Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis)

by McKenna Juliet E.

  ‘Ely and Galen.’ Kalion squared his plump shoulders.

  ‘That’s one question answered then.’ Planir shared his displeasure between the Hearth Master and the Flood Mistress. ‘I wondered why I returned to find the wine shops humming with rumour and speculation.’

  ‘You think questions weren’t already scurrying around the city?’ Kalion was indignant. ‘Your absence has added far more fuel to those fires.’

  ‘I know,’ Planir assured him. ‘I have discreet ears listening for every whisper and ready to damp down any unruly blaze. At the moment I see no great cause for concern.’

  ‘Pupils and prentices may swap gossip as they wish from sunrise to sunset but the Council must be kept fully informed and soon.’ Troanna scowled.

  ‘So tell me what Ely and Galen have learned,’ Planir invited. ‘Unadulterated by wild surmise.’

  ‘Only that these mageborn have yielded to the Mandarkin’s teaching. Not that they have much to show for it as yet,’ Kalion admitted.

  ‘It takes a full season for Hadrumal’s mentors to channel a raw apprentice’s affinity into the most paltry cantrips,’ Troanna observed. ‘I cannot imagine this Mandarkin will work wonders in a handful of days.’

  Planir smiled. ‘Then my absence in Suthyfer is neither here nor there.’

  ‘We have no notion how the Mandarkin might train their mageborn,’ Kalion retorted. ‘Nor of these artefacts he has gathered up. And forgive me—’ he spared Jilseth a brief nod ‘—I fail to see what we may learn from the death of some unfortunate corsair in Relshaz.’

  ‘The more we know, the more complete narrative of recent events we will have to lay before the Council,’ Planir countered. ‘Hence the need for this necromancy.’

  Kalion snorted with something perilously close to scorn. ‘Then why was this spell not worked when these two arrived?’ A gesture shared his ill-temper equally between Jilseth and Nolyen.

  ‘Necromancy is a demanding magic,’ Planir replied calmly. ‘Any stone mage would be ill-advised to attempt it without being fully rested.’

  Jilseth did her best to look both refreshed and confident in her abilities. She had assuredly slept better here in her own bed.

  Troanna opened her mouth but before she could speak, booted steps echoed in the curve of the stairwell.

  ‘Good day to you all.’ Rafrid appeared at the door, prompting the rest to advance further into the study. ‘Forgive me, Archmage. I had pressing business in Wellery’s Hall.’

  ‘We all have other pressing business as well as commitments to those mages who share our affinity and to all those pupils studying each element’s magic and the quadrate spells that combine them,’ Troanna snapped. ‘You may bespeak me when you’ve worked this necromancy, Archmage, and I will return to go scrying after this Mandarkin.’

  Jilseth honestly believed that the Flood Mistress would have left the room if Rafrid hadn’t been blocking the doorway.

  ‘Or you could scry with the Hearth Master’s assistance,’ Planir suggested, ‘while Rafrid and I witness Jilseth’s spell?’

  ‘That seems eminently sensible,’ Kalion said instantly. ‘We must not let this Mandarkin go unobserved.’

  ‘Very well.’ Troanna shooed Nolyen out of her way and sat down at the scrying bowl.

  Jilseth recalled Nolyen saying that Sannin had told him that Hearth Master Kalion was itching to try his hand at the bitumen-enhanced scrying.

  The fat wizard quickly took a seat opposite Troanna, arranged the fullness of his mantle so the velvet wouldn’t crease, and leaned forward to peer into the empty bowl.

  Troanna swept her hand in a swift circle. Jilseth heard the muted ringing of the silver as water flowed around it. Nolyen stood ready to hand over the perfume oils which Troanna might ask for.

  Jilseth frowned to see how little bitumen remained. There had assuredly been a good deal more when she had left that dish in Relshaz. Had Ely and Galen been so profligate? But Planir had mentioned scrying after Corrain when the Caladhrian had gone to Solura. Had he taken some of the bitumen to Suthyfer to enable his mageborn allies there to see what was afoot in the Archipelago?

  ‘I’m glad to see you so fully restored,’ Rafrid said quietly as he joined Jilseth and the Archmage beside the tiled table.

