Charmcaster Read online

  ‘He was … welcoming your familiar.’

  The hyena gave a strange yipping sound that meant nothing to me, but apparently spoke plenty to Nephenia. ‘He says you’re lying and that the squirrel cat just threatened to turn him into a rug.’

  ‘Blanket, actually. But death threats are pretty much how Reichis greets everybody. You get used to it.’

  The hyena made a distinctly chortling sound which seemed to settle Nephenia’s ire. ‘Well, tell him unless he wants a similar greeting from me, he’d better not—’

  ‘If y’all are gonna wrastle,’ Ferius said wearily, ‘you ought to know that I’m running out of medical supplies, so you’ll have to take care of your own damned wounds.’

  I looked over to see Ferius kneeling next to one of the unconscious Berabesq Faithful, slathering ointment from our supply of oleus regia over his burns. To say that oleus regia is expensive is like saying diamonds are pricey or mountains are hefty. ‘You realise we’re all wounded too, right?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll be happy to look after your scrapes just as soon as the four of you have decided not to add to them.’

  Nephenia’s cheeks reddened. ‘Forgive our rudeness, Lady Ferius, we didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Just Ferius, kid,’ she interrupted. ‘No “Ladies” around here.’

  ‘Oh great,’ Reichis grumbled. ‘This again.’

  The hyena chuckled, then opened his jaws a little wider and made a strange noise that sounded an awful lot like a mocking version of ‘Oh great. This again.’

  ‘A demon!’ Reichis said, slowly backing away.

  ‘Ishak! Stop that!’ Nephenia scolded the hyena. To me she said, ‘His pack have an affinity for mimicry. He doesn’t speak other languages, but he can reproduce anything he hears.’ As if to confirm this, the hyena swung his head towards Reichis and barked, ‘A demon!’

  It was a startlingly good impression, which was odd since the squirrel cat doesn’t speak so much as chitter and growl; it’s the bond between us that lets me hear them as words.

  ‘Shoot the mutt, Kellen!’ Reichis shouted. ‘Shoot ’em both. Demons, the pair of them!’

  ‘They’re not demons,’ I informed him, though even I didn’t think I sounded very convincing. I mean, let’s look at the facts, shall we? The world is a big place, and the odds of running into a girl I’d pined over most of my life out here in the middle of the desert were pretty slim. ‘How did you find us?’ I asked.

  ‘Tracking spells, mostly.’ She extended a finger to trace along the silver glyphs on my hat. ‘These things made it incredibly difficult, by the way. Gave me an awful headache every time I searched for you.’

  ‘A headache? These glyphs are supposed to prevent the long line of mages who want me dead from tracking me at all!’

  She gave me that sly grin again – the one so unlike the girl I remembered. ‘Then I guess you’d best not kiss any of them, because that’s the connection I used to break through the warding glyphs.’

  Well, that was some relief at least. Unless she was lying and I was about to get blasted by a silk mage with a lousy sense of humour.

  ‘Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I’d lost your trail. There was a Berabesq city nearby, so I asked around about any Jan’Tep spellslingers passing through. That’s when I found out that a delegate from the lords magi of our clan had offered a substantial donation to the Berabesq Faithful in exchange for the apprehension and execution of Kellen of the House of Ke.’

  My thoughts returned to the man in red who’d been standing at the top of the dune. ‘You’re telling me someone from our own clan bribed the Faithful to kill me?’

  ‘You’ve made a lot of enemies, Kellen.’

  Yeah, like, everyone who’s ever met me. I guess the despair I felt must’ve shown on my face because Nephenia put a reassuring hand on my arm. Only, it wasn’t that reassuring.

  ‘What happened to your fingers?’ I asked.

  ‘An accident.’

  Unlikely, for a mage. We tend to be cautious about the parts of our bodies that are crucial for casting spells. I reached over and held up her other wrist. ‘On both hands?’

  She took her hands away and ignored the question. ‘As I was saying, a squad of the Faithful was dispatched to hunt you.’ She pulled her scarf back up, covering the bottom of her face. With her long coat and the silks hiding both her mouth and forehead, she could’ve been almost anyone. ‘So I went around pretending to be you, thinking I could set them on the wrong path and then lose them using charm spells.’

