14
The Snake
‘It was your idea really,’ Shalla said as we crept along the path.
‘What was my idea?’ I asked, shouldering the pack she’d brought with her and now expected me to carry. ‘You still haven’t told me what this is all about. And what are we doing on the Snake, anyway?’
The Snake was the second of the intertwining routes that ran north–south through the Jan’Tep lands, so called because of the way it wound itself around the nearly five hundred miles of caravan track called the Staff. Daroman military engineers had carved out the Staff from the surrounding forest hundreds of years ago in order to facilitate trade, travel and, in times of war, moving an invading army into our lands. The Snake was a much older road whose proper name was the Path of Spirits. It was said to be occupied by the ghosts of our ancestors who waged a never-ending war with those of our ancient enemies, the Mahdek. It was also the place where Jan’Tep mages went on vision quests when seeking out the high magics.
‘When you were duelling Tennat the other day,’ Shalla said, ‘you spoke to that falcon flying overhead.’
I nearly dropped the pack to the ground. ‘Shalla, that was just a trick. I was just pretending so that I could—’
‘Scare Tennat. I know. But you haven’t thought about the reason why it scared him. It’s because a mage with a power animal can channel magic even if their bands are still in place.’
‘So?’
‘So what if you really did have a power animal?’
It was a stupid hypothetical question. The kind of impossible thought experiment that appealed to ageing spellmasters, my annoying sister, and pretty much no one else. ‘Well, we’re never going to find out, are we? Since you need actual magic to summon a power animal, which, in case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have any more.’
‘But I do.’
I stopped right there. ‘Father’s allowing you to continue your trials? I thought he was going to make you wait because you …’ almost killed your own brother.
I supposed he had to let her finish. If the council was considering the strength of the bloodline, then my father’s only hope of becoming clan prince was for Shalla to make an impression on the lords magi. She wouldn’t receive her mage name until she was sixteen, but by passing her trials three years early she could prove the strength of our house. Not that any of that would help me. ‘Shalla, hardly anyone bonds with power animals any more. They’re too risky. Why would …?’
She looked down at her feet. ‘Mother helped me convince father that a familiar might … temper my behaviour somewhat.’
Fat chance, I thought. While it made sense in theory that when a mage and their familiar bond there’s a kind of fusing of personalities, I doubted some cat or duck was going to teach my sister humility.
Shalla coughed and I noticed again how pale she looked. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked. ‘You look worse than Tennat, and he nearly got his neck sliced by Ferius last night.’
‘It’s just a cold,’ she said, and started down the path again. ‘I’m not going to let it get in the way.’
‘So what does any of this have to do with me?’ I asked.
‘I convinced Father to let you be my watcher. You’re going to protect me.’
I nearly broke out laughing. ‘You expect me to guard you from evil Mahdek spirits on the Snake? With what? My winning personality?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Kellen. Nobody’s seen any Mahdek for decades. Besides, I’ve got my own warding spells and no doubt Mother will have cast a scrying spell to watch over me. All I need you to do is keep any bugs or sick animals from trying to bond with me while I’m under the calling spell.’
‘So I get to watch you become even more powerful, and in exchange I get what?’
She smiled as if she was about to reveal that she was the one who invented the wheel. ‘I’ve got a plan. Once I’ve got my falcon—’
‘What makes you think you’ll get a falcon?’ I interrupted. Falcons were bold creatures who seldom allowed themselves to be commanded by humans and so were the rarest of power animals to respond to a summoning. ‘You’re more likely to spend the rest of your life bonded to a mouse or a tree frog.’
Shalla rolled her eyes at me. ‘Kellen, please. Can you imagine me with something that weak? I’d rather just die and come back and try again in the next life.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘If you get a falcon …’
‘When I get my falcon – I’ve figured out a way to keep the summoning spell going even once the bonding has taken place. I’ll use a sympathy spell to channel my will through the falcon to summon one of its fellows. If there’s another one anywhere within ten miles of here I’ll make it come and then it will try to bond with me, but I’ll already be bonded to my one.’
‘So the bird will have no choice but to bond with me?’ I tried to imbue the words with as much incredulity as possible, but the thought of getting my own power animal was beyond tantalising. A falcon. A falcon. Not only would I have a way to channel my magic past the damned bands on my forearms, but I’d be able to pass the final two tests. Also, pretty much everyone else in town would be lining up for my attention. A falcon. ‘But … how can that work? I mean, it makes sense, but why hasn’t somebody else tried it?’
Shalla smiled. ‘Because regular mages get so lost in the moment of bonding that they forget everything else. People are stupid and sappy that way, but I’m not. I’ll keep my focus and I’ll keep the spell going, and you, my brother, will have your own power animal.’
