Having lived all her life dealing with the worst Athas had to offer, from surly customers to sand creatures who wanted to kill her, there was very little that could frighten Karalith.
The sight of what Rol Mandred had turned into, however, managed that feat.
If Gan hadn’t made reference to the changes Rol was undergoing when last he saw his friend, Karalith might not have believed that it was him. His skin was slate gray, strange faceted jeweled armor covered his shoulders, his hands and feet were mutated, and his mouth was segmented.
It was the most foul creature Karalith had ever seen—and she had seen the foulest creatures Athas had to offer.
And somehow it was Rol.
“If we can determine how to control that creature, then our army will be a wonder to behold.” Hamanu spoke almost dreamily.
Karalith’s idea started to coalesce in her head. “What if we adjusted the terms of the contract in such a way that benefits you in the long term?”
Hamanu frowned. “Excuse me?”
“Instead of you subsidizing the arena, as you put it, what if we instead consider it an investment?”
That got Hamanu to raise one white eyebrow. “So the money I provide would be repaid?”
“With interest,” Karalith said.
“And what would you require in return for this particular amendment, which doesn’t benefit you in the least?”
“On the contrary,” Karalith said with a smile, “it benefits us tremendously to create good will between us and our new landlord. But, as it happens, there is one thing that we would humbly request, if you’d be willing to give it.”
“And that is?”
She pointed at the door. “Him.”
“He was removed from the arena.”
Komir stepped in then. “And what has he done for you? At least in the arena, he can be earning profit—Drahar and his psionists can continue to study him at the Pit, but he’ll be earning you coin so you can raise that army you want.”
Hamanu stroked his beard. “An interesting proposition. I must admit, having that creature in the arena will be a draw.”
“Exactly,” Karalith said. “You’ll make back your investment within a week of opening. And we’ll continue to provide you with a share of the profits, which you can use to raise your army.”
The king’s face split into a massive grin, one that Karalith would have found disturbing before she saw what Rol had turned into.
And right then, Karalith knew that they had him.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
The happiest day of Barglin’s life was when that big mul kicked the rusted metal gate to the arena in, allowing all the fighters to escape.
The thri-kreen who was working with the mul had told everyone that if they wanted paying work, to meet in three days at sunset at Dedie’s Tavern on Geros Way in Potters’ Square.
A goodly number of the fighters, Barglin knew, would take advantage of the opportunity to get the hell out of Urik, and Barglin didn’t blame them.
But Barglin was escaping from a prison sentence. When you were arrested in Urik, the Imperial Guard tended to take anything of value you have on you, and they had done so to Barglin. It wasn’t much of a haul for the two soldiers in question. Most of Barglin’s net worth had gone toward the drinks, the imbibing of which led in part to the altercation that had preceded his arrest.
Still, he had nothing save the clothes on his back, so he figured he’d keep that appointment.
The only problem was that he had to sleep in the streets, since lodging was out of the question. That was something he’d never done before while sober. Two nights of tossing and turning on cobblestone convinced the dwarf that it was an experience best enjoyed while unconscious from ale.
So it was with a very sore lower back and a growling stomach that Barglin entered Dedie’s at sunset. He recognized about half a dozen of the fighters from the Pit—a mere fraction of the total who were freed by the mul and the thri-kreen—all sitting in a corner, talking about this and that, and Barglin joined them.
“Barglin,” cried one of the other dwarves. “Welcome. Have an ale. It’s on our benefactors.”
An objection that he had no coin died on his lips. If they were paying for drinks too, he definitely wanted to hear their pitch. He signaled for an ale and squeezed in between the dwarf who’d spoken and a five-legged thri-kreen.
“I expected to see Jono here.”
“He got himself hired to guard a caravan.”
“Wish I’d thought of that.”
“Right, like anyone’d hire you to guard a caravan. You can’t even see over the carriages.”
“Wonder what the deal here will be.”
“Didja hear? They killed Calbit and Jago.”
“Good riddance.”
“Hope they killed that bitch of a daughter of Calbit’s too. You know what she did to me?”
“Nothin’, prob’ly, but I bet she promised a whole helluva lot.”
“Yeah.”
A barmaid brought over Barglin’s ale, which he sipped eagerly, foam getting into his mustache, and some of the ale dribbling down his chest. He didn’t care. The crisp sensation of the ale cascading down his throat was the most wonderful feeling in the world right then.
“A little thirsty, there, Barglin?”
Barglin swallowed, paused, let out a loud belch that echoed off the tavern walls, then smiled. “A bit, yeah.”
A voice from behind him said, “There’ll be more where that came from.”
Turning, Barglin saw the one-eyed human who’d come in with Rol Mandred. “Gan, I thought they traded you out for that mul.”
With Gan was a curly-haired blonde. “They did,” she said with a smile. “My name is Feena—I’m Gan’s sister. And we have an offer for you gentlemen.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Barglin said.
“What is it?” another asked.
“Simple—we want you to return to the Pit.”
Silence fell over the table.
