Dangerous Waters Read online

  Book 1 of THE HADRUMAL CRISIS

  DANGEROUS

  WATERS

  Juliet E. McKenna

  For Ernie

  much loved and much missed

  First published 2011 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: (ePUB) 978-1-84997-277-2

  ISBN: (MOBI) 978-1-84997-278-9

  Copyright © Juliet E. McKenna 2011

  Map artwork by Juliet E. McKenna and Pye Parr

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of he copyright owners.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Also by Juliet E. McKenna

  CHRONICLES OF THE LESCARI REVOLUTION

  Irons in the Fire

  Blood in the Water

  Banners in the Wind

  THE ALDABRESHIN COMPASS

  Southern Fire

  Northern Storm

  Western Shore

  Eastern Tide

  TALES OF EINARINN

  The Thief’s Gamble

  The Swordsman’s Oath

  The Gambler’s Fortune

  The Warrior’s Bond

  The Assassin’s Edge

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Barony of Halferan, Western Caladhria

  12th of Aft-Spring

  In the 8th Year of Tadriol the Provident of Tormalin

  SHE STOOD AT a crossroads. The lodestone twisted on the pewter chain looped around her fingers. She frowned. Until now the metallic black crystal had led her unerringly in this direction. Now it wavered between two roads.

  Jilseth disliked imprecision. Furthermore, she had refined this magic herself, blending an untried combination of spells. If there was some flaw in her understanding, she must find it. She had hoped to submit her discovery to the Council of Wizards on her return to Hadrumal. Not now she wouldn’t, if there was some inherent ambiguity in the magic for other mages to seize on.

  She could ignore those who’d merely seek to draw out her embarrassment, but she wouldn’t risk the possibility that someone might find a solution, claiming a decisive share in the credit for her work.

  Jilseth focused on the lodestone, on the power flowing around it. Expanding her wizardly senses, she felt its connection to the damp earth beneath her feet, to the rock below the muddy track, to the elemental iron so far beneath that.

  In some remote corner of her mind, she still marvelled that so few could see those lines of power. Even a pigeon could feel their tug. But no, for the mundane majority, the way in which pins were drawn to a shiny black rock was a trivial curiosity, perhaps of use to tailors but no more than that. To Jilseth’s wizard sight, the unseen forces flowed through the lodestone unhindered. All was as it should be.

  What of the magical use she had made of the crystal? Expanding its affinity to sense any magics manipulating earth and stone. This was an old sorcery, honed by generations of wizards and well practised by Jilseth herself. She found no error there.

  The next step. To sense the elemental air, fire and water that combined with the essence of earth to make up the world around her. Magebirth only conveyed a single affinity in most cases; an innate understanding and the ability to influence one of the four elements. It took an apprentice wizard several years of dedicated study to master other magics in addition to those of their birthright, and only then when guided by more experienced mages with a talent for explaining their own instinctive perceptions of the elements.

  Now Jilseth’s awareness encompassed the breezes ruffling the new leaves on the ill-kempt hedges. She sensed the warmth of the sun lending vigour to those leaves. She felt the water drawn up through the roots spreading vitality throughout the buckthorn.

  Jilseth had been a diligent pupil. She had been equally quick to move beyond the magics of each individual element to the next step in her education; to the quadrate wizardry that blended all four into more complex magecraft. That had only been the start.

  Along the way she had also learned caution and control. She kept a tight hold of her wizardly instincts lest she be overwhelmed by the intoxicating sensations of the magic. Now her concern must be the second spell that had attuned this lodestone to search for elements beyond her own mageborn, intuitive grasp. This was a new magic not yet recorded in Hadrumal’s libraries, never credited to some long dead mage.

  Jilseth tempered her pride. She couldn’t claim all the credit. Archmage Planir had summoned her along with three other wizards whose talents he’d noted. He had suggested that they share their understanding of their individual affinities to see what they could learn together of quintessential magic. Where quadrate magic stemmed from one wizard combining the four elements into a single spell, quintessential sorceries required four mages to work together, each drawing the element of their affinity into a union that offered wizardry with a scope far beyond anything that a mage working alone could hope to attain. Like the others, Jilseth had relished the challenge.

  Standing on the muddy track, she was soon reassured. They had indeed succeeded in attuning this lodestone to find magic borne of any combination of the elements. Better yet, quintessential magic wasn’t subject to the vagaries of wizardry still inextricably tied to the vacillating elements. Quintessential sorcery was as robust as the diamond that was its symbol.

  Which only left her individual contribution to this artefact. Only Planir knew of that. Only the Archmage could sanction studies in the esoteric discipline she had chosen.

  This was the most compelling of the reasons that kept Jilseth in Hadrumal when erstwhile friends and fellow apprentices had quit the wizard island’s strictures. Peddling magecraft on the mainland was a far less demanding life.

