“Let’s hope so,” Tournam said with a grin. “After that last debacle with a damned mage I need something to take my aggression out on.” He gave Diadera a jab with his elbow. “How about you?”
She returned his smile. “Oh, definitely.”
With their myriad abilities they made a formidable team, and yet Tas’diem had beaten them all, stringing them up like animal carcasses with his shadowblack tendrils. The six of them had so much raw power compared to the paltry collection of tricks a spellslinger like me could bring to bear. Why had one crazed mage—no matter how powerful—been able to ensnare them so easily?
They rely on their abilities, I realised then, remembering how the lessons Ferius had taught me—each and every one of them—came down to thinking your way out of trouble instead of using brute force. Ferius had no magic, only her training, her tricks and her daring. The thing about a good trick, though, is that it lets you use an opponent’s strength against them, rather than relying on your own. Tournam, Ghilla, even Diadera, always drew on their shadowblack first, as if it were a compulsion. No, I realised then. It’s panic. For all their bravado and banter, the shadowcasters lived in a constant state of fear, always betting their survival on the very thing that made them outcasts, never taking the risk to rely on their wits or on each other.
“Kellen, are you ready?” Butelios asked. The big man’s oily black tears were returning to his face, sliding up his cheeks and back into his eyes. It made for a disconcerting sight.
“We need to go now,” Azir said, jaw tight and his young forehead lined from strain. At his feet the onyx road was beginning to fragment. “The abbot’s sent us on too many missions lately. I can’t hold the road much longer.”
“Well then,” Tournam said, slapping the boy hard on the back, “here we go!” He gave a defiant laugh as he leaped off the shadow path and into the fog.
“Wait,” I said. “What if it’s a trap?”
Diadera looked back and grinned. “Kellen, we do this kind of thing all the time, and today was the first time we’ve ever been caught in a mage’s trap. It won’t happen twice.” She winked and asked, “Nobody’s luck is that bad, right?”
She’d stepped through the fog before I could warn her that my luck was precisely that bad.
If you’ve never spent the night in the open desert then you haven’t seen the sky as it’s meant to be seen. An endless expanse of sand surrounds you in every direction, its perfection broken only by the occasional patch of scrub you can barely make out in the dark even if you’re looking for it. No distractions, precious few sounds. Your eyes go skyward, drawn to the thousand glimmering points of light, whose combined beauty fills even the most jaded mind with unimaginable awe.
On the worst night of your life, you still couldn’t help but look up there and wonder if perhaps those stars were winking at you, welcoming you into their presence. Until of course you remember one thing.
The desert is a liar.
“There’s something over here,” Ghilla called out.
My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet, so it was hard to make her out from the other five. Azir was the same height as her, but he was kneeling a little way behind me, still catching his breath from the effort of bringing us here. I walked over to the girl. She was staring down at her feet. “This musta taken a whole lotta work, eh, boy? What you call this then?”
Three concentric rings had been traced in the yellow-gold sand, the largest about five feet in diameter, so perfectly formed that I instinctively stepped back to avoid disturbing them. Ghilla was marring the outermost circle by standing on it. Had one of my old spellmasters been there to witness her disrespect, she’d’ve gotten an earful of outraged insults and threats of dire punishment. Even for me—an outlaw with no love for his people—it was an effort to stop myself from pushing her aside. Inside the circle, a long sequence of complex sigils filled nearly every inch of the space.
“It’s a spell circle,” I said. “This particular kind is a sequencing wheel. It holds spells within the shapes in order to trigger a series of conjurations one after another.”
“Is it dangerous?” Ghilla asked, dragging the toe of her boot along one of the sigils, crossing it out.
“Not without a Jan’Tep mage to supply the magic.”
My clan favoured pure tactical magic rather than rituals, the latter being considered overly elaborate and of limited use, given how much preparation they required. I looked around for Suta’rei. If her clan still performed things like abnegations—which were themselves a form of ritual magic—this stuff would be more familiar to her than to me. I spotted her about thirty yards away, staring off at the horizon. “Could you come here, Suta’rei?” I called out.
