Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis)

by McKenna Juliet E.

  Crabs had nibbled at the fingertips. As the hand came closer, a fish tugged at a hanging fingernail before vanishing into the murk with its prize. Close to the choppy surface, the hand tumbled over to expose the clean cut through the wrist. Jilseth could see the remaining small bones of the wrist glowing golden amid the dull sea-sodden flesh.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Nolyen rasped, alarmed.

  ‘Sorry.’ Jilseth hastily thrust away both the earth magic and her necromancy. Too hard. The hand sank like a stone. Only Nolyen’s command of the water caught it.

  ‘Bring it right to the surface.’ But as Jilseth spoke, she realised something was wrong. Granted air had always been the element most unreceptive to her magecraft. Now it was more elusive than ever. She struggled to weave a simple invisibility, never mind interleave the spell with a shield to contain the rank smell of the carrion.

  Nolyen subjected her to a searching stare. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘I am.’ Jilseth thrust away all doubts.

  Her shielding spell meshed with the invisibility and the dead hand rose, fish-belly pale. Lifting it free of the water, she saw Nolyen instantly smooth away the ripples where it had breached the surface. Falling drops of water dissolved into mist blown away on the breeze.

  The hand weighed shockingly heavy on her affinity. All her earthly mage senses longed to explore the dead flesh and bone, to focus on the necromancy she intended.

  No, she couldn’t allow that. Jilseth drew on all her years of perfecting her wizard skills to bring the pathetic remnant scudding across the water towards them. She rose slowly to her feet, eyes fixed on the unseen hand.

  Nolyen gripped her forearm with insistent fingers. ‘Don’t move.’

  She dared not speak, still less look to see what had alarmed him until the murdered corsair’s hand reached the stones where they stood.

  Jilseth set it on the dock, swathed in magic. Now she could follow Nolyen’s gaze. She saw what prompted such taut unease as he stood beside her.

  Armed men had appeared, emerging from the broad road arriving at the waterfront half way between the east and western breakwaters. The sentries outside the substantial storehouses flanking the highway were ready, hands quick to their sword hilts. They stepped back, acknowledging these arrivals with measured courtesy.

  ‘More slaves.’ Jilseth saw that the marching Aldabreshin swordsmen flanked a double line of captives.

  Once again, these men looked uncommonly cheerful for those condemned to the living death among the southern barbarians. By contrast, their captors looked like men facing the gallows. But men who would kick and spit and struggle up to the instant the noose tightened around their necks.

  ‘Mellitha will want to know what ships these men are taken to.’ Jilseth sank down to sit on the bollard again.

  Cupping her hands over her face, as though once again overcome, she watched the column heading westwards around the harbour. They halted where two swift galleys flanked a predatory trireme. All three vessels flew the same pennant at their mastheads. Jilseth committed the angular symbol to memory.

  As soon as the last stragglers of the slave column were being urged aboard, Nolyen’s hand beneath her elbow forced Jilseth to her feet. ‘Come on.’

  She had no quarrel with his urgency. ‘That way.’

  Nolyen enchanted a swirl of air to carry the dead corsair’s salvaged hand ahead of them as he took the closest route off the dockside. Jilseth looked steadily at it, making quite certain that no charnel stink escaped her tightly woven spell.

  Nolyen ignored the yards on either side of the alley heading back towards the heart of the city. Longer, lower buildings framed these fenced enclosures. Some of these warehouses had narrow doors guarded by sharp-eyed Relshazri and windows criss-crossed with bars.

  Elsewhere open-fronted barns sheltered tethered mules awaiting harness. From the grave faces of the men standing disconsolate around stacked packsaddles, the beasts’ respite from burdens was likely to continue.

  One of the city’s narrow canals arrived in a blunt-ended basin and Jilseth saw the watermen were similarly idle. They should be poling their flat-bottomed boats away from these docks loaded with Aldabreshin luxuries destined for the riverside wharves and the merchants trading onwards up the Rel to Caladhria, Lescar and Ensaimin.

  ‘In here.’ Nolyen dragged her into a lean-to hovel piled high with mouldy fodder. ‘Take command of all the spells.’

