Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(72)

We sat across the table from each other. She shuffled the deck and dealt each of us thirteen cards, face up, laid out across two rows. Somehow every one of her cards featured scenes with figures bearing seven-pointed stars. Whether through guile or magic, she had given herself the entire suit of spells – the suit of the Jan’Tep.

I looked down at my cards. Each of the figures painted on their surface carried or wore a number of black leaves. So I’m to play the Mahdek.

Mer’esan fanned out the rest of the deck into three circles. The largest she placed at the centre of the table between us, face down so that the backs of the cards showed. ‘The oasis,’ she said, then laid down two smaller circles of cards, one on the right and the other on the left.

It took me a moment to figure out what they represented. ‘Duelling circles?’

She nodded and placed one of her cards inside her circle, face up, showing a young woman with outstretched hands above which floated seven septagrams. ‘Your turn,’ she said.

I was about to reach for one of my cards when I suddenly understood what this was. ‘You’re … enacting the duels from the final war between the Jan’Tep and the Mahdek. But why?’

‘It is only a game,’ she replied. ‘Now make your choice.’

The last war had taken place nearly three centuries ago, when Mer’esan would have been a young woman. We had nearly been wiped out in that conflict. The Mahdek had used the magic of shadow – of the void – to unleash demons, attacking Jan’Tep children in their sleep so as to distract even our most powerful mages. My ancestors had fought back, drawing on the other six fundamental forms of magic: iron and ember, sand and silk, breath and blood.

Not knowing the rules, I made the simplest choice I could. I selected one of my cards. It was named ‘The Warden of Leaves’ and showed an archer shooting eight arrows into the air, the fletching of each one made from a black leaf. I placed it inside my circle.

‘Wrong!’ Mer’esan declared, and took my card away.

‘I don’t understand. My card was an eight of leaves and yours only a seven of spells. Shouldn’t mine—’

‘This card cannot defend itself,’ she said. ‘It is in grief.’

‘In grief? What does that mean?’

She pointed to the two rows of cards laid out in front of me. Two of them had somehow ended up face down. ‘Those cards are taken. They bind your warden of leaves in grief.’

I looked under the two cards. They were both low numbers, a two and a three. Each of them depicted a child.

‘Now choose your next attacker,’ Mer’esan commanded.

Confused and shaken, I placed another face card, this one was a nine – the shaman of leaves.

‘No!’ Mer’esan said, and took that one away too.

‘Let me guess, it’s “in grief” too?’

Her eyes blazed angrily. ‘Yes.’

I glanced back down at my remaining cards and saw another had been flipped over without my noticing, this one a five. ‘This is wrong,’ I said, finally understanding her intent. ‘The Mahdek attacked our families, not the other way around. They were the ones who—’

‘Play the game!’

Frustrated, I took three of my cards at once, including the highest numbered card, the speaker of leaves, and placed them in my circle.

‘Grief.’ Mer’esan ripped the card from the circle and tossed it into a growing discard pile next to her. She grabbed the second and the third. ‘Grief and more grief. You cannot win this way.’

My circle was empty again. Moreover, almost all the cards on my side of the table had somehow been flipped over, like rows of corpses strewn across a battlefield. ‘This isn’t what happened! The Jan’Tep duelled the Mahdek demon summoners, not their children.’ I rose from my seat. ‘Why are you lying to me?’

Mer’esan wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘The game isn’t done yet.’

‘Then what is my move?’ I demanded. ‘Every time I try to play a card you tell me it can’t fight back!’

‘You have no cards left to play,’ she replied. ‘All you can do now is watch.’

Reluctantly I took my seat. Mer’esan placed one of her cards, the clan prince of spells, inside the oasis. Her hands were shaking, and I couldn’t tell if this was because she was fighting the mind chain or from some deeper agony that came with the memories.

She reached a fingernail under one of the cards making up the fanned-out circle of the oasis and turned it over, sending all the other cards flipping over in sequence until at last they were all face up. Every one of them was a septagram. The oasis had been taken by the Jan’Tep. ‘You are defeated,’ she said.

‘I don’t understand. What spell did the clan prince cast?’

‘The only spell that matters. The one that lets you win the game.’

I followed her gaze to the Mahdek cards laid out in front of me. They were all face up as well. Each of the leaves depicting their suit was now blood red in colour.

‘This makes no sense,’ I insisted. It makes perfect sense. You just don’t want to believe it. My people lived in beautiful cities, but had no great architects. Our magic came from the oases in the centre of those cities, yet we did not have the means to create new ones. Always we told ourselves it was our great ancestors who had devised these things for us and that our duty was to protect them from being taken away by our enemies.