  Though some, it was murmured by pupil wizards in Hadrumal’s wine shops, some went to Suthyfer now. Mageborn had lived among those merchants and hired swords engaged in trade across the distant ocean for this past handful of years. The rewards for wizardly aid in defying the deadly storms and tides included liberty for mages to explore their talents however they saw fit. Ideally on some suitably remote reef among the scattered islands that were such vital stepping stones to the empty lands the Tormalin Emperor’s men had discovered on the far side of the ocean.

  Jilseth couldn’t deny such freedom was a tempting thought. But she was an earth mage and Planir the Black was not merely the Archmage. He was the Stone Master of Hadrumal and the finest mage of that affinity in ten generations. Even his critics on the Council of Wizards couldn’t deny that. There was no one better to teach her.

  Besides, she wasn’t some mainland mageborn already uprooted from hearth and home when an adolescent elemental affinity had caused chaos and alarm. Some of her fellow apprentices had been shipped off so swiftly that they arrived on Hadrumal’s dockside with only the clothes that they stood up in. Starting a new life a second time, on terms of their own choosing, that wasn’t such an overwhelming prospect.

  Jilseth was the latest daughter of a line of mageborn five generations long. Her roots in Hadrumal went deep. Perhaps that’s why Planir had chosen her for this quest. The Hadrumal mageborn would feel most deeply wronged if Minelas’s treachery ever came to light.

  She had summoned up the elemental echo of blood spi
lled and bones broken by the foul renegade’s magic at the foot of the cliff where his ship had docked. She had bound this lodestone to every resonance of the rare earths and minerals in those dead men’s bodies. The unique reverberation of his spells would lead her to the wizard who had so betrayed his birth and his oaths to Hadrumal.

  Focusing all her mage-sense on the conflicted stone, she understood. Her spell was working perfectly well. The lodestone indicated a choice of routes. Either way, she’d find a place where Minelas had worked magic.

  The question remained. Which road to take? Jilseth looked around. No one worked in these empty fields. Not a cow nor a sheep cropped the first growth of weedy grass. Even though this sodden coastal region lay as flat as rush matting, no roof or chimney stack rose above the horizon.

  Had the Caladhrians already abandoned these coastal regions for fear of corsairs’ summer depredations? The raiders coming up from the south had been plaguing this coast and the sea lanes offshore for a handful of years now and the spring equinox usually marked the start of the sailing season.

  She closed her eyes, the better to sense any infinitesimal variation in the magical resonance. Now that she knew what she was looking for, the difference soon became clear. Minelas had worked magic in two places. He had only killed in one and that had been his most recent magecraft. She must follow the road to the shore.

  Jilseth began walking. Twenty or so paces on, the tug of the lodestone drew stronger. The shining grey crystal swung upwards to pull its chain out straight ahead, true as a mariner’s compass needle. This was definitely the right path, even if she must measure every pace of it with her own feet.

  Not for the first time on this quest, she cursed one limitation of magic. Not only of her magic. All wizards were similarly bound, whatever the tavern tales might say of their uncanny ability to step across hundreds of leagues in a blinding flash of light.

  While almost every wizard worthy of the name could use magic to travel from place to place, they could only revisit somewhere they had already been. If not, like Jilseth on this journey, mages were subject like everyone else to the inconveniences of ill-sprung coaches, lame or recalcitrant horses, rutted and mud-choked roads.

  Since the best the last village could offer had been a plodding ox cart, Jilseth had opted to walk. At least she could use a sling of woven air to relieve the burden of the battered leather sack she carried, its drawstring over her shoulder.

  In the event that she encountered some peasants, or even trailblazing corsairs, she didn’t anticipate trouble. Her modest gown was the soft shade of a pigeon’s wing, the better to travel unnoticed. There was little else in her appearance to prompt unwelcome interest, even if this spring sunshine found some auburn glints in her long brown hair. Only her luminous hazel eyes might prompt a second glance.

  In any event, she could wrap herself in elemental air and simply disappear, leaving the Caladhrian bog-trotters to entertain their mud-stained friends with a tavern tale of encountering a magewoman. Corsairs could flee trembling at the thought of their narrow escape from a wizard’s wrath.

  She followed the lodestone’s continuing pull as the buckthorn hedged fields gave way to open pasture, still with no sign of livestock.

  So Minelas had killed a second time. That was an unwelcome revelation, if not entirely unexpected. Jilseth scowled as she trudged along the muddy track. She’d been unpleasantly surprised by tavern tales on this journey, as she sat unnoticed in some corner with a bowl of unremarkable pottage. These mainlanders were far too eager to dwell on magecraft’s potential for violence.

  There’d been no such stories told in her childhood. Even islanders on Hadrumal with no elemental affinity knew the reality of wizardry. There was no need for wizards to kill. There were countless other ways in which Minelas could have evaded pursuit, when his arrival on Caladhria’s shore had been threatened by mounted assailants. Villains they might have been, Jilseth allowed, but Minelas had killed them merely to show off his powers to the awestruck Caladhrians who hoped to hire him to defend them from the corsairs.

  As her leather half-boots squelched, another gloss of magic kept them and her stockinged feet within safe from insidious dampness. The ground underfoot was growing markedly wetter, the air dank with the scent of decay. Not the death she was seeking; merely the slow rot of sedge and rushes into the brackish water.

