Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (20 page)

Black Turtle Isle

In the domain of Nahik Jarir

H
OSH RUBBED HIS
eyes, gritty with lack of sleep. He glanced up at the sky, wondering how long it might be before the rain began to fall today.

‘Have you seen some omen?’ Anskal instantly demanded.

‘No.’ Hosh yawned so wide that he felt his jaw crackle.

‘Where are they?’ The Mandarkin’s patience was wearing ominously thin.

They had been sitting waiting since first light on the terrace by the kitchen steps of the pavilion formerly claimed by the
Reef Eagle
’s master. Even though Hosh had explained how long it would take Nifai to cross the island.

He could only trust that Anskal wouldn’t kill him now that the meeting the wizard had sought was so close. After all, the Mandarkin hadn’t skewered him with some bolt of lightning when he had finally returned to relay Imais’s message; Nifai would come when the stars offered him most protection and not a day before.

Perhaps it would help to remind him. ‘The Ruby has moved into the arc of Honour and joined the waxing Pearl. They’re with the stars of the Vizail Blossom for this one day. Those are all omens promising your good faith.’

Anskal’s sideways glance silenced Hosh more effectively than a slap in the face. The boy looked down at the ground below the terrace. He couldn’t read anything in the wizard’s hooded gaze, certainly not good faith.

But there were other stars which should surely persuade Nifai to run this risk. The Diamond had shifted into the arc of Death and now rode with the Amethyst for new inspiration with the Mirror Bird whose feathers supposedly turned magic back on those who used it. Two jewels in each of those arcs made for a powerful portent, all the more so with the Opal for truth waning in the arc of Foes, tangled in the stars of the Net.

As long as Nifai hadn’t seen some other omen to dissuade him. Seeing a mothbird in the daytime. Seeing a spider’s web between two trees of different kinds. A pattern of crosses left on the sand at low tide. A lamp flame dividing into two, if any of the fugitive corsairs had such a thing to light their nights. And those were only some of the portents promising bad luck. Hosh didn’t doubt that the Aldabreshi had a handful more for each one he knew of.

He looked up again as he heard rustling leaves. There couldn’t be anything large enough left uneaten on the island for that to be an omen. It must be Nifai.

As he saw the overseer appear amid the undergrowth now choking the path through the ironwood trees, Hosh froze. Ducah had come with the overseer.

He was an Archipelagan straight out of a mainlander’s nightmares. Half a head taller than even Corrain, he was the tallest man whom Hosh had ever encountered and far more heavily muscled than the wrestlers who travelled Caladhria’s markets and festivals. He had overseen
Reef Eagle
’s master’s affairs here ashore whenever the raiding vessel was voyaging.

His ebony back was ridged with whip scars. Ducah never sought to hide them, going bare-chested however cold and insistent the rain. So everyone could marvel at the strength that had seen him survive such a flogging. They could wonder in awed whispers what feats he must have accomplished to escape an oar slave’s chains and rise to such a privileged position.

Hosh reckoned that the villain judged a day when he didn’t kill someone was a day wasted. The slightest provocation, or often none that Hosh had seen, ended with Ducah’s curved blade slicing off someone’s head or hooking out their entrails.

Yet now, the instant the brute saw Hosh and the wizard waiting, he balked like a packhorse scared by some shadow. That was hardly good news. If Ducah was terrified, his first instinct would surely be to lash out with the swords thrust through the sashes wound around his hips.

Hosh fought not to touch his arm ring for reassurance, settling for a silent prayer that it would truly save him from one last glimpse of the damp earth coming up to meet him as Ducah’s blade swept his head from his shoulders.

But who should he pray to? Hosh realised with a shock that his mother had never spoken of any god or goddess having an interest in magecraft.

If Ducah could have been a wrestler, Nifai had the build of a runner likely to win prizes in every festival’s foot races. He betrayed less obvious nervousness, though he kept fiddling with the four large pearls he wore in each ear. Hosh could see the last holes still bleeding where the overseer had driven the silver hooks through his lobes that very morning.

