The First Champion

by Sandell Wall

  At last, when Mazareem thought he could take no more, they arrived at a small room deep in the bowels of the castle. The tomb keepers deposited Mazareem on a low bed and immediately left the room. They ignored Sorrell, who took a seat in the single wooden chair.

  Mazareem sat upright, his spine as straight as he could make it. Slowly, mercifully, the sensation of burning needles stabbing into his back faded away. He slumped over on the bed to lie on his side. Sorrell probably wanted an explanation of what just happened. He intended to explain it to her, but first, Mazareem wanted to close his eyes for a moment.

  The sound of the door slamming open caused Mazareem’s eyes to fly open. It seemed like he had just shut them, but he realized he must have slept. Dezerath swaggered into the room. She had donned a richly embroidered red cape.

  Sorrell abandoned the chair and threw herself to the floor at the foot of Mazareem’s bed. Dezerath nodded to herself, pleased by Sorrell’s act of submission. The venerator spun the chair to face Mazareem and sat down. She struck a dashing figure with her crimson cloak and embossed armor.

  “If I’d known what she was doing to you, I’d have acted sooner,” Dezerath said. “Terro told us you were a guest of Morricant as a matter of respect. She said nothing of torture. But that is only more evidence of her lies. Terro was in league with the empress, adopting policies beneficial to her own personal goals and not those of House Gorvan. I tried to reason with her, but she dismissed my concerns out of hand. So I introduced her to the method we use to deal with traitors out on the fringes of the empire.”

  Dezerath smirked, the self-satisfied expression reminding Mazareem of a petulant child.

  “Morricant will come for you,” Dezerath said. “And when she does, we’ll be ready. Not even the mighty seplica can roust us from this fortress. If they want a fight, we’ll wash the streets with their blood. With the risen one at my side, who’s to say I couldn’t sit on the throne?”

  “After this, none would dare,” Mazareem said. He decided to feed her delusion. Trying to convince her that she had made a terrible mistake would be hopeless.

  Dezerath’s eyes flashed at Mazareem’s words. She leaned forward, full of eagerness and naked ambition. “You see the future?” she said. “Can you prophesy my victory?”

  “The future is not yet written,” Mazareem said. “But your star is ascendant. Go forth and claim your destiny.”

  “I knew it,” Dezerath said. “I knew I was meant for greatness.”

  Lost in visions of her own grandeur, Dezerath jumped to her feet and rushed to the door. She paused just long enough to speak over her shoulder.

  “Rest, risen one,” Dezerath said. “I’ll have food sent within the hour.”

  Mazareem stared at the door for a long time after Dezerath departed. Sorrell waited until she was certain they would be left alone for a while before returning to sit in the chair. Mazareem turned his weary gaze on her.

  “That woman is the most dangerous sort of idiot,” Mazareem said. “She’s a fool who doesn’t know her own limitations. That makes her unpredictable. Unfortunately, that’s a lesson her late superior learned too late. She’s lived a charmed existence up to this point, but I don’t think she’ll survive this debacle.”

  “What’s going to happen to us?” Sorrell said.

  “Morricant won’t let this stand. I’d guess we have a day at most before her seplica storm this place and erase House Gorvan from existence. As long as we stay out of the way while that happens, we might survive the slaughter.”

  Sorrell shuddered and hugged herself. Mazareem closed his eyes. What he had told Sorrell was not quite a lie. He did not think Morricant would kill him, and by proxy, Sorrell. But fury often overrode reason, and Morricant might decide that Mazareem had outlived his usefulness.

  Mazareem silently cursed himself. He should have killed Dezerath in the canyon when he had the chance. Her insanity might have doomed them all.

  Chapter 40

  SORRELL BATTLED HARD AGAINST the terror that gripped her. An overpowering sensation of helplessness and despair threatened to rob her of the strength to keep fighting. She was locked up with the murderer of her child’s father, waiting to see if they would live or die at the hand of a vengeful empress. Sorrell’s fatigued mind was having a hard time accepting that all of this was real. It seemed like a bad dream. Any moment, she might wake up back in Coriddia with a bright future ahead of her.