  Before she had gone half a league further, glistening shallows stretched away to either side. Only the track rose high enough above the salt marsh for a traveller to pass dry-shod. Two horses might ride abreast, if anyone wealthy enough to travel mounted had business in this backwater.

  Jilseth studied the moist ground. A whole troop of horsemen had ridden this way. Hoof prints clustered thick in the mud, crossing and overlapping. She sank down to pass a hand over a waterlogged crescent. A handful of days ago.

  She sighed. Then again, not so very long ago, she’d been ten whole days behind Minelas. She was closing in on him. Standing up, she continued, glancing back and forth from the hovering lodestone to the water-blurred path ahead.

  It took no magic to mark her destination. Vegetation lay broken on either side of the track. Mud was churned up all around, darkened with lingering bloodstains. Jilseth shoved the lodestone into a pocket in the folds of her skirt and her touch quelled its sorcery. She didn’t want any distractions.

  Now she could use her chosen expertise. The magic which only those born with an earth affinity could even attempt to master. Nearly all chose to shun it, repelled by its very name without even attempting to understand its fascinations. Necromancy.

  Where were the bodies? Jilseth frowned once again. Finding them should have been simplicity. She added a touch of fire to her mage-sense. The mainland custom was always to burn bodies on funeral pyres. That said, if anyone had tried building a pyre here, from sodden wood and green leaves, she wished them luck. They’d need a wizard to raise even a spark and Minelas would have no interest in reducing his victims to ash for a funeral urn.

  There! Her wizard sight glimpsed a sunken body deep in the fen. The corpse itself was a horse but Jilseth’s necromantic perception could see the dead man trapped beneath it.

  Green magelight spread around her feet; the emerald hue of water magic. With her own affinity so focused, she had scant attention to spare for concealing her other workings. It hardly mattered. There was no one here to see but some frogs.

  Once off the path, her wizardry ensured her firm footing a handspan above the muddy water. She walked over to the dead horse. Reed lizards had gnawed its ears and nose while some larger scavenger had ripped into its underbelly, releasing bloated entrails into the bog.

  A sparkling sapphire veil of air defended Jilseth from the stench. She carefully balanced that spell with the contrary force of the water magic beneath her. By comparison, heaving the horse’s dead weight aside demanded a trifle of her inborn affinity with the earth, an amber haze barely colouring the air.

  As the dead horse sprawled with a noisome splash she saw the man’s corpse. Jilseth locked her anger in that remote corner of her mind where she was accustomed to shove such distractions. Unbridled emotion threw wizardry into confusion, from highest to lowest, and she couldn’t afford that here.

  The dead man wore a woollen shirt beneath a scuffed leather tunic and buff breeches. A base metal brooch fastened the coarse cloak wrapped around his shoulders. He’d had greying hair but beyond that, no one would ever know him again. Worms and crabs had eaten their fill from his discoloured hands and face.

  Jilseth wondered what twist of fortune had left this Caladhrian rotting faceless in the marshes. Well, she could soon find out and those mindless scavengers had made her task a little easier. A necromantic touch plucked a finger from his ravaged hand. She only needed the smallest of bones.

  Walking back to solid ground, she unslung the leather sack from her shoulder. The black cloak she had stuffed in the top could protect her skirts from the damp ground. She needed all her energie
s for other magecraft now.

  Folding the heavy cloth, she sat cross legged upon it. The dead man’s finger hovered beside her as she took her things from the leather sack. A silver bowl. A small, securely stoppered bottle. She uncorked it to pour clear oil into the bowl. It trickled slow as honey. As she passed her hand over the liquid, amber radiance glowed.

  Her gesture sent the dead man’s finger into the bowl. The oil seethed, amber magic darkening. Jilseth swept her hands through the steam and thickening smoke, deftly shaping a latticed orb threaded with golden magelight.

  A vision formed at its heart. The dead man’s last moments. He’d been riding into battle with the troop whose horses had left these hoof prints. Jilseth could see the resolve in their faces.

  The dead man turned in his saddle to rebut some comment behind him. ‘He’s no milksop. He couldn’t handle that stallion if he was.’

  His nod told Jilseth who he meant. Blue-cloaked, some way ahead, Minelas was riding beside that poor fool of a baron.

  As soon as Jilseth learned his name, that noble lord would be answering to the Archmage and the Council of Hadrumal alongside the renegade mage. The edict was absolute. Wizards did not engage in warfare. No matter how grievously these coastal regions had suffered at the hands of the raiders, Minelas had no business taking Caladhrian gold in return for unsanctioned magic killing the corsairs.

  So what exactly had happened? Jilseth concentrated on her spell. Once she knew the extent of his guilt, Minelas would learn the true meaning of the Archmage’s wrath.

  ‘This is salt marsh.’ The dead man was pointing something out to the man riding beside him. The captain of the troop, judging by his finer linen and padded green tunic. ‘See, samphire and spearweed.’