‘No, he only says he believes this foolishness.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Apparently you think he’s even more of an idiot than I do. He hopes to take advantage of this opportunity to show how his strength is what our people need now that my husband is dead.’
A thought occurred to me then, like a fist clenched around my stomach. ‘Do you intend to resist my father’s election as clan prince?’
‘I couldn’t care less who becomes the next clan prince, child.’
The next words came out of my mouth far too fast for my own good. ‘Then what exactly do you care about, Mer’esan?’
The sudden stare she gave me convinced me that I’d gone too far. She rose to her feet and began walking around me as if I were a poorly made sculpture she were examining. ‘You fought your own friends to save the Argosi woman. Why?’
I considered my reply. If Mer’esan had decided that Ferius was, in fact, some kind of spy or wished us ill, it wouldn’t be hard to interpret my actions as treason against my own people. ‘You commanded me to maintain her interest in me, Dowager Magus.’
She stopped in front of me and held up a hand. Once again I could see the web of coloured tendrils of energy weaving under her skin. ‘It takes almost every ounce of magic I have to keep myself alive, Kellen, but I assure you the minuscule amount that remains is more than enough to beat the truth from you.’
I thought up a dozen other reasons, plausible explanations for my actions. I’m a reasonably accomplished liar most days. But the dowager magus seemed to be better at detecting dishonesty than I was at conjuring it. ‘I like her,’ I said.
‘You like her?’
I nodded.
‘Is she particularly pretty? Do you desire this woman? Do you hope she might –’ Mer’esan waved a finger in the direction of my trousers – ‘teach you things?’
I felt my cheeks flush and started fumbling for words, then stopped myself. It’s a game. Mer’esan knows I wasn’t referring to some misplaced teenage lust. She’s testing me again.
‘Ah,’ the dowager magus said, tapping my forehead. ‘Clever. Good.’ She resumed her slow walk around me. ‘Show me more.’
‘You don’t believe the Mahdek have returned,’ I said.
‘That much is obvious.’
‘But you think there is a threat,’ I added.
‘Again, obvious.’
I thought about how angry she was over my father’s assumptions. ‘You believe the men in masks are a distraction.’
She quickened her pace. ‘Obvious. Obvious. Obvious. Ask me a question worthy of an answer.’
I tried to imagine who might be working against us. The Daroman kings had a long history of seeking control over the Jan’Tep. That was why people were so quick to believe Ferius must be a spy. The Mahdek – if there were any left – had sworn blood oaths to destroy us, which explained my father’s convictions. The Berabesq considered our magic to be a blasphemy against their six-faced god … We had no end of enemies – that was precisely why magic was so vital to our society, why the trials were so harsh. It was why Jan’Tep and Sha’Tep were not allowed to marry – for fear that such unions would weaken the bloodlines.
‘Speak,’ Mer’esan said, still pacing around me. ‘I’m growing impatient of watching you stand there.’
‘A moment,’ I said.
Despite the avarice of our enemies, we had never been subjugated. Our magic had always been too strong. So why was Mer’esan – the oldest and most knowledgeable person in our clan – suddenly so concerned?
‘Ask the question,’ she demanded, her sandals slapping against the wooden floor.
‘What is the one foe that magic cannot withstand?’ I asked.
She stopped, and patted me on the arm. ‘Good,’ she said, her voice suddenly weary. ‘This is the question that men like your father, like those pompous fools on the council, cannot think to ask. The very possibility of a threat that magic cannot solve is utterly foreign to them.’
Whereas for me, the possibility of using magic to solve anything is fading fast.
‘The second trial comes to an end and you have failed it,’ she said, without a trace of sympathy in her voice. ‘Now you fear you will fail the third as well.’
‘How can I create a spell using two disciplines when I can’t break even one of my bands?’
‘I told you once before: do not ask questions to which you already know the answer.’