I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me, but soon she nodded and walked over. Though she maintained her usual Jan’Tep composure, her eyes were wet. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing. What do you want?”
I pointed down at the circle on the ground. “Any idea what this was for?”
She seemed surprised when she saw it. “How did that get here?”
“Imagine someone drew it, girl,” Ghilla said with a snort.
One day I’d really have to find out something about Ghilla’s people—like who they were, and why they insisted on referring to their elders as “girl” or “boy.”
Suta’rei knelt down and examined the circle. “Remarkable.” She pointed a slim finger at the lines in the sand. “Look how stable they are, even with this breeze. The sand everywhere else is shifting about, but the lines remain pure.” She crossed one of them out, and the sand fell away, breaking the line. “This was sand magic.”
“Well, it’s sand anyway,” Ghilla scoffed.
“No, you little twit. Sand magic gives dominion over time. The reason the sand doesn’t move until we touch it is that the mage who prepared this circle forced it to remain within a single instant in time. Thus it retains its form unless someone changes it.”
Diadera came to stand with us, Tournam following close behind. “Sounds like a lot of work,” she said. “What was the point?”
Suta’rei’s eyes scanned each sigil within the inner circles. “There are three different spells involved.” She pointed at a quadrant of linked glyphs. “Look, see here? These are part of a tracking incantation.” Her brow furrowed. “Quite a simple one.”
“Who’s it trying to track?” Diadera asked.
Suta’rei’s finger touched another set of sigils, then pointed up at me. “Him. The mage was looking for Kellen.”
“Well, they must’ve been disappointed,” Tournam said, arms across his chest. “No Jan’Tep spell can pierce the abbey’s veil, so Kellen’s in the clear.”
“You’re wrong, Berabesq,” Suta’rei said. “Like all your people, you misunderstand the true nature of the universe. There is no force, no power—” she looked up at the sky—“no god that the fundamental magics cannot unwind.” Ignoring his angry glare, she returned to the markings in the sand. “In fact, look at the way the grains of sand here have changed colour, turning from yellow to silver. It appears the mage did find Kellen’s location. This second set of sigils holds a messaging spell, and it, too, was completed.”
“The abbot won’t be happy to hear that,” Azir said, coming over to join us.
“What about the rest of the ritual?” I asked, pointing to the third ring.
Suta’rei shook her head. “The final spell was never completed.”
“How can you tell?” I hated admitting to Suta’rei how ignorant I was of my people’s magic.
She passed her hand over the final set of sigils, swearing as if flames had burned the palm of her hand, before crashing it down on the sand and destroying the markings. “These ones were meant to kill you.”
I experienced an all too familiar stab of fear mixed with anger. “How? The circle is meant to sequence the spells one after the other. If the tracking spell managed to locate me, then why wasn’t the killing spell
triggered?”
Butelios spoke, his deep voice carrying even though he was a fair distance away, and we all turned to see him staring down at a mound in the sand. “Because someone killed her first.”
38
The Shadow Play
There wasn’t much left of the woman who’d come to murder me, but the sight of her bones put a knot in my stomach. Usually when someone wants to finish me off they do it up close—often after a long speech rhapsodising my many real or imagined crimes. This time however, had the final spell been invoked, I would’ve died never having seen the face of my executioner.
“What makes you so sure this body belongs to the mage who cast the spells?” Diadera asked. “For that matter, how can you tell the corpse is even Jan’Tep?”
A fair question, since there wasn’t a shred of clothing or flesh left on the body. The pelvic bone and jaw indicated the deceased was female, but beyond that? In the desert it doesn’t take long to reduce a body to bones and bits of hair. Carrion eaters are plentiful, and once they’ve had their due the sandstorms scrub clean whatever’s left.
