Kingdom of Souls
THERE’S MAGIC IN HER BLOOD.Explosive fantasy set in a West African world of magic and legend, where one girl must sacrifice her life, year by year, to gain the power necessary to fight the mother she has never been good enough for.Perfect for fans of Sarah J Maas, Tomi Adeyemi and Black PantherTHERE’S MAGIC IN HER BLOOD.Arrah is a young woman from a long line of the most powerful witch doctors in the land. But she fails at magic, fails to call upon the ancestors and can't even cast the simplest curse.Shame and disappointment dog her.When strange premonitions befall her family and children in the kingdom begin to disappear, Arrah undergoes the dangerous and scorned process of selling years of her life for magic. This borrowed power reveals a nightmarish betrayal and a danger beyond what she could have imagined. Now Arrah must find a way to master magic, or at least buy it, in order to save herself and everything she holds dear.An explosive fantasy set in a West African world of magic and legend with a twist you will never see coming.Perfect for fans of Sarah J Maas, Tomi Adeyemi and Black Panther.
Читать Kingdom of Souls онлайн беплатно
KINGDOM OF SOULS
THE LAST WITCHDOCTOR
Rena Barron
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Rena Barron 2019
Jacket design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Jacket images © PeopleImages/Getty Images (woman)
Rena Barron asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008302238
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008302252
Version: 2019-07-26
To everyone who dares to dream,
dares to live their truths,
dares to stand against atrocities,
dares to say I am enough, this book is for you …
… and for my family.
Contents
Re’Mec, Orisha of Sun, Twin King
Koré, Orisha of Moon, Twin King
Fram, Orisha of Life and Death
Fram, Orisha of Life and Death
Re’Mec, Orisha of Sun, Twin King
For she will rise from the ashes alit in flames.
For no water will ever quell her pain.
For no redemption will befall her.
For we will never speak her name.
—Song of the Unnamed
Be still, Little Priestess.
My father kneels before me with a string of teeth threaded between his fingers. They shine like polished pearls, and I square my shoulders and stand a little taller to make him proud. The distant echo of the djembe drums drowns out his words, but it doesn’t tame the twinkle in his eyes as he drapes the teeth around my neck. Tonight I become a true daughter of Tribe Aatiri.
Magic of all colours flutters in the air as gentle as wingbeats. I can’t be still when it dances on my father’s dark skin like lightning bugs. It flits along his jaw and leaps onto his nose. My hand shoots out to catch an ember of gold, but it slips through my fingers. I giggle, and he laughs too.
Girls gossip as their mothers fix their kaftans and bone charms. For every one the magic touches, it skips two, like the rest of us are invisible. My chest tightens, watching it go to others when it’s never come to me – not even once.
The few girls who speak Tamaran ask me what it’s like living so far away in the Almighty Kingdom. They say that I am not a true Aatiri because my mother is not of the tribe. Something twinges in my belly, for there is truth in their words.
I hold my head high as my father straightens my collar. He’s the only man in the tent, and the other girls whisper about that too. I don’t care what they say; I’m glad he’s here. ‘Why doesn’t magic come to me, Father?’
The question comes out too loud, and silence falls upon the tent. The other girls and their mothers stare at me as if I’ve said something bad. ‘Don’t worry, daughter,’ he says, folding the sleeves of my orange-and-blue kaftan, which matches his own. ‘It will come in due time.’
‘But when?’ I stomp.
It isn’t fair that many of the Aatiri children younger than me have magic already. In Tamar, I’m the only one among my friends who can see magic at all, but here, it flocks to the other children and they can make it do things. I can’t.
‘Maybe never, little ewaya,’ says the oldest girl in accented Tamaran. She glares at me and I wrinkle my nose at her. I’m not a baby, and she’s wrong. It will come.
The girl’s mother clucks her tongue and fusses at her in Aatiri. Her words slide over my ears without meaning, like all the strange and beautiful languages in the markets back home.
‘Even if the magic never comes,’ my father says, ‘you’ll still be my Little Priestess.’
I poke my tongue out at the girl. That’ll teach her not to be so mean.
Another girl asks why my mother isn’t here. ‘She has more important things to do,’ I answer, remembering how my father had begged her to come.
