Soulbinder

by Sebastien de Castell

  “Suzy,” I said again, speaking to the wind spirit—or sasutzei, as they’re properly called—that lives in my right eye. “If you’re not too busy, I could really use a hand right now.”

  Most days she was only good for showing me hidden paths or blasting my eyeball with cold air whenever I did something that offended her moral sensibilities. A few months ago, though, she’d saved my life by fighting back against my own shadowblack. If I could rouse her now, there was a chance she’d take a dislike to this particular demon before it ground my skull underfoot. If not, she’d have to find a new eyeball to hang out in. In the meantime, my daring counter-attack amounted to not much more than running maniacally around the courtyard.

  “Anytime now, Suzy,” I said. Well, I said a lot more than that. Whisper magic is strange that way: there aren’t any specific incantations; it’s more that you let your feelings intermix with your breath, like flowery, poetic pleading. It’s actually pretty embarrassing.

  One of the demon’s left arms swept low along the ground as he tried to swat me. I was now faced with the rather difficult decision of whether to duck beneath it or try to jump over it. I chose the latter. Poorly. Another couple of inches and the thing’s massive black forearm would’ve sailed beneath my feet. As it was, he caught the edge of my toes. I went head over heels in the air, and only by chance did I happen to land back on my feet. To someone watching, I imagine I’d have looked fairly athletic in that moment, but it was luck and nothing more.

  The demon tried a different approach this time, spreading his huge hands out in preparation for squashing me like a bug.

  “Suzy, it’s now or never,” I whispered.

  No answer. Never count on wind spirits.

  The whoosh of the monster’s massive hands coming for me told me my time was up. I tried to shut my eyes—there being no evidence that facing death head-on made it any more pleasant—but my right wouldn’t close. Instead a sudden blast of white cloud emerged from it, the sensation bitterly cold and unsettling. The view wasn’t much better. The sasutzei billowed out from my eye, growing larger and larger as it rose up to face the demon. She unleashed a whistling shriek that sent the monster rearing back. I couldn’t be sure if this was due to some innate fear of wind spirits or because he just found it weird to see a cloud coming out of some insignificant human’s face.

  The demon roared a challenge at the sasutzei. Suzy roared right back with the high-pitched scream of a hurricane blowing through canyon walls. I was left staggering from the sheer force of her winds. Other noises followed: shouts and cries and boot heels slamming against the flagstones.

  “Quickly,” a young woman called out. “While the stygian’s distracted!”

  I didn’t know what a stygian was, but I hoped she meant the creature and not my wind spirit. My vision was kind of blurry on account of Suzy’s cloud, but I could just make out the newcomers rushing towards us. There were six of them—teenagers, from what I could see—spreading out next to me to surround the demon. They all had the shadowblack, but unlike the other monks, they wore long coats of black, accented with reds or dark blues or silvers instead of traditional robes. Those coats were uncomfortably reminiscent of the ones worn by the two guys I’d only recently escaped.

  “That wind spirit won’t hold the stygian for long,” said the girl—well, young woman, really. It’s hard to call someone a girl when they’re waging war against a demon. “Let’s show the bastard what we can do!”

  The sight of red curls and a fierce, wild grin gave me a sudden shock. For an instant I could’ve sworn a young Ferius Parfax had take up a position next to me, weaving her arms in the air with a fluid grace that looked more like she was dancing in front of an audience than facing off with a monster. Of course it wasn’t Ferius. Now that I saw her more clearly, this girl didn’t even look like her, apart from the hair. I guess I just missed my mentor.

  “I’m Kellen,” I said, though this seemed a remarkably inappropriate time for introductions.

  “Diadera,” she replied, close enough now that I noted the sun-bronzed skin of her cheeks was covered in tiny dark freckles. Her eyes narrowed in concentration and suddenly the markings came alive, launching into the air like a swarm of gleaming black fireflies. They darted into the demon’s five eyes, stinging them repeatedly. When the monster batted at them, Diadera reeled back as if she’d been the one struck. “Are you planning to help anytime soon or are you just going to keep standing around looking pretty?”

