Spellslinger: The fantasy novel that keeps you guessing on every page

by Sebastien de Castell

  ‘How did you get in here without me hearing you?’ I asked.

  She steadied me and gave me a little wink. ‘Who can say? Maybe it was magic.’

  ‘I didn’t know Daroman could—’

  Ferius sniggered. ‘You Jan’Tep. So reliant on your little spells that you can’t imagine getting through the day without them. You were distracted, kid, that’s all. I’ve been tapping on that window for the past five minutes, but you were so focused on listening to your parents through that big old door that you were oblivious to what was happening right behind you. A roof snake looking for a midnight snack would’ve made a meal of you by now.’

  ‘I nearly died from having my own sister hit me with a sword spell,’ I said, irritated. ‘I’m not exactly at my best. What time is it anyway?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t pay much attention to clocks, but I’d guess I left you here around four hours ago.’

  ‘I’ve been unconscious for four hours?’

  ‘Probably longer than that, seeing as how I had to spend forever explaining to your mom how I revived you.’ Ferius shook her head. ‘And the woman calls herself a healer? Anyway, your dad had a bunch of questions, your sister had a bunch of excuses – but no one offered me anything to drink. So I left and spent the next couple of hours discovering that nothing remotely resembling a saloon stays open after midnight in this hick little town of yours. Thought I may as well come back and check on you.’

  It struck me as a little odd that a Daroman cartographer – not that I believed that’s what she really was – would go to the trouble. Maybe she was hoping to get paid for saving my life.

  I walked carefully back to the door to see if I could hear any more of what was happening on the other side. My parents were still arguing, though not loud enough for me to make out anything but the occasional word like ‘weakness’ and ‘flaw’ and, of course, my name.

  Shame and exhaustion drove me back to sit down on the settee. Ferius took a seat next to me and reached into the pocket of her waistcoat to pull out a short, stubby smoking reed. ‘I don’t think I like your family, kid.’

  Despite the fact that I’d be a corpse right now if it weren’t for her, it irked me that this woman thought she could come into my family’s house and pass judgment on us. ‘I suppose your family is so much better?’

  ‘Well, my family’s all dead,’ she said, lighting the reed with a match and taking a puff from it. ‘So they’re not nearly as noisy.’

  A quiet knock at the door startled me. Abydos, our steward, entered the room with a tray. The aroma of freshly baked bread and poppy-seed cheese filled the room and tugged at me, helped along by the sharply sweet scent of mulled pomegranate juice. When Abydos caught sight of Ferius he stiffened. ‘I see you’ve returned, Lady Ferius.’

  ‘I’m no lady, but yeah, I’m back.’

  Abydos set the tray down on the table in front of me. ‘I wasn’t sure when you last ate, Master Kellen.’ His eyes flicked from me to Ferius and back again.

  ‘Oh, relax, Aby,’ she said, laughing. ‘You look as if you’re trying to decide whether I’m here to kill the kid or seduce him.’

  ‘And which is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Abydos!’ I said, my voice rising. ‘This woman is a guest in our house. You will—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Aby,’ Ferius interrupted, casting me an angry sideways glance. ‘Neither murder nor seduction’s in the cards today.’

  ‘Well then, that’s all to the good. I’ll leave you to …’ The steward gave a quick nod to me, then left.

  I was voraciously hungry and halfway through the bread and cheese when I saw the curious expression on Ferius’s face as she looked towards the door. ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Abydos didn’t mean to be rude. He’s just protective of me.’

  ‘He looks a lot like your father,’ she commented.

  ‘Oh, that. He’s my father’s brother,’ I explained, taking another bite of bread before washing it down with some pomegranate juice.

  ‘You mean he’s your uncle.’

  ‘I … technically, yes.’

  ‘And you talk to your uncle like a servant?’

  ‘He’s Sha’Tep,’ I said, though I was fairly sure she knew that already. The look in her eyes made me feel small. ‘He’s well treated, you know. Some Sha’Tep work in the mines or are sent to serve other households. Most of them live in the slums at the edge of town. Abydos lives here, with us. My father treats him like family.’

