Arena

by Karen Hancock

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” she reminded herself and set off briskly down the lower path. Only when she’d put a curtain of rock between herself and the gloomy cleft did her uneasiness abate.

  She soon encountered a second branching where the canyon widened briefly. Again she chose the low option, proceeding along a small stream through a field of pungent yellow wild flowers. Six Ys later, however, she was decidedly uncomfortable. The sheer walls loomed close, and the sun—or whatever was substituting for it—was clearly descending. She’d been prudently staying on the canyon floor, but now impatience flapped its dark wings, demanding more results for the time and effort she’d expended. If she went up, maybe she could see the arched gateway she sought. “Okay,” she said. “Next opportunity, I’ll do it.”

  Only now the opportunities stopped.

  Worse, her road had acquired an unsettling dinginess. The incoming paths she’d passed earlier had been similarly discolored, which she’d taken as indications of heavy use. Now she wondered if they might have been tricks, side spurs to confuse and distract. What if, at that first juncture, she’d chosen the wrong path?

  The thought of backtracking nearly brought her to tears. As far as she’d come, she’d never make it back before dark. And there was that rock dragon to consider as well.

  But if she was off the path . . .

  Maybe she was just being paranoid again. Maybe it was the light reflecting off the surrounding red rock. Or dust. She paused at yet another turn and squatted to rub her fingers across the pavement. Sure enough, they came away coated with a fine red grit. “See?” she told herself. “It’s still white underneath. Nothing to worry about.”

  And then that sense of being watched poured over her again, thick and stifling. Nape hairs erect, she eyed her surroundings—sand, rock, a few weeds. Nothing at all alarming. Yet the feeling persisted. Creepy. Invasive. Almost . . . evil.

  Slowly she arose, rubbing her fingers on her thigh.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw it standing twenty feet upstream, half hidden by a boulder. It jumped immediately out of sight, but the afterimage remained—humanoid, hairless, all arms and legs, with luminescent gray skin and two pitlike eyespots.

  More alien than the cactus grass or the red crustacean—or even Alex and his vanish-into-thin-air trick—this thing’s very aura reeked of otherness. It struck a chord of such primal terror, she had backed ten yards downstream before she knew it.

  She stopped and pulled herself together. It hadn’t attacked her. Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe it was in another dimension. Maybe it wasn’t even dangerous.

  No. It was dangerous. Intuition, perhaps, but definitely as strong a feeling as she’d ever known.

  Fighting panic, Callie hurried along the path, desperate now for an escape route. No matter what heights she had to brave, it was better than being down here with that thing.

  But the canyon snaked on with no new branches—as if the creature had waited until she was trapped before revealing itself. It followed her steadily, and she glimpsed it now and then, peering from behind the rocks, an unnerving hunger in its “eyes.”

  Finally, in the late afternoon, bone tired and increasingly desperate, she rounded a bend and found deliverance. Her narrow canyon descended sharply into another, the juncture marked by a stand of bright green cottonwoods. Stopping at the top of a twenty-foot limestone cliff, she spied the Y she sought. One leg continued down to the intersecting canyon. The other wound through the trees and switch-backed up the wall behind them.

  Laughing with relief, she descended the switchbacks alongside the cliff and was just starting across the grassy swale toward the beckoning cottonwoods, when a low voice sounded behind her: “I don’t think you want to go that way, miss.”

  Callie whirled with a cry. On the rock behind and above her crouched a brown-skinned, bearded man with glowing blue eyes.

  CHAPTER

  3

  He was not another alien after all, but human, like her. And his eyes didn’t really glow—they were just so blue, they contrasted dramatically with his beard and tanned skin. Dirty brown hair curled over his shirt collar, and he wore a scratched leather vest above filthy jeans and sturdy hiking boots. A sheathed knife as long as his forearm hung at one hip, a holstered gun at the other. He carried a rifle with a rubberized stock and a white ceramic barrel encircled with wire rings.

  Was he another participant? Or one of the distractions that rule three instructed her to avoid?

