‘The Sha’Tep are forbidden from having children,’ Abydos said. He nodded to where Shalla lay on the table in the lower section of the room. ‘The great houses want only more mages like her.’ He reached out a hand to my cheek. ‘If the lords magi had their way, those like you and me would—’
‘I’m not Sha’Tep,’ I said, pushing his hand away.
‘That’s what we all tell ourselves,’ Abydos said. ‘“It’s just temporary … My magic will come back if I just wish it hard enough.”’
A man older than my uncle removed his mask. ‘It wasn’t always this way. Once we were soldiers as often as servants. Some of us trained as scholars and diplomats. We even had our own seats on the council. But year after year, generation after generation, people like your father take away more and more of our rights.’
‘Why didn’t you speak up?’ I asked, as ashamed as I was angered by their words. ‘Why not demand your rights?’
‘Our grandfathers and grandmothers tried,’ said a woman, her face hidden beneath a horrific fanged mask. ‘Just like their grandmothers and grandfathers before them. Each time they were punished. Pain spells. Mind chains. Magic.’ She said the word as if it were something filthy and disgusting.
I looked up at Abydos, my uncle, who I’d spent my whole life believing was the mild, contented fellow who happily brought us our food and took care of our home. ‘Father would have listened,’ I said. ‘He would never—’
‘Ke’heops is the worst of them all,’ he said, cutting me off even as he turned away from me. ‘When we were children … you could never have found two boys more alike. We were best friends. We did everything together: laughing, looking out for each other, finishing each other’s thoughts. Then one morning he began sparking his bands.’ Abydos held up his arms, the lines of the sigils so faint they just looked like old scars. ‘I didn’t, and from that day forth the brother that I’d loved, that I’d protected, treated me like little more than a useful pet.’
‘Sounds like a hard life,’ Ferius said. ‘A brave man might stand up and fight to change it. He just wouldn’t do it by hurting children.’
Abydos strode towards her, his face as much a mask of rage as any of the black lacquer ones worn by his followers. For a moment I thought he might strike her, but he calmed himself and his voice was almost pleading. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m doing this for Kellen!’
‘For me? What are you talking about?’
‘When the others first approached me with their plan, I refused. I said I loved my family.’ He turned to me. ‘What good is my love if all I do is stand by while your parents destroy the magic inside you that you long for so much, even more than Ke’heops ever did.’
‘They thought I had the shadowblack,’ I said. ‘They were trying to protect me.’ The words sounded utterly unconvincing even to me.
‘They were protecting her,’ Abydos said. He walked down the stairs to where she lay unconscious on the table. ‘Shalla – who has none of her mother’s kindness, and all of her father’s arrogance. Shalla, who would one day become a monster worse than any of them, if we gave her the chance.’
I started after him, but two of the men grabbed me before I took a step. ‘Uncle, what are you doing?’
He bent down to the floor and lifted up a narrow tray, which he set down next to her on the table. I saw the flames of six small braziers. Above each one rested a tiny clay jar bearing a symbol representing the liquefied metal within. A piece of loosely wrapped silk sat on the right side of the tray, the kind that might be used to hold writing implements, but which I knew contained a set of long, thin needles, one for each jar.
‘I’m doing this for you, Kellen. I couldn’t stop Ke’heops from denying you your magic, but you and I can make him pay for what he’s done to you. We can do it together.’
He looked back up at me, a terrible love in his eyes that held me more than any binding spell, more than the men who gripped my arms. ‘You …’ My voice was barely a whisper. I was so desperate not to say the words but somehow unable to stop myself. ‘You’re counter-banding Shalla for me.’
How many times had I resented Shalla for the luck she’d never earned, for the way magic came to her so easily. How many times had I secretly wished she would fail, that her bands wouldn’t spark. How many times, lying there strapped to that table over the past days, had I wished my parents would burn the counter-sigils into her skin instead of mine, and take the magic away from her forever.
‘Shalla had nothing to do with any of this,’ I said, to myself as much as to Abydos. ‘She tried to help me find my magic.’
