‘Oh, do shut up, boy.’ He made a twisting motion with the thumb and middle fingers of his left hand and suddenly I couldn’t speak.
Guess that leaves hoping for some kind of miracle. My people aren’t religious by nature, having left such superstitions behind generations ago. So probably no miracles either.
‘Don’t you dare silence him,’ Abydos said. ‘Or are you afraid of words now, you coward?’
‘You can be quiet too,’ Ra’meth replied, and cast the same spell on Abydos.
It’s incredibly difficult to keep multiple spells working at once, so I supposed one hope was that Ra’meth would over-extend himself and one of us could attack. He glanced around the room. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I need to figure out how it all happened.’
Ra’meth turned to the man who’d worn the one-eyed mask. ‘Right. You were doing something … unseemly to poor Shalla when, in a burst of desperation, she broke through the terrible drugs you gave her and hit you with a –’ he looked over at me – ‘lightning spell? Does that sound like something your sister might do? Never mind.’ He turned back to Paetep, the man who’d lost his wife in a cave-in. ‘Everyone likes a good lightning spell.’ With a snap of the thumb and little finger of both hands he sent a bolt of white-and-yellow light that struck the man through the chest.
Static crackled, accompanied by the smell of charred flesh. Paetep was dead.
Breaking through the silencing spell, Abydos unleashed a bellow of pure rage.
‘You really are a strong fellow,’ Ra’meth said, momentarily touching a hand to his brow. ‘Now, what’s next?’ He turned to Sephan. ‘Right. You, my fine and loyal servant, died during an act of sublime courage. Realising you’d done wrong by your house, you tried to stop Abydos from wreaking more havoc on our people. Alas, he strangled you.’
Ra’meth touched the fingers of both hands to his lips and then reached out with them. Sephan writhed, his body sliding slowly up the wall, legs shaking and jerking beneath him. Ra’meth closed his hands into fists and I heard a cracking sound as Sephan’s neck broke.
‘You bastard,’ Abydos said, once again defying the silencing spell. Once more he set himself against the invisible shackles of Ra’meth’s binding spell. With an inner strength I could scarcely fathom, he took a step forward.
‘Stop,’ Ra’meth commanded.
Abydos took a second step. ‘You shouldn’t have come here alone, Lord Magus.’ The air was practically shivering around him, as if the wind itself were trying to hold him still, but Abydos wouldn’t stop. ‘But what mage ever thinks he might need help to kill a Sha’Tep?’ A third step.
‘You will not come closer,’ Ra’meth said, pouring more of his will into the spell. He’d made a mistake though, by binding so many of us; he didn’t have the focus to cast defensive spells.
Step by step, inch by inch, Abydos pushed forward.
‘How is this possible?’ Ra’meth asked, struggling now. ‘You have no magic.’
‘No magic,’ Abydos repeated. Blood began to seep from the corners of his mouth, then his ears, and finally from his mouth. This was killing him, and yet he kept going, his arms now outstretched, reaching for Ra’meth’s throat. ‘Just a man. One Sha-Tep man who is tired of your coward’s magic.’
‘No!’ Ra’meth said, trying to move away even as my uncle’s hands wrapped around his neck.
Suddenly the shackles were gone, from all of us. The binding spells that had continued holding up the bodies of the dead men fell away, and they slumped to the ground. Now that I could move and speak again, I rushed to help Abydos.
My uncle’s eyes were now filled with blood and I knew he couldn’t see me, but as he squeezed the life from Ra’meth, he smiled. His face beamed with so much pride that he looked like the statue of an ancient hero come to life. That smile was still on his face as Ra’meth’s own eyes closed. It was still there too as a half-dozen knives, flying through the air like a flock of birds, struck Abydos in the back, lifted him in the air and carried him away from Ra’meth.
I shouted my uncle’s name and tried to run to him, but a new binding spell was upon me. For a moment he hung suspended. His eyes blinked away the blood. He turned his head to me and said, ‘If I’d had a son …’
I tried to reach for him but my limbs wouldn’t respond. All I could do was watch in horror as the blades slipped out of Abydos’s body and he fell to the ground, eyes staring up at the ceiling. One by one the knives drove down, impaling each of his hands, his feet and finally his chest.
