Charmcaster

by Sebastien de Castell

  She leaned her back against the wall for just a second, then drove forward, raised one leg and slammed the heel of her boot into the door barely an inch from the lock. The door burst open with an ear-splitting crack. For barely a second it hung off one hinge before crashing to the floor.

  I stepped in front of Ferius. With the precision and reflexes that came from months of practice I tossed my powders into the air. Even before they collided my hands had taken on the somatic shapes. As I uttered the first syllable of the invocation, my eyes adjusted to the light. I counted three figures in the room, seated close enough together that one blast would take them all and finally bring an end to the obsidian worms.

  ‘Ca—’

  The incantation died on my lips. The powders clashed together and a flash of red and black flame blinded us all for an instant before fading into nothingness. I was left standing there like an idiot, staring at my enemies, and one in particular who I’d recognised just in time to stop myself from murdering her.

  ‘Shalla?’

  38

  The Delegate

  My little sister looked up at me with a hint of a smile. ‘Brother!’ she said, and leaped up from her chair to hug me, as if three seconds before I hadn’t been a hair’s breadth from turning her to ash.

  ‘Shalla?’ I hadn’t seen my sister in over a year – not since I’d left the Jan’Tep territories. Well, that’s if you don’t count the times she used spells to make her face appear in a patch of sand or a bowl of water from hundreds of miles away. She usually went to all this trouble for the sole purpose of expressing her disapproval over some new embarrassment my being an outlaw had caused our family.

  ‘Of course it’s me, silly. Who else would it be?’

  Good question, I thought, unsure if I could trust her and yet unable to stop myself from returning her embrace. Silk magic is effective for deceiving the eyes and ears, but it’s less reliable with the other senses. The girl in my arms certainly gripped me with the determined affection Shalla showed when she wasn’t irritated with me. She felt like my Shalla. The scent of her hair, so much like our mother’s, reminded me of home. But if this was my little sister, then that begged a question: ‘What in the names of our ancestors are you doing here, Shalla?’

  She let go of me and took a step back to strike an unmistakably condescending and self-righteous pose. Okay, this is definitely Shalla.

  ‘I’m our clan delegate to Gitabria, obviously.’

  ‘Wait … You’re the what? You’re only thirteen years old! How could they—’

  ‘I’m fifteen, silly. I’m two years younger than you, and my birthday comes two weeks before yours.’ Her face lit up in a smile. ‘Which means we missed your birthday! We must celebrate together!’

  Her unbridled enthusiasm left me speechless. Not so the others in the room.

  ‘Enough of this nonsense!’ the older of the two mages said. Layers of silver-and-grey robes stretched around his belly as he pounded a heavy fist against the table. ‘This wretch is a traitor to our people!’

  The younger man – the one dressed as a merchant who I’d followed inside the tower – spoke with less exuberance but equal hostility. ‘Lord Magus Hath’emad is correct. This one is shadowblack. It is our duty as Jan’Tep to end his life.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Shalla said. ‘Kellen is my brother.’

  ‘Then I’ll happily deal with him myself,’ Hath’emad declared, pushing himself to his feet with no small effort. Grey and gold shimmered about his forearms as he drew on the magics of iron and sand.

  Before he could speak his invocation, a steel playing card embedded itself in the wall less than an inch from his face. ‘Reckon we’ll all get along better if you keep a civil tongue, friend.’

  The card was still vibrating, fluttering against Hath’emad’s cheek. ‘Perhaps I was hasty, Argosi.’ He stepped away from the wall, holding his hands up, palms out to show he wasn’t about to cast a spell. ‘Dal’ven? You kill them.’

  Without hesitation the younger mage took on the shape of the second somatic form of lightning – hardly the most powerful variant of ember magic, but certainly the quickest. The moment the final syllable of his incantation passed his lips, blue and white tendrils of energy came for us. I dived in front of Ferius. It wasn’t from any courageous impulse on my part, simply that she was more likely to be able to take him out before his spell killed one of us. Besides, I’d been hit by lightning spells so many times I had to be building up some kind of resistance by now, right?