  “What’s down there?” she asked.

  “Swarm of harries.” His voice was low and pleasant, at odds with his appearance. He dropped lightly to the ground before her. “Believe me,” he added, squinting at the trees, “you don’t want to stir them up.”

  She inspected the cottonwoods doubtfully. He pointed past her, sleeve and forearm layered with dirt. The smell confirmed his need for a bath.

  “There in the tallest tree,” he said. “That blob hanging in the middle.”

  She finally saw it—a pale mass suspended from a stout, bright-leaved branch. Other smaller shapes hung scattered around it. She shaded her eyes. “Harries, you say?”

  “They look like flying manta rays. Paralyze their victims with the venom in their stingers, then suck the blood out of them.”

  Callie shuddered. Suspicion swirled through her. She turned back to him. “I thought the white road was a safe zone—a place where things like that can’t hurt you.”

  “It is.” He eyed her appraisingly. “I figure you left it, oh, on the first or second branching.”

  “Left it? What—”

  “Look back the way you’ve come.” He gestured over his shoulder. “It isn’t white, it’s pink. You’re on a sucker path.”

  She was well aware of the road’s dinginess, but the manual had said nothing about sucker paths. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Just another ‘participant.’ ” The man’s lips twitched bitterly.

  “So why are you off the road?”

  He shrugged. “After you’re here long enough, you realize there’s no point to it.”

  “But if it’s a safe zone—”

  “It goes nowhere.”

  She regarded him with renewed suspicion. Antagonists within the Arena work to prevent you from attaining your goal . . . avoid all distractions. “So, uh, where do you think I ought to go?” Callie asked.

  “I’m headed for camp now. You can come with me, or go back and try to find where you went off. I wouldn’t advise that, though.”

  “Naturally not.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. You say you have a camp? There are others of you, then?”

  “Yeah, we have a good-sized group.” He glanced past her shoulder. “Look, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get going. I’ve got fresh meat with me.” He pointed up the rock, and Callie saw his backpack leaning where he’d left it. Twice the size of hers, it had a dog-sized lizard tied across its top. Rock dragon, perhaps?

  “They’ll be hunting soon,” he added. “I’d rather not be here when they break.”

  The old pressure-sale method, Callie thought wryly. Pitch your product and give the customer five minutes to decide. Come on, Alex, do you think I can’t see through that?

  She motioned toward the canyon walls. “By all means. Don’t let me stop you.”

  He frowned, regarding her with those intensely blue eyes.

  She waved him on. “Go ahead. But thanks for the warning.”

  “Those things will kill you, miss.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” Callie headed toward the trees, feeling his eyes on her back.

  Ahead, the pale blob fluttered and rippled.

  Avoid all distractions, the manual said. Don’t leave the white road.

  Except . . . he was right about the first branching. She’d avoided the whiter path because of her fear of heights. A fear Alex must have known about, since she’d mentioned it to the receptionist.

  She glanced back,
but the stranger was gone.

  Surprise gave way to smug assurance. See? He was a distraction. If these things were as bad as he said, he wouldn’t let me walk right into them.

  She’d nearly reached the grove now, the gray blob differentiating into pale lavender wings and flat manta-ray bodies. Layered onionlike, they slid over one another in a writhing mass, a translucent wingtip occasionally stretching out from the huddle. The sphere began to pulse. She slowed, staring up at it. Fear needled her extremities. Her intended route passed directly beneath the throbbing mass.

  So what’re you going to do? Go back? Callie chewed on her lip, waffling again, her stomach quivering. Irritation overwhelmed her fear. He was just trying to scare you off. Now get on with it.

  Resolutely she forced herself forward. A comb-and-waxed-paper trilling danced around her, and the breeze carried a sweet, musty odor. She walked faster.

  The old cottonwood loomed above. As she drew under it the trilling mounted. Then the quivering blob contracted, throbbed, and burst like a grenade, flinging pale, purplish manta shapes into the air. They flapped up through the branches to the open sky, whirling like debris in a dust devil.

