Ankh focused only on placing one foot in front of the other, grabbing another rock ledge, sweating his task out in silence. It wasn't that he was unfit: far from it, as all Lanciars were, even ones of such dubious heritage as he. It was simply that he was decked out in full Lanciarial armour, stifling in the broiling heat of the Badlands of the Occident; and that, as the helots of Magia said, the view from Barrowmount wasn't worth the climb.
Still, Ankh surmised as he turned, his greaves crunching on the sandy, sun-baked gravel of the plateau that most reckoned as the tip of Barrowmount proper, the view from Barrowmount was something that had to be seen at least once in a life. An ocean of tan, wind-sculpted sand stretched as far as the eye could see, broken only by the occasional sand-blasted red rock spire, a few gatherings of blue canvas tents, inhabited by Shai Qadi nomads, and, to the east, on his left, the citadel of Magia: light grey walls made shining white by the glare of the sun and the contrast with the sands roundabout; tall circular towers appendiced to a sprawling keep, and surrounded by the mud huts and irrigated fields of the indigenous Farhighter population, all enclosed by the afore-mentioned curtain wall; and the glimmering lake of the Magia Oasis, the only remnant of the fertile, civilised plains that the Badlands had once been, before man-made infertility had desertified them. The people of Magia might have umber skin and speak Saliciri, but Magia belonged to the Duchy of Akar, and had these last three centuries, ever since the Shahanshah of Farhight had granted. No Farhighter – or any save a Lanciar – had seen the inside of Magia's walls since then: not since it had been made the stronghold of the Pontifexes: officially Akar's priesthood and mages' guild; unofficially, her dreaded secret police.
"Ankh." a rough voice called from behind him.
"Pontifex-Decanus Calstrade." Ankh turned stiffly to face his mentor: Ankh did everything stiffly. He had no sense of humour: it had died with his family.
"Stop daydreaming and come over here." Ankh suppressed a flash of anger: he hadn't been a minute looking. Anyway, it was foolish being angry. Most people were fools; Ankh wasn't.
Calstrade was certainly no fool: hugely tall, almost eight feet, and with a physique to match, there were some who said that the hulking giant with his heavy brows, brutish features and peerless intellect was not human. Certainly, with a name like Calstrade and an accent like he had, he was no Akarean. Ankh sat himself down on the proffered rock and turned to face the huge man.
"Tell me, Ankh," the Pontifex-Decanus, his soft, scholarly voice at odds with his appearance and the Pontifex's white brush on his helmet, "who are you?"
"I was born in Salicir to Farhighter parents. When I was three, we emigrated to Caragean. When I was seven, Kamarean paramilitaries murdered my parents and sister. My brother and I fled to Kallipolis, where my magical talent was recognised and I was ta – selected."
"That is not who you are." Ankh closed his eyes and berated himself. If he didn't pull himself together, he wouldn't pass this, the most important of his Pontifexial examinations.
"I am an apprentice Pontifex."
"Better. And why are you here?"
"Eh... to become a full Pontifex."
"Excellent. You have passed your first test... barely. You must remember to think outside the box, Ankh." Calstrade stood up. "As a Pontifex, you will face many trials and tribulations along the road of your life, some because you are a magic-user, some because you are Akarean, some merely because you are in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Am I a Pontifex now?" Ankh asked. If he had been anyone else, he would have sounded eager: because he was Ankh, he just sounded disinterested. Passion was for fools.
"You are not. You will now be confronted. Do not kill. Goodbye." And then Calstrade walked off. Ankh watched him go, feeling a bit foolish. What the hell was this?
It was about then that the man in the blue robes stepped out from behind a rock.
"Hello." Ankh whipped around – or did the closest thing he could to 'whipping around' in Lanciarial armour, which amounted to a kind of hasty shuffle. The blue-robed man in front of him was the kind of person you describe as 'nonchalant', 'lithe', and perhaps even 'clichéd' – he certainly would have made an excellent ninja, although Ankh wouldn't have known that.
