17
The Nekhek
The next day saw a flurry of activity that began with my being something of a hero and ended with me becoming a traitor.
‘She’s still asleep,’ my mother said, noticing me poking my head into Shalla’s room. ‘An interrupted summoning spell is hard on anyone and doubly so on someone as young as your sister.’ Her tone was calm on the surface but full of barely contained accusations underneath. The falcon, sitting on the edge of Shalla’s bed, turned its head to gaze at me with similar menace.
‘It was Shalla’s idea,’ I said. ‘Why am I to blame?’
‘I didn’t say you were, but since you chose to bring it up, why in all the world did you agree to such a thing?’
I reached for a sensible, believable reply. I found none. ‘She said she was ready.’
‘She’s thirteen!’
‘And she’s more powerful than half the mages in this city.’
‘Not last night, she wasn’t.’ My mother came to stand in front of me and placed her hands on my cheeks as she examined me. ‘Look at you, still bruised from getting into fights, and now this.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
She ran a finger along the hollow of my left eye the way she always did when I got hurt. I still had a cut there. When she seemed satisfied I wasn’t dying she said, ‘Couldn’t you see how weak Shalla was?’
I went to sit down on the reading chair next to my sister’s bed. The events of the previous day started to replay themselves in my mind. ‘She said she had a cold.’
‘Well, it’s not a cold.’
‘Bene’maat,’ my father said from the doorway. It was rare for him to use my mother’s name in front of us.
‘Don’t try to gentle me like some barnyard animal, Ke’heops,’ she said, her tone a warning that I recognised. ‘Our daughter could have been killed, or worse.’
My father put his hands in front of him. ‘I’m not, but Shalla was the instigator of this nonsense. Children her age have been sneaking onto the Path of Spirits trying to find their power animals since long before you or I were born, and none has ever come back with anything worse than a headache and the sniffles.’ He paused and looked over at me with something like pride on his face. ‘Kellen did everything he could to protect his sister.’
‘Those men—’
‘We’ll find the Mahdek who attacked her.’
Something about that bothered me. ‘I don’t think they were Mahdek, Father. I think they were ordinary men sent by Ra’meth.’
‘Ra’meth and his sons already submitted to interrogation by the lords magi. We used silk magic to discern the truth of their words. They were neither there nor had any knowledge of or involvement in the attack.’
What was it Ferius had said the other night? That if there’s a spell for everything then there’s probably a spell to counter it. ‘Maybe they found a way around the interrogation.’
‘Oh?’ my father said, his expression suddenly irritated. ‘And what exactly is your expertise in these matters?’
I closed my eyes, thinking back to the way the men who’d attacked us had been dressed, the way they talked. ‘Maybe the masks had something to do with it? Besides, the Mahdek were supposed to be wizards. Why didn’t these men use any spells?’
‘The Mahdek are deceivers,’ my mother said. ‘They use tricks and traps and, yes, dark magics to do their will. But magic can be traced. These Mahdek wanted to hurt us without being tracked down.’
I wasn’t sure I was convinced, but I let it drop. ‘What’s wrong with Shalla?’ I asked. ‘You said it wasn’t a cold but—’
‘We’re not sure,’ my father replied. ‘But her magic’s been weakening steadily for the past three days.’
Three days? Why three days? Unless … ‘She fought me three days ago. In the oasis.’
I looked over to my father and saw his steady gaze. He nodded, but there was something else … something he wasn’t telling me. Then I remembered that Tennat was sick too. ‘Spirits of our ancestors … Osia’phest was right. They’re going to blame me.’
‘Who is going to blame you, Kellen?’ my mother asked. ‘And blame you for what?’
‘Tennat duelled me and he got sick. Shalla fought me next and now she’s sick too. People are going to think I poisoned them or that I’m diseased and they got sick because of me.’
‘No,’ said my father.
‘I’m going to be exiled. Ra’meth will convince the council to—’
‘No,’ he repeated. ‘I will deal with the council and I will deal with Ra’meth. Whatever has happened is either coincidence or, more likely, caused by the presence of the Mahdek and their nekhek servants nearby.’
‘But I told you, when the nekhek showed up those men ran.’
‘They were running from your mother and myself, not from their own servant.’
‘But they—’
‘Enough, Kellen. You’ve brought us a lifetime’s worth of foolishness these past few days. Now you will obey your parents. You will do what your mother and I tell you to do and say what we tell you to say.’ He came over to where I sat and knelt down so we were eye to eye. ‘Later today you will accompany me to the oasis. Our people need to see the nekhek and be reassured that there is no danger. If anyone asks you, you will tell them that the creature was in service to the Mahdek raiders who attacked your sister. Do you understand?’
‘I …’ what was I supposed to say? This was my father. The head of my family. I was his son and my duty was to obey. Besides, even if this particular nekhek wasn’t working for these particular Mahdek, it was still a creature of deceit and darkness, as my father had said. It had torn that little dog’s throat out without a second thought. As much as my people had feared the Mahdek, we probably feared the nekhek more.
So why has this one come to me?
At my father’s insistence I accompanied him to the oasis, so that no one could accuse him of hiding the one person who’d seen everything that had happened. Hiding, though, was exactly what I most wanted to do. The crowd was densely packed, the smell of sweat and fear and anticipation so thick that I found it hard to breathe. The hum and buzz of muttering was like a swarm threatening to envelop the city. A lesser man than my father would have found it impossible to speak over it.
