Futile rage rose up inside me, and like a fool I struggled even harder against the unbreakable grip of his sand shape. Stop, I told myself. Anger won’t do any good now. Think, damn it! Think!
Unfortunately I’m not the only one with anger issues. Reichis’s outraged howl split the air. “Lousy Jan’Tep skinbag!”
In the periphery of my vision I saw him leap out at the mage, fangs and claws poised to tear into our enemy. But the bloodshaper was smart—and prepared. He must’ve known about Reichis, just as he’d known about Ferius, so he’d been waiting for the squirrel cat’s attack. His hand opened wide, causing his sand shape to do likewise and sending me tumbling to the ground. With a casual slap of the air, the shape struck Reichis hard, hurling him some twenty feet before the squirrel cat landed in an unconscious heap. Before I could get to my powders, the mage reached out to me and closed his hand again. Once more I was immobilised.
“Nine mages,” he said, venom thick in his voice as he squeezed my ribcage to what felt like breaking point. “Nine good men and women brought low, all because you didn’t have the courage to meet your destiny.”
“In my defence,” I groaned, struggling for breath, “it wasn’t an especially appealing fate.”
He laughed, coming closer, his sandy grip easing just a fraction. “I have to admire an opponent who makes jokes right up until the moment of his death. Ferius Parfax did that too.”
“Yeah?” I asked, struggling to shift my hands just enough to flip open the tops of the pouches at my sides. I had no hope of tossing the powders into the air—never mind forming the somatic shape to guide them—but a new plan was coming to me now. It was dirty and underhanded and even cruel. That only made it more appealing. “You should’ve been there when I blasted those nine mages, because that was really funny.”
His mouth twisted into an ugly grimace. He lifted the hand up high for an instant and then brought it back down, throwing me to the ground and knocking the wind out of me. “You would mock the deaths of your own countrymen?” he demanded. “Cannot even an exile like yourself understand how few true mages exist among us? How numerous our enemies?” Shaking in righteous fury, he willed the sand into a massive fist and brought it down on me like a hammer.
I should’ve died then, but the form wasn’t as durable as before. The sand shape broke against my shoulders, falling apart and half burying me. The blow hurt like hell, but it revealed that my opponent’s concentration was fallible.
I spat out sand. “They aren’t my countrymen. They’re a bunch of thugs who hide behind spells because they’re too cowardly to get their hands dirty.”
“Filthy shadowblack!” he shouted, and back-fisted me with about two tons of sand. Once again, though, the shape fell apart before it could do any serious damage. In the meantime, most of the powder in my pouches had fallen into the remains of his shaping.
I staggered unsteadily back to my feet and gave the mage my biggest, most slap-worthy smile. “Don’t look now, friend, but it looks like your precious spell is falling to pieces.”
He smirked right back at me. “Is that what you believe? That you can goad me into losing control of my own magic? Allow me to show you the difference between an amateur spellslinger and a true mage.” He held out his hand, palm up, and the sand rose up in the air to take the shape he willed. Slowly he began to close his fingers, watching me as I waited for death. But waiting for death has never been my style. In fact I was waiting for something else entirely.
Come on, I begged silently. Show me how tough you are. Make a nice big fist to smite me with.
The metallic red and grey tattooed bands on his forearm, signifying blood and iron, shone brightly as he focused his will, closing his fist ever tighter, the sand shape become more and more densely packed as he prepared to bring it down on my head. “Any last words?” he asked.
I would’ve liked to have replied, “Just one, arsehole,” but that would have risked mistiming my spell. I kept my mouth shut and watched for the sign. When it didn’t immediately come, I was afraid that the powders had become too diluted in the sand to ignite. But then I saw it: the first beautiful sparks rising up out of the sand as the powders trapped inside came into contact. “Carath,” I said.
