‘That’s not how the magic works, you fool. The dog has to answer the summons. It has to want to bond with her. She can’t refuse it, but the dog has to come to her.’
‘Get away!’ I shouted at the dog. Why wasn’t her own magic working? The defensive aspect of her summoning spell should have kept sick animals away.
The men laughed and Tusks said, ‘Shout all you want, boy. The puppy’s deaf – one of the many unfortunate symptoms of the disease we gave it.’ He turned to the other two. ‘I wonder if the girl will become deaf when she bonds with it. Won’t that be interesting to find out?’
‘Why are you hurting her?’ I cried.
‘We’re not hurting her,’ Horns replied. ‘She came seeking a familiar, and that’s what she’s going to get.’ He came over and put a gloved hand against my jaw. ‘They think so grandly of themselves, your clan, your family, don’t they? And she’s the worst of them all. So convinced she’s going to become the greatest mage of her people. And who knows? Maybe she could’ve been.’ He nodded to Tusks, who walked over to the dog and gave it a gentle push. It started ambling towards Shalla again. ‘But I’m betting once she’s bonded to this little thing she won’t be nearly so high and mighty any more.’
‘Please don’t do this,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late. Just take the dog back and we can talk. There must be something you want!’
Without warning, the back of his hand slapped me across the face. ‘I want to enjoy this. That’s what I want.’
Third-Eye laughed appreciatively. ‘These Jan’Tep. Take away their little magics and they become like lost babes in the woods.’
‘We’ve never done anything to you!’ I shouted, pulling against the rope that held my wrists. ‘The war between the Jan’Tep and the Mahdek happened three hundred years ago!’
‘Ah,’ the leader said, his voice almost a whisper, ‘but the effects of that war? They just keep going on and on, don’t they?’
The little dog, the poor creature drawn by Shalla’s power, was only inches away from her now, sniffing in the air as though it could smell her magic. Within moments it would touch her and the bonding would take place. It would be over for Shalla. She’d be weak and sick for her whole life.
I convinced Father to let you be my watcher. You’re going to protect me.
This was my fault. I was the watcher. I was supposed to keep this from happening. Damn you, spirits of our ancestors. Damn you all. How could you let me fail again? In hopeless agony I reached out with my will as I’d been doing before. If there was another animal nearby, maybe it could … I didn’t know what it could do, but I was desperate. All I could do was try. I concentrated again on the summoning. Te-me’en-ka. Te-me’en-ka.
‘It’s taking too long,’ Third-Eye said. ‘If the parents really were scrying, then they’ll be close now.’
‘Almost there now,’ Horns whispered. ‘Almost there.’
Despite my efforts to focus, I couldn’t help but open my eyes. The sick little dog was extending a scabby paw towards Shalla.
‘No,’ I said, pleading. ‘Please, no.’
Horns nodded. ‘Let it happen, Kellen, just let it—’
Before I could ask how the man knew my name, he was cut off by the sound of something in the branches high above us. I looked up, but whatever it was ran too fast for me to make out anything other than the briefest glimpses of brown fur. It ran along the branches on four legs and I guessed its body to be about two feet long. It was hard to be sure though, because the colour and lines of its coat were so much like the tree bark it seemed to melt into the branches.
‘Ancestors protect us …’ Tusks said.
Suddenly the creature flew down at us, the claws of its back legs raking the back of Tusks’ mask as it swooped past him. Even before Tusks could try to swipe at it with his knife, the monstrous thing had glided away, slamming into the small dog that was now only inches from Shalla, rolling with it on the ground. When the creature came back up, it had the sad little dog’s neck in its jaws.
‘Hells,’ Horns said. ‘What is that thing?’
Even now, with the creature barely fifteen feet away, it was hard to make out its shape against the forest floor. The fur that I had first thought to be the brown of the trees above was actually darker, almost as black as the shadows themselves. It shook its head once, twice, a third time. On the final shake I heard the crunching sound of the dog’s neck breaking, ending its suffering. The killer let the body drop to the ground and turned to face us. At first I thought it might have been another dog, but this wasn’t like any dog I’d ever seen. Its face was almost like that of a cat, only wider and thicker, with a flat snout. Its fur bristled, and now I could make out dark stripes along its sides and its thick tail. Its eyes reflected the blood red of the flickering firelight.
