‘Have I mentioned that crocodiles just love places like this?’ Reichis asked, sitting on my shoulder and peering out into the swamp ahead of us.
‘A few times.’ I started walking again, as quietly as I could, yet somehow my every footstep seemed to set off leaves crunching, insects buzzing.
‘I mean, this is a really stupid idea, Kellen.’
‘You said that already, too.’
Reichis is usually perfectly happy to go wandering around dark places in the middle of the night, but something about this particular swampy forest had us both on edge. It didn’t help that we were hunting for someone who had the power to summon spirits or demons or whatever else it was to kill us or destroy our souls or maybe just eat us alive.
‘If you’d just kissed that girl like I told you—’
‘What good would that have done?’
He gave a snort. ‘She’d have got so angry she’d have slapped you into next week! That girl would’ve hit you so hard, Kellen, you wouldn’t even think of risking our lives going after some crazy whisper witch – you’d be too busy trying to find someone to cast an ice spell so you could get the swelling down on your face!’ He started giggling uncontrollably and had to dig his claws into my shoulder to keep from falling off.
‘You little bastard. I knew you were setting me up!’
It took him a while to settle. Then he said, ‘But seriously, you should kiss her next time.’
I would have picked him up and thrown him into a tree if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d just glide back down again to land on my head.
A crackling behind us caused me to spin around, almost dislodging Reichis. I saw nothing, however.
‘Just the wind,’ he said. ‘It’s picking up the leaves and making them—’
‘I know how wind works.’
‘I still think we should have waited for Ferius.’
Yeah, I thought as another gust of wind sent the leaves spinning around us. Me too. ‘Ferius wouldn’t have let us come,’ I said, as much to myself as to Reichis. ‘She’d say something stupid like, “Never listen to rumours about hedge wizards and whisper witches, kid … they’s just a bunch a hogwash.”’
Reichis chuckled. ‘Yeah, and then Rosie would be like, “My … sister … has a certain unwarranted empathy for … recluses.”’ For a talking animal, he does pretty good impressions of humans.
‘Then Ferius would say, “Sister, them’s wrastlin’ words!”’
‘Oh, oh, and then Rosie would come back with, “You have lost the way, Path of Farting Daisies. Now we must fight to the death … or perhaps just play cards and stare at each other again.”’
I started laughing so hard I had to hold on to a tree to keep from falling over. Reichis and I went back and forth like that as we made our way deeper into the swamp, knowing we should stop but somehow unable to.
Eventually Reichis asked, ‘You know why this is such a stupid idea?’
‘You said that already. Like, twelve times.’
‘Yeah, but do you know why it’s a stupid idea?’
I stopped. ‘Why?’
Reichis shivered on my shoulder. ‘Because this place is giving me the creeps, and I’m a squirrel cat – normally we’re the ones giving other people the creeps.’
A light laugh came at us, the sound of wind chimes in a soft breeze, dancing around us as though each note were being carried on the back of an insect darting this way and that.
‘Who’s there?’ I asked, my hands already dipping into the pouches at my belt.
‘Didn’t no one tell you, mister spellslinger? It’s dangerous to mess with Mamma Whispers in her own place of business.’
Reichis growled, sniffing at the air. ‘I can’t see her.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked, then closed my eyes so that I could figure out where the reply was coming from.
‘Why you askin’, Jan’Tep?’ She stretched the word out, mak-ing it sound like ‘Jaahhn-Tehep’. ‘Maybe you trying to trick Mamma Whispers? Maybe you come to do a bit of murder?’
‘We’re not here to murder anyone,’ I said.
‘We’re not?’ Reichis asked. He sounded distinctly disappointed.
My attempts to locate her from the sound of her voice failed miserably. It was as if she were flying through the underbrush all around us. Reichis wasn’t having any better luck with her scent. ‘Something’s not right,’ he said.
‘My spirits, they don’t want you tracking me, spellslinger. They make the air move for me. The spirits always help out Mamma Whispers.’
‘Then why are you afraid to show yourself?’ I asked. ‘Do you prefer to do your work unseen? Infecting innocent people with the shadowblack?’
‘Shadowblack?’ She spat the word. ‘You shouldn’t be sayin’ such things around here, spellslinger.’
The sound of leaves and soft underbrush crunching crackled in the night air. ‘You want to see Mamma Whispers? Be careful what you wish for.’
The figure that emerged from the trees was not at all what I’d expected. I’d imagined a woman, maybe in her forties or fifties, large and powerful. Instead what I saw was a girl of no more than ten or eleven, barefoot and wearing a simple peasant dress that hung to the ground. Her hair was long and black, topped by a hat that might have been worn by a wealthy gentleman were it not battered and threadbare.
‘You’re a kid,’ I said aloud. Probably not the best idea.
‘I am what you see, spellslinger, and what you don’t see too.’
Reichis gave a low growl. ‘I already don’t like her.’
The girl took another step towards us, and her presence made me more uncomfortable the closer she came, as if she belonged here but we didn’t. ‘Stay back,’ I said.