  ‘Messin’ with the Faithful is a bad idea,’ Ferius observed. She sounded exhausted, almost sluggish.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Just addin’ a little nightweed to the bandages for these folks. Make sure they get some proper rest before they decide to come lookin’ for us.’

  Great. One more thing to worry about.

  ‘The Faithful are unbelievably effective trackers,’ Nephenia said. ‘I tried everything to shake them, but they just kept gaining on me.’

  ‘So you led them to us?’ I asked.

  ‘They would’ve figured out I wasn’t you eventually, Kellen. The only hope for either of us was if I could get to you first so we could fight them together.’ She wrapped her arms around the hyena again, gently stroking its fur. ‘Poor Ishak nearly died protecting me.’

  ‘Nice story,’ Reichis said. ‘Only she and the mutt ran into the storm as soon as they saw us.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Nephenia asked. When I translated she looked even more irritated. ‘By the time I caught up with you there wasn’t time to explain and I didn’t want to risk you getting killed.’ She reached into her coat and withdrew what looked like a tiny iron box, its sides rusted and charred. ‘My charm protects me from the lightning, but it would’ve been just as likely to strike you as the Berabesq.’ She tossed the now-dead charm onto the sand. ‘Possibly not my best plan.’

  Her account made a certain amount of sense. Captured storms were notoriously dangerous to mess around with, and the Faithful had been so close to her that had she stopped even for a second they would’ve caught her. Of course, that’s exactly the kind of story a silk mage would concoct to try to trick me.

  ‘Kellen?’ she asked, staring at me intently.

  I didn’t know what to believe. I was tired and injured and, to make matters worse, my left eye had started to ache. The black markings around it burned like someone had poured acid on them.

  My people believe the shadowblack is a conduit through which a demon slowly takes over the body of a mage, but whenever my attacks came, it was everyone else who changed. Nephenia’s eyes narrowed into yellow slits and her smile grew so wide her jaw looked as if it were about to come off. She laughed at me – at the way I’d fallen so easily for her pretence. Why would Nephenia be here, hundreds and hundreds of miles from our home? Wasn’t it far more likely this was some Jan’Tep bounty hunter who’d been caught off guard by a bunch of religious zealots? Now she was playing me for a fool until she could get a second chance at killing me.

  Several things happened at once. The hyena rose to its feet, ignoring the injury to its leg as it snarled at me. Reichis did likewise and started stalking towards the hyena, his fur turned a deep crimson.

  Nephenia was staring at my hands. I looked down and discovered that they’d slipped inside the pouches at my sides without me being aware of it. ‘Kellen? What are you doing? It’s me, Nephenia.’

  ‘Wrong,’ I said angrily. ‘Her name’s Neph’aria now.’ I removed my hands from the pouches and made sure she could see the red and black powders I held. ‘So who the hell are you?’

  10

  The Reunion

  ‘Kellen,’ she said, eyes narrowed and tone sharp. ‘My name isn’t Neph’aria any more. It’s Nephenia. Our clan council took away my mage’s name the day they exiled me.’

  A likely story. My sister Shalla had informed me months ago that Neph was betrothed to Pan’erath and so had the protection of his ho
use. I knew Pan. He’d never have let anyone exile her.

  ‘Let go of those powders, Kellen. Your breath band is sparking.’

  She was right. A faint silver-blue glow wound around the tattooed band on my forearm. Nephenia – or the mage pretending to be her – reached into her coat. A charmcaster could have any number of nasty things hidden in there. I was pretty sure I was faster though. Only at this range I’m likely to kill her.

  The growls coming from the squirrel cat and the hyena kept getting louder. The blood was rushing in my ears. My left eye just kept burning hotter and hotter, showing me visions of fire and death and all the mages who’d come for me before and would surely do so again. The sasutzei in my right eye hit me with an aching cold sensation too, warning me to stop. I didn’t know which instinct to trust, but I was sick to death of people trying to trick me or lie to me or kill me. Not this time. Not again.