I looked at my sister, struggling not to drop to my knees, throw my arms around her waist and promise to for ever more be the best brother the world had ever seen. There were a hundred reasons to doubt both Shalla’s motivations and her ability to pull this off. But if she could? If it were at all possible?
A falcon.
Hours later I sat with my back against a tree, staring up at the sky through the forest canopy as the moon reached its zenith. I kept the small cooking fire we’d made using a simple fire spell (well, Shalla had made) at my back so that I wouldn’t lose the night vision I needed to keep an eye on my sister, who was meditating in her spell circle some thirty yards away. She’d insisted that I keep my distance so that the sound of my breathing wouldn’t distract her, but I knew it was really because she didn’t want to risk my presence tainting her spell.
Like a lot of mind spells – what my people call silk magic – the calling is basically invisible to the eye. If I looked very, very carefully, I could almost imagine a subtle shimmer around Shalla – a soft expansion of the air as the spell pushed outwards into the forest, summoning a power animal to her.
It was kind of remarkable that any of this was happening. Most initiates spend days trying to cast it, only to fail from exhaustion and have to try again another time. Shalla, despite obviously being at less than her best, of course got the spell to work on the very first try. As petty as it sounds, part of me wished that nothing, not even a cockroach, would come near her.
My job as watcher was relatively simple. If an insect or a sick animal tried to approach Shalla, I had to chase it away. Insects are unsuitable as familiars. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think it has something to do with their brains being too simple, incapable of proper communication with a mage. So bonding with one would be kind of a waste and it would keep other animals from answering the summons.
Sick animals were more dangerous. A sick animal would try to bond with the mage in a desperate attempt to prolong its life. But the illness inside the animal would infect the mage, crippling their magic for years. Even after the animal died, the sickness remained. It wasn’t a death sentence for a mage, but it was close.
I suppose I should have been at least a little proud that Shalla trusted me with something so important. But by then I was fairly sure of two things. First, she had almost certainly lied about having our parents’ permission to summon a power animal. Being Shalla, she probably figured that once it was done and she’d shown how wonderfully things had turned out, everyone would forgive her.
The second reason why she likely felt safe with me as her watcher was that she probably didn’t need one. A perfectly formed calling spell has two parts, one to summon the right type of creature, and a second to warn off the wrong ones. So chances were that any sick animal would just avoid her. So really there wasn’t much for me to do except sit and wait and hope that she could really do what she promised.
That thought kept me occupied for the first few hours of the night, but as the chill began to set into my bones, so too did my doubts whether Shalla would really summon a familiar for me. I glanced over at her again, looking for some sign of duplicity. She looked as still and serene and arrogantly self-assured as ever. Did she even need me there at all? Or was I just an audience to witness her upcoming triumph?
Shalla loved to chide me for being lazy and acted as if all I needed in order to become a powerful mage was to really apply myself, but I knew she took no end of pleasure in having more power than I did. Would she really risk giving that up? Or would she back out on the deal once she had what she wanted?
I tried copying her cross-legged pose, my arms in front of me, bent at the elbows, my right hand facing outwards with the ring and little finger touching the palm – the sign of reaching out. My left palm faced inwards with the second and third fingers touching, forming the sign of summoning. Using the silent breath that Master Osia’phest had taught us since childhood, I repeated the simple four-syllable incantation over and over. Te-me’en-ka. Te-me’en-ka.
I closed my eyes, not because the spell required it but because staring at the unsparked tattooed bands on my forearms wasn’t going to help my confidence any. Inside my mind and my heart I shaped my will and thought about falcons. You are summoned. We are meant to be together. We are meant to be soul-bonded. You are summoned. You will come.
I kept on, over and over, doing my best to ignore the growing pain in my head from the constant recitation of the spell, concentrating on the somatic forms, the silent verbal incantation and the inner shape of my will all at once. Te-me’en-ka. Te-me’en-ka.
I kept it up for what felt like hours but was probably only a minute or two. The breeze rustled my hair, sending strands of it tickling my face. Drops of sweat stung my left eye. Blinking away the tears did nothing for the pain but broke my concentration completely. I wiped the sweat from my brow and realised I was nearly soaked in it. Nothing had changed. The fire still crackled, Shalla still sat in her circle thirty yards away from me. It was as if the entire world had ignored my efforts.
Oh ancestors, I’ll forgive you for every lousy thing you’ve ever done to me if you’ll just give me a power animal. I promise I’ll be good to it. I’ll feed it whatever it wants and keep it from harm. I’ll give it as long and happy a life as I possibly can. Just don’t leave me like this. Don’t leave me alone.
It was only then that I realised I’d mistaken the crunching of dried leaves for the crackling of the fire. Something had been hiding in the darkness, and it was coming for me.