Charmcaster Read online

  She was favouring one leg and her right arm hung limp at her side. Her black leather waistcoat was in tatters, and blood seeped through her shirt from the wounds across her back and arms. I remembered what she’d said about the painful poison the Faithful used to coat their swords.

  ‘What should we do?’ I asked Reichis, but the poor little bugger was unconscious. I took off my shirt and tied it into a makeshift sling, and as gently as I could, I placed him inside it before hanging it over my neck. I looked ahead. Ferius’s tracks were already fading under the incessant wind scouring the sand. We’d each barely survived facing one of the Berabesq Faithful. Injured as she was, how could she expect to fight off two of them?

  ‘Whoever you are,’ I muttered under my breath, as I set off after Ferius, my thoughts on the idiot charmcaster who’d brought all this trouble on us, ‘next time, pick someone else to impersonate.’

  7

  Doubt

  The idiot in question was still bound in that strange circular arrangement of ropes. The two remaining Berabesq Faithful were busily and loudly singing prayers while making rather sweeping gestures over their victim’s unconscious form. Nearby, the hyena gnawed desperately at its ropes, giving off howls that cut right through to my soul. Though the wind still raged nearby, inside this small area the air was completely calmed. We had come to the very eye of the storm.

  I caught up to Ferius just in time to hear her loudly announce her presence. ‘Say there, fellas, you mind cutting down that racket?’

  Yeah, that’s right: she again refused to sneak up on them. While that wasn’t all that unusual for Ferius, what was surprising was the anger in her voice. That may have had something to do with the six-sided shape in the sand the Berabesq had drawn around the unconscious charmcaster and the metal spikes they’d placed at each juncture in preparation, one had to assume, for driving them into his flesh. I remembered back when I was an initiate, reading about Berabesq religious practices (or ‘insane atrocities’ as my mother had called them), and thinking how odd it was that a culture that so reviled magic seemed to have a real affinity for esoteric rituals.

  The two Berabesq Faithful turned, the first drawing a sword, the other presenting his forearms to his partner who drew two lines of blood along the skin so that he could summon the faith shield they were so fond of using in battle. ‘You have bested our brethren,’ the bleeding one said, turning to us before giving a short bow. ‘Such talent is to be admired.’

  I expected one of Ferius’s typical snarky replies, but just as she’d done before, she shifted to a more formal way of speaking. ‘Talent unguided by truth is an abomination.’

  It struck me as an awkward phrase, but the Berabesq Faithful seemed impressed. ‘Always the Argosi speak as though wise, and yet do I question your wisdom, for it comes without faith.’

  ‘Care to test your faith, most worthy one?’ Those last three words came out with a great deal of scorn. Have I mentioned that Ferius loves unnecessarily irritating people?

  The second Berabesq, who wielded one of those curved kazkhan blades, took offence. ‘What we do here is sacred. It is the will of God. Would you mock Him?’

  ‘Right now I mock only you, brother.’

  ‘Enough,’ the bleeding Berabesq told his companion. ‘The Argosi seeks to delay us in hopes some fortuitous circumstance will aid her cause. Let us finish the ritual and then deal with the heathens.’

  A steel card appeared in Ferius’s hand, glinting in the hazy light within the eye of the storm. ‘It’s only a simple test,’ she said.

  The Berabesq smiled. ‘You are foolish to question our faith.’ He slammed his bleeding forearms together and again I saw that shimmering in the air as his shield manifested. ‘Our devotion protects us.’

  ‘So it does,’ Ferius said, then added almost absently, ‘That’s precisely your problem.’

  The swordsman took a step towards us, away from the protection of the shield. ‘I will end her blasphemous prattling.’

  ‘Stop, fool,’ the other said. ‘She tries to draw you away from the shield so that you will be undefended.’

  Ferius nodded, then said to me, ‘Kid, when that moron comes for us – and trust me, he will – I want you to blast him real good.’

  I reached my hands into the pouches at my sides and took a generous pinch of the red and black powders. Reichis looked up groggily from inside the sling across my chest. ‘What’s happening? Did I miss something?’ He turned his head to the scene before us. ‘Oh, great. More talking.’ He slumped back down and closed his eyes. ‘Wake me when something interesting happens.’

