Page 68 of Earthbound

‘We learned how to weave souls together,’ he said proudly.

‘What is the benefit of a binding?’

She had seen Afa the child, now here was Afa the teacher. ‘Bindings enhance the capability of your power. For example, on my own I could call on the fastest camel; bound with others, I could simply create the fastest camel.’

Lettle was horrified. ‘But the sacrifice…’

He nodded. ‘Was great.’ Not would be. He had done it.

‘So you bound to Hady?’

‘Yes, my first mistake.’

First? she thought. She had counted many more already.

‘The magic allowed for us to communicate within our mind, as well as amplify our spells, which I have said already. What I have not said is that Hady was fae.’

Lettle felt a thread of an answer unravel in her mind.

He paused and looked over to the waterfall. Tears began to swim in his eyes as he continued, ‘And the other thing you should know about Hady is that I loved her with more than my soul, more than my heart. If I was captivated by knowledge, I was equally captivated with Hady. She was everything to me.’

Again a pause. ‘What happened next?’ Lettle prompted, conscious of the ever-growing darkness around them.

‘We had heard of a tome in the fae court that had spells that we could add to our library. The fae queens were not willing to part with it. Our extraction failed, causing more commotion than we had anticipated.’

‘You say extraction, but what you mean is you attacked the fae court?’

He shrugged. ‘It was a small fire, that is all–but what are buildings in the face of our mission? Human language is as old as the earth, and it deserves to be in the hands of those who were blessed with it. The fae sent their army across the continent–they believed sorcerers an abomination, and they wished to rid the world of us. Though we had our magic, we had no army. The humans had no infrastructure to support it. I was the first leader to unite the hamlets in over seven hundred years. The most we had were farmers and scythes.’

‘Could you not have taught them your spells?’

A muscle twitched in Afa’s jaw. ‘There was no time for that. We had studied for years just to perfect the ones we did know. I could not in good conscience allow the human language to be improperly used.’

Lettle didn’t think he’d appreciate her pointing out the irony. He hoarded the knowledge he’d gained instead of giving it back to his people.

‘OK, so you had no army. And the fae, I assume, had a big one?’

‘Yes, the largest on the continent. We needed soldiers and we needed them swiftly. So we decided to create one, with the grace of the shadow deer, the strength of the mountain leopard and the speed of the snow fox.’

Lettle’s stomach began to churn with horror. ‘I’ve never heard of those animals before–are they native to this mountain range?’

Afa folded and refolded his hands in his lap. Then continued as though Lettle hadn’t asked the question at all. ‘Hady, Guso and I all sacrificed one of the animals as I wove the spell, hoping it was enough of a penance for the magic. But it was not.’ He looked at her with those mad eyes and said, ‘The reason you have not heard of those animals is that they all went extinct that day, and in their place the obeah came to be.’

‘You made them.’ Her hand tightened in Ajax’s fur. ‘You made them from a spell. That’s why you know they won’t hurt you.’

‘Come,’ he said–just one word–and all the obeah in the meadow rose up and went to him. They surrounded Lettle and Afa in a circle.

Ajax growled low but didn’t rise up in her defence as the obeah closed in. She realised now why he couldn’t; Afa’s power held him, too.

Lettle had never noticed how utterly terrifying obeah could be. Their powerful shoulders rippled as they prowled towards her. Their sharp horns glittered pearlescent in the fading fraedia light. Their teeth, which she’d only ever seen eat fruit, looked deadly as their jaws hung open, ready to bite.

An army of them was a frightening thing to behold.

‘Stop,’ he said, and the obeah lowered themselves to the ground. ‘I am both maker and destroyer. Now you see the extent of a human’s power.’ He looked proud again. Proud he had wiped three species off the earth. Lettle was sickened. If she wasn’t convinced by his insanity before, she was now. Afa had lost all sense of reason, all sense of morality.

What if he sacrificed it?

She had to look away as she asked, ‘And did you win? The war?’