‘Shalla is the worst of all of them.’ Abydos’s voice was soft, almost regretful. ‘I tried … in my own small way I’ve tried to get her to change, but she is a perfect replica of Ke’heops in female form, only she will be stronger than he ever was, when she comes into her power. She’ll be the worst tyrant our people have ever seen.’ He shook his head and looked back up at me. ‘She will treat you as a pet at best and a slave at worst, Kellen.’
‘You don’t know the future,’ Ferius Parfax said. ‘Even the wisest of us doesn’t know that.’
‘Perhaps not, Argosi.’ To me he said, ‘Look in your heart and tell me I’m wrong, Kellen. Tell me that Shalla will still call you brother the day after you’re made Sha’Tep.’
I wanted to. I wanted to call him a liar and say he didn’t understand Shalla, that underneath the arrogance she was different. I wanted to tell him that she’d always love me as her brother, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t be sure it was true.
Abydos picked up one of the needles and dipped it into one of the heated ceramic jars. ‘Did you know that it’s easier for a Sha’Tep to inscribe the counter-sigils than for one of the Jan’Tep? The very magic that courses through their veins rebels against the act, as though it were a kind of desecration.’
‘How did you learn the counter-sigils? Only the lords magi know their forms.’
‘Your father of course. I don’t think he meant to leave them unlocked in his study, but he was distracted while stealing your future from you.’ He held up the needle. A single drop of liquid copper dangled from its end. ‘I will show you how. We can do this together.’
‘You’ll show me how …’ The Jan’Tep were monsters, as cruel to their own Sha’Tep brothers and sisters today as they had been to the Mahdek they’d massacred three hundred years ago. My father spoke of honour and doing what was best for our house, but that had only meant doing what was best for him. My uncle … My uncle had suffered in silence my entire life until I’d set off this chain of events, from cheating at my duel with Tennat, to Shalla nearly killing me, to my father unwittingly revealing how he’d suppressed my magic my whole life. Now my uncle had finally found a way to help me get back at the world.
‘We can do this together.’
‘Uncle Abydos?’ I said.
He put down the needle. ‘Yes, Kellen?’
‘I’m ready now. Tell your men to let me go.’
He nodded and the men on either side of me released my arms.
‘I’m going to come down there and take my sister,’ I said. ‘Then Ferius and Reichis and I are going to carry her out of here, back up to the surface, where I’m going to put her on the horse in the barn and take her home.’
‘I can’t let you do that,’ he said, the expression on his face so sad and lonely that I genuinely felt as if I were disappointing him.
‘If you try to stop me, Uncle, I’ll kill you.’
38
The Bluff
Abydos set the needle down on the tray and began walking up the stairs towards me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his men readying their weapons. Ferius shifted her weight, no doubt preparing some manoeuvre to give her an edge when the fight began.
Reichis clambered up my leg and back onto my shoulder. ‘Finally. Which one do I get to kill first?’
‘I think the animal’s going to attack,’ the young sandy-haired man warned, his knife at the rea
dy. He moved into position next to Abydos.
The deep rage that had led me to threaten my uncle dissipated far faster than I would have thought possible, replaced by the cold, hard reality of our situation. There were just too many of them. Ferius, for all her taunts, was still groggy from the drugs they’d given her to fight them off. I’d used up what little strength the mine hadn’t already sapped by carrying Shalla further than my arms could handle. Even Reichis, for all his posturing, seemed to know that we couldn’t win this fight.
‘This would be a good time for a really powerful spell,’ he chittered in my ear.
‘I’ve got one that channels a light breeze,’ I said, ignoring the confused looks of my uncle and his followers. ‘Think that’ll work?’
Reichis gave a sigh. ‘Why did I ever agree to partner up with a magic-less skinbag?’
‘I think because your mother ordered you to.’
‘That’s dirty fighting.’
