“N-No—I mean yes, I mean—”He looked about frantically as laughter circled the dim chamber. “I wasn’t looking at you—I was looking at the floor.”
“The water?” asked Droless.
“The blood.”
Droless’s brow furrowed in confusion, but his next question was interrupted by a sharp whistle. One of the guards was trying to get their attention, so Droless and the other prisoners turned to the lit torch on the other side of the bars at the chamber’s far end and looked to the guard standing there.
“Droless!” called the guard. “Visitor!”
Visitor? Who would . . . but his thoughts trailed off as he saw his mother standing beside the guard. Someone released an appreciative whistle and Droless could hardly blame him. Even in the half-light of the torch, his mother’s golden armor gleamed and her eyes seemed to shine like stars. Without realizing it, he’d come to the bars and the other prisoners pulled away.
“Hello, Son,” said Al’rashal in a voice so soft and gentle that it made tears tug at his eyes.
“Hi, Mom.”
There was a silence filled with a lifetime of recrimination, loss and unsaid words. She broke it first.
“You . . . why didn’t you tell me?” Her voiced quivered.
“I . . .”
“We could have helped.”
“No. You couldn’t.” Shouldn’t, he thought. “These are my crimes, this is my sentence.”
Silence.
“I saw you today,” she said. “In the arena—we all did. You always let yourself get so hurt.” She smiled sadly, reaching a hand between the bars to cup his face.
“I heal fast.”
“It’s reckless. You should be moving away, not charging in.”
He felt almost at ease. “You never liked the way I fought.”
“It scares me.”
“I scare you.”
“No. I’m scared of losing you.”
Silence.
“Your father thinks you fought well.”
He pulled away. “Glad to make him proud.” He didn’t add ‘at last’ but it hung in the air nonetheless.
“They say you can get out of this, or lessen the penalty. That repenting—”
“Ha!” barked Droless. “I am many things, Mother, but sorry is not one of them.”
“Droless, stop. I know you—I know—”
He turned away. “I need to rest, to heal. I am tired, guard—see my mother away from this place.”
“I know you’re lying!” she cried.
“Come, Mrs. Kintaur,” encouraged the guard as Droless left the light. “You can’t make a man do anything. Even if he should.”
When he made it back to the water pail the young prisoner was still there, and still looking at the floor. “What is it with you?” Droless growled.
The man looked up at him. “There’s no grating here. I kinda expected there would be, to catch the blood.”
“I don’t think they care about how clean it is in here.”
“You think they drain the blood to keep the arena clean?” the young man asked.
Droless narrowed his eyes at him. He didn’t have the kind of killing intent he expected from those paying the Blood Toll with him, though few of the prisoners did. “Why are you here?” he asked.
The man offered a hand as he rose. “Ken. I wanted to thank you . . . properly.”
Droless did not take the hand. “No, here. Why are you here?”
“I tried to get downstairs, under the arena.”
“And you decided to fight for your life to pay for that?”
“I . . . I didn’t get a choice. I said it was trespass, but they said it was treason. So it was the noose or this.”
Someone chuckled.
“It’s not fair,” shot back Ken. “I was just—”
But he was cut off by more laughter that was both mocking and sad. “We’re all traitors in here, boy,” one of them said. “You really thought Irozion had that many murderers and rapists to fill the arena day to day?”
“Why then? For the money?” asked Ken.
“Of course,” shot back the figure from the darkness.
But that didn’t make sense to Droless. He knew lots of places with blood sports and gladiatorial fighting pits—he’d fought in some over the years. There was good money in developing competent warriors, better than throwing in petty criminals. No, they want the death toll. He looked to the floor—or they want what the death brings.
Chapter Six
Brotherhood
Eihn looked up, smiling, as Al’rashal returned from the dungeon, but his countenance fell as he recognized the defeated look on her face. Despite himself he asked, “Well?”
Al shook her head. “No.”
