Again Ra’meth flinched, tensing the muscles of his right hand to draw more of the iron magic through his band. ‘Will you stop that? You’re giving me a headache.’
As my uncle tried to fight back against Ra’meth’s binding spell, I racked my brain to see some kind of way out of this. Shalla was still unconscious, Reichis had passed out on the floor and Ferius was as trapped as I was. My experience of life thus far led me not to expect people to miraculously come to save me, so all that was left was to try to talk my way out of this. ‘You’re not seeing the whole picture, Lord Magus,’ I began.
‘Oh, do shut up, boy.’ He made a twisting motion with the thumb and middle fingers of his left hand and suddenly I couldn’t speak.
Guess that leaves hoping for some kind of miracle. My people aren’t religious by nature, having left such superstitions behind generations ago. So probably no miracles either.
‘Don’t you dare silence him,’ Abydos said. ‘Or are you afraid of words now, you coward?’
‘You can be quiet too,’ Ra’meth replied, and cast the same spell on Abydos.
It’s incredibly difficult to keep multiple spells working at once, so I supposed one hope was that Ra’meth would over-extend himself and one of us could attack. He glanced around the room. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I need to figure out how it all happened.’
Ra’meth turned to the man who’d worn the one-eyed mask. ‘Right. You were doing something … unseemly to poor Shalla when, in a burst of desperation, she broke through the terrible drugs you gave her and hit you with a –’ he looked over at me – ‘lightning spell? Does that sound like something your sister might do? Never mind.’ He turned back to Paetep, the man who’d lost his wife in a cave-in. ‘Everyone likes a good lightning spell.’ With a snap of the thumb and little finger of both hands he sent a bolt of white-and-yellow light that struck the man through the chest.
Static crackled, accompanied by the smell of charred flesh. Paetep was dead.
Breaking through the silencing spell, Abydos unleashed a bellow of pure rage.
‘You really are a strong fellow,’ Ra’meth said, momentarily touching a hand to his brow. ‘Now, what’s next?’ He turned to Sephan. ‘Right. You, my fine and loyal servant, died during an act of sublime courage. Realising you’d done wrong by your house, you tried to stop Abydos from wreaking more havoc on our people. Alas, he strangled you.’
Ra’meth touched the fingers of both hands to his lips and then reached out with them. Sephan writhed, his body sliding slowly up the wall, legs shaking and jerking beneath him. Ra’meth closed his hands into fists and I heard a cracking sound as Sephan’s neck broke.
‘You bastard,’ Abydos said, once again defying the silencing spell. Once more he set himself against the invisible shackles of Ra’meth’s binding spell. With an inner strength I could scarcely fathom, he took a step forward.
‘Stop,’ Ra’meth commanded.
Abydos took a second step. ‘You shouldn’t have come here alone, Lord Magus.’ The air was practically shivering around him, as if the wind itself were trying to hold him still, but Abydos wouldn’t stop. ‘But what mage ever thinks he might need help to kill a Sha’Tep?’ A third step.
‘You will not come closer,’ Ra’meth said, pouring more of his will into the spell. He’d made a mistake though, by binding so many of us; he didn’t have the focus to cast defensive spells.
Step by step, inch by inch, Abydos pushed forward.
‘How is this possible?’ Ra’meth asked, struggling now. ‘You have no magic.’
‘No magic,’ Abydos repeated. Blood began to seep from the corners of his mouth, then his ears, and finally from his mouth. This was killing him, and yet he kept going, his arms now outstretched, reaching for Ra’meth’s throat. ‘Just a man. One Sha-Tep man who is tired of your coward’s magic.’
‘No!’ Ra’meth said, trying to move away even as my uncle’s hands wrapped around his neck.
Suddenly the shackles were gone, from all of us. The binding spells that had continued holding up the bodies of the dead men fell away, and they slumped to the ground. Now that I could move and speak again, I rushed to help Abydos.
My uncle’s eyes were now filled with blood and I knew he couldn’t see me, but as he squeezed the life from Ra’meth, he smiled. His face beamed with so much pride that he looked like the statue of an ancient hero come to life. That smile was still on his face as Ra’meth’s own eyes closed. It was still there too as a half-dozen knives, flying through the air like a flock of birds, struck Abydos in the back, lifted him in the air and carried him away from Ra’meth.
I shouted my uncle’s name and tried to run to him, but a new binding spell was upon me. For a moment he hung suspended. His eyes blinked away the blood. He turned his head to me and said, ‘If I’d had a son …’
I tried to reach for him but my limbs wouldn’t respond. All I could do was watch in horror as the blades slipped out of Abydos’s body and he fell to the ground, eyes staring up at the ceiling. One by one the knives drove down, impaling each of his hands, his feet and finally his chest.
I screamed then, and kept screaming even after a silencing spell prevented any sound from escaping my lips.
For most of my life I had thought my uncle a simple, contented servant, then a vicious traitor to our people. Only in the final seconds of his life had I seen him for the complicated, indomitable man he really was.
A man in blue robes entered the room, ahead of another mage in white. ‘Are you injured, Lord Magus?’ he asked.
Ra’meth rose to his feet, his hand rubbing at his neck. ‘A little bruised, but wiser for it.’ He looked down at my uncle’s broken body. ‘You were right, Abydos. It would have been terribly arrogant for me to come here alone.’
40
Floating
I was floating in the air, my body slowly drifting through the winding tunnels of the mine like a twig caught in the current of a slow-moving stream. I lifted my head and looked behind me to see Ferius, Shalla and Reichis all floating along with me, but they appeared to be asleep. It felt so much like flying that I wondered if I might be sleeping too, until I heard the mage in blue ask, ‘Where would you like them, Lord Magus?’
I turned my head and saw Ra’meth leading us outside. He pointed to a barn down the path. ‘In there should do nicely.’ He looked over at me and nodded. ‘Ah, good. Let’s finish our story, shall we?’
‘What have you done to the others?’