Okay, so we can’t win this with magic, and we can’t win it with weapons. What I really needed was some kind of ingenious ruse. Didn’t I used to be good at that? I’d tricked Tennat into beating himself in our initiates’ duel. Problem is, one gullible bully is easier to bluff than six deadly serious men and women. What I needed was a way to reduce their numbers so that Ferius, Reichis and I could make a move. Okay, so what weakness does a conspiracy have? The answer hit me like a blast of ember magic. Trust. ‘There’s something you failed to consider about this great rebellion of yours, Uncle.’
He gave a low chuckle, and smiled to the other Sha’Tep. ‘You see what I told you? Always some trick or scheme rolling around in his head. Never lets anyone see when he’s scared. Never backs down.’
‘This whole plan of yours is vulnerable – it relies on the Sha’Tep who live and work in the great houses poisoning the initiates from those families.’
‘It’s not poison,’ one of the women said defensively. ‘It just lessens their connection to the power of the oasis.’
‘Which will make the lords magi believe the bloodlines are weakening,’ I said, following the train of logic.
The young man with the sandy hair nodded, apparently excited that I’d worked it out. ‘With the clan prince dead, the council are terrified that the Berabesq will try to take advantage of our weakness to once again try to destroy us, or that the Daroman military will come to conquer us.’
The big man who’d worn the tusked mask spoke up. ‘When they see barely a handful of initiates becoming mages, they’ll realise how much they need the Sha’Tep. The mages don’t have the strength to pick up weapons. They don’t know how to fight or what it feels like to ache from hard labour.’
‘Exactly,’ Abydos said. ‘The Jan’Tep will finally understand that they need us, not as servants, but as equals.’
I shook my head in disgust. ‘Ancestors! No wonder there’s never been a Sha’Tep conspiracy before. You people are terrible at this.’
‘Don’t,’ Abydos warned. ‘Don’t mock these people and the risk they take.’
Okay, time to see how gullible you are, Uncle. ‘One of them has betrayed you.’
‘What? Who?’ the older man asked.
‘No one,’ Abydos said. ‘He’s just trying to stall.’
I took a chance and pushed back. ‘How can you be so stupid? Of course I was bluffing before – I was hoping Shalla would wake. But then I realised just how careless you’ve all been.’ Now that I thought about it, they really had been careless, which made it all the more easy to make my ploy sound believable. ‘Ra’meth knows! You haven’t launched some grand rebellion. All you’ve done is to turn over power to our family’s greatest enemy!’
‘What are you talking about?’
I started to weave recent events into my story. ‘The day after Tennat and his brothers attacked Ferius, Tennat showed up at the oasis and his magic was weakened. He couldn’t cast any spells.’
‘We got to him just like we got to the others,’ the big man said proudly.
‘Except that the next night he was casting blood sympathy spells! And just hours ago he was using silk and iron magic to track me! Don’t you see? Ra’meth figured out what you were doing and caught the Sha’Tep who was poisoning Tennat.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Abydos said. ‘Sephan here –’ he indicated the young man with the sandy hair – ‘is Ra’meth’s personal servant. He’d know if anyone in the House of Ra had found out.’
I leaned back against the wall, letting my exhaustion show through. ‘You know, Uncle, all my life I thought that the main difference between you and my father was that you didn’t have magic. Now I know it’s that you’re incredibly dumb.’ I pointed to Sephan. ‘Ra’meth put a mind chain on him. His will is bound and he can’t even do anything that would let you see that he’s been caught.’
My uncle and the others looked over at Sephan, who looked back at them in confusion. ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m fine. I couldn’t get any more of the compound into Tennat’s food that night. Everything will be fine.’
‘Except you’d have no choice but to say that if you were mind-chained,’ the big man pointed out.
I had to hold back my sigh of relief. I’d given, I thought, an excellent performance. The fear and then the anger on my face had been believable, and my lie was just credible enough to create doubt in their minds.
My deception had only one flaw, which had already started to squirm around in the back of my mind. There was a reason why my story was so convincing.
It turned out to be true.
‘Well, well, well,’ a voice said from down the corridor in the mausoleum. ‘This all sounds positively dire.’
It was Ra’meth.