Urkjorman took his wife into his arms and held her a moment. “Is he . . . will he live?”
She nodded. “He’s too angry to die.”
Urk released a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. It brought a smile to Eihn’s lips.
“Enough now,” said the guard, gesturing toward the exit. As he and Urk had waited, most of the spectators had filed out and there was little activity in the arena now but people cleaning up the mess and bookies paying out to winners. Urk rumbled at the guard, but Al placed a steadying hand on her husband’s chest and together they left. The pass would let them visit every day, but it was vague about how many days would be allotted. Certain periods were forbidden to them, likely to allow the arena staff to do whatever it was they did to prepare for each match.
Eihn walked along with Al and Urk, sharing in their silence and dread. “Muraheim has a place,” he began. “Well, the wayfarers do. I’m sure you can stay. It always has lots of empty rooms, since wayfarers don’t stay put very long.”
“Thank you,” said Urk, his voice weaker then Eihn had ever heard before.
The walk to the building was full of the city’s hustle and bustle, with people of all sorts doing all manner of things, but none of it could hold his attention for long. When they reached the Yonder Home, Eihn felt they’d crossed thirty miles instead of three. Muraheim greeted them at the door, offering food and drink, though Al and Urk simply wanted quiet time to themselves. Eihn had seen the likes of it before— the look of people preparing themselves to watch a loved one die.
“Wait,” called Muraheim halting the two. He walked to another room and returned with a massive iron ax that he struggled to carry. Urk took it in hand before the gnome had taken more than three steps.
“When we,” began Muraheim. “When I brought in your son I took this. I did not want it lost here.”
Urk looked the weapon over seeming to remember a lifetime of battle with it in his hand and gave the gnome a nod of appreciation. Thanking Muraheim the two retired.
When it was just himself and his old master sitting at a table with a hookah, the gnome took a draw and spoke. “Speak of it, child.”
“I’m not a child.”
“You will always be a child to an elder who loves you.”
“Does that hold true for all parents?”
“Of course,” answered Muraheim, as though the answer were self-evident. He took another draw of the hookah. “If there is love.”
“I . . . I don’t think Droless sees that.”
The old gnome looked away as though gazing to some far-off land. “It is the way of the world. Boys become men, girls become ladies, and parent and child both must learn again how to reach each other.”
Eihn followed Muraheim’s gaze to the northern window, where miles away in a sea of sand lay the city Karden and Iilna, Muraheim’s daughter. “And if they never learn to reach each other?”
“Then they die with sadness.”
Eihn cast his gaze in the direction of the arena. “That would be a terrible end for anyone. I just wish I could do more than sit here and hold Urk’s hand.”
“Who says you cannot do more?”
“I mean . . . it is not my place. I’m just—”
; “Do you care for Droless?”
The words were asked plainly, as though he asked Eihn for a piece of fruit, but it struck him like a slap to the face. “Yes.”
“Then it is your place.”
“I don’t know that I have the answers to his torments.”
“Then do not go to him as one with answers, but as one with care.”
The next morning Eihn asked Al’rashal and Urkjorman if he could use the pass. He expected some argument or hesitation, but they gave it to him with nothing but sad smiles. They went together to the arena, but as before only one would be permitted below.
The first level beneath the arena was not as Eihn expected. The halls were clean, the stone was worked with incredible precision, and glowing glass balls set into the walls provided warm light. He could see that this level was well traveled and he heard all manner of activity. Someone was pushing a tray of freshly butchered meats, and another person was hauling a wagon of weapons down a hall that seemed lit with forge fires. They even passed what seemed to be one of the gladiators, arms chained and with a guard at his back, following a beautiful woman in a flowing pearl gown. Eihn raised an eyebrow at that but the guard either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
The second level was more of what Eihn expected.