  Jilseth gathered her wits. ‘Thank you, Cloud Master.’

  If she and Rafrid had been alone, or if only Planir had been with them, Jilseth would have admitted her qualms. She felt confident that she had recovered all her elemental strength but her control was wont to falter unexpectedly. Worse, she was forced to acknowledge that her affinity sorely lacked its former stamina. But she wouldn’t admit any such thing with Troanna or Kalion in the room.

  ‘So this is your prize from Relshaz.’ Rafrid looked into the copper pot with an involuntary shudder, though the dead man’s hand was barely visible through the viscous yellow rock oil.

  ‘You can work necromancy with a single finger bone?’ He looked at Planir, visibly steeling himself. ‘Shouldn’t we cut the thing up? To learn as much as we can from successive spells?’

  ‘I think not.’ Planir’s tone suggested he’d already considered this. ‘We already know how this unfortunate died. We want to look much further back, as far as we can beyond his few last days, if we’re to learn all we can from that galley’s progress through the Archipelago. The more substantial the remains used in the spell, the more chance Jilseth has of success.’

  If the Archmage had no necromancy skills of his own, he was as well informed on the quirks of this magic as he was on every other.

  Rafrid stood up straight, the rim of the bowl blocking his view of the grisly contents. ‘Can I be of any assistance?’

  ‘Look for any detail in the necromantic visions which you think I might miss?’ Planir suggested with a wry smile.

  ‘As you command, Archmage,’ Rafrid answered with a grin.

  ‘Whenever you are ready, Jilseth,’ Planir invited.

  She could already see the emerald glow of Troanna’s scrying across the room. Nolyen’s back was to her so she couldn’t see his expression but Kalion’s face was avid as he peered into the spell’s broad reflection. The Flood Mistress’s expression was coldly intent, revealing nothing of Troanna’s inner thoughts.

  Warding her affinity against any hint of that rival spell, Jilseth laid her hands on either side of the copper bowl. She focused all her wizardly instincts on the rock oil within it. In some remote corner of her mind, she observed that she was concentrating more thoroughly on working this necromancy than she had done since she had first perfected these spells, in that season after she had advanced from her apprenticeship to her first pupillage.

  She promptly dismissed that thought lest it prove a distraction in itself. Within a breath, the oil began to stir. It came to a boil as though a fire had long since been lit beneath it. Ensorcelled smoke and steam rose from the seething surface though the copper bowl was merely warm against her palms.

  The dead corsair’s calloused hand in the depths of the oil was now completely obscured. No matter. Jilseth did not need to see it. Reaching through the copper and through the oil, her earth affinity found the infinitesimal traces of everywhere this dead man had been, of everything which he had encountered, all now part of his blood and bone and skin in a manner beyond mundane sight and sense.

  Dull amber magelight began to shimmer through the mist rising from the bowl. Jilseth raised her hands to gather the swirling opacity between her clawed fingers. The threads of magelight brightened to vivid gold as she shaped and reshaped the unruly vapours into a churning globe.

  Now her wizardry drew every key to the puzzle of the nameless oarsman’s life out of his dead flesh. She lifted those intangible wisps up through the oil to be woven into the glowing haze. Though this was only the beginning and barely one in ten earth mages ever mastered even so rudimentary a skill.

  Now Jilseth had to send true necromantic magic through the interstices of every trace drawn from the dead man�
�s hand. She had to find those arcane resonances woven betwixt and between the physical memories embodied unseen in his remains. Only then could her spell extract some reflection of whatever had happened to this hapless Archipelagan.

  The first such remembrance already lay within her reach. Jilseth ignored it, concentrating instead on the fainter reverberations behind it. She stretched her magecraft further. Now she was questing ever deeper into this unseen realm of infinite space bounded by the essences of elemental matter too seemingly insignificant for any but wizardly senses to comprehend.

  There it was, she realised; the most remote recollection that she had any hope of grasping. Try to go any further and she risked losing control of this entire spell. Such a disaster didn’t bear contemplating. Her hands shaped the swirling greyness with quick resolve and the magelight wove itself into a lattice of golden threads.

  A vision appeared caged amid the haze above the bowl, as tiny and as perfect as the most skilled artist’s miniature work. Except where a painter could only offer a vision as flat as a scrying, this image was as complete from all angles as the finest sculpture.

