Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker

by Sebastien de Castell

  The Riddle

  My father is a big man. Tall, powerfully built. The unbendable iron in his stance makes it impossible to be in a room with him and not feel small by comparison. Yet now he slumped, eyes downcast, and for the first time reduced to mere mortality. ‘I … I’m not entirely sure how to begin,’ he said. The deep baritone that used to rattle the windows of my room when I’d disobeyed him was barely more than a whisper. ‘Perhaps it is easier to show you.’

  He stepped behind the table and drew from his robes a small leather bag like the ones he’d brought with him to the Chamber of Murmurs.

  ‘I’ve already seen this trick, Father,’ I reminded him.

  ‘This is neither an illusion nor a confounding spell.’ He poured pale blue sand onto the table, the grains spreading across the white marble surface, making it appear as if I were staring up into the sky on a cloudy day.

  Sand magic – which only occasionally involves actual sand – is the fundamental force used in the manipulation of time. Its workings are incredibly complex, but even a first-year initiate learns that prediction, prognostication and the like are nothing more than superstitious nonsense.

  ‘You must really have a low opinion of my knowledge of magic to expect me to believe you can divine the future now, Father.’

  The bands on his arms first glistened then glowed. His hands weaved back and forth above the table as his fingers formed a series of complex somatic shapes. ‘Divination implies foretelling events through insight into the unknowable. This spell operates within the mind of the mage, taking his awareness of the past and present to infer the future. It bends the pathways of his thoughts to calculate possibilities and probabilities, deducing the inevitable outcomes that will come to pass unless the historical forces shaping them are opposed.’

  I would’ve pointed out that none of that sounded any more credible than pulling out the guts of a dead sheep and looking for auguries within its entrails, except for the fact that what my father had just described was distressingly similar to the underlying theory of an Argosi deck: by painting each card to reflect the hierarchies of power and influence within a civilisation, the Argosi attempt to extrapolate the most likely effects of those structures on the lives of its citizens.

  Sweat appeared on Ke’heops’s brow as he uttered each syllable of the invocation. It was like watching someone trying to walk through waist-high mud in a hurricane. Finally the grains of sand began to move, swirling around one another until they settled, forming miniature cities that spread out across the table. Seven cities for the seven clans of the Jan’Tep.

  ‘Imagine a paradox,’ Ke’heops began. ‘A secret kept by all yet unknown to any.’

  ‘Riddles, Father?’ I asked. ‘That’s not like you.’

  In addition to card tricks, actors and his son, my father’s never had much patience for riddles. This was the kind of gibberish I’d expect from Ferius – something that sounded ridiculous until you realised it somehow made perfect –

  ‘Wait,’ I said before Ke’heops could explain. ‘A secret kept by all – you mean something known only to the councils of lords magi, right?’

  Ke’heops shook his head as more shapes appeared, men and women in the elaborate robes of clan princes. ‘Not even them. Only the seven princes and their closest advisors.’

  Even on a good day my arta precis isn’t the best, but I’d been getting a lot of practice lately. ‘A discovery made by each prince separately, but because they never shared it with their fellow rulers, none of them realised it was happening to all of them. A secret kept by all yet unknown to any.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘It must have been something that shamed or weakened them,’ I went on, gazing at each of the little blue princes on the table as they turned away from the others. ‘Something they couldn’t share for fear the information would be used against them by their rivals.’

  My father gave me a weary smile. ‘Shall I show you the rest, or do you intend to deduce it all yourself?’

  ‘Show me.’

  He snapped his fingers and the figures broke apart. He whispered and the grains of sand swirled together again until they began to form new shapes. An oasis rose up from the centre of the table, the fount of raw magic ringed by seven columns marked in the sigils of iron, ember, breath, blood, silk, sand and shadow.

  Ke’heops raised his hands even higher, hovering them above like a puppet master pulling invisible strings. Thousands of grains of sand followed, coming together into the effigy of a man, his limbs outstretched, strands of raw magic winding around his forearms.