  “How?” I asked.

  She gave me a wink. “Sort of medium pretty, I suppose. Maybe if we got you cleaned up I could reassess. In the meantime, use your bloody shadowblack to help me kill that thing!”

  The demon clapped two of his massive hands together, crushing the swarm of her freckles between them. They drifted to the ground like dead ashes. Diadera groaned and fell to her knees, but she soon got back up and reached out with her hands, commanding the black fireflies back up into the air.

  “You’re wasting your time if you think this moron’s going to be any use, Diadera,” an angry—and all too familiar—voice on my left replied. Shoulder-length brown hair and a pretentious sleeveless black leather coat confirmed it. “I’m going to kill you when this is over, Jan’Tep,” Tournam said.

  “First hold the stygian,” a deeper voice rumbled, taking Diadera’s place when she fell back from the demon’s onslaught. The shaved head and facial markings ending in black teardrops beneath his eyes made him known to me as well.

  “Oh, hey, Butelios,” I said. “Sorry about pushing you off that cliff.”

  I’m not sure if he found my apology sufficiently sincere, because right then the entire courtyard shuddered as the demon slammed all four of his fists down on the flagstones. I looked up, wondering why neither I nor any of the others was dead yet. It was Suzy, wrapping her white clouds around the monster’s head, blinding him. The demon smashed his foot down, close enough to Tournam that he fell back, the black bands from his arms unwinding from the demon’s limbs.

  “Everybody, keep up the pressure,” Diadera said, once again sending the ebony fireflies of her shadowblack freckles to assail the demon.

  There were almost a dozen of us now trying to hold the creature back, though in fairness I was mostly just acting as a kind of vessel for the sasutzei. One girl half my size dropped to her knees and opened her hands, palm down, on the ground. Black vines from her fingers burrowed into the flagstones, only to erupt several feet away to tangle themselves around the demon’s legs. Butelios shed ebony tears into his hands and hurled them at the creature, not so much attacking it as making it hesitate, as though the beast were suddenly drunk on sorrow. My amazement at how these people were capable of using their markings in such remarkable ways was overshadowed by the realisation that we were losing. The creature tore through the black vines and swept his forelimbs at us, forcing everyone to fall back as he tried his best to find anything soft and fleshy to grab on to.

  Diadera grabbed my arm. “Kellen, the others are tiring. Use that cloud of yours to hold the stygian!”

  “She can’t!” I shouted back. Suzy’s cloud had faded to a pale fog that was rapidly dissipating under the demon’s assault.

  “Just a little longer,” Diadera urged. “He’s almost here!”

  “Who?” I asked, then realised that it didn’t matter since in about three seconds we’d all be dead. I grabbed the rest of my steel cards from the pack strapped to my leg and threw them one after another at the creature’s eyes. Most just bounced off his hide, but one stuck dead centre. That won me a howl of pain and outrage along with a couple of seconds’ reprieve. “That’s it,” I said. “I’m all out of tricks.”

  The demon lumbered towards us. I tried to shield Diadera with my body. It wouldn’t do any good of course, but I figured it couldn’t hurt for my ancestors to think I’d performed at least one noble act when they judged me in the grey passage after my death.

  The slap of sandals on flagstones was followed by
a bellowing voice. “Hey, arsehole, you want a fight? I’ll give you a fight.”

  I turned to see a tall man racing into the courtyard. Loose curls of ash-blond hair framed as square a jaw as I’d ever seen. The lines on his forehead and around his grey eyes marked him as middle-aged, but he had the broad chest and lean muscles of a younger man. Also, he was naked, now that he’d torn off his robes. What should have been pale skin was covered almost head to toe in a twisting web of shadowblack. He stopped before the demon, spread his arms wide and squeezed his fists so tight the knuckles went white. Every muscle on him clenched at once, and his body gave a shudder as the ebony markings burst from his skin. They struck the demon like a wave breaking on the shore, enveloping his body. Suzy gave her own scream, fleeing back into my eye, but the demon got it worse.

