Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (63 page)

Those seas were Nolyen’s province. Jilseth felt the cool shiver of his water affinity so far below, circling the boundary where the saturated rocks of the seabed yielded to the dry heat of molten fire below.

After all their experience working as a nexus, Nolyen knew better than to try forcing any kind of union there. His water magic rose from the depths and mingled with the moisture drifting through the night air, drawn from the sea by the warmth of the now vanished sun and destined to fall as dew on the island. Nolyen’s subtle magecraft bound this elemental water to Jilseth and Merenel and Tornauld’s magic.

The circle was complete. The blending of three elements became four and their strength was doubled again. Jilseth could feel Nolyen’s water magic drawing on her own affinity as he lifted the corsair vessels’ anchors and parted the water before their prows. She was part of Merenel’s wizardry laying the whole island open to the Caladhrians’ mage-touched sight. Now she lent her strength to Tornauld’s spell wrapping ships, tents and houses in invisible silence, and Jilseth felt his affinity in turn coursing through her own magecraft armouring Corrain and his men.

Now quintessential magic was within their reach and as they grasped it, the four wizards had the strength of four times their number. Immediately Jilseth could feel the other nexus’s wizardry coursing through the seas. The spells woven by Sannin, Canfor, Galen and Ely were running along the seabed in the anchorage. Their subtle, inexorable magecraft pushed the corsairs’ galleys and triremes onto the beach. A hundred oarsmen, a thousand, could not have resisted that gentle pressure.

Far out to sea, Jilseth’s wizard senses saw the elemental water of the seas being turned against the advancing Aldabreshi. The nexus went further, repelling the metal and wood of the Archipelagan ships. Artfully woven mists all around the fleet obscured both their chosen paths through the sea lanes and their lack of progress.

Even if the Archipelagans had understood what they were facing, they would have needed a nexus of their own and one to equal Planir’s own, to make any headway against the ensorcelled tide now denying them any route to this island.

How was it possible that Anskal had not yet sensed such phenomenal wizardry surrounding him?

Jilseth didn’t know if that was her own incredulity or some thought shared by Nolyen, Merenel or Tornauld.

Hard on its heels came vengeful satisfaction.

However much the Mandarkin might be startled by that magic, he could have no conception of the wizardry now to be directed against him.

Here it came. The quintessential magic worked by the Archmage’s nexus.

Remote as she felt from her own body, Jilseth could sense her own head instinctively ducking, her shoulders cringing. Through the nexus she knew that the other three were all doing the same, sat in this little circle amid the corsair island’s darkened undergrowth.

Brilliance cracked across the sky. Not that anyone not mageborn could have sensed it. To any mageborn though, it looked like lightning carried from horizon to horizon in the blink of an eye. A rainbow shimmer lingered to stain Jilseth’s magesight. The Element Masters and Mistress of Hadrumal had combined and magnified their already formidable powers with terrifying results.

The diamond brightness sheeted across the sky again. This time it did not fade. Now forked magelight struck downwards, branching and branching again, seeking out any hint of wizardry.

Distantly Jilseth could feel her fingers numbed by Merenel’s crushing grip. She knew she was punishing Nolyen just as painfully and could only be grateful that her helpless hand wasn’t subject to Tornauld’s strength. They could all feel their interwoven magic being lashed by those quintessential tendrils. Sustaining their protective magic, rooted in the elemental endurance of this island, took all the strength of affinity and of will that they could summon up between them.

The touch of the Archmage’s nexus was as painful as a scald, as terrifying as a choking cloud of dust. The urge to recoil, to fight her way free of this endless anguish, was almost too much for Jilseth to bear. That impulse was only countered by the certain knowledge that any unguarded retreat would leave all four of them defenceless, senseless and dead.

In the next instant, the agony flowed through them to be carried away on the breezes, to dissipate in the boundless seas, to be consumed by the fires far beneath the island, unable to shake the foundations of their magic so deep in the bedrock. The Archmage’s quintessential wizardry passed on.

Jilseth felt her own shiver of relief travel around their circle, only to rebound and return as that shudder struck equal shocks born of Merenel and Nolyen’s exultation. A final tremor declared Tornauld’s fears eased.

For a moment their combined magecraft was thrown into utter confusion. Only for a moment. Instinct combined with their shared years under Hadrumal’s discipline and they reasserted their control of those spells so essential for the Caladhrians’ success in battle.

Elsewhere, the quintessential magelight was searching out the chaotic wizardry now afflicting those mageborn unable to rally their affinity so readily. With her wizard senses, Jilseth could see those lightning strikes pinioning the Mandarkin’s barely trained apprentices one by one. Trees and buildings, the mundane born Caladhrians advancing onto the beach; they all were no more than shadows, no obstacle to her quintessential vision as she picked out each one of the coerced mageborn within the faint outline of the distant pavilion. One here, two there, another couple, a cluster sharing some large room, each successively skewered.

As the Archmage’s nexus struck, each hapless victim’s affinity was woken. The mageborn were swathed in coils of magelight; sapphire, amber, ruby and emerald. Here and there Jilseth saw a more vivid spark kindle amid the blinding light; a necklace, a belt buckle, the hilt of a hidden dagger. The ensorcelled artefacts.

The first tangle of coloured magelight had already begun to pulse. The rhythm mimicked the beat of a panicked heart. Now that light became sharp-edged. Each swirl of pounding radiance was confined within a sphere of diamond luminosity faceted like a gemstone.

