Dangerous Waters (44 page)

‘Will they be as skilled as a mage of Hadrumal?’ Corrain recalled Minelas’s lethal magic.

He realised he had no idea if the traitor had been a prentice mage, a journeyman or a master. Though he thrust that uncertainty away, he was nevertheless relieved to hear Kusint’s next words.

‘They wouldn’t have been sent across the river if they weren’t well able to defend themselves and any men they’re riding with,’ the Forest youth assured him.

A mere lady wizard like Jilseth had put Baron Karpis and his troopers to flight, Corrain reminded himself.

‘We need food.’ He reached for his travelling bag and pulled the coin box forward with his heels. ‘To eat now and to take with us, and we’ll want some means of hunting once we’re into the woods as well.’

Now he had the whip hand again, and he’d be astride a decent horse before nightfall, if such a beast was to be had anywhere in this tree-choked country.

It was those endless days sitting on the barge that had unmanned him, Corrain realised. On the galley watching for the ever-present perils of mutiny or murder had kept him alert.

Kusint drank his ale with maddening slowness before counting out copper coins to pay their reckoning. He set the tankard on top of them before standing up. ‘Let’s go.’

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
E
IGHT

Trydek’s Hall, Hadrumal

7th of Aft-Summer

‘G
OOD DAY TO
you, Jilseth.’ Hearth Master Kalion entered the Archmage’s spacious sitting room, rubbing his hands together. ‘Since we have the benefit of your presence, let’s see if we can finally find this scoundrel Corrain.’ His smile was distant, his thoughts already focused on the magic they would be working. ‘If our errant adventurer is already dead, that greatly simplifies matters.’

‘Let’s hope so, Hearth Master.’ Jilseth had been wondering why Kalion had specifically requested her attendance this morning. That was now clear. Galen could no more scry for the dead than any other wizard. Only an earth mage who was also a necromancer had that particular talent.

Canfor didn’t say anything as he left the window seat for the chair opposite Kalion’s own.

‘Nolyen.’ Kalion acknowledged the water mage. ‘Please, take the lead.’

‘Hearth Master.’ Nolyen’s smile was taut enough to betray his nervousness. This was the first time he had shared a nexus with the Hearth Master himself, never mind directed the magic.

Canfor smirked. Jilseth would have liked to have kicked him under the table but she knew the white-haired mage would only exclaim to call attention to her childish behaviour. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. More to the point, she wouldn’t subject Nolyen to such foolishness.

She offered the erstwhile Caladhrian noble an encouraging smile as she and Kalion took their seats around the table. A shallow silver bowl in the centre was half filled with water.

Nolyen cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been consulting with Mellitha Esterlin of Relshaz. I would like to try her practise of using perfumery oils in scrying. In particular, she suggests that I use some scent tied to the man we’re seeking. Since Jilseth recalls tansy on his linen, I’ve added that to the mix. ’

‘I commend your initiative.’ Kalion leaned forward, keenly interested. ‘Let’s see what we may learn, of the man himself and of this particular magic.’

These past few days, Jilseth was finding herself more at ease in Kalion’s company than she had expected. When the Hearth Master’s attention was fixed on his magic, or on anyone else’s come to that, he proved mercifully free of his usual pomposity.

‘Indeed, Hearth Master.’ Some of the tension left Nolyen’s neck and shoulders.

Jilseth was amused to see Canfor swallow whatever critical remark he’d had on the tip of his tongue. Doubtless he thoroughly disapproved of Mellitha Esterlin, the independently-minded and independently wealthy magewoman who’d made her life in the trading city for decades now.

Canfor should consider how valuable Mellitha was to Hadrumal, keeping the Archmage informed of every rumour and scrap of news that washed up on the tides or drifted downstream from all the countries of the Old Empire and beyond.

‘Jilseth?’ Kalion was looking at her.

‘I’m ready, Hearth Master.’ She hastily gathered her wits as Nolyen uncorked a small vial. He let a few drops fall, not even enough to tint the water if they had been ink. Since this was magic, the clear water turned emerald green. The radiant magelight was bright enough to outdo even the summer sun pouring through the windows.

Canfor rested one long-fingered hand on the rim of the bowl. The magelight shimmered turquoise, the water rippling as if a breeze toyed with it though the air in the room was quite still.

Jilseth reached forward and laid her own hand against the side of the bowl, the silver cool against her palm. The magelight warmed with a golden hue, scenting the air with perfume. She smiled appreciatively at Nolyen. This smell was so much more pleasant than the acrid fumes from the rock oils she was accustomed to using in her necromancy.

She could feel the ensorcelled water through the silver bowl. To an earth wizard, the metal was no barrier. The water itself was so much more than she was used to sensing whenever she worked a scrying alone. Working with others, water magics that usually tested her powers would prove a mere trifle. Arcane spells normally a tantalising finger’s width beyond her reach would fall easily into the palm of her hand. This was quintessential magic.

She felt the resonance of elemental air with every breath she drew. It was usually so antagonistic to her own affinity. Working its complex spells required all her concentration. Not now. That magic linked her to the dancing breezes outside these closed windows, to the winds shepherding the clouds above the city and beyond to the sweeping currents of air beyond Hadrumal’s shores, all the way to the great vortex of a circling storm far away across the open ocean.