‘Then … it’s over. My sixteenth birthday is in a few days. I’m never going to become a mage. I’m going to be Sha’Tep.’
I felt myself becoming dizzy, as if just saying the words out loud had drained the strength from my limbs. Mer’esan held my arms. ‘You will never be a Jan’Tep mage like your father and mother. Whether you become a servant like your uncle is up to you.’
Like a child I held out my forearms, the metallic ink of the bands almost glistening in the cottage’s soft light. ‘Can’t you help me? You have the power, I know you do. Can’t you—’
‘I cannot,’ she said simply.
‘Why?’ I asked, tears sliding down my cheeks. ‘Why is this happening to me? Why won’t anyone help me?’
She didn’t answer, but simply led me by the hand to the door of the cottage. ‘These are the questions of a child, Kellen. You already found the one that matters, the one that binds all of our fates together. Ask it again.’
She had ushered me outside. ‘What is the foe that can’t be defeated by magic?’
Mer’esan looked at me, her face so full of sadness that for the first time she looked every one of her years. ‘The truth,’ she replied.
THE THIRD TRIAL
To rely on those spells already known is to allow the enemy to know your weapons. Our magic cannot be stagnant, but must adapt and change to protect our people against those who would take it from us. Only those who can demonstrate the ability to devise new spells can truly be called Jan’Tep and earn a mage’s name.
19
Blood Magic
The coarse sand on the path leading to the village square scratched at the skin of my bare feet as I crept along, as quietly as I could, cursing the way the food I’d stolen from the kitchen bounced awkwardly inside the cloth sack against my back. I’d been a fool to bring so much. If anyone caught me near the nekhek’s cage I’d have a tough time convincing them I was there for a midnight picnic.
Go back, part of me commanded. There are probably things worse than becoming a Sha’Tep, and if you get caught you’re going to find out exactly what they are.
I couldn’t just go back though. I’d spent hours sitting in my room in the darkness, trying to think of some way to spark my bands, to prove Mer’esan wrong. It got me nowhere. Through all of it I just kept finding myself staring at the blood-red markings on the card Ferius had given me and thinking about the animal that had saved my sister’s life, sitting in a cage, waiting to die.
I shifted the bag to redistribute its weight across my shoulders. Would the nekhek even want any of the food I’d brought? What did they eat, anyway, when they weren’t supposedly feasting on the soft flesh of Jan’Tep babies?
The sound of a door opening stopped me in my tracks. I held my breath and crouched in the shadows as a man with limp grey hair stumbled out of the house barely five feet from me. He pulled down the front of his trousers and let out a loud belch. The sickly-sweet smell of his breath reached me a second before the stench of his urine. I held my breath, praying he’d stop before the urge to wretch overcame me.
The old man looked down, admiring the stream of his piss as it went on and on, the puddle it formed on the ground leaking back down the slope towards me. A few seconds later I began to feel the trickle of urine work its way between my toes. The steady hiss finally stuttered to an end, followed by a deep sigh and then a cough. The old man didn’t even bother hoisting his pants back up. He just stood there, looking up at the moon reaching his right hand back to lean against the side of the house while the other idly scratched his hip.
Fine, Ferius. I’d look the nekhek in the eyes. I’d even give it something to eat. Out of all the different foods I’d stuffed in the bag, there must be something that would appeal to the little monster. Maybe it would gorge itself and choke to death and save everyone a good deal of trouble.
‘What are you doing, standing there in the dark like an idiot?’ a voice called out.
Hells, I’ve been seen. I tried to tense the muscles in my legs and almost cried out from the pain of pins and needles. Move, damn you! Don’t just sit here waiting for him to grab you!
I had just managed to push my way to a standing position when the old man said, ‘I’m just enjoying a little fresh air. Go back to bed.’
It’s just someone inside the house talking. I haven’t been spotted.
The person in the house said something else but I didn’t hear it. The old man replied with a grunt that turned into another bout of coughing. Then he turned and limped back into the house, his pants still halfway down his thighs.