Suta’rei knelt down and tapped the bones of the dead woman’s forearms. “See these faint horizontal striations that travel from the radius to the ulna and back again? The discolorations?” She held out her own right arm and pulled up the sleeve of her coat to show the metallic tattooed bands that began just past her wrists. “Over time the special inks our people use to imprint our bands seep beneath skin, muscle and sinew. Eventually the markings appear on the bones.”
I’d never known that. Once again Suta’rei had shown me how little I knew about my own people. Was this simply because my self-imposed exile had begun before I’d been fully inducted into the secrets of our magic? Or was my clan in some way primitive compared to hers? Were my father’s ambitions to become mage sovereign of the entire Jan’Tep nation being met with serious debate by the other clans, or were they laughing behind his back?
“Jan’Tep magic is more than just skin deep, eh?” Tournam chuckled, shaking me from my thoughts as he held up the dead woman’s wrist and dangled her arm.
Suta’rei shot him a sour look. “That which is real often provides physical evidence of its existence. Unlike the superstitious nonsense some call ‘faith.’”
“You’ll find plenty of evidence of God’s power in the afterlife, heathen.”
“Speaking of the afterlife,” Diadera said, pushing Tournam out of the way, “can anyone tell me how long this mage has been dead?”
I knelt down for a closer look. Of all of us, I’d probably spent the most time out in the desert. Tournam and Azir were Berabesq, of course, but their people tend to live inside magnificent cities, not out in the kind of desolate expanse you find in the Golden Passage. “The bones are scoured clean. Even with scavengers and the hot sun, that takes at least a month.”
“But we only rescued you a week ago,” Tournam said.
I bristled at the word rescued, but let it pass. “Then it had to be a sandstorm. A big one.” I stood back up to examine the terrain in all directions. Other than the spell circle, kept in place by magic, the desert was a pristine carpet of sand. That in itself provided a timeline. “Couldn’t have hit more than a day ago.”
Ghilla looked up at me, eyes suspicious as always. “How can you tell, boy?”
“Look around you, girl. This whole area is too smooth. Undisturbed. If you were to come back here tomorrow you’d find animal tracks, bits of debris and other signs of life.”
Which means I’ve come a day too late to find out what happened to Reichis.
“Hey,” Diadera said, taking my hand. She pulled me close and reached out a finger to touch my shadowblack. I flinched like I always did, but she refused to let go. It wasn’t your fault, she said, sending her thoughts through the connection we shared. Better that you live with the guilt than have died with your misplaced loyalty intact.
I pulled away, breaking contact. I wasn’t ready to let go of either my guilt or my debts to Reichis, not by a long shot. But an idea was forming in my mind. I turned to Butelios. “Those tears of yours—can they show me what happened to Reichis?”
He almost winced at the suggestion, the furrows on his brow deepening, making him look older than he was. “Not alone, I’m afraid.” His gaze went to Suta’rei. “I would need an alacratist. We would have to …” He let the rest drift away unspoken.
The reluctance on Suta’rei’s expression as she looked back at Butelios—the way she wrapped her arms around herself—spoke volumes about how unpleasant she found the prospect of doing what I’d asked. After almost a minute she nodded her assent. “If we must, then let us be quick about it. The intimacy this calls for is not something I …” It was her turn to leave something unsaid.
Despite the good-natured smile Butelios put on, I had the sense he was stung by her reticence. “This is not my favourite way to pass the time either, I assure you.” He approached her until they were so close that had he bent down or she tilted her chin, their lips would have touched. He reached out to her, but Azir grabbed his arm.
“Wait,” the boy said. “The abbot doesn’t like it when you—”
“The abbot isn’t here,” Tournam said, cutting him off. He grabbed Azir’s shoulder and lowered himself until they were eye to eye. “And no little busybody is going to tell him. Not unless he wants to wake up in the middle of the night to a most unpleasant thrashing.”
