For the next few minutes we did the things you do in these situations. Ferius shook off the effects of the explosion faster than the rest of us and, after she had checked Seneira and me over, went to tend to Rosie’s wounds. We were all in shock, I think, even Reichis, whose eyes glanced around slower than usual, as if he was having trouble focusing. He wasn’t saying anything.
I waited until the smoke had cleared and then went inside. Soon there would be people coming to see what had happened, which meant we didn’t have much time. Even through the dull haze and the throbbing in my head, there was something I had to see for myself; the house had been warded against magic, and yet I recognised the spell Revian had cast.
‘What are you looking for?’ Seneira asked. She looked confused, as if she’d only just remembered how to speak.
I walked over to the centre of the room, now covered in rubble, where Revian had been floating just minutes before. ‘Stay back, Seneira.’
‘Surely the body will be destroyed from the blast,’ Rosie said, glancing around at the charred interior. It was as if a dozen bolts of lightning had all struck at once.
‘Not necessarily.’
She, Ferius and I pushed slabs of broken sandstone and pieces of shattered furniture out of the way. Eventually we found Revian. He was dead of course, but not from lightning.
‘How is this possible?’ Seneira asked. She wasn’t crying or shouting. It was as if she’d forgotten how to feel.
‘An ember spell protects the caster from its effects.’
‘But the boy is dead,’ Rosie said.
‘Well, drop a ton of debris on a person and they die regardless of what spell they’re casting.’
‘What’s this?’ Ferius asked.
I knelt down to examine what she’d found, but the first thing I noticed was Revian’s face. His eyes were still wide open, as if he was pondering something inexplicable. So was I: the markings around his eye were completely gone. On the ground next to his head was a tiny pile of ash. It wasn’t like the charred debris around us; this was made of distinct particles like grains of black sand. ‘Ancestors … I should have known.’
‘What is it?’ Ferius asked.
I pointed to the markings around my eye. ‘This – what you see – it’s part of me. It’s in my skin. Nothing could remove it.’
‘But that fella, Dexan –’ Ferius began.
I shook my head. ‘He had scars. Look at Revian’s face. The skin is perfectly smooth.’
‘So then …’
I reached out a hand to close Revian’s eyes. I’d barely known him, and yet, in that last moment before he died, he’d looked at me as if I was a friend come to save him, who might be able to tell him what had happened to him. Unfortunately I’d figured it out too late – the reason why none of this made sense, why people who weren’t Jan’Tep were suddenly getting a disease that only affected mages.
‘It’s not the shadowblack,’ I said, looking up at Seneira.
‘Then what is it?’
‘I don’t know, but whatever it is, it doesn’t just torment the victims. It’s allowing someone to use them as anchors, to cast spells in places protected by magical wards.’ I turned to Ferius. ‘Someone used Revian to murder his parents. And whoever did it? I know one more thing about them: they’re Jan’Tep mages.’
When I was a kid, I used to wonder why my people didn’t rule the world. I mean, the Jan’Tep are by far the most powerful mages on the continent. Whatever paltry spiritual forces the Berabesq viziers believe their many-headed god provides them, whatever mystical artefacts the Daroman generals scrounge up to supplement their military forces, none of those things could hold a candle to the power of a true master mage.
Sometimes I’d ask my mother and father, but they’d just make some remark about how I should probably spend my time learning to become a mage and then I wouldn’t need to ask them the question. Shalla – whom I hadn’t asked but who’d eavesdropped on the conversation – told me it was because our people were merciful. ‘And besides,’ she’d added cynically, ‘what would be the point of being the greatest nation in the world if there were no others to compare ourselves to?’
It was Osia’phest, my old spellmaster, who’d given me the closest thing to an answer. ‘Our magic is powerful, yes,’ he’d said, shuffling about among the shelves of books in his dusty sanctum, ‘but our flesh is no different than that of other men. What does it matter that a war mage’s lightning is more powerful than a sword or a crossbow if his blood already spills from the wound left by the enemy’s blade or bolt? Further, magic, like all of nature, follows rules. As a shield can protect its wielder from an arrow, so too can a warded house protect its owner from spells.’
That, I’d come to understand, was why my people didn’t simply assassinate our rivals’ leaders and take over their countries. The other nations had found ways to protect their palaces from our spells.
Only, what if you could get past their wards?
What if the mage could send an anchor into a warded building and channel the magic through them? Since the actual spell was originating from far away, the magic would simply appear through the victim, and the wards would be ineffectual.
‘Something about this is not right,’ Rosie said, mounting her horse.
No kidding.
‘You got an itch?’ Ferius asked.
Rosie nodded. ‘Those previous victims I was looking into – one family lives in a town not far from here.’
‘All right,’ Ferius said. ‘Kellen, best you and I take Seneira to the Academy hospital. Her father needs to know what happened here.’ I noticed she was careful not to mention Tyne’s worsening condition.
I knelt down to check on Reichis. ‘You all right, partner?’ I asked.
He stared at me blankly, and I worried that something had happened to break the connection we shared, but after a few seconds he shook himself off. ‘I really need to kill whoever did this.’
‘I need you to do something for me first.’
‘What?’
‘Go with Ferius and Seneira. Keep an eye on them for me, okay?’