  Callie wanted to run for the rocks, fifty feet away now, but that would take her off the path. Doggedly she followed the pavement as it curved away from safety. Her scalp prickled, and her hands shook. She broke into a trot, rounding the hollow and coming out into the flat.

  The stranger’s voice rang out from the rocks across the clearing. “Here they come!”

  A pale shape dove by her. She dodged sideways, glimpsing shiny, jointed appendages dangling wasplike from its posterior. A turquoise beam shot from the rocks to the beast, now a yard in front of her. Thwip, thwip, thwip. Its body deflated in a puff of purple smoke, fluttering to the path like an empty sack. Two more beams burst from the rocks, downing two more harries as they swooped.

  Ahead, the stranger rose from his hiding place and told her to run. Again she was tempted to leave the path. But nothing had touched her yet, and she wasn’t convinced anything could.

  A series of beams slit the air in a succession of rapid thwips. Callie was aware of more hits, more puffs of purple gas, more falling sacklike bodies. Car-sized boulders loomed ahead on the left. Maybe they would afford some protection.

  But then a harry caught her from behind, tentacles slapping along the left side of her back in lines of tingling heat. She staggered, crying out more from shock than pain.

  The lavender shape skimmed by and imploded in a puff of purple. She dodged the plume as best she could, coughing on the sickening-sweet smell.

  But I’m on the path, Callie protested, looking down through watering eyes to be sure. Nausea and dizziness churned in her. The heat on her back gave way to numbness.

  More thwips. More beams. Tentacles came at her face. She spun away into another attack, and fire tracked along her upper arm. After that, reality devolved into nightmarish chaos. Shadow shapes whirled around her—malevolent wing flaps, hirsute tentacles, bulbous bodies bursting into purple at the ends of blue-green lines of light. Dead rays littered the ground, tripping her. One burst over her head, dowsing her with the eye-watering, stomach-turning gas. She doubled over, staggering on wobbly knees. Tentacles slapped across her back, and new waves of hot numbness sent her reeling. As she sought to regain her balance, a harry clamped on to her right hip, tentacles winding down her leg like a tetherball round its pole, a thousand burning needles pumping venom into her flesh. The wing flaps clutched her leg. The mouth bit through fabric and skin into her waist.

  Panicked, Callie beat at the leathery body, white light spreading in amebic splotches across her vision. Someone was screaming hysterically.

  I’m going to die. I’m going to die here, and I don’t even know where I am!

  She saw her mother. Lisa. Daddy . . .

  Suddenly the stranger was looming over her, firing the rifle with one arm as he ripped the harry off her leg with the other. He lifted her effortlessly. Her legs and left arm were numb and useless, but she clung to his neck with her right arm as he carried her among the rocks, firing as he ran.

  It grew hard to breathe. The white splotches swelled. Something slapped her ear. . . .

  The next thing she knew, she lay on her back at the rear of a low-ceilinged cave. The stranger crouched by the entrance, shooting at the harries outside. Beside her lay his pack and the rock dragon, dried blood caking its pointed teeth. A milky eye stared at her alongside a serrated blue face crest. It stank of sour socks.

  Thwip, thwip, thwip. Turquoise light flared pink and faded.

  The man drew back, opened a panel in the rifle’s side, and pulled a small pink cube out of it. Tossing the cube aside, he slapped in a replacement and resumed firing, all one-handed. His left arm dangled at his side, his shirt sleeve slit in several places to reveal a bicep scored with red welts. Another welt seared across his cheekbone, and his eyelid drooped above it.

  Thwip. Thwip—thwip.

  Callie knew she should help him, but it felt as if a boulder lay atop her chest. She couldn’t feel her left arm or either of her legs. Was the poison spreading? Would the numbness soon creep to her heart? And if it wasn’t spreading, would it wear off? Or would it leave her paralyzed for life?

  The amebic lights returned to carry her into oblivion.