  Ferius took a puff from her smoking reed. ‘That’s decent of you.’

  She’d said it as if it was a joke but I felt guilty anyway, so I changed the subject. ‘Were you really just pretending to have a weapon before?’

  ‘Weapon?’

  I pointed to her waistcoat. ‘When Ra’meth was—’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Ferius reached a hand into her waistcoat and pulled out a small stack of rectangular paper-thin boards, each one about the size of one of her hands. Gambling is forbidden among the Jan’Tep so it took me a moment to realise what she was holding.

  ‘Playing cards?’ I asked, dumbfounded. ‘You threatened the leader of my clan’s council of mages with nothing but a deck of cards?’

  Her face took on a theatrically offended expression. ‘“Nothing but a deck of cards”? I’ll have you know that I’m deadly with these things.’

  I watched as she laid them out on the table in front of us. Now that I had a better chance to see them I found myself entranced by the cards’ bright colours and beautiful, elaborate paintings. Even the ones bearing nothing but numbers and symbols were elegantly composed and stirred up stories of deadly battles and courtly intrigue in my mind.

  Ferius split the cards into four stacks, each decorated with a different symbol. She picked up the first stack and fanned it out in front of me, pointing first to a card with an elaborately drawn number nine surrounded by shields. ‘This is a numbered card.’ Then she pointed to one showing an illustration of an oddly dressed man bearing a crown seated on a golden throne decorated with chalices. ‘This is a face card.’ She closed the fan and put the four stacks back together. ‘There are four suits, each with ten numbered cards and three face cards.’

  ‘What’s that one?’ I asked, pointing to a card that didn’t seem to be part of any of the suits. Instead it showed a woman carrying fire in one hand and ice in the other.

  ‘We call those discordances,’ Ferius replied, quickly removing it from the deck and stuffing it back into her waistcoat. ‘Those cards are a little too dangerous to mess with for now.’

  Before I could ask how a card could be dangerous, Ferius launched into an explanation of the basic mechanics of the deck and described some of the games that could be played with them. She rattled off names: Country Twist, Royal Courts, Desert Solitaire, Six-Card Standoff … they went on and on. Each game had its own rules and strategies. I was utterly confounded by the complexity of it all. It had never occurred to me that there was more than one game that people played with cards.

  I stared in awe as Ferius shuffled the deck, her hands moving smoothly and confidently as the cards flipped around her fingers. It was like watching a master mage performing a dazzling series of somatic shapes one after the other.

  It was like magic.

  ‘So,’ Ferius said, grinning at my expression, ‘want me to show you a few spells?’

  7

  The Cards

  I don’t know how long we sat up playing cards, but by the time we stopped the first rays of sun had made their way through the open window of my mother’s study. Playing cards. The term didn’t even begin to describe what it felt like to me.

  I had no difficulty memorising the rules of each game or learning the different ways of handling the cards. I’d always been quick with both my head and my hands. It was too bad that magic wasn’t just twirling your fingers and saying the right words.

  ‘You got me, kid,’ Ferius said, miming an arrow to the chest as she pretended to fall backwards.


  I looked down at the cards on the table. I had beaten her at a game of Speared Jacks. My first game of it in fact.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Don’t go getting a swelled head.’ She picked up the cards and shuffled them back into a tidy stack.

  ‘Are we stopping?’ I asked, disappointed.

  She shook her head. ‘Just want to see you try something else.’ Ferius took one card off the top of the deck and held it between her thumb and forefinger. ‘See that knot of wood in the centre of the door there?’ Before I could answer she snapped her wrist and the card flew through the air, striking dead centre in the little imperfection of the door’s wood before bouncing off onto the floor.

  ‘How did you do that?’ I asked, utterly amazed.

  She handed me a card and showed me how to place it between my own thumb and forefinger. ‘It’s all in the wrist.’

  I gave a toss of the card. It landed a few inches in front of my foot.

  ‘Again,’ she said, handing me another card.