‘Weapons at the ready,’ Horns told the others.
The creature looked down at the dead puppy at its feet, then rose up on its haunches and opened its mouth wide to let out a growl of such rage and ferocity I would have turned and run had my arms not been bound. It’s angry. It’s angry because it had to kill the dog. I don’t know how I knew that, but something in the creature’s face, in the growls and chitters that came from its mouth, convinced me that I was right.
The creature began moving closer to us. That was when I saw the dark furred webbing that stretched from its front paws to its rear – that must have been how it had seemed to fly at us even though it had no wings. The front paws that tore at the ground as it approached didn’t resemble those of a dog or a cat; they were more like black fingers with sharp claws.
‘Nekhek,’ one of the men whispered. ‘A demon’s familiar has come for us!’
Nekhek. The word meant ‘herald of the darkness’. A creature so foul it was said to be the Mahdek’s favourite weapon against my people, its bite stealing our magic and poisoning our spirits. I struggled uselessly against my bonds, desperate to get away. Tusks and Third-Eye ran immediately.
Even through my fear, a question rose in my mind. If these men were Mahdek, then why were they terrified by their own weapon?
Horns hesitated. ‘Pray the creature takes her, Kellen,’ he said to me. ‘The world would be better for it.’ Then he too turned and raced out of the clearing and into the night.
For a long while the monster just stared at me, making odd sniffing sounds punctuated by chitters and growls. Then it started coming towards me, its movements unnatural to my eyes, especially the way it would stop sometimes and wipe at its face with those eerie paws that looked almost like hands.
‘What are you?’ I asked stupidly. ‘Did I …? Did I summon you somehow?’
Oh ancestors … send me a spirit to chase this monster away.
The nekhek came closer and sniffed at my feet, then moved up my leg. Its snout snuffled over to my hand. I kept expecting to hear a voice in my head demanding a blood price for killing the dog. ‘You saved my sister,’ I said. ‘If … If that means there’s a debt to be paid, then I’ll pay it.’
I could feel its nose sniffing around my fingers. Its tongue reached out and licked at my skin for a moment, then the creature opened its mouth and I felt its teeth on the edge of my hand. Was this what destiny had in store for me? Was a nekhek going to devour me as I remained tied to a tree?
Just as I felt the teeth beginning to bite down, the nekhek suddenly flew through the air as if hurled by a great hand. The creature slammed against the trunk of a tree and fell to the ground unconscious. ‘Got it!’ my father said, emerging from the path behind me with my mother and several others.
‘The men who attacked us,’ I said, trying to keep my wits about me. ‘They went west, deeper into the forest.’
‘Go,’ my father said, and four men ran past me.
My mother came into the clearing, glancing at me only briefly before she went to Shalla and began the sequence of spells needed to ease my sister out of the summoning.
‘There were three of them, Father. They wore masks. Like th
e Mahdek ones from the pictures.’
I felt him working at the rope binding my hands behind the tree. ‘I know. Your mother saw them in the scrying. We should never have allowed this foolishness. I knew what Shalla was up to. I’d hoped you would have more sense than to help her in such an unwise endeavour.’
The rope gave way and my hands came free. I began rubbing at my wrists, trying to get feeling back into them. ‘Shalla told me she had permission. She said –’
My father came from around the tree and I saw the grave expression on his face. ‘Did you believe her?’
I found my eyes wandering down to the leaves on the forest floor. ‘I wanted to,’ I said.
‘A Jan’Tep can’t allow his desires to overcome his sense nor the needs of his family. A Jan’Tep must be …’ He stopped then, and after a moment let out a long breath. ‘Mahdek on the Path of Spirits, and with a nekhek servant. Ancestors above and below, these are dark signs.’