He gave a quiet growl that was his way of agreeing while letting me know he wasn’t happy about it.
‘Where are you going, kid?’ Ferius asked.
I looked out past the open door towards the desert in the distance. ‘There’s someone I need to speak to.’
I sat cross-legged on the ground, staring at my patch of sand. Teleidos is fairly heavily developed, full of large buildings and sidewalks and even small, elegantly designed public gardens. So I’d had to walk almost to the edge of town before I found undisturbed sand where there weren’t people all around so that I could attempt the invocation.
The big problem, of course, was that whatever spell Shalla had cast to communicate with me was far too complicated for someone of my limited abilities to attempt. Also, since I’d never sparked the tattooed metallic band for sand magic – and never would, thanks to the counter-glyphs my father had permanently etched into the skin of my forearm – there were parts of the spell that would always be denied me. My only option was to try something simpler and hope I got lucky.
For once in my life.
From what I understood of Shalla’s explanation, the spell she’d used had many components to it – bits and pieces of different forms of magic to handle individual tasks, working together almost like a clock or some other contraption. If that were true, then the spell might still be active, like a warrant, just waiting to be reawakened. Since Shalla had mentioned breath magic as a key requirement, and since that was the only kind of Jan’Tep magic I could do, that’s where I had to start.
‘Tuvan-eh-savan-teh-beranth,’ I intoned, hoping I remembered the incantation correctly. Nothing happened, but that could be due to any number of factors. A Jan’Tep spell requires five components: the words, perfectly spoken; the envisioning, held in the mind with total clarity; the somatic shapes made with the hands; the anchoring, for which I was using the sand and the breeze; and, finally, dominion: the will of the mage. I was always weakest at that last part.
‘Tuvan-eh-savan-teh-beranth,’ I repeated, making extra sure I was holding the somatic shape correctly. When it again didn’t work, I tried going through each component of the spell yet again, searching for my mistake. Of course, there might not be any mistake. I might just not be strong enough.
My anxiety broke my concentration, which meant my envisioning of the spell fell apart. I became frustrated, knowing full well that Shalla could have done this in her sleep. I could just imagine her, standing there, staring at me with that perpetually amused yet disappointed expression on her face, her oh-so-flawless features and bright golden hair so different from the dark mop that adorned my head. Most of all, it was her voice that always irritated me: more mature than any thirteen-year-old’s voice had a right to me, the diction so perfect, each syllable like a note of music. I didn’t know why I was even bothering to try to contact Shalla – it was like she was already here anyway.
Oh.
‘Tuvan-eh-savan-teh-beranth,’ I said for the final time.
I hadn’t noticed the wind picking up until a few grains of sand flew into my eyes, making them water. When I looked back down at the ground, the particles were swirling from the breeze. ‘Kellen?’ Shalla’s face said to me.
‘Shalla?’
The image frowned. ‘How did you …?’ I was about to explain how I’d made the spell work when the image shifted again. ‘Oh, of course. I forgot to close off the spell, so I suppose when you did that amateurish breath invocation, my own casting must have been inadvertently awakened.’
‘Sure,’ I said, not wanting to get into a fight. I needed information. ‘Shalla, who in our clan could—’
She cut me off, the shapes of her eyes in the sand suddenly shifting around. ‘Ancestors, Kellen, are you still in Teleidos?’
‘I am. There’s something—’
‘Get out of there!’ she shouted, the swirling wind picking up in response to the increased magical forces. ‘I told you to leave that place!’
‘You did,’ I said, my own voice quiet. ‘You seemed to know exactly when I should leave.’
A subtle back and forth in the sand told me she was shaking her head. ‘It’s not like that, Kellen. Just … please, just trust me, you don’t want to be there.’
‘Why, Shalla? Because there is no shadowblack plague? Because our own people are behind this?’
‘This has nothing to do with you, Kellen. Get away from that awful place!’
This was getting me nowhere, and Shalla had always been more stubborn than I was. ‘Tell me what you know, and maybe I will.’
She hesitated, the tiny particles of sand oddly still now, despite the breeze. ‘I don’t know much, Kellen, but when I tried my own scrying spells to find the source of the shadowblack, I couldn’t make any sense of what I was seeing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There were … the only word I can think of to describe it is strands, Kellen. Thin strands of ethereal forces stretching all the way from the Jan’Tep territories to the Seven Sands. Then, when I tried to push further …’
‘What? What happened?’
Shalla’s image in the sand took on a strange expression, one I wasn’t used to seeing on my sister’s face: fear. ‘Someone pushed me out of the ethereal plane and knocked me unconscious, Kellen. Someone much more powerful than I am.’
The mere fact that Shalla had acknowledged that anyone might be more powerful than her told me just how serious this was.
The sands shifted again, and her face began to dissolve. ‘The spells I created to make it possible for us to communicate are fading, and I can’t risk casting them again in case it draws attention from whoever is behind this. I don’t know when we’ll be able to speak next, Kellen, but now you know everything I know, so do what you promised and leave Teleidos tonight.’
I didn’t bother mentioning that I hadn’t actually promised anything. Instead I wiped the sand clear with my hand. ‘Stay safe, sister.’