Charmcaster

by Sebastien de Castell

  ‘Me, me, me,’ Reichis mocked. ‘Why is it always about you, Kellen? Notice how we never run across other squirrel cats? That’s because most of my kind have been killed by your kind.’

  I felt ashamed by that. The squirrel cat almost never brought up the fact that his relatives had died at the hands of a mage from my own clan, but any time I asked if he wanted to talk about the loss of his family, he bit me. Hard.

  Ferius offered up a sardonic smile. ‘Not everybody hates you, kid. There are entire countries full of people who haven’t met you yet.’

  ‘Well, I’m starting to hate both of you,’ Reichis grumbled. ‘And I’m hungry, so unless one of you is planning to feed me one of your ears for supper, let’s get out of this lousy wasteland and find a town with somebody who knows how to make butter biscuits.’ The squirrel cat went back to busily – and futilely – picking the sand out of his fur.

  ‘He’s right,’ I said to Ferius. ‘We’re supposed to be in Gitabria right now, saving the last remaining victim of the obsidian worms – someone who hasn’t been hunting us for three solid days. If this mage has got himself mixed up with a bunch of religious fanatics with a burning desire to … well, burn people? Then better him than us.’

  It didn’t sound very noble when I said it out loud like that, but the alternative was way worse. I went and picked my hat out of the scraggly bush where it had landed. ‘Let’s just get the hell out of—’

  Pain. I mean, pain.

  I rubbed at my right eye to try to get rid of the stinging sensation. ‘Quit attacking me, you crazy wind spirit!’

  Ferius came over and pulled my hand away, peering into my eye as if she expected to find the sasutzei staring back at her. ‘Sounds like Suzy’s trying to tell you something, kid.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I snapped. ‘She’s telling me to rip out my own eyeball!’

  ‘I get first bite,’ Reichis said, then gave Ferius a snarl just in case she didn’t get the message. Unlike me, she can’t turn his little chitters, grunts and growls into words, but she’s been around him long enough to know his particular culinary proclivities.

  ‘It’s all yours once we’re done with it, squirrel cat.’ To me she said – of course, ‘Breathe, kid.’

  Since it was becoming clear that the sasutzei wasn’t going to let me leave until I paid attention to her, I did just that.

  Whisper magic isn’t like the spellcraft of my people. Our magic is built on summoning the six fundamental sources of power through the tattooed metallic bands on our forearms. Casting a spell takes carefully worded invocations along with precise somatic shapes to match the intricate mystical geometry we envision in our minds. Whisper mages? They basically just … whisper. It’s more like begging the spirits than commanding magical forces – which is probably why my people look down on it. ‘Okay, Suzy,’ I murmured to the sasutzei, ‘show me what you’ve got.’

  I let the air ease out slowly from my lungs, using it like a river upon which I sent little wooden boats made more from emotion than thought, each one carrying a message to the spirit. I’m not sure what words I spoke – it’s hard to keep track when you’re trying so hard not to think, but after a few seconds the pain shifted to a softer sensation, like someone gently blowing on your eyelids. When I opened them, I found the world had split in two. My left eye beheld everything before me – the sand dune, the mountains off in the distance; Ferius, standing there patiently; Reichis looking irritable. My right eye was looking directly inside the sandstorm.

  ‘You okay, Kellen?’ the squirrel cat asked. ‘One of your eyes just went all milky.’ His muzzle twisted into a look of mild disgust. ‘Don’t think I want to eat it any more.’

  I ignored him and focused on the visions the sasutzei was showing me. The air that had been so still an instant before was now swirling all around me, sand and dust whipping at my skin, though I couldn’t feel any of it. What I was witnessing was further away, deeper into the heart of the storm where the four Berabesq Faithful pushed through fierce winds as they closed in on their prey. The mage looked to be an inch or two shorter than me and even skinnier. If he couldn’t destroy them with magic, I doubted he’d be able to defend himself physically. ‘They’ve almost got him,’ I said out loud. ‘The animal with him, the hyena, it’s fallen to the ground. It’s not getting up.’

  ‘Good,’ Reichis muttered. ‘Hope the filthy thing is dead.’