  ‘So this is your “test”?’ the unarmed Berabesq called out. ‘Whether we can be goaded into reckless action? We are the Berabesq Faithful. We are schooled in philosophy and self-discipline even before we learn to read. Our faith isn’t some backwards religion, as you may believe. Ours is the most complex and perfect understanding of the universe and its workings. Do you truly believe we can be so easily ensnared?’

  ‘Nope.’ Ferius showed off her steel card. ‘This here’s a simple bet. In a minute, I’m going to throw this card at you. If I can hit you, the charmcaster goes free and we go on our way. If I can’t, well, you can bleed three more heathens. That should please God plenty.’

  Reichis opened one eye. ‘What’s that she just said?’

  ‘I think she has a plan,’ I whispered.

  Please, ancestors, please let her have an actual plan.

  The Berabesq Faithful seemed unfazed. ‘Perhaps you hope to strike once my shield fades.’ He touched his forearms together again and the shimmer in the air renewed. ‘It is not so simple, I’m afraid. God protects the faithful.’

  Ferius took out a smoking reed from her waistcoat and stuck it in her mouth. ‘So I’ve heard it said.’ She pulled out a match and struck it against the edge of her steel card, then lit the reed. ‘Only, I’ve got me a theory about God.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’ the Berabesq asked, a contented smile on his face. I was starting to get the impression that maybe these people actually like debating religion.

  By way of answer, Ferius let out a puff of smoke in the shape of a ring. It seemed to float in place, never quite fading in the strange air inside the eye of the storm.

  ‘Very well,’ the Berabesq said, once more renewing his shield. ‘I welcome this gamble of yours. Let us see how your Argosi speculations fare against my faith.’

  Though Ferius Parfax has no end of tricks up her sleeve, I had a strong feeling her current strategy was to talk our enemies to death. More specifically, try to talk them out of their current intention to kill the mage. That would be a terrible plan.

  ‘Faith is a funny thing,’ Ferius began.

  Oh, ancestors, she really does mean to do this.

  ‘See,’ she went on, ‘that fancy shield of yours is only as powerful as your faith, ain’t that right?’

  ‘It is God who creates the shield,’ he corrected her. ‘My faith is merely the conduit.’

  Ferius took a puff from her reed. ‘Just so. Just so.’ She paused a moment. ‘Only, it occurs to me that God might care more about the righteousness of a person’s actions than he does how much they pray.’

  The smile left the man’s face. ‘Tread carefully, Argosi, you do not wish to—’

  ‘Oh, I do indeed.’ She turned her gaze skyward. ‘See, what I think God sees as he looks down upon us is two Berabesq Faithful who’ve overstepped their own laws, using heresy as a convenient excuse to kill a stranger.’ She spread her arms wide. ‘I think he’s looking down at me and God’s saying to himself, “That Argosi there? She’s got no horse in this race. She’s cut up, beat up, tired, and probably needs a drink. But here she is, putting her neck on the line to keep some poor wretch from being bled to death by a pair of disagreeable zealots.”’ She looked back at the two men standing in front of the bound mage, then blew out another smoke ring that hung in the air before her. ‘That’s what I think.’

  The Berabesq’s
expression darkened. ‘Then let us test your theory, and be done with this.’

  ‘You sure?’ Ferius asked, spinning the steel card in the air, then catching it. ‘Because I smell doubt, and I’ve got a good nose for these things.’

  ‘What you smell is the stench of your own fear,’ the Faithful said, and slammed his forearms together once again. ‘Now play your card, and reap what follows, for it is known far and wide that you Argosi believe in nothing, and the world will be none the lesser for your passing.’

  ‘What the Argosi believe,’ Ferius said, the smirk suddenly gone from her expression, the easy tone gone from her voice, ‘is that no God protects bullies and assassins.’ She flung the card into the air and it spun through the floating smoke ring, hurtling towards the Berabesq Faithful’s shield. It was only in that moment that I realised something: the last time he’d brought his forearms together, the air hadn’t shimmered at all.

  The razor-sharp card cut deep into the muscle of his arm, drawing a scream of pain from him, followed by a bellow of rage from his sword-wielding companion, who came running towards us, blade held high.

