Soulbinder

by Sebastien de Castell

  They’re afraid, I thought absently as I trudged along behind them. Afraid of what the abbot might do. Afraid of being cast out from the abbey.

  Everything was “us” and “them” with these people. You were either a shadowblack fighting to survive in a world that hated you, or you were one of the countless enemies coming after them. The shadowcasters were a pack, of sorts, bound together by need and sometimes desire, but not by the bonds of friendship. Even when they fought together, they never really watched each other’s backs.

  “Azir’s hurt,” I said, the only one to notice the boy’s shambling gait. He looked even more exhausted than I felt, which was saying something.

  “He’s fine,” Tournam replied. “Just needs to toughen up, right, kid?”

  Azir looked straight ahead, his entire being concentrating on the flakes of shadowblack that fell from his feet, growing and thickening to form the road ahead of us. “Path feels wrong today,” he mumbled. “Too heavy.”

  Suta’rei and I both looked back, but there was nothing there.

  Butelios put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You are tired. There is no shame in that. To navigate through shadow as you do … You are a marvel, Azir.”

  Tournam butted the big man out of the way, sweeping aside the comforting hand. He gave Azir a light swat to the back of the head. “The kid’s lazy is all. We’ve been too easy on him and now he’s gone soft.”

  “Why must you pick on the boy endlessly?” Suta’rei demanded, barely catching her balance as she stepped forward to confront him. “Does it make you feel strong to bully him so?”

  “Azir and I are Berabesq,” Tournam replied. “You know nothing of our ways, Jan’Tep, so best you keep your heathen mouth shut.”

  “How about everybody shuts up?” Diadera said, her eyes on the road ahead. She had noticed the same thing I’d seen: the path was becoming narrower. Weaker. The fragments that made up its surface looked clumsily pieced together now. Fragile. Like they might not be able to take our weight.

  A wind picked up all around us like the beginnings of a sandstorm. When we’d first entered shadow, there had barely been a breeze. Now we were being buffeted by it, and I gripped the bundle under my arm tighter for fear a sudden gust would snatch it from me.

  “Somethin’ bad is shakin’ itself awake,” Ghilla muttered. “Don’t want to meet no spirit that lives here.”

  “Maybe you should rest,” Diadera suggested to Azir. “Relax for a few minutes. We’re not in any rush.”

  He shook his head, straggly hair moving with it. “Have to keep going. Don’t want to get lost.”

  Hard to imagine getting lost on a road that travelled straight as an arrow, but I remembered what Diadera had said: the onyx path only appeared straight. Our eyes simply couldn’t see the way it twisted and turned through multidimensional geometries. We might be hanging upside down at that very moment.

  “We’re almost there,” Butelios said, pointing to the shimmering black fog a few dozen yards ahead of us.

  “Road still feels too h-h-heavy,” Azir said, though it was hard to hear him over the wind. It was the first time I’d heard him stutter.

  Again I looked back, expecting to find some demonic presence stalking us, but though the onyx path that stretched behind us bobbed up and down uneasily, like a ship battered by the waves, there was no one there.

  “Kellen, come on.” Diadera beckoned me on. The others had already slipped through the fog. “No big demons or monsters after us. Azir’s just tired. We’re almost home, safe and sound.”

  Safe and sound.

  A part of me almost wished there had been a devil on our heels. Safety meant there would be nothing to distract me from the endless grief waiting to swallow me whole.

  Diadera grabbed my hand and pulled me through the fog with her, back to the abbey where it turned out grief was going to be the least of my problems.

  41

  On the Brink

  I’d never really understood the term “the brink of war” before. In the Jan’Tep histories, the words seem to denote a very specific, entirely rational moment in time when the heads of a clan, perched upon thrones built high up on the pillars that rise above the council room, would gaze at each other and ask, “My fellow Lords Magi, we stand now on the brink of war. Shall we say yea or nay to mayhem and bloodshed?”

  Here, though, the brink of war meant something entirely different.