His coppery forearms were weighed down with mismatched silver and gold bracelets all studded with lesser pearls which skilled craftsmen had halved on account of some flaw. These were highly prized here at this northern end of the Archipelago, as far as it was possible to get from the pearl reefs of the most remote south.

Ducah wore ropes of pearls around his neck, a double handful of strands iridescent against his dark chest.

Anskal smiled broadly. Hosh guessed he was pleased to see such proof that the corsairs had indeed fled with a good haul of their loot. He would have no idea of their trust in the pearls’ talismanic properties.

‘Good day to you.’

The Mandarkin spoke in his strongly accented Tormalin. Nifai looked guardedly at Hosh, who saw that though the Archipelagan had understood, he had no intention of answering.

Ducah’s expression was too thunderous for Hosh to tell if he had understood Anskal or not. His lip curled on the brink of a sneer as a gust of the shifting breeze from the sea carried the rank stink of Anskal’s unwashed body to them. Like all the Archipelagans, the corsair was scrupulous about his personal cleanliness.

Hosh didn’t imagine he was impressed by Anskal’s yellow tunic either, or his gauzy white trews embroidered down the side seams with scarlet sprays of vine blossoms. Hosh guessed that the garments had been sewn for some corsair’s whore but he’d kept his mouth shut about that.

The Mandarkin mage pursed his lips as though coming to some conclusion. ‘I do not speak your tongue and I have no magic to do so,’ he said to Nifai. ‘That is the privilege of the Mountain enchanters.’

Nifai looked helplessly at Hosh, lost as to the wizard’s meaning, for all that he understood the words.

Hosh quailed at the thought of trying to explain whatever it was called. Artifice? Aetheric magic? He had barely believed half the tales tossed around the barrack hall, of adepts speaking to each other across a thousand leagues and seeing through each other’s eyes. Corrain had dismissed all the stories as nonsense.

Then again, Hosh had barely believed in wizardry until he’d seen Master Minelas’s murderous spells and Corrain had been proved so wrong about so many aspects of Aldabreshin life.

He cleared his throat. ‘There are different magics on the mainland. Master Anskal is only master of one.’

‘Then we will speak as the broken-face slave does,’ Nifai said warily. ‘He can help us understand each other.’

Anskal looked up as the first drops of rain pattered onto the terrace’s stones. For one appalling moment, Hosh though he was about to ward off the shower with some sorcery. If he did, this meeting was over before it had begun.

Instead the Mandarkin mage gestured first to the steps and then to the pavilion’s broad eaves overhanging the terrace. ‘I would offer you shelter. I would offer you food but Hosh says that my touch would taint it for you. Still, the boy brought those up from the cellar. I have not touched them.’

He gestured with his filthy hand towards a basket of wax-sealed bottles.

Well, that was a lie and a half to shame Trimon the teller of tales, as Hosh’s mother would say. He had done no such thing. Why had the Mandarkin told such a falsehood?

He set that question aside as he hurried under the eaves to escape the strengthening rain. After a long moment’s thought and glances of unspoken debate, Nifai and Ducah slowly climbed the steps to join them.

Whatever Anskal sought, Hosh saw his well-hidden satisfaction as the corsairs yielded to their thirst after toiling across the island.

Ducah twisted the wax off a bottle neck and drew the protruding cork out with his teeth. Downing half the contents in one swallow, he tossed a bottle to Nifai and as an afterthought, lobbed another one to Hosh. Nifai already had a knife in his hand to lever out the cork.

Hosh looked at the bottle in his hand. He had no way to get the cork out without a blade. Trying to work the stopper out with his teeth was out of the question. Hosh had lost most of his upper teeth where his cheekbone had been broken and the rest were none too securely rooted in his lower jaw these days. He wasn’t about to risk condemning himself to starving to death.

‘Boy!’

Looking up, startled, Hosh’s hand instinctively snatched at the gleam of silver flying through the air. Anskal had thrown him a small folding knife.

‘Drink,’ the Mandarkin urged with a grin.

