‘Your sister will be sick for some time, I’m afraid. She spent far too long in the mines. As for the Argosi and the nekhek, they were beginning to annoy me so I put them to sleep.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘But let’s talk about you. Brave and brilliant lad that you are, you tracked your filthy uncle and his co-conspirators to this place where you uncovered their nefarious plot.’
We neared the barn and he motioned for the mage in white to open the doors. ‘Alas, they captured you, and, Sha’Tep being rather vicious when given the chance, they …’ He paused, then looked to the other two mages. ‘Any recommendations?’
‘Fire, Lord Magus?’ the one in white suggested.
‘Ah, fire! Excellent.’
The mage in blue sent Shalla’s body floating into the barn, where it drifted down to the ground, followed by Ferius and then Reichis. ‘Do you know why the Sha’Tep love fire so much?’ Ra’meth asked as I floated past him. ‘It’s because it’s the closest they’ll ever come to wielding true magic. That’s why they locked you all in here and set fire to the barn.’
One of Ra’meth’s men presented him with an unlit torch. The lord magus closed his eyes, formed a set of somatic shapes and then spoke a single word. The torch ignited instantly. He made a second gesture and the flames were reduced to a red glow, perfectly controlled by Ra’meth’s will. ‘You probably haven’t learned the spell for thirstfire, have you?’ His man tossed the torch into the barn, where Ferius’s horse stood tethered to a post, already rearing and bucking in fear. ‘You can try putting it out if you like.’
They shut the door and I heard it being barred from the outside. I got to my feet and started pounding on it, screaming for them to let us out. Once Ra’meth unleashed the thirstfire, nothing would stop it until everything inside the barn was burnt to ashes.
‘What’s with all the shouting, kid?’ Reichis said. He took a few wobbling steps towards me. ‘Gods-damned Jan’Tep magic. Just give me a minute and I’ll rip that skinbag’s throat out.’
‘Remarkable,’ Ra’meth said, from the other side of the door. ‘The nekhek has already broken the sleep binding. Let’s see if he’s equally resistant to fire, shall we?’
‘The lords magi will find out what you did,’ I shouted, still banging on the thick wooden wall between us. ‘You’ll never become clan prince!’
‘Really? But I’m a hero, don’t you see? I’m the one who found you in the burning wreckage of this barn. Too late to save you, alas, far too late. In a rage, I risked my own life to enter the mines to confront the man who murdered you. Imagine my horror when I discovered the culprit was your own flesh and blood. In an act of righteous vengeance, I killed the traitors who had slaughtered you and your sister.’
‘My father will kill you for this,’ I yelled. ‘Unless my mother gets to you first!’
Ra’meth laughed, a soft, musical sound, neither angry nor fearful. ‘You are quite correct, Kellen. My whole life I’ve never been as strong as your father, or your mother for that matter.’
He went silent for several seconds. I kept expecting the torch to burst into unquenchable flame, but it remained with its tightly controlled crimson glow. Ra’meth, it seemed, wasn’t done tormenting me yet.
‘If I’m being completely honest,’ he said, ‘I’d come to believe that I would never dare set my magic against theirs. But then something remarkable happened. You, a weakling boy, mere weeks from being declared Sha’Tep, bested my own son Tennat. Not through any strength of yours, mind you, but by using his against him. That was when I saw my path to victory. I would defeat your father exactly as you defeated my son.’
‘Except that my father’s not an idiot,’ I shouted, looking around the barn for something I could use to prise open the door.
‘No? He just spent the last several days exhausting his magic in order to bind yours. He’s weak as a child now. I can almost see him sitting there, trying to rise, seeking to summon his strength, only now sensing what is to come. Ke’heops has used his own power against himself, and now I’m going to kill him. I have one small task ahead of me first, one last act of courage, a great gift for our people. Then I will go before the council and set before them all the ignominy of your house. I will lay such slander against your father, against your mother, that Ke’heops will choke on my words. He will call me a liar. When I challenge him to a duel, he will have no choice but to accept. In his weakened state, I will kill him this time.’
‘Why?’ I shouted at the heavy door of the barn. It made no sense. No amount of competition, of feuding, could justify the raw venom inside him. ‘How can you be this way?’
I thought he’d gone and that my question would go unanswered, but a few moments later I heard him speak again, his mouth close to the door, almost whispering. ‘My whole life I’ve watched as your father paraded himself like the paragon of Jan’Tep society. Always looking down on me. Always believing I was less than he was.’ There was a brief pause, and then he said, ‘You can’t imagine what that feels like.’
The torch burst back into flame.
41
The Barn
The first lick of flame slithered away from the torch and began climbing the barn’s southern wall. Reichis raced over and leaped onto my shoulder, his entire body thrumming with anger and fear. ‘Put it out! Quick! This entire place is catching fire!’
He needn’t have bothered pointing that out. I was already trying to extinguish the torch. I grabbed a half-full bucket next to the horses’ watering trough and threw it on the torch. As if in answer, the flames hissed and spat, but showed no sign of quenching.
The squirrel cat scrambled down to the ground, running a mad route between my legs. ‘It’s not going out! Why won’t it go out?’
‘It’s thirstfire,’ I shouted, refilling the bucket and dumping it out on the torch again. ‘It won’t go out by natural means.’ The flames were already spreading out across the walls. Within minutes the entire barn would be engulfed in flame.
‘Stamp it out, Kellen! We’re going to burn alive in here!’
‘It won’t do any good,’ I said. ‘Stepping on the flames will just set my clothes on fire.’
‘Then banish the spell! Do something.’
I envisioned my will taking dominion over the flame, and chanted the words old Osia’phest had taught us. When nothing happened, I reached further inside myself and re-doubled my efforts. As if in answer, the counter-banded ember sigils on my forearm seemed to tighten, to strangle the vessels underneath my skin. Spark, damn you. I refuse to die just because of some stupid tattoos.
There’s this hope you have, deep down, that when you most need it – in that instant where everything suddenly matters because now it’s life and death – you’ll be able to overcome whatever it is that’s held you back your whole life and find your true strength. That was how it worked in all the old stories: the young Jan’Tep mage, face to face with the demons who have been tormenting his village, finally casts the great spell of banishment that had eluded him for so long.