‘Or what?’ she asked, her voice young but the way she spoke that of a much older woman. ‘You going to burn me with your magic? Go ahead, spellslinger, show Mamma Whispers what you got.’
I had no intention of blasting a little girl, even if she wasn’t really that young. ‘I’m not here to fight you. I just have questions.’
The girl grinned. ‘But what if I’m here to fight you?’
Okay, so much for the gentle approach. I lifted my hands up, each one holding enough powder to make an impression once I cast the spell. I wasn’t intending to aim it at her, just to fire off a warning shot, but as I hurled the powders into the air, I saw her lips move and heard a whispering sound. Suddenly the powders flew out of my hands, swirling up high, only to come right towards me and Reichis. I ducked down low just in time for the powders to pass overhead, clashing together and setting off an explosion of red and black glimmer that would have given me a nasty burn if they’d touched me.
‘My spirits don’t appreciate your kind of magic, spellslinger. You shouldn’t have come to mess with Mamma Whispers. They don’t like that, no they don’t.’
‘I told you, I didn’t come here to fight!’
The girl came closer again, still seeming like no kind of threat at all, and looked up at me through wide, seemingly innocent eyes. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. We see what my spirits say.’
Again I watched in fascination as her lips moved just a fraction and I could hear the wind moving in response. Soon it picked up in force, swirling all around us, and other voices appeared … ones I recognised.
‘Last chance to walk away, Kellen,’ the first one said. It was Tennat, the words those he’d spoken at our initiates’ duel months ago.
The wind picked up. ‘A Jan’Tep must be strong,’ my father said from somewhere behind me.
I spun around but he wasn’t there. ‘What’s going on?’ I demanded.
A new voice appeared, off to my right. ‘These are the questions of a child, Kellen.’ Mer’esan, the night she first summoned me to the palace.
More and more voices appeared, falling on top of one another, coming and going in the breeze, all voices I recognised, all words that had been spoken months before. Over and over they called out to me: Shalla, my parents, Nephenia, Panahsi, Ra’meth, Abydos … The swirl of sound became maddening and I was about to cover my ears to block out the noise when suddenly they all stopped, all except for one voice. It was Master Osia’phest, on my last night in my city, reading from the slip of paper upon which I’d written my answer to the fourth trial: ‘There’s no amount of magic in the world that’s worth the price of a man’s conscience.’
Everything went silent, until finally Mamma Whispers said, ‘Well now, aren’t you a fascination?’
Reichis bristled on my shoulder. ‘Can I kill her now?’
‘Maybe later. How did you do that?’ I asked the girl.
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t do nothing. My spirits though, they can be powerful useful when they’re of a mind to be.’
She’d certainly proved that to be true. To my people, the words ‘spirit’ and ‘demon’ were pretty much interchangeable. ‘What else can your spirits do?’ I asked.
The girl gave me a sour look. ‘They don’t put the shadowblack on innocents, if that’s what you came to find out.’
Reichis leaned forward on my shoulder and sniffed the air. ‘Hard to tell with all the crazy smells around here, but I think she’s telling the truth.’
I felt tired then, as if all my anger, all my fear, all my brave words about fighting to protect Seneira and her family, were just that – words. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, to the strange girl standing in front of me, and to all the people I couldn’t seem to help.
The girl whispered something into the night air, and suddenly the winds swirled around me again, murmuring snatches of conversations from the last few days. Mage plague … The Academy … Laughter … They’re watching you now, Kellen. The sounds stopped abruptly, and Mamma Whispers said, ‘You’re being played, spellslinger, listenin’ to the wrong voices, following the wrong path.’
‘Then what is the right path?’ I demanded. ‘What am I supposed to do?’
She laughed in response. ‘That’s a big question, boy.’ She lifted a thin arm and pointed a thin finger to the sky. ‘Look at all of those stars. Why you need to pick just one to follow?’
‘That’s not what I mean, damn it! Who’s behind all of this? You keep talking about your spirits, telling me I’m following the wrong trail. Fine, then ask your spirits who is causing the shadowblack plague!’
I half expected her to run off into the forest, or maybe attack me with some kind of spirit spell, but instead she nodded, and whispered into the darkness behind her. At first there was nothing. Then the wind picked up again. ‘They see threads, my spirits do,’ she said. ‘Threads here, in the Seven Sands, stretching far, spellslinger, from Teleidos all the way to …’ She started turning round and round in a circle, as if she really were just a child spinning to make herself dizzy. Suddenly she stopped, her arm pointing due west. ‘Some of the threads go there.’
‘Where? That’s just more forest and, past that, more desert.’
‘Further.’
There was only one place further west than the desert. ‘The Jan’Tep lands …’
She started backing away in slow, languorous steps. ‘I wouldn’t know, spellslinger. My spirits, they see far, but they don’t like to leave this place.’
‘And you?’ I asked. ‘Do you ever leave here?’
She smiled as if I’d said something entirely stupid and kept walking backwards until her small form blended into the darkness. ‘I’m Mamma Whispers, spellslinger. Why would I want to?’