I let out my breath and shifted the bag of food again before stepping out from the shadows, rubbing my thigh with my free hand and doing my best to step around the little puddles of urine as I headed down towards the oasis, cursing Ferius Parfax all the way.
It took only a few minutes more to reach the edge of the seven columns. I stopped to gather up what little courage I could find in myself. I realised suddenly that I was standing under a glow-glass lantern hanging from a pole and felt a flicker of panic that it might light up, making me visible to anyone walking along one of the adjoining paths. I needn’t have worried; the lantern was completely dark. I looked up and, like a fool, reached out with my will and tried as hard as I could to make the glow-glass spark. Nothing happened. There just wasn’t enough magic inside me to bring it to light. I was useless. For once in my life that turned out to be a good thing though, because I soon realised that there were already people at the oasis.
‘Do it again!’ Someone had whispered so loudly that the sound carried the entire distance from the centre of the oasis to the column where I crouched. Tennat! I shuddered at the thought of what he might do to me now that he knew I had no magic to fight back with. He was supposed to be sick, like me. What’s he doing here?
‘Shut up,’ cautioned a deeper and less nasal voice. It was my former friend, Panahsi. ‘Osia’phest will skin us alive if he finds out we’ve been practising blood sympathies.’
‘No one’s going to care, Pan,’ Tennat replied, sounding too excited to be cowed. ‘The council said they were going to use sympathy on the beast anyway.’
‘Yes, but the council will use silk spells to spread it to the other nekhek,’ a soft female voice replied. Hearing Nephenia speak made me shift from my position so that I could see around the corner. Soft light from the small lantern at her feet cast a glow on her pale blue dress. She stood over the boys, who were kneeling in front of the four-foot brass cage the mages had warded hours before.
Inside, the creature that had sent three armed men fleeing for their lives growled its outrage.
I don’t care how innocent Ferius thinks that thing is, I thought. Nekhek or squirrel cat … it looks as if it would tear my face off if I tried to feed it.
The three of them continued their conversation, unaware that I was listening. ‘The point of the sympathy is to make the other nekhek in the hills feel this one’s pain,’ Panahsi said. ‘Then they’ll be forced to come here, and Ke’heops and the other master mages can rid us of them all at once. It’s the only way to protect the clan.’
‘Doesn’t mean we can’t try out a few of our own spells on the creature first, right?’ Tennat argued. ‘Look, if we want to pass the third test, then we need to be able to show a new spell that combines two disciplines, or at least construct a variation of one of the usual ones. No initiate has ever devised a spell incorporating blood sympathy. We’ll have the pick of apprenticeships if we can make it work. When are we ever going to get a chance like this again?’
Panahsi and Nephenia exchanged a hesitant look, but a moment later, they nodded to each other in agreement.
I felt oddly betrayed that my one friend and the girl I never stopped thinking about were here, even after everything that had happened between us. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was one thing to know the theory behind blood sympathies, but actually getting to test them was something else entirely. Blood magic was far too risky to try out on humans or even pets. But something insidious like a nekhek, a creature you didn’t have to feel sorry for, who wouldn’t want a chance to try out magic like this?
‘Here, watch this,’ Nephenia said. They were nearly a hundred feet away from me so I had to squint to make out what was happening. The animal was reaching out with its paws between the bars, no doubt trying to claw at Nephenia. She made a somatic gesture with her left hand, the little finger touching the thumb, and then reached the index finger of her right hand to touch one of the bars. Blue light flickered in and out and the nekhek suddenly flew back from the bars to thump against the back of the cage.
‘How did you do that?’ Tennat asked. ‘That was beautiful!’
‘Lightning,’ she said, looking down as if she were a little embarrassed by his praise. ‘I can’t make much but it’s enough to conduct through the iron bars.’
