‘Don’t,’ the leader said, the horns on his mask glinting in the light of my small fire as he came forward. ‘Bind him.’
Tusks shoved me back, hitting my head hard against the tree trunk a second time to stun me. At first I assumed they’d cast a binding spell on me, but instead the man unwound a length of rope from his waist and used it to tie me to the tree. It struck me as odd that none of these men had attempted to use a spell. I thought the Mahdek were supposed to be dark wizards. Focus, damn it! ‘Shalla!’ I shouted. ‘Wake up! You’ve got to wake up!’
The leader pushed Tusks out of the way and stood only inches away from me, as if he wanted me to see every inch of his hideous mask. ‘Scream all you want. She’s lost in her little spell, waiting for her darling power animal to come to her.’
‘My mother is scrying for us!’ I said. ‘My father will come for us when he—’
‘Of course they’re coming. Maybe they can even see us now.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Can you see me, mighty Ke’heops? Do you know what I’m going to do to your precious child? Come on. Send down a bolt of lightning to strike me!’ He turned back to me and laughed. ‘You see? Even if they are watching, they’re still too far away.’
‘Who are you? Why are you doing this?’ I said, my voice pleading.
Horns ignored me and went back into the trees for a moment, returning with a large brown sack in his hand. ‘Make sure he’s properly tied. He’s a slippery one.’ Tusks walked behind the tree and checked the ropes, tightening them even more and making me groan at the pain in my wrists.
‘He’s not going anywhere,’ Tusks said.
The leader nodded and reached into the sack. What was in there? I had visions of wickedly curved knives or vials of poison. The sack wriggled a bit and I thought, Snake – he’s brought a snake that’s going to bite me and fill my veins with its venom. But when the man’s hand came out of the sack it wasn’t holding a knife or poison or a snake. It was holding a small white animal, its patchy fur revealing red, oozing sores. Its eyes were wet and blurry as if it couldn’t see properly. It was a dog. A sick animal barely holding on to life.
The leader set the diseased animal down on the forest floor a little ways from Shalla and immediately it began to stumble slowly, awkwardly, painfully towards her. That was when I understood what they were going to do to my sister. That was when I really screamed.
16
The Creature
The more I shouted, the more I begged them to stop, the more the men in masks laughed at me.
‘Look at him,’ Tusks said as he wrapped a bandage around Third-Eye’s wrist where I’d slashed it with the metal card. ‘We’re not even doing anything to him and he’s still losing his little Jan’Tep mind.’
My eyes were focused on the sickly little dog that would take a step towards Shalla, pulled in by her magic, then stop and sit for a moment, licking at a wound on its paw.
‘It’s taking too long,’ Third-Eye complained. ‘Just pick up the damn pup and throw it at her.’
‘That’s not how the magic works, you fool. The dog has to answer the summons. It has to want to bond with her. She can’t refuse it, but the dog has to come to her.’
‘Get away!’ I shouted at the dog. Why wasn’t her own magic working? The defensive aspect of her summoning spell should have kept sick animals away.
The men laughed and Tusks said, ‘Shout all you want, boy. The puppy’s deaf – one of the many unfortunate symptoms of the disease we gave it.’ He turned to the other two. ‘I wonder if the girl will become deaf when she bonds with it. Won’t that be interesting to find out?’
‘Why are you hurting her?’ I cried.
‘We’re not hurting her,’ Horns replied. ‘She came seeking a familiar, and that’s what she’s going to get.’ He came over and put a gloved hand against my jaw. ‘They think so grandly of themselves, your clan, your family, don’t they? And she’s the worst of them all. So convinced she’s going to become the greatest mage of her people. And who knows? Maybe she could’ve been.’ He nodded to Tusks, who walked over to the dog and gave it a gentle push. It started ambling towards Shalla again. ‘But I’m betting once she’s bonded to this little thing she won’t be nearly so high and mighty any more.’
‘Please don’t do this,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late. Just take the dog back and we can talk. There must be something you want!’
Without warning, the back of his hand slapped me across the face. ‘I want to enjoy this. That’s what I want.’
Third-Eye laughed appreciatively. ‘These Jan’Tep. Take away their little magics and they become like lost babes in the woods.’
‘We’ve never done anything to you!’ I shouted, pulling against the rope that held my wrists. ‘The war between the Jan’Tep and the Mahdek happened three hundred years ago!’
‘Ah,’ the leader said, his voice almost a whisper, ‘but the effects of that war? They just keep going on and on, don’t they?’
The little dog, the poor creature drawn by Shalla’s power, was only inches away from her now, sniffing in the air as though it could smell her magic. Within moments it would touch her and the bonding would take place. It would be over for Shalla. She’d be weak and sick for her whole life.
I convinced Father to let you be my watcher. You’re going to protect me.
This was my fault. I was the watcher. I was supposed to keep this from happening. Damn you, spirits of our ancestors. Damn you all. How could you let me fail again? In hopeless agony I reached out with my will as I’d been doing before. If there was another animal nearby, maybe it could … I didn’t know what it could do, but I was desperate. All I could do was try. I concentrated again on the summoning. Te-me’en-ka. Te-me’en-ka.
‘It’s taking too long,’ Third-Eye said. ‘If the parents really were scrying, then they’ll be close now.’
‘Almost there now,’ Horns whispered. ‘Almost there.’
Despite my efforts to focus, I couldn’t help but open my eyes. The sick little dog was extending a scabby paw towards Shalla.
‘No,’ I said, pleading. ‘Please, no.’
Horns nodded. ‘Let it happen, Kellen, just let it—’
Before I could ask how the man knew my name, he was cut off by the sound of something in the branches high above us. I looked up, but whatever it was ran too fast for me to make out anything other than the briefest glimpses of brown fur. It ran along the branches on four legs and I guessed its body to be about two feet long. It was hard to be sure though, because the colour and lines of its coat were so much like the tree bark it seemed to melt into the branches.