  But the nightmare persisted, and deep in her gut, Sorrell knew there was no going back. Her heart felt empty. Grief had hollowed her out, and to her shame, she had no more tears to shed. This felt like a betrayal of Stone’s memory, but in her numbed state, Sorrell found the courage to ask the question that had haunted her since first finding Mazareem.

  “What were his last words?” Sorrell said.

  Mazareem cracked a single, blood-shot eye. He regarded her for a moment before responding.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific,” Mazareem said. “I’ve collected as many souls as the keeper of the underworld himself.”

  Sorrell hesitated. It was unlike Mazareem to not know what she was speaking about. She took this as a sign that he was in a great deal of pain. That, or he was being cruel and wanted her to speak Stone’s name.

  “You know who I mean,” Sorrell said. “What did Stone say when you killed him?”

  Mazareem closed his eye. Sorrell imagined him looking back through his memories at Stone’s final moments.

  “He died with your name on his lips,” Mazareem said. “He called for you, over and over.”

  Sorrell trembled. Her hands shook and her lips quivered as if she were a frail old woman, but it was not weakness that set her shaking. A terrible determination gripped her. Before being captured by House Gorvan, Sorrell had held out a tenuous hope that she might get out of this alive. But she realized now that hope was dead. She would die here, and her child would perish with her.

  Before that happened, Mazareem had to die. Sorrell would end his miserable life and accept the consequences. At least she could leave this world on her own terms. Her unsteady hand reached for the needle hidden in the folds of her dress. When her fingers closed around the cold metal sliver, the trembling stopped.

  Mazareem opened his eyes at the sound of Sorrell’s dress swishing against the floor. She knelt next to his bed. He saw the needle. To her frustration, she saw no fear or surprise in his gaze.

  “Do it,” Mazareem rasped. “Release me from this prison. Perhaps in death, I’ll find freedom at last.”

  Sorrell’s hand moved with a will of its own. She raised the needle, pausing with the point poised a few inches above the pale flesh of Mazareem’s neck. The wound on her throat throbbed as she imagined inflicting an identical injury.

  It would be so easy. One swift stab, and Mazareem’s black blood would flow. Sorrell tensed her muscles in preparation for the killing strike, but just before she slammed the needle home, her stomach fluttered. Sorrell paused at the bizarre sensation. It was like nothing she had ever felt before.

  Her insides turned over again, this time stronger than before, and Sorrell realized she was feeling the baby move. She rocked back on her heels. Mazareem watched her face, watched the killing needle draw back from his skin.

  Sorrell’s resolve wavered. To slay Mazareem in his bed was to doom her child to certain death. Could she pay that terrible price? Better to make certain he died while he was under her hand. Stone would have understood. But as Sorrell considered this, an image of her child popped into her mind. She saw a boy with his father’s earnest face and unruly brown hair. Of course, it would be a boy.

  “The child complicates things,” Mazareem said.

  “The abyss take your rotten heart,” Sorrell said through clenched teeth. “I hate you. I hate the very air that you breathe. You taint everything you touch. Stone was a beacon of light in a savage, loveless world, and you cut him down without a second thought.”

  “He was only one of many,” Ma
zareem said. His voice trailed off as if he was falling asleep.

  Sorrell returned to the chair. She could not do it. She could not bring herself to knowingly put the child she carried at greater risk than it already was. Reluctant to discard the needle, Sorrell slipped it back into its hiding place in her dress. The child moved again, and despite herself, Sorrell smiled.

  With both hands flat on her belly, Sorrell rocked gently back and forth in the chair. This was the first time she had actually felt physically connected to the baby. Before, it had only been an idea, but now, it was real, tangible in a way that she could not describe. This realization filled Sorrell with a sense of wonder. If she survived to give birth, she was going to be a mother.

  “I’d hold back the weight of the ocean for you if I could,” Sorrell whispered. “If there’s a way to keep you safe, I’ll find it.”

