by Mok, DK
“We both know the clerics of Thorlassia can’t do what you can do.”
Whereas the clerics of Fiviel were rather good at poultices and medicinal broths, Seris was of the opinion that the popular clerics of Thorlassia were mostly good at wearing fashionable robes and selling accessorisable amulets.
Eliantora, despite her flaws, was the only deity who actually granted her clerics the gift of healing. Assuming you survived her eccentricities.
“You’re asking me to follow your hero around like a regenerating medicine kit?” said Seris.
“There may not be many of you, but the clerics of Eliantora still command a great deal of respect. To send one with our hero gives people confidence that we are doing all we can to recover the prince.”
“Politics.”
“You should probably catch what sleep you can before Lord Qara summons you. I imagine things are about to get quite busy for you.”
Several of the lamps in the study had burned out, and Falon sat hunched at the desk, flipping through piles of parchment.
“He’s trying to kill me,” said Falon. “Assassination by aneurism.”
“I doubt those were his foremost thoughts while being abducted,” said Qara.
“Of all the stupid, asinine, idiotic—” Falon struggled with an internal avalanche of adjectives. “They probably just tossed a toffee apple into a sack and he crawled in after it. It’ll probably take him a day or two before he even realises he’s been kidnapped.”
“Your Highness, it might be best to leave that kind of speculation alone.”
“The townsfolk will be saying it tomorrow anyway. Qara, do we still have that thing where we hang people for making jokes about the royal family, or did we get rid of that?”
“We still have it, but we try not to use it.”
“Post up a notice, reminding people we still might.”
Valamon regained consciousness surrounded by a spread of stars, cold sparkling lights above and below. Frozen air screamed past, and it took him a few moments to realise that the lights below him were from the city. Or, at least, a city.
He was vaguely aware of a hulking shape gripping him with more limbs than he was comfortable with, but as he looked blurrily at the distant lights below, he decided he probably shouldn’t struggle until they were ten thousand feet lower. At any rate, he was finding it difficult to breathe. His thoughts trailed away from him, and at some point, he passed out again.
After what seemed like a long haze of dark and tearing cold, Valamon became aware of a gradual deceleration, and then a sudden cloud of warm air and light. The creature released its grasp, and Valamon slid across rough flagstones. When he finally rolled to a stop, Valamon continued to lie quite still. He’d observed that carnivorous birds were less likely to bash their prey repeatedly against a rock if they thought the meal was already dead.
In the silence, Valamon opened his eyes a slit. Torches burned in iron brackets, illuminating a sizeable castle hall. Cobwebs draped the rafters, and narrow cracks in the walls spilled with emerald moss. The creature hulked between Valamon and a large, crumbling window, its back to him.
The flickering torchlight revealed a horribly fused mess of human, hippogriff, and harpy, with eyes and limbs and wings in all the wrong places. As he watched, it seemed to draw in on itself, like blood pooling back into a wound. Black folds rippled and fell around the creature, until all that remained was the cloaked figure of a woman.
“If you’re pretending to be unconscious, you should close your eyes,” said the woman, not turning around.
Sorcerer.
The word raked icy claws through Valamon. His father had drummed into him the conviction that sorcerers were dangerous, unpredictable, and liable to have unpleasant senses of humour. Valamon quickly reassessed his likely fate and decided that he was probably about to become a key ingredient in some unholy blood sacrifice. However, he refused to rule out the optimistic possibility that she was a lonely, evil sorcerer wanting to learn more about humanity, and somehow Valamon could earn her respect and turn her towards the forces of good.
However, as the woman turned to fix burning green eyes on Valamon, he conceded that it was probably going to be blood sacrifices. The woman crouched beside him with a smile that made his blood abandon his extremities.
“This is going to be so much fun,” said the woman.
Valamon had the distinct feeling that the woman’s idea of “fun” was violently different to his idea of “fun”, and that her idea of “fun” was probably fairly similar to his idea of “gruesome”.
“Maybe we could discuss some kind of compromise,” said Valamon quickly.
His gaze skittered around the hall, taking in a long table, several chairs, and a large wooden door, which seemed unnecessarily far away.
The woman gave a soft, throaty laugh.
“I don’t think anything you say could save you now. But you’d have to speak to the person in charge.”
“The person—”
The door slammed open, and a bear of a man strode into the hall, dressed in battered plate armour. He looked to be in his late forties, built like a warhorse, and knotted with faded scars.
“Lady Amoriel,” he said sharply.
The woman stood up, delicately dusting off her robes with an ingenuous smile.
“He was like that when I found him.” Amoriel swept a slender arm towards Valamon. “General Barrat, Crown Prince Valamon.”
Valamon rose tentatively to his feet, and Barrat looked at him with the same expression he might wear if he’d just stepped in something inconvenient.
“You found him like that?” said Barrat sceptically.
“Just like that.”
“No armour. No shoes. Did you drag him from the bath or something?”
Amoriel shrugged carelessly. Valamon was dressed in a cotton nightshirt and sleeping trousers, which he suddenly decided were inappropriately thin for mixed company.