  The dead corsair was standing on a crowded shore, the battered galley listing behind him. It was one of a host of ships anchored close together along the broad sweep of this bay. Archipelagan men and women thronged round the gaunt, hollow-eyed mariners. Their expressions were concerned and their outstretched hands welcoming.

  Jilseth felt her affinity attuned to the necromancy as never before. The vision caught in the heart of the wizardry grew clearer, the distant voices louder. A necromantic spell needed no clairaudience to enhance it.

  ‘This is their first landfall.’ Fluent in the Archipelagan tongue, Planir picked the most vital information out of the riot of questions and pleading. ‘On one of the Nahik domain’s trading beaches.’

  Despite her firm intentions, Jilseth yielded to a silent moment of pride in her own achievement. She had become accustomed to drawing out the last moments, the last day of some unfortunate’s life and death. Going back this far, tracing the fleeing corsairs’ fate almost all the way back to their galley’s frantic departure from the prison which the Mandarkin’s magic had wrought for them? This was an achievement worthy of Hadrumal’s most celebrated necromancers.

  Jilseth reminded herself of that other staple of chimney corner wisdom; as soon as pride lifts the chin, the feet are apt to trip. She turned her attention from the dead corsair back to her magecraft. The Archmage stood at her side with Cloud Master Rafrid opposite them both. The Element Masters could make note of whatever had befallen the oarsman. Jilseth’s responsibility above all else was to sustain this spell.

  She could already feel tremors of exertion in her thighs and across her shoulders. Gritting her teeth, she forced her hands to shape the swirling magic with steady care and tried to block her ears to the sounds forcing their way past her fingers.

  Except in the corner of her eye, Jilseth could see that the Nahik islanders who had so solicitously crowded around the starveling corsairs were now all recoiling with cries of unmistakable horror.

  ‘They are saying that all these ships must leave and at once.’ Planir translated the Archipelagan shouts. ‘They are refusing them food and water. They say they must not make landfall anywhere else within the domain.’

  Jilseth could hear the hapless corsairs’ protests being shouted down with fearful fury by the other islanders. With ominous speed, the cacophony turned savage; yells of hatred cutting across screams of pain and despair.

  The crowd surged forward again, this time with raised fists. Jilseth wondered how the galley’s exhausted crew would ever be able to fight their way free. But clearly they had done so. This poor wretch had survived to be hacked to death on Relshaz’s dockside.

  ‘Courier doves.’ Rafrid jabbed a finger at the magecrafted vision.

  ‘Have a care!’ Jilseth said sharply as the Cloud Master’s finger came perilously close to the flutter of white wings disappearing into the blurred haze edging her spell.

  Speaking was a dreadful mistake. The words rasped in her throat as the reek of parboiled flesh and the acrid fumes of the rock oil instantly filled her nose and mouth. Her next breaths came fast and shallow but offered no relief from the sense of suffocation.

  She had already been feeling light-headed. Now Jilseth fought an impulse to gasp desperately for air. In that remote corner of her mind, calm consideration told her that sucking these fumes so deep into her lungs would leave her coughing uncontrollably. Worse she would be wholly incapable of sustaining her spell.

  Nostrils flaring, she succeeded in forcing her breathing into a slow and settled rhythm. The thumping pulse of blood in her temples eased to a dull drum beat and only the ache in the angle of her tightly clenched jaw remained as evidence of her silent struggle.

  ‘More doves are being loosed over there,’ Planir commented. ‘That’s how the word spread so quickly.’

  ‘No great surprise.’ Rafrid clasped his hands behind his back. ‘He can have no understanding of the Archipelago at all if he truly believes they will pay him tribute.’

  ‘How far has that word spread?’ Planir mused. ‘Has Velindre had any word from Kheda?’

  The spell flickered in Jilseth’s instant of surprise. She remembered the magewomen mentioning this Archipelagan but knew no more of him than that. In the next moment, she realised that Planir was asking Rafrid.

  ‘There’s no sight nor sound of him as yet.’ The Cloud Master’s reply betrayed his own exasperation.

  ‘Troanna,’ Kalion said sharply on the other side of the room. ‘We have seen enough for the present. We cannot risk alerting this villain to our scrying. You know how close we came last time!’