  Before she could object, his magic swept the dead man’s fingers into her cringing grasp. The touch of a wizardly mentor’s magecraft guiding an apprentice might be likened to a gentle hand as a child shaped letters with pencil and slate. This was akin to a slap in the face.

  Jilseth gasped but before she could protest, Nolyen’s magic wrapped her in smothering light. She landed with a thud that shook her from ankles to shoulders and sent her staggering across Mellitha’s lawn.

  Far too much of Nolyen’s innate water affinity had mingled with the air and fire underpinning the translocation spell. Jilseth’s lungs felt full of Hadrumal’s thickest winter fog. As a coughing fit wracked her, it was scant consolation to see Nol struggling as desperately for breath.

  Wiping tears from her eyes, Jilseth was relieved to see the dead corsair’s hand lying at the edge of the lawn. However her magic veiling the noisome thing had unravelled in the shock inflicted by Nolyen’s spell. The first blue backed flies were already converging from all directions. One more reason to be thankful for the high walls shielding Mellitha’s elegant house from curious eyes.

  Blinking Jilseth saw one of the household lackeys waiting by the open door. He looked unperturbed, either by their sudden appearance or their ghastly trophy.

  Drawing a cautious breath so as not to start coughing again, she walked towards him. ‘Could you find a lidded dish, to keep that from getting flyblown?’

  She knew from gruesome experience that a single maggot’s wriggling presence wreaked havoc with necromancy. She really did not want to have to go over the stinking thing with a darning needle heated in a candle flame before she could work her spells.

  ‘Of course, madam mage.’

  Jilseth wondered what the handsome lad had seen in Mellitha’s service. What would it take to startle these servants?

  Any impulse to smile died on her lips as a vivid sweep of sapphire magic propelled the courtyard gates open. Mellitha’s carriage bowled through, the horse wide-eyed and lathered with sweat. Tanilo hauled the beast to a halt as mercilessly as he had driven him on. The coachman’s fawn cotton jerkin was splashed with crimson blood.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Nolyen demanded hoarsely.

  No one answered.

  Tanilo jumped down nimbly enough to indicate that the blood wasn’t his own.

  Velindre threw the carriage door open with another gust of sapphire magic. She stepped out backwards, her feet guided safely to the ground by the same azure radiance. All her attention was on drawing a sheet of woven air out of the coach. The spell supported an unconscious man.

  Mellitha followed, her gaze never wavering from the vivid green wizardry wrapped close around their charge. Both her silk dress and Velindre’s long cotton tunic and flowing skirt in the Archipelagan style were as gruesomely bloodstained as Tanilo’s jerkin.

  ‘Master Kerrit?’ Jilseth could hardly believe it.

  She had left the stout mage safely on his own doorstep; an amiable man of middling years and middling height with the permanent pallor and stooped shoulders of a lifelong library denizen.

  Now she could barely recognise him. Kerrit had been beaten bloodily insensible. His nose must surely be broken and bruises were swelling his jaw and cheeks. Blood oozing from a long gash in his thinning hair was rendered eerily discoloured by Mellitha’s emerald magic.

  Her wizardry was swaddling him from head to toe to make sure that no broken bones did further unseen damage. A dirty footprint was ground deep into the midriff of his linen shirt, his maroon doublet ripped open. One foot lay limp
at an excruciating angle, stripped bare of its soft house shoe. Kerrit’s other stocking had been torn by the buckle flapping loose at his breeches’ knee.

  ‘Sheyvie, fetch Master Resnada,’ Mellitha said calmly.

  As the lackey by the house ran for the gate, two more servants opened the doors to the hallway and to the salon beyond. By the time Velindre had coaxed her magical litter inside, a maidservant had spread a sturdy cotton sheet over the silken daybed.

  ‘He needs more than an apothecary.’ As her sapphire magic faded, Velindre looked at Mellitha. ‘He has long held that aetheric magic offers the best healing.’

  ‘Once we know how badly he’s hurt.’ The older woman was intent on her green wizardry shrouding the senseless wizard. ‘Then we can send word to his friends at the Temple.’

  Jilseth found her voice half a breath ahead of Nolyen.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Who did this?’

  ‘Some Relshazri of islander blood have decided that all wizards must be driven out of the city,’ Velindre explained icily.