The nekhek scurried back into the far corner of the cage, away from Nephenia. I took a quiet step back from the edge of the square. I’d seen enough to know that I didn’t want to stick around. It sickened me to watch the way the three of them acted like children, egging each other on as they tormented the nekhek. I’d believed Nephenia and Panahsi were better than that.
While I’d been ready to risk getting bitten by that little monster, I wasn’t going to take a chance on the humiliation of getting caught by Tennat. Perhaps he would just blackmail me into giving him one of my few personal possessions, but he could just as easily decide to tell his father that they’d caught me bringing food to the nekhek. Of course, since it looked as if he’d fully recovered from his earlier weakness, if I were really unlucky he might use this opportunity to impress Nephenia by working a blood sympathy spell on me. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I’d tried my best to do what Ferius had asked, but sometimes life didn’t work out the way you hoped. The nekhek probably already knew that. If not, it would figure it out soon enough.
I was about to turn and trudge home when I heard a sound that drove a spike into me. The cry wasn’t human, but it filled me with feelings I didn’t like. Shame. Disgust.
‘That’s amazing!’ I heard Tennat cheer. ‘How are you doing that?’
Despite my fears I returned to my spot and looked back into the square. What I saw made my insides wither. Within the cage, the nekhek was spasming again and again, its muscles clenching so hard its whole body jerked uncontrollably into the air and then back down to slam against the floor of the cage. The creature twisted and turned, clawing at its belly.
Panahsi was holding a long piece of string in his hands, dangling and shaking it. ‘It’s the string,’ he told the others. ‘I’ve used sympathy to bind it to the little monster’s intestines.’ He began winding the string around one of his fingers. ‘So when I give it a little twist …’
The animal gave another screech that sounded almost human to me. It set my teeth on edge and started a pounding in my skull.
‘Show me how to do it,’ Tennat said, sounding like a gleeful toddler.
Panahsi shook his head, his eyes focused in deep concentration. ‘It’s not as easy as it looks. Blood sympathy takes a lot of preparation. I had to spend most of the day meditating just to get ready.’ He smiled up at Nephenia. ‘Worth it though, wouldn’t you say?’ He w
hipped the string out hard and I saw the nekhek’s body lift inside the cage, all four limbs extended, the furred webbing between them stretched unnaturally. The animal screamed once more and then fell to the floor of the cage, shivering.
‘That’s probably enough, Panahsi,’ she said, favouring him with a nervous smile. ‘We’re not supposed to kill it. Let’s go back before we—’
‘Let me try something,’ Tennat interrupted, pushing the other two away from the front of the cage. ‘My brother found this in a book Osia’phest was keeping hidden in the masters’ library.’ From his pocket he brought out what looked like a short, thin tube and began whispering.
‘Is something supposed to be happening?’ Nephenia asked.
‘Just a second.’
I didn’t recognise the spell he was casting, but I had a feeling I knew what he was going to do with it. There was a part of me that wanted to rush out and yell at them to stop. No matter how vile the creature inside the cage, there was something wrong with this. It wasn’t just that I resented the way they were taking turns showing off for each other, it was the way Tennat giggled when the nekhek cried out.
I wasn’t gullible enough to believe the nekheks really stole human babies and fed them to their young – at least, if they did, I’d never heard of it happening in my lifetime. But I also knew they carried disease that could kill even a master Jan’Tep mage. They were a threat to our safety and had to be eliminated. But it’s not as if it was their fault, was it? Can something really be evil just for being what it is?
I shook my head. Ferius and all her stupid talk were confusing me.
Tennat had stopped whispering his spell. ‘Watch this,’ he said.
I couldn’t bring myself to look away as he reached down and picked up a handful of sand from the ground. He started pouring it from his closed fist down into the hollow tube. At first nothing seemed to be happening, but then the nekhek jumped up from the floor of the cage. Its mouth was open wide as if it were desperately trying to suck in air. I felt sick.
Spellslinger: The fantasy novel that keeps you guessing on every page Page 14