  In addition to not being sentimental, squirrel cats also aren’t big on sympathy.

  I closed my left eye to focus my attention on what was unfolding inside the sandstorm. ‘The mage is trying to pick up the hyena, but the Berabesq are too close – they’re starting to … Wait … He’s throwing something at them.’

  I watched in fascination as what appeared to be a small wooden box, no bigger than the palm of my hand, fell in front of the pursuers. The instant it hit the ground, it broke open and fire burst out of it, the flames erupting in all directions.

  ‘What is it?’ Ferius asked. ‘Some kind of weapon?’

  ‘Caged fire, I think. He must be a charmcaster.’

  Reichis tilted his fuzzy head at me. ‘A what now?’

  ‘A charmcaster. They’re like …’ How do you explain the arcane distinctions between disciplines of magic to an Argosi gambler and a squirrel cat? ‘It’s like this: a proper mage can invoke spells at will so long as they’ve sparked the necessary tattooed bands that my people use to create a connection to the raw forms of magic. It’s all about energy and will. A spellslinger like me can only do a little bit of magic, so I have to combine it with other things to make it useful. A charmcaster doesn’t really cast spells at all so much as bind them to physical objects. Some charms – simple ones like warning locks and glow-glass lanterns that don’t require a lot of magical force – can keep working for months or years. Bigger ones—’

  ‘Like freakin’ dry lightning?’ Reichis asked.

  ‘Exactly. A storm takes a lot of work to bind, so you could only use it once and it won’t last for more than maybe an hour.’ A sudden twinge of pain in my right eye courtesy of the sasutzei brought my attention back to the visions she wanted me to witness. ‘The caged fire didn’t work. The Berabesq have the charmcaster pinned down now. Three of them are strapping him down with ropes, but …’ I hesitated, unable to make sense of what I was seeing.

  ‘What’s wrong, kid?’ Ferius asked.

  Again I struggled to peer closer at what the sasutzei was showing me. ‘The way they’re tying him down is really weird. They’ve got ropes around each of his limbs and then they’re tying those to each other so that his hands and feet are all outstretched. It’s almost like the ropes are forming a circle around him.’

  ‘That’s the rite of damnation,’ she said grimly. ‘They use it to cleanse the earth of a heathen’s blasphemy.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘Slowly, and with a lot of blood.’ Her words came out hoarse and gravelly, and were soon followed by the sound of her footsteps in the sand. ‘Best we get on with it then.’

  I opened my left eye to find her setting off in what was decidedly the wrong direction.

  ‘Is that crazy Argosi going into the storm?’ Reichis asked.

  ‘Wait!’ I called out to Ferius. ‘You said the Faithful were dangerous!’

  ‘That I did, kid,’ she shouted back, still headed for the sandstorm. ‘Then I recalled something you said.’

  ‘Me? What did I—’

  She stopped then, buttoning up her waistcoat and pulling her hat down lower over her eyes against the wind and sand. ‘You forget already? You said you wished that for once somebody would come along to help instead of always trying to kill us. Reckon that works both ways.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? You expect us to put our lives at risk on account of an idle thought I had in the middle of a lightning storm in the desert?’

  Ferius glanced back at me, the smirk on her face at odds with the trepidation in her eyes. ‘Warned you that head of yours was too full of
thoughts, kid.’ Then she turned and resumed her steady march into the swirling chaos of the storm, leaving Reichis and I to decide whether to follow or abandon Ferius to almost certain death.

  Ancestors, I prayed silently as I jogged after her, ignoring Reichis’s threats to let me charge headlong to my own execution without him. When I come back in the next life, let me carry this one thought with me: next time you meet an Argosi, run away as fast as you can.

  4

  Polite Conversation

  Even blinded by fierce winds and pummelled by sand flying in all directions, it didn’t take us long to find the Berabesq Faithful. By a rare stroke of luck, we even managed to do it without them spotting us first. All we had to do now was keep quiet until we could free the mage.

  ‘Nice weather we’re having,’ Ferius called out cheerfully to them, completely blowing our cover. ‘How about we have ourselves a little picnic and a friendly chat?’