  The seven of us had stepped out from the fog to find the same mountaintop as we’d left, with the same chill in the air and crunch of snow on the ground. From the western edge of the abbey grounds we’d walked through covered cloisters, all of us silent save for the clacking of our heels on the black flagstones as we approached the training grounds. It was there that the first tangible sign that something was wrong greeted us.

  The square was stuffed to the gills, as if every single inhabitant of the abbey had congregated there. Rows upon rows of monks stood on guard, black robes flapping in the breeze, the markings on their skin coming to life as they heeded the shouted commands of one of their brethren at the front.

  “Banders, strike!” he bellowed, and a dozen monks sent their shadowy ribbons to lash out at a line of dummies made of wood and straw.

  “Foggers, strike!” came the next command, and the second row stepped forward to open their mouths wide as I’d seen Ghilla do, each projecting billowing black fog from their mouth that enveloped and strangled several unfortunate bales of hay.

  “Guess the abbot stepped up the training,” Diadera said, unconvincingly.

  I’d witnessed some of the training the day before, but not involving so many people, and not with the manic intensity that consumed them now. Tournam grabbed at a monk’s shoulders. “What the hell’s going on here, brother? Why are you all—”

  The monk shrugged him off, ignoring his question and going back to slinging spiked balls of shadow at a target twenty feet off.

  “Out of the damned way!” a woman shouted, almost running me over with a cart laden with more mundane weapons, such as pole arms and crossbows. She rolled the cart towards the other side of the square, where those without abilities were being yelled at to find a weapon suited to them.

  The crash of earthenware smashing on the flagstones behind us sent the square into a near-frenzy. The shadowblack banders spun and sent their ebony lashes to kill the attacker. The old man whose only crime had been trying to carry one too many jugs of water came within a hair’s breadth of losing his life.

  They’re terrified, I thought. And they’re turning that fear into a cold, deadly determination. These people weren’t just practising. They were readying themselves to kill.

  That, I learned then, was the brink of war. Not so much the moments before battle, but rather the time when all thoughts of peace are abandoned, when every man, woman and child accepts that death is imminent and killing far preferable—killing without question, without hesitation and, above all, without mercy.

  The Ebony Abbey was on the brink of war.

  A deep voice thundered across the square. The monks attacking their wood and straw training dummies froze mid-strike to turn and see the abbot striding towards us—towards me. That’s when I realised the thing he’d been shouting had been my name. “You lousy traitor,” he growled, barrelling up to me, hands clenched in what certainly appeared to be preparation to strangle me. “I should’ve killed you the day you turned up here. Should’ve thrown you off the roof of the tower and saved us all a lot of grief.”

  Butelios tried to get between me and the abbot. He failed though, because there wasn’t any space there. “My Lord Abbot, this wasn’t Kellen’s fault. He was betrayed by his—”

  The abbot grabbed him by the front of his coat and threw him aside—an impressive feat considering Butelios was just as big as he was. “You think a drowning man gives a damn whether the drunk who pushed him overboard did it on purpose?”

  He stared at the seven of us, daring any of us to answer. Abruptly he
turned on his heel. “All of you, follow me.” Without looking back, he swung his arm to point right at me. “Make sure he doesn’t get away.”

  Tournam and the others shuffled out of the training square in the abbot’s wake, exchanging looks of confusion and concern. I bent down to lend Butelios a hand before turning to follow. Diadera lagged behind with me. “It’s going to be all right, Kellen. He’ll yell at you a while and give a big speech about how shadowblacks either fight together or die alone. When he’s done I’ll get him to calm down so we can figure out what to do next.” She squeezed my hand. “He won’t send you away. I promise.”

  Regrettably, she turned out to be right on that score.

  It wasn’t until we’d traversed the entire length of the abbey and the abbot motioned for us to pass through the front gates that our destination became clear. I was expecting this to lead to some form of ritual exile, but then he followed us out himself and marched us towards the cliff’s edge, where we met the first victim of the war to come.

