Soulbinder

by Sebastien de Castell

  “You’re a child,” I wheezed, then added, “and a coward.” I finished by spitting in his face.

  To the untrained observer, it might seem as if I hadn’t quite mastered my lessons in arta loquit. However, the purpose of eloquence isn’t to make friends with your opponent; it’s to speak to them in a way they truly understand—to use words and ideas that reach deep inside them. Now, inwardly, the Berabesq culture is considered rich and vibrant, full of traditions and contradictions, devout faith and philosophical questioning. I’d never really gotten to know that part of their people though, because the face their religious leaders show to the rest of the world is zealous, dogmatic and arrogant as all hell. That was the language I’d chosen to speak.

  The Berabesq view the passage into adulthood even more seriously than the Jan’Tep. When I’d called Tournam a child, I’d implied he’d failed to make that sacred transition. Next I’d impugned his courage. Bravery is considered by the Berabesq to be the fundamental distinction between themselves and foreigners, so naming him a coward was akin to saying he wasn’t Berabesq at all. Finally, Tournam’s people live surrounded by desert and pride themselves on being able to survive without water for days at a time whenever they go on their holy pilgrimages. To spit at a Berabesq is to imply that they need the water more than you do.

  See? Arta loquit. No problem.

  The bands around my limbs tightened, squeezing so hard I feared the small bones in my wrists and ankles would shatter. “What did you say to me, Jan’Tep?” Tournam hissed. He gestured at the floor, and his shadowblack bands forced me to my knees. “Look at you,” he said, towering over me. “Feeble. Helpless. No real shadowblack abilities of your own—just a few tricks easily evaded by taking away your toys. You’re a spy, Kellen, and that means I can do anything I want to you.” He knelt down until his lips were practically touching the lobe of my ear. “Let me hear you say it.”

  For a guy who wanted me to speak, he wasn’t making it easy. The noose around my neck was making it harder and harder to get any air into my lungs, and my heart was beating so rapidly that I was convinced I had only seconds before I’d pass out. That’s why I didn’t waste what little breath I had left on trying to deny I was a spy. Instead I forced out a single word: “Duel.”

  I’ve never seen someone’s eyes go that wide so quickly.

  Yeah, I thought. That got you, didn’t it?

  I’d accused him of being a coward and a child. Now I was offering him the chance to prove me wrong, which is always more satisfying than beating up a helpless victim. Unless he turned out to be a lunatic who got off on murder, at which point I was in serious trouble.

  Tournam stepped back a few feet. His shadows lifted me up until I was floating a foot off the ground. “You really think you could take me, Jan’Tep?”

  I nodded.

  He snapped his fingers. All of a sudden the ribbons let go and I fell gasping to the floor. I ignored the jolt to my knees in favour of rubbing desperately at my wrists to get the feeling back into them.

  “Oh, this is going to be fun,” Tournam said.

  No, it’s not, you moron. You’re an arrogant, privileged arsehole. I’m a gods-damned outlaw spellslinger who’s faced guys a lot tougher than you. I’m going to beat you silly.

  When I was reasonably sure I wouldn’t fall down, I rose to my feet and reached out for my trousers and powder belt, only to have Tournam’s ribbons yank them away. “That’s not how shadowcasters duel, Kellen.” He gave me as close to a friendly smile as that smug mouth of his was capable of producing. “This is the Ebony Abbey. The rules are a little different here.”

  Okay, so this might be a problem after all.

  25

  The Duel

  “Everyone at the abbey’s been wondering what your shadowblack abilities are,” Tournam said. “Diadera says she thinks you’re an enigmatist.” Another pair of black ribbons unwound from his arms to sway in the air between us. “So come on, mystery boy. Show me what you’ve got.”

  Hearing that Diadera had talked to him about me put a sour taste in my mouth. I set that aside though, because regardless of what she thought, I was no more an enigmatist—whatever that was—than I was a lord magus. “Give me back my cards, Tournam. Make it a fair fight and I’ll—”

  “Fair?” Tournam practically spat the word. “Are you sure you didn’t just paint those markings around your eye? No one cursed with the shadowblack still thinks the world is fair.”

