“I’ve a feeling that won’t be a problem.”
“Then it appears we have an agreement and, with it, duties we must each fulfil.”
I hesitated, only now understanding how alike the abbot and Ke’heops were. “Father …” I wasn’t even sure how to ask the question, but still I forced the words out. “Have you ever … Have you or Mother ever performed the abnegation ritual on our clan’s enemies?”
He was silent a long while, just watching me. I feared I already knew the answer, and he was simply waiting for me to come to that conclusion myself. “No, Kellen, I would never carry out such an abomination, even on my enemies. There was a time when I might have considered it, but not so long ago I committed an act almost as depraved, and the memory has haunted me ever since.”
“What?” I asked. “Which crime could possibly have caused the mighty Ke’heops’s to question his duty?”
I saw the lines of the card settle back to their static form as he closed the spell, but not before I heard my father say, “I counter-banded my own son.”
56
The Gates
Nephenia, Ishak, Reichis and I ran up one flight of stairs after another until we finally found ourselves inside a hallway in one of the largest of the abbey buildings. We sprinted outside and across the courtyard, past monks readying for war, innocents preparing themselves for the worst and children playing in naive ignorance of what was coming. By the time we were approaching the abbey gates, I could already see the damage the abbot had done to the once gleaming spell bridge. The bright colourful Jan’Tep bands were intermixed with thorny black vines that twisted around them, tearing at them. Sparks of red and gold, silver and blue, grey and yellow shattered the night sky as their essence fought against the black seeping inside them. The abbot was working fast.
“Come on,” I said, heading for the gates.
Reichis, seated atop Ishak’s back, kept chittering, as he had been the entire time since we’d left the dungeon. Periodically the hyena would translate for Nephenia and occasionally she’d start to convey his commentary to me.
“He says—”
“I know exactly what Reichis is saying. He’s saying this plan is terrible, I’m going to get us all killed, and this is what he gets for agreeing to be the business partner of a weak-kneed skinbag.”
Nephenia grabbed my arm. “That’s fantastic! I thought you couldn’t understand his words any more.”
“I can’t. The little bugger is just predictable, that’s all.”
Reichis gave a lengthy snarl.
I leaned into his face. “No, you’re not going to eat my eyeballs. You know why? Because if I’m dead, then you’ll be all alone, with nobody to find you baths and butter biscuits. Face it, Reichis: it’s you and me against the world, just like always.”
Ishak gave a loud bark. Nephenia just glared at me. That too I could translate without magical assistance. “I know you’re risking your lives too. It’s just … Look, can you all hold off hating me until after we stop these lunatics?”
Neph glanced at the hyena, who then turned his head to look at Reichis. Finally he gave a little yipping sound. “Fine,” Nephenia translated. “But afterwards you’re going to be making some spectacular apologies.”
With that negotiation settled, the four of us ran through the gates to face what we’d known all along would await us there. It occurred to me then that I might never need to make those apologies.
57
The Casualty
We’d expected trouble, of course. The abbot, for all that his methods had taken a dark turn, had spent years earning the devotion of his followers. That isn’t easy to do. He’d have monks with him—banders or foggers or whatever else they called them—guarding him as he worked. I’d be a fool to think the shadowcasters wouldn’t be there too. By now, their paths chosen, their loyalties decided, they might even be spoiling for a fight. What I hadn’t foreseen was that the first casualty would already be waiting for us.
“He’s dead,” Tournam said. He was kneeling on the ground, holding Azir’s still form in his arms. There was no blood, no broken bones. Only the palpable emptiness in the boy’s lifeless gaze.
There was an odd stillness in the air, as though the death of an innocent had become a wall separating the two sides, holding us back from committing further violence. For his part, Tournam wasn’t even looking at us, though I knew he was speaking to me. “It wasn’t a wound or a spell or anything. Just too many trips in too short a time. Too much fear of being found, of being captured by the posse. Fear takes its toll, you know. It weakens the spirit.” He shook his head over and over. “Dumb kid. I kept telling him he had to grow up. Stop being such a child.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He … I think he looked up to you.”
Tournam rose to his feet, still carrying Azir’s body. “He hated me. Thought I was a bully. I guess he was right, but I was just trying to toughen him up, you know? I thought if he could just stay strong a little longer, get a couple more years in him, he’d be okay.”
A group of four monks, along with Suta’rei and Ghilla, stood between us and the abbot. We’d have to get past them to stop him infecting the spell bridge any further.
“What would Azir have wanted?” I asked Tournam. “If he were still here, what would he tell you to do?”
The Berabesq’s eyes finally turned to me. “He’d have said we were going too far. He’d have begged me to listen to you, to think about what we were about to do before it was too late.” He walked to the edge of the cliff, stepping up onto the outcropping of rock near the bridge. “But Azir isn’t here any more.” He lifted up the body over his head and threw it over the cliff. Though we knew there would be no sound when it finally hit the bottom, still we were silent for a while.
“Tournam, where is Butelios?”
He nodded to where he’d disposed of Azir. “Rolled him over the side. He was still unconscious. I don’t think it hurt.”
