The First Champion

by Sandell Wall

  Lacrael ignored the pointing finger and stayed on the far side of the street. The other girls got to their feet. Lacrael quickened her stride.

  “Where ya going in such a hurry?” the oldest girl said. “Haven’t you forgotten something? Where’s your turd transport?”

  The other girls giggled cruelly at the older one’s joke. Lacrael was almost even with them now. A few more steps, and they would be at her back.

  “Here, take this with you!” the oldest girl said. “Have a care that you don’t drop it. It’s my most precious poop.”

  The girl tossed something underhanded at Lacrael. It sailed high into the air. Automatically, Lacrael’s gaze tilted upward to follow the object's arc. It was oblong and brown. With her attention on the first projectile, Lacrael never saw the second. Something slammed into the bottom half of her mask. Lacrael staggered back into the wall of the building behind her.

  Dazed, she sank to her knees in the street. Her face was on fire where her mask had been crushed into her jaw. In front of her, a fist-sized rock clattered to the cobblestones. The girls across the way howled in laughter.

  Furious at being duped by such a stupid trick, Lacrael tried to call on the fire that burned inside her. This reaction was instinctive, automatic. Even as she made the attempt, she knew it was futile. The fire had not answered her in months. It was still there; she could feel it. But it no longer responded to her summons.

  Lacrael climbed back to her feet. She steadied herself with a hand on the building she had crashed into. Her tormentors had already turned their attention to some other unfortunate soul. Lacrael took a few unsteady steps before finding her balance again. Once she did, she hurried around the corner and out of sight. She slipped a hand beneath her mask to touch her throbbing face. If Lacrael had not been wearing a mask, the stone would have broken her jaw.

  Loosing a fireball at her antagonizers would have been beyond foolish, but that did not stop Lacrael from fantasizing about it. The absence of her powers felt like the loss of a limb. Lacrael desperately missed the searing heat that used to fill her entire being. She longed to see the flames dance on her fingertips again. It had never dawned on her that she might someday lose the abilities given to her by the high king. Now that she had, Lacrael wanted them back.

  She made a silent plea to the high king as she walked. If he was still out there, still listening, let him see that Lacrael kept the faith. They had come too far for her to give up now.

  And having returned to Vaul, witnessing again the corruption that was consuming her home, Lacrael remembered the promises of her grandfather. Garlang had told her that when Abimelech was defeated, High King Rowen would restore Vaul to its original glory. He would banish the miasma and cleanse the world of the lifeless desert. Such a thing seemed impossible right now, but Garlang had believed in it, and that was enough for Lacrael.

  Lacrael reached the royal district without further incident. Here, the narrow streets gave way to a wide boulevard that circled the castle in the center. Along this boulevard, richly appointed apartments and mansions looked out over the city. As with every other part of Orcassus, the architecture was dominated by death. Fences were constructed with bone instead of wood or iron. Everywhere Lacrael looked, the eyeless sockets of skulls stared back at her. It did not look like a city—it looked like the inside of a mausoleum.

  Time was not on her side. The sun was setting fast. Lacrael walked around the circle, doing her best to blend in with the crowd of busy slaves. Here and there, she saw another forsaken wearing the same featureless mask as her. She could not help but wonder what the mark on their faces looked like. Were they permanently disfigured beneath their masks?

  Lacrael had almost walked completely around the castle and was starting to feel discouraged. Nothing out of the ordinary stood out to her, and she had no clue how to identify which building held the risen one and Sorrell.

  She was about to give up when she noticed that one of the apartments was being guarded by two tomb keepers. The two armored women stood in the street looking bored. At their feet, a waste pail waited to be collected.

  With nothing else to go on, Lacrael decided she had to try. If this did not work, or it was the wrong suite, she would have to come back tomorrow. Lacrael made straight for the two tomb keepers. They glanced at her as she approached, but that was the only consideration they gave her. Lacrael grabbed the handle of the bucket at their feet and joined the procession of other slaves hauling waste through the city.

  Lacrael took care not to look down into the pail. The sloshing sensation and the smell were enough to make her want to gag. To make it worse, someone had puked in the bucket. Lacrael breathed through her mouth to avoid losing her composure.