39
The Hero
It says something about how much I hated and feared Ra’meth that my first reaction was to try to hit him with a spell.
‘Breath magic?’ He looked amused. ‘That’s really the best we can hope for from the son of the great Ke’heops?’ He made a tiny gesture with one hand and whispered a single syllable. I found myself paralysed. The lord magus turned as he gazed at each of the walls in the mausoleum. ‘Absolutely remarkable. This will make my ascension as clan prince an even more memorable accomplishment for our people.’
Reichis sprang into the air, only to collide with something invisible before falling to the ground. The squirrel cat growled, rearing up to launch himself at the mage, but Ra’meth uttered a second spell and Reichis fell unconscious. ‘I really thought we’d killed all those filthy creatures centuries ago.’
‘How is this possible?’ one of the Sha’Tep conspirators asked, straining against invisible bonds. ‘Mages can’t work spells here in the mines.’
The corners of Ra’meth’s mouth rose in a jackal’s grin. ‘I won’t lie to you. It’s not as easy as it looks. The compounds I had to drink have some rather unpleasant intestinal side effects. Nonetheless, they do counteract the effects of close proximity to the ore.’ The lord magus brought his palms together as if in prayer, then turned them so the backs faced each other before intertwining the fingers together. Suddenly we were all falling, tumbling as if the entire chamber were spinning at great speed. I felt myself hit one of the walls and stuck there as if dozens of hands were holding my limbs immobile.
‘You see,’ Ra’meth said to Abydos and his followers, ‘the reason mages do not mine the ore ourselves is not that it’s impossible for us, simply that it’s beneath us.’
‘Jan’Tep bastard!’ Tusks shouted, but for all his anger and size, he was trapped like a fly inside an invisible web.
The trick to resisting a binding spell isn’t pulling against it on a physical level, you have to set your mind against it, willing it to break apart. With every fibre of my being I commanded the spell to shatter, but I might as well have been trying to crush an ocean with my bare hands.
Ra’meth seemed to find my exertions amusing. ‘I’ve seen your father breach much stronger shackles many times, you k
now. It’s not that hard – just a matter of will.’ He approached me without a trace of fear that I would break the spell. ‘Come, Kellen of the House of Ke. Are you not your father’s son? Show me the strength of your bloodline.’
‘Leave the boy alone,’ Abydos said, struggling against his own bonds. ‘Kellen has nothing to do with this.’
Ra’meth stopped. ‘Nothing? You do the boy a disservice. None of this would have been possible without him.’ He reached down and took hold of my wrist. To me it felt as if thick iron manacles held it against the wall, but Ra’meth lifted it up effortlessly to scrutinise the bands on my forearms. ‘Ke’heops does excellent work. Very precise. I doubt a hundred mages working in concert could break these counter-sigils.’ He looked up at me. ‘Your father must have risked a great deal of his strength in order to so utterly bind you.’
Well, I thought, fighting off the bitterness that threatened to engulf me, it’s not hard to see where Tennat gets his shining personality.
‘I warn you, do not harm him!’ Abydos shouted, straining so hard I could see the veins in his neck sticking out.
A flicker of pain passed over Ra’meth’s features. ‘That is a remarkable calibre of will you have, Abydos. I don’t think I’ve ever felt someone push so hard against a binding spell. You would have made a powerful mage had you been able to spark your bands.’
‘I don’t need your magic,’ Abydos said, pulling against the invisible shackles holding him to the wall. ‘I don’t need any filthy Jan’Tep spells to deal with you. I’m a man! Do you hear me? A man!’
Again Ra’meth flinched, tensing the muscles of his right hand to draw more of the iron magic through his band. ‘Will you stop that? You’re giving me a headache.’
As my uncle tried to fight back against Ra’meth’s binding spell, I racked my brain to see some kind of way out of this. Shalla was still unconscious, Reichis had passed out on the floor and Ferius was as trapped as I was. My experience of life thus far led me not to expect people to miraculously come to save me, so all that was left was to try to talk my way out of this. ‘You’re not seeing the whole picture, Lord Magus,’ I began.
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