‘Our Jan’Tep ancestors gave us magic so that we could protect each other,’ he said, standing four feet above the ground atop the cloth-covered cage, his voice silencing the crowd. ‘So that when danger came, we would face it together, not cower under our beds or wail in prayer.’
A few murmurs arose from those near me, some voicing concern but most supporting my father’s sentiment. I’d never seen that many people in the oasis at one time before. Bodies were crammed into every square inch and spilling out onto the surrounding streets.
‘You people throw the oddest parties,’ Ferius Parfax said from behind me.
‘Why do you keep sneaking up on me like that?’ I asked, irritated.
‘Why is it you never pay attention to anything around you?’
She gave me a grin to take the sting out of the words and I felt a stab of guilt over not telling her that the dowager magus had asked me to spy on her. ‘Ferius …’
‘Later, kid,’ she said, looking past me. ‘Your father’s talking.’
Ke’heops went on about courage and honour and how the council and every mage in the clan would protect the town. He told the story of what had taken place on the Snake the previous night and assured them that he’d already sent word to other Jan’Tep cities. Some of the council members took turns reciting poems and stories about how we’d overcome nekhek infestations before and reminded us all that there was a reason why the Jan’Tep thrived, when the Mahdek were all but gone from the world.
‘Let us see the enemy!’ an old man shouted from nearby.
Other voices rose up in agreement. Speeches were fine, but few had ever seen a nekhek in their lifetime. My father looked annoyed but finally jumped off the cage and down to the sand. ‘Very well,’ he said, and pulled the cloth from the cage.
As the creature inside was revealed, its jaws opened wide and it growled at the crowd. Its paws scratched at the bars and lock on the front of the cage, probing for the means to escape. The onlookers in the oasis shrank back, hands covering their mouths as if they could catch a disease simply by breathing the same air as the nekhek.
There was no shouting, no screaming. Only the awed silence of a people come face to face with the creature that has stalked their nightmares. That, and the sound of one woman laughing.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ I hissed angrily to Ferius Parfax. ‘Stop laughing!’
A figure wearing a robe of red-and-white silk pushed through the crowds towards us. It was Ra’meth. ‘Of course,’ he said, a sneer on his face. ‘The Daroman spy and her little Sha’Tep ally from the House of Ke take joy at the presence of a creature bred to draw the power from Jan’Tep mages and the life from our children!’
Ra’meth’s words very nearly echoed my father’s own as to why the other initiates had been getting sick. Except nobody’s complained of being bitten by a demonic shadow creature, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you forget.
‘Kellen was the one who faced down the Mahdek,’ shouted someone. It was one of the mages who’d accompanied my father the night before. ‘Without him we never would have caught the nekhek and it would still be out there.’
‘So he would have us believe,’ remarked Ra’meth.
‘So I say,’ my father replied, coming towards us. People parted before him, showing him even more respect than usual. You could see on their faces that the prospect of Mahdek assassins had reminded them that it mattered who became clan prince. They wanted strength in all its forms. Strength was what my father offered.
When he reached us he stopped in front of Ferius. ‘Would you mind telling us what’s so funny?’
She put up a hand. ‘Sorry, sorry. It’s just that … well, is that –’ and here she pointed at the creature in the cage. ‘Is that really the dreaded nekhek? Bane of the Jan’Tep people? Corruptor of mages and warriors and –’ she giggled like a child – ‘mercy killer of sick puppy dogs?’
‘It is a plague animal,’ Ra’meth said. ‘Bred to chew weak-weed that mixes with the creature’s saliva. A single bite can paralyse a mage’s power, making us defenceless. It brings disease and ill luck. It is a creature of darkness and death, and its kind has wrought more destruction upon the Jan’Tep than the Mahdek ever did.’
For some reason that sent Ferius into an uncontrollable flurry of laughter, and if it hadn’t been for a warning look from my father, I’m pretty sure Ra’meth would have lit her up with fire magic right then and there.
It was true that in the light of day the nekhek didn’t look quite so fierce. Its fur wasn’t as dark as I’d remembered, more a tan colour like the sand around the oasis. Its claws and teeth looked sharp, but were no longer nor sharper than those of a wild cat. But I still remembered the speed with which it moved, the way it had snapped the neck of the sick animal that the men in Mahdek masks had tried to use against my sister, and when I looked at the glinting black irises staring back at us, I didn’t doubt for a second that it could have torn out my throat just as easily as the dog’s. ‘It’s a lot more dangerous than it looks,’ I said.
‘Oh, I’m sure it is,’ Ferius said. ‘Positively deadly. It’s just that, well, in Darome and most other places, they’re mostly known for rooting through bins and occasionally stealing food. See, the rest of the civilised world wouldn’t call that animal in there a “nekhek”.’
‘What do you call them?’ my father asked.
‘Oh, they have many names, mighty Ke’heops. The Berabesq call them senhebi, “wind leapers”. The Daromans call them felidus arborica, “forest gliders”. But most folks on the frontier just call them squirrel cats.’
‘Squirrel cats?’ I asked.
Ferius, her eyes filled with tears from laughing so much, barely held back her chortling long enough to say, ‘Your ancient enemy is basically just a really, really big squirrel.’