Spellslinger: The fantasy novel that keeps you guessing on every page

by Sebastien de Castell

I looked around and saw the way she was wiping sweat from her brow, the way her hands shook. Exhaustion and injury were taking their toll. Pan had killed her horse, leaving us with only mine. ‘Take the horse,’ I said. ‘Bring Shalla to my parents. My mother can heal both of you.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, kid. I just—’

  ‘You’re not fine!’ I shouted. ‘Nobody’s fine. Shalla’s barely breathing and you can barely stand. So take the damned horse and get my sister to safety.’

  ‘Okay, kid. Okay.’ She locked eyes with me. ‘And what about you?’

  I set about picking up as many of the steel cards as I could find. ‘I’ll come soon.’

  ‘You’re going after Ra’meth,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.

  Reichis crawled up my side to sit on my shoulder. ‘Damned straight we’re going after him. If I can’t taste the flesh of these skinbags, then I want the guy responsible for all of this.’

  Ferius cocked an eye at the squirrel cat. ‘Is he bragging again? His kind do that a lot, you know.’

  ‘Tell the stupid Argosi to—’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said.

  The two of them looked at me, startled. Contrary to what they both thought, I wasn’t even the least bit interested in pursuing Ra’meth. I’d learned my lesson. I wasn’t the young Jan’Tep hero going off to defeat his enemy in a glorious battle. Ra’meth was one of the lords magi of our clan. He was vastly more powerful than Pan or Ra’dir or the others. He was also smarter. He’d managed to outwit my uncle and the Sha’Tep and everybody else, all so he could line things up perfectly to make himself clan prince. Now all he had left to do was to stand before the council and tell his lies and cast the blame at my father’s feet. Would that be enough though? My father had a lot of supporters on the council. Could Ra’meth really be sure they would all elect him then and there? Or would he need something else? One more act of courage, he’d told me. A great gift for our people.

  It didn’t matter. None of it mattered – not my fear, not even Ra’meth’s plans. I couldn’t let him become clan prince. I had to stop him before he got to the council chambers. I turned to Ferius. ‘I need you to do this for me,’ I said. ‘I need you to get Shalla to my parents. They’ll believe her, and that will give them time to prepare for whatever comes next.’

  She reached out a hand and gripped my shoulder. ‘You’re tough, kid. You’ve proven that. But you can’t go after a mage like Ra’meth by yourself.’

  ‘Leave the skinbag to me,’ Reichis growled.

  I translated. Ferius, surprisingly, didn’t crack a joke. Instead she bowed her head to the squirrel cat. ‘Anyone can see that you are a fierce warrior, a skilled hunter and a wise scavenger,’ she said, with an odd formality to her voice. ‘But the skinbag in question will have other mages with him. They are too many, and you are too few.’

  Reichis gave a little snort in reply. There’s something really disturbing about a squirrel cat snorting dismissively. ‘Too few?’ He sprang off my shoulder onto her back and then started running down the path. ‘Come on, kid. Let’s go get the rest of my people. Then we’re going to really tear those hairless sons of bitches apart.’

  The squirrel cat kept up a furious pace as we raced along the forest paths, skirting thick copses of trees and running across clearings where the terrain suddenly dipped wildly. Reichis moved like water flowing down a winding stream – his feet finding the perfect route under fallen trees and over rocky outgrowths. I couldn’t keep up.

  ‘Stop,’ I gasped, knocking my shoulder against a tree as I slid to an awkward halt.

  The squirrel cat turned to look back at me. ‘What? Why?’

  Sweat was dripping down my face, stinging my eyes. I’d accumulated a dozen more bruises and scrapes in the past half-hour. ‘I’m going to be dead before Ra’meth even gets the chance to blast me, that’s what. Give me a minute.’

  ‘We’re almost there. Just tough it out.’

  ‘No,’ I insisted, still trying to get my heart to slow down.

  Reichis cocked his head. ‘You know, I really wonder some days why my people ever feared yours. It seems to me you can barely get your arses out of bed without having a heart attack.’

  ‘Just …’ Why can’t I catch my damned breath? ‘Just give me a second.’