The next mageborn was similarly imprisoned, then the next and the rest. Each glittering sphere grew brighter and brighter. Now the colours of the imprisoned affinity began to bleed into the rainbow glimmer of Hadrumal’s all-consuming magic.

Jilseth heard a despairing groan and realised that she had uttered it. None of these coerced mageborn was yielding to the Archmage’s nexus. Whether they lacked the will or the skill was irrelevant. If they could neither surrender their affinity nor master it sufficiently to save themselves within the confines of the quintessential warding, then their magic would be the death of them. So the Archmage had decreed.

The closest sphere of magelight swelled alarmingly, collapsed in on itself and vanished in a coruscation of blue-green light. The Masters and Mistress of Hadrumal could at least ensure that each hapless wizard’s death destroyed nothing else.

‘No!’

Tornauld’s protest cut across Merenel’s confusion.

‘He had a fire affinity!’

Jilseth didn’t know if she was truly hearing them or they were sharing such insights through the nexus bonds.

Regardless, they were both right. That unknown mage should have died a fiery death, not stricken by ensorcelled air and water.

‘Look!’ Nolyen’s alarm directed them all towards the next faceted sphere enveloped in diamond magelight.

This time they all saw the turquoise thread snaking towards the relentless magic imprisoning the hapless mageborn.

They saw the infinitesimal instant between the untrammelled wizardry within killing the man born cursed with its gift and the crushing magic of Hadrumal that would force catastrophe to consume itself rather than level the building.

In that immeasurable moment, the turquoise thread fastened leechlike on the dying wizard. Writhing magelight stripped every last vestige of power from flesh and bone. The Archmage’s merciless warding closed on no more than an empty husk.

‘The renegade!’

‘How?’

‘Where—?’

A turquoise dart answered Tornauld’s question. It wasn’t heading for any of those mageborn already subjected to Hadrumal’s trial. Jilseth saw a woman skewered, the magic ripping her chest open as surely as it tore into her affinity. The turquoise radiance swelled obscenely.

A diamond lance shot down from the magelit sky. The turquoise magic recoiled. The lance stabbed at it, twice, a third time. The leech spell twisted and looped back on itself, always evading the Archmage’s strike. Another dart from Hadrumal had already found its vile prey. That didn’t stop a third sucking thread from stealing the release of unfettered wizardry from the next victim of Hadrumal’s nexus.

‘What—?’

As Nolyen spoke, Merenel shrieked.

‘The magesight!’

Jilseth had wondered how the Mandarkin could hope to hold such power within him. As it turned out, Anskal was no such fool. Instead he hurled a brutal blast of magefire towards a small troop of Caladhrians who had made a break from the tree line beyond the tents. They were racing across the beach towards the remaining pavilion.

Jilseth knew who they were. That troop was Corrain and his men, setting out to avenge their dead lord by killing the corsair captain who had murdered him. That was the signal for their allies to slaughter the rest in the tents ashore and aboard the corsair ships now beached below the high water mark.

But Anskal’s magefire wasn’t only seeking to burn those Caladhrians. Jilseth, Nolyen and Tornauld all shared Merenel’s horrified insight. The Mandarkin sought to use their very own spell as a conduit. Wizard fire would burn the eyes out of each man’s head. It wouldn’t blind only this handful. The Mandarkin’s lethal blaze would trace every path which their spell had taken, as it had been passed from hand to hand.

Quick as thought, Merenel gathered all their strength. In the next heartbeat, she was ready to throw a diamond barrier of quintessential magic between the Mandarkin’s evil wizardry and the defenceless Caladhrians.

‘No!’

Jilseth barely managed to show the fireborn magewoman the Mandarkin’s next attack. More stealthy yet no less murderous. Hateful wizardry summoned from the earth crawled golden across the sand. It sought her own spell armouring the Caladhrians. Their bones would be turned to stone, their skin to hardened clay.

Life without eyes was surely preferable to whatever miserable, brief existence they might eke out in such torment?

Neither spell reached the Caladhrians. A shaft of sapphire-edged magelight tore down from the sky to intercept the ruby fire. The Archmage’s nexus drove the Mandarkin’s magic deep into the earth to be consumed by the banked fires beneath the deepest rocks.

A white wave foaming with emerald wizardry surged up the beach. Retreating, it carried away the dulled ochre splinters of his malice to scatter them across the seabed.

Relieved as she was, Jilseth could not exult at Hadrumal’s momentary victory. While Hadrumal’s Element Masters and Mistress had been forced to focus on saving the Caladhrians, the Mandarkin’s loathsome magic had drained life and wizardry from another two of his captive mageborn.

Nolyen gasped. ‘The sea!’

They all felt the waves of magic ripping through the depths as the spells ensorcelling the tide against the Aldabreshi vanished.

How was that possible? The Mandarkin knew nothing of quintessential magic. Before Jilseth could complete that panicked thought, new terror assailed her.

Some new magic had fastened on her own affinity. No, it wasn’t only seizing on her wizardry. Her elemental link to the earth had given this unknown spell an entry to their entire nexus. They were all helpless to resist.

Jilseth fought it anyway. She could feel the others doing the same. She reached deep within herself and deeper still, searching for the elemental foundation of her power.

Too late she realised that was precisely what this unknown wizardry sought. Wild magic roared through her. Power that Jilseth could never have imagined. She had no hope of holding it back.

The shock of the untamed wizardry which she had felt before was as a candle set beside a blazing building compared to this.

Somewhere far away, she heard someone screaming.

It was her.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
F
IVE