I hadn’t expected a reply, but I felt an itch in the back of my mind and a moment later she spoke again. ‘I know you’re angry with us, Kellen. You have every right.’
I was beginning to understand how the magic worked. I wasn’t communicating directly with my mother, but these messages were more than just words scrawled on a page. The spell was made from a more complete collection of her thoughts, capturing a single moment in time during which my mother had bound up all her contemplations on a particular topic and infused them into the card.
A spectral tear slid down my mother’s cheek. ‘It broke my heart, what we did. We believed we were protecting you, protecting the world from what you might become. We had no idea how wrong our actions were.’
You should’ve known, I thought bitterly. A mother is supposed to protect her child, not ruin him.
I didn’t say any of it out loud though. I knew it wasn’t really Bene’maat standing there in front of me, yet still I couldn’t bear to say such hurtful things to my mother.
‘I thank you for your gracious missive,’ I said finally. ‘Are we done now? I have an important appointment in a jail cell. So unless you have some miracle cure for—’
Bene’maat’s arm extended, pointing now to a different card.
I replaced the one I was holding and picked up the nine of quills. The expression on my mother’s face changed to a look of determination, and arranged all around her were sketches and diagrams and pages upon pages of esoteric formulae. ‘Every day since you left, I’ve tried to find a way to undo the counter-banding. I’ve searched every book of lore in our sanctums, consulted with spellmasters across the territories. I read every scrap of parchment your father brought back from the Ebony Abbey, hoping to find among their knowledge of the shadowblack’s etheric planes the means to repair your connection to the high magics. At times I thought I might be close …’
She stopped, squeezing her fists in frustration. The image of her fluttered and faded.
The spell must require perfect focus to imprint the message on the card, I thought. Every time she lost her concentration, she’d had to stop and start a new one.
‘What do you mean, “close”?’ I asked. ‘Are you saying there might be a cure?’
A different card began to glow brighter than the others. The peddler of masks. I picked it up.
‘So much of what I’ve been told has turned out to be lies, Kellen. False promises. Supposed secret methods for inscribing new sigils that resulted in nothing more than temporary illusions.’
‘Then it’s hopeless?’
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of all the things I lost when I left my people, the one I knew I could never get back was my magic. I’d learned to live with that fact. With my one breath band, my blast powders, my castradazi coins, and all the other tricks I’d learned along the way, I sometimes even prided myself that I could outsmart my enemies without spells. But I still woke up in the middle of the night sometimes with every inch of my skin glistening with sweat, my fingers twitching through the dozens of somatic forms I’d practised thousands of times for spells I would never cast, so desperate for the taste of magic that no food or drink could satisfy me.
Like all my people, I was an addict. My addiction was inscribed in tattooed metallic inks around my forearms. I could never sate that desire. I doubted it would ever leave me.
The apparition of my mother gestured behind me, and I turned to see the thief of masks rising above the other cards, beckoning me to take it. When I did, her voice became a whisper.
‘There might be a way.’
I spun back around to see her, still standing where she’d been before. There was an uncertainty in her gaze though, as if she were afraid someone might burst into wherever she’d been when she’d created these messages for me.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
She looked as if she were struggling to get out the words without losing the concentration required to continue imprinting her thoughts onto the card. ‘Our people have been … wrong about magic, Kellen. So very wrong, and at costs we’re only now discovering. The fundamental forces are vastly more complex than we assumed and can be fashioned in ways we never imagined. There are traditions as old as our own, spread out across the cultures of this continent. Much of the knowledge has been lost even to their own peoples, but I’ve found traces of it within old songs and stories.’
No wonder she was having so much trouble holding the spell. To hear a Jan’Tep mage admit our people weren’t the only ones who could perform high magic was a kind of sacrilege that even I found troubling.
‘There is a place far from here where I believe I might acquire the means to rectify the crime your father and I committed against you, to give you back the chance to become a true mage of the Jan’Tep.’ The look of determination I’d seen in her so often as a child appeared in her features. ‘I swear to you, my son, there is no price I will not pay to buy back your future.’
I swallowed. My breathing was quick, my heart beating faster than it should. The prospect of what my mother was suggesting … But I’d travelled the long roads of this continent, seen and heard just about every kind of con game there was, performed half of them myself. Not everything is fake in this world, but nothing of value comes free.
I reached for the card depicting two figures exchanging goods as they stood beneath an open scroll. My people don’t use scrolls for spells or messages. We use them for contracts.
‘Come home,’ my mother said, her voice more a plea than an opening bid. ‘Come back to us. Your father is mage sovereign now. He has lifted the spell warrant against you.’
‘Too bad he didn’t mention that to the lord magus who just tried to kill me.’
The apparition of my mother gave no reply. She couldn’t, of course. She would’ve had no knowledge of this latest attempt on my life. Besides, it was a fair bet this guy had been hired by Daroman conspirators rather than my own people.
‘Come back to me,’ Bene’maat repeated. ‘Even if I fail to return your magic to you, still I can give you a home.’
Home. Such a strange word. I wasn’t sure I knew what it meant any more.
‘I’ve been scrying you when I could, though you’re very difficult to track,’ Bene’maat said. ‘Not spying on you, I promise, but I needed to see you sometimes, through a mother’s eyes and not through the recounting of your sister and others.’ In the haze behind her, pictures formed and faded, images of events in my life since I’d left my homeland. Scenes of violence, of pursuit, of me sitting alone after a fight looking far more miserable than even I remembered. ‘The brave face you put on for those around you, this trickster’s guise you’ve taken on, it’s not you, Kellen. You weren’t meant for this life. You aren’t happy.’
Happy? I’d spent the past three years facing every mage, mercenary or monster this continent had to offer. I’d survived them all. Saved a few decent people along the way. Wasn’t that enough? Was I supposed to be happy now too?
My mother’s fingers were outstretched, reaching towards me, a desperate hope in her eyes. ‘Come home, son.’
The card in my hand felt heavy. Clammy against my skin. I sank to the ground and before another could glow or rise or otherwise demand my attention, I shuffled them all together, fully breaking the circle and ending the spell. The cards became dull and flat once again, and the world around me came back to life.