  Chapter 41

  LACRAEL’S FEET THROBBED. IN the past three days, she had hiked all over Orcassus. Her flimsy leather sandals—the only footwear a forsaken was allowed to wear—provided nothing in the way of support. What she would not give for her old pair of boots. She had left them behind in Sadreed’s village, and Lacrael hoped they were being put to good use.

  After leaving Kaiser in the fighters’ encampment, Lacrael had explored the city on her own for a few hours. She wanted to familiarize herself with the twisting, narrow streets, and she also wanted time to herself to think. Circumstances had forced them forward with only the most tenuous of plans. While she wandered, Lacrael worked through each step of the plan, searching for weaknesses and trying to find alternatives.

  No matter which angle Lacrael assessed the scheme from, everything hinged on Mazareem. In her mind, this was completely unacceptable, but she could find no way around it. Without Mazareem, they had no way of creating a distraction big enough to cover their escape. And if he spoke the truth, they would not even be able to activate the portal without his help.

  Mazareem would undergo the ceremony he called the “rite of oblation,” and during this ritual, he would search the spirit realm for High King Rowen. If successful, Mazareem would help Rowen overcome the barriers that prevented him from exercising his full powers in Vaul. This would restore Lacrael’s magus fire, which she could use to ignite the miasma outside the city.

  Lacrael shook her head in consternation. Assuming all of that worked, and that was a big assumption, it took for granted the fact that she needed to be in place and ready the instant her powers returned. Kaiser’s bronze door in the wall of the encampment offered an avenue outside, but how was Lacrael supposed to open it undetected and without help?

  Like every step of the plan thus far, it seemed impossible. The only way Lacrael saw that it might work was if she traded her current disguise for a different one. If she somehow donned a tomb keeper’s armor, she would be able to navigate the city unobstructed. As long as she was not challenged by another tomb keeper, this would give Lacrael the freedom to enter the fighters’ encampment and order the bronze door opened. But where would she get a tomb keeper’s armor?

  And even if Lacrael set the miasma on fire, they still had to collect everyone and fight through the city to the portal to escape. The longer she contemplated the chain of events that must take place for them to flee Orcassus, the heavier Lacrael’s heart felt. She did not want to discourage the others, and she saw no better alternative, but if she was honest with herself, Lacrael did not hold out much hope for success.

  Disheartened by this conclusion, Lacrael turned her feet towards the slave quarter of the city. She was tired and hungry. Even though they did not have much time to spare, she still needed to rest. Maybe a few hours of sleep would give her a fresh perspective.

  Like every other enclave in Orcassus, the slave quarter was separated from the city proper by a wall. Fortifications within the borders of the city walls seemed strange to Lacrael, but she had seen them everywhere in her explorations. It was almost as if the people that lived here were protecting themselves from attacks that came from within, from their own neighbors.

  Lacrael passed through the wide gate and into the slave quarter. The guards paid her no notice. She was merely another forsaken slave running an errand for her master. Inside the high walls, the slavers’ compound was a single massive building. Four stories high and constructed from the same stone blocks as the rest of the city, it reminded Lacrael of the military armories she had seen in Coriddia.

  One of the wealthiest and most prestigious factions in the city, the slavers had decorated their enclave with rich banners that hung between the windows on the building. According to Niad, each banner bore the crest of a house involved in the slave trade. Lacrael recognized only one, the black diamond on a red background of House Riggor. There were no cages here. Any slaver that arrived in Orcassus came to sell. No one purchased slaves here to take back out into the empire.

  As a forsaken, Lacrael was not allowed to use the main entrance. She circled the building until she reached a small door set back in an alcove in the stone. It was almost hidden from sight. Lacrael pushed through this doorway and climbed the cramped stair up to the level where Niad’s room was.

  Eager for privacy where she could remove her stifling mask and robe, Lacrael hurried along the floor of dark, polished wood. She passed door after door, each one a portal into temporary quarters for visiting slavers. Niad’s room was marked with a symbol that Lacrael had committed to memory, and she soon saw it three doors down the hallway in front of her.

  Lacrael had almost reached the room when an inhuman wail shattered the stillness of the quiet corridor. The horrible sound was so shocking that Lacrael leapt to the nearest wall and pressed herself up against it. She looked up and down the hall but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Her heart pounded in her chest.