Barglin burst out laughing. “Good one, Gan. You and your sister have a great sense’a humor.”
“We’re not kidding, Barglin,” Gan said. “But it’ll be different this time. For starters, it’s only for a day or two. For another, you won’t have to fight.”
A half-giant asked, “What do we have to do?”
Feena said, “Sit in the cubicles while we pretend to be fixing the place up for the grand reopening. Once we’re done, you’ll each get three silver and be on your way.”
Gulping down some more ale, Barglin then wiped more foam from his mustache. “We don’t have to fight?”
“No. You’re just there to make it look like we have fighters ready to go once we open. There’ll be mind-mages there, so we need to have people who are used to being in those cubicles. The mind-mages will be busy elsewhere, but we don’t want to take the chance.”
“So basically,” Barglin said, “you’re paying us three silver to sit on our asses?”
Gan chuckled. “Pretty much, yeah. Think you can handle that, Barglin?”
Three silver would pay for a corner of a carriage in a caravan that would get him away from this town with its royal nephews who picked fights in taverns. “Yeah, I think I can. When do you need us there?”
“Right away,” Feena said. “Finish your drinks, and we’ll head over now.”
Rol had to admit to taking great pleasure out of the creature’s frustration.
For days, he’d been hearing importunings and implorations, not to mention boasts and threats, all relating to the great power wielded by the monster that had taken over his mind and transformed his body.
And yet there it was, being held in check by three mind-mages.
Rol himself was just as helpless, of course, but at least the thing that had taken everything away from him was being stymied.
If only those mind-mages would figure out a way to change him back …
Still, it was something.
You are a fool. This is only a temporary setback. Soon, chaos will reign over this world and—
“Oh, will you give it a rest, already?” Rol was really getting tired of the thing’s speeches. “These guys have you.”
Yes, but they are attempting to study me. To learn more about me so they can control me—they are even bigger fools than you are, and soon they will discover their mistake, though too late to stop me. I only need them to waver but once, or to probe too deeply.
The creature’s ramblings were interrupted by the door to the cell opening. A soldier was standing in the doorway. “Bring him.”
The soldier was talking to the mind-mages, apparently, since Rol’s newly oversized legs proceeded to get up and walk toward the door, even as the creature was screaming.
Rol just laughed. “What are you complaining about? Isn’t this the part where they might probe too deeply?”
Perhaps. They will rue the day they attempted to control me, for I am chaos and cannot be controlled.
To Rol’s surprise, the psionists took them away upstairs and out of the dungeon area.
Where are they taking us?
“How the frip should I know?”
They put Rol into a carriage that was attached to a pair of crodlus. They trudged their way slowly through the streets of Urik. Rol didn’t know the area well enough to figure out where they were going until they arrived at a very familiar mine.
“We’re coming back here?” Rol said, but of course only the creature heard, and it didn’t respond.
He was brought to a cell—or, rather, cubicle—very much like the one he was in when Calbit and Jago brought him there. On the way, they passed several other cubicles, many of which had familiar faces in them.
For a long time, he sat, which wasn’t qualitatively different from sitting in the castle dungeon. He wondered if he’d be asked to fight again.
He hoped not. Rol had never shied away from a fight in his life, but knowing what the creature could do, he feared for what would happen to whatever poor bastard got into the ring with him.
At least it would probably be over quickly …
Drahar was stunned when he went down to the dungeon to find Mandred’s cell empty.
There were no psionists, no guards, nothing. Just an empty room.
He stormed back upstairs and summoned Cace. “What happened to Mandred?”
Calm as ever, Cace replied: “The king agreed to send him back to the arena. The new owners plan to contribute their future profits toward expanding the Imperial Guard, which they agreed to in exchange for having Mandred be the main attraction again.”
“Is he—” Drahar cut himself off. It wasn’t wise to even think about questioning the King of the World’s sanity.
Normally, the first couple of words wouldn’t even escape his lips like that, but he was well and truly frustrated.
No such person as “Tharizdun” existed anywhere in any archive that Drahar had been able to track down. He’d gone to his tutors at the King’s Academy, many of whom were mages of many centuries’ standing, and who were in touch with wizards from all across Athas. Few people in the world kept any kind of history—surviving the present generally took precedence over preserving the past—but it did survive to a degree in the minds of the oldest residents of Athas. They didn’t recall everything, of course, but surely they would remember something powerful enough to turn Mandred into the creature he had become.
None of them had the slightest idea who Tharizdun might be, nor did they recognize the creature.
And the king had taken the creature away.
A panic seized him. “Please tell me the psionists went with him.”
“Of course,” Cace said.
“Don’t say ‘of course’ as if it were a normal thing,” Drahar snapped, then immediately regretted it. “My apologies, Cace, it’s been a trying day. Cancel my remaining appointments.”
“Where will you be?”
“At the arena, of course. The whole point of bringing Mandred here was to use him to supplement the Guard, without having to pay to train more soldiers.” He let out a long breath. “Still, if that’s what magnificence wants, that is what he will get. But I will continue to do as I was instructed, so I’m going to the Pit to continue my work.”