  ‘They can explain themselves to whatever warlord buys them for household slaves,’ Mellitha observed with measured calm. ‘Once the Magistracy has them arrested, they’ll be sold at the next forfeiture auction.’

  Velindre nodded with cold satisfaction. ‘Once Kerrit’s been tended, I will scry out their trail.’

  ‘The Archipelagans are buying slaves by the boat load,’ Nolyen remembered. ‘We saw them being loaded aboard at the harbour.’

  ‘Not only the ones we saw by the pewter fountain court.’ Jilseth looked at Mellitha.

  ‘Tanilo mentioned those, destined for Khusro Rina’s wives.’ The magewoman still didn’t blink, all her attention on Master Kerrit.

  ‘The galleys and trireme carrying them off bore this pennant.’ Jilseth drew the sweeping strokes of the devices in darkly ochre magelight.

  ‘Miris Esul,’ Velindre said with satisfaction. ‘What do we suppose the Miris warlord plans to do with them?’ She absently scoured the blood stains from her clothing with a sweep of pale magelight.

  ‘We need to know what’s happened in the Archipelago to stir the local islanders into such a frenzy,’ Mellitha said tartly. ‘Jilseth, if you would be so kind as to address yourself to your necromancy?’

  ‘Of course.’ Though horror hollowed Jilseth’s stomach as she realised she had no notion what had happened to the dead corsair’s hand. The lackey she’d asked to pick it up had been sent for the apothecary.

  ‘You’ll need this.’ Hoarse, Nolyen offered her the gruesome remnant, shrouded in turquoise magelight and hovering a finger width above his open hand.

  ‘Thank you.’ Relieved as she was, Jilseth looked at the carrion with some trepidation. This would be a gruelling test of her erratic magic.

  ‘Take that to Hadrumal.’ Velindre’s tone brooked no argument. ‘The Archmage himself must see whatever that man’s fate has to tell us.’

  ‘Quite,’ Mellitha agreed. ‘And tell Planir about this recent slave trading into the Miris domain and Khusro.’

  ‘And about this attack on Kerrit,’ Velindre added.

  ‘But Planir has gone to Suthyfer,’ Nolyen reminded them.

  ‘Then bespeak him and call him back,’ Velindre ordered curtly. ‘Go on. We have our hands full here.’

  Both the magewomen turned their attention to Master Kerrit’s appalling injuries.

  Nolyen offered his hand to Jilseth. She braced herself and focused on carrying the dead man’s hand safely through the translocation spell.

  As white magelight closed around her, she realised too late that they had left the last of the crumbled bitumen in Mellitha’s salon. They must remember to retrieve that. Whatever this necromancy might show them of past events in the Archipelago, they still needed to keep a close watch on whatever the Mandarkin was doing.

  The sooner the renegade wizard was dealt with, the sooner that harmless scholarly mages like poor battered Master Kerrit could walk Relshaz’s streets in safety again.

  And she must remember to ask Nolyen and Merenel to help her scry for Captain Corrain. With Tornauld keeping watch over Halferan Manor, Jilseth was ready to invite Canfor to make up their nexus if that’s what it took. She only hoped that the Caladhrian had persuaded the Solurans to share some scrap of their knowledge of ensorcelled artefacts.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Pastamar Town in the Kingdom of Solura

  12th of Grelemar (Soluran calendar)

  CORRAIN STIFFENED AS the tavern door opened only to slump on his stool a moment later.

  The newcomer was merely another Soluran shaking his cloak to shed drops of the evening rain. The closest serving maid glanced down at his boots. Satisfied that the man had cleaned his hobnailed soles on the iron scraper, she gave him the nod to join his friends sharing dishes of stewed beef and freshly baked bread smeared with stewed apple at a corner table.

  Corrain had long since eaten his fill of such dinner. ‘How much longer are we going to have to wait?’

  His elbows resting on their table, Kusint rolled a trio of rune sticks, far longer and slimmer than the bones which Corrain was accustomed to play with at home. ‘Four days until the Greater Full sees the next docket posted. After that it’ll depend how long the noble lord takes to deal with the pleas above ours.’

  ‘But we don’t need to see Lord Pastiss,’ Corrain growled. ‘We only want to talk to his wizard. You said we’d only need the noble lord’s nod of permission.’

