Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(102)

I reeled back, as much from her words as her unusual gentleness. How could anyone live that kind of life? How could she sit back and let the people who had murdered her tribe just keep living in the same cities they’d stolen from them? I looked down at Ra’meth and remembered the look on my uncle’s face as the bolt of fire had burst through his chest. ‘I don’t think I’m like you, Ferius.’

‘Never asked you to be.’ She walked over to where Reichis lay on the ground and very gently scooped him up and placed him in a bag that she slung over her shoulder. ‘Tough little bastard, isn’t he?’ She looked over to me. ‘You’ve got a decision to make, kid. There’s a little shack a few miles out of town. Fella there knows some healing ways. Figure he can help the squirrel cat. He also brews up some kind of drink that makes a sane person’s head spin round and round. It’s a safe bet that I’ll be there a few hours. If you want to learn the Argosi path, come find me.’ She put a foot into the stirrup and got up on the horse. ‘If not, well, then I reckon that’s one less card I have to worry about.’

She started turning the horse around and I was struck by the thought that I might never see her again. ‘Wait,’ I said, struggling to find some excuse to make her slow down. ‘The card I saw you painting at the oasis … the dowager magus thought you were here because there was something that you believed could make civilisations rise or fall. Was she right?’

She turned back. ‘Canny old bird, wasn’t she?’ Ferius reached a hand carefully across her chest so as not to disturb Reichis and pulled a card from her waistcoat. ‘Finished this while I was waiting to make sure your sister would be okay.’ She flipped the card through the air at me and I caught it in my hand.

‘You’re giving this to me?’

‘Depends. If all you’re planning on doing with your life is killing Ra’meth, then you might as well tear it up for all I care.’

‘What if …? What if I don’t kill him? What if I come find you?’

She grinned. ‘Then make sure to bring the card with you, kid, cos I’ll need it for my deck.’

‘Why?’

She kicked her horse and started down the path. ‘Because that card might just change the world.’

As Ferius disappeared from view I turned the card over and finally saw what she’d been painting ever since she’d come to town. It was, as Mer’esan had predicted, one of the discordances. The inscription at the bottom said ‘Spellslinger’. It was a painting of a young man standing in front of an open road with a squirrel cat sitting on his shoulder and fire in his hands. The figure looked just like me.





46


The Mage’s Trial


An hour later I was dragging Ra’meth’s unconscious body up the sandy street that led to the court of the lords magi. My horse had developed a limp in his step a quarter-mile back and, figuring enough people and animals had already died for me, I slung Ferius’s pack on my shoulder and walked the rest of the way. Now I had a limp.

One of the guards out front caught sight of me about twenty feet from the steps to the oasis. They were crowded with families each awaiting their child’s turn to face the court and learn the verdict of their mage’s trial. ‘Stop where you are,’ the guard called out. He was a big man, I guessed in his forties. As he ran towards me he kept his hands at his sides, fingers forming the shapes that told me he was probably a chaincaster. I was getting sick of those.

I stopped, still looking past him at the families on the steps. I recognised several of the initiates from my class. They recognised me too, and turned away. The slight didn’t bother me. I was more baffled by the fact that, despite our clan very nearly having been taken over by rebellion and conspiracy, Jan’Tep life still revolved around deciding who would get to be a mage and who would become a servant.

‘Just dropping something off,’ I told the guard, and let go of the collar of Ra’meth’s robes. I rubbed at my shoulder, partly to show I wasn’t about to attempt any spells and partly because, well, my shoulder hurt.

The people on the steps started shuffling towards us, peering down at the unconscious form next to me. It took only a few seconds before they realised who it was, and about two seconds more before they started coming for me.

‘Stay back!’ The cold determination in my mother’s voice surprised me. I turned to see her striding towards us, the long flowing fabric of her dress dancing in the night breeze. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked me, her eyes still on the guards trying to approach.

‘He’s attacked one of the lords magi,’ the guard in front of me said.

I thought that was a little unfair. After all, how did they know I hadn’t just saved Ra’meth from somebody else? It didn’t really matter though, because when my mother turned to face the guards, she looked a good deal scarier than I did. ‘Kellen stopped a murderer from taking over our clan,’ she said, then turned to me, and I guessed from her expression that Ferius must have told her what had happened. ‘He saved my daughter.’

The gratitude in her smile was so pure, so genuine, that I don’t think she could possibly have understood that the other side of that coin was how obvious it was that she saw me not as a son, but as a kind of treasured servant. I had done my duty, which was to protect Shalla.