Soulbinder

by Sebastien de Castell

  The abbot took my words at face value. “Thanks. And thanks for helping me put an end to him. His … change came on quickly. None of us expected him to lose the fight so soon.”

  Those words spawned a thousand questions for me. What fight? How does the transformation from human being into demonic manifestation work? And if that’s what happens to us, is my father right? Is it better to kill us all before we become a danger to everyone around us? But what I asked was, “Since you’re feeling grateful, how about you let me leave this place and we’ll call it even?”

  “You really want to go back to that lousy desert where we found you? With a posse of seventy-seven lords magi on the hunt for shadowblacks?”

  “Beats hiding out here in the mountains,” I replied. “Though I suppose it must be easier than facing enemies who are probably younger, stronger and smarter than you are.”

  He met my challenge with a smile. “‘Younger, stronger and smarter’? That’s one of those Argosi tricks, right? You want to get me off balance, so you bring up everything from my age to my ability to my intellect just to see if being diminished will trigger a reaction?”

  Pretty much spot-on, but his confidence really bugged me. “No, you just seem old and tired and kind of dumb.”

  He snorted out a laugh that caused the cigar to fall out of his mouth and onto his robes. He brushed it off before it could set them on fire. “That’s a real charming personality you’ve got there, Kellen. Am I going to have to keep Tournam and Butelios from trying to kill you?”

  “Only if you reckon you haven’t lost enough monks for one day.”

  The sudden flash of anger in the abbot’s eyes told me I’d pushed him too far. He got himself under control pretty quick though. “You do not go out of your way to be liked, do you?”

  “Would it get me out of here faster? Look, I’m sure your abbey is a nice place and all, but judging by how covered you are in shadowblack markings, I’m guessing you don’t have a cure, and I have business elsewhere.”

  He gave a chuckle and stubbed out the cigar on his palm. “So go. Only reason I sent my boys out to get you in the first place was because Butelios’s tears sometimes lead him to shadowblacks in distress. Since you seem to think you were doing just fine on your own, go on and see how well you fare against a posse of war mages with nothing but some flashy powders and that big mouth of yours.”

  “Really? You’ll let me—”

  “Just one thing,” he said, rising from his chair. “Come up to the roof with me first.”

  I felt that prickly feeling on my skin that comes right before a conversation that began with “Are there any Jan’Tep funerary rites you’d like us to perform on your corpse?” ends with someone pushing you off the top of a tower. “Why should I?” I asked.

  With a firm hand the abbot shoved me out the door and up a set of black stone stairs leading up to the top of the tower. “Simple. Because you have no idea where you are right now.”

  18

  The Tower

  The rooftop’s chill conspired with my lack of warm clothes to make me shiver as I stared out over the abbey’s strange and wondrous architecture. The tower on which I stood was crowned with a circular battlement, the crenellations rising almost to the height of my chest. Upon four separate raised promontories, which I guessed matched the cardinal points of a compass, stood rotating brass fixtures, each holding a rectangular piece of curved black crystal roughly two feet wide. I was surprised when I looked through the nearest one to discover they were a kind of magnifying glass, enabling me to see for the first time that each of the abbey’s seven towers bore their own unique design.

  Opposite us, across the courtyard, a thin minaret perhaps fifteen feet across rose up like a spear, topped in a smooth, curved structure like a black candle flame. Narrow vertical slits spaced evenly along its circumference allowed those inside to see out and, I assumed, aim weapons at potential invaders. A third tower was even more eccentric, the top shaped like a giant hand reaching up to snatch the sun from the sky. I was about to ask how the monks had come to create such singular buildings when the abbot made it clear that he’d be the one asking the questions.

  Even though I’d been half expecting some kind of attack, he surprised me with his speed, grabbing me by the jaw and hauling me towards the edge of the tower before I could reach for my weapons.

  “Who sent you to my abbey?” he demanded.