  One of his ribbons cracked like a whip at my cheek. I’d seen it coming, but my limbs were still so numb from having been constricted that I couldn’t risk any of Ferius’s fancy evasion techniques. Instead I threw myself out of the way. The room was narrow, and I misjudged how hard to push with my legs. I ended up slamming against the wall like a bird flying into a closed window.

  “So much for those Argosi martial arts I’ve heard so much about,” Tournam said. He sounded almost disappointed. “Use your markings, Kellen. Fight me like a proper shadowblack.”

  “I can’t!” I yelled back at him. That proved a mistake. He’d been goading me, and now took advantage of my lack of focus to lash out at me with a second ribbon. This time I moved too slowly, and my cheek stung as if I’d been struck with a leather belt. Tournam was toying with me.

  “This is who I risked my life to carry back from that barren desert? A simpering boy who can’t even conjure an ounce of shadow?” Two of his shadowblack tendrils reared up, then sliced down in opposing diagonal cuts to my face. I got my arms up in time to block them, but the pain was worse than being flogged. Tournam’s attacks were becoming rapidly more violent. I couldn’t take much more of this.

  “Fight back!” he demanded.

  I spun around in an old Daroman dancing turn that Ferius had taught me to use as a whirling kick. My foot stopped an inch from Tournam’s face, caught by one of his ribbons. Before I could recover, it wrapped around my leg and hurled me backwards with enough force that I knew I’d either wind up knocked unconscious against the stone wall or break my neck. I arched my back the way you do in a Gitabrian tango dip, transferring my momentum into a backflip. Oh, how I wished I’d spent more time practising those damned tangos with Ferius. By some miracle I managed to turn in the air and get my feet back under me. Before I could attack again though, I saw that I’d landed right inside the loop of one of Tournam’s shadowblack ribbons. When he twisted his right hand, the lasso tightened and my legs were jammed together.

  “No more games,” he said. “Show that you can cast shadows, Kellen. Prove to me that you belong here.”

  I couldn’t cast shadows of course, or do any of the other things these people did. The markings around my left eye only ever brought me pain and misery. Damn you, Seren’tia. Why did you do this to me? How could you band your own grandson in shadow?

  The bitterness and anger hit me even worse than the pain of Tournam’s lashing black ribbons. “I never asked to come to this damned abbey!” I shouted at him. “I just want to leave and find my friend!”

  My outrage only seemed to spur his indignation. “Shadowblacks don’t have friends. We only have each other. You’re either one of us or you’re one of them.” His voice went quiet, calm. No, not calm. Cold. “If you’re one of them, Kellen, if you’re an agent of the Jan’Tep, I’ll kill you.”

  “I’m not a spy!”

  “Prove it.” He flicked a hand and one of his ribbons wrapped itself around my forehead, forcing it back. A second one began probing the winding black lines around my left eye, poking at them like a surgeon’s knife preparing to make an incision. “Awaken your shadowblack,” Tournam said. “Use the markings to save your life before it’s too late.”

  The tip of his ribbon pushed against the skin above my eye like a needle. I could feel the flesh about to part from the pressure. “Stop!” I screamed. “My shadowblack doesn’t work like yours! It doesn’t do anything except make my life hell!” I struggled to pull away, but more and more of Tournam’s ribbons were wrapping
themselves around my body, entombing me like a mummified corpse.

  “I know you’re a spy,” he murmured. Something about the way he repeated it over and over was odd, as if he weren’t so much trying to get me to confess as to convince himself.

  Ancestors, damn me for a fool. I’d completely misread this situation. Underneath Tournam’s bravado, he was afraid. Panicked. The idea that there was a Jan’Tep spy in the abbey terrified him. But he wasn’t a murderer. So he’d tried to goad me—to push me until I put him in a situation where he’d have no choice but to kill me in self-defence. Even though I’d failed to present a genuine threat, he’d come too far now to stop. Tournam was working up the nerve to finish me off.

  A terrible resolve rose up inside me, and I prepared myself for what I would have to do next.