  ‘What’s the point? It’s not like—’

  ‘Just throw the card.’ I did, and this one flew a little further, maybe two whole feet before flopping to the floor. The third did better than that. On the fourth try, I hit the door. By the time I’d worked my way through the deck and we’d picked up all the cards again, I could hit the target easily, and all I could think was, I’m good at something.

  It’s hard to describe the sense of elation I felt. Maybe it was because I’d spent the last several weeks failing at everything I tried, or perhaps just because I’d almost died and my head still wasn’t right, but for whatever reason, I was smiling a big, stupid grin.

  ‘Feels good, don’t it?’ Ferius asked.

  I flicked a card towards the edge of the door. I could almost line it up so that it would stick in the gap between the door and the frame. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, not wanting to sound too eager. ‘It’s not like it’s real magic or anything.’

  Ferius raised an eyebrow. ‘Not real magic? Of course cards are magic, kid. I’ve got all kinds of spells I can do with them.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She flipped a card into the air – a three of shields. When it landed back in her palm it was the ace of spells. ‘Like using them to make someone else’s money magically move from their pocket to mine, for example.’

  ‘How?’ Then I realised she was just talking about gambling, not actual magic. ‘Oh, right.’ I turned away and pulled back my wrist to fling another card at the door.

  ‘“Oh … right”,’ Ferius repeated, mimicking me in a way that made me feel stupid. ‘You Jan’Tep. You wouldn’t know real magic if it hit you in the face.’

  Just then the door opened. I hadn’t been paying attention to the sounds of approaching footsteps. The card I’d been hurling at the door left my hand before I could stop it and an instant later hit my father right between the eyes.

  I watched my father’s hands go up reflexively into the somatic form for a fire spell. I flinched, immediately bringing my arms up to cover my face and dropping the cards all over the floor in the process. When I noticed that I wasn’t engulfed in a ball of flame, I opened my eyes again and saw my parents standing by the door. My father looked more disappointed than angry.

  My mother took immediate notice of Ferius sitting next to me. ‘Lady Ferius, I wasn’t aware that you’d returned. Can I—’

  ‘No “Lady”,’ Ferius interrupted.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I’m not a …’ and here Ferius waved her hand deferentially towards my mother before finishing with, ‘whatever.’

  While I wasn’t sure what would qualify a Daroman woman as a ‘lady’, it was certainly true that Ferius had nothing in common with my mother. Ferius’s features might have been attractive on a woman who, well, dressed like a woman, but everything about her was sharp edges and hard angles. It was as if some mischievious god had designed her entirely for the purpose of smirking, making lewd remarks or sauntering into other people’s homes uninvited.

  My mother, on the other hand, could have walked right out of a painting of the three goddesses of love and would have put the other two to shame. Her straight blonde hair was like Shalla’s, but with a deeper colour, as though lit from underneath by warm fires. She rarely wore excessive finery, yet her simple kasiris dress – a sheath of white muslin that went down to her ankles – drew no end of attention from the men in our city, sometimes annoyingly from my fellow initiates.

  My father glanced at the open window and then at Ferius. He reached into a pocket of his coat and pulled out a small bag of blue silk. ‘I was going to seek you out later in the day, but since you’re already here, I wish to repay you for your service to my family.’

  ‘What, you mean chasing off old Ram … Ramey …’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Heck, I can’t keep track of all the weird names your people have. Anyway, don’t think nothing of it.’

  A flicker of irritation passed over my father’s features. ‘I would have dealt with Ra’meth and his sons myself. I was referring to Kellen’s weakness nearly costing him his life earlier.’

  ‘Well, in that case it’s the kid who owes me a debt, not you, Mister Ke’heops.’

  My father’s jaw clenched. The implication that anything involving a member of his family might not be his concern was not something my father tolerated. This was getting ugly, fast.

  ‘Master,’ my father said.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘A Jan’Tep mage of my rank is referred to as “master”.’

  Ferius shrugged. ‘I’ve made it a policy never to call any man “master”, so I suppose we’ll just have to pretend we’re friends and I’ll call you Ke’heops.’

  ‘And you? Shall I call you Ferius Parfax?’ He jiggled the silk bag. Coins tinkled against each other. ‘Or do you go by Ferius Argos? That is how your kind are named, is it not?’