  ‘Anytime now, kid,’ Ferius reminded me.

  Oh. Right. I tossed the powders against each other and cast the spell. ‘Carath,’ I said, and the twin fires struck the centre of his chest. He flew back a good six feet before landing on the ground.

  Ferius shot me an annoyed look. ‘Did you have to hit him so hard? Between you, me, the squirrel cat, the hyena, that other guy you blasted back there, and now this poor sap, we’re going to use up all our medicine.’

  ‘You told me to blast him good!’

  ‘I meant carefully.’ She headed off towards the two men, drawing her steel rod from her waistcoat. A flick of her wrist and it extended to its full length.

  The Berabesq with the steel card in his arm fell to his knees. ‘God has forsaken us!’

  She knelt down so they were eye to eye. ‘Nobody forsook you, friend. You just doubted is all.’ She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Doubt is good every once in a while.’ Then she slammed the bottom of the rod into the side of his head and knocked him unconscious.

  8

  The Hyena

  In the year or so that I’d known Ferius Parfax, I had on occasion wondered whether – despite her repeated statements to the contrary – she did know spellcraft. This was one of those occasions.

  ‘It wasn’t magic, kid,’ she said before I could even ask the question.

  I ran to catch up with her as she walked over to the unconscious charmcaster. ‘You took apart a Berabesq faith shield,’ I insisted. ‘How is that not magic?’

  She paused for a moment and tapped a finger to her temple. ‘Aren’t you the one always going on about how brilliant you Jan’Tep are on account of how you can hold that – what do you call it? – “esoteric geometry” in your head so perfectly?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘“But” nothing. Faith works the same way.’ She started walking again. ‘Leastways for the Berabesq and their spiritual mumbo jumbo. I gave him just enough doubt to shake his focus is all.’

  A trick, I marvelled. Nothing more than a clever Argosi ploy.

  This was how Ferius Parfax got by in a world where she made enemies of just about every powerful person she ever met: tricks and ploys. As she knelt to untie the ropes binding the unconscious charmcaster, I felt a sudden dread spread inside my guts. Ferius was, by far, the most amazing person I’d ever known, but what would happen on the day when she ran out of tricks?

  A prickling feeling in the back of my neck made me turn around. Off in the distance, at the top of the dune, a figure dressed all in scarlet stared down at us. I squinted to try to make out any details, but the figure suddenly turned and walked away, over the crest and down the other side. I considered whether I should run after him. The Berabesq Faithful had mentioned a Jan’Tep diplomat had set them on my trail.

  ‘Kid, you wanna free that hyena?’ Ferius called out. ‘Damned thing’s gonna give himself a heart attack.’

  ‘I think I saw someone,’ I said. ‘It could be the guy who—’

  ‘They look like they’re about to kill us?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Then let’s deal with the problem at hand.’

  Reluctantly, I turned back and approached the animal, who growled as soon as he saw me coming. A second growl arose from my own chest. It took me a moment to realise it was Reichis. The barely conscious squirrel cat tried unsuccessfully to crawl out of his sling. ‘Let me at him.’

  ‘Can you talk to it?’ I asked.

  The squirrel cat paused in his snarling to look up at me. ‘You want me to talk to a hyena?’

  ‘Yeah. Tell him I’m going to untie the ropes and it would be helpful if he didn’t rip my throat out in the process.’

  ‘Sure,’ Reichis replied, still awkwardly trying to escape the sling. ‘Just let me bite off a few of his parts first to get his attention.’

  Okay, new plan. I carefully took the sling off my shoulder and set Reichis down a considerable way away, resisting the urge to say, ‘Sit.’ I returned to the hyena, moving very slowly and speaking in reassuring tones. ‘Listen, my squirrel cat business partner can understand regular humans, so I’m going to assume it’s the same for you. We’re here to help, okay? I’m going to remove those ropes from you and then you can go to your master, who, I hope you’ve noticed, we’re also trying to help. So don’t eat me. Deal?’