“You damned—” I stopped. Anger would do me no good now, and unlike Tournam, I would do what Butelios would have wanted me to, look for a path to peace.
The other shadowcasters were watching me. Ghilla had grown on me, despite the threats and calling me “boy” all the time. Suta’rei was a fellow Jan’Tep, yet so different from me that I’d hoped that by getting to know her I might understand my people better. And Diadera, whom I heard come running up behind us. Nephenia had warned me this might happen, but her shadowblack would’ve gotten her out of any restraints once she woke up, and neither of us felt right about using magical means to bind her. There’d been more than enough of that lately. Besides, there had been a small, foolish part of me that still hoped that once we were all together again I could reason with her and the other shadowcasters. Make them see that this catastrophe couldn’t be allowed to continue.
But pain and loss can be like kindling when it sits atop enough anger, and Azir’s death had lit a spark.
“Do you understand now, Kellen?” the abbot asked, rising from the bridge. Evidently he wasn’t done lecturing me, nor did he intend to leave the killing to the others. “The Jan’Tep are a disease. Even when they don’t murder us with their spells, their mere existence takes any hope of peace from our lives. I can’t let them get away with that. Not now when I have the means to protect us from them.”
I could have told him that his words almost perfectly mirrored my father’s, that expecting death at every turn had become his excuse to become no better than those he despised. I didn’t though. Sometimes being right doesn’t make a bit of difference.
“Well?” the abbot asked, removing his robes. The shadowblack markings all over his body practically shimmered in the air, as though aroused by the prospect of violence. “You’ve wanted to duel me ever since you got here. Now you finally get your chance.”
My eyes went from the abbot to Diadera, then Tournam and Ghilla next to him, and finally to the monks arranging themselves as they awaited the order to attack. Nephenia was
poised for a signal from me. She knew as I did that there was no good way for this to end. Shadowblack monks were going to kill Jan’Tep mages. Jan’Tep mages would slaughter shadowblack monks. All that was left was for Nephenia, Ishak, Reichis and me to try and keep the fires of hate from spreading so fast that a bunch of children and their families who’d had no say in this, no power to affect any of it, would be caught in the flames.
All that was left was to fight.
58
Bridge Dancing
Of the four of us, only Nephenia had any real magic of consequence. Despite having lost two fingers from each hand and being therefore unable to make the somatic forms required of Jan’Tep high magic, she was one hell of a charmcaster.
She opened with an iron box with a caged storm inside that released bolt after bolt of lightning everywhere, sending shards of rock at our opponents. Next she threw flecks of steel from a small jar onto the ground. They skittered along the flagstones like tiny rats, crawling up the robes of one of the monks to gnaw at his flesh before he could stab her with his shadowblack ribbons in the first exchange of blows. As he fell, his tendrils swung wildly, and had Ishak not tackled her to the ground, Nephenia would’ve found herself knocked over the cliff’s edge.
Reichis focused on sneak attacks, biting into the neck of an opponent then leaping off into the air, spreading his limbs wide so his furry flaps could catch the wind. He’d disappear for several seconds, before reappearing on the other side to find a new opponent. He fought as he always did: furiously, bravely, recklessly. But he was smaller now, thin from fever and ancestors-knew-what-else he’d faced in that desert. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. None of us would.
Any second now, Ghilla would envelop one of us in her choking fog, or we’d be engulfed by Diadera’s swarm of shadow-black fireflies. Tournam’s ribbons, like those of the other monks, could tear us apart. We couldn’t match strength for strength, so we had to find a subtler way to victory.
“Come here, you gutless bastard!” the Berabesq shouted, wiping at his eyes. I’d tossed a handful of black powder at him. Of course, it hadn’t had any effect. A moment later his shadowblack ribbons had grabbed hold of my wrists and ankles, preventing me from fighting back. I felt my arms and legs being pulled from their sockets. “Nothing clever to say, cloud boy?” he demanded.
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Instead I spat a mouthful of the red powder into his face. Though my hands were bound, still I managed to form a clumsy version of the shape as I uttered the one-word incantation. A sudden burst of fire set him screaming. The flames weren’t enough to kill him, but he was soon blinded from the burns and out of the fight. It was a cruel and dirty trick to pull on someone who for one brief moment in time had tried to be my friend.
Another of the monks sent his shadow tendrils at me, but by then I’d already pulled one of Ferius’s razor-sharp steel cards from my pocket and launched it spinning towards him. It sailed right through the narrow gap between two of his black ribbons, lodging itself deep in his cheek. It was maybe the best card throw I’d ever done, and Ferius wasn’t even there to see it.
Ghilla had snuck up behind Nephenia and was about to smother her with her shadow fog, when a boy called out, “Wh-where should I g-g-go?”
It was Azir’s voice and everyone froze when they heard it. Ghilla turned to see Ishak behind her. He barked a second time with the dead boy’s voice. “Wh-where should I g-g-go?” Even I was surprised. It took me a second to remember that Azir had spoken those words yesterday when we’d journeyed through shadow to reach the war coven’s encampment. The hyena had the ability to mimic anything he heard. To use a dead boy’s voice was an even crueller trick than the one I’d played on Tournam, but I guess war doesn’t leave much room for decency.