  Ferius Parfax has many bad habits. I’ve never been able to figure out whether these are an unavoidable consequence of walking an Argosi path or whether it’s just because she has a terrible sense of humour. Whichever way you look at it though, announcing your position to four Berabesq Faithful in the middle of a charmcaster’s sandstorm to suggest a friendly chat is a terrible, terrible idea.

  ‘Totally saw that coming,’ Reichis grumbled.

  Without so much as a word to each other, the Berabesq came to a joint decision to decline our invitation of tea and polite company. They also settled on a plan: two of them dragged the unconscious charmcaster deeper into the storm, and the other two came for us.

  Ferius sighed. ‘Nobody wants to engage in a free and open exchange of ideas any more.’

  ‘Thank the squirrel cat gods for that,’ Reichis said, puffing himself up. His fur had taken on the exact colour of the sand around us once again, which was smart since it made him almost impossible to see in the storm. But the little bugger has an ego bigger than most countries, so of course he had to make his stripes dark red to show he meant business. ‘Come and get it, skinbags.’

  The two hunters loped gracefully towards us. The woman was broad-shouldered and slid a sword from the scabbard at her back as she approached. The blade was about three feet long, curved along its length with a tip that ended in a sharpened hook. ‘That’s a kazkhan,’ Ferius said. ‘Try not to get cut, okay?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s sharp, kid.’

  ‘Right. Helpful advice as always.’

  ‘Also,’ Ferius went on, ‘the Faithful like to coat the inside of their scabbards with a venom from one of the local snakes. Stings like the devil when it gets under your skin.’

  Well, I suppose I hadn’t really been planning on letting myself be stabbed anyway.

  The slender man had darker colouring than his partner and didn’t look as if he were carrying a weapon at all until he got within twenty feet of us. That’s when I caught the reflection off the metal sheaths attached to each of his fingers that ended in glinting points.

  ‘Tiazkhan,’ Ferius said. ‘Don’t let him hit you with those either.’

  ‘Let me guess: poisoned?’

  ‘Strangely, no – at least not with anything that makes you sick.’

  ‘Then what—’

  ‘Ours is a gentle God,’ the man called out. ‘Even to heathens. So it is that I must offer you a chance at life.’ He spoke to us in Daroman, though with a heavy accent. I guess with Ferius and me wearing frontier travelling clothes, we must’ve looked as much like Daroman herders as anything else.

  ‘May he grant you serenity and peace to all you love,’ Ferius called back, an unusual formality to her voice. She does that sometimes: switches from sounding like a drunken gambler to enunciating with the precision and eloquence of a court diplomat.

  ‘And peace, in turn, to you,’ the man replied with a note of surprise in his voice. ‘Indeed, peace may be cheaply purchased.’ He gestured to the ground. ‘You need only kneel and bow your head that God may see you are merely lost, and not come here to interfere in His work.’

  Ferius gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Forgive me, most worthy one, but when I bow, my eyes cannot see the path ahead, and when I kneel, I cannot walk where my heart dictates.’

  This too seemed to bewilder the two Berabesq Faithful, but only for a moment. ‘Argosi,’ the woman said at last. Well, spat is more like it.

  Ferius grinned at her. ‘A common and most sensible reaction, faithful one.’

  The man grew impatient. ‘Ask your questions then, wanderer. We do not seek a quarrel with the Argosi.’

  Ferius took a step forward and made a show of looking around. ‘You are far from your temples and cities, most worthy ones – closer to the Gitabrian border than your holy places. What crime has this mage committed that brings you on such a long chase?’

  ‘Heresy,’ the two Faithful replied in unison.

  Ferius whispered to me, ‘It’s always heresy with these guys.’ She then turned back to the Faithful. ‘There are seven hundred and seventy-seven heresies, most worthy ones, could you be more specific?’

  The man seemed mildly impressed. ‘You know our ways, so I will answer: the crime of witchcraft.’ Before Ferius could respond, he held up a hand, the metal points of the sheaths attached to his fingers reflecting the hazy light that permeated the storm. ‘Before you ask, of the eighteen forms of devilry, this one is a forsaken warlock.’

  ‘Dang,’ Ferius muttered under her breath.