  When she came to, she was alone in full darkness and still unable to move. She thought the dark bulk beside her might be the pack with its smelly burden, but where was the man? Had the harries gotten him?

  Panic rattled through her, and she fainted again.

  When she awoke for the third time, the man had lit a small three-legged lamp and was laying sticks for a fire. The pile of branches to his right revealed where he’d been earlier—collecting firewood.

  Her mouth was cotton dry, her head ached, and her stomach felt as hollow as a dead tree. But at least she could sense her limbs again— cold and tingling unpleasantly. Her pack lay at her feet, but her attempts to reach it only proved she couldn’t even roll over, much less sit up. After a brief struggle she sagged back onto the dirt, gasping.

  The stranger squatted beside her. “Want some help?”

  “A drink,” she croaked, shocked at the inhuman sound of her voice.

  The smell of him was strong as he lifted her to a sitting position against the wall. His nearness made her uneasy, and she kept her eyes off his face, concentrating on the water pouring over her parched lips and tongue. Seeing she could handle the bottle on her own, he let go and eased back. She drank eagerly until he stopped her, then licked her lips and dropped her head back against the rock.

  When she opened her eyes, he had returned to arranging the firewood into a small teepee. Her glance flicked to the scarlet welts on his face, the clumsiness of his left arm. “You saved my life,” she rasped.

  He didn’t look up. “We’re not out of this yet.”

  “Surely the worst is past.”

  Silence.

  “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  She frowned, her good feelings toward him evaporating. “Well, it’s only my first day—”

  “That’s obvious.”

  Callie snapped her lips shut. All right, forget it. She let him work in silence for a few moments, then said, “I don’t suppose you have a name.”

  “Pierce.” He positioned another stick.

  “I’m Callie Hayes.”

  No reply.

  Great, Callie thought. A macho male with a chip on his shoulder. Well, two can play this game. She drew the manual from her back pocket and started to read. But she’d lost her glasses in the harry attack, and the dim light made the print too fuzzy to see without a struggle. In the end she had too many questions and not enough patience to ignore him, so presently she tried again. “You said there was no point staying on the white road. What did you mean?”

  Pierce laid the last stick onto his teepee, then drew a long-barreled handgu
n from his holster and fired a burst of green light at the wood. Yellow flames licked greedily upward.

  “The gates are there,” he said, pulling two metal stakes from his pack. “You just can’t get to them.”

  “You know this for a fact?” She pushed a lock of hair out of her face. “You’ve actually seen one?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, maybe it was an exception.”

  “I’ve been to all fourteen.” He began to pound a stake into the hard earth on one side of the fire. “The routes to reach them are different, but the gates are all identical—and all identically unattainable.” Rocking back on one knee, he met her gaze. “This place is like a doughnut— the Inner Realm’s the hole, the Outer Realm’s the cake, with a ring of cliffs between the two. All the gates stand atop those cliffs, and all the roads end at the bottom. So while you can see the gates just fine, you can’t get up to ’em. Though believe me, many have tried, long and hard—myself included.” Grimly, he finished pounding in the stake.

  Callie watched him, frowning. Maybe he’s lying. Maybe he really is a distraction and this was all staged.

  But she couldn’t believe that anymore. He seemed too bitter, too frustrated, too much like her—another victim trapped in the same nightmare. A sick feeling settled into her middle. Fourteen gates, but not one was accessible?

  “Why give us a task that’s impossible?” she wondered aloud. “Why give us a manual—”

  “Who knows?” he snapped. “As for the manual, obviously you haven’t read it. The thing’s about as useful as your boots.” He pounded the second stake into the ground opposite the first. “The part you can read is cryptic or flat wrong, and the rest’s gibberish.”

  “Maybe it’s some sort of code, and we just need to find the key.”

  “If there is a key, I’ve never heard of it. And I’ve been here long enough, I should have.”

  She frowned. “How long have you been here?”

  He gave the stake one last blow, then sat back on his heels, staring at the flames as they crackled among the sticks. “Five years this summer.”