  The creature was utterly drenched in the newcomer’s shadows, as though a thousand barrels of oil had been poured over him. Snarling with rage, the beast clawed this unwanted shroud, desperately tearing at it to no avail. All three of his tails stabbed at the oily covering, but none of them could pierce it.

  The black fluid solidified as it began to contract, tightening around the demon, crushing him. He kept fighting though, and the naked man’s expression contorted with pain, as if every one of the demon’s blows were striking him. Slowly, inexorably, the shroud became smaller and smaller, until the demon was crushed inside, leaving nothing but a twisted heap of shattered bones and ravaged flesh in a pool of black oil upon the ground.

  A couple of the others ran to the blond man, but he pushed them away. He stumbled alone into the centre of the black oil. “I’m ready,” he said, but it seemed as if he were talking to himself. The oil started to slide onto the tops of his feet, up his calves, twisting around his legs and over the rest of his body. When it was done, he was once again covered in the winding markings of the shadowblack.

  Diadera walked over and handed him his robe. He took it from her and slipped it over his head. The children who’d been cowering in the alcove ran to him, cheering as they tried to take his hand. He gave them smiles and pats on the head but soon shooed them away.

  “Who is he?” I asked Diadera, who seemed to both know him and be entranced by him.

  Her reply was filled with a level of awe usually only seen in Berabesq clerics talking about their six-faced god. “That’s the abbot.”

  The abbot walked around the courtyard, stopping to kneel by each of the dead monks. Then he came over to me, his blue eyes locking on mine. He was just standing there, watching me. So was everyone else. Finding the silence uncomfortable, I extended a hand and tried to introduce myself. “My name is—”

  He cut me off. “I know exactly who you are, Kellen.” He was silent again for a second before a wry smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. “Boy, have you ever come to the wrong place.”

  Cages have bars and everyone knows you’re supposed to escape a cage, but houses have walls and people lock themselves inside to feel safe. You ask me, it’s a lot easier to break out of a cage than a house.

  —What Passes for Squirrel Cat Wisdom

  17

  The Abbot

  I disliked the abbot almost immediately, and not just because he opened negotiations with, “Are there any Jan’Tep funerary rites you’d like us to perform on your corpse?”

  He’d said this while leading me into one of the abbey’s immense towers and then up enough flights of stairs to remind me that I wasn’t sufficiently recovered from my assorted injuries and exertions to get into another fight. By the time we reached the top floor, I was dripping with sweat and trying to hide the fact that I was gasping for breath.

  “In here,” he said, motioning for me to accompany him into a darkened room about eight feet square, whose only light came from a window nearly as tall as I was but far too narrow for me to fit through, should negotiations go poorly.

  “You first,” I replied.

  Following him into the tower might have been a mistake, but I had a better chance of fighting him alone in here than I would surrounded by his fawning acolytes in the courtyard. One way or another though, I was leaving this bizarre abbey with its freakish monks and even less pleasant demonic manifestations.

  I needed to get off this mountain, and from there to the nearest village or town where I could steal a horse and ride for the Golden Passage. Assuming I could find either of course. I had no way of knowing whether I was still near the Berabesq border or somewhere north of the Seven Sands. I couldn’t even say for sure how many days it had taken to get to this place. All I could do was hang on to the hope that Reichis had survived his wounds and found water. It wasn’t impossible. The squirrel cat was tough. If Shalla had worked up a spell to keep him alive, if she’d found a way to send word to Nephenia and Ferius … If … If … If …

  The abbot pushed past me and entered the small room, slumping down into a chair behind a small writing desk. “Accept the inevitable, Kellen. You’re going to die.”

  My hands drifted inside the sagging, depleted pouches at my sides. “People keep telling me that. Want me to show you where I buried their corpses?”

  My arta valar—what the Argosi call “daring” but Ferius refers to as “swagger”—would’ve been more impressive if my fingertips could’ve scraped more than a pinch of red and black powders from the bottom of my pouches. Might be enough to slam the abbot into the rear wall and knock him unconscious if my timing was perfect. And if I were a lot luckier than usual.