“General Barrat, would you be the person in command?” said Valamon.
“No. And I don’t think you want to meet Lord Haska looking like tha—”
The door to the hall slammed open.
An armoured figure stood silhouetted in the doorway, and silence seized the room. Lord Haska strode towards them like a pillar of dark fire, moving with unshakeable purpose.
The first thing Valamon noticed was the armour. It wasn’t Talgaran, and it was nothing like the flimsy plate and crooked chain that were churned from the smithies these days. This was carefully crafted from plates of bronze and steel, meshed with flexible leather guards, bearing crests he didn’t immediately recognise. The armour looked as though it had been handed down through generations, accumulating as much history as its occupant.
The second thing Valamon noticed was the grotesque steel half-mask shadowed beneath the helm. The mask completely covered the right side of the wearer’s face and depicted a stylised visage howling with rage.
The last thing Valamon noticed was the armoured fist as Haska punched him hard across the face, sending him crashing onto the flagstones.
“Valamon,” said Haska.
She said his name like a warning, like a malevolent welcome, like a message of blood carried across the centuries. Growing up in Valamon’s family, he wasn’t a stranger to being struck about the head, but he’d never been hit like that. It was like being smashed in the face with the flat of a battleaxe, and his hand came away wet with red.
“That’s so you know I’m not afraid to hurt you,” said Haska.
Valamon had actually been acutely aware since childhood that people weren’t afraid to hurt him. One of his earliest memories was of his nursemaid being dragged from the dining hall after serving him poisoned soup. Although he’d tried to reassure everyone that he hadn’t eaten any of the dish, they’d all bemoaned the incident as a contributing factor in his apparent shortcomings. For months afterwards, the screams of his nursemaid stabbed through his dreams, although one of the only words he’d
understood was “spawn”.
Valamon managed to rise to his feet, fairly certain he’d be reintroduced to the floor.
“We’re not going to sit down and discuss this like civilised people,” said Haska. “I cannot be reasoned with, bribed, threatened, or seduced. Any attempt to do the above will result in your stay being even more brief and unpleasant than I already intend it to be.”
Valamon decided that his best course of action was to say nothing and to concentrate on breathing quietly through his mouth.
Haska looked at Valamon with what he could only describe as mortal enmity.
“General Barrat, take the prince to his cell.”
TWO
Seris was ready to crawl under a rock and die in an accusatory manner. To the general population, it was a mild day, with a barley-scented breeze drifting in from the outlying fields. To a sun-sensitive cleric, who’d been sitting outdoors from dawn until dusk for the past three days, it was an exhausting, searing day beneath an unforgiving sun.
Falon’s speech had gone pretty much as expected, and news of Valamon’s abduction had been received with a mixture of fear, horror, amusement, and apathy. News of the tournament and the hero’s quest had been greeted with significantly more interest, particularly the part about the reward. Ten thousand pieces of gold, a plot of prime land, the gratitude of the king, and the title Champion of the Realm. Every barkeep, stable hand, and half-reformed street thug who fancied themselves an adventurer had flocked to sign up.
Seris drooped behind the sign-up table, willing the sun to sink faster into the hills. He slid another full page of names into his wooden tray, drawing another blank sheet from the endless pile. Sitting beside him, Qara studiously organised the names into groups and schedules for the three tournament challenges. It was late afternoon, but a dense crowd remained in the castle forecourt, milling around the specially constructed stand.
Seris rather uncharitably suspected that Qara’s refusal to erect an awning was a ploy to force him into drawing his hood over his face. Certainly, having a mysteriously hooded cleric of Eliantora sitting beside the marquis added a mystical flair to the proceedings. Seris wondered what Qara would have done if he’d insisted on wearing a sombrero instead.
The mood of the crowd shifted suddenly, and Seris squinted towards a commotion across the forecourt. Every new arrival had been greeted with jeers or cheers or the occasional shoe, but this time a taint of hostility spread through the crowd, like rumours before a riot. Mutters snaked from mouth to mouth, and abruptly, Seris caught a word. It was a word you couldn’t miss, a word you wouldn’t use, and it slapped through the air like the first stone.
Without warning, Qara’s hand darted out and grabbed Seris’s robe. In the same motion, she pushed out of her seat and yanked Seris backwards, pulling him away from the stand. Seris caught the briefest glimpse of an overhead shadow before a burly man crashed from nowhere onto the sign-up table, splintering it into kindling.
The suddenly silent crowd drew back, forming a nervous space around a young woman with dark hair.
“Anyone else have something to say?” said the dark-haired woman.
It was difficult to tell her age, although at a guess she was a few years younger than Seris. Maybe eighteen. Her ragged tunic and trousers resembled mutilated potato sacking wrapped in copious amounts of raw twine. Her short hair was irregularly hacked, as though cut by an opponent during battle. The woman lashed a smile across the watching faces, sending shivers through Seris. He imagined she’d wear a similar smile if your entrails were splattering over her feet.
The woman approached the remains of the desk and stopped in front of Seris.
“I’m here to sign up.”