  I’m sorry, Ferius, I thought.

  As much as I’d tried to study her gentler ways, I’d learned just as much about fighting from Reichis. Squirrel cats, for all their big talk, are small animals. Fragile. Like me. The only reason they survive against larger predators is because they’ve adapted to seek out the perfect moment to strike, and when it comes, they do so without mercy. The Way of Thunder, the Argosi call it. That was the path I was going to have to walk now.

  I watched Tournam’s eyes, thinking through what I would need to say next, what final trick would get him to lose his grip on me. When that moment came, there’d be no more of Ferius’s clever movements. No more dancing. I would press my fingers together to form a striking surface and then I’d drive it straight into the ball of Tournam’s throat.

  “There!” he said, pointing at me as if I’d just uttered a confession. “I can see it in your eyes! That same look you had when you pushed Butelios over a cliff.” He came closer. “When you tried to kill him.”

  Well, he sort of had a point there, and I doubted I could convince him otherwise. In a second it wouldn’t matter though, because he’d become so focused on my face that the band around my right wrist was almost loose enough for me to work my hand free. I choked down the feeling of guilt crawling up my belly. This is the Way of Thunder, I told myself. This is how it has to be.

  “Kellen only pushed me over that cliff because he knew you’d use your shadowblack to save me,” a deeper voice said, surprising us both. The slow plod of sandals against the stone floor preceded Butelios pushing open the door to the room.

  Light from the hallway trailed him into the room, the faint morning sun from windows on the other side reflecting orange off those parts of the big man’s shaved head that weren’t covered in black markings. He offered us both a hint of a smile. “I may have forgotten to thank him for that.”

  “Thank me later,” Tournam said. “I’m about to save your life a second time, and the lives of everyone else at the abbey.”

  Butelios put a hand on his shoulder. “No, I don’t think you will.”

  “How do you plan to stop me? Drown me in those shadowblack tears of yours? Get out of here, you oversized child. You’ve never been a fighter.”

  Before he could respond, before I could bring my now-freed hand back in preparation for driving it into Tournam’s throat the instant he turned back to me, a new voice broke the silence.

  “But I am.” It was Diadera.

  She stepped inside the room and my heart jumped from one too many shocks for any sane person to endure. Just a minute ago I’d thought Tournam was going to kill me, then I’d committed to murdering him first, then Butelios had tried to calm things down only that hadn’t looked like it would work. Now Diadera had entered the picture.

  An unexpected sensation came over me. Not relief or lust, but mortification. I glanced down. Yep. Still naked. Tournam’s ribbons hadn’t even had the decency to cover up the important parts.

  “Did you boys throw a party and forget to invite me?” Diadera asked without a trace of awkwardness. Her gaze travelled all the way from my feet to the top of my head via all points in between. “Why, Tournam,” she said lightly, “I never knew you were into bondage games. Think of the fun we’ve missed.”

  Tournam’s cheeks went red, either from outrage or humiliation. “Get out of here, Diadera. You were supposed to kill him, not bed him.”

  “I changed my mind,” she said, though now she refused to meet my gaze.

  Great. The one person I thought might not hate me had been planning on killing me.

  For his part, Tournam now seemed angrier with her than with me. “Then I guess it’s a damned good thing I’m leader of the shadowcasters and not you.”

  Diadera batted her eyelashes innocently up at him. “You mean because you’re the biggest, baddest, toughest shadowblack of us all?”

  “Damned right.”

  She sauntered over to stand between us before spinning to face him. “The thing is, Tournam dear—and I don’t mean to brag now—but I can be big and bad too. So maybe it’s time I took over the shadowcasters.”

  Tournam’s whole body was shaking with barely contained frustration and humiliation. Diadera had pushed him too far, misjudging him as badly as I had. “You think you can best me, girl?”

  “Oh, definitely.” Suddenly she grinned and tossed her red curls back. “But then I’d have to bruise that beautiful face of yours, and we couldn’t have that, could we?” Without warning she stretched up on her toes and kissed him full on the lips. Without giving him time to react, she came back down and walked right past him, stopping at the door to give us all a wink. “Playtime’s ended now, boys. We’re due in the training square.”