I looked over at the nekhek. I could see its sides rising and falling with shallow breaths as two men warily began to bind it with the rope that my father had removed from my arms. ‘I don’t understand. Those men were as scared of the creature as I was.’ I reached down and retrieved Ferius’s steel card from where Tusks had dropped it. ‘Weren’t the Mahdek supposed to be—’
My father cut me off. ‘Leave those men to your elders.’ He turned to the men binding the nekhek. ‘Make sure it can’t open its jaws. It will try to bite once it wakes, to infect us with its poison.’
My father started to walk away from me but I grabbed at his arm. He turned and looked at me with surprise. I don’t think I’d ever done that before. ‘The nek … the animal. I don’t think it was working for those men. I think it saved Shalla’s life.’
My father’s eyes narrowed. ‘Kellen, whatever you think you saw, whatever that demon creature was doing, it wasn’t trying to save Shalla. The nekhek is a creature of shadow and deceit. They were trained during the wars to chew poison weeds and bite Jan’Tep mages to paralyse their magic. They are our enemies as much as the Mahdek themselves.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘But we have one now, in part thanks to you, so this night has not all gone ill.’
‘I don’t understand. You’re going to kill it?’ Somehow the thought troubled me. Despite the stories I’d heard as a child, this animal had saved me from those men and Shalla from a fate that she would have considered worse than death.
My father shook his head. ‘Not yet. Where there is one nekhek there will be others, and that is the greater threat. We will cage the creature and use pain spells to break its spirit.’ He glanced over at where Shalla was being cared for by my mother. ‘It was clever of your sister to conceive of the means to use sympathy to bind the kin of another creature. We can use blood magic to draw other nekhek to this one so that we can kill them all before they become a threat.’
He walked over and lifted Shalla up in his arms. ‘It’s time to bring your sister home.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘That creature killed the diseased dog those men were using to infect Shalla. It saved her. How can you –’
He cut me off with a look. ‘You’ve had a shock. You were terrified of those men and you saw what some frightened part of you wanted to see. I don’t fault you for it, Kellen. But now you have to be a man and come to accept the things a man must do to protect his family. A Jan’tep must be strong.’ His expression changed a little, becoming … I couldn’t tell. Proud? ‘When the time comes, Kellen, I want you to be the one to put the blade in the monster’s heart.’
Before I could even think of an objection, the sound of wings flapping caught my attention. I looked up to see a bird slowing its descent as it flew towards us, moving with a heartbreaking grace and elegance. Without thinking, I reached a hand out to it, but the bird evaded me and landed on Shalla’s unconscious form. For just an instant, it blinked, its eyes turning from a dark brown to blue then to gold. It settled there, on my sister’s shoulder, as my mother and father looked at each other and smiled.
Shalla had found her falcon.
17
The Nekhek
The next day saw a flurry of activity that began with my being something of a hero and ended with me becoming a traitor.
‘She’s still asleep,’ my mother said, noticing me poking my head into Shalla’s room. ‘An interrupted summoning spell is hard on anyone and doubly so on someone as young as your sister.’ Her tone was calm on the surface but full of barely contained accusations underneath. The falcon, sitting on the edge of Shalla’s bed, turned its head to gaze at me with similar menace.
‘It was Shalla’s idea,’ I said. ‘Why am I to blame?’
‘I didn’t say you were, but since you chose to bring it up, why in all the world did you agree to such a thing?’
I reached for a sensible, believable reply. I found none. ‘She said she was ready.’
‘She’s thirteen!’
‘And she’s more powerful than half the mages in this city.’
‘Not last night, she wasn’t.’ My mother came to stand in front of me and placed her hands on my cheeks as she examined me. ‘Look at you, still bruised from getting into fights, and now this.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
She ran a finger along the hollow of my left eye the way she always did when I got hurt. I still had a cut there. When she seemed satisfied I wasn’t dying she said, ‘Couldn’t you see how weak Shalla was?’
I went to sit down on the reading chair next to my sister’s bed. The events of the previous day started to replay themselves in my mind. ‘She said she had a cold.’
‘Well, it’s not a cold.’
‘Bene’maat,’ my father said from the doorway. It was rare for him to use my mother’s name in front of us.