Seris glanced nervously at Qara, who was staring at the woman with a tense, calculating expression, her sword half-drawn. If the blade came all the way out, you knew you were in trouble. Seris scooped up a rumpled sign-up sheet and looked helplessly at the broken ink pots smashed around the prone man.
“Um, I’ll just need to get some—”
Seris stared as the woman carefully dipped her quill into a spatter of fresh blood on the flagstones. Reaching across to the piece of parchment, she inscribed several neat words before tucking the quill into Seris’s sleeve. He stood perfectly motionless, staring at the bloody writing.
“Aren’t you going to heal him, cleric of Eliantora?” said the woman.
“I, uh, we…”
The woman continued staring at him, and there was something disturbing about her eyes, as though there were things crawling behind them.
“Sure, yes,” said Seris. “We’ll patch him up. Thank you for signing up.”
The woman dragged her gaze lazily around the whispering crowd before sauntering from the forecourt, the mob parting as though around a cart of bubonic corpses. Qara took the sign-up sheet from Seris and looked at the name printed in sticky red, her expression turning stony.
Elhan del Gavir.
“That’s why we don’t have an awning,” said Qara.
Seris didn’t usually frequent the city’s bars, but tonight he needed the noise. It had been a very long three days, and it had ended with rather more excitement than he cared for. Healing the wounded man had also been extremely draining. The internal bleeding in particular had been…tricky.
Seris laid his head on the sticky table, closing his eyes as he clutched his glass of cold lemon water. Mutterings, exclamations, and the occasional axe bounced around the tables, but almost all the conversations were about the same thing.
The Kali-Adelsa is here.
“They say she’s crossed the borders from beyond the annexed lands, in breach of the king’s ban…” came a hushed voice from a crowded table.
“Even the Kali-Adelsa wouldn’t break the pact—” said another voice.
“She’s in the capital! Everyone saw her.”
“They say she once gouged out the eyes of a woman for looking at her funny.”
“I heard she once ripped out the tongue of a man for grammatically inaccurate speech.”
“Surely they wouldn’t let an uncontrollable butcher enter the tournament…”
Seris doubted the accuracy of that last comment, particularly in light of the credentials possessed by many of the adventurers who’d signed up. Although, to be fair, Seris had turned away an uncontrollable butcher the previous morning. The man had aggressively refused to put down his cleaver, and Qara’s guards had been forced to quietly escort him back to his offal stall.
Seris sat up slowly, trying not to think of the woman in the forecourt, somehow buzzing in his vision like something not quite real. He tried not to think of the man’s ruptured organs, painstakingly mended under Eliantora’s guidance.
He tried instead to think of the temple, which would probably smell of baked potatoes and pumpkin. Petr would be in bed by now, and hopefully, Morle had remembered to take off his shoes. Morle would be sitting by the front window, watching the city trickle by with her tense, haunted eyes.
Seris tried not to think of the past three days, because he had the ominous feeling that the next three were going to be worse.
The morning drizzled with misty rain, but it wasn’t enough to deter the crowds. The forecourt was packed to capacity, jostling with curious locals, cocky adventurers, and people with highly graphic nicknames. A dozen roped-off platforms rose like islands in the crowd, and the centre of the forecourt was dominated by a wooden arena, tautly roped around the sides.
Seris tugged his hood farther over his face as Qara handed maps and schedules to her guards. As the last few soldiers dispersed to their designated stations, Qara flicked the rain from her eyes.
“Onto the stage.”
“What? But I’m—”
Without waiting for Seris to finish, Qara stepped briskly onto a small podium. Seris reluctantly followed, aware that the consequence of not doing so would probably involve a certain amount of undignified manhandling. He stood sullenly beside Qara as she addressed t
he crowd, the forecourt falling into a hush.
“Three trials. Three days,” said Qara. “One victor will emerge from each challenge to compete in one final trial, for the honour of undertaking this quest.”
Seris could feel the excited tension bubbling off the crowd, visions of wealth, glory, and sanctioned violence floating like smog through the air. Qara continued.
“The tournament’s first challenge is a test of unarmed combat. Each challenger will compete in instant elimination rounds until ten potential champions remain. All ten will then enter the arena in simultaneous battle until one victor emerges. You fight for your king and empire. Do them no dishonour!”
A roar of anticipation carried across the crowd as Qara stepped from the stage. A flicker of something like distaste crossed her face but was quickly suppressed.
“Do we have to watch?” said Seris.
Forcing a cleric to watch people beating each other into comas was akin to forcing a scholar to watch a library go up in flames.
“It’s my duty to assess the competitors. You can sleep in the tent if you like. I mean, meditate.”
Seris felt a pang of guilt when he realised her offer was genuine. As he watched Qara diligently inking notes onto her schedule, Seris wondered briefly how well Qara had known Prince Valamon.
“I’ll stay with you,” said Seris. “I guess I should familiarise myself with my potential travel companions.”
Seris walked with Qara as she strode from platform to platform, observing the bouts through the steady rain. The audience around each ring cheered and booed in equal measure, and by noon, ten battered combatants remained.
As the