A heavy iron door almost three inches thick was pulled aside and from the passage beyond came the rank odor of unwashed bodies, sweat, blood, and excrement. Eihn choked and got a bit of laughter from the guard. They proceeded deeper—here the glowing glass spheres were replaced by torches which the guard lit as they wound their way down, the rock turning from well-worked stone to raw, until they came to a large chamber with iron bars running from floor to ceiling and a door set in the middle. There were a few prisoners sleeping near the bars, and two woke up with the light and another just turned over.
“Tell Droless he has another visitor,” said the guard.
One of the men wandered into the darkness and the other all but dragged the sleeping figure away.
Nothing happened.
“How long do I wait?”
The guard shrugged and sat on a stool near the rear wall. “You get to come an’ ask for him. He doesn’t have to show up.”
Come on, you big, stubborn idiot.
The sound of iron-shod hooves on stone echoed from the darkness beyond the torch light, and Eihn’s heart picked up its beat. Slowly Droless came into view, shielding his eyes from the soft glow and smiling when he recognized Eihn. For a moment Eihn didn’t see Droless as he was now but as he had been before: a young child, barely tall enough to reach his shoulder, with a smile as bright as his mother’s and a laugh as loud as his father’s. The kintaur had been slim then, with no sign of the musculature he would develop and not even a hint of horns. Now Droless was almost twice as tall as Eihn, with enough muscle to pull a horse off the ground and thick black horns that protruded out so the tips extended just past his shoulders.
“Hey, little brother,” Eihn said.
Droless released a blurt of laughter. “I haven’t been your little brother for a long time, Two-legs.”
It was Eihn’s turn to laugh. Droless had been the first to call him ‘Two-legs,’ and all his siblings had followed suit. What has become of that bright, cheerful boy I knew all those years ago?
“Really got yourself stuck in it this time, huh?”
Droless leaned against the bars, trying to effect a carefree look and failing. “Nothing I can’t handle. A few more bouts and I’m out of here.”
He lifted an eyebrow at the word ‘few’, the kintaur had more than thirty bouts remaining. Eihn had asked Muraheim how often people paid the Blood Toll and lived. The number wasn’t very high. “I’m sorry you’re in there…you know I can…”
He let the sentence hang. Locks and bars did little to stop a wayfarer.
Droless seemed surprised. He glanced to the guard and then down at his hands. The smile he’d been forcing fell away. “No, Eihn. I’ve never run from a fight—”
“Yes, you have,” Eihn cut in. “I was there. Those wolves out on the Tharmis fields? We ran. You’re a kintaur, capital and lower-case k. Kintaurs run. Kintaurs run to stay alive—your mother taught you that. I know—I was there.”
Droless pounded the bars, getting a rise from the guard. “Kintaur don’t run…”
But Droless didn’t finish the quote. The kintaur, as a union of centaur and minotaur, learned from both their parents. Al taught them when to run, and Urk taught them when to fight. As far as Eihn was concerned, Droless always reversed the two.
Droless looked up and away, as though he could see the sky overhead. In that moment he looked old—older than Eihn, older than his father. He looked like a man burdened in ways Eihn could not know, but wanted to. “I think…”
“No,” replied Eihn. He could feel Droless pulling away even before the kintaur turned.
“I deserve this,” the prisoner said.
“No, Droless, no!” exclaimed Eihn as he grasped the bars. “You’ve done a lot of stupid things, bad things, but you’ve done a lot of good, too. You—”
“I’ve made my peace”—Droless cut him off and began to turn away—“I earned this.”
“Droless, please.”
The kintaur stopped, head tilting to the side. “But maybe not everyone has. There are more here than murderers and thieves.”
Eihn tried to make sense of that, but his thoughts were interrupted by the guard. “Time to go.”
“But…” Eihn trailed off as he noticed the guard’s hand resting on the pommel of his sword. The disinterested look in his eyes had been replaced by a glower that seemed anger with a hint of fear. “Fine,” Eihn said.
The guard relaxed a fraction and led him out. Eihn couldn’t help but cast one more look over his shoulder as darkness washed Droless away.