With Ghilla distracted, Nephenia whipped a strip of silken fabric across the younger girl’s mouth and uttered a three-syllable incantation. Suddenly the cloth turned rigid, clamping itself to Ghilla’s mouth as it had to mine the night before.
Another dirty trick. Another victory for our side.
By my count, the fight had been going on for less than a minute. We could probably hold out for another thirty seconds. The problem with tricks and deceptions is that once the enemy’s seen one, you can’t use it again. I’d once asked Ferius what she’d do when she finally ran out of tricks. Her answer hadn’t reassured me.
“Look at you,” the abbot said, stalking towards me. “Fighting your own kind.”
“Story of my life,” I said.
I was near the edge of the cliff. I’d managed to work my way around so I was close to the bridge. About a third of the strands were black now, infused with shadow from the abbot’s seemingly limitless reserve of whatever stuff it was that existed at this portal between our plane of existence and those of the many voids. I leaped off the rocky outcropping and onto the bridge itself. It felt solid beneath my feet.
Diadera met me there. “How are you doing this?” she asked. The swarm of her freckles darted between us as if waiting for the command to strike. “You’ve barely got any abilities. Your friend is outnumbered by people with more power. It’s just the two of you and a couple of animals out here. How are you winning?”
“Do you remember that day I first came to the abbey, when that demon was killing monks left and right in the courtyard? That was the first time I saw you and the others fight. Even then, I could see something was wrong. You know how to use your abilities to attack together, but not how to protect each other. That’s why Tas’diem took you all so easily.”
She was coming closer, watching my hands to see what trick I’d try to use on her. “The shadowcasters did just fine before you got here, Kellen. We’ll be just fine after I’ve thrown you off this bridge.”
I backed away a step, keeping my hands up so she could see I wasn’t holding anything. “You’re wrong, Diadera, and I so wish I could make you see that. Underneath all the missions and drunken parties and whatever else you do together, these people aren’t your friends. Not the friends you need anyway.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe the things that come out of your mouth sometimes, Kellen.” Her shadowblack freckles went up high, preparing to dive down on me. “What good will you be to your friends when you’re dead?”
“Let’s find out together.”
I sprang at her. For an instant she looked stunned, but then brought her swarm to attack me. I’d seen what those tiny bits of shadowblack could do, so it took everything I had to keep my eye on the target. Just before the swarm reached me, a blast of wind sent them spinning away. Over by the cliff’s edge Nephenia was waving a small triangular fan. It looked a little silly, but the resulting wind was so powerful that even outside the direct line of its effect, I had trouble staying on my feet. Diadera got hit harder and stumbled. She was close to the edge of the bridge, already losing her balance. I ran over and grabbed hold of her wrist with one hand, keeping her stable while my free hand threw a steel playing card through the air that hit the abbot before his shadowblack ribbons could get a grip on Reichis. The squirrel cat seemed oblivious to the threat, instead attacking the neck of a man who’d gotten hold of Ishak. The hyena leaped away, landing on the last monk before he could get to Nephenia.
Diadera looked stunned, watching all of this unfold. I pulled her back onto the bridge, holding her close to me. “Me, Reichis, Nephenia and Ishak, we take care of each other, Diadera. That’s why we can fight the way we do. That’s what you and Tournam and Ghilla and the others never learned. That’s how Tas’diem was able to capture you, and that’s why you’re going to lose now.”
She didn’t fight back or yell at me. She didn’t even deny my claims. Oddly, what she said was, “We should’ve been looking out for Azir.”
Suddenly she flew out of my hands, snatched away by the abbot’s ribbons. He settled her down next to him. “You’re wrong, Kellen. I look out for my flock. I guard them. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
My words were wasted on him. All the things I’d said about my father were just as true of the abbot. He was sick and tired of a world that looked down on those with the shadowblack. More than wanting to protect his people, he wanted to prove that they were better than everyone else.
“You’re a fool if you think that posse will ever stop hunting us,” the abbot said. “And a damned fool to think I don’t know you’ve been positioning yourself on that bridge to run across and warn them. I’m going to kill you now, Kellen of the House of Ke. Not because I want to, but because it’s the right thing to do. Then I’ll finish what I started, and those mages will serve me from now until the day their souls are eaten alive by whatever demons have a claim to them.”
He raised his arms, and a wave of shadowblack oil rose up high above me, blotting out the sun. He held it there, just a moment, so I could see my doom coming. “Even after all you’ve done, Kellen, you’re one of my people. My flock. Come back to us. Swear you’ll fight alongside me and I’ll give you the one thing the Jan’Tep never will: forgiveness.”
It was, considering the circumstances, a rather generous offer. My reply was a whisper, too soft for him to hear, but he got my meaning. His hands balled into fists and came crashing down, bringing the wave of shadows down with them, only to be met by a screaming white cloud that billowed from my right eye.
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