a long step beyond sound reasoning to Jilseth.

  Some shrines had endured through the generations since the Old Tormalin Empire had collapsed. It would be no surprise to find that devout priests and priestesses had hoarded their predecessors’ wisdom.

  The Eldritch Kin were wholly wrought from superstition. They supposedly lived in the shadows, so hard to see
with their blue-grey skin, unmistakable with eyes that were pits of darkness. Some stories claimed them as Poldrion’s envoys, warning those about to die, especially those with good cause to fear the wrath of his demons. Shiver for no reason? Eldritch Kin had stepped on your shadow, so mainland-born mages would joke.

  She recalled an idle evening when Merenel and Tornauld had shared such myths with her and Nolyen, along with several bottles of wine. Some fables seemed to hold true though, however many hundreds of storytellers had passed them on across the thousand leagues that separated the furthest northwest corner of Ensaimin and the remotest tip of southern Tormalin.

  Those stories told of a twilight realm between this life and the Otherworld. Of Eldritch Kin crossing from one to the other through shadows at dawn and dusk or under the fleeting arch of a rainbow. Some spoke of the Kin sharing arcane wisdom with those lucky enough to encounter them. More warned of their tricks and caprice, luring the greedy and gullible into their domain whence few would ever escape. Mainland mothers, Jilseth had concluded, kept such tales current to curb any impulse to stray among perilously adventurous children.

  ‘The Archmage seeks such nursery tales in Suthyfer?’ She asked, incredulous. ‘Not this ring that Mellitha mentioned? And what do you know about that?’ she asked pointedly.

  Surely knowing more about these magically enhanced treasures was more likely to offer some insight into why Anskal was seeking them.

  But Hadrumal’s mages had turned their backs on instilling magic into artefacts for the past handful of generations. It had long been felt that offering the most paltry of wizardry’s boons to the mundane born indicated very poor judgement in a mage. Jilseth recalled one of her early teachers rebuking a fellow apprentice asking for the truth of spell-casting rings in tavern tales. Such unworthy artefacts degraded every mystery of wizardry, so the Terrene Hall’s former Mistress had said.

  Nolyen leaned closer, lowering his voice though they were alone in the rattling carriage. ‘Did you ever hear the full story of Larissa’s death? Planir’s lover a handful of years ago?’

  ‘Not really,’ Jilseth said slowly.

  There had been plenty of speculation around Hadrumal’s wine shops. Was Planir truly fulfilling all the obligations of his office when he was so clearly infatuated with this new pupil? Some openly and enviously wondered how soon Larissa might advance to a Council seat by way of the Archmage’s bed.

  When news spread that Larissa had died, those same wine shop sages wondered how badly the Archmage would be unmanned by what must surely be devastating grief? Jilseth had been far more interested in that debate than in piecing together Larissa’s fate from the swirling fragments of gossip.

  She had been relieved to see nothing to support such conjecture, any more than she’d ever seen reason to think that Planir would dishonour his office by handing a mage some unearned privilege, however dear they might be to him personally.

  ‘Planir gave Larissa the ring which Mellitha was talking about. It had once belonged to Otrick and to Azazir before him, though I don’t know who first ensorcelled it,’ Nolyen whispered, wide-eyed.

  Jilseth looked at him with equal astonishment. Cloud Master or not, if half the tales told were true, Otrick had been one of Hadrumal’s most unruly mages. Azazir had been far, far worse; always among the previous generation’s wizards cited when conversation turned to those mages of legend driven to arrogance, madness and destruction by the intoxicating power afforded by their affinity.

  Jilseth had been unpleasantly surprised to hear such tales, ancient and more recent, so commonly told in the mainland taverns, when she had been searching for Minelas last year.

  ‘I’m sure the Archmage had good reason to give her such a ring,’ she ventured.

  Good reason beyond adorning his sweetheart with some token? Jilseth hadn’t entirely believed that Planir and Larissa had been lovers; the woman had a dual affinity after all and any such wizard invariably became the Archmage’s personal pupil. Discovering that Planir kept her funeral urn in his study had changed Jilseth’s mind about their intimacy but she still had no reason to doubt Planir’s integrity. Not so far, any way.

  To her relief, Nolyen nodded. ‘Very good reason. Larissa and other mages besides, along with other folk from Tormalin, Ensaimin and elsewhere between, were risking their lives in Hadrumal’s service. Larissa wasn’t the only one who died.’ He looked faintly sickened and not by the swaying motion of the carriage through Relshaz’s streets.

  ‘Go on,’ Jilseth prompted with some apprehension.

  ‘There are Aetheric adepts of notable skills living in a swathe of islands in the northern ocean,’ Nolyen explained. ‘Akin to the Mountain Men and their sheltya. A handful or so years ago, they had ambitions to seize the Suthyfer islands and those new lands beyond the ocean besides.’

  ‘The lands which the Tormalin Emperor had claimed?’