"I am Janin, of the Sand's End Shai Qadi." he stated in a funny accent, exuding confidence from every pore. "The tall-man hired me to kill you." Calstrade? Why would he want to kill me?
"Well then, why are you sitting around talking about it? Would you perchance like a cup of tea before you chop off my head?" Ankh bit back acidly.
"Certainly not, it's too hot for tea. Anyway, the people of the Qadi – that's what Shai Qadi means, 'people of the Qadi', that's our name for the Badlands - "
Ankh lashed out with his sword.
Janin moved faster than Ankh would have thought possible. He flowed – metaphorically speaking – under Ankh's clumsy blade, pulling a wave-shaped scimitar from a sheath on his back -
A flash of metal. He was bleeding! Ankh was bleeding! He put a hand to his middle, pulling back a handful of blood and broken metal links. He stared at them disbelievingly.
Janin smashed his scimitar into Ankh's arm, no trace of his earlier delicacy evident. The dying man fell over like a dying castle, ponderous and metallic. The earth tilted sideways, the cruel sun waxing yellow as the sky aligned itself with his nose -
Crash. His lifeblood flowed out. His passionless had availed him none. Janin's fabric-bound boots planted themselves in front of his eyes, his swordpoint grounding itself, spinning off on some self-important soliloquy or other. Ankh wasn't listening. He was blee -
I can use magic. The revelation hit him like a carrack hitting a drowning man – definitely enough to see him safe home, but perhaps too much to grasp. Mind you, considering how fast that viper of a man had moved, and considering that his guts were on the verge of spilling out all over Barrowmount, it wasn't like he had a choice.
Calm. That was how he used magic. He calmed himself, letting Janin drone on...
...and he saw the world as it really was, each shape reduced to the mathematical graphs and equations which dictated its shape, and around each one, the mysterious, unknowable natural force that was magic. It ignored the green lines and cloying blackness, swarming instead to the lights of Ankh's sentient mind, and Ankh let it, letting floods of glowing particles through the gates of his consciousness until he was bursting with phosphorescence.
Now... He located Janin's mind, a pulsating light set in the graph of his being. Magic didn't work as fireballs or thunderclaps, oh no: magic was the oil that greased the universe, and it could only be used to affect existing objects in relatively minor ways.
However, Janin's mind glowed outside the universe, belonging in this realm of maths and magic. That, Ankh could affect in almost any way he wanted.
So he did.
Ankh opened his eyes to see the Shai Qadi's jet-black eyes staring glossily at him, devoid of expression and content – but not life. Calstrade had forbidden him to kill. What kind of bastard test was that? Ankh wheezed his way upright, holding his organs in with his hands – well, most of them. He could live without a kidney. Or whatever it was that had made that ugly squishing sound. Janin, viewed from above, was as helpless as a rag doll – Ankh gave him a kick, not out of malice, but rather to make sure the spell had worked. His mind was severed from his body, leaving the husk to wither here until the magical chains dissipated – if they did. Ankh had tried to make it temporary, but he had not tried very hard.
As it turned out, Decanus-Pontifex Calstrade was waiting for him, not far away, with the medical kit he said he had to take every time. Ankh was drugged into a stupor and, when he woke up, he was in Magia's infirmary, his midriff sewn up, and a small flame of elation burning inside him to match the strange light in the sky that had appeared outside the window. He was a Pontifex!
But that was not the end of the story.
Janin of the Sand's End Shai Qadi stared, the only option left to him with his mind shackled as it was. The pyramid-shaped rock in front of him had become his world, all he could see, that and the sand as the wind blew it into his unclosing eyes. He had had the Lanciar dead, damn it! It wasn't fair!
But I can make it so.
Janin of the Sand's End Shai Qadi listened with interest to the voice coming from the light in the sky.
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