  She did not have to follow the crowd far. The slaves were making their way to the bridge that spanned the moat around the dark castle. Here, they walked out a few feet and tossed the refuse they carried into the abyss below. Lacrael followed their example. The contents of her pail hung in the air for a disgusting second before falling into the pit.

  Chore complete, Lacrael made her way back to the guarded apartment. Intuition told her she had one chance to get inside. These severe women did not realize that their pride made them predictable. The tomb keepers wrinkled their noses when Lacrael returned with the empty bucket. She held out the pail to one of the women.

  “I’m not touching that filthy thing,” the tomb keeper said with a scowl. “Take it back inside and put it where it belongs.”

  Lacrael ducked her head in obedience, and she smiled behind her mask. That went better than expected. She climbed the stairs to the apartment and pushed her way through the door. On the other side, she found another set of stairs and a second door. Certain that the tomb keepers would come looking for her if she tarried too long, Lacrael hurried into the suite.

  In the first room, Lacrael found a woman sitting in a high-backed seat. The woman glanced up at Lacrael’s entrance and then back down to the garment she was mending. At first, Lacrael did not recognize the woman. Her hair was arranged artfully around her head, and her face, although smudged, had been painted by someone with talent. And her neck was wrapped in a bandage.

  Lacrael was halfway across the room when she stopped to take a second look.

  “Sorrell?” Lacrael said in disbelief.

  Sorrell’s head snapped up.

  “It’s me, it’s Lacrael,” Lacrael said, moving near to Sorrell’s chair.

  She sat the empty bucket on the floor and slipped off her mask.

  Sorrell’s eyes went wide when she saw Lacrael’s face.

  “How did you find me?” Sorrell said. “What happened to your face?”

  Lacrael touched her swollen cheek and winced. It must look bad.

  “Don’t worry about this,” Lacrael said. “I’m fine. We knew you were taken to serve the ‘risen one.’ I just had to find where that was.”

  “Oh, yes,” Sorrell said.

  Sorrell’s countenance changed so drastically that Lacrael worried the other woman might be in pain. She could not recall ever seeing such anguish and hatred in Sorrell before.

  “Let me show you this risen one,” Sorrell said.

  At Sorrell’s beckoning, Lacrael followed her into one of the other rooms in the suite. Lacrael stepped through the door into a large, extravagant sleeping chamber. Sorrell moved to the bedside and clearly expected Lacrael to join her.

  Lacrael did so, and when she looked down at the sleeping occupant, she almost shouted in surprise. Stretched out to the full length of his long frame, a gaunt and bloodied Mazareem rested beneath pristine white sheets. Lacrael’s mind reeled.

  “Mazareem, here?” Lacrael hissed.

  Sorrell only nodded.

  “Why haven’t you killed him yet? Here, I have a knife.”

  Lacrael drew Elise’s dagger from beneath her forsaken robes.

  “No!” Sorrell said, hand raised to stay Lacrael’s blade. “If he dies here, I’ll be sacrificed in his place.”


  This was too much. Lacrael needed to sit down. She stumbled to the chair next to the bed and sat down hard.

  “I’m sorry,” was all Lacrael could think to say.

  “Me too,” Sorrell said.

  Lacrael scrubbed her face with her palms, careful to avoid her injured jaw. After a few deep breaths, she could think clearly again.

  “This certainly isn’t what I expected to find, but it doesn’t change anything,” Lacrael said. “I don’t have much time. Before I forget, if for some reason you need to find us, we’re on the fourth floor of the slavers’ quarter, sixth door on the right from the servants’ entrance. But that’s not what I came to tell you. We found a portal in the city. Once I make contact with Kaiser and Brant, we’re going to try and escape. All we’re missing is some sort of distraction to cover us.”

  Beside them, Mazareem stirred in the bed. They both glanced over to find him awake. His eyes were bright and shining.

  “I can help you,” Mazareem said.

