Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(99)

I reached out a hand to help her reach the protection of the rocks, only to have her sink her teeth into my forearm. ‘Damn it!’ I swore. I was getting tired of being bitten.

‘Forgive me,’ she said in a mix of chitters and desperate gasps for air.

I can understand her, I realised. Maybe it was through breaking the skin, getting their saliva into your bloodstream, that the squirrel cats created whatever bond allowed communication with a human.

‘My name is Chitra,’ she said, and slunk a little closer to Reichis. I understood without her having to tell me that she was using her last moments of life so that she could die next to her son.

‘Well, Kellen?’ Ra’meth called out. ‘What do you think? Let’s do this: you kill your father for me, and I’ll kill Tennat for you. We both win, and the world will be a better place for it.’

Chitra gave a cough that sent blood dripping down her chin. ‘Humans …’ she said as she dragged herself a little closer, ‘… are something of a disappointment, at times.’

I reached out to her. ‘What can I do?’

She nuzzled my hand. ‘Take what I have to give.’

My hand came away bloody. ‘I … I don’t understand.’

‘The red powder,’ she said. ‘Mix my blood in it.’

I pulled the pouches out from my pockets and reached into the one with the red powder. ‘What will this do?’

Chitra ignored the question, instead collapsing next to Reichis. She extended a paw and placed it on his muzzle. ‘He will be so full of anger, this one. You must be his caution, as he will be your courage. You will teach him when to flee and he will teach you when to fight.’

‘I …’ What could I say to her? We were about to die, and Reichis could barely tolerate me. ‘I will,’ I said finally. ‘I promise.’

She gave a strange little cough, and more blood dripped from her mouth. It took me a moment to realise she’d laughed. ‘Perhaps you should have him teach you how to lie too. You don’t seem to be very good at it.’ The sides of her mouth pulled up a little bit, making a weary smile. ‘You must be firm negotiating with him. He will steal the rest from you, anyway.’

Reichis’s eyes blinked open for a moment, the little black orbs finally seeming to understand what he saw. He let out a moan then, so full of pain and sorrow it pulled me into it, drowning me. I had never known love, I realised then, and now could only watch as it slipped away.

‘Keep him from extortion and blackmail, if you can,’ Chitra went on, her chitters almost inaudible over the crackling of the flames around us. ‘He has many bad habits, this one.’ She lay her muzzle down on his. ‘But every once in a while he makes his mother so very proud.’

My hand wouldn’t stop shaking, even as I tried to mix her blood in with the red powder. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, blinded by the tears filling my eyes as I watched the life fade from her. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘The Mahdek believed that magic should be used to give voice to the spirits of the world,’ she said, barely a whisper now. ‘Let yours speak for me.’ Chitra let out one last sigh, in which everything that was left of her settled upon the dying earth. Inside the pouch at my side, the red powder glistened and smouldered with a heat that threatened to set it aflame.

A blast of fire lit the air above my head. ‘I don’t believe you’re taking my offer seriously, Kellen.’

‘No, really, I’m considering it,’ I said. I was lying of course, but so was Ra’meth. This was all a game for him – one last little piece to take from Ke’heops. When he killed my father, he wanted to be able to look down at him and say, ‘See? Your son betrayed you. He was willing to murder you in your own house in exchange for a room in mine.’

I looked down to where Reichis still lay on the ground next to his dead mother. His own breathing was shallow, his eyes flat as they looked up at me.

‘I suppose you’re right to refuse,’ Ra’meth called out, even though I hadn’t said anything. ‘An arrangement like ours would be unlikely to last.’ He sent a blast of flame that lit up the outcrop of rock where I hid. ‘Come then. Stand and face me one last time – one final act of courage before you die. When you enter the grey passage, stand tall before our ancestors and tell them you faced death without fear. This is the greatest gift I can give you, Kellen. A clean death. A Jan’Tep death.’

I reached my hands into the pouches, still feeling the stickiness of Chitra’s blood on the fingers of my right hand. ‘I’m coming,’ I said.

I rose, very slowly, and faced Ra’meth. He glowed with red, swirling magic all around him, an endless ocean cresting and crashing and cresting again. It was like watching a painting of one of the first lords magi come to life. He nodded to me, not unkindly. ‘Good. Good. It’s better this way. You weren’t meant for this world, Kellen. You were meant for—’

My hands came up into the air, the powders floating, glimmering for an instant in the light of Ra’meth’s own magic. I waited, for just an instant, letting the first sparks ignite as the grains of black and blood-red powder collided against each other, then I formed the somatic shapes with my hands and said the words, slowly and deliberately, wanting them to ring out into the night sky. ‘Carath Chitra.’