The First Champion

by Sandell Wall

  Kaiser’s breathing slowed. The palms of his hands were dry—a good sign. He was out of practice in the arena, but the habits learned over a lifetime of war came back to him like he had never left.

  When the gate had risen high enough that they could duck under, Kaiser urged the men forward.

  “Out, out!” Kaiser bellowed. He ducked under the wooden beam himself and entered the arena.

  As soon as he was clear, Kaiser raised his shield, both to protect his face, and to ward off the blazing sunlight. His eyes needed time to adjust, and that brief instant of sun-blindness was the perfect time to catch an arrow. As if in response to this thought, an arrow slammed into Kaiser’s shield.

  “Damn it,” Kaiser bellowed over the roar of the crowd. “I’d hoped they wouldn't have archers. Stay down and stay behind me.”

  Brant crawled out from beneath the gate and ducked low to stay in the cover of Kaiser’s shield. Kaiser risked a peek over the top—he jerked his head back down as another arrow whizzed past his ear.

  “We’ve got to get rid of that archer!” Kaiser said.

  The one thing that could pick the shield wall apart was a concentrated ranged barrage. Morale would fail and the formation would break after one or two men fell with an arrow in their eye.

  At the center of the shield wall, the swordsman bellowed an order in his foreign tongue, and the line advanced on the nearest squad of tomb keepers. The tomb keepers had not yet decided how to respond to the sight of their supposedly pathetic and terrified enemy formed up and fighting as a unit.

  Kaiser did not waste any time waiting to see how the first engagement went. Shield held high to protect his head, he sprinted in the direction of the archer. Brant stayed right behind him, as did the three other fighters protecting the right flank.

  When another arrow glanced off his shield, Kaiser lowered it just enough to see in front of him. They were charging a small squad of tomb keepers. Three of the warrior women were firing arrows as quickly as they could draw and release their shortbows. In front of the archers, two more tomb keepers provided a screen of protection with massive tower shields and flails.

  Only one of the archers was focusing on Kaiser. The other two were slinging death into the shield wall. Kaiser made eye contact with the woman as she raised her bow to fire again. She aimed at his chest, and he made ready to heft his shield upward again. At the last instant, the tomb keeper jerked her bow to the left and let fly. Kaiser heard one of the men behind him gasp and cry out as the shaft struck him.

  The archer vanished behind the shields as her protectors surged forward to meet Kaiser’s reckless assault. Flails whirled in the air above the black tower shields, waiting to crush the skull of the first man to wander too close. Kaiser halted his charge—there was no going through that wall of wood and iron.

  Voices cried out in triumph and pain as the shield wall engaged its first target. The noise of the crowd surged. Weapons clashed, and from the sound of it, Kaiser guessed that the tomb keepers were getting the worst of it. He dared not risk a glance to check.

  Kaiser danced to his left. They needed to force the flail-wielding tomb keepers away from each other. Grouped together, they protected each other's exposed backside. All the while, a steady volley of arrows poured over Kaiser’s head at the shield wall. He needed to disable those archers, and fast.

  Before Kaiser opened his mouth to tell Brant to go right, the big man charged straight at the nearest tower shield. Brant raised his greataxe high overhead and brought it crashing down into the enemy’s shield. Wood splintered and iron crumpled under the terrible blow. Brant wrenched his weapon away, and the mangled shield came with it.

  This was not what Kaiser had planned, but he was not about to let the tomb keeper recover. He lunged forward, thrusting his spear hard at the enemy’s exposed torso. The rusted point bit hard into the tomb keeper’s breastplate and forced her back. Kaiser kept his shield up to cover his left side, anticipating a counterattack from the deadly flail—the spiked head slammed into the old wood and stuck fast.

  Both hands on the flail, the tomb keeper used her weight to pull Kaiser’s shield from his arm. He let it go rather than be yanked off balance. But instead of jumping back, as she probably hoped he would, Kaiser dug his toes into the sand and hurled himself forward. His only chance was to keep the initiative. If Brant did not deal with the other shield bearer, Kaiser was dead.