  The simple truth is, my people aren’t especially strong physically. Most things that matter we do with magic. Even the Sha’Tep use objects spelled by clan mages to ease their labours. We’re really not a very tough people, I guess.

  ‘Listen, kid,’ Reichis said, sitting back on his haunches to scratch at the fur under his chin, ‘when we get to my people, let me do the talking.’

  ‘Since I don’t speak squirrel cat, how was I supposed to do it in the first place?’

  He gave a little chortle. ‘Yeah, but my people aren’t dumb like yours, so even if you can’t understand what they’re saying, they’ll understand you just fine. So when negotiations start—’

  ‘Negotiations? You mean to tell me the rest of your pack are going to want to get paid?’

  Reichis looked up at me as if I were dim. ‘Kid, everything comes at a price. We’re squirrel cats, not dogs. We don’t work for bones and a pat on the head. Think it through, would you?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘So what are they going to expect in return for helping us?’

  The thin line of his lips twitched a bit and I realised I’d just stepped into a trap. He launched into a remarkably complete list of every shiny, valuable object in my house and, in fact, half the other houses around town – things I’d never even seen. According to Reichis, squirrel cats spend quite a bit of time ‘casing’ locations.

  ‘You realise I can’t promise things I don’t own,’ I said, when he was finally finished.

  ‘Oh, that’s okay.’ He held up a reassuring paw. ‘You can just help us get access to the stuff. Or you can find us other things of equal value later.’

  Later. It almost made me laugh that he thought there would be any kind of ‘later’ for me. Once this was done, I was going to be exiled if I was lucky, executed if I wasn’t. A smarter person would have left all this behind the moment he’d realised he had no future among his people. Is that what an Argosi would do? I wondered. Just walk away? But I wasn’t Argosi. I wasn’t Jan’Tep or Sha’Tep or anything else. I was just a guy with one spell, a squirrel cat and a complete inability to stomach the thought of Ra’meth winning or what he might do to Shalla if he became clan prince. ‘All right,’ I said finally. ‘If all this goes smoothly, I’ll get you what you want.’

  He gave me the squirrel cat equivalent of a grin. ‘Great. That’s really …’ I think he must have noticed that I was watching him clack his claws together again because he stopped abruptly.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  Reichis lifted his snout. I noticed then that the breeze had shifted and brought with it a strange smell. Fire … and something thick and acrid that made me feel sick to my stomach. Burning flesh.

  One last act of courage, Ra’meth had told me. A great gift for our people.

  Reichis took off like an arrow and I followed as quickly as I could, ignoring the pain and exhaustion, my muscles fuelled by the scent of death, and pulled inexorably towards the sound of flames and the most horrible screams I’d ever heard.

  44

  The Flames

  The first glimmers of the flames lit the gaps between trees more than a hundred yards ahead of us. By then the smoke was already choking me, making it even harder to keep up with Reichis, until finally it was only his fear of fire that slowed him down enough for me to catch up. The flames formed a wall that seemed to stretch forever before curving round to form a circle enclosing the glade. Reichis raced back and forth along it, desperately looking for an opening. ‘They’ve ringed the whole area with fire,’ he chittered frantically. ‘My people are trapped!’

  ‘How did he even find them?’ I asked. ‘I thought –’

  The squirrel cat growled. ‘My stupid mother. S
he told the tribe to gather here.’ He turned and glared at me, the flames giving his eyes a hateful glow. ‘She wanted them ready to help you, to protect you and that damned Argosi –’

  More screams cut us off – this time, though, the voices were those of Ra’meth’s men.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, trying to get closer, but the heat was too much for me.

  ‘My people are killing yours,’ he said, still running along the wall of flames. ‘As it should be. As it always should have been.’

  I watched in horror as he got too close and his own fur caught fire almost instantly. ‘Stop!’ I shouted. Without thinking, I threw myself over him again, wrapping my entire body around him. I felt the rest of my shirt burning and had to keep rolling to put out the flames. Reichis was less than grateful.

  ‘Get off me!’ he snarled, crawling out from under me. ‘I have to go help them!’

  I reached over to grab him by the scruff of his neck. ‘You’ll be dead before you get near them.’