The boy’s lip trembled. He couldn’t hold Tournam’s gaze, but he didn’t back away and I kind of admired the way he stood his ground.
Tournam continued. “If a Jan’Tep mage has tracked Kellen to the Ebony Abbey, then we need to know if she told anyone else before she died. If she shared that information with the war coven, they might be able to—”
“He’s right,” Diadera said. “I’m sorry, Kellen, but this is too important.” Without giving me a chance to protest, she turned to Butelios. “We need to see what happened after the mage discovered Kellen’s location. If you still have the strength after that, then you can attempt a second search for the squirrel cat.”
Butelios was still facing Suta’rei, gazing into her eyes even as he spoke to me. “I’m sorry, my friend, but she’s right. There are children at the abbey. We must think of them.”
“Then let’s get on with it,” Suta’rei said, shivering.
The big man nodded his agreement, then bowed his head. Suta’rei leaned her own face close to his until their cheeks were touching. The awkward intimacy of their embrace was uncomfortable to watch. When their shadowblack markings came into contact, Butelios began weeping shadow tears as he had before. They drifted up into the air above the pair, circling like a floating crown. Suta’rei closed her eyes, revealing the pitch-black lids. The markings peeled away from her, joining together and flittering up high until they found Butelios’s tears, which began to spin and dance around the elegant black moth. The strange procession hovered over to the dead mage’s spell circle.
“Step back,” Suta’rei commanded us.
Diadera tugged on my shoulder. I followed her and the others a few feet away. Once the spell circle was clear, Butelios’s tears and Suta’rei’s moth began to cast shadows upon the ground, like cut-out paper puppets held in front of a candle to project their shapes against a wall. The shapes began to move, and a remarkable scene unfolded before our eyes, like watching a Gitabrian stage play on the Bridge of Dice, only here the actors were shadows.
The dead mage’s silhouette sat cross-legged inside her ritual circle. Suta’rei’s shadow moth fluttered its wings, and I could make out the barest whisper of the mage’s incantations. Even before the first circle of sigils in the sand took on an eerie glow, I recognised the syllables she was repeating over and over.
“Saret’kaveth. Saret’kaveth. Saret’kaveth.”
The floating compass. Not the first form that I’d used the night before, which carries a tiny object from one person to another, but the second—the one from which the spell der
ives its name—which traces the path back to the sender.
“What is the girl holding in her hand?” Ghilla asked. The others had seen it too: a tiny sliver of darkness floating an inch above the silhouette’s upturned palm, so black you could see it even against the mage’s shadow.
Suta’rei kept silent, maintaining her focus on the link she shared with Butelios to unveil these past events. The others probably didn’t know what they were looking at. But I did.
Anguish and disgust fought over which would take me first. They both lost to a despair so deep it made my bones ache. Shalla, how could you do this to me?
“What is it?” Diadera asked, holding on to my arm. I guess I’d stumbled in the sand. I couldn’t bring myself to answer though. If I did, I’d reveal myself to be exactly what Tournam had accused me of earlier: a Jan’Tep spy.
Shalla hadn’t asked me for an object touched by Reichis so she could help him. She needed something I’d touched so that she could track me to the Ebony Abbey. The moment I’d sent the onyx shard through shadow, she must have used conventional magic to divert it to a member of my father’s war coven—someone close enough to the Golden Passage to seek out the traces left by the shadow road Azir had made when he’d helped Tournam and Butelios rescue me. Even that wouldn’t enable the mage to pierce the veil surrounding the Ebony Abbey though. For that, they needed something bonded to me. Something made of shadow itself. The onyx shard.
My sister had sold me out to curry favour with our father.
“What’s the mage doing now?” Azir asked, pointing to the silhouette that was now shifting the positions of its hands. The second ring of sigils in her spell circle ignited.
“She’s revealing the location of the Ebony Abbey to the leader of the Jan’Tep war coven,” I replied.
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