Hosh managed a grateful smile. He would rather have cursed. Now he could see fresh mistrust in Nifai’s eyes as well as Ducah’s.

And it wasn’t as if he liked this fermented sap which the Aldabreshi tapped from one particular stubby tree. They would cut off a dull greeny flower spike and lash a gourd over the oozing stump. Corrain had always said the stuff tasted like a stagnant puddle that a pig had pissed in. But Hosh wasn’t about to give offence by refusing so he worked the cork free with the knife.

‘You wished to speak with us.’ Refreshed, Nifai challenged Anskal more boldly.

‘Indeed,’ the Mandarkin agreed. ‘I wish to do you a service.’

Hosh’s heart sank. Hadn’t the fool wizard understood the Archipelagan loathing of magic?

He took a long drink of the reeking brew and thought of Corrain drinking Halferan’s finest ale and regaling the tavern with tales of his exploits amid the Archipelagan slavers. The captain would explain how he had made the most of whatever opportunity had come his way. So Hosh folded the finger-length blade into its bone handle and slipped it discreetly into his trews pocket.

‘You can do nothing—’ Ducah took a step forward before recoiling as Anskal raised a warning hand.

As Hosh narrowed his eyes against the expected flash of magelight, he wondered why Ducah was here. To defend Nifai against any other corsairs wandering the island? Or had the brute come here to kill the mage himself?

Did Anskal realise the danger he was in? If the evil of elemental magic touched him, there could be no doubt that Ducah would attack. He could have nothing left to live for beyond spending his life to kill the wizard. Where would that leave Hosh?

There was no sign of magic. Ducah halted, eying the Mandarkin suspiciously. Hosh breathed a little more easily.

‘The boy has told me of your people’s hatred for magic,’ Anskal said calmly. ‘So I will take all the gold and silver and gems which I have found in these cellars and you will all deliver up whatever wealth you managed to carry off when you fled from my magic. You may consider this your payment for the service which I have rendered you.’ He nodded airily towards the enchanted wave. ‘Then I will allow your ships to sail away.’

Hosh didn’t really think he needed to remind the Aldabreshi of his power and their plight.

‘What is this service that you speak of?’ Nifai asked, desperate.

‘Ridding you of the magic which you don’t even know you have here.’

Anskal’s secretive smile made Hosh’s blood run cold. In the next instant, his heart leaped in his chest from pure terror. Ducah’s sword was flying towards his head. Not wielded by the bare-chested brute but whipped from its scabbard by sapphire magic.

Hosh was too shocked to duck or even to close his eyes, until his vision was seared by the brilliant glow erupting from the gold and crystal arm ring. Ducah’s blade fell away as though it had struck a physical barrier.

‘Your people—’

Whatever Anskal wished to say was lost beneath Ducah’s venomous curses. The big man was ripping the looped sashes from his waist, hurling away the sword scabbard thrust through them. His curses rose to a deafening pitch as hatred for the wizard blazed in his eyes.

Nifai shouted something. Hosh didn’t catch what the overseer said to silence Ducah but it worked. A good thing too, given Anskal’s next menacing words.

‘If you cannot curb your tongue, I will wrap you in silence and you may live with that taint on your skin as best you can.’

Ducah took a step backwards, something Hosh had never expected to see. The corsair’s dark face was ashen with dread. Anskal nodded with malicious satisfaction before addressing Nifai.

‘There is magic in these islands, though you do not know it. The wizardry that can be bound in trinkets such as the boy wears.’

Hosh looked down to see the magelight had shrunk to an amber radiance ringing his upper arm, visible through his sleeve. Well, there was no hope now of trading the gold and crystal for passage on an Archipelagan ship. Nifai’s appalled expression told him that much.

‘I have found several such artefacts among the treasures here,’ the wizard continued. ‘There will be more among the loot you have hoarded. I will take them off your hands and you may purify yourselves as you see fit.’

His smile curved like the mouths of those sharks which Hosh had seen following the galleys to eat the sick slaves who were thrown overboard.