Read Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) for Free Online

yet.’ Kalion flushed unbecomingly. ‘But I have been refining a new nexus working with Ely, Canfor and Galen.’
    ‘Galen is cautiously optimistic,’ Ely insisted.
    The Archmage glanced at her with a thin smile. ‘I would rather hear that you are optimistic, since scrying is a water magic. You should have as much confidence in your abilities as you do in Galen’s.’
    Ely couldn’t meet the Archmage’s eyes. She looked at Jilseth instead. ‘Has your nexus been considering this challenge?’
    Jilseth wished she could say yes. That she was weaving her elemental affinity with the earth into Merenel’s fire-born wizardry, to be further enhanced by Nolyen’s talent for water magic and Tornauld’s grasp on the elusive air.
    A single mage could add the other elements’ magics to their own affinity with sufficient study and application. A nexus of four wizards could double and redouble each other’s power to summon up quintessential magic. Such wizardry was far stronger and more durable than anything a solitary mage could achieve.
    Or so the Element Masters and Mistresses of Hadrumal had always thought. Now the whole city was speculating how this unknown northern mage could sustain such impenetrable magic all on his own.
    ‘We are considering it.’ That much was no lie. If she couldn’t join them in a nexus, her friends insisted that Jilseth share her gleanings from years of reading in Hadrumal’s libraries, in case something could possibly hint at some answer. Nolyen in particular was obsessing over the puzzle, like every water mage from Flood Mistress Troanna down.
    ‘We have no insights to offer.’ That was, alas, also the truth.
    ‘Have you learned anything from the Soluran Orders?’ Kalion asked the Archmage without much hope.
    Planir’s lip curled. ‘All the Elders whom I have sought to contact refuse to acknowledge my spells.’
    There was so much that the mundane populace didn’t understand about magic, Jilseth thought inconsequentially. A wizard’s ability to bespeak another across a thousand leagues was truly marvellous. It was also only useful if the bespoken mage deigned to reply.
    ‘Have you explained to the Solurans that we never invited this Mandarkin wizard to our waters?’ Kalion demanded. ‘That it was this Caladhrian ruffian Corrain who chose to travel beyond the reach of Hadrumal’s edicts to find a wizard prepared to sink the corsair ships? That it was only when the wizards of Solura rebuffed him that he allied with a Mandarkin mage?’
    ‘You think I should throw some blame their way?’ Planir raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘When looking for co-operation?’
    ‘Why won’t the Solurans share what they know of Mandarkin magic?’ Ely looked from Archmage to Hearth Master. ‘They have been at each other’s throats for generations.’
    Planir shrugged. ‘Silence is their prerogative. Happily there are others we can ask, who know something of those northern mountains and the magics used there.’
    Kalion narrowed his eyes with sudden suspicion. ‘Suthyfer?’
    ‘Artifice?’ Ely couldn’t hide her disbelief.
    Jilseth suddenly guessed who the Archmage meant. ‘Aritane has aetheric magic to use against the Mandarkin?’
    She should have remembered that Planir liked to consider challenges from unexpected angles and the Mountain woman had been born and raised in one of the scattered settlements in the valleys among the peaks separating the Kingdom of Solura and the Mandarkin realm. Aritane had also been one of the sheltya, the teachers, law-makers and judges governing the Mountain race’s miners and trappers. Until some folly that even Ely’s curiosity couldn’t discover had seen her banished from those uplands, forced to accept Hadrumal’s shelter.
    ‘You think that mumbled enchantments can prevail,’ Kalion scoffed, ‘where the united magecraft of Hadrumal cannot?’
    Loath as she was to agree with the Hearth Master, Jilseth found that equally hard to believe. For all that