  The hyena just kept staring at me, but at least it had stopped growling. I knelt and began undoing the elaborate knots. As I removed the last rope, it unavoidably rubbed against the animal’s wounded leg. The hyena bit me even harder than Reichis does.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Hah!’ the squirrel cat chittered. ‘Told you never to trust a stinkin’ hyena.’

  The animal showed us its teeth before hobbling over to where Ferius was removing the last of the ropes from the still-unconscious charmcaster. ‘Hey there, fella,’ she said to the hyena, reaching out a hand to stroke its fur. In an injustice of cosmic proportions, the beast not only didn’t bite her, but nuzzled her face briefly before lying down next to its master.

  I went over to pick up Reichis, who was still laughing at me. ‘Better put one of those fancy healing ointments on that bite, Kellen. Bet you’ve got rabies now. Also, you—’

  ‘I stink of hyena. I know.’

  I knelt down opposite Ferius with the freed but unresponsive charmcaster between us. Again I was struck by the odd choice of clothes for a mage: leather riding pants and boots beneath a long traveller’s coat, a swathe of silk that came up to cover his mouth and nose while another wrapped around his head under the frontier hat. From what little I could make out in the strip of tanned, mildly sunburnt skin between the two, the charmcaster probably wasn’t any older than me. ‘Who is this guy?’ I asked aloud. ‘And why would he go around using my name?’

  Ferius stared at me through narrowed eyes for a moment and then chuckled at me. ‘Tell you what, how about you get that silk off the poor mage’s face and let some fresh air in?’

  I reached for the coverings. The hyena gave a warning growl, and suddenly a hand grabbed my wrist. The mage’s grip felt odd – wrong, somehow. I looked down to see two fingers were missing from the hand holding on to me. That explained the vocation as a charmcaster instead of a proper mage – can’t do much high magic if you don’t have enough fingers to form the somatic shapes.

  ‘Kellen?’ a voice said, so ragged and rough that the word came out more as a cough than anything else.

  I stared into a pair of dark eyes that were oddly familiar. ‘Have we …’ Before I got the question out, the charmcaster pulled down the swathe of silk covering what I now saw was a distinctly feminine mouth, then she kissed me full on the lips.

  ‘Okay,’ I heard Reichis mutter behind me. ‘I didn’t see that coming either.’

  MEMORY

  An Argosi deck is always changing. Our cards are not slabs of stone but
pools of water. People, nations, even history itself alters over time, for history is but a tale told to suit the present. Thus must an Argosi be prepared to let go of any card within their deck, for recollection is forever incomplete, and even the most vivid memories must always be … suspect.

  9

  The Charmcaster

  It wasn’t a great kiss, to be honest. Her lips were rough and chapped from the desert sun and my jaw was swollen from an elbow to the face I didn’t even remember taking. The result was that my ability to purse my lips was severely compromised. It’s possible I drooled.

  Usually when someone uses silk magic to deceive your mind it’s either to break your spirit with visions of unimaginable horrors or to seduce you with … well, other sensations. Neither of those quite matched my current predicament.

  ‘Nephenia?’ I asked, pulling away suddenly.

  ‘Of course it’s me, Kellen.’ She smiled at my confusion. Actually, smiled is the wrong word. She grinned – a wild, reckless sort of grin very much at odds with the shy, demure girl I’d known back home. ‘Who else would chase you halfway across the continent just to save your life?’

  ‘Save our lives?’ Reichis growled. ‘We’re the ones who—’

  The hyena bared its teeth and struggled to its feet, looking even more injured and bedraggled than Reichis.

  ‘Come on, mutt,’ the squirrel cat taunted, his fur becoming pure black with dark red stripes. ‘I haven’t eaten all day.’

  The other animal crouched in preparation to attack, only to stumble when it tried to put too much weight on its foreleg.

  ‘Ishak!’ Nephenia cried, wrapping her arms around him. ‘You’ll hurt yourself!’

  ‘“Ishak”?’ Reichis asked. ‘She named a hyena? What’s next? Giving royal titles to clumps of dung? Let me at him, Kellen. We can use his hide as an extra blanket.’

  The creature struggled to pull away from Nephenia’s grip, returning a snarl that was clearly aimed at both of us, even though none of this was my fault. Nephenia didn’t seem pleased either. ‘What did the squirrel cat just say?’