Soulbinder
Page 9
She stopped, and turned back to me, sliding her fingers between mine as if we’d known each other forever. “Everybody gets the speech, Kellen.” Her face contorted to a deeply serious expression clearly not suited to her features. “‘You’re going to die, you know? You’ll fight it, you’ll think you’ve mastered it, but the shadowblack will still take you, my son. You’ll die. Die. Die. Die.’”
Despite how hard I tried not to, I couldn’t help but break out laughing. And when I did, I couldn’t stop—not even when the laughter turned to useless tears and racking sobs so bad I slipped and found myself on my butt, a sharp pain in my back where I had struck one of the stairs. Even then I couldn’t stop myself. Reichis was dead. I’d left him behind. In a lifetime of feeling useless, I’d never felt as helpless as I did now.
Diadera grabbed on to me, kneeling awkwardly next to me. “It’s all right, Kellen. I know. I know what this feels like. But I promise, it’s all going to be different for you now.”
“Different how?”
She took my hand and put it against her cheek, my fingertips touching her markings, that strange connection between us igniting once again. Then she looked at me with those pale green eyes of hers, and I swear she could’ve said just about anything and I would’ve believed her, even if the words she chose hadn’t been the ones I’d most wanted to hear since the day I’d left the Jan’Tep territories. “You’re home now, Kellen.”
20
The Invitation
Diadera led me by the hand down the tower’s winding stairs. At the end of a curved hallway on the third landing she pointed out a half-open door. “There’s a room there for guests of the abbey,” she said, adding, “if you want to sleep.”
I could’ve sworn I’d heard a slight rise in her voice at the end, like she’d asked a question. For a fraction of a second the corner of her mouth had twisted up into a smile. Or had it? I was so exhausted and bleary-eyed by this point I might’ve just imagined it.
Spend enough nights in travellers’ saloons, though, and you come to learn that when someone says, “If you want to sleep,” sometimes they’re asking if you’re tired and other times they’re asking whether you’d like to sleep with them. My people consider innuendo to be the province of poets, actors and other undesirables, which has left me kind of bad at it.
Ferius Parfax had once demonstrated to me how a simple greeting such as “Well, hello there” could convey as many as twelve different insinuations, ranging from mild disinterest to outright salaciousness. So which was it now?
“Kellen?” Diadera asked.
Damn, but she was beautiful. Even her shadowblack freckles drew my gaze—the way they adorned her cheeks down to her jaw line, with just a few trailing down that perfect neck, the last ones hiding just beneath the collar of her long leather coat.
“If you want to sleep …?”
No, she hadn’t said it like that. Not exactly. And why would Diadera be interested in me anyway? We’d only just met. It was ridiculous. The question had been perfectly innocent. Only, my palms were slick. My breathing was unusually fast. There were other signs of my interest in her too, though it felt very, very important to ignore those ones.
If only I could be sure what she’d meant. Had Reichis been here, he’d’ve sniffed her leg and then informed me she was expecting me to kiss her and then suggested elaborate—and highly inappropriate—mating rituals. Ferius, on the other hand, would’ve advised responding with the most innocent answer possible, but delivering it with a saucy wink.
“I am very tired,” I replied, remembering to wink about a second too late. Then I wasn’t sure if I even had winked properly, so I did the thing one should never do in such situations: I winked again.
Diadera looked back at me, head tilted. “Are you all right? You have a twitch in your eye.”
“I’m fine … I just … you know …”
Oh, ancestors, did I just wink again?
I suddenly missed Nephenia so much my chest hurt. I never had to put on airs around her. She would’ve responded to my pathetic attempts at romantic subtlety by telling me that playing coy in the hope that the other person will make the decision for you is both selfish and cowardly. Then she would’ve smiled at me in that way that said, without words and yet with perfect clarity, “It’s okay, Kellen. You’re allowed to be bad at this,” and everything would’ve been okay again.
Reichis. Ferius. Nephenia. How was I supposed to stop missing them when I couldn’t get them out of my head?