The mage’s eyes went wide as he too noticed the flash of light and saw the somatic gestures my hands were making. Twin fires, red and black and carrying all the fury of a hundred hells, bore down on him, swirling all around him. Reflex made him abandon his blood spell as he tried desperately to form the somatic shapes for a shield. Too late though, because by then the sand was exploding all around us. I felt the heat as the blast of air sent me flying.
I’m pretty sure I lost consciousness for a second or two, because when I opened my eyes I was face down on the ground. Unable to get to my feet, I crawled on all fours towards my enemy, following the stench as much as my blurred vision.
When I finally reached him I was surprised to see that he actually had managed to cast a shield. Unfortunately for him, the spell had only partially manifested when the flames hit. Instead of being fried to a crisp, his body was now a patchwork of untouched skin next to tracts of burnt flesh the colour of ash. A wound on his chest bled profusely, too fast for me or anyone else to have stopped it. “Ten,” he said, spitting blood with the word. “Ten of your own people. Does it make you proud?”
“Almost never,” I replied.
He chuckled, even as tears came to his eyes, belying the curse he uttered next. “My death wins you nothing but more suffering. Another will take my place, and another should he fall. Seventy-seven mages will hunt for you until the desert turns red with your blood. Do you hear them coming, Spellslinger?”
Beneath his bravado and contempt was a terrible sadness, as though he were watching all his dreams of being a great mage—dreams I had once shared—collapse like castles made of sand. His sorrow filled me with shame for what I was about to do next, but I did it anyway. I grabbed his shoulders and squeezed until he winced in pain. “Tell me what happened to Ferius Parfax. You said you killed her. Was it a lie?”
His lips twitched and I wasn’t even sure if he’d heard me. Then he spat out a ragged laugh that brought more blood with it. “Did I say I killed her? Perhaps she escaped. Perhaps I never found her at all. Beg me for the truth and I might remember.”
I shook him again. “Please! Just tell me if she’s—”
My enemy met death with a soft exhalation of breath that carried with it his last words: “Suffer, shadowblack.”
4
The Dilemma of Dying
A day and a night went by before either Reichis or I could manage to crawl a few more feet without passing out from the pain. The pair of us were exhausted and half dead. Being stuck out in the desert with no guide and no supplies would soon take care of the other half.
“You know what I was thinking?” Reichis asked, rousing me from my steady drift into a sleep from which I was unlikely to awake.
I forced my eyes open. The first blush of orange dawn was pushing back against the darkness. It would start getting hot again soon. “What’s that?”
“When that mage asked if you had any last words? You should’ve said, ‘Just one,’ and then blasted him.”
I lay until I could get enough breath in my lungs to waste it on a reply. “Good note. I’ll remember that for next time.”
As the first rays of morning light brushed my cheek, numbness began to seep through the rest of me. This was it. This was really it. In another hour, maybe two, I was going to die.
With the last dregs of strength of will left to me, I slowly inched towards Reichis.
“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously.
I collapsed a couple of feet away from him and reached out a hand to lay it against his fur.
“Kellen?” He figured out what I was doing. “Get that stinkin’ paw of yours off o’ me!”
“No,” I said, watching as his coat slowly changed colour. He was trying to make it go black with d
ark red stripes the way he does when he wants to look threatening, but he was too weak now. Instead it turned a pale grey. I stroked it gently. “If we’re going to die out here, then I’m going to say what I have to say. And you’re going to listen.”
The squirrel cat tried to squirm away, but he didn’t have the strength for it. “Get off me, skinbag! I’m not your kin. I’m not even your friend! This was strictly a business arrangement!”
“Reichis,” I said, ignoring his protests, “you were mean and irritable. A thief, a liar, a …”
“A murderer,” he added.
“Right. That too. But despite all that, you were … Reichis, I want you to know that I lo—”
He cut me off with a snarl, scrambling to try and get his legs under him. “Idiot skinbag! All your moanin’ and talkin’ kept us from hearin’ them!”