I screamed then, and kept screaming even after a silencing spell prevented any sound from escaping my lips.
For most of my life I had thought my uncle a simple, contented servant, then a vicious traitor to our people. Only in the final seconds of his life had I seen him for the complicated, indomitable man he really was.
A man in blue robes entered the room, ahead of another mage in white. ‘Are you injured, Lord Magus?’ he asked.
Ra’meth rose to his feet, his hand rubbing at his neck. ‘A little bruised, but wiser for it.’ He looked down at my uncle’s broken body. ‘You were right, Abydos. It would have been terribly arrogant for me to come here alone.’
40
Floating
I was floating in the air, my body slowly drifting through the winding tunnels of the mine like a twig caught in the current of a slow-moving stream. I lifted my head and looked behind me to see Ferius, Shalla and Reichis all floating along with me, but they appeared to be asleep. It felt so much like flying that I wondered if I might be sleeping too, until I heard the mage in blue ask, ‘Where would you like them, Lord Magus?’
I turned my head and saw Ra’meth leading us outside. He pointed to a barn down the path. ‘In there should do nicely.’ He looked over at me and nodded. ‘Ah, good. Let’s finish our story, shall we?’
‘What have you done to the others?’
‘Your sister will be sick for some time, I’m afraid. She spent far too long in the mines. As for the Argosi and the nekhek, they were beginning to annoy me so I put them to sleep.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘But let’s talk about you. Brave and brilliant lad that you are, you tracked your filthy uncle and his co-conspirators to this place where you uncovered their nefarious plot.’
We neared the barn and he motioned for the mage in white to open the doors. ‘Alas, they captured you, and, Sha’Tep being rather vicious when given the chance, they …’ He paused, then looked to the other two mages. ‘Any recommendations?’
‘Fire, Lord Magus?’ the one in white suggested.
‘Ah, fire! Excellent.’
The mage in blue sent Shalla’s body floating into the barn, where it drifted down to the ground, followed by Ferius and then Reichis. ‘Do you know why the Sha’Tep love fire so much?’ Ra’meth asked as I floated past him. ‘It’s because it’s the closest they’ll ever come to wielding true magic. That’s why they locked you all in here and set fire to the barn.’
One of Ra’meth’s men presented him with an unlit torch. The lord magus closed his eyes, formed a set of somatic shapes and then spoke a single word. The torch ignited instantly. He made a second gesture and the flames were reduced to a red glow, perfectly controlled by Ra’meth’s will. ‘You probably haven’t learned the spell for thirstfire, have you?’ His man tossed the torch into the barn, where Ferius’s horse stood tethered to a post, already rearing and bucking in fear. ‘You can try putting it out if you like.’
They shut the door and I heard it being barred from the outside. I got to my feet and started pounding on it, screaming for them to let us out. Once Ra’meth unleashed the thirstfire, nothing would stop it until everything inside the barn was burnt to ashes.
‘What’s with all the shouting, kid?’ Reichis said. He took a few wobbling steps towards me. ‘Gods-damned Jan’Tep magic. Just give me a minute and I’ll rip that skinbag’s throat out.’
‘Remarkable,’ Ra’meth said, from the other side of the door. ‘The nekhek has already b
roken the sleep binding. Let’s see if he’s equally resistant to fire, shall we?’
‘The lords magi will find out what you did,’ I shouted, still banging on the thick wooden wall between us. ‘You’ll never become clan prince!’
‘Really? But I’m a hero, don’t you see? I’m the one who found you in the burning wreckage of this barn. Too late to save you, alas, far too late. In a rage, I risked my own life to enter the mines to confront the man who murdered you. Imagine my horror when I discovered the culprit was your own flesh and blood. In an act of righteous vengeance, I killed the traitors who had slaughtered you and your sister.’
‘My father will kill you for this,’ I yelled. ‘Unless my mother gets to you first!’