  Kaiser could not do much to the fully armored tomb keeper with his battered spear. So instead of wasting time trying to find a weak spot in her defenses, he simply ducked past her. She was distracted by trying to extract her flail from his discarded shield. This allowed Kaiser to close the distance on the archers.

  Unlike the flail-wielding tomb keepers, the archers were not wearing helmets. They scattered when Kaiser fell upon them. His spear lashed out with deceptive quickness, each two-handed thrust aimed at an exposed face. One of the archers stumbled in her haste to get away—the point of Kaiser’s spear scored a bloody furrow in the side of her head. She dropped, not dead, but out of the fight.

  One down, two to go. Two of Kaiser’s fighters got between the second archer and the open arena. They backed her into the wall, and while she desperately tried to fend them off, Kaiser knew she was doomed. He turned his attention to the third archer who was sprinting across the sand towards the nearest squad of tomb keepers.

  There was no way his spear would pierce her armor, but Kaiser could make sure she did not reach safety. He took a short hop, raised his spear up into a throwing position, and hurled it at the fleeing archer. The throw was perfect. Kaiser’s spear passed through the tomb keeper’s legs and stuck hard in the sand. Her thigh caught the shaft mid-stride, and she went down hard. Her bow snapped beneath her body.

  The crowd roared their approval. No doubt they thought this was all a part of the show, and everyone liked to see some fight from the underdog. The tomb keeper who had lost her shield was backing slowly away into the open arena, her extracted flail a blur over her head as she kept it spinning. Kaiser let her go. There was nothing he could do to stop her.

  Kaiser turned to check on Brant. The big man had forced the remaining tomb keeper back—she wanted nothing to do with his double-bladed greataxe. As Kaiser watched, his other fighters finished slaughtering the trapped archer and swarmed towards Brant and his opponent.

  Brant turned away in disgust as the men quickly disarmed the tomb keeper, threw her to the sand, and slammed the points of their weapons into the weak points of her armor. She stopped struggling when one of them pierced the gorget around her neck.

  For the next few moments, Kaiser and Brant were out of the fight. Kaiser knelt next to the stunned archer and collected her bow and quiver. She whimpered when he came near, and he winced at the terrible wound his spear had inflicted. If she survived, she would lose an ear and probably an eye.

  When Kaiser stood, Brant was next to him.

  “We’re exposed out here,” Kaiser said, shouting to be heard. “We need to get back to the shield wall!”

  Kaiser finally allowed himself to check on the battle line’s progress. He was pleased to discover that they were already advancing on a second squad of tomb keepers. The remains of the first squad lay strewn across the sand behind their line.

  But the tomb keepers were already adjusting to this tactic. The individual squads were converging to form one massed force, the size of which would easily surround and slaughter the shield wall.

  Notching an arrow to his bow, Kaiser looked up at where Mazareem watched over the gruesome spectacle. If that pale bastard was going to do something, he better do it fast.

  Chapter 53

  MAZAREEM WATCHED THE COLOSSEUM fill with people, watched as the tomb keepers took their positions on the arena floor, and he watched Kaiser and the men chosen to die spill out onto the open sand. On the periphery of his awareness, he noted the surprising start to the battle being waged below him. Tomb keeper blood was the first to stain the sand. But none of
that mattered. All Mazareem cared about was when Morricant would make her appearance.

  He did not have to wait long. The Lady of Pain revealed herself during the first clash of weapons. At the sight of her, the crowd surged to their feet and roared their adulation. Morricant reveled in this praise as she walked slowly down the stone platform towards Mazareem.

  In this moment, Mazareem saw the first sign of weakness in his old lover. Morricant hungered for the worship of these people. She needed it. It sustained her. This entire spectacle was for her benefit, both to bask in their praise and to confirm to them her divinity. In a flash of insight, Mazareem perceived the religion of the tomb keepers for what it was: a way for Morricant to make herself a god.

  Mazareem felt sorry for her. Morricant’s hatred of Abimelech had turned to jealousy, and now, she wanted to set herself on equal footing with the dragon tyrant. It was a hopeless cause, and Morricant, of all people, should know that. But she had been sequestered in Vaul for so long, she must have become seduced by her own delusions of omnipotence.

