I was so tired and hurt and confused that his words almost made me giggle. The man who, minutes before, had screamed as if he’d watched a thousand devils descend upon the world, was now telling me that maybe things weren’t ‘quite as bad as they seem’.
Outside of stories, I didn’t really know much about the shadowblack, other than what any initiate is taught in his first year of training. Of the fundamental forms of magic, six can be safely wielded by a Jan’Tep mage: iron and ember, breath and blood, sand and silk. The seventh, shadow, cannot. It is the void, the emptiness. It is the absence of living magic and the place where only demonic energies thrive. No Jan’Tep would ever study or seek out its power any more than one would willingly contract the red plague or lung rot. The shadowblack was a terrible disease that only came to terrible people.
People like me.
I remembered back to what my parents had said about my grandmother. Could the disease be passed down from parent to child? Perhaps, like some conditions, it skipped a generation. Why me? I’ve never had enough magic to make a dent in the sand, and now this?
A darker thought entered my mind, like a silk spell, or a snake that slithered under the bedsheets while you slept. It should have been Shalla.
I tried to push the vile feeling away, wondering if, even now, the shadowblack was taking me over. None of the shadowblack mages in the stories were teenagers, I thought desperately. My grandmother had to have been old before it had taken her, so maybe I had years. Maybe I can still have a bit of a life before I become a monster.
‘It is a type of curse,’ my father said, jolting me back to the present.
‘It is a disease,’ my mother corrected.
My parents stared at each other for a moment. It seemed to be part of some longstanding debate between them. But it wasn’t theoretical for me. ‘Well? Which is it? What’s going to happen to me?’
My mother turned back to her instruments and passed a hand over a small brass brazier, carefully raising the forefinger of her right hand until the flame was at the exact height she desired.
‘Your mother is correct, in her way,’ my father said. ‘And I am right in mine.’ He sat down next to me on the settee – an unusually comforting sort of act for him that only made me more uncomfortable. ‘The shadowblack is a kind of disease, but one of magic, not nature. It was brought down on us as a final curse by the Mahdek after we defeated them in the last war between our peoples. It is their corrupting magic that gives it power over us.’
‘The Mahdek are supposed to be dead,’ I insisted. ‘All the masters say so.’ Except you saw a group of them in their demon masks just two days ago. ‘Could they really have come back?’
My father’s eyebrows rose in the centre of his forehead – a sign of despair I’d seen on plenty of people before, just never on Ke’heops. ‘I don’t know, Kellen. Better and truer mages than I have tried to purge this world of the last vestiges of Mahdek magic. If someone out there is trying to strengthen it …’ He let the words trail off. Then, because men like my father don’t shy away from the truth, he said, ‘Some of the greatest mages of my parents’ generation were lost to the shadowblack. It worked its way into their souls slowly but inexorably, twisting their hearts even as the black markings twisted along the lines of their skin. Once the demons took them, all the powers those great men and women had used to protect their people had been turned against us. We nearly lost the clan.’
‘Enough, Ke’heops,’ my mother said from her worktable. ‘Don’t scare the boy any further.’ She came back to us with a glass vial held between her hands. ‘There are a few records of mages who showed the signs of the shadowblack one day only to have it disappear the next, never to return.’
I reached up a hand and traced the black markings around my left eye, feeling my way from the cold sensation they brought to my fingertip. ‘It’s not fair. I only just broke my first band. How did I get cursed with a disease that strikes master mages?’
‘I don’t know,’ my father said.
I don’t know. Three words I’d never thought to hear him say. He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘But perhaps in that weakness lies our one hope, Kellen. If the shadowblack truly feeds on a mage’s magic, then the absence in you might prevent the disease from thriving.’
I tried to take some comfort from those words. Perhaps whatever had been weakening my magical ability could enable my mother and father to remove the shadowblack from me. Then maybe, just maybe, I could then build up my power and pass my tests. I hung on to that slim thread of hope the way a drowning man does the last shred of river grass he can reach. Please, all you gods of sun and sky, of sea and earth, please stop making my life so damned rotten.
‘Drink,’ my mother said, holding out the vial.
I looked inside. A blue-and-green mixture swirled around of its own volition. ‘What will it do to me?’ I asked.
My mother’s eyes narrowed even as she gave me a faint smile. ‘A lifetime of mastering medicinal spells and now I must answer to you?’ She reached out a hand and tousled my hair. ‘It’s to heal those horrible cuts and bruises, all of which will, I promise you, be a topic of further discussion once the present crisis is over.’
The fact that I was going to be in trouble later was oddly reassuring. Having to face a flogging and house arrest – hells, even having to become a Sha’Tep – didn’t seem so bad any more.
‘You’ll need to be strong, Kellen,’ my father said, rising to stand by my mother. ‘You’ll need to be brave.’
I looked up at my parents. They looked like the painted portraits of the heroic mages of our past, when our people were feared and admired throughout the civilised world. You need to be strong. You need to be brave. I took the vial and drank it down. ‘I can do that,’ I said.
Both the words and the potion made me feel a little better. I was still young, and the shadowblack marks had only just appeared. My mother was brilliant, my father one of the most powerful mages in our clan. I could tell just by looking at them that they had a plan to fix this. Things were going to be okay.
The first tear slid lazily down my mother’s cheek, and with a sleepy impulse I reached out as though I could wipe it away. My father’s eyes were dark, stricken but hard. I watched the world grow hazy and felt my head become far too heavy to hold up. That was when I knew that things weren’t going to be okay.
My mother had drugged me.
26
The Bands
I woke up screaming.
My body was slick with sweat, every part of me on fire. I had dreamed that I’d been strapped down on a table as vile Mahdek mages with black lacquer masks drove red-hot needles into my skin, burning the shadowblack into my face, down my shoulders and arms. I had awoken at the moment when they’d begun piercing the skin around my forearms.