Gan was going insane sitting around.
Feena had told him to stay in the back office where the money was kept. A messenger from the castle had brought the “investment capital”—three thousand gold, with the promise of another two thousand once the treasurer determined that the first thousand had indeed been spent on upkeep.
That determination would never take place, of course. Thirty silver would go to the fighters, and there were some other expenses involved—like all that ale the fighters drank at Dedie’s—but mostly the Serthlara Emporium would wind up with a near-three-thousand-gold profit, and Gan would have his freedom once again.
Fehrd would still be dead though.
And then there was Rol.
With the three thousand in place, it was just a matter of distracting the soldiers and the mind-mages in such a way that they could get Rol out of there.
Gan’s job was to stay in the back room for the dual purpose of guarding the money and staying out of sight. He’d been a prominent fighter there, albeit only for a couple of days, and someone might recognize him. The eye patch, after all, was distinctive.
But after sitting in the office for the better part of a day, he was going quite mad. His knees ached, his left eye socket itched, and he had to pee.
So he got up and walked around for a bit, locking up the door to the office to keep the money safe.
As soon as he turned a corner, he bumped into a man in fine linens who looked maddeningly familiar.
Then he recalled when last he’d seen him: in a palanquin outside the tavern near the oasis. It was Chamberlain Drahar. He was being escorted by two soldiers.
“Excuse me,” Gan said quickly, turning around to go back to the office. He promised never to leave it ever again.
“Stop,” the chamberlain bellowed.
Not wanting to do so, Gan ignored the order and kept going.
“Stop that man.”
Unlike Gan, the soldier did as Drahar instructed, and he ran after Gan. Quickly picking up speed, Gan started to run, hoping that the staircase he thought was around the corner was still there, as once he got downstairs, he could easily lose the soldier in the catacombs.
However, the staircase wasn’t there—it was the dead end that led to the office he’d just locked.
Turning around, he saw the soldier facing him while holding a large bone staff. “I don’t like it when folks make me run.”
The soldier swung downward with his staff, which Gan was able to block by crossing his wrists—one of the first tricks Fehrd had taught him during his one and only lesson in use of the staff as a weapon.
He then grabbed the staff and yanked it downward, forcing the soldier to lose his grip. With the staff firmly in hand, Gan struck the soldier in the jaw, sending him onto his back. Gan finished him off by slamming one end of the staff into his nose.
The soldier lay dead at his feet, the bones of the nose having been jammed up into his brain. Gan then ran back the way he came, hoping that he could run away before the second soldier caught up.
Like far too many of Gan’s hopes of late, it was a forlorn one. The soldier slammed his right arm into Gan’s throat as he turned the corner, sending him crashing to the floor in the same manner as the first soldier had done a few seconds earlier.
However, the second soldier didn’t finish Gan off, instead yanking the staff out of his hands and hauling Gan to his feet, pulling his arms behind his back.
Roughly bringing Gan to Drahar, the soldier said, “ ’Ere ’e is, sir.”
Drahar stared at him. “You were a fighter in this arena. I saw you. Yet now you walk around free. Something about that is wrong. Something about all of this is wrong.” He turned to the
soldier. “Take me to Mandred’s cell, and bring him with us.”
“Yessir.”
Gan put up a struggle out of habit, but he knew it was no good. The soldier had him gripped tightly.
He tried not to think too hard about how he had screwed up yet again.
They went downstairs to the catacombs, eventually winding up in front of the cell where they’d put Rol. Three mind-mages were standing outside the door, concentrating for all they were worth. A soldier—that one a sergeant—was standing next to them.
“I’m not sure what’s going on here,” Drahar said to the sergeant, “but until I do know what’s going on, I want Mandred back in the palace where I know we can control him.”
The sergeant looked confused. “My lord?”
“I will take responsibility with the king, Sergeant. I believe that there is a trick being pulled on us.”
For a moment, Gan considered denying it, then decided, for once in his life, to not speak. Talking would just make things worse.
As the sergeant moved toward the door to unlock it, the mind-mages each stepped back, their faces still twisted with concentration, eyes focused forward on the door, none of them actually looking where they were walking.
With a creak, the door flew open, the sergeant telling the monster that Rol had turned into not to move (as if he could).
Then one of the mind-mages slipped on a bit of green pus on the stone floor that hadn’t been cleaned up.
A second and a half later, all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
At last!
The dreadnaught was free.
Joy echoed throughout the mind that once belonged to Rol Mandred, as the Voidharrow chortled with glee at the loosening of the mental bonds that had been used to shackle the dreadnaught in place.
It was the first of many soldiers of Tharizdun that would stalk across the land bringing the god’s will to life. As the Voidharrow’s first act of freedom, the dreadnaught reached out to grab the soldier on top of his head and then twist. With a meaty squelch, flesh tore and blood spurted, and the snap of the man’s spine as it broke in twain echoed in the corridor.
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