  All of this raced through Mazareem’s thoughts as Morricant approached him. But as she closed the distance between them, her beauty chased everything else out of his mind. Her long black hair shone in the morning sun, and her eyes, as green and as mysterious as the ocean depths, regarded Mazareem with a hungry anticipation that nearly took his breath away.

  In the forgotten parts of his humanity, he still ached for her.

  Morricant came to a stop before Mazareem. She had to tilt her head back to look up at his face. She carried a wicked, serrated dagger in her right hand. Above them, the crowd thundered, and beneath them, the battle raged, but these only seemed like distant distractions. The two of them stood alone on an island of stone, suspended between heaven and earth.

  “House Gorvan is erased, and your rite of oblation has been revealed as the sham it always was,” Morricant said. She did not raise her voice to be heard over the crowd, yet her words still reached Mazareem’s ears. “I was going to cast you into the abyss and be done with you. There’s a portal down there that will banish you from my realm. But after what you did, I’ve decided to give the crowd what they came for. Your blood.”

  Morricant raised her blade with a smile that showed her perfect teeth. “Death is so final, so boring,” she said. “The dead move beyond caring, and that’s not a gift I care to give to those who anger me. But pain—pain is permanent. The scars it leaves behind serve to form the person that survives. No one endures suffering without change. But you already know this, don’t you?”

  Mazareem did not respond. He had no desire to cheapen this moment with words. He was ready. Every muscle in his body tingled with excitement. Strength that he thought had abandoned him filled his limbs. If he wanted to, he could snap these flimsy ropes and strike Morricant down where she stood.

  But his purpose was different now—Rowen waited for Mazareem to act. Mazareem closed his eyes and willed Morricant to strike him. He needed the pain as a catalyst to overcome the collar around his neck.

  Morricant obliged. Mazareem gasped as her dagger pierced the flesh of his chest, right beneath his breastbone. The blade was short, designed to inflict pain rather than mortal injury. Morricant sawed a jagged cut down across Mazareem’s chest to the left and then back again over his stomach.

  The blade cut across his barely healed wounds, and even in Mazareem’s strength, the agony almost caused him to black out. Thick, black blood flowed down his torso and splattered on the stone beneath his feet.

  Mazareem threw back his head and screamed. At the same time, he used the pain as a conduit, concentrating with every scrap of focus he could grasp as he reached for the spirit realm. Rowen responded immediately—the shrouded king had been ready for him. The barrier imposed by the collar was nothing before Rowen’s power.

  The arena, Morricant, and even the sun overhead vanished as Mazareem’s awareness was plucked from his body and transported into the world of spirits. He found himself standing on a grassy hilltop overlooking a vast, verdant plain. In the distance, a great forest stretched as far as the eye could see. Mazareem knew without asking that this was Vaul as it had once been, before being consumed by corruption.

  Mazareem was not alone on the hill. A solitary figure sat on a log next to a fire. This figure wore a plain brown robe, although, at his wrists and feet, Mazareem spotted the twinkling of brilliant gold that hinted at riches beneath.

  “Rowen,” Mazareem said. The name came unbidden to his lips.

  Rowen raised his hooded head to reveal his face. He still bore the face of a hero. Rowen’s countenance could have been chiseled from stone. He smiled, and the warmth of that smile brought memories crashing down over Mazareem. They had ridden into countless battles, side-by-side. They had carved out a kingdom for fledgling humanity, buying their race freedom from Abimelech’s dragons. They had shared one another’s joys and sorrows. They had been brothers in spirit, if not in blood.

  “Mazareem,” Rowen said. “Look, and see.”

  With these words, a vision filled Mazareem’s sight. He saw Rowen choosing each champion in turn. He watched as Rowen guided Lacrael to Kaiser, saw again their escape from Northmark, but this time through the eyes of Rowen. And then he watched his own failings a second time when Rowen snatched Sorrell out of his grasp in Praxis. Mazareem observed the events that led all of them to Vaul, and through this, his suspicions were confirmed: Rowen himself had withheld his powers from his champions. The shrouded king had wanted them weakened here.

