‘You can do it,’ she insisted. ‘I know you can. You’re the son of Ke’heops! You’re my brother, not some Sha’Tep weakling. Prove it to them. Show them. Now!’
She reached out and suddenly I felt her fingers around my heart. Stop, I tried to say, but nothing came out. She was attacking me, just as fast and hard as Tennat had done. But this time I wouldn’t be able to trick her into defeating herself. I had to try to fight back with whatever real magic I had inside me. My left hand formed the somatic shape of the shield, four fingers curled closed in front of my chest and the thumb extended, as I tried in vain to draw on the power of the oasis. With the inks of the iron band flat and dead around my right forearm, I couldn’t summon enough. Spark, I commanded the tattooed bands. The coloured metallic inks briefly glinted in the sunlight, mocking me. Spark. You will light! I’m the son of the most powerful mage in the clan. I can do this. Spark, damn you. Spark!
The pain of Shalla’s attack continued unabated and I cried out. Even seeing me in agony didn’t lessen her will in the slightest. She was so sure that I was as powerful as any of them, that big enough stakes were all I needed to shake me from my weakness. ‘Find the stillness, Kellen,’ she murmured. ‘Let it flow.’
Despite how angry I was with her, I did try. I tried to be still the way the masters taught us, but all I could feel was the force of Shalla’s will crushing my heart. Oh ancestors, this is really starting to hurt now.
‘Come on, Kellen,’ Panahsi urged.
I poured everything I had into my shield – every shred of will I could muster and more. I pushed at my limits. I pushed beyond them, tearing through the barriers like parchment. The bands were still there, but I didn’t care any more. You want to see my will, sister? Well, here it is, you stupid, arrogant, mean-spirited wretch. Here’s all of me.
All at once, I felt the stillness, the emptiness. Is this what the masters go on about? The ‘deep silence of the mind’?
But the silence wasn’t in my mind – it was in my body. I had stopped breathing some time ago … why had I stopped breathing? The answer came to me as my knees buckled and I felt myself falling to the ground.
My little sister had just stopped my heart.
3
The Grey Passage
Among my people the space between life and death is called the grey passage. It is a shadowy place where every mage must one day await the three thunders that will summon him to the judgment of our ancestors.
This isn’t fair, I thought, watching the world tilt before me as I fell backwards like a blade of grass freshly cut by a gardener’s scythe. Bad enough that I was dying, but did it have to be in such a completely humiliating way, killed by my own sister? I hadn’t even turned sixteen years old. I’d never kissed a girl. In fact, I hadn’t done much of anything with my life yet. There would be no tales of grand accomplishments with which I could purchase my place in the afterworlds from our ancestors, the first mages.
I heard a loud thud, which I assumed was my back hitting the sandy ground of the oasis. I tried (somewhat heroically, from my perspective) to draw in breath. Nothing came.
I thought about lying to the ancestors – making up stories in which I’d fought fiery mages to the death or saved small animals from harm, but I suspected that deities were actually quite difficult to trick, and besides, lying hadn’t been working out that well for me lately.
The revered elders of my clan tell us that reincarnation is the penalty the gods levy for the sins of a life poorly lived, and the punishment is to come back somewhere lower on the ladder of life, as, say, a rat or maybe a small fern. But just as I hadn’t achieved anything yet, neither had I committed any great sins. So, as my body settled into the sand beneath me, I came to the inevitable conclusion that I was about to traverse the grey passage only to be sent back to start all over again as a somewhat sickly Jan’Tep initiate possessed of almost no magic. Please, please don’t let me die like this.
The elders would have chided me for such insolent thoughts and reminded me that the grey passage is a time of peace and warmth, when the dying mage hears the soothing sounds of music and the voices of those he admires most praising his name.
Me? I heard screaming.
It came from every different direction. Osia’phest was loudest. He bellowed for the other initiates to get out of the way and then launched into a spell which, if I heard it properly, had many of the same syllables as the one cooks use to keep food from spoiling. Osia’phest is a kind old man, but he isn’t exactly the most powerful mage you’ll ever meet. His voice was shrill and desperate, which is a bad way to start out since the high magic requires complete calm and perfect focus.
Get up, I told myself. Breathe. Osia’phest is going to end up preserving you like a dried apricot. Get up!
Panahsi was shouting too, calling out for someone to find one of the healers. I think he had even less faith in Osia’phest’s abilities than I did.
One voice was quiet and almost soothing. Nephenia was calling out to me. ‘Try to breathe, Kellen, just try to breathe.’ She repeated the phrase over and over as if she might persuade me through repetition.
Dearest Nephenia, you’re not doing me any good at all, I thought. Try a kiss, maybe that will get my heart started. At least it’ll give me something to tell the ancestors. I would’ve laughed at myself if I’d had the requisite bodily function to do so. Who knew that even dying couldn’t put a stop to teenage lust?
‘His skin’s going grey,’ someone said. That set off even more shouting.
In among all the noise, the one voice I didn’t hear was that of my sister Shalla, though I swear I could hear her breathing.
When we were children and shared a bedroom, I could always tell when Shalla was having nightmares. Her breath would go in and out in this peculiar pattern … fast and shallow, as if she were racing up a hill. Listening to it now gave me an absurd impulse to hold her hand and comfort her the way I did when we were kids – when neither of us had any magic and we would stay up late at night talking about how powerful we’d both be when we grew up. I liked her better in those days. She probably felt the same way about me.
How long has it been since my heart last beat? I wondered. A minute? Two minutes? How long can you survive without something pumping the blood through your veins? And if this is the grey passage, why does it seem to involve so much standing around, figuratively speaking?