  My feet struggled to keep their balance as he pushed me nearer and nearer to the ledge. “Nobody! Your idiot monks dragged me here against my will!” I tried without success to pull out of his grip. Hells, but this guy was strong.

  “Nice try, but you were already searching for the abbey before Tournam and Butelios found you. Now you want to leave? There’s a war coven out there that would pay a hefty reward to find this place. A spy might try to discover the abbey’s location, learn its defences so he could report back to his Jan’Tep masters.” He leaned in closer, the smell of his cigar heavy on his breath. “Those markings of yours are way too smooth and precise to be natural.” The thumb of his other hand rubbed the twisting black lines around my eye, so hard I feared the skin would come off.

  I drove the palm of my hand under his elbow, pushing it up until it forced him to release my jaw. Chances were he’d follow up with a roundhouse punch, so I readied myself to duck a blow that never came. The abbot just stood there, examining his thumb for signs that my markings had come off. “Doesn’t prove anything,” he said, more to himself than to me.

  I fought the urge to call him an idiot and remind him that I’d probably been hunted by more bounty mages than anyone living inside this abbey. Ferius’s first lesson in the art of persuasion was to remember that the simplest truth usually gets you further than the grandest deception. “My grandmother,” I said. “She banded me in shadow. That’s why the markings look the way they do.”

  “Impossible,” he snapped, but then he came closer to peer into my eye. This time he didn’t try to grab me. “Son of a bitch,” he breathed. “Or, I guess, grandson of a bitch in this case.” He stepped back. “Show me what you can do.”

  “I can’t do anything. I don’t have abilities like you or Tournam or the others. I get headaches! And horrible visions of people becoming monstrous versions of themselves. I get lost in shadow sometimes, and when I do, even my friends start to forget me. I was a baby, and my own grandmother stole my future from me without ever telling me why!”

  The abbot was silent, as though weighing my words for evidence of deception. “Something about this stinks. Despite the nonsense your people believe, the shadowblack isn’t some poison or disease. You can’t just infect someone with it. I need to consult my books,” he said finally. “If some crazy old Jan’Tep really did band you in shadow, then I need to figure out how she did it and why. We’ll talk more tomorrow once I’ve—”

  “No,” I said.

  “No?”

  “I told you, I have a business partner who’s dying out in the damned desert. While I’m wasting time here with you, he’s waiting for me to come and save him!”

  The abbot tensed. Even through his robes I could see the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching. He wanted to hit me. Badly. “Have you forgotten here’s a Jan’Tep war coven out there hunting us? My boys risked all our lives bringing you here, and all you can do is whine at me about some lost pet. Where’s your damned sense of duty to your fellow shadowblacks?”

  Before I could reply, he waved me off. “No, forget it. Even if I didn’t need to understand what those markings around your eye signify, I can’t take a chance on you getting captured and revealing the location of the abbey. There are too many lives at stake.”

  Fear gave way to a cold certainty in my guts. I reached for the castradazi coins sewn into the bottom of my shirt, tearing the thread holding them even as a half-dozen very bad plans for escape came to mind. “You won’t be the first person who tried to lock me up.”

  The abbot gave a weary chuckle and
put up his hands. “I surrender, spellslinger or Argosi or whatever the hell it is you think you are.” He retrieved the stub of his cigar from his robes and stuck it unlit in his mouth. “I swear, never have I grown so damned sick of someone I only just met.”

  I backed away, moving slowly towards the door that led down. From there I’d have to move quickly in case he changed his mind and sounded the alarm.

  “You know, I always heard the Argosi have an uncanny knack for knowing exactly where they are. Guess they never taught you that particular talent, eh?”

  I spun around, a sick feeling in my guts even before I ran up to one of the black lenses housed in its rotating brass fitting atop one of the crenellations. I caught a glance of the mountains in the distance, appearing so close it was as if you could reach out and touch them. There was just one problem: these weren’t any mountains I recognised. I ran to the next magnifier, aiming it in the opposite direction, only to again be presented with a vista that bore no resemblance to anywhere I’d been in my travels across the continent. It was when I looked through the fourth slab of curved black glass—the one facing east—that a feeling almost like vertigo overtook me. What I saw in the distance wasn’t land, but water. An ocean’s worth. “Ancestors, where have you brought me?”