Was this what Canfor felt every day, from first waking moment to last dozing thought? What was he feeling in turn? Was he aware of the stones of the building, of the foundations reaching down through rich soil to the bedrock? Could he feel the rise and fall of the seabed surrounding Hadrumal’s island? The crests and troughs where the living rock buckled or split as the cold sea met the banked fires beneath?

She could sense the furnace heat many leagues deeper down. The Hearth Master was holding his hands over the bowl now. The water was swirling round and round, the motion hollowing the middle. The gold of her own magic warmed further to a fiery orange.

It would be the work of mere moments for this nexus to draw the molten ores upwards from deep beneath Hadrumal, sundering the very land the city was built on. As long as they all agreed on it, which of course, they never would.

‘Nolyen,’ the Hearth Master prompted.

The younger mage slid his outstretched fingers into the water and the swirling magic stilled. Magelight rose like vapour, rainbow hues sliding over and under each other. Nolyen gestured and the magelight formed a ring floating above the silver bowl’s rim.

Kalion leaned forward to study the image reflected in this magic mirror. ‘Do any of us know this place?’

It was a town of wooden buildings with wide, well-made streets. Jilseth could see that, just as she could see that no one else in this nexus had any more notion where it might be than she did.

‘Let’s see look for some clues,’ Nolyen murmured.

He sent the spell scudding along the road. Jilseth only wished doing this didn’t make her feel quite so nauseous. She should be more sympathetic to sea-sick Caladhrian barons.

‘It must be Solura.’ Canfor’s voice sharpened with anticipation. ‘That’s their script.’

Jilseth saw an inn had some bold proclamation painted on its whitewashed wall. ‘This is the furthest anyone’s scryed after him so far.’ She caught Nolyen’s eye and grinned.

‘Fine food and clean beds. Horses and carriages for hire.’ Kalion looked at the three of them, challenging their surprise. ‘Solurans visit Hadrumal from time to time. I have long considered it folly that more of us don’t learn their tongue and their script.

‘No knowledge is ever wasted,’ he went on with something of his usual superiority. ‘Nolyen, kindly find me the main market. There will be proclamations posted there with the local lord’s seal and insignia.’

Jilseth sat as quietly as Canfor, both focused on maintaining their part in the magic while Nolyen did as the Hearth Master instructed. The water mage soon found a stone pillar nearly invisible beneath layers of broadsheets, the last to be pasted up detailing entertainments for the Solstice feast.

‘Pastamar,’ Kalion said. ‘Nolyen, please show me the course of the river.’

As the town shrank away, the magic soaring like a bird, Jilseth had to close her eyes.

‘Nadrua.’ Kalion’s satisfaction was tempered by perplexity. ‘Why is this vagabond swordsman travelling so far from home?’

Jilseth opened her eyes to see the magical reflection searching along the wharves of a riverbank crowded with sail barges and humbler scows.

‘Is he there?’ Kalion peered into the spell. ‘Or has he already moved on?’

That was a refinement of quintessential scrying which Jilseth had come to value. Where the customary spell merely showed where someone or something was to be found, this enhanced magic could trace out their path.

‘Is he still alive?’ Canfor wondered. ‘Jilseth?’

Outside the nexus, she knew, his question would fall somewhere between a taunt and a challenge. Within the magic, he was honestly curious.

She concentrated on Corrain and as she did so, Jilseth found she could pick out the individual note of the tansy oil amid the heady mix of perfumes. She teased it out of the circling magelight. Focusing her own magic through it overlaid the vivid image with a pale golden veil. It was both like and unlike working necromancy. Instead of drawing on some scrap of flesh or bone, now she was seeking such carrion.

Not any carrion. Only Corrain’s dead body. Could she do this at such an incalculable distance? No, this was no time for self-doubts.

As Nolyen surrendered control of the spell, she sent it searching this way and that. Jilseth was conscious of Kalion watching her intently. She could feel his elemental affinity reaching through the fire woven into the quintessential scrying. The Hearth Master sought some understanding of the magic she was working.

Canfor’s pale eyes were avid. She could sense tension in the elemental air threaded through the spell. His instinct was to take control of the spell, even as wizardly reason must tell him that the magic would be torn asunder if he did. Jilseth recalled her own struggles with this unnatural intimacy of affinity.

She had to find Corrain, if he was there to be found, before Canfor’s innate self-importance triumphed over his conscious intellect. But she was only sensing emptiness.

‘I’m sorry, Hearth Master. I don’t believe he’s here, dead or alive.’ She swept the golden haze away from the magical reflection of the distant town and felt the tansy oil merge with the perfumed scrying once more.

Canfor opened his mouth, doubtless ready with some cutting criticism.

Kalion spoke first. ‘I regret to say I must agree. My compliments, madam mage. The clarity of your magic is such that there can’t be any doubt of it.’ He looked up, not to Jilseth but to Nolyen. ‘Can we follow his trail from here?’

‘Let’s see.’ But after a few tense moments the emerald magelight in the scrying bowl glowed with Nolyen’s chagrin. ‘I regret not, Hearth Master.’

Canfor opened his mouth. Jilseth was ready to kick him if he sneered at Nolyen. Instead he surprised her.

‘Let’s try the pendulum, Master Kalion, now that we can start with a specific point on the map.’ He gestured at the ensorcelled reflection.

Kalion pursed his fleshly lips. ‘We’ve had no luck with that magic at such a distance.’

‘We haven’t tried with this particular nexus,’ Canfor countered, ‘and Archmage Planir is insistent that we find this man.’