Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(8)
‘I’ll cast a binding spell on you if you don’t stop,’ Shalla threatened.
‘Little girl, you’re starting to bug me.’ The woman struck my chest a third time, then a fourth. Then she leaned forward and I felt something soft and wet on my lips. The sensation was strange and gentle. Was she kissing me? The gods have a strange sense of humour.
Apparently they don’t like being mocked, because a moment later the kissing stopped and the pounding resumed. It didn’t hurt as much as before though, and the itching had gone too. In fact, I really didn’t feel anything. This is it … I’m about to die.
The elders say that when you reach the end of the grey passage the thunder will strike three times to summon you for judgment. I heard that thunder.
The first time it sounded like a loud crack, followed by a sudden sharp pain in my left side. One of my ribs had broken.
The thunder struck again, this time as a loud boom coming from somewhere deep inside me. My heart had just given its first belligerent beat.
I’m alive, I realised, as my chest expanded in a sudden, agonising rush. I’m breathing! Absurdly, my next thought was to try to think of what I could say when I got up that would make me sound clever and brave. Then I heard the thunder strike its third and final blow – a roar so loud it threatened to shake the whole world apart and send us all tumbling away.
It wasn’t really thunder, of course, just as it hadn’t been the other times. What I’d heard just then was the voice of my father.
He sounded very, very angry.
The gods, it seemed, were ready to pass judgment.
4
The Thunder
What happened next came mostly in flashes – little sparks between the shadows that would envelop me on the journey from the city’s oasis back to my family home. It began with my father lifting me up from the ground and whispering in my ear.
‘Do not cry in front of them. If you must cry, hold it in a little while longer.’
A Jan’Tep must be strong, I told myself. I’m usually not much of a cryer anyway, never having seen any evidence that it does any good. But I was exhausted and frustrated and more than a little scared, so it took a surprising amount of self-control for me to say, ‘I’m not going to cry.’
My father gave me a small nod followed by the barest hint of a smile. I felt a warmth inside me that made me wonder if he’d just cast a fire spell, though of course there was no way he could have made the somatic forms while holding me in his arms.
Everyone in the oasis stood stiff and silent, except for Osia’phest, who still lay on the ground, though from the mumbling noises he made I presumed he was gradually regaining consciousness. Panahsi, Nephenia, Tennat and the rest of my fellow initiates just stared at us.
My father was a big man, over six feet tall with deep black hair – a sharp contrast to the blond colouring that both Shalla and I had inherited from our mother. He kept his moustache and short beard meticulously trimmed and exuded an air of imposing dignity wherever he went. He was strong in all the ways a Jan’Tep was supposed to be: physically, mentally and, above all, magically. Even Panahsi’s eyes reflected a kind of disbelief that I was really the son of someone as powerful as Ke’heops.
‘I can stand,’ I said to my father, embarrassed to appear so weak in front of the other initiates. He didn’t let go of me.
Shalla walked gingerly towards us. ‘Father, don’t be cross with—’
‘Be silent,’ he said, and my sister closed her mouth. I watched as my father scrutinised the scene in front of us, his eyes moving to each of the participants in turn. I knew he was reading them as easily as if he could unlock their minds, watching their reactions to his presence, sifting through furtive glances and shifting eyes. I could see him work through recent events by considering and cataloguing each person’s fear or guilt under his gaze. Then his face took on a slightly puzzled expression. I turned my head and saw him looking at the woman who’d saved my life.
‘You. What is your name?’ he asked.
She took a step closer as if to prove she wasn’t afraid of him. ‘Ferius Parfax,’ she said, and reached out a gloved hand to wipe something from my face. I saw grains of green and grey dust against the brown leather of her glove. ‘You’ll want to bathe him. That powder can start acting up again something fierce when it settles into the skin.’
My father barely let her finish the sentence before he said, ‘You will come with us now.’
Ferius Parfax, who, despite the single lock of white sticking out from the red tangle kept in check by her frontiersman hat, looked to be several years younger than my father, nonetheless put her hands on her hips and laughed out loud. ‘Now, see, I thought you Jan’Tep were supposed to know all the magic words.’
There was grumbling and sharp intakes of breath from my fellow initiates, the loudest coming from Shalla. No one spoke to Ke’heops that way, especially not some magic-less Daroman wanderer. I looked up at my father and saw his jaw tighten just a little, but then he said, ‘Forgive me. Would you please accompany us to my home? I have questions that may be important to my son’s recovery.’
Ferius looked at me and winked as if she’d just conjured a thunderstorm on a dry day. ‘Surely I will.’
I felt oddly compelled to contribute to the conversation, so I said, ‘My name is Kellen.’