  He bit me until I let him go. ‘Then get us in there! You’re supposed to be a damned mage. Use that –’ he waved his paws in the air – ‘spell thing of yours.’

  There were probably a dozen different spells that could bring down a fire wall, either by removing the original spell or cooling the air around it. None of them were ones I could perform of course.

  I started coughing again, struggling for air. ‘Wait …’ Air was the problem. Air was feeding the fire. That gave me two possibilities – one of which didn’t risk blowing my hands off, so I decided to try that one first.

  I stepped back from the wall. Breath spells manipulate the movement of air, and one spell in particular can draw air towards the caster. I ran through the somatic forms a couple of times – both hands extending outward, then making the fingers touch the palm in a smooth sequence, alternating the right hand with the left, moving like the air itself. The movement was simple enough, but it had to be performed with perfect fluidity.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Reichis asked.

  ‘Just a minute.’ The second part was the visualisation. Concentrating on air is harder than you’d expect. You have to specifically avoid thinking about the things air moves, such as leaves or dust, and focus on the air itself. Once I had that, all that was left was the verbalisation. This one was tricky though – it had to be voiced entirely on an inhalation. Even harder, you had to keep repeating it throughout the entire spell.

  ‘An-ahl-ha-teht,’ I whispered.

  Nothing.

  I kept going. Osia’phest always used to say that with magic you had to focus on performance, not outcome. ‘An-ahl-ha-teht … an-ahl-ha-teht …’

  ‘Keep it up,’ Reichis urged. ‘Something’s happening.’

  I continued the spell and watched as the wall began to bend, the six-foot flames losing their strength, slowly starving for oxygen.

  ‘It’s working, keep going!’ Reichis said.

  ‘An-ahl-ha—’

  My voice was cut off as the smoke filled my lungs. My stomach seized and I crouched over, coughing uncontrollably. ‘Can’t …’ I said. ‘Can’t breathe through the smoke.’ I looked up to see the flames had regained their full strength.

  ‘Then throw me!’ Reichis said.

  I tried to stand up straight and clear my vision. ‘Throw you?’

  ‘The treetops are on fire so I can’t climb up them to glide down. Throw me over the flames!’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Even if I could, you’d be alone in there!’

  ‘My people are alone, right now, dying!’

  ‘Give me a second,’ I said, still trying to calm my breathing.

  My second plan was the eminently worse option, but still better than what Reichis proposed. I walked back about ten feet from the wall of flames and took a pinch of powder from each of my pockets. ‘Come here,’ I told Reichis, as I tried to figure out the timing that was going to be required for this to work.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I nodded towards the flames. ‘The second I start running, you run with me. At my speed. Don’t get ahead of me and don’t fall behind. Understand?’

  I looked at the heavy pinches of red and black powders held between my fingers and took a last clean breath.

  Reichis clued in to what I had planned. ‘Are you out of your—’

  ‘Just do it,’ I said, and started running, heading straight for the wall of fire. The instant my right foot hit the ground, I tossed the powders into the air two feet in front of me. As my second step landed and the first spark ignited between the grains of powder, I formed the somatic shape with my hands and spoke the word. ‘Carath!’

  The blast shook the ground in front of us, at the edge of the wall of flames, just as Reichis and I leaped in the air. For one brief instant, the explosion drove back the fire and we passed through unscathed. We landed awkwardly on the other side and I found myself rolling head over heels until I finally landed hard on my back. The squirrel cat looked down at me. ‘Not bad. Now get up and help me kill that mage.’

  I staggered to my feet to witness the wreckage of burnt trees all around us. Pockets of fire rose from the underbrush as though a mad priest had lit dozens of braziers around a fallen temple. Bodies littered the ground, human and squirrel cat. A bloody fight had been fought here between tooth and blade, between claw and spell. Only one figure still stood, his arms outstretched as if he were dancing alone among the flames. Ra’meth.

  I didn’t wait for him to notice me. I didn’t make threats or demands. I didn’t even think twice. Instead I dug deep into my pockets and tossed enough powder into the air to shatter stone. With the word and the gesture, I unleashed the explosion straight at his heart. The blast cracked the night sky and the resulting flames engulfed him. A moment later they faded away as if they’d been nothing more than a faint spark of a worn-out piece of flint.

