'I had a choice,' Risala reminded him. 'I came because I wanted to, because I believe in you, because I believed we had to find out just what might threaten Chazen.'
Kheda glanced at her. 'At least they had their magic to encourage them to think they might actually be able to do something about any dangers lurking here.'
'You don't think their magic just made them more arrogant?' countered Risala. 'Do you honestly think they intended to raise up the coastline like this? I don't think
they had any idea what would happen when they let their magic loose like that.'
'Well, we're all more humble now.' Kheda tore viciously at a particularly stubborn quill. 'And at least they saved us all from those dragons.'
'Do you think you might have been a little arrogant in setting your face against omens and portents?' Risala fiddled with the bandage around her broken wrist.
Kheda didn't answer, simply ripping more feathers from the partially denuded bird.
'When we get back to the Archipelago,' Risala persisted, 'will you at least look again at all the records, all the philosophers' writings, and listen to the epic poets who discuss their misgivings? You're hardly the first one to have doubts. Just to see if there's a chance you might be mistaken, before you throw all that away?'
Kheda cleared his throat. 'All right. I can do that much for you.'
When we get back to the Archipelago? If we ever get back to the Archipelago. That's an easy promise to make, because I don't see how we're ever going to get home.
'Kheda! Risala!'
The shout from the stern cabin made them both jump.
Risala looked at Kheda. 'Naldeth wants us.'
'Let's see why.' He swung his legs inboard. Traversing the slanted deck was a question of half-crawling, half-walking. The door to the stern cabin was hinged on the uphill side and awkward to manage. Splinters from the shattered ruby egg were driven deep into the wood.
Kheda forced a cheerful tone as he looked inside the cabin and flourished the dead bird. 'Fresh meat tonight, and I'll see if—'
He swallowed the rest of his words as he saw that the cabin wasn't just lit by the harsh sunlight filtering through the holes in the broken planking. A green glow
rose from the dented silver bowl that Velindre cradled, illuminating her face.
The magewoman sat cross-legged on the haphazard collection of clothing and bedding that they had piled in the angle of the sloping deck and the tilted wooden wall to make a vaguely level surface for sleeping. Looking up, she smiled at Kheda. Where her face had been thin before, the magewoman was now positively gaunt and the green light made the bruises all down one cheek look black against her pallor.
'How far can you scry?' Kheda tossed the dead bird back out onto the deck and stepped into the cabin. Risala followed him, her face alive with curiosity.
'So far I've seen that our friends in the village over on that higher ground escaped the worst of it.' Velindre sounded weary yet exultant.
'Some of their warriors have even made their way home.' There was no mistaking Naldeth's guilty relief. He still looked as exhausted as Velindre. His tan had faded to an unhealthy sallow and deep lines were now fixed between his brows and either side of his mouth. The blood staining his eyes had decayed to ghastly yellow and purple.
Kheda sneaked a discreet look at the young wizard's stump. The convulsions that had racked Naldeth during the mountains' eruptions had left his metal leg a misshapen ruin. As the mage had lain unconscious, Kheda had forced himself to see what had happened to his bleeding thigh. Relieved to find metal and flesh separate once more, he had forced the contrivance off the blistered stump and thrown it into a corner. Naldeth hadn't spoken of it since recovering his senses. Nor had he allowed Kheda to re-dress his broken scars.
At least there's no sign of suppuration, and if the flesh was rotting, we 'd all smell it in here.
Then he realised that the young mage's hands were
clasping his remaining knee. He had discarded all the splints and bandages Kheda had used to painstakingly reconstruct his broken bones.
'Naldeth, your hands,' the warlord said, astounded.
The young mage looked down and flexed his fingers, wincing. The torn flesh was still thickly scabbed and odd lumps bulged beneath the skin. 'I thought I had better make use of that black dragon's bone magic,' he said, swallowing hard. 'If my hands don't mend sufficiently to be useful, I really will be a cripple for the rest of my life.'
So such knowledge has its uses, however vile the uses that cloaked wizard might have put it to.
'Indeed.' Kheda kept his voice neutral.
'What have you seen?' Risala peered into the ensorcelled bowl.
'Rather more pertinent is what we haven't seen,' Velindre said slowly. 'We've seen no wild wizards working any magic to help the people or to help themselves. Some villages have gathered up their dead, but there's no sign that any dragon has been tempted to dine.'
'Neither of us have had any sense of a dragon within miles of here.' Naldeth gazed inland as if he could see through the splintered planks. 'And there's a warlord's ransom in rubies studding the deck. That would surely have drawn any beast attuned to fire.'
'I think we did it.' Velindre broke into a coughing fit that left her wheezing painfully.
The confusion plaguing Kheda resolved itself into one simple question. 'What exactly did you do?'
'We poisoned the well.' Velindre's smile was as cheerful as a death's-head rictus. 'That's another respected tactic in Aldabreshin warfare, according to what I heard as I sailed the Archipelago, one of the best ways to end a fight quickly.'
'We realised we couldn't beat the dragons.' Naldeth
shuddered. 'We must have been mad to think we ever stood a chance. We couldn't match them without destroying ourselves.'
'They were drawing on the elemental confluences that underpin this place.' Velindre gazed around as if she too could see through the broken hull of the Zaise. 'Or used to underpin it, I should say.'
'But what did you do?' Risala asked again.
'There was a degree of instability already inherent in the elements,' Naldeth said briskly. 'Water was seeping into the fissures in the sea bed, reaching all the way to the point where the fire came up out of the earth into the mountains. The pressures would have built up to an eruption long since if the dragons and the wild mages hadn't been drawing the elemental potential away with their wizardry, crude as it was. We simply accelerated events.'
Kheda wasn't wholly sure what the wizard was talking about but he knew self-justification when he heard it.
'Perhaps,' Velindre said dryly. 'The crucial thing was that we could use that ruby to work nexus magic. Between us we could draw all four elements together. Only there was no point in trying to use that quintessence against the dragons.'
'So we turned it against the instabilities in the elemental confluences and tipped the whole balance.' Naldeth rubbed a hand over his unkempt beard. 'I have to say, I wasn't expecting quite such dramatic results,' he added, contrite.
As Risala tucked herself under his arm, Kheda groped for understanding. 'How did this poison the elements?'
'They're all running into each other at the moment.' As Velindre looked up, the emerald light in the water dulled. 'Like dyestuffs bleeding into each other in cheap cloth. Any dragon with any sense will have gone in search
of a purer, stronger elemental focus. All this confusion will repel them.'
'None of these wild wizards will have a chance of working their magic' Satisfaction warred with apprehension in Naldeth's words. 'It's proved nigh on impossible for us these past few days and we're used to working complex wizardry. These wild mages only know how to draw on a single element and their spells are little more than pure instinct.'