  The abbot paid no attention to what I’d said or any potential danger I might present. Instead he rummaged through heaps of papers and shoved aside books strewn across his desk. Jan’Tep sigils adorned two of the cracked, leather-bound covers. No spellmaster would ever allow such texts to leave their sanctums, which meant they were stolen. Something rolled out from underneath a stack of documents that put a broad smile on the abbot’s face as he snatched it up. “Now I have you, you little bastard! Thought you could escape, didn’t you?”

  I was halfway to blasting him when he stuck the object in his mouth and leaned back in the chair. The golden-brown tube was roughly the length of his hand and the thickness of his thumb, wrapped in some kind of gauzy cloth or parchment. The abbot rummaged around the desk some more before sighing disconsolately. He looked up at me expectantly and tapped the end of the tube as he gestured to the pouches at my sides. “Help out a fellow demon-cursed fugitive, would you?”

  “Is that some kind of smoking reed?”

  Ferius Parfax was the only person I knew who smoked, and her reeds were just little things, almost as thin as the stem of a flower.

  “It’s called a cigar,” the abbot replied. “It’s like a smoking reed but for civilised people.”

  He tossed back a lock of ash-blond hair from his brow, exuding that casual self-assurance that only the truly handsome possess, making me feel small and petty all at once. Small, because he was big, muscular man with a square jaw and a smile that suggested he knew things I didn’t. Petty, because, well, worrying about someone else’s looks is just petty.

  I didn’t trust handsome people though. My father was handsome, and he’d counter-banded me so that I’d never be able to fulfil my magical potential. My one-time best friend Panahsi—now called Pan’erath—was handsome, and he’d tried to kill me. Twice. Dexan Videris, a fellow spellslinger, was so good-looking even Reichis had thought he was cool. Dexan turned out to be the biggest arsehole of them all.

  So, yeah, I don’t get along with the undeservedly attractive.

  The abbot grinned up at me, white teeth biting onto the cigar to hold it in place. “Come on, kid. Don’t leave me hanging. Show me what you got.” He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head and eyes slowly closing.

  He was practically daring me to attack him. Did he know I was almost out of powder? Or was he so confident in his own abilities that he simply wasn’t worried about what I could do?

  I let the pinch of powder slip back into the pouches and only kept a
few grains on my fingertips. I flicked them into the air between us. My hands formed the somatic shapes to strike my target.

  Considerable skill is required to channel an explosion of flame into such a tiny, precise area. I’d be more likely to set the silvery blond bristles of the abbot’s chin on fire than hit the end of his cigar. “Carath,” I intoned, and a pencil-thin, somewhat anaemic belch of red and black flame ignited the end of the cigar.

  The abbot showed no sign of being impressed at my skill with the powders. He was grateful though. “Oh, thank the mountains and oceans,” he moaned, taking long drags. “Thought for sure I’d be dead before I got another taste of these beauties.” Puffs of pungent grey smoke filled the space between us.

  “Speaking of impending death …” I began.

  The abbot opened one eye and looked at me as if he’d long ago forgotten I was still here. “Hmm? Oh, right.” Reluctantly he removed the cigar from his mouth. “Don’t take it personally. I say that to all the newcomers. ‘You’re going to die’ is practically how we say hello around here.”

  “Some would say that’s a dangerous way to greet strangers,” I observed, right hand slipping into the leather pocket attached to the leg of my trousers. I’d only had time to pick up two of my steel cards after the fight with the demon, but in an enclosed space like this, I wasn’t likely to miss.

  “Shadowblacks don’t exactly age well, Kellen,” the abbot replied, holding his cigar out the narrow window and tapping it on the ledge. Ash drifted down to the courtyard below. “That stygian monstrosity you helped me fight? That was brother Caleb.” The abbot’s prior good mood seemed to collapse in on itself. “He was a good man. Always thought Caleb would outlast the rest of us.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, more out of reflex than from sincerity. No matter how kind or decent these people pretended to be, I had to remind myself that for all intents and purposes they’d kidnapped me and most likely planned to keep me prisoner here. I couldn’t allow that. Not with my business partner waiting for me to rescue him.