  ‘You need not tell me so,’ the Flood Mistress snapped.

  Planir took a step away from Jilseth’s side. ‘What have you seen?’

  Jilseth spoke before either Kalion or Troanna could answer. ‘What more do you need to see here, Archmage? Forgive me, I do not think that I can draw this vision back to its beginning,’ she added with bitterest chagrin.

  If necromancy could only be worked once with any piece of dead flesh or bone, as long as the stone mage didn’t let the spell unravel, the vision would play itself out time and again in a circle of memory as endless as a serpent devouring its own tail. A scene could be watched and rewatched until whatever secrets it held had been learned.

  But though she had gone so far and so deep into this necromancy, Jilseth could feel the strength of her affinity beginning to fail her, faster and more brutally than ever before.

  Planir stood motionless, his eyes distant with contemplation. An instant later, he turned quickly to Rafrid. ‘Make a note of all the domain pennants represented on that beach. That will suffice.’

  As Rafrid nodded and fetched paper and pen from the Archmage’s writing desk, Planir took a few swift strides across the room to look at Troanna’s scrying.

  Jilseth looked after him. She couldn’t help herself.

  The Flood Mistress ripped her hands away from the bowl, the curt gesture embodying her frustration. The perfume essences gliding across the water evaporated to fill the air with a riot of discordant scents.

  Jilseth glimpsed Kalion clenching his fists as though something had stung his palms.

  She hastily returned her attention to her own spell as it dimmed. Rafrid deftly copied the Archipelagan symbols fluttering in the breeze. For a moment, the scrape of quill on paper was the only sound in the room.

  As the emerald magelight of her scrying faded, Troanna glowered at Planir. ‘We would learn a great deal more and a great deal more swiftly if we could work a clairaudience into this scrying.’

  Her gaze shifted across the room. ‘Cloud Master?’ The emphasis she laid on Rafrid’s title turned her question into a barely veiled rebuke.

  Jilseth tensed. Rafrid looked up from his sketching. His weathered face hardened but rather than turn to acknowledge Troanna, let alone reply, he flicked his up
raised hand. A brief glimmer of sapphire magic sped across the room to open one of the narrow windows. Clean cold air obeyed the Cloud Master’s summons, carrying the cloying perfumes away to be lost on the winds curling around this high tower.

  Rafrid returned his attention to the necromantic vision, making a few last notes before smiling at Jilseth. ‘We have all that we need. You may release your spell.’

  Once again, Jilseth couldn’t help stealing a quick look across to Planir. At the Archmage’s barely perceptible nod, she spread her hands wide and let the glowing lattice unravel. Swirling threads of golden magecraft faded to amber and to dull ochre before vanishing entirely.

  ‘My compliments, madam mage, on a notable achievement.’ Rafrid’s gesture swept the noisome smoke and steam away to follow the perfumes out of the window. ‘I told you that your magic would return, didn’t I? Better than ever, it seems,’ he added with warm approbation.

  Jilseth settled for a modest smile. If she tried to speak, she feared some quaver in her voice would betray her exhaustion to Kalion and Troanna. The Element Master and Mistress were looking across the room, no hint of sympathy and scant patience on their faces.

  If only the Cloud Master had some spell to relieve the unpleasant atmosphere between these senior mages.

  She swallowed her nausea at the sight of the pathetic carrion in the bottom of the bowl. As the roiling oil slowed, the corsair’s hand was revealed, as thoroughly cooked as some pig’s trotter in a vat.

  Rafrid peered at it, his wrinkles deepening as he grimaced with distaste. ‘What shall we do with this, Archmage?’

  ‘Burn it.’ Kalion gestured and the dead hand rose from the oil’s surface.

  The wizened fingers were as clawed as Jilseth’s own had been when she worked her spell. She found the sight oddly disquieting.

  ‘No.’ As Planir spoke, the hand sank back down out of sight. ‘The Archipelagans abhor such rites for the dead.’

  ‘They abhor all our magecraft,’ Troanna said with icy contempt. ‘In which case, wouldn’t the Aldabreshi insist on fire’s purification for any mortal remains which have been so thoroughly defiled by sorcery?’