  The vision continued, and as Rowen’s true purpose in this was revealed, Mazareem recoiled from it. Rowen had taken a calculated risk, because he needed Mazareem and the champions working together for what came next. The risk was great, because failure would set Rowen back by hundreds, if not thousands of years, but the shrouded king did not view time like a mortal man, and he accepted the cost of failure, if it came to that. Mazareem tried and failed to grasp the scope of Rowen’s ambitions.

  “You understand, yes?” Rowen asked as the vision faded.

  “I understand,” Mazareem said.

  And he did. Mazareem understood that he was just a pawn. Rowen did not care that Mazareem had betrayed him a thousand years ago. Next to Abimelech, Mazareem’s role in Rowen’s undoing was insignificant.

  Mazareem sensed a power in the shrouded king that defied description. Rowen was ripe with it. Unlike Morricant, Rowen had spent the last millennium becoming something terrible. Something unknowable. To stand in his presence felt like straddling a slumbering volcano, one that was slowly waking up, its power felt in the tremors that shuddered through the earth. Mazareem wanted to escape the coming eruption, but there was nowhere he could hide.

  “My champions' powers have been restored,” Rowen said. “When you escape Orcassus, you will take them to Syngard, the fourth realm. There, you will find the last champion.”

  Syngard, the cursed realm. No one who ventured there had ever returned. This was why Rowen needed Mazareem, because whatever he expected them to find in Syngard, he did not trust his champions to be able to overcome it themselves.

  Mazareem did not need to respond. Rowen knew he would do as commanded. The spirit realm started to fade, and Mazareem braced himself to be thrust back into the arena. Before he vanished completely, Rowen spoke again.

  “You belong to me now,” Rowen said. “Do not think to betray me a second time, or I will give you the immortality you seek. I will bind your soul on this plane, and you will never pass on. Defy me, and you will serve me here for the rest of eternity.”

  Rowen’s warning echoed in Mazareem’s head as reality came rushing back. The colosseum descended on him again with a roaring fury. Fresh pain seared his chest, like the cut had only been made seconds ago. Mazareem looked down—Morricant was only just removing the knife from his flesh. His brief foray into the spirit realm had taken no time here.

  Morricant looked up when Mazareem’s scream cut off. He stared down at her, and she m
ust have seen something in his eyes, because she took half a step beck.

  Mazareem grinned at her.

  “Rowen sends his regards.”

  Chapter 54

  SORRELL SAT WITH HER back against the hard stone wall of their tiny room. Tarathine lay with her head on Sorrell’s lap. After recovering from the fight with Elise, the girl had been desperate for human touch. Sorrell stroked Tarathine’s hair and stared off into space.

  Gustavus had cleaned Niad’s body and placed it on the bed. He had done his best to give her a proper funeral, and he had not left his vigil at her bedside. Sorrell could not believe that Niad died while she was gone. She had left to find food, and she returned to a scene of bloodshed and mourning.

  Morning sunlight streamed through the small window, and still they received no sign from Lacrael. Sorrell did not know what was supposed to happen next, but wherever Lacrael was, Sorrell hoped she was okay. Maybe there was a chance that at least some of their party would survive.

  As for Sorrell, her heart was empty. She had no fight left in her. This room was their prison, and it might as well be their tomb. Niad had fallen first, but the rest of them would soon follow. It did not take much imagination to know what would happen if they were discovered with a slain tomb keeper in their room. Sorrell suspected that their deaths would not be quick. If it came to that, she was resolved to make sure Tarathine was spared torture.

  A single tear rolled down Sorrell’s cheek as she caressed Tarathine’s hair. She hoped Kaiser would forgive her for what she had to do. Drowning in her own sorrow, Sorrell lost track of time. Her awareness snapped back to reality when voices echoed in the hallway outside, and Sorrell held her breath as heavy footsteps approached their room. She jumped when someone pounded on the door.

  Sorrell had expected to have more time. From his seat beside the bed, Gustavus did not stir. The hand knocked again, and when no one answered, Sorrell heard the voices again, this time raised in deliberation. She did not need to understand the language to know that they were discussing whether to break into the room or not.