  ‘A mage is forged by three forces,’ Ke’heops said. ‘Years of exposure to the oasis, careful training of the mind and natural talent – which cannot be learned, but must arise in the blood.’

  ‘The difference between Jan’Tep and Sha’Tep,’ I said. ‘Between those who rule and those who serve.’

  A flash of my father’s customary irritation flashed across his features. ‘Between those who serve our people with their magic and those who serve through their labours. We all serve, Ke’helios. Every one of us.’

  ‘Our numbers are small, brother,’ Shalla said, stepping in as always to calm the tensions between me and our father. ‘The Jan’Tep way of life is preserved not through military might but through our magic – that which makes us unique. Special.’

  ‘Powerful,’ my father corrected. ‘It is by virtue of the strength of our spells that other nations think twice before seeking to take from us that which is ours.’

  I didn’t bother bringing up the fact that the oases originally belonged to the Mahdek, until our ancestors massacred them. My people are touchy on that subject.

  My father brought one hand low then high again, causing a gust of sand to fly up to form the shape of a second mage – a woman – who stood next to the first as they joined hands. ‘The wedding of magical bloodlines,’ Ke’heops said. ‘The essence of Jan’Tep society. For three hundred years we believed the survival of our people lay in the careful cultivation of such unions.’ He clapped his hands together and the sand couple fell apart. ‘We were wrong.’

  Something caught in my throat. My father’s casual dismissal had just contradicted the fundamental premise our parents had imbued into Shalla and me since we were born. ‘You were wrong?’ I demanded, surprising even myself by the vehemence in my voice. Almost my entire life I’d believed my weakness at magic was due to a fault in my own character. ‘Wrong how, exactly?’

  My father spread his hands wide again, and the air above the table filled with hundreds of tiny sand figures. Men and women, boys and girls, and those who chose neither definition. ‘The talent for magic lies in the blood,’ he said, as a paltry few of the figures began to glow while the majority remained dull and lifeless. ‘But this gift is a … a selfish thing, it seems.’

  He rotated his hand clockwise as if turning the dial of a lock. The sand figures began whirling in the air, pairing up together. When one with the talent was matched with one without, about half the time the combined form still retained the same glow of magic. But when both showed the talent, the combination was dimmer. Weaker.

  ‘You’re telling me that breeding those with the greatest talent actually weakens the magic of their offspring,’ I whispered; disbelief had taken the very air from my lungs.

  ‘There are exceptions, of course.’ Ke’heops nodded to Shalla. ‘It is a question of probabilities and thus difficult to measure with precision. When I became mage sovereign over all the clans, I demanded all the archives of house lineages so that I could better plan for the future of the great houses.’

  That my father would believe it his right to dictate the marriages of every citizen for the good of his people was barely a surprise. I glanced over at the plain bound book he’d been reading when Shalla had first brought me into the athenaeum. ‘You calculated the change in the number of bands sparked by the offspring of each generation?’

  He nodded. ‘The contamination of the blood
is slow, of course. The trend manifests only across many generations. That’s why none of us understood what was happening until it was too late.’

  Unite the strong with the strong, the weak to the weak. It was such a pattern of Jan’Tep life that when I was first approaching my mage’s trials and my magic had begun to fade, I took consolation in watching Nephenia struggle with her own spells. A small, petty part knew that the worse she did, the better my chances of one day convincing her to marry me.

  Yeah, I know. I was a lousy kid, all right? In case you haven’t noticed, I come from a pretty lousy people.

  ‘Change the pattern,’ I said, the idea striking me like blast of ember. ‘When mages first travelled to this continent in search of a new source of raw magic, they came from many different nations. Jan’Tep civilisation has never been based on ethnicity, but our shared culture. Open the schools of magic to foreigners again! Seek out those in Darome, Gitabria, Zhuban and everywhere else who show an aptitude for magic, and bring them here!’

  The answer felt so obvious to me now, so right, you’d almost think I cared about the future of my people.