  The monk’s black robes had been pierced by a gleaming cord of silvery light that now held him aloft, spearing his body to anchor itself deep into the rock face. The other end soared in an arc far into the distance, over hundreds of acres of sparse trees, fading into the clouds above the great ocean. Even without knowing what the cord was, we knew where it led. Somewhere back on my home continent of Eldrasia, Jan’Tep mages from the posse had launched a first, tentative thread of magic, like fishermen casting their lines into the water. They probably hadn’t been expecting to snag such a big trout on their first try.

  The dead man’s corpse bobbed and weaved in the air, impaled on that thin rope of pure magical force.

  “Brother Dyem?” Tournam asked.

  The abbot gave a hoarse chuckle. “You want to talk about bad luck? Dyem was Caleb’s brother, the unfortunate bastard whose demon took him over two days ago. Came out to grieve by himself, just standing there, minding his own business, when that light descended on him. Poor guy must’ve wondered if it was his brother’s spirit coming to greet him.”

  Suta’rei approached the glimmering strand that spanned the thousand miles between the abbey and those who would destroy it. “This is a spell bridge—more precisely, the first strand of one.” She caught my gaze. “If they can summon more …”

  I saved her the trouble of finishing that sentence. “The posse will be able to cross the bridge. They’ll have a way to invade the Ebony Abbey.”

  “And it won’t take them months or even weeks,” Suta’rei added. “The spell compresses distance, achieving in physical space what Azir does through shadow. Once the bridge is complete, reaching the abbey will be a matter of hours, requiring no more effort than a pleasant stroll along a brightly lit avenue.”

  I had a hard time envisioning an onrushing horde of Jan’Tep mages with blood-lust in their eyes and magic flaring from their metallic tattooed bands as being on a pleasant stroll.

  A spell bridge. A damned spell bridge. I’d only ever seen pictures of them in books. My old spellmasters had described them as purely theoretical conjurations—fascinating to think about, but utterly unfeasible. The number of Jan’Tep mages required to risk their magic and their lives in such an endeavour far exceeded those paltry few willing to sacrifice themselves.

  I guess your scheme to be crowned mage sovereign must be coming along swimmingly, Father.

  “How long will it take them to finish the bridge?” Diadera asked.

  Suta’rei bent down to examine the gleaming silver rope more closely. Brother Dyem’s corpse jiggled on the rope as though excited to see her. “It’s hard to predict. A spell bridge over such a distance shouldn’t be possible. It’s not just the magic required, but keeping the strands stabl—”

  A flash of light shattered the distant clouds and arced like a falling star over the ocean and the acres of forests towards the abbey. Suta’rei was kneeling right beside the first strand. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where the next would strike.

  I threw myself at the tall girl, knocking her out of the way. The two of us rolled along the ground as shards of rock exploded all around us. Too late I realised my clumsy leap had brought us to the edge of the cliff and she was now sliding over the precipice. My left hand clung desperately to the collar of her coat as I dug the fingers of my right into the dusty ground. Most of her weight was now over the edge, and she was dragging me down with her. Just as I felt myself losing my grip, pain exploded as someone grabbed hold of my wrist so tightly I thought the bones would snap. The abbot, his lips tight in a grimace that was either strain or disgust, hauled us back over the rough ground to safety. “You don’t get away that easily,” he said to me.

  I caught my breath and rose to my feet, rubbing at the bare skin on my torso that was now covered in dirt and scratches from scraping over the rocks. Reichis would’ve laughed his head off, pointing out that skinbags without proper fur should probably wear their shirts instead of using them to carry dead animal bones.

  “Kellen …” Suta’rei said. Her hand was on my arm, which struck me as an unusually intimate gesture for her. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a few … Oh.”

  She wasn’t talking about the scratches on my chest.

  Reichis.