  Ferius caught me in her arms. ‘You’re a sweet kid sometimes, you know that?’

  ‘You were supposed to throw something at him!’ I replied, a little embarrassed. But oddly not electrocuted.

  I turned to see the tendrils of Dal’ven’s bolts halted just a few inches away. The sparks threw themselves against an invisible barrier keeping them from us. ‘That will be enough of that,’ Shalla said, her right hand slowly pushing outward.

  The muscles in Dal’ven’s fingers tensed and the copper sigils of the ember band tattooed around his forearm flared. Being undermined by my little sister didn’t appear to agree with him. ‘Do not think to command me simply because your father is clan prince.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she replied. With nothing but a twitch of her own fingers, the barrier pushed the lightning back towards its source. ‘There’s a much simpler reason why you ought to obey me.’

  Dal’ven’s face was already slick with sweat and his brow furrowed as he struggled to keep his own spell from shocking him to death.

  ‘I warned them not to send a precocious child as our delegate,’ Hath’emad growled. He placed his palms against each other as though he were about to shake hands with himself. He twisted them together and the iron band on his forearm shimmered. A simple spell we used to call the fettering magnet when I was an initiate. But why? All it does is create a connection between two spells … Oh, hell.

  ‘Ferius!’ I shouted. There wasn’t time to explain that Hath’emad was about to bind Shalla’s shield to Dal’ven’s lightning and kill her with it in the process. If I tried firing my powder spell into the mix to stop him, I’d end up creating an explosion that would kill all of us.

  ‘On it,’ Ferius said. Though she seems to take pride in her ignorance of magic, she has an uncanny knack for guessing people’s intentions. Hath’emad was halfway through the invocation when a second steel card lodged itself in his mouth.

  He spat it out. Blood came with it.

  ‘Awgothy bith!’ he swore. Well, I think that’s what he said. It’s hard to talk when your tongue is bleeding that profusely.

  ‘Now what did I say about keeping a civil tongue?’ Ferius asked.

  Hath’emad was gesticulating furiously, several of his tattooed bands sparking, but without noticeable effect.

  ‘Hey, kid,’ Ferius said. ‘You don’t suppose enunciation is important for spellcasting, do you?’

  The air between Shalla and Dal’ven sizzled as she forced his ember spell back on him. ‘Come now, my lord,’ she said idly. ‘I’m not even a proper war mage. Just an impudent girl. Isn’t that what the two of you keep reminding me?’ I don’t know why Shalla insists on taunting her elders, but she’s been doing it since the day she uttered her first coherent sentence and shows no signs of slowing down as she gets older. ‘Surely one of you two great and powerful mages is prepared to teach me a little lesson in magic?’

  Dal’ven’s eyes had grown so wide you could see the sparks of his own lightning reflected in them. ‘Enough!’ he said, dropping the spell. ‘I yield.’

  Shalla looked disappointed. ‘Oh, all right.’ She turned back to me. ‘Now, brother, let’s talk about your birthday.’ She tapped a finger against her lower lip and frowned. ‘Gitabria is such a gauche little country. I’m afraid we won’t be able to celebrate as we should, but still …’ She spared a passing glance at the two mages behind her. ‘One does what one can with the resources available.’

>   How do you reply to that kind of insanity? She’d always had that effect on me – like a whirlpool that draws everything around it into its own swirling miasma of confusion.

  For a moment there, it almost looked like we’d get through this without bloodshed – well, except for Hath’emad’s tongue. But then Ferius said, ‘Kid, you’re paying too much attention to the forest. Don’t miss the trees.’

  I thought she must be referring to Dal’ven or Hath’emad, but neither had moved so much as an inch. Then I looked back at Shalla and noticed something odd. All this time, she’d kept her left arm at her side, the sleeve of her gown covering her wrist.

  Ancestors, please, no. ‘Shalla,’ I said, my voice sounding cold even to me, ‘hold up your right hand.’

  My sister saw where I was staring. ‘Don’t be like this, Kellen. We’ll talk tomorrow when you’ve—’

  ‘Hold up your right hand, sister. Now.’