“Hearing who?” But then I heard it too: the quiet plod of footsteps on sand. I managed to roll onto my back, not that it would do me any good. My fingers were so numb that if I tried to cast the carath spell all I’d do was blow my own hands off.
Two hooded figures stood over us, the rising sun at their backs hiding them in shadow. Gradually I made out the long black leather coats they wore, nothing like the brightly coloured silks of a Jan’Tep mage, but far more functional. They knelt down and began to drag me onto a litter made of woven reeds.
“Well, what do you know?” I said to Reichis. “That scout wasn’t lying about taking us to the Ebony Abbey.”
“Yeah,” he growled softly, “only she left something out.”
Squirrel cats have better eyesight than humans, which is why he noticed what was wrong before I did: underneath his hood, the face of the monk nearest me was covered in twisting black lines that moved as though alive when I stared at them.
“Well, crap,” I muttered as consciousness slipped away from me.
Despite all the trials and tribulations in our way, we’d found our mythical monastery in the desert, or rather, it had found us. Problem was, it hadn’t gotten its name because they had a cure for the shadowblack.
They called it the Ebony Abbey because the monks who lived there embraced it.
5
The Downside of Dreams
My people hate dreams.
Can’t stand them.
Awful things.
The most fundamental demand magic makes of a mage’s mind is clarity: complete awareness of your surroundings and absolute discipline over your thoughts. You can’t exert dominion over the six esoteric forces of reality if your brain is busy telling you that you’re bouncing atop the back of a floating snake, surrounded by white bears who keep whistling in your ears.
So, yeah, my people have no use for dreams.
Neither do outlaws, by the way. Hard to get yourself out of a jam while hallucinating something that—in retrospect—probably isn’t much worse than what’s actually about to happen to you.
“White bears!” I screamed, struggling to escape my bonds. As if the bears weren’t enough, a slick, oily sea creature was swallowing my legs. I was already halfway down the monster’s throat, the disgusting slackness of its outer flesh smothering me in its wet, icy grip. The more I tried to kick it away, the tighter the foul thing’s grasp became, until at last my highly trained Jan’Tep mind took control.
You’re tangled in your blankets, moron. And they’re only wet because you’ve been sweating in them.
With considerable effort I unwrapped the heavy coverings from my legs and threw them off. I regretted it immediately. Wherever I was, it must be night because it was damned cold. And dark. I shook my head until I felt fully awake and then slapped myself a couple of times just to make sure. Dreams are tricky that way; they fool you into thinking you’re awake, and then a few seconds later, sure enough, more whistling white bears come to eat you.
As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I found myself in some sort of tent constructed from three poles joined at the top by leather straps, the entire affair draped in thick canvas. I was still wearing my own clothes, which was bad, because like the blankets they were soaked through with fever sweat. Shivering uncontrollably, I nonetheless got myself up to a sitting position and looked around for something to use as a weapon. I almost never wake up in a strange place without somebody planning to kill me.
I found the remains of my pack nearby—at least what hadn’t been burned to a crisp in the desert by that Jan’Tep bloodshaper. Most of the contents were destroyed, but I still had a half-deck of Ferius’s razor-sharp steel cards. I put those aside before remembering to run a hand along the bottom seam of my shirt. My fingertips found the distinctive shapes of the five castradazi coins hidden inside a secret fold sewn into the fabric so that Reichis wouldn’t steal them when I slept. My chest unclenched a little. A bunch of cards and a few coins might not seem all that impressive, but at times like these you take what you can get.
I peered around the rest of the tent, looking for … Yes! A couple of feet away my belt was waiting for me, coiled up, the pouches still attached. They’d be almost empty of course, since I’d used up most of the powders on that damned bloodshaper, but even a pinch or two can mean the difference between escape and execution.
I put on the belt and placed the steel cards in a leather case I’d had sewn onto the right leg of my trousers by a tailor who’d found the idea ridiculous but had been happy to take my money.
