The elders promise that visions will appear to the dying mage of those he loves best, and who love him in return. That too turned out to be something of an exaggeration. All I could see now was a burning ember that remained perfectly still. It’s the sun, I realised. When I’d hit the ground, my head had landed facing west, and now I was staring straight into the last light of the sun with unblinking eyes. That explains the burning sensation anyway.
On the positive side, the fact that I was aware of anything despite my heart’s not beating suggested that Osia’phest’s desperate spell might be doing something useful.
The amber light became a blur that slowly resolved into the sight of Shalla kneeling in front of me. Some of the pain in my eyes subsided. She’d had the presence of mind to realise I was going blind from staring into the light. As her face became clearer her expression settled into one of fear and sorrow and … something else. Disappointment. She killed me and she’s actually disappointed in me for dying.
I felt strangely calm. I suppose that made sense, since the symptoms of panic – pulse racing, rapid breathing, or profuse sweating – all required a beating heart.
The weary repetitions of Osia’phest’s exhausted voice shook me from my thoughts. The harder I tried to focus on his face, the less I could make anything out. Is it getting darker?
‘The preservation spell is fading,’ Panahsi said anxiously.
‘I cannot continue. We need the healers. Now.’ Osia’phest’s voice was hoarse and almost pitiful.
‘Use a blood sympathy spell!’ Panahsi demanded. ‘Make his heart beat again!’
‘I can’t,’ Osia’phest replied. ‘I’d have to link his heart to mine and I’m too old.’
‘You’re afraid!’
‘Of course I’m afraid, you fool. If I die now, the spell preserving him will disappear completely.’
Shalla finally spoke. ‘Then I’ll do it. Show me how!’
‘You cannot,’ he replied, his voice strained. ‘You … lack the training. I’ll not be … the one to tell your father that … that I …’
I heard a thump next to me.
‘Master Osia’phest?’ Shalla called out, her voice shrill.
‘The old fool has passed out,’ Panahsi said. ‘He couldn’t keep up the spell.’
Perfect, I thought. I’m surrounded by mages and no one’s going to save me.
Someone was crying now, their sobs sounding like raindrops falling down a deep well. Where’s that soothing music the elders promised? Where are all those voices praising my name?
I heard the thump-thump of boots coming towards me across the sand. ‘Out of the way, idiots,’ a woman’s voice growled. She made the last word sound like idgits. Her accent wasn’t Jan’Tep at all, but a thick drawl that made me want to giggle. ‘Y’all stay far back unless you want to spend the next week tryin’ to scratch your own damned skin off right through those fancy skirts of yours.’
Something light and powdery fell on my skin. I wondered if this was what snow felt like. At first it tingled, then it burned, and finally it itched so badly I began to fear that I would go mad.
‘Sorry, kid,’ the woman whispered close to my ear. ‘This ain’t gonna be much fun for you.’
The itching spread to my eyes and for a moment my vision cleared. I could see her now, kneeling over me. Her face was pretty but sharply angular, framed by long red hair with a single lock of white sticking out from under a frontiersman hat – the sort of thing I’d seen Daroman riders wear as they travelled their lands, following herds of cattle. We didn’t see many Daroman in the Jan’Tep territories these days. This particular one wore a soiled white shirt under a black leather waistcoat. She had something in her mouth – a stick with a flicker of red light that generated little billowing clouds of grey fog. A smoking reed? Who smokes in front of a sick person? And gods, why won’t this itching stop?
There was some kind of scuffle as Shalla tried to take control. ‘Who are you? Get that stuff off of him. He’s—’
‘Shove off, girly,’ the woman replied, easily pushing my sister away. She turned her attention back to me. ‘That itch you’re feeling is the powder making your nerves go wild. That idiot spell the old man was mumbling would have left you paralysed and brain damaged.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, ‘Not that all Jan’Tep aren’t at least a little brain damaged.’
‘He needs real magic, not some stupid frontier hedge medicine,’ Shalla insisted.
‘“Real magic”,’ the woman snorted. She turned her attention back to me. ‘I know it’s uncomfortable, kid, but if it makes you feel any better, this next part is really going to hurt.’
I felt something slam down onto my chest, as if I were being hammered into the ground. The woman’s hands were bunched into fists. She lifted them up, only to bring them crashing down on me again.
‘Stop that!’ Shalla screamed. ‘You’re killing him!’
I’m pretty sure you already took care of that, Shalla. On the other hand, I was going to end up a remarkably battered and bruised corpse if this kept up. Maybe I could turn this into a story the ancestors might like enough to let me through the gates. There I was, Your Godlinesses, lying on the ground, when a crazy woman started beating the hells out of me with her fists.
‘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.