  I ran back to the ledge. When I’d grabbed Suta’rei, I’d had to let go of my rolled-up shirt. The way she was looking at me meant she must’ve seen it go over the side. I peered down, praying the little bundle had gotten caught on an outcropping, but all I saw was a rope of pure crimson light, sparks erupting from the rock face where it embedded itself next to the silver one.

  “How are they doing this?” Diadera demanded, directing her ire at the abbot. “You told us this place was safe, shrouded against Jan’Tep magic! How did the war coven pierce the veil?”

  “They had help.” He came to tower over me, his broad shoulders and muscular frame making me feel even smaller as I stood there shirtless, wearing a hat too big for my head that had somehow stayed on even as the last remains of my business partner had tumbled into the abyss. The abbot thrust his fist out at me and I flinched, expecting a punch to the gut, surprised when none came. He opened his hand, and there, resting on his palm, lay a tiny sliver of shadow. “This belongs to you, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “It wasn’t Kellen’s fault,” Azir said. “His sister tricked him into—”

  The abbot ignored him. “It’s ingenious, you know. All my life I’ve been perfecting the veil that surrounds the abbey, searching through every book on Jan’Tep magic, every history of their ways, making sure none of their spells could pierce it.” He closed his hand over the sliver, clenching so hard a trickle of blood oozed from his fist. “Turns out all they needed was a shard of pure shadow bonded to someone inside the barrier.”

  A third cord of light broke through the air, driving deep into the cliff face, this one shimmering gold. It too bonded with the others, the bridge now just under a foot wide, sparks of raw magic glittering across its surface, curving away into the distance to span two continents.

  “How many more strands do they need?” Butelios asked Suta’rei.

  “I cannot give you a precise number,” she replied, “save to say that to come this far, the bridge will need a great many strands to support it, perhaps one for every mage in the war coven.”

  “They’ll have to rest though, right?” Diadera asked. “A spell like this must take its toll on them?”

  Suta’rei nodded. “The coven will need time to recover. Perhaps a day.”

  “A day,” Azir repeated, looking lost in thought, eyes blurry as if he couldn’t quite focus. “I can make another couple of trips, try to get—”

  “You can’t take more than a few people at a time into shadow,” Tournam said, for once not taunting him. “It won’t be enough.”

  “Then we fight,” Ghilla said.

  “We’ll die,” Suta’rei countered. “Neither our numbers
nor our abilities will be enough against the war coven.”

  While the others grasped at straws, the abbot’s eyes were on me. Was he waiting for me to do or say the thing that would give him an excuse to kill me? Nobody wants to see themselves as a murderer—even the actual murderers I’ve met. Much easier to find some rationale to justify the killing, maybe even make it look heroic. But the abbot was doing more than that: he was waiting for the others to run out of ludicrous plans to make things right. He was testing their loyalty.

  “Everybody, get out of here,” I said.

  “Kellen, don’t,” Diadera warned. Our shadowblack markings didn’t need to touch for me to know that the look she was giving me was a question: Are you trying to get yourself killed? Has grief driven you mad?

  I was glad our markings weren’t in contact, because I didn’t have a good answer. “Just go,” I repeated.

  Even Ghilla looked scared for me. “Why, boy?”

  I took a step closer to the man who, for the first time since he’d dragged us out here, looked almost happy. “Because the abbot and I are going to have a little chat.”

  42

  The Pebble

  The Argosi Way of Water holds that there’s always at least one path that circumvents impending violence. With arta loquit and arta precis—the talents of eloquence and perception—a wanderer can discern this path so long as they listen without preconception and speak without provocation.

  “You should run,” I said.

  He looked surprised. I guess he’d been expecting me to plead for my life. The stuff of shadow began to emerge from beneath his robes, oozing out from his collar and the cuffs of his sleeves. His markings moved differently to those of the others. Unlike Tournam’s whipping ribbons, Diadera’s buzzing fireflies or Ghilla’s black fog, the abbot’s shadows were liquid. They floated in the air, beads of black oil dancing in clear water. The effect was mesmerising, conveying both power and grace.