  The abbot came to join me at the magnifier. “Haven’t you wondered why this place wasn’t overrun with bounty mages years ago?” He took hold of the sides of the brass frame holding the magnifier and swivelled it downward. “You want to leave, Kellen? Just follow that road until it takes you to the foot of the mountain. About three days’ walk south you’ll reach a village, and a hundred miles past that you’ll hit the coast. Wait out the winter and, if you’re very lucky, you might just find a ship willing to sail a thousand leagues to the south-east.” He clapped me on the back. “Welcome to the continent of Obscaria, Kellen. The weather’s cold, the food is terrible, and the reason those who come to the abbey never leave is because we’re a long, long way from home.”

  19

  The Firefly

  I stumbled down the stairs, the abbot’s parting words ringing in my ears. An initiate in Jan’Tep magic doesn’t spend a lot of time studying road travel or sea voyages, but a year of riding with Ferius had taught me enough to come up with a rough calculation: it would take me six months to get back to my own continent and return to the Golden Passage.

  Six months.

  I ran a hand across my chin. I wasn’t one for beards, but even so, there was only a week or two’s worth of stubble. How on earth had Tournam and Butelios gotten me here in that time?

  “Guess you got the speech, huh?” a voice asked.

  Even before I saw her, I recognised Diadera’s voice, which was odd since we’d only met briefly and most of that time was spent fighting a demon. She was just around the bend in the stairs, leaning against the curved stone wall, apparently waiting for me. A tumble of red curls framed green eyes and the hint of a lazy smile occupied one corner of her mouth. It says something that it was her smile that caught my attention rather than the filigree of tiny intricate black markings across her cheeks and chin.

  It might sound hypocritical, but the sight of the shadowblack makes my stomach churn. I’d grown up in a society that considered it to be the most disgusting disease imaginable. Healthy Jan’Tep had a responsibility to shun those afflicted so as not to let the condition spread. Mages had a duty to kill them. So even though I had it myself and had come to learn that the shadowblack wasn’t precisely what I’d always been taught, seeing the markings on someone else—someone standing so very close to me—was profoundly disconcerting.

  “Don’t like what you see?” she asked, and though her light tone of voice tried to mask any animosity, I had the sudden feeling I was in more danger now than I had been with the abbot.

  It’s not like I hadn’t been this close to someone else’s markings before. Seneira had them, though hers turned out to be something completely different. Maybe on some deeper level I’d sensed it, which was why she hadn’t produced the same reaction in me as this girl did.

  Or maybe it was taking me a second to understand exactly what I was feeling.

  Diadera’s reaction, on the other hand, was entirely different. She peered at the markings around my left eye, tracing them with her gaze, looking so deep it was as if there was something written there that I’d missed in all the hours I’d spent staring in the mirror. She reached out a finger and touched the ridge of my eye. Cool, she said.

  No. Wait. She hadn’t said it. She’d thought it.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked, pulling away.

  “Our shadows,” she replied, coming closer, not showing the least trace of anger or embarrassment at my awkwardness. “They’re both connected to Umbra Arcanta—that’s one of the ethereal planes. I’ve never met anyone whose shadows are so close to my own.” She tapped the freckles on her left cheek. “Are you an inspiritor like me? Can you make your markings come to li—”

  “Stop it!” I said, my voice rising in both volume and pitch. “I’ve never heard of this ‘Umbra Arcanta.’ I haven’t a clue what an ‘inspiritor’ does.”