‘Don’t try to gentle me like some barnyard animal, Ke’heops,’ she said, her tone a warning that I recognised. ‘Our daughter could have been killed, or worse.’
My father put his hands in front of him. ‘I’m not, but Shalla was the instigator of this nonsense. Children her age have been sneaking onto the Path of Spirits trying to find their power animals since long before you or I were born, and none has ever come back with anything worse than a headache and the sniffles.’ He paused and looked over at me with something like pride on his face. ‘Kellen did everything he could to protect his sister.’
‘Those men—’
‘We’ll find the Mahdek who attacked her.’
Something about that bothered me. ‘I don’t think they were Mahdek, Father. I think they were ordinary men sent by Ra’meth.’
‘Ra’meth and his sons already submitted to interrogation by the lords magi. We used silk magic to discern the truth of their words. They were neither there nor had any knowledge of or involvement in the attack.’
What was it Ferius had said the other night? That if there’s a spell for everything then there’s probably a spell to counter it. ‘Maybe they found a way around the interrogation.’
‘Oh?’ my father said, his expression suddenly irritated. ‘And what exactly is your expertise in these matters?’
I closed my eyes, thinking back to the way the men who’d attacked us had been dressed, the way they talked. ‘Maybe the masks had something to do with it? Besides, the Mahdek were supposed to be wizards. Why didn’t these men use any spells?’
‘The Mahdek are deceivers,’ my mother said. ‘They use tricks and traps and, yes, dark magics to do their will. But magic can be traced. These Mahdek wanted to hurt us without being tracked down.’
I wasn’t sure I was convinced, but I let it drop. ‘What’s wrong with Shalla?’ I asked. ‘You said it wasn’t a cold but—’
‘We’re not sure,’ my father replied. ‘But her magic’s been weakening steadily for the past three days.’
Three days? Why three days? Unless … ‘She fought me three days ago. In the oasis.’
I looked over to my father and saw his steady gaze. He nodded, but there was
something else … something he wasn’t telling me. Then I remembered that Tennat was sick too. ‘Spirits of our ancestors … Osia’phest was right. They’re going to blame me.’
‘Who is going to blame you, Kellen?’ my mother asked. ‘And blame you for what?’
‘Tennat duelled me and he got sick. Shalla fought me next and now she’s sick too. People are going to think I poisoned them or that I’m diseased and they got sick because of me.’
‘No,’ said my father.
‘I’m going to be exiled. Ra’meth will convince the council to—’
‘No,’ he repeated. ‘I will deal with the council and I will deal with Ra’meth. Whatever has happened is either coincidence or, more likely, caused by the presence of the Mahdek and their nekhek servants nearby.’
‘But I told you, when the nekhek showed up those men ran.’
‘They were running from your mother and myself, not from their own servant.’
‘But they—’
‘Enough, Kellen. You’ve brought us a lifetime’s worth of foolishness these past few days. Now you will obey your parents. You will do what your mother and I tell you to do and say what we tell you to say.’ He came over to where I sat and knelt down so we were eye to eye. ‘Later today you will accompany me to the oasis. Our people need to see the nekhek and be reassured that there is no danger. If anyone asks you, you will tell them that the creature was in service to the Mahdek raiders who attacked your sister. Do you understand?’
‘I …’ what was I supposed to say? This was my father. The head of my family. I was his son and my duty was to obey. Besides, even if this particular nekhek wasn’t working for these particular Mahdek, it was still a creature of deceit and darkness, as my father had said. It had torn that little dog’s throat out without a second thought. As much as my people had feared the Mahdek, we probably feared the nekhek more.
So why has this one come to me?
At my father’s insistence I accompanied him to the oasis, so that no one could accuse him of hiding the one person who’d seen everything that had happened. Hiding, though, was exactly what I most wanted to do. The crowd was densely packed, the smell of sweat and fear and anticipation so thick that I found it hard to breathe. The hum and buzz of muttering was like a swarm threatening to envelop the city. A lesser man than my father would have found it impossible to speak over it.
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