  The terrible voice screamed again. This time, it was quickly muted. Lacrael pinpointed the source of the noise, and to her surprise and mounting dread, it was coming from Niad’s room. She detached herself from the wall and ran the rest of the way to the door.

  Hand on the dagger beneath her robe, Lacrael threw the door open and lunged inside. What she found caused her to stumble to a halt in confusion. Gustavus was propped up against the wall to her right. His face was a mess, with four wicked scratches running from forehead to chin. Niad was deeper in the room and struggling with someone on the floor. Her opponent fought like a demon, snarling and spitting as they flailed wildly. To Lacrael’s stunned disbelief, she realized that the girl pinned beneath Niad was Tarathine.

  Lacrael slammed the door shut behind her. She rushed forward to help Niad. The other woman caught one of Tarathine’s hands as the girl swiped at her face. This gave Tarathine the leverage to start bucking, and she heaved upwards, trying to throw Niad off of her. Lacrael dropped to the floor just in time to grab Tarathine’s shoulders and hold her fast.

  Tarathine tried to howl again, but Lacrael saw that she had a piece of fabric jammed down her throat. Now that Lacrael had pinned Tarathine’s upper body, Niad shimmied down and pinned the girl’s legs. Together, the two of them held on while the girl thrashed. Tarathine’s frail body possessed surprising strength.

  Finally, Tarathine ran out of stamina and fell back onto the floor. She panted through the rag in her mouth, spittle covering her lips and cheeks. Neither Lacrael nor Niad were ready to let go of the girl just yet.

  “What the blazes happened?” Lacrael said when she had her breath back.

  “She woke up, that’s what happened!” Gustavus said.

  “I gave her a dose of the sun root, just like we’re supposed to,” Niad said. “It must be doing something, because she woke up and attacked us.”

  Lacrael stared down at Tarathine’s face. The kind, gentle girl she knew was not recognizable in those grotesquely twisted features. Her eyes were clouded over. As Lacrael watched, a dark liquid swirled across the whites of Tarathine’s eyes. It looked like she had the miasma inside her.

  “We have to bind her,” Lacrael said
.

  “We don’t have any rope,” Niad said.

  “Cut strips of cloth from that blanket,” Lacrael said. She glanced at Tarathine, trying to determine if she could risk removing one of her hands from the girl. Tarathine seemed exhausted, so Lacrael decided to try. She fished the dagger out from beneath her robe and tossed it to Gustavus. To Lacrael’s relief, the girl did not attack her.

  Gustavus grabbed the knife and went to work cutting up one of the room’s blankets. When he had four long strips, he came and knelt over Tarathine. First, he tied her wrists together. Once her ankles were secure, Lacrael and Niad stood up.

  “She won’t wriggle out of these,” Gustavus said. “You could haul in a whale with those knots.”

  Now that Tarathine was subdued, the three of them lifted her up and placed her on one of the beds. Lacrael leaned over and withdrew the gag from the girl’s mouth. She kept it in her hand in case Tarathine started screaming again.

  Tarathine glared up at them. There was no sign of recognition on her tormented face. She writhed against her bonds, testing their strength. Beneath her pale skin, her muscles never stopped moving. She tensed and released them over and over, and Lacrael started to suspect that Tarathine had no control over this odd behavior.

  “When we set out to cure her, I didn’t think she’d come back a demon,” Gustavus said. He winced as he touched the bloody gouges on his face.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t think this would happen,” Lacrael said. “I guess I thought we’d find medicine that would return her to normal. But we know the miasma corrupts the living, and she’s had the poison inside her for weeks now.”

  “What do we do now?” Niad said.

  “We stick to the plan.”

  “You found Kaiser?”

  While the three of them stood over Tarathine, Lacrael filled in Niad and Gustavus on the details of her visit with Kaiser. As she spoke, she saw Tarathine’s eyes twitch whenever Kaiser’s name was mentioned. For the briefest of instants, it looked like Tarathine was looking around for her father.