37
The Chamber
The space we entered was the largest we’d seen in the mines, over thirty feet across, the ceiling almost as high. The effort to carve it out, to lay the foundations and put in supports, must have been staggering, and yet it was the shape of the space that took my breath away.
What Abydos had called the ‘mausoleum’ was seven-sided, and each wall was covered with intricate sigils, some of which I recognised, most of which I was sure weren’t in any book or scroll or even in the mind of any Jan’Tep spellmaster in any of our cities. I stood facing one of the walls and held up my right forearm with its sparked breath band. There were nine sigils on my band, each one a different form of breath magic from which spells might be constructed, if I had the power. The wall opposite me had dozens.
‘It’s an arcanum,’ I said, but no one even noticed. Of the people there, only Shalla would have cared, and she was unconscious.
‘Put the girl down there,’ Abydos told his men. ‘On the altar.’
Towards the middle of the room, a set of stairs descended from each of the seven walls, leading to a recessed area at the very centre that reflected the shape of the room itself but was only large enough for a simple stone table.
‘Why are they putting Shalla on the altar?’ I asked.
‘Better than the floor,’ Abydos replied.
Reichis hopped off my shoulder and started sniffing around. ‘Lot of dead people in here.’
He was right. I’d been so focused on the inscriptions of spells that I hadn’t noticed the dozens of three-foot-square openings carved into the lower sections of the walls. Inside each one lay a body, wrapped over and over in thick strips of linen, the covered heads facing out towards us. This wasn’t part of the funerary practices of my people; nor were the black lacquer masks covering the faces of the dead.
‘Funeral masks,’ Abydos said, removing one and handing it to me. His casual treatment of the deceased felt wrong to me, but my uncle seemed untroubled. ‘It took me weeks of sitting here, staring at these things, to figure out that the Mahdek had never worshipped demons at all. They feared them.’
‘Then why the masks?’ I asked.
‘Superstition, or possibly just tradition. I suspect they believed the mask would frighten off any demons that came for them in the eternal darkness.’
‘And you desecrate the dead, without a second thought,’ Ferius said. ‘Wearing the masks to scare your own people. You sure are a brave bunch.’
‘They aren’t our people!’ Tusks shouted, tearing the mask off his face. He was younger than I expected, with sandy brown hair and soft features. I doubted he was more than a couple of years older than me. ‘My people are treated like servants. We can’t choose our own work, we can’t marry without permission. We can’t even …’ He stopped, looking as if all the air had gone out of him.
‘The Sha’Tep are forbidden from having children,’ Abydos said. He nodded to where Shalla lay on the table in the lower section of the room. ‘The great houses want only more mages like her.’ He reached out a hand to my cheek. ‘If the lords magi had their way, those like you and me would—’
‘I’m not Sha’Tep,’ I said, pushing his hand away.
‘That’s what we all tell ourselves,’ Abydos said. ‘“It’s just temporary … My magic will come back if I just wish it hard enough.”’
A man older than my uncle removed his mask. ‘It wasn’t always this way. Once we were soldiers as often as servants. Some of us trained as scholars and diplomats. We even had our own seats on the council. But year after year, generation after generation, people like your father take away more and more of our rights.’
‘Why didn’t you speak up?’ I asked, as ashamed as I was angered by their words. ‘Why not demand your rights?’
‘Our grandfathers and grandmothers tried,’ said a woman, her face hidden beneath a horrific fanged mask. ‘Just like their grandmothers and grandfathers before them. Each time they were punished. Pain spells. Mind chains. Magic.’ She said the word as if it were something filthy and disgusting.
I looked up at Abydos, my uncle, who I’d spent my whole life believing was the mild, contented fellow who happily brought us our food and took care of our home. ‘Father would have listened,’ I said. ‘He would never—’
‘Ke’heops is the worst of them all,’ he said, cutting me off even as he turned away from me. ‘When we were children … you could never have found two boys more alike. We were best friends. We did everything together: laughing, looking out for each other, finishing each other’s thoughts. Then one morning he began sparking his bands.’ Abydos held up his arms, the lines of the sigils so faint they just looked like old scars. ‘I didn’t, and from that day forth the brother that I’d loved, that I’d protected, treated me like little more than a useful pet.’
‘Sounds like a hard life,’ Ferius said. ‘A brave man might stand up and fight to change it. He just wouldn’t do it by hurting children.’
Abydos strode towards her, his face as much a mask of rage as any of the black lacquer ones worn by his followers. For a moment I thought he might strike her, but he calmed himself and his voice was almost pleading. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m doing this for Kellen!’