  ‘Why is that bad?’ I asked. ‘I mean, any more than the seven hundred and seventy-six other heresies?’

  ‘The Berabesq hate mages, but most of the time they avoid risking war with their neighbours just for the sake of killing one. A forsaken warlock is someone they’ve been given permission to execute without reprisal.’

  ‘Clearly nobody wants to save this guy,’ Reichis said irritably. ‘I mean, what kind of filthy reprobate has his own kind telling their enemies to go ahead and kill him?’ He looked up at me with what I assumed was the squirrel cat’s expression of mild embarrassment. ‘Other than you, of course.’

  Ferius locked eyes with the Faithful. ‘You follow a dark path, most worthy ones. To conduct a rite of damnation without even a trial? What proof have you that this mage—’

  The woman started to object, but her partner held up a hand. ‘Ease your conscience, Argosi. The heretic was foolish enough to give his name to any who would listen in a town not three days’ ride from here.’ He gestured nonchalantly behind them to where his fellow zealots had carried off their prisoner deeper into the storm. ‘The one we are about to sacrifice is none other than the notorious Jan’Tep fugitive, Kellen of the House of Ke.’

  5

  The Fugitive

  ‘Okay, I admit it,’ Reichis said as we found ourselves squaring off with the two Berabesq Faithful. ‘That I didn’t see coming.’

  ‘You’ve made a mistake, worthy ones,’ Ferius said with the same calm, almost jovial tone as before. The Berabesq weren’t buying it.

  The woman with the sword spoke to her companion in their own language. I had no idea what she said, but the gist was probably something like, ‘Hey, let’s go kill these filthy heathens, murder our captive, and then we can have some nice tea and polite discourse with their decapitated heads.’

  ‘Kneel, beg forgiveness and we may yet let you live,’ the man urged as they came for us. ‘Our mission is to execute Kellen of the Jan’Tep, not to slaughter misguided travellers.’

  ‘Heh,’ Reichis said as he crouched down in preparation to attack. ‘This would be kind of funny if we weren’t about to get killed anyway.’

  The woman swung her curved-bladed kazkhan in effortless arcs. The whoosh of its passage cut through even the roaring of the sandstorm. ‘One of the warlock’s own people – a mage himself – came to us under diplomatic sanction. He brought offerings and entreaties that we should rid the world of the blasphemer’s presence.’

  ‘Which mage?’ I asked. �
��Who hired you to—’

  ‘Not really the point right now, kid,’ Ferius whispered.

  ‘God commands you bow your heads before him,’ the woman said, the arcs of her blade taking on a much deadlier pattern. ‘He does not concern himself with whether those hands remain attached to your shoulders.’

  Ferius gave no ground. ‘Forgive me, most worthy one, but it’s the two of you who should probably duck right about now.’ After a second she glanced at me, looking mildly disappointed. ‘That was your cue, kid.’

  ‘What? Oh, right.’ I reached into the pouches at my side and took a pinch of each of the powders – not so much that I would blast the Faithful into little pieces, but enough to make an impression. The wind kept shifting direction, which would present a problem if it blew the powders into my own face right as they exploded.

  ‘Any time now,’ Ferius muttered.

  A gap in the gusting winds finally came, so I tossed the powders into the air. The instant before they made contact, I formed the somatic shapes for the spell with both hands: index and middle fingers aimed at my targets to give the spell direction, ring and little fingers pressed into my palm for restraint, and thumbs to the sky … One of these days I really need to find out what that particular somatic shape is supposed to mean. ‘Carath,’ I intoned as the first burst of red and black flame appeared and the spell took hold. The twin fires seared the air just inches above our opponents’ heads, leaving the scent of sulphur and blood in the air between us.

  The two Faithful stopped in their tracks. The man gave me a small, polite bow. ‘Your devilry is almost as impressive as your generosity, blasphemer. Had you chosen to do so, you might well have killed us with your first attack.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Reichis said, looking up at me. ‘Idiot.’

  ‘Now you’ve seen what we can do,’ Ferius said. ‘So why don’t we all—’

  The man ran a metal-sheathed finger from each hand along the outside of the opposite forearm. The sharp metal tips left a scarlet line of blood trickling in their wake.