  I fully expected Tournam to use her departure as an opportunity to renew his attacks on me. Instead he just stared after her, fingers brushing his lips where hers had been. How long he stood there, how long he left me waiting to see if this was still going to end in one of us dying, I couldn’t say, but the next thing I knew, his ribbons released me, and without so much as a stern look back he followed Diadera out of the room.

  I steadied myself against the wall, taking long, deep breaths as I tried to slow my heart rate. I couldn’t decide if I should be jealous, or relieved, or whose gender I should be the most disappointed in. “You people are insane,” I murmured.

  Butelios offered me my clothes and a deep-throated chuckle. “Don’t look at me, friend. Attraction to the opposite sex has always struck me as a little perverse. You should get dressed. Brother Dyem is training us today and his lessons can be somewhat … distressing at first.”

  “Distressing?” My hands shook as I struggled to get my trousers on. “What’s distressing is that I’m a thousand miles from my homeland, trapped inside a madhouse where the inmates can’t decide between murdering strangers or seducing them.”

  The big man shrugged. “Most of us are young, Kellen.” His index finger traced the pattern on his face that ended in three black teardrops. “If the shadowblack does not kill me before I am twenty, then surely those who hate me for having it will. The others here will likely suffer the same fate. Is it any wonder our impulses tend to be … pronounced?” I was still buttoning up my shirt when he threw an arm around my shoulder and led me out of the room. “Welcome to the Ebony Abbey, Kellen of the Jan’Tep. A place of respite from a world that despises us. Here’s hoping you survive the experience.”

  26

  People and Places

  Diadera was at the end of the hall, engaged in deep conversation with Tournam, their voices too quiet for me to hear. When she saw Butelios and me approaching, those pale green eyes of hers followed my every step without ever meeting my gaze. Had she set me up last night, using her shadowblack to put me to sleep, knowing full well Tournam was waiting to ambush me? Or had she genuinely not known? Come to think of it, given Tournam’s earlier threats, I really shouldn’t have needed any warning.

  At times like these it’s impossible not to imagine Shalla giving me one of those disapproving sighs of hers. You’re too trusting, brother. You always have been. So desperate for love and acceptance that you gift your enemies with the means to get t
he better of you.

  “You’ll be happy to hear that Tournam has agreed to desist in his attempts to execute you as a spy,” Diadera said brightly. “Until he finds some … Now what was that word we were using a moment ago, Tournam?” She prodded him in the chest before answering her own question. “Oh, that’s right. Evidence.”

  He tried and failed to meet her challenging stare. “Have it your way. Cloud boy’s your responsibility now.” He turned on his heel and set off down the stairs.

  Diadera gave an exasperated sigh before following him. “Believe it or not, Tournam really does grow on you after a while.”

  “So does gangrene,” I muttered to myself. “That’s why its better to cut it off sooner rather than later.”

  Butelios chuckled behind me. “‘So does gangrene.’ Good one.” He gave me a gentle nudge towards the stairs. “I can sense already that we’re all going to be great friends, Kellen of the Jan’Tep.”

  Somehow I doubted that.

  Round and round the four of us went, descending the winding tower stairs in silence. Diadera’s steps were quick and assured, almost playful, reminding me that this place that loomed so dark and ominous to me meant something completely different to her. Safety. Sanctuary. Home.

  Had Ferius been there she might’ve opined—in that frontier drawl of hers—You can learn a lot about a person’s relationship to a place by watching the way their body moves inside it. She’d never said those exact words, but they certainly sounded like the kind of thing she’d say. Maybe I was now stumbling across new Argosi insights all by myself.

  Tournam reached the wide double doors at the base of the tower first, pushing them open to reveal the early morning sun reflecting off a narrow black path that led back to the main courtyard.

  “Is this some kind of volcanic glass?” I asked, noting a similar quality to the abbey’s towers and other buildings.

  “Sounds about right,” he replied, clearly never having given the question any thought.