“Kellen?” Diadera asked. She appeared genuinely concerned about me by this point.
I started to reach out to her. Maybe if my fingers touched her markings, the way hers had touched mine, we’d share that connection again and this would stop being so complicated. My hand moved slowly, tentatively, then stopped.
No. Not like this. Not in the way of a boy trying to steal a slice of cake.
An odd sense of calm came over me. I had made a decision. Regardless of what Diadera had or had not implied by her question, I was not going to fall into bed with a girl I’d just met out of some desperate desire to escape my grief. I’d take my pain and my loss like a man. Whatever that meant.
I was about to say goodnight when I noticed she seemed to be getting taller. A dull ache was coming to the back of my head too. That’s when I realised I’d fallen back against the wall and was now slumping down to the floor. Diadera ran over and grabbed me, pulling my arm over her shoulder and supporting me as she led me into the tower’s small guest room.
She managed to get me over to the bed. I said, “Diadera, I’ve decided not to …”
“Idiot.”
“What did I—”
She gently set me down on what turned out to be a remarkably comfortable mattress. “Not you, me. I should’ve realised you’re not used to this altitude. The air’s thinner up here. No wonder you’ve been staring at me like some half-witted village oaf. And you’re obviously exhausted. It’s a wonder you’ve survived any of this.” She tossed a thick blanket over me. “You’ll be better in the morning. For now, sleep.”
Sleep. The word alone was enough to make my eyes heavy. But I pushed the blankets aside nonetheless. “We have to … set traps,” I mumbled.
Ferius always set up a perimeter when we bunked down for the night—whether in some stray patch of forest in the middle of nowhere or inside a wealthy merchant’s palace. I fumbled in the pockets of my shirt and trousers. Where had I left the strings with the bells and the foot spikes?
“Kellen, stop.” Diadera pushed me gently back down. “You’ll hurt yourself. It’s safe here, I promise. Rest.”
“Can’t,” I said, my attempts to rise failing utterly. “Never bed down without settin’ yer tra—”
I felt that strange connection again. When I looked up, some of her shadowblack freckles were drifting from her face to mine. They fluttered against the markings of my left eye like the wings of a butterfly.
Rest.
I lost consciousness after that.
21
The Dreamer
I dreamed of those I’d left behind.
Ferius Parfax was dancing with two other women in flowing silk garments. They spun and twirled along a marble floor like graceful planets orbiting her sun, their arms swaying out to touch her shoulder or her cheeks. It felt wrong, watching the dance unfold. It was too intimate, too …
Wait. They’re not dancing. Ferius calls it dancing, but to everyone else it’s fighting.
The women were attacking her. Their hands whipped out, and tiny knives appeared out of nowhere. The Argosi batted them away with fanned-out steel cards in one hand and her extensible steel rod in the other. She was tired though, and as she spun to keep her attackers in view, droplets of blood were flung from a half-dozen wounds on her face and arms.
Ferius! Ferius, hold on! I’m coming!
She turned and looked at me over her shoulder. “Don’t talk crazy, kid. You’re nowhere near here. You left, remember?”
“Don’t waste time wrastlin’ problems you can’t fix.” She whirled just in time to dodge a short, thin blade thrust at her face. Then she said, “This isn’t a dream, Kellen.”
Wait, what? What do you mean, this isn’t—
She was gone. So were the two assassins.
The sound of hoofs thundered in my ears. Nephenia was riding a fast horse along a grey dusty road, coming towards me. Ishak, her hyena familiar, balanced atop the horse’s neck, barked something I couldn’t understand.
Nephenia, where are you going? Who’s chasing you?
“There’s no time!” she shouted. “He’s all alone out there!”
Who’s alone, Nephenia? Who are you—
The horse was almost upon me now. “Kellen, look out!” she shouted, seeing me for the first time. “This isn’t a dream!” The horse reared up, its hoofs—
Sand.