  Chapter 36

  MAZAREEM WATCHED THE EFFECT his words had on the two women. He was not so far gone that he could not be amused at their expressions. While feigning sleep, he had listened to them whisper, and the beginnings of a plan had started to form in his mind. There might still be a way out of this.

  “I’d sooner cut out your heart than accept your aid,” Lacrael said.

  “I understand, really, I do,” Mazareem said. “But right now, it might be wise to set aside our differences for the time being, at least until we’re out of this decidedly inhospitable city. The enemy of my enemy, and all that.”

  “There’s nothing you can say or do that will change my mind,” Sorrell said.

  “Even if I can help save your child?” Mazareem said, eyebrows raised.

  Sorrell looked away, and Mazareem knew he had her.

  “You’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain,” Mazareem said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not in a position to be turning down any advantage, no matter how dubious the source.”

  Mazareem watched Lacrael grapple with this. She glanced at Sorrell and then back at him.

  “Assuming you could help us, and assuming we’d consider it, what do you want in return?” Lacrael asked. “And don’t tell me you’ve taken to charity on your deathbed.”

  “I want you to take me with you,” Mazareem said.

  Sorrell shook her head violently.

  “Out of the question,” Sorrell said. “That’s too much. I’m an idiot for even listening to you this far.”

  “Look at me,” Mazareem said. “One more torture session and I’ll be an invalid. Take me with you, and I’ll be at your mercy. Kill me once we’re free of this place if you like; I don’t care. I just don’t want to die here.”

  “What sort of fools do you think we are?” Lacrael said. “You’d never make such an offer if you didn’t have a way to survive.”

  “I won’t try to convince you otherwise. That’s a risk you’re going to have to take. You’ve no idea how hard this plan of yours is going to be to pull off. I don’t know how you’ve done it, but so far, you’ve remained beneath the notice of the Lady of Pain. If you start making ripples now, you’re going to attract her attention. And if you do that, you’ll very quickly find yourself stretched on the rack next to me. You’re in more danger than you know.”

  Lacrael cast a disparaging glance at Mazareem’s bandaged torso. “You’re as helpless as a cripple, there’s nothing you can do for us,” she said.

  “I know how you can bring Orcassus to its knees,” Mazareem said. “I know how to give you the distraction you need to escape.”

  “I don’t like this,” Sorrell said. “There’s no way we can trust anything he says.”

  Mazareem was growing impatient. He turned his eyes from Lacrael and stared at the ceiling. “She’s right, you know,” he said. “There’s no way you can trust me. You’d best get on with your little plan. I’ll do my best not to let my knowledge of it slip out when I’m next under the knife.”

  “I knew it!” Lacrael said, her anger almost causing her to shout. “You thrice cursed bastard, not even five minutes after offering to help and you try to blackmail us.”

  “Please, do forgive my rudeness, but I don’t have the energy to convince you to listen to me,” Mazareem said. “Neither of us has much time, and your hesitancy is wasting it for both of us.”

  Mazareem’s words were met with silence. He waited for Lacrael to consider them, waited for her to come to the conclusion that it was in her best interest to listen to what he had to say. Before she had appeared unbidden at his bedside, Mazareem had been prepared to die. But now that she was here, Lacrael represented a chance at survival, and Mazareem found himself grasping at that chance with every scrap of willpower he had left. Silently, he screamed at Lacrael to see reason.

  “Speak, if you must,” Lacrael finally said. “But if you make one more threat, I’ll slit your throat and walk out of here with Sorrell. The death of a ‘risen one’ might give us the cover we need.”

  “That would certainly rile the hornet’s nest,” Mazareem said. “However, you wouldn’t get far, and besides, I've got a better way. The miasma that surrounds Orcassus has two very important properties. It is both magical in nature and exceedingly combustible when exposed to an enchanted flame. Volatile, you might say. One good burst of your magus fire at the right spot, and you could start a chain reaction that would ignite the miasma. This is why they hunted you the first time, before you escaped through a portal. Use your fire on crystalized miasma, and it would quickly spread to engulf all of the Ravening.”

  Lacrael was shaking her head before Mazareem even finished. “That does us no good,” she said. “Our powers have been weak since entering Vaul. I couldn’t conjure the flame.”

