Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(39)
I felt him working at the rope binding my hands behind the tree. ‘I know. Your mother saw them in the scrying. We should never have allowed this foolishness. I knew what Shalla was up to. I’d hoped you would have more sense than to help her in such an unwise endeavour.’
The rope gave way and my hands came free. I began rubbing at my wrists, trying to get feeling back into them. ‘Shalla told me she had permission. She said –’
My father came from around the tree and I saw the grave expression on his face. ‘Did you believe her?’
I found my eyes wandering down to the leaves on the forest floor. ‘I wanted to,’ I said.
‘A Jan’Tep can’t allow his desires to overcome his sense nor the needs of his family. A Jan’Tep must be …’ He stopped then, and after a moment let out a long breath. ‘Mahdek on the Path of Spirits, and with a nekhek servant. Ancestors above and below, these are dark signs.’
I looked over at the nekhek. I could see its sides rising and falling with shallow breaths as two men warily began to bind it with the rope that my father had removed from my arms. ‘I don’t understand. Those men were as scared of the creature as I was.’ I reached down and retrieved Ferius’s steel card from where Tusks had dropped it. ‘Weren’t the Mahdek supposed to be—’
My father cut me off. ‘Leave those men to your elders.’ He turned to the men binding the nekhek. ‘Make sure it can’t open its jaws. It will try to bite once it wakes, to infect us with its poison.’
My father started to walk away from me but I grabbed at his arm. He turned and looked at me with surprise. I don’t think I’d ever done that before. ‘The nek … the animal. I don’t think it was working for those men. I think it saved Shalla’s life.’
My father’s eyes narrowed. ‘Kellen, whatever you think you saw, whatever that demon creature was doing, it wasn’t trying to save Shalla. The nekhek is a creature of shadow and deceit. They were trained during the wars to chew poison weeds and bite Jan’Tep mages to paralyse their magic. They are our enemies as much as the Mahdek themselves.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘But we have one now, in part thanks to you, so this night has not all gone ill.’
‘I don’t understand. You’re going to kill it?’ Somehow the thought troubled me. Despite the stories I’d heard as a child, this animal had saved me from those men and Shalla from a fate that she would have considered worse than death.
My father shook his head. ‘Not yet. Where there is one nekhek there will be others, and that is the greater threat. We will cage the creature and use pain spells to break its spirit.’ He glanced over at where Shalla was being cared for by my mother. ‘It was clever of your sister to conceive of the means to use sympathy to bind the kin of another creature. We can use blood magic to draw other nekhek to this one so that we can kill them all before they become a threat.’
He walked over and lifted Shalla up in his arms. ‘It’s time to bring your sister home.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘That creature killed the diseased dog those men were using to infect Shalla. It saved her. How can you –’
He cut me off with a look. ‘You’ve had a shock. You were terrified of those men and you saw what some frightened part of you wanted to see. I don’t fault you for it, Kellen. But now you have to be a man and come to accept the things a man must do to protect his family. A Jan’tep must be strong.’ His expression changed a little, becoming … I couldn’t tell. Proud? ‘When the time comes, Kellen, I want you to be the one to put the blade in the monster’s heart.’
Before I could even think of an objection, the sound of wings flapping caught my attention. I looked up to see a bird slowing its descent as it flew towards us, moving with a heartbreaking grace and elegance. Without thinking, I reached a hand out to it, but the bird evaded me and landed on Shalla’s unconscious form. For just an instant, it blinked, its eyes turning from a dark brown to blue then to gold. It settled there, on my sister’s shoulder, as my mother and father looked at each other and smiled.
Shalla had found her falcon.
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.’