  She raised both hands, in fact – as close to an act of submission as I’d ever seen from her. The sleeve of her shirt slid down her arm. ‘Brother, there are things you don’t know. Things you need to understand before—’

  Sometimes I think maybe I’m two different people. One of them is a whiny Jan’Tep boy, desperate for all the things he’d wished for as a child: to be safe; to wield the high magics of his people; to be with his family. But the other Kellen? He’s an outlaw – an outcast older than his years and sick to death of the unconscionable ways his people use their magic. It was the outcast who saw the onyx bracelet around his sister’s wrist and reached inside the pouches at his side for the powders that would blast her from existence.

  39

  Sibling Rivalry

  The problem with threats is that not everyone waits for you to finish them. In fact, some people don’t even let you get started.

  The powders weren’t even out of my pouches before everything went to hell. Dal’ven and Hath’emad were already lighting up the room with the glow of their tattooed bands as they brought their hands up to form the somatic shapes of a pair of particularly nasty spells. Their invocations turned to howls of pain as Ferius’s steel cards sliced into the flesh of their palms.

  Dal’ven recovered a lot quicker than I would’ve expected and sent a burst of iron magic spikes that should’ve skewered her right where she stood, except she wasn’t standing there any more. With that uncanny tactical awareness of hers, Ferius had already launched herself into a shoulder roll the moment she’d flung the cards. She went under the mage’s spikes and came up right behind him, the edge of a razor-sharp steel card resting against the ball of his throat. ‘You tried to kill me just then, friend. Most places on this continent that gives me the right to make sure you never cast another spell. I’d prefer it if you were to come to that conclusion on your own, but I’ll let you decide.’

  A few feet away, Hath’emad’s bleeding hands shook as he fought to calm himself enough to attempt a counter-attack. The outrage and contempt in his eyes was something to behold. Ferius kept her card on Dal’ven’s neck while she gave Hath’emad a tolerant smile. ‘Really, old man? You think I haven’t worked this out? You reckon I went to all this trouble without a plan for dealing with you?’

  ‘A thousand times will you die, Argosi,’ he declared, still lisping a little from his bleeding tongue, but doing an impressive job of enunciating his threats. ‘You will scream. You will beg. Even as I—’

  ‘Hold that thought, master mage,’ she interrupted, then turned her gaze to me. ‘Kid, I told you before: this is your decision to make, but make it one you can live with.’

  Shalla was watching me, making no effort to protect herself or hide the bracelet. Her expression wasn’t so much concerned as curious – as if she were wondering why it was taking me so long to solve a simple problem. ‘Brother, are you quite all right? You appear unwell.’

  Absurd as it sounded, the question was sincere. The thing about Shalla is that she loves me. She always has. How could something so simple and pure be housed within such callous self-interest? How could she so willingly participate in the torture of Cressia – a girl who’d never done her any harm? How could my sister support the attempted assassination of Janucha, in an effort to ruin the hopes of an entire country?

  Because Shalla is the worst of all of them. Those were the words my uncle Abydos had spoken to me on the day he tried to get me to help him counter-band her and take away her magic. ‘I’ve tried to get her to change,’ he’d said, ‘but she is a perfect replica of Ke’heops in female form, only she will be stronger than he ever was … She’ll be the worst tyrant our people have ever seen.’

  ‘Kid,’ Ferius said, ‘you’ve got about three seconds to make a decision here.’

  Shalla shot her a contemptuous glare. ‘You must be mad, Argosi, to think my brother would ever harm me.’ She reached out and took my arm. ‘No matter what nonsense he believes.’

  She always did think she knew me better than I knew myself. But she was wrong. She had no idea how much I longed to throw off her hand and toss the powders into the air; to see the look on her face when they collided and I said the word. I might have less power than Shalla, but I was sure I was faster. I could outdraw her. I could end her.

