Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(75)
The words came out before I could stop myself. ‘I’m glad my father killed her. She deserved to die.’
Mer’esan withdrew her hand. ‘The Seren’tia I knew was a wise woman, a mage of great skill and subtlety.’
‘Until she went insane.’
The dowager magus looked at me, her expression not so much disapproving as … sad. ‘We must make a choice, you and I. We must decide whether to hate the madwoman who tried to destroy you, or whether to believe that some part of your grandmother’s soul remained, and perhaps she understood something that we do not. Magic is neither good nor evil; it is how we use it that dictates its purpose.’
‘What purpose then? Why would my grandmother want me to have the shadowblack?’
‘Only time will tell, and only if you survive long enough to walk the path before you.’ She turned away from us and started walking deeper into the garden. ‘My path leads me elsewhere.’
‘Wait!’ I called out. ‘We have to stop the Sha’Tep conspirators! You have to help me –’
She paused, just for a moment. ‘I have given three hundred years to our people, Kellen, most of those spent bound in a spell cast by the man I loved, and who loved me. I have been chained by magic, and now I am sick of it, and of the past. The future belongs to you and to your generation. Only one task remains to me now.’
‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What could possibly be more important than the future of our people?’
‘I want to go for a walk in my garden,’ she said, and began walking towards the wide beds of flowers and vines, her hands outstretched, reaching for them. With every step, the spells shimmering beneath her silken garments flickered. Soon they began to fade, and the skin beneath the cloth, and the muscles and bones beneath the skin, crumbled in on themselves. Before she’d touched a single petal, the dowager magus had become dust.
33
The Mine
The entrance to the mines was marked by weather-worn pillars covered in an unpleasant grey moss that gave off an eerie glow in the darkness. I crouched behind a nearby tree, expecting palace guards to come chasing after us at any moment. The forest all around was silent for the most part, the notable exception being my laboured breathing.
Without any more of the lightning weed, and compounded by everything else I’d been through over the last few days, it was all I could do to keep up with the damned squirrel cat.
Reichis seemed less than impressed with my stamina. ‘Your people really can’t—’
‘Enough,’ I said, holding on to my knees as I bent over to catch my breath. ‘I get it. Humans are useless. Squirrel cats are the greatest hunters, trackers, runners, fighters … Did I miss anything? Poets, maybe?’
He gave a little snorting sound. ‘You know I can understand sarcasm, right?’
I kept expecting his mother to give him a well-deserved bite as she seemed prone to doing, but somewhere along the road she’d left us. No doubt to return to the rest of the pack.
I glanced back the way we’d come at a barn about thirty yards behind us. We’d made a quick search of it, finding it empty except for a mottled black-and-grey horse that I was pretty sure belonged to Ferius.
Okay. So if Ferius was in the mine, there was a good chance Shalla was too. Which meant all I had to do was sneak through what had to be miles of tunnels, find Ferius and Shalla, free them and get them back out without being seen. Easy.
I glanced down at my forearms, just in case the silk band had sparked so that I could use mind-clouding spells to mask our presence. It hadn’t. Of course it hadn’t, nor would it ever, now that my father had counter-banded me from ever wielding silk magic. Okay, so not easy.
I’d thought about trying to go for help, but Tennat and his brothers were still hunting me. Ra’fan would have me in a chain spell long before I reached the centre of town. Besides, even if I made it home, I’d no doubt end up strapped back down on that table with my father finishing the counter-banding. He wasn’t likely to pay any attention to my incoherent screams about how the dowager magus had revealed to me that our people had cravenly massacred the Mahdek and now somehow the Sha’Tep – who nobody believed were capable of so much as talking back to a mage – had somehow hatched a plot to weaken the magic of Jan’Tep children.
No wonder Reichis hated us so much. It turned out we were pretty rotten.
Which is why it might not be such a good idea to place my life in the hands … or paws rather … of a creature that despises anything that walks on two legs. ‘Do you really hate our kind?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t hate all humans,’ Reichis replied. ‘The Mahdek were pretty much the most peaceful types you’d ever meet. Your people, on the other hand?’ He gave a dismissive snort. ‘Basically giant walking turds that try to ruin everything around them.’
‘How would you know what the Mahdek were like? They all died before you were born.’
He tapped a paw against the side of his head. ‘Squirrel cats have excellent tribal memory.’
I started to object and then realised I was coming perilously close to entering into a debate with a creature who most likely greeted other members of his species by sniffing their backsides.
‘Enough talking,’ he growled, and took off at a run for the mine entrance. ‘Let’s go save the Argosi and make the world a better place by killing off a few Jan’Tep.’