Ra’meth laughed, a soft, musical sound, neither angry nor fearful. ‘You are quite correct, Kellen. My whole life I’ve never been as strong as your father, or your mother for that matter.’
He went silent for several seconds. I kept expecting the torch to burst into unquenchable flame, but it remained with its tightly controlled crimson glow. Ra’meth, it seemed, wasn’t done tormenting me yet.
‘If I’m being completely honest,’ he said, ‘I’d come to believe that I would never dare set my magic against theirs. But then something remarkable happened. You, a weakling boy, mere weeks from being declared Sha’Tep, bested my own son Tennat. Not through any strength of yours, mind you, but by using his against him. That was when I saw my path to victory. I would defeat your father exactly as you defeated my son.’
‘Except that my father’s not an idiot,’ I shouted, looking around the barn for something I could use to prise open the door.
‘No? He just spent the last several days exhausting his magic in order to bind yours. He’s weak as a child now. I can almost see him sitting there, trying to rise, seeking to summon his strength, only now sensing what is to come. Ke’heops has used his own power against himself, and now I’m going to kill him. I have one small task ahead of me first, one last act of courage, a great gift for our people. Then I will go before the council and set before them all the ignominy of your house. I will lay such slander against your father, against your mother, that Ke’heops will choke on my words. He will call me a liar. When I challenge him to a duel, he will have no choice but to accept. In his weakened state, I will kill him this time.’
‘Why?’ I shouted at the heavy door of the barn. It made no sense. No amount of competition, of feuding, could justify the raw venom inside him. ‘How can you be this way?’
I thought he’d gone and that my question would go unanswered, but a few moments later I heard him speak again, his mouth close to the door, almost whispering. ‘My whole life I’ve watched as your father paraded himself like the paragon of Jan’Tep society. Always looking down on me. Always believing I was less than he was.’ There was a brief pause, and then he said, ‘You can’t imagine what that feels like.’
The torch burst back into flame.
41
The Barn
The first lick of flame slithered away from the torch and began climbing the barn’s southern wall. Reichis raced over and leaped onto my shoulder, his entire body thrumming with anger and fear. ‘Put it out! Quick! This entire place is catching fire!’
He needn’t have bothered pointing that out. I was already trying to extinguish the torch. I grabbed a half-full bucket next to the horses’ watering trough and threw it on the torch. As if in answer, the flames hissed and spat, but showed no sign of quenching.
The squirrel cat scrambled down to the ground, running a mad route between my legs. ‘It’s not going out! Why won’t it go out?’
‘It’s thirstfire,’ I shouted, refilling the bucket and dumping it out on the torch again. ‘It won’t go out by natural means.’ The flames were already spreading out across the walls. Within minutes the entire barn would be engulfed in flame.
‘Stamp it out, Kellen! We’re going to burn alive in here!’
‘It won’t do any good,’ I said. ‘Stepping on the flames will just set my clothes on fire.’
‘Then banish the spell! Do something.’
I envisioned my will taking dominion over the flame, and chanted the words old Osia’phest had taught us. When nothing happened, I reached further inside myself and re-doubled my efforts. As if in answer, the counter-banded ember sigils on my forearm seemed to tighten, to strangle the vessels underneath my skin. Spark, damn you. I refuse to die just because of some stupid tattoos.
There’s this hope you have, deep down, that when you most need it – in that instant where everything suddenly matters because now it’s life and death – you’ll be able to overcome whatever it is that’s held you back your whole life and find your true strength. That was how it worked in all the old stories: the young Jan’Tep mage, face to face with the demons who have been tormenting his village, finally casts the great spell of banishment that had eluded him for so long.
‘Are you doing anything?’ Reichis asked. ‘Because it just looks like you’re constipated.’
It turns out all those stories are lies. Or maybe you’re not the young Jan’Tep hero in the story. Maybe you’re the demon that gets destroyed.
The flames were spreading, slowly but surely, making their way around the wooden walls of the barn. Already my eyes were watering from the smoke. Blind panic overtook me and I ran back to the door and hurled myself against it over and over. I got nothing for my efforts but a shooting pain through my shoulder.