  I glanced between my father and Ferius. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘The woman is an Argosi,’ he replied.

  ‘What’s an Argosi?’

  Ferius reached out and plucked the small bag from my father’s hand. ‘Someone your people don’t understand very well, I’d say.’

  My father nodded towards the coins that Ferius was now stuffing inside a pocket of her waistcoat. ‘It seems we understand you well enough.’

  ‘Were you not able to find a place to stay in the city?’ my mother asked. ‘You could stay here with us …’ Her words drifted off just enough at the end that even I caught her meaning.

  ‘That’s all right, ma’am,’ Ferius said. ‘Not enough booze in this house.’ She rose and walked past my mother and father to the door. ‘Besides, you’ve got too many spies.’ She abruptly banged the door right in its centre. From the other side I heard Shalla squeal a loud ‘Ouch!’ Ferius gave a little laugh and shook her head, the red curls shivering as if they too thought it was funny. ‘You Jan’Tep. You knock me out, you know that?’ She turned back to look at me briefly. There was a strange softness in her eyes. ‘Keep the cards, kid. You’ll need ’em.’ Then she opened the door and walked out, leaving me alone with my parents.

  My mother came to me immediately and brought a hand to my forehead.

  ‘I’m fine, Mother,’ I said.

  ‘Unless you’ve become a healer without my knowing, that is for me to judge,’ she said, lightly tracing a finger around my left eye. It was something she did when I was sick – her way of reassuring me.

  My father walked back to the door, picked up the card I’d hit him with and then slowly collected the others and placed the deck on the table. ‘Later today you will send one of the servants to return these to the Daroman woman.’

  ‘She said I could keep them.’

  My father sat down on the table next to the settee, which was unusual for him. ‘Kellen, a son of the House of Ke doesn’t play with cards. He doesn’t gamble. He doesn’t cheat at his trials.’

  ‘I beat Tennat,’ I said, the combination of
exhaustion and my earlier elation at learning to throw cards making me foolish. ‘Does it really make a difference how I did it?’

  ‘Cheats. Deceptions. Tricks. It is always tricks with you, Kellen. Tricks will not keep our family safe.’

  I found myself tensing up. I resented my father in that moment, resented his lofty words and his honour and, above all else, his magic. Was it my fault the damned bands around my forearms wouldn’t spark? Was it my fault I had so little power inside me I could barely light a glow-glass lantern? Ever since I’d been a child I’d had to find ways around my problems, never able to force my way through them the way Shalla or my parents could do. ‘Tricks are all I have,’ I said.

  He turned to my mother. ‘Clever. The boy seeks always to be clever.’ My father uses the word ‘clever’ the way other people use terms like ‘unsavoury disposition’ or ‘unsightly skin condition’. He walked over to her writing desk and returned with a small glow-glass ball, the kind children use to learn to focus their will. He handed it to me. ‘A Jan’Tep must be strong.’

  I held the ball in the palm of my hand. It was burning brightly, but when my father and mother walked to the door, the light disappeared. Not dimmed. Disappeared. I focused my will on it, urging it to light, but nothing happened. Come on, I told myself. You’ve done this a thousand times before. Nothing. The light was dead. Ra’meth’s cold voice came back to me. You will soon find yourself among the Sha’Tep, where even your family knows you have always belonged.

  ‘A Jan’Tep must be strong,’ my father repeated from the doorway. I looked up and saw that he wasn’t talking to me – he was talking to himself, the way people did when they were preparing themselves for something that was going to be very hard, or very sad. The last days before my sixteenth birthday were upon me and, for the first time in my life, I was truly afraid of my father.

  8

  Abydos

  I spent most of that day in my own room, sleeping, waking and, in between those two states, staring at the little glow-glass ball I still clutched in my hand. I could get the barest glimmer out of it now, just enough that if I pushed myself to the point of collapse I might make it compete with a small candle. Eventually I threw the ball against the wall of my room. It didn’t even have the courtesy to break. One more test failed. No messenger was going to be coming to bring me the gold disc that would symbolise passing the first trial.