  ‘We can’t,’ Shalla said. ‘Outsiders can’t—’

  ‘Oh, for the sake of our ancestors,’ I swore, ‘let go of your prejudice for once and—’

  ‘Shut up!’ she shouted, fists clenched, angry flares of magic sparking across her bands. ‘You idiot! You think Father hasn’t thought of that already? You think such an obvious solution somehow eluded everyone but you?’

  ‘Then why not do it?’ I asked.

  It was my father who answered, speaking in the dull, flat tones of a soldier surrendering the battlefield. ‘Because war is coming. I have had to sign a treaty with Darome to supplement their armies with our mages lest the Berabesq overrun us all. Once the battle begins …’ He began flicking his fingers in the air. One by one the tiny glowing figures dimmed, their magic disappearing as they fell apart into grains of sand once again, the brilliant blue draining away as they fell as motes of dust upon the table. ‘There will be too few of us left to hold our own territories.’

  ‘Those with the talent, like me, will be forced to marry the scions of powerful foreign houses,’ Shalla said, ‘so that their family lines will produce mages loyal to their own nations. We will be absorbed into their societies. Magic will continue to exist on this continent, but the Jan’Tep culture, our way of life, will be no more.’

  All this time my father had avoided my gaze, but at last our eyes met across the table. He didn’t speak, didn’t utter a word, yet in that moment I knew why Shalla had brought me here. And just how badly I’d been suckered.

  ‘All this,’ I said, slapping a hand across the dust-covered surface of the table, sending up a dirty brown cloud between us, ‘this dark prophecy of our people’s future, all to give me one more push to sneak off into Berabesq and murder a child?’

  ‘To save our people,’ he replied, but he was talking to Shalla now. ‘Look in his eyes, daughter. Tell me you find something in there beyond disdain and distrust. He has not an ounce of duty inside him, not one shred of love for his people.’

  He stepped out from behind the table. My hands drifted to my powder holsters.

  ‘Can you not see?’ Ke’heops demanded of his daughter. ‘Even now his twisted thoughts turn to murder. But does he seek the blood of our enemies? Never! Only the death of his father.’

  He came closer and I had to step back to keep enough distance to use my weapons. His own hands were loose at his sides, ready to cast any number of spells for which I’d have no counter. A quick, brutal first strike was my only hope.

  ‘And what crime did we commit that was so heinous as to justify these endless retaliations?’ he asked. ‘We counter-banded him. We sought to end the threat of the shadowblack that will one day eat his soul. And for that he would sacrifice the future of every other Jan’Tep.’

  I took a pinch of the red and black powders, my eyes locked on my father’s hands. The moment they so much as twitched, I would fire the spell.

  ‘Kellen, don’t,’ Shalla warned. Now the bands around her forearms were gleaming too.

  ‘Ke’helios,’ my father corrected, seemingly more angered by this than the fact that I was about to blast him. ‘I have named him Ke’helios. He is a son of the House of Ke, and by the blood and magic of my ancestors, this is the day he begins acting like it!’

  I backed up again, nearly tripping on the threshold of the doorway out of the athenaeum. ‘I’m walking out of here, Father. I don’t think Mother would want me to kill you on the day of her funeral.’

  He sneered at me. ‘You have no idea what your mother wanted, you craven boy. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

  ‘Father, stop,’ Shalla said. ‘Just tell him. It’s not too late to—’

  But it was too late, and she knew it, because my father’s lips had already begun to form the first syllable of a spell that would either incapacitate or kill me, and I wasn’t going to let either happen. My powders were already in the air as my hands formed the somatic shapes of my own spell.

  But nothing happened.

  In the periphery of my vision, I could see my sister whispering syllables that echoed around the athenaeum over and over, becoming neither louder nor softer, but filling the air like an ocean of breath. The spell materialising on my father’s fingertips froze like a candle-flame trapped in ice.

  I watched, paralysed as she made quick, subtle movements with her fingers in the air, tweaking the effects of the spell piece by piece. I found myself able to speak again, but not move. ‘Let me go, Shalla.’

  ‘Sha’maat,’ she said, almost sadly. ‘How many times have I told you? My name is Sha’maat now.’