  Tadriol the Provident had initially claimed the unexplored expanses, Jilseth recalled, on the grounds of some ill-fated Tormalin nobleman’s expedition lost in the first years of the Chaos. Planir had intervened and invited the Emperor to think again, or so the story around Hadrumal went.

  Whatever the truth of that, those unbounded lands were now open to anyone willing to risk the perilous ocean crossing. The vital stepping stones on that route, the islands of Suthyfer had become a self-governing fiefdom rapidly growing into a trading centre with ambitions to rival Ensaimin’s city states.

  Nolyen was nodding. ‘Planir, Otrick and the Hearth Master led the first mages to defend the settlers—’

  ‘Kalion?’ Jilseth struggled to believe that. The Hearth Master was known to leave Hadrumal to be wined and dined by noblemen from Caladhria to Toremal but to suffer the indignities and discomforts of a settlement being hacked out of untamed wilderness?

  But Nolyen was nodding. ‘There were several clashes between those northern adepts and the other mages in Planir’s confidence. Why else do you think he was so ready to allow Shivvalan and Usara to set up their new sanctuary for wizardry in Suthyfer?’

  Jilseth frowned. ‘But that was after Larissa had died. And what has any of this to do with an ensorcelled ring?’

  Nolyen raised a placating hand. ‘You know there are Aetheric adepts in Suthyfer, working with Usara and Shivvalan? Drawn from those who’ve studied medicine and other lore in Tormalin’s oldest shrines as well as scholars and mentors from the universities of Vanam and Col? It seems that they found some way to use that ensorcelled ring to help shield the mageborn from aetheric attack by these northern adepts.’

  ‘The adepts used the ring? But those who use Artifice cannot be mageborn any more than a wizard can learn these aetheric enchantments of theirs.’

  Now Nolyen was shaking his head. ‘You do not have to be mageborn to benefit from inherent magic instilled into an object.’

  Jilseth leaned back against the carriage’s velvet upholstery to consider this.

  What was Planir thinking? If Artifice had somehow shielded those mageborn from aetheric attack, how might that rune land reversed?

  She frowned. ‘Is he hoping to find some way of using these artefacts which this Anskal is hoarding to render him vulnerable to an adept’s assault, even when he’s not actively engaged in magecraft?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Nolyen admitted.

  As the carriage rumbled on through Relshaz, Jilseth had to curb her envy of Nolyen, so much deeper in the Archmage’s confidence than she was.

  Deep enough to know something more of Velindre’s excursions into the Archipelago? A handful of years ago, Hadrumal’s gossip-mongers had peddled tales of dragons’ devastating magic scouring Aldabreshin islands down to the bedrock before the creatures had apparently departed as abruptly as they’d appeared.

  Otrick had long been rumoured to have an interest in dragons while Azazir had been widely condemned, according to legend, for actually summoning up such a beast in hopes of bending its innate magic to his wizardly will. It was generally agreed that
the dragon had eaten him instead, unanimously judged to be a fitting and well-deserved fate.

  ‘What did Velindre mean about crafting a warding against dragons across the Archipelago?’

  ‘I’ve barely heard half that tale.’

  That clearly frustrated Nolyen. Jilseth tried not to let it comfort her.

  ‘Velindre definitely helped drive the beasts out of the islands,’ Nolyen asserted. ‘She learned that a dragon won’t linger where one of its own kind has been killed. So she and some others in the Archmage’s confidence spread soil stained with dragon’s blood throughout the Archipelago on the winds and the tides.’

  ‘So there really is no chance of a dragon biting this Mandarkin’s head off.’ Jilseth wondered if Planir would truly have resorted to such measures. Surely he was powerful enough to both summon up a beast and control it. But if that option was no longer open to them, there was no point regretting a cracked egg.

  Still, it was reassuring to know that Hadrumal’s mages had proved they could best the wildest and most devastating untamed magic bred into a dragon’s very bones. The Archmage and the Council should surely defeat a single Mandarkin wizard.

  The carriage trundled onwards. The two of them sat in silence.

  Looking sideways under cover of her eyelashes, Jilseth watched Nolyen staring blindly out of the window. As he fiddled with the peridot studs at his shirt cuffs, she guessed he was contemplating whatever the Archmage truly expected of him in Suthyfer. Whatever he hadn’t told her.

  Jilseth could take comfort from knowing precisely what was expected of her and her necromancy. Though she didn’t know how far they had to go to this fountain where the carriage would leave them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Nadrua Town, Pastamar Province, in the Kingdom of Solura

  9th of Grelemar (Soluran calendar)

  ‘HAVE YOU SEEN him? His name is Kusint. He’s of Forest blood, though not of the Folk, as I think the saying goes.’

  Corrain hadn’t realised until he’d started this quest that he had no idea of Kusint’s family name. Nor if the Forest Folk used such courtesies.