‘For me? What are you talking about?’
‘When the others first approached me with their plan, I refused. I said I loved my family.’ He turned to me. ‘What good is my love if all I do is stand by while your parents destroy the magic inside you that you long for so much, even more than Ke’heops ever did.’
‘They thought I had the shadowblack,’ I said. ‘They were trying to protect me.’ The words sounded utterly unconvincing even to me.
‘They were protecting her,’ Abydos said. He walked down the stairs to where she lay unconscious on the table. ‘Shalla – who has none of her mother’s kindness, and all of her father’s arrogance. Shalla, who would one day become a monster worse than any of them, if we gave her the chance.’
I started after him, but two of the men grabbed me before I took a step. ‘Uncle, what are you doing?’
He bent down to the floor and lifted up a narrow tray, which he set down next to her on the table. I saw the flames of six small braziers. Above each one rested a tiny clay jar bearing a symbol representing the liquefied metal within. A piece of loosely wrapped silk sat on the right side of the tray, the kind that might be used to hold writing implements, but which I knew contained a set of long, thin needles, one for each jar.
‘I’m doing this for you, Kellen. I couldn’t stop Ke’heops from denying you your magic, but you and I can make him pay for what he’s done to you. We can do it together.’
He looked back up at me, a terrible love in his eyes that held me more than any binding spell, more than the men who gripped my arms. ‘You …’ My voice was barely a whisper. I was so desperate not to say the words but somehow unable to stop myself. ‘You’re counter-banding Shalla for me.’
How many times had I resented Shalla for the luck she’d never earned, for the way magic came to her so easily. How many times had I secretly wished she would fail, that her bands wouldn’t spark. How many times, lying there strapped to that table over the past days, had I wished my parents would burn the counter-sigils into her skin instead of mine, and take the magic away from her forever.
‘Shalla had nothing to do with any of this,’ I said, to myself as much as to Abydos. ‘She tried to help me find my magic.’
‘Shalla is the worst of all of them.’ Abydos’s voice was soft, almost regretful. ‘I tried … in my own small way I’ve tried to get her to change, but she is a perfect replica of Ke’heops in female form, only she will be stronger than he ever was, when she comes into her power. She’ll be the worst tyrant our people have ever seen.’ He shook his head and looked back up at me. ‘She will treat you as a pet at best and a slave at worst, Kellen.’
‘You don’t know the future,’ Ferius Parfax said. ‘Even the wisest of us doesn’t know that.’
‘Perhaps not, Argosi.’ To me he said, ‘Look in your heart and tell me I’m wrong, Kellen. Tell me that Shalla will still call you brother the day after you’re made Sha’Tep.’
I wanted to. I wanted to call him a liar and say he didn’t understand Shalla, that underneath the arrogance she was different. I wanted to tell him that she’d always love me as her brother, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t be sure it was true.
Abydos picked up one of the needles and dipped it into one of the heated ceramic jars. ‘Did you know that it’s easier for a Sha’Tep to inscribe the counter-sigils than for one of the Jan’Tep? The very magic that courses through their veins rebels against the act, as though it were a kind of desecration.’
‘How did you learn the counter-sigils? Only the lords magi know their forms.’
‘Your father of course. I don’t think he meant to leave them unlocked in his study, but he was distracted while stealing your future from you.’ He held up the needle. A single drop of liquid copper dangled from its end. ‘I will show you how. We can do this together.’
‘You’ll show me how …’ The Jan’Tep were monsters, as cruel to their own Sha’Tep brothers and sisters today as they had been to the Mahdek they’d massacred three hundred years ago. My father spoke of honour and doing what was best for our house, but that had only meant doing what was best for him. My uncle … My uncle had suffered in silence my entire life until I’d set off this chain of events, from cheating at my duel with Tennat, to Shalla nearly killing me, to my father unwittingly revealing how he’d suppressed my magic my whole life. Now my uncle had finally found a way to help me get back at the world.
‘We can do this together.’
‘Uncle Abydos?’ I said.
He put down the needle. ‘Yes, Kellen?’
‘I’m ready now. Tell your men to let me go.’
He nodded and the men on either side of me released my arms.
‘I’m going to come down there and take my sister,’ I said. ‘Then Ferius and Reichis and I are going to carry her out of here, back up to the surface, where I’m going to put her on the horse in the barn and take her home.’
‘I can’t let you do that,’ he said, the expression on his face so sad and lonely that I genuinely felt as if I were disappointing him.
‘If you try to stop me, Uncle, I’ll kill you.’