  She made another adjustment, and my father was released from her spell. ‘Say nothing,’ he warned her before leaving the room. ‘We do this my way.’

  ‘Sister,’ I said, fear rising up from the pit of my stomach like a worm slithering through my lungs, sticking in my throat.

  ‘Just try to relax, brother,’ she said. ‘This … This is for the best, I promise.’

  No good has ever come from those words.

  My father came back into the room, bringing with him a large wooden tray laden with a set of burning braziers upon which small ceramic dishes bubbled with molten metals. A set of needles were arrayed alongside them. All my arta valar, all those times I’d faced down bounty mages and hired killers, fled as I recognised those instruments.

  ‘No,’ I said, but I doubt anyone heard me.

  ‘He’ll never forgive me for counter-banding him,’ my father said to Sha’maat as he brought the tray closer. ‘For spite and revenge, he’ll always make himself a threat to my plans. I can’t allow that any more.’

  ‘Please,’ Shalla begged, seeing the terror in my eyes. ‘Just explain to him wh—’

  ‘No!’ My father’s bellow reverberated along the walls of the athenaeum. ‘I am Ke’heops of the House of Ke, Mage Sovereign of the Jan’Tep people! I am done explaining myself to children!’

  My sister looked at me with a mute apology in her eyes, proving once again that while she loved us both, she would always obey our father’s commands.

  I screamed then, a thousand pleas that I knew would not move my father one inch, but which were loud enough that Shalla looked pained when she passed her hand across my face and put me to sleep, my last thought a question I could never seem to answer.

  Why do I keep trusting my sister?

  24

  The Banding

  I dreamed of a crowded room, with a dozen faces staring down at me, waiting expectantly as if I were a performer who’d entered the stage only to forget my lines in front of the entire audience.

  There was a pressure on my chest. A warm, oddly fuzzy weight that turned out to be Reichis. He was delivering a long, slow growl at everyone around me. Ferius was there too, standing at my left shoulder. Shalla was on the opposite side, glaring at my Argosi mentor. Queen Ginevra watched me w
ith an anxious gaze, ringed by a rather large entourage of guards and marshals, including Torian Libri, who looked very much as if she’d come here in hopes of killing a few people and had thus far been stymied. The mesmerising blue of her eyes was what made me realise I wasn’t dreaming.

  I was lying on my back on the hard surface of the athenaeum’s central table. At the end, leaning against one of the columns a couple of feet away, was my father. His face was paler than usual. Lines furrowed his brow, making him appear older than I’d ever seen him before.

  ‘You’re all right, Kellen,’ the queen said, glancing from my father to me. ‘We’re here for you.’

  ‘My brother will be disoriented for some time yet,’ Shalla said, attempting to take control of the situation. ‘All of you standing around here gawking at him accomplishes nothing.’

  Well, that much was true anyway. My head was so buried in fog it took all my concentration just to separate all the strange sights and sounds that surrounded me like buzzards waiting over a dying deer. ‘Keep it down for a second, okay, partner?’ I asked Reichis.

  ‘Fine,’ he grumbled, settling himself on my chest. ‘But if I don’t get to kill somebody before this is done, I’m gonna get real irritable.’

  ‘Rest, brother,’ Shalla said to me. ‘You won’t be able to think clearly for a few more hours.’

  A familiar chuckle over my left shoulder, like the opening notes of a jaunty tune or perhaps the irritating morning crowing of a rooster, turned my attention to Ferius.

  ‘Show ’em who we are, kid,’ she said. ‘Show ’em precisely who we are.’

  Sometimes I love the sound of that voice. But the way she’d said that one word, almost as if were pronounced pre-cease-ly, tickled at the back of my brain.

  Sounds like ‘precis’, I thought. Arta precis.

  Perception.

  I propped myself up on my elbows and waited for the dizziness to pass. ‘Ferius and Reichis came to rescue me,’ I began. ‘Only th—’

  ‘Rescue you?’ my sister demanded. ‘From your family?’