“He’s…he’s punishing himself,” explained Eihn.
Al crossed her arms and continued staring out the window as though unable or unwilling to turn her gaze to Eihn. “For what?”
“Everything,” answered Urkjorman from the corner where he sat in thin shadows just beyond the rays of the afternoon sun. The ax lay in his lap and he gazed at it as though it held answers.
“Maybe, yes, but maybe”—Eihn was trying to wrestle with the idea forming in his head—“Maybe more.”
“What do you mean?” asked Al.
“He said—he said he deserved to be there, but maybe not everyone deserved to be there.”
Al turned about at that, a spark of hope twinkling in her eyes. “What does that mean?”
Urk leaned forward. “It means, perhaps, that he’s fighting for more than his own sins.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Al’s lips. “Then what?”
Eihn looked to the west. “I don’t know. But I can find out.”
It was evening now, though one could hardly tell, given the city’s constant activity. It seemed half of Irozion never slept—miners worked all day and night, and a host of businesses stayed open into the late hours of the evening to serve them.
Fortunate for Eihn, the director-prime’s office was not one of them. The building was a pile of stone, metal, and glass that seemed to have been formed haphazardly. It made the structure imposing, but it also made it easy to climb. Eihn used a decade of experience and just a little luck to pull himself up the wall, using the dark of the night and the intense lights of neighboring buildings to keep him in shadow. Occasionally he was forced to cross near some of the odd light spheres on the building, but few people looked up as a matter of course, and no one saw him reach the slanted window on the fifth floor. The first two windows he’d reached were permanent fixtures, but this one was designed to open, perhaps for ventilation. Peering into the dim hall within, Eihn made sure no one was about and whispered, mingling his words with radiance and watching as the window silently lifted open.
He pulled himself within, spiraling through the air to land softly on his feet. He waited—no cries of alarm,
no magic pulses, no racing feet. He was safe, for now. Eihn moved down the hall, half guessing, half remembering the way to the director-prime’s office. The door was unguarded and he swiftly inspected the lock. It looked simple but closer inspection revealed otherwise. The material was unnaturally cool to the touch and made the tips of his fingers tingle. It was likely spell-resistant. His magic could open it, but it would probably set off some mystical trap or alarm, so Eihn fished out thin pieces of metal, stuck a bit of fuse in his mouth, lit it, and began probing the tumblers. Five tumblers, one unusually stiff, likely a dummy to set off a trap—and, yes, what seemed like a needle nestled in the base of the lock. He wiped his brow on the back of his hand as the slow-burning fuse inched closer to his face. The needle was part of the lock, he realized. Grasping it between thin tweezers, he pushed it back until it hooked a spur, and he smiled as the lock opened.
Slipping within, he used the fuse to light a lantern near the door, shucked his cloak and pressed it to the bottom seam of the door to block the light, and approached the pile of books on the table at the room’s center.
“All right, l’il brother. What are you talking about?”
Chapter Seven
Politics and Judgment
Urkjorman didn’t like the arena, and it wasn’t just that his son had chosen this place to die—it was simply wrong. Not blood sports in general or arenas specifically—no, this arena was wrong in ways he found difficult to articulate. The strange purple metal, the odd crystal lights, the way the floor greedily sucked up blood or how the basin of the arena seemed to have been constructed first and the stone built around it. Mostly, however, it was the magic. Experience and his crystal eye told him magic was being used in some peculiar way here, but it had nothing to do with the sky or his god Kurgen’kahl, so he couldn’t discern any more than that.
“Are we ready for blood?” boomed the voice of the announcer. The audience responded with a primal howl.
Urk looked over to his wife and Eihn where they had all essentially crowded into the walkway before the first row of seats—it was the only place she could stand comfortably. Eihn sat on her back, to see but more to talk to them both without shouting. A guard had tried to move them on, but one glance at Urk’s glowing eye convinced him to let it be. Few people were willing to sit near them, which gave thema small measure of privacy.
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