  He couldn’t help his exasperation. He had allowed himself to hope that they could somehow circumvent this rigmarole and meet with this unknown mage when they arrived here.

  When Ysant had used her Artifice to set her sister writing out their petition, she had brought back word that very same evening. When the sister had taken their letter to the castle gate, her mention of the wizards of Fornet had seen the missive taken straight to Lord Pastiss’s castellan. Then, better yet, Ysant’s sister had received a message within the Soluran hour, instructing Corrain and Kusint to present themselves at the castle’s gate as soon as possible and to be ready to be called for an audience.

  So they had ridden here so brutally hard that their exhausted horses would be no use to them or anyone else before the turn of the season. They had presented themselves at the castle gate at dawn and been told to wait in this tavern until they were sent for. They were still waiting.

  Kusint gestured at the three runes now landing upright. ‘See? The Calm for contemplation and the Broom for the need to take care sit alongside the Fire for a trial. Meet this test and all will be well, you’ll see.’

  Corrain managed to resist the temptation to start snapping Kusint’s rune sticks in half. He had no more time for this fortune telling which the lad had apparently learned from Ysant than he did for prayers to the gods and goddesses who’d so callously abandoned him and Hosh.

  ‘How many people could be waiting to see this wizard?’ he demanded

  ‘Not nearly as many as will be wanting to beg some indulgence from Lord Pastiss.’ Kusint cast another trio of runes and smiled at the symbols carved deep into the age-darkened wood. ‘The Mountain for endurance, the Lightning for a fresh start and the Wellspring for a desire fulfilled.’

  This time Corrain had to clench his fists unseen below the edge of the table. ‘Then why—?’

  ‘We haven’t only sought an audience with the resident wizard.’ Kusint gathered his rune sticks together. ‘We have asked to lay a request from the Archmage of Hadrumal before the Elders of Fornet. You may be certain that those mages will be finding out all they can about both of us and of events beyond the Great Forest before we are summoned.’

  ‘Do you supposed Orul will be there?’ Corrain asked more soberly. ‘Or the others?’

  Kusint studied the smooth wooden stick showing the Sun, the Greater Moon and the Lesser on its three sides.

  ‘If they are,’ he said frankly, ‘that rune definitely shows one positive face and one
reversed by way of a warning. We won’t have to waste time relating the details of our previous encounter in the Forest. But we can’t expect to trade on any scrap of goodwill once that story has been told.’

  His words were a clear rebuke and Corrain couldn’t blame him.

  If Orul the greybeard had seemed a fair-minded and mild-tempered man, Selista the woman had been hostile from the outset. Espilan, the youngest of the three Soluran wizards in Castle Pastamar’s service, would surely be nursing the sorest grudge. Corrain had intervened when the Soluran wizard had been about to capture Anskal and doubtless return to accolade and reward. Corrain had cost him all that.

  A new fear hollowed Corrain’s stomach. ‘What if they have used their magic to ask Planir about us?’

  ‘I suppose they might have done.’ Kusint sat up straighter, lashing his rune sticks together with a leather thong. ‘How better to learn if we are honest messengers?’

  ‘But if the Elders have done that, Planir could already have made his own case to them.’ Corrain could have kicked the table over in his agitation. ‘Leaving us with nothing to do here but stick our thumbs up our arses.’

  If that had happened, since Corrain had not fulfilled his part of their bargain, how was he to force Planir to make good on his promise and rescue Hosh?

  And all this while he would have abandoned Lady Zurenne and Ilysh in the midst of Halferan’s rebuilding for no good purpose, he realised with belated guilt.

  ‘You think the Archmage would just have left you here if that had happened?’ Kusint demanded.

  Before Corrain could take comfort from that, the tavern door opened again, admitting another gust of wind redolent with autumn rain.

  ‘Here we go.’ Kusint got to his feet, raised a hand and called out something in the Soluran tongue.

  Corrain stood up so fast that his stool fell back against the wall. The newcomer wore the blue and grey surcoat of Castle Pastamar over a sturdy chainmail hauberk.

  The pimpled youth cut through the tavern tables with all the assurance of a man with an armoured guard troop behind him. He offered a folded, unsealed leaf of parchment to Kusint with the briefest of words.