Nothing but sand now, deep underfoot and swirling in the air. A squirrel cat reared up, hackles rising, coat turning pure crimson with black stripes, gliding flaps stretched out to make itself appear larger. It was Reichis. He growled and hissed and snarled at someone behind me. I tried to turn my head to see who it was, but I couldn’t. Reichis began to circle his enemy. The squirrel cat was hurt, dragging his front leg. His eyes were unfocused, blinking away the sand as he struggled to see his opponent. I heard laughter, and the sound of ember fires igniting the air.
Reichis, run! Don’t fight a mage without me! We have to be smart, do this together, like we always do. We’ll kill him, Reichis. We’ll kill him for trying to hurt you. We’ll—
Reichis chittered. “Don’t be stupid, Kellen. You’re a thousand miles away. You can’t help me. I’m doing this for you.”
Fear and frustration took hold of me. I could feel my body struggling against the blankets I’d gotten myself wrapped up in. It’s a dream, I told myself. A meaningless hallucination. It’s all just pain and bad memories and all the wasted—
But then Reichis looked up at me, the fur of his muzzle so close I could’ve reached out and touched it. “Stop saying that, Kellen,” he growled, voice thick with irritation. “I keep telling you, this isn’t a dream.”
My hands gripped at the blankets, tearing them off me. I tried to rise, to force my eyes open …
“No, dummy,” a new voice said. It didn’t belong to Ferius or Nephenia or Reichis, but to someone just as familiar. “This only works if you’re unconscious. Calm down and listen to me, Kellen. This is not a dream!”
It was all gone now. The marble floor, the dusty road, the desert sand. I was standing inside a vast heptagonal room, barefoot. The floor was cool, but not unpleasant. When I looked down I saw it was made from silver, polished and gleaming. Seven columns held up a domed roof of dusky glass through which pinpoints of starlight stretched down to glisten in the silky white smoke of a brazier set in the centre of the room.
“Hello?” I called out.
A feminine form strode through the haze towards me, robed in silks that shimmered softly through every colour imaginable, anchored only by the sun-golden hair that framed her face and the cuts on her hands that dripped blood onto the silver floor. “Finally,” she said. “I thought you were going to make me stand here and bleed to death before you’d stop filling my head with all your inane thoughts.”
I hate it when my sister does this.
22
The Sanctum
I’ve heard that when you’re not sure if what you’re seeing is real or a dream, pinching yourself is a good way to—
“Don’t,” Shalla warned, and held up her bleeding hands. “If you wake up now, all this will have been for nothing.”
“Why are you using blood magic?” I asked, and turned—more slowly this time—to take in the massive sanctum. “And where is this place?”
My sister grunted in annoyance, a somewhat childish mannerism at odds with the unworldly scene she’d conjured. “We’re in my mind, obviously,” she replied, then added, “Yours is exactly as much of a mess as I would’ve expected. Why on earth do you allow all those terrible thoughts of death and dying into your dreams?”
“You think I have a choice?”
She gave me a raised eyebrow by way of reply.
“Shalla, you’re telling me you’ve learned how to control your dreams?”
“Of course. I’ve been doing it since I was ten.” She gestured to the serenity of her imaginary—at least my jealousy made me hope it was imaginary—mage’s sanctum. “I spend my nights here. I find it very practical.”
“Practical?”
She walked over to the nearest column and touched its surface. The marble coating seemed to dissolve, revealing shelves holding countless vials and glass boxes with all manner of stones and powders inside them. She picked up something that looked like a piece of jade and tossed it onto the brazier in the middle of the room. The smoke took on a green hue, and the room came into sharper focus. “That’s better,” she said, coming back to me. “I’m sure some people enjoy bizarre night terrors or perverse fantasies, but I prefer to use my sleeping time for experimentation.”
“Experimentation …” I said.
She looked at me quizzically. “Are you drifting away again? You keep repeating the last thing I said. Anyway …” She aimed a finger at the silver floor and traced a circle in the air. Yellow sparks appeared, forming a perfect spell circle. “See? If you establish the rules of your dream world accurately, you can work out all number of esoteric geometries while designing new spells.”
I walked over and took her wrist, holding up her bleeding hand. “Too bad you can’t envision it without all the blood.”