  ‘Kellen, don’t make me—’

  Five bright, shining pieces of steel spun through the air to land at our feet in a line, demarcating the space between us. ‘All right, children,’ an irritated voice said, cutting through all the noise in my head. Ferius stood just a few feet away, the falling sun at her back casting a shadow over us. In her left hand she held her deck of steel cards. ‘I figured you could sort yourselves out, but apparently I was wrong.’ She drew one of the cards. ‘So here’s how this goes: the first spellslinger, charmcaster, squirrel cat or hyena to make a move is going to get one of these right between the eyes. I am too tired, too beat-up and too damned sober for this nonsense.’

  It took everything I had not to fight back, but I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths until the visions faded and the voices urging me to attack were quiet. Quiet, but not silent. ‘How do we know she’s not an imposter?’

  The Argosi limped her way over to us. ‘Show him who you are, girl.’

  ‘He already knows who I am,’ Nephenia replied. ‘And I’ll thank you not to call me “girl”.’

  ‘He knows who you were. Show him who you are now.’

  The frontier hat came off, followed by the scarves covering her head and face. Seeing her now, it was no wonder I hadn’t recognised her at first. The skin on her face was dry and deeply tanned from desert travel. The angles of her cheeks and jaw had become sharper. She’d always been slender, but she was almost wiry now. When I was an initiate, I’d learned to memorise images with rigorous clarity – a necessity for envisioning the esoteric geometry of some spells. That’s why, even months after I’d left my people, I could have described Nephenia’s luxurious, waist-length hair practically strand by strand. But now it was cut short, with unruly dark locks sticking up at odd angles, reminding me more of the fur on her hyena’s head than the girl I’d known. I managed to resist saying so. ‘You cut your hair,’ I said instead, which wasn’t so bad until I unnecessarily added, ‘I liked it long.’

  Oh, ancestors. Why can’t I keep my mouth shut at times like this?

  The tight line of Nephenia’s lips told me that observation wasn’t worthy of a response. The hyena opened its mouth and mockingly echoed my words. ‘I liked it looooong.’

  ‘Worked it out yet, kid?’ Ferius asked.

  I had, in fact, though this had been a strange way to convince me it was really Nephenia. All Ferius had proven was that this girl didn’t look, sound, or act like the person I’d known. I guess that was the point. ‘A silk mage posing as Nephenia would’ve pretended to be more like I remembered her, wouldn’t they?’

  Ferius retrieved her cards from the sand and put the deck back in her waistcoat, then took out a bent smoking reed. She stared at it drowsily. ‘The kid finally learns to listen with his eyes. Here endeth the lesson.’ With a flick of her wrist, a match appeared between her fingers which she used to light her smoking reed. After a long drag she said, ‘I swear, one day you Jan’Tep are going to be the death … The death of …’

  Her words trailed off. She started to sway uncertainly on her feet, like a drunk walking on an uneven street. I hadn’t noticed before how pale her features had become since the fight. When she stared back at me, it was as if her eyes couldn’t quite focus. She tried to reassure me with one of those smirks of hers, only to then tip forward and fall face first to the sandy ground. I rose to get the pack with our medical supplies, only now seeing just how bad the wounds were on her back. The Berabesq Faithful’s blade had done a lot more damage than she’d let on. The deep cuts had soaked all the way through her clothes, and were dripping down her side to turn the golden sand beneath her crimson.

  11

  The Black Sky

  I knew something was wrong with me the moment I took my first step towards Ferius. The blindingly bright afternoon sun had become a black disc that hung in the sky, casting darkness over the desert. The once-golden sand beneath my feet had turned to countless tiny shards of pure onyx. There wasn’t a single source of light anywhere, and yet I could see with perfect clarity, as if my eyes could discern the thousands of different shades of black that painted the world around me.

  Where am I?

  A voice called out to me. ‘Kellen?’ It was Nephenia, but she sounded as though she were miles away and her voice was echoing along the walls of a distant canyon.

  I spun around to get my bearings. Some thirty yards away the desert ended in a ragged coastline that had no business being there. A black ocean swelled with waves that crested high above us. At the shadowy water’s edge, a lone figure stood with her back to me. It was Ferius. She seemed to be talking to herself. ‘Would’ve been fine to cross the ocean again, just once more.’