  Without warning, the shadowblack took me. The room, the tower, the whole city disappeared for me. I was back in the place of onyx sands, where all was darkness and yet I could see with perfect clarity. The people in the room were gone, replaced by otherworldly versions of themselves. Shalla shifted between two different beings: one who smiled with cruel delight as thousands upon thousands of men and women dangled from strings attached to her fingers. The other was pleading with someone off in the distance behind me. ‘Please, don’t make me do this,’ she cried over and over.

  ‘Kid?’ The voice belonged to Ferius Parfax, but not the one I could see standing alone on the shadowy beach staring out at an endless black ocean. ‘Kid, you gotta come back now.’

  Why did it matter? I was alone here, as were the rest of them. If I just stayed in this desolate place, maybe the world would forget about me. Maybe I wouldn’t have to hurt my sister.

  ‘Kellen, don’t!’ Shalla screamed from somewhere far away just as a blast of icy-cold air in my right eye shocked me to my senses. Suddenly I was back in the room, the dim light from the lanterns blinding me.

  That’s not the lanterns, I realised too late. It’s the flash of my powders!

  Black and red flames had just begun to flare and my hands were aiming the somatic shapes right at my sister’s heart. I could feel the one-word incantation of the spell vibrating on my lips, too late for me to stop. It was the look of sorrow on Shalla’s face that struck me with a force as raw as iron magic and let me turn my hands just enough to save her. The blast that tore through the tower’s outer wall was big enough to ride a horse through.

  A wisp of my sister’s hair, the gold burned to black, floated between us. ‘Who … Who are you?’ she asked. The question sounded curious. Genuine. As if for a second she really hadn’t recognised me.

  Ferius looked equally confused, even as she kept her eyes darting between the two mages to make sure neither attempted an attack. ‘Kellen,’ she said slowly, as if my name was unfamiliar to her. ‘He’s Kellen.’

  ‘No,’ said Hath’emad, his fingers holding a binding shape. ‘He is not.’

  Unnatural grey light from the iron band on his forearm spun out into gleaming strands that whipped around our throats, holding us immobile. The lord magus stepped out from the wall and examined his handiwork before walking over to Ferius. He carefully removed the steel card she’d been holding to Dal’ven’s throat. Then he came for me.

  Hath’emad took the card between his thumb and forefinger and placed its cutting edge at the ridge of my left eye. ‘His name is Shadowblack.’

  40

  The Shadowblack

  After what I’d done, you’d think my sister would’ve been content to watch Hath’emad slice my eye from its socket. Instead she g
rabbed his arm, hauling on him without effect. Her slim figure next to his bulk made it look as if she were trying to climb a tree. ‘I am the chief delegate of our clan.’ Shalla gave the words as much authority as her quavering voice allowed. ‘I will decide what to do about my brother.’

  ‘No,’ the big man said. ‘I am done taking orders from a child.’

  Something profound had changed in Hath’emad. He stared at the black markings around my eye without a trace of anger or viciousness in him, only determination. This wasn’t about hatred for me any more, but rather a sacred duty to rid the world of what he saw as an imminent danger to his people. Hath’emad was the hero now, and I was the monster.

  The pinch of the card’s edge began to bite into the skin near my eye. Ferius was still trapped by the mage’s iron binding. Dal’ven watched her, slowing his breathing in preparation for what I had no doubt would be very unpleasant spells to use against her.

  ‘Lord Magus Hath’emad,’ Shalla shouted, ‘you will heed my words.’ Light flickered from the sigils on the tattooed bands for iron and ember around her forearms, but the sparks died just as quickly.

  ‘Terror is hard to swallow, isn’t it?’ Hath’emad said, his gaze still on me. ‘It sticks to the throat, choking off our incantations. Makes our hands shake until they can no longer form the somatic shapes. With experience, it gets easier. But experience is what you lack, little girl. So no, I will not heed your words. I will be leading our mission in Gitabria from now on.’

  ‘My father—’

  ‘The new clan prince has not shown himself to be sentimental.’ The edge of the card dug deeper into the markings on my skin and I felt a drop of blood begin to slide down my cheek. ‘If he were, don’t you think he would have lifted the spell warrant against his own son?’