“Don’t be silly, Kellen. I told you—this isn’t a dream. I’m just using this place to give you focus so you don’t regain consciousness and break this very complex and taxing silk spell.” She took her hand away. “The blood magic was the only way I could create a connection between us. Now, can we get down to business?”
She gestured behind me. I turned and watched as part of the silver floor turned liquid, rising up like a fountain. When it had reached about two feet, it slowed, the molten silver taking on the shape of a rather elegant chair. Knowing Shalla’s propensity for obstinacy—especially after she’s taken pains to be impressive—I sat down. “Good,” she said, taking a seat upon her own somewhat more regal silver throne. She looked down at the blood from her hands already pooling on the wide arms. “I suppose we’d best be quick. If I pass out from blood loss, it’s unlikely anyone will find me in time.”
Any concerns I might have had that this was just a dream were banished by Shalla’s unbearable and all too familiar self-assurance. That this was real gave me a small sliver of hope. “Did you do it? Did you get help to Reichis?”
“Who? Oh, the nekhek.” She leaned back on her silver throne. “Really, Kellen, I wish you’d just get a proper familiar, or at least a less offensive pet. Father should’ve dest—”
“Shalla,” I said, cutting her off. I considered my next words carefully. Despite all the complicated machinations and deceits between us, despite the way she’d always treated me as an inferior, and one who—no matter the horrors our parents had tried to inflict on me—always needed to be reminded of my duty to our house, I still loved her. She had saved me as many times as she’d nearly gotten me killed. She was my sister, and she would always be precious to me. But she was talking about my business partner. “Finish that sentence, and, dream or no dream, I will make you regret it.”
She stared at me, her smile easy, everything in her posture relaxed. I knew it for an act. She was scared. And hurt. I’d just hurt my little sister. She held on to the pretence regardless. “My, my. Outlaw life has changed you, brother.”
“Having people try to kill you all the time tends to clarify things. Where is Reichis?”
“Clarify things such as …?”
I couldn’t afford to let up. Shalla has
a kind of addiction for control. When it gets the best of her, she follows what the Argosi call the Way of Stone. “Such as who you’re willing to die for, and, sometimes, who you’re willing to kill. Now tell me what happened to Reichis.”
“What if I told you I forgot all about the rodent? What if I told you I had better things to do with my time—and my spells—than search out a filthy nekhek and try to save its life? Would you kill me, brother?”
“I …”
I was going about this all wrong. Ferius wouldn’t use arta valar against someone as obstinate as Shalla. Daring would only harden her. A better path was arta precis. Perception. My sister wouldn’t go to all this trouble to contact me if it weren’t important. Chances are, she wouldn’t do so just to tell me she’d saved Reichis either.
She wants something.
Arta siva, the talent of persuasion, is not so much about coaxing an opponent as it is about reframing their context. “I’m sorry, Shalla. I shouldn’t have frightened you. I’d never hurt you for failing to help Reichis. I’m only half the mage you are, but I can’t imagine how difficult those spells would be.”
Frightened. Hurt. Failing. That should do the trick.
An angry flush came to her cheeks. “Half the mage I am?” In fact, Shalla was ten times the spellcaster I would ever be. The idea that I considered myself anywhere in her league was intolerable. “I’ve cast more complex spells in my sleep. Literally.”
“I’ve upset you, sister. Again, I apologise.” I rose from my chair. “You and Father have probably been right all along. I should never have bonded with a nekhek. All he ever did was steal my stuff and bite me.”
Shalla’s not so easily fooled. “After all your bleating about the squirrel cat, now you don’t care?”
Arta tuco, the talent of subtlety—or gambling, as Ferius calls it—has many facets. The simplest one is reducing the value of your own stakes, and thus raising those of your opponent. “Your hands are still bleeding, Shalla. This spell is dangerous.” I walked past her, to the door at the far end of the room. “I’m going to go now. I’ve found a new home, a new place in the world far from the things that once seemed so important. You should rest. I hope we get to speak again soon.”