I awoke to find Ferius and myself both sitting on wooden chairs, our hands tied behind our backs. Her waistcoat and the belt holding my pouches were a few yards away on the floor. My fingers ached and I realised they were taped in a way that kept me from forming any somatic shapes. That was the one bright spot: Dexan hadn’t figured out that I couldn’t do any damage without my powders. Maybe if I could get loose I could bluff him somehow.
If I ever get out of here, I should really learn how to bluff.
On the table in front of us I saw several metal implements, but my eyes were mostly drawn to a particularly sharp knife.
‘I tried to tell you, kid,’ Dexan said, reaching up to a shelf and pulling down a blue glass box with lines of silver along its surface. ‘Remember the first rule of being a spellslinger?’
Never mess with another spellslinger’s business. ‘Talk like a pompous ass?’ I asked.
He chuckled. ‘Clever. Brave too.’ He turned to smile at me. ‘Leastways you know how to give that impression, and that’s almost as good as the real thing, right?’
I looked around the chamber, hoping to find something, anything, that could help us. Reichis was still unconscious, tracks of blood on his side and haunches from where the crocodile had got hold of him. The massive creature crawled around the back of the room like a sentry waiting for the next attack. I wanted to kill the animal for what it had done, but the swirling darkness in its eyes told me that it hadn’t had any choice in the matter. It was a slave to Dexan’s commands. One more reason why I had to find a way to end him.
‘I’m curious,’ he said, placing the box on the table. ‘How did you figure out it wasn’t the shadowblack?’
‘Revian,’ I replied. ‘When I went back to look at his body after he died, the markings were gone. All that was left was a tiny pile of black ash next to his face. The shadowblack is part of the skin, so it shouldn’t have come out like that.’
That seemed to impress him. ‘See? Like I said: clever.’ His hand came up, holding something about six inches long that gleamed. I flinched instinctively, expecting to see some kind of weapon. Instead, what he held was a small pair of silver tongs. ‘You were right about the infection. It’s not the shadowblack, but it’s also not a curse. It’s something far more … inventive.’
As I watched, he set the tongs down and carefully, almost as if he were following a ritual, opened up the blue glass box to show me the contents. At first I thought it was some kind of thick black oil, swirling from the box having been shaken, but then I began to make out individual strands, twisting, each separate from the others, dozens of them. ‘They’re a type of fluke; a flatworm, basically,’ Dexan explained. ‘Found a colony of them burrowing in a patch of volcanic glass a couple of miles north, near the mountains.’ He pursed his lips in disgust. ‘Vile things really. When I first saw them, a couple of years ago, I nearly blasted them out of existence.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ I said, revulsion at the sight of the seething tangle of worms threatening to make me nauseous.
‘I found a book some years back, an old Jan’Tep tome I got off a man who died not far from here. It mentioned a kind of charm that I’d never heard of before. I didn’t think nothing of it at first, until I saw a picture of the creature needed for the ritual.’ Dexan picked up the tongs and reached them inside the box to pull one of the writhing worms out. He dangled it in front of me. ‘The book called them obandiria neheris, but I just call them obsidian worms. They sure are ugly, ain’t they?’ Suddenly he used the tongs to hold the worm down on the table and his other hand came up holding a knife. He cut the creature in half and a faint black mist filled the air between us. ‘Try not to breathe it in if you can,’ he warned. ‘Makes you powerful sick for a few hours.’
‘What …? What was the point of that?’
‘You ever cut worms in half as a kid?’ he asked. ‘Weird creatures. Some of them don’t die – they actually just become two worms. My friend obandiria neheris here does one better. Both halves remain … well, connected somehow. Even across a hundred miles, they’re still part of each other.’ He lifted up the tongs, which still held one half of the worm. ‘First step is to take this little guy and place him in onyx.’ He held up a bracelet made of rough black beads, like the one he’d used to control the crocodile. ‘Now watch this, Kellen. This is the first weird thing about them.’ Very slowly, he touched the worm to the bracelet. As I watched in horrified fascination, it … slid … inside the stone, inch by inch until it was completely enveloped.
‘How …? How is that possible?’ I asked.
Dexan shrugged. ‘Who knows, kid? The underground metals in parts of this continent do weird things to some creatures.’ He nodded towards where Reichis lay on the floor. ‘I mean, just look at your friend there. You reckon that’s natural?’