  Ra’meth turned to me. ‘Hello, Kellen.’

  45

  The Voice of Fire

  The next thing that happened was that Reichis went berserk. The sight of his fellow squirrel cats dead all around the clearing tipped his crazy-but-controlled ferocity into a heedless rage that swept over him so completely that I swear I nearly got caught up in it too.

  ‘Reichis …’ I warned, seeing the muscles bunching in his haunches as he prepared to attack. ‘Wait. We need to—’

  Whatever he growled at me then was too primal. It didn’t have any human equivalent so I couldn’t understand it. I tried to grab at him but he was too fast, kicking up dirt and brush behind him as he raced towards Ra’meth. There was a moment when I thought he might have a chance – his speed and rage propelled him at his enemy like a spell. If he just got his teeth into the mage’s neck before he could raise his arms, he could – but no. Even as the squirrel cat leaped into the air, Ra’meth turned and uttered a single word. Reichis froze, his body swaying in the air as if he were hanging from a rope. ‘They really are fierce little vermin, aren’t they?’ Ra’meth flicked his fingers and the squirrel cat flew through the air before his body crashed into a tree. I heard the sounds of bones snapping.

  I should have run. I should have taken off and hidden and tried to come up with some plan to survive this. I simply couldn’t. The sound of Reichis’s broken growls of pain echoed over and over in my ears, deafening me to the sound of the flames, of the trees creaking as they fell, of everything but his pain and my heart beating faster and faster and faster. Finally another sound broke through – a growl that came from my own lips. I dug my hands into my pockets and pulled out more powders than I’d used the other times I’d cast the carath spell. I flung them into the air and made the somatic forms and spoke the word. The explosion lit up the night sky, surrounding Ra’meth in a perfect sphere of fire. It raged on for a second, then another, but finally it faded away. The mage was unharmed. ‘Fascinating,’ he said, taking a step towards me. ‘Do it again.’

  There was no fear in him, only in me. There was also no point in holding any
thing back. I used even more powder this time – so much that I felt it burn the skin on my fingers even before I spoke the word. The explosion followed the line of my index and forefingers right for Ra’meth’s heart. Again my spell struck true, again he shrugged it off.

  ‘Remarkable,’ he said, as the last trickle of flame faded. ‘And you escaped the thirstfire in the barn. Impressive all round. I take it since you’re here that you also dealt with my sons. Did you kill Tennat?’

  ‘I figured having you for a father was punishment enough.’

  He gave a good-natured laugh. I took advantage of the moment’s distraction to fire the spell again. Even with only a tiny shred of his focus, he could keep the shield up. I wondered for the first time whether maybe Ra’meth had been wrong all these years. Maybe he was more powerful than my father, he’d just never had the courage to challenge him to a duel.

  ‘That little spell of yours, Kellen,’ he said, head tilted as he looked across the fire-strewn ground at me, ‘it’s just the first-form breath spell channelling the explosion from some sort of chemical powders, isn’t it? Truly ingenious. It reminds me of those old spellslingers who wandered around, combining a few little spells with other tricks to make their way through the world. Quite a romantic notion, don’t you think?’ He cast his own spell then – a minor pain cantrip that ought to do little more than cause an itch.

  It felt as if my insides had turned to ice and I screamed.

  ‘The problem is, however, that there’s a difference between a boy with a spell and a real mage. The true Jan’Tep is complete. He can attack but also defend. He knows how to weaken his opponent’s power while enhancing his own.’ He cast another spell, and this time I was thrown backwards through the air until my back struck the same tree as Reichis had and I found myself on the ground next to him.

  I gasped for air, tasting blood in my mouth. Ra’meth ignored my moans. ‘I don’t hate you,’ he said, turning to survey his handiwork. ‘In fact, I admire your daring. You’re a better man than your father, I’ll give you that. All he’s ever done is treat magic like a little castle he builds around himself, brick by brick, hoping to climb its pathetic walls to become clan prince. And for what purpose? None. He would sit back and have us live here like frightened animals, hoping the real predators pass us by in search of better prey.’ He turned, pointing south. ‘I would see us be a great power again, Kellen. I would see the Daroman king begging at our feet.’