‘Hit it harder,’ the squirrel cat chittered.
‘I can’t,’ I said, gasping from the pain of my exertions. ‘I’m not strong enough to break the door.’
‘Then just—’
‘Shut up,’ I said, trying to concentrate. I focused all my attention on the door, looking for a weakness in it, finding none. The only weakness I could find was in myself. Reichis could see it too.
‘Damn it all,’ he chittered frantically. ‘If I was going to take on an idiot human as a business partner, why didn’t I pick Ra’meth? At least he has enough magic to dismiss a fire spell!’
My throat tightened under the growing strain of frustration and terror. ‘Well, if I’m going to die in this burning barn with nobody but a stupid nekhek to give my eulogy, I’d rather you found something nice to say.’
‘Well, let me see,’ Reichis growled back. ‘You’re weak, you’re a coward and you seem to be pretty much the only member of your race who doesn’t have any magic. But on the other hand …’
He stopped chittering. I glanced around to see what he was looking at, but all I saw were the burning walls. ‘What?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. I can’t think of one good thing about you, Kellen. You’re the most useless member of a useless species I’ve ever seen and now we’re going to die because of it.’
The flames crackled as they travelled up the wooden beams to the hay that was stored on the second level of the barn. Smoke was filling the room. Soon it would be hard to breathe. ‘I’m trying,’ I said, dragging first Shalla’s body and then Ferius’s to the water trough. I splashed some of the remaining water on each of them, not sure what good it would do but having no better ideas. I glanced around the barn again, searching for something, anything, that might help. If there had been enough horses I could’ve hoped that they might stampede and smash through the walls. All we had was Ferius’s horse though, and though it was growing more and more agitated, I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Sorry, whatever your name is. It’s not fair that you have to die without knowing the reason.
The heat was overwhelming and whatever moisture I had left in me was sweating out from every pore. We didn’t have much time. Unlike the horse, Reichis understood what was happening, but his instinctive fear of fire was making him frantic. He tried to climb one of the walls, but there was too much fire and smoke now. The squirrel cat made it halfway up before tumbling down to the ground, coughing and shaking. I felt a strange empathy for the little monster. As terrified as I was, it must be worse for an animal co
vered in fur, for whom fire wasn’t a normal part of life. I knelt down to try and pick him up. He bit me.
‘Get away from me, human,’ he growled. He got on his feet and shook himself. The shock of falling seemed to have brought him back. His eyes were a little clearer and he looked as if he’d mastered his fear. I wished I could say the same for myself.
‘I was trying to help,’ I said.
He looked up at me and gave a little snort. ‘If you’re going to cry, go do it over the torch. Maybe you can put it out that way.’
‘I’m not crying, damn it. I’m sweating from the heat.’
‘Sure.’
I moved to the centre of the barn where the smoke wasn’t as thick and reached into one of Ferius’s saddlebags, which were on the floor. I was looking for a cloth to wrap around my nose and mouth. What I found was the little pouch of red powder she’d shown me when she was painting her card. I rummaged around and found the pouch of black powder. Hells, I thought, remembering what she said about them exploding on contact with each other. No need to worry about burning to death. I’ll just blow us all up instead. I thought about tossing them to opposite sides of the room to keep them separated, but then had a better idea. Well, not a better one, but it was the best I had. I ran to the barn door.
‘What is it?’ Reichis asked, following behind me.
‘These powders. They make an explosion on contact with each other.’
‘What’s an explosion?’
I almost laughed. But when would a squirrel cat have ever seen anything explode? Careful to use only my left hand, I scooped out a small handful of black powder and dropped it by the door. Part of me expected it to catch fire right away, but it didn’t. Whatever it was made from stayed inert until it met with the opposing chemical. With my right hand I pulled out a small handful of the red powder. ‘Stay back,’ I said to Reichis. I took a few steps back myself and then tossed the red powder towards the black. They exploded in a small ball of flame and, just for a second, I felt a surge of hope that the door might give way. It didn’t.
Spellslinger: The fantasy novel that keeps you guessing on every page Page 26