  Ancestors, why am I even talking to her? I might not be a prisoner here, but I’m not free either. I don’t know these people and I don’t want to know them. If I’d just fought back when they took me, maybe I could’ve stayed with Reichis and died with my frie—

  “Shh …” Diadera said. She took my hand and, more slowly than before, as though I were a frightened rabbit, she brought my fingertips to the freckles on her cheek.

  I’m sorry I was so forward before, she said without speaking. I just wasn’t expecting this.

  “I still don’t kn—”

  She put her other finger on my lips. Just think it.

  I tried to settle myself, but it was hard. It wasn’t just her words I could hear. When she touched my markings, it was as if all my senses became overwhelmed by her presence. Her smell. The texture of her hair. The way she—

  Focus, she thought to me. Even without looking at her face I could sense her grinning. We hardly know each other.

  Once again I tried to get control of myself. I’d never properly learned arta precis—the Argosi talent for perception—but I knew something was up.

  Tell me what’s happening, I thought back to the red-haired girl. You’re not just sending words into my mind. You’re messing with my head.

  She nodded. Well, she didn’t, but in my thoughts she did. Let’s start at the beginning. You probably think the shadowblack is this big evil plague, right?

  Isn’t it?

  Oh, definitely. That stuff about demons taking us over? Well, you saw the stygian in the courtyard, so you know it happens. But it’s a lot more complicated than you’ve probably been told. The black markings on our skin are a kind of … portal … for energies between our plane of existence and ones far outside our own.

  Portals?

  Her finger tapped one of the tattooed bands on my forearm … No, again, she hadn’t. She’d just sent that touch to me. Your Jan’Tep bands connect to six esoteric planes, which you call things like “sand,” “silk” and “fire,” right?

  Ember, I corrected.

  Whatever. Anyway, think of the shadowblack kind of like your bands only it connects to one of dozens, maybe hundreds, of different ethereal planes. Most people’s markings come from one of a dozen or so lower planes. When their shadows touch or, like I’m doing now, they touch skin to the other’s markings, their minds share a connection on that plane. Does that make sense?

  Hardly at all, I replied.

  She took my fingers away from her cheek and smiled at me. “What’s my name?”

  “Diadera. You told me before, in the courtyard.”

  “My full name.”

  “Diadera dan Hestria,” I replied. “Wait … How did I—”

  “What’s my favourite colour?”

  I answered without even having to think. “Green and silver. You can never decide be
tween them.”

  Somehow I knew more about her than I did most of the people I’d grown up with. Dozens of little details. Likes and dislikes. Fears and desires. A few scattered memories, though I knew she’d kept most of those to herself. I also knew she hadn’t taken any from me. What I knew from her had been a gesture. An offering of friendship.

  “And your markings are from the same plane as mine? This ‘Umbra Arcanta’?”

  She nodded. “It’s supposed to be one of the hardest to control, but I’ve always been able to bring my shadows to life.”

  “Because you’re an … ‘inspiritor’?”

  “Exactly.” She touched a finger to my own markings again. Now we just need to figure out what you can do, Kellen of the Jan’Tep.

  It was getting easier to share thoughts with her. Well, I get splitting headaches and have horrible visions. Does that count?

  Show me.

  I shook my head. No. The things I see are … I don’t go looking for them.

  Too bad. We have a Jan’Tep girl here named Suta’rei who’s an alacratist. That means her markings let her reach into the past and reveal it for us. Is that what happens to you?

  Not unless the past is a lot uglier than anyone remembers.

  Diadera’s finger began tracing the lines around my eye. Your markings are strange. Almost like the wheels of a lock. Maybe you’re an enigmatist.

  What can they do?

  Nobody knows. Outside of a couple of brief mentions in one of the abbot’s books, no one’s ever met one. She took her finger away, leaving me feeling oddly alone. “Come on,” she said, turning to the stairs that led back down the tower. “I’ll show you around.”

  I didn’t budge. My conversation with the abbot came crashing back down on me, reminding me that I was as much a prisoner here as if they’d locked me in a cell. “I think I’ve seen enough of the abbey for one day.”