  I ran to her, my feet pounding against the onyx sand. Something wasn’t right. No matter how far I got, I never seemed to be any closer to her. ‘Ferius, it’s me!’ I shouted. ‘I’m trapped somehow. Tell me what to do!’

  ‘Would’ve been nice to see them again too, maybe talk about things left unsaid, but I reckon the Path of the Rambling Thistle ain’t one for looking back.’

  Path of the Rambling Thistle? The Argosi gave themselves names like that. Ferius was the Path of the Wild Daisy. Rosie, the only other Argosi I’d got to know, was the Path of Thorns and Roses. I’d never heard of anyone called the Path of the Rambling Thistle.

  The faint echoes of Nephenia’s pleas tugged at me. ‘Kellen, why are you just standing there? I don’t know what to do for Lady Ferius. She’s bleeding so much. I can’t staunch the wound!’

  ‘Nephenia! Where are you?’

  Suddenly I heard her voice right behind me. ‘Mustn’t be her any more,’ she said quietly. I spun around and saw her just a few paces away, idly looking off towards the east. Her rough travelling coat and trousers were gone, replaced by the blue-and-silver robes of a Jan’Tep adept. Her hair was long again, down to her waist. She held the strands in one hand and cut away at them with a pair of black scissors, but somehow the hair never got any shorter. ‘Got to be someone new from now on,’ she murmured. ‘Can’t be her ever again.’

  She couldn’t have been more than a couple of feet away from me, but when I reached out to her, my fingers never touched her. ‘Nephenia? What are you doing? Who can’t you be?’

  The apparition didn’t turn, didn’t seem to notice me at all. Somewhere far away, the other Nephenia called out desperately. ‘Kellen, please, don’t walk away! Don’t you understand? She’s dying, Kellen. Ferius is dying!’

  ‘Nephenia! I can’t see you. I don’t know where I am!’

  I got no reply, just Nephenia’s sobbing, desperate voice shouting my name over and over, begging me to help her. I looked everywhere for a way back, but the shadowy landscape seemed endless.

  A blur of black fur raced past me along the onyx shards. I recognised him immediately. It was Reichis, or a shadow of him, anyway. He stopped to growl at unseen enemies, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. ‘Reichis,’ I shouted, ‘help Nephenia. Show her the oleus regia in the silver jar. She has to heat it up with her hands first or it won’t do any good.’ The squirrel
cat suddenly took off, chasing after things I couldn’t see. ‘Reichis! Reichis, listen to me!’

  He ignored me, scurrying this way and that as he bared his teeth at the darkness all around us. I made a run for him, reaching out to grab hold of him. I would’ve sworn I was getting closer, yet somehow I was always too far away to touch him. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get to any of them. Off in the distance, the shade of Ferius waded into the deep black ocean. I called out to her, but I knew she wouldn’t hear.

  Surrounded by shadows, alone save for the sound of Nephenia’s pleas begging me to help her save my mentor, I finally understood what was happening to me. This was the next stage of the shadowblack. No longer content to terrify me with visions of violence and despair, now it had swallowed me whole.

  I was lost.

  Lost in shadow.

  And Ferius Parfax was dying.

  12

  The Chains

  I awoke in chains and a comfortable bed. How long I’d been there I had no idea, but the injuries I’d taken in the fight with the Berabesq weren’t much more than a dull ache now so someone must have seen to them.

  Consciousness was a little slow in coming, but I was able to work a few things out. First, I wasn’t in a cell but rather a modest guest room with simple furnishings. I must’ve been on the upstairs floor of the building because I could hear voices – lots of them – coming up through the floorboards. Talking, shouting, laughter; glasses clinking and the occasional creaking of hinges that must’ve been from a door swinging open and then closed again. A tavern or an inn.

  A breeze whistled into the room, and I pushed myself up from my pillow to see out the open window on the wall to my left. Daylight shone through – soft, though, so probably from the late afternoon sun. The air that came with it was fresh, unlike the dry, oppressive desert heat that always brought dust with it. How far had I come?