‘You gonna charge us for this little zoological demonstration?’ Ferius asked groggily. Her eyes were blinking and I could tell she was fighting to clear her vision so we could find some means of escape.
‘Hey, you’re awake,’ Dexan said. ‘That’s great.’ He used the silver tongs to pick up the second half of the worm. ‘Now, Kellen, you being a clever fellow, have you guessed what we do with this part?’
Ancestors, I thought, my eyes locked on the writhing, horrible thing dangling from the tongs. Please, don’t let him do this to me. I’m pretty sure I screamed then.
Dexan started laughing. ‘Come on, kid, don’t be like that. What did I tell you was the first rule of being a spellslinger? Never, ever mess with another spellslinger’s business. Besides, the way I hear it? Your father’s got a good chance at becoming prince of your clan.’ He turned to Ferius and started towards her, the worm still held in the teeth of the tongs. ‘This Argosi pain in the ass, on the other hand, well, your kind don’t have any friends at all now, do they, darlin’?’
Ferius’s eyes went wide, but just as quickly she recovered and assumed her usual calm. ‘You reckon that’s the best way to play this?’ she asked. ‘Because I think you’re missing out on an opportunity.’
I’d seen Ferius talk her way out of plenty of problems before, or, more often, talk her opponents into putting themselves in a position where she could overcome them. Dexan was having none of it. ‘Don’t you start that Argosi persuasion nonsense on me. You think I’m going to let you mesmerise me?’ He reached out with his free hand and grabbed her jaw, hard. ‘You should know that I’m not a bad man really. I don’t kill people unless I have no choice. I’m just a guy with a couple of spells and a few tricks up my sleeve, trying to survive as best I can.’ With that he placed the worm on the skin just below her right eye.
Ferius tried to shake it away but Dexan was holding her jaw too firmly. At first nothing happened – the worm seemed to just slither around her eye socket. Then suddenly one end of it drove down through her skin, and Ferius Parfax screamed as if the obsidian creature was digging its way into her very soul.
She screamed for a long time.
I’m not sure how long it went on for. I was shouting at Dexan, begging him to stop, to pull the worm out. I threatened him too, though that didn’t do any good either. I think he must have done something to knock me out, because when I woke up we were outside and our bonds had been removed. Ferius was stumbling around, unable to find her footing.
‘It’ll be like that for a few hours,’ Dexan said, standing next to me. ‘She’ll seem drunk, and then the fever will set in. Don’t bother trying to cool her down; it’ll only make it worse. Best just to let nature take its course.’
‘And then what?’ I asked.
‘Then she’s mine.’
I turned and tried to hit him, but either he was too fast or I was too clumsy because I missed by a mile. He gave me a sharp slap across the face. ‘Listen, kid, because this is how it’s going to be from now on. You do what I tell you, you do it when I tell you and how I tell you. You want to know what happens if you don’t?’ Without waiting for an answer he lifted up his arm and stroked the new onyx bracelet. The worm inside writhed as if it were swimming in the black stone. Ferius screamed again, turning to me, eyes blind even as I could see the creature that had embedded itself in her face began swirling beneath her skin.
‘Stop!’ I shouted, lunging for Dexan. He sidestepped and I tumbled face first to the ground.
After a few more seconds, his fingers drifted away from the bracelet and the screaming stopped. ‘I can do this any time I want, Kellen, from anywhere. I can use silk magic to send dreams into her mind that will leave her so terrified it’ll be as if someone had cut parts of her brain out. I can do other things too, awful things. Things I don’t want to do unless you make me – unless you defy me.’ He reached down and grabbed me by the collar before hauling me back to my feet. ‘Or maybe, if you both behave for a year or two, I’ll be a nice guy and use one of the rituals I’ve devised to destroy the worm and set her free.’ He gave me a shake. ‘Do we have an understanding now, Kellen of the House of Ke?’
Ferius would have taken advantage of the proximity to knock him down. She would have had something clever to say, some means of getting around this impossible situation. I just said, ‘Yes. Yes, we do.’
‘Good.’ He held up a folded piece of paper and slid it into the front pocket of my shirt. ‘Tell Beren this here’s my client’s final offer.’
Without another word he turned and walked away, showing me his back without the slightest fear that I might attack him because there was no reason to fear me.
Dexan had won.
He’d won it all.