  Mazareem blinked slowly as he digested this bit of information.

  “Weak, as in gone?” Mazareem asked.

  “No, not gone,” Lacrael said. “I can still summon enough heat to boil water with my hands.”

  “There’s nothing about Vaul that should inhibit you…” Mazareem said, his voice trailing off as his thoughts raced through the implications.

  “Tell that to your master,” Lacrael said. “He hunts the shrouded king through the spirit realm, and the nearer he comes to his prey, the greater the risk. Rowen is forced to hide himself, and in so doing, he diminishes our abilities as his champions. If our powers vanish completely, we’ll know the high king has fallen.”

  Her face was now hidden behind the mask she’d put back on, but Mazareem detected the sneer in her words. How strange to hear her speak Rowen’s name. And with such fervor. Mazareem was sorely tempted to tell Lacrael the truth about Rowen, to watch as her misplaced faith crumbled. But now was not the time. He needed her cooperation, and she would not believe him anyway.

  “All is not lost,” Mazareem said. “In a few days, I’ll be forced to undergo the rite of oblation. I don’t think I’m expected to survive. The nature of the ceremony will weaken the barriers that separate me from the spirit world. For a time, and at great risk to my soul, I might be able to search for Rowen on the other side. If he’s truly beset by Abimelech, my appearance should be enough of a surprise to give him a window of opportunity. He can restore your powers for long enough for you to ignite the miasma, and we can escape. The only catch is that you’ll have to be in position outside the city and ready to act the moment I make contact with Rowen.”

  Mazareem left out a great many important details, and he did not tell Lacrael the whole truth, but he had not outright lied. He was certain he could find Rowen in the spirit realm. What happened after that, Mazareem had no idea.

  “And then you expect us to fight through an army of tomb keepers to snatch you from the sacrificial altar?” Lacrael said.

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Mazareem said. He attempted a weak grin that felt more like a grimace. “I know you’ve been using a Dragonslayer trinket to navigate t
he portals between realms. That trick only works on portals the Dragonslayers themselves created. If you try to open the one you found in Orcassus the same way, you’re going to be in for an unpleasant surprise. You need me. I know how to open that portal.”

  The sound of heavy footsteps in the main room caused all of them to glance at the door.

  “You have to go,” Sorrell hissed to Lacrael.

  Lacrael turned her featureless gray mask back to Mazareem. He did not need to see her face; her indecision was written in her posture, in the way her fingers worried at the tatters of her robe.

  “You only have two days at most to decide,” Mazareem said. “You won’t find a better chance than my offer. I can get you out of here, all of you, and in one piece.”

  Thinking fast, Sorrell scooped up an armful of dirty bandages from the floor beside the bed. She dumped them into Lacrael’s hands and pushed her towards the door. Lacrael accepted the burden without speaking. Together, the two of them left the room, playing the role of dutiful servants. Lacrael looked over her shoulder at Mazareem one last time before she stepped through the door.

  Mazareem swore under his breath. She had been about to accept his terms; he was sure of it. He wished a pestilence of parasites on whoever had caused the untimely interruption. A shadow in the doorway told Mazareem he would not have to wait long to identify the offender.

  An armored tomb keeper stepped into the room, quickly followed by another. Mazareem squinted his eyes in the dim lighting. They were not regular tomb keepers, they were seplica. His heart thumped hard in his chest. He knew without asking that they were here to take him back to Morricant.

  The pair of grim-faced women did not speak. They drew near to Mazareem’s bedside, and with rough hands, pulled him to a sitting position and then out of the bed. He clenched his jaw in pain. Even the smallest movement caused fire to shoot through the wounds on his chest. They put their shoulders beneath his arms, and he hung between them, feet dragging on the floor. Supporting his weight, the seplica carried him from the room.

  The women were not gentle. Mazareem felt the gashes on his chest re-open as they jolted down the stairs to the street. His fresh bandages turned black as blood seeped into them. Outside, night had fallen. The seplica turned their feet towards the bridge that spanned the abyss surrounding the citadel.