Okay, I thought. I’ve got all my stuff. Now where’s—
“So. You’re awake.”
The voice that had nearly given me a heart attack had spoken in Daroman, but the accent made me suspect he was Berabesq. A face whose sharp features confirmed as much appeared at the opening of the tent. He was younger than I expected—maybe a year older than me—and didn’t look like any monk I’d ever seen. His hair was chestnut brown and came down nearly to his shoulders. Instead of robes he wore a long, sleeveless black leather coat that showed off both the lean muscles of his arms and the twisting black lines that wound around them. What wasn’t there was just as surprising.
“You don’t have any bands,” I said, my voice creaking like the hinges on a rusty gate.
He rolled his eyes. “Typical Jan’Tep. Probably raised to believe only mages can get the shadowblack, right?” He flexed one of his arms. The markings writhed around the skin. “Just one more lie your people tell.” He sat back on his heels. “My name is Tournam, and in case you’re wondering, I’m the one who saved you from dying in the desert. Don’t get all weepy with gratitude.” He held out a silver bowl to me. “There’s food, if you’re hungry.”
“I’m …” Starving, I realised. Absolutely starving. I’d eat my own arm if there was enough meat left on it.
“I could eat, I suppose,” I replied, shivering because he was letting in the cold air.
Inside the bowl was a fairly disgusting-looking mixture of dried grasses topped with bits of cooked meat from something unidentifiable and probably equally disgusting. I practically tore the bowl out of his hand.
So good … I thought, only tasting the food because a few particles of the meat still remained on my tongue once the rest had already slid down my throat.
“You shouldn’t eat so quickly,” he advised. “You’ll make yourself—”
“More!” I demanded, showing him the empty bowl.
He crossed his arms over his chest, flexing the muscles, which—unnervingly—caused his shadowblack markings to writhe like snakes. “Later, once your stomach has adjusted to the food.”
“Now,” I rasped, my voice still too raw for such extended conversations.
Generally speaking, it’s not advisable to make demands of your hosts—or kidnappers—but I’d been pretty much starving even before they’d taken me, and at least a couple of days must have passed since then. Also, it’s possible that my table manners had become a little less refined after spending too much time around a certain two-foot-tall furry glutton.
Wait, I thought. How was I even able to get three bite
s without him stealing them?
“Where’s Reichis?” I asked.
My benefactor stared back at me quizzically. “I don’t know any place with that name. This is—”
“The squirrel cat! The animal that was with me when you found me.”
He chuckled, which the Berabesq manage to do with an accent. “Ah, the animal.”
“‘Ah’ what?” I asked, a sudden cold creeping into my belly.
The young monk knelt down and sat back on his heels. “The abbot ordered us to bring you, not anyone else. The abbey has no use for animals.” He nodded to the bowl in my hand. “Except as food, of course.”
There wasn’t much powder in my pouches, so I only got a pinch in each hand before I blasted the son of a bitch.
6
White Sand
My spell doesn’t work the same as regular fire. The twin red and black flames react differently depending on how much powder I use and the precise way I angle my fingers. The effect can range from being hit with a very large tree to having rapacious fiery apparitions tear your flesh apart. With the tiny pinch of powders I’d used in this particular case, and with the index and middle fingers of each hand aimed just a touch away from each other, the result was like taking a very hot cooking pan and slamming it into Tournam’s chest. Very, very hard.
He was knocked back several feet, so I took advantage of his momentary disorientation to scramble out of the tent. Soon I was a dozen yards away from him, fleeing into the night.
He’s lying about Reichis, I told myself over and over. Even injured, the squirrel cat would’ve got away before they could catch him. With his ability to change the colour of his fur to match his environment, he could have disappeared into the golden sands.
And then what?
Even if Reichis had been able to get away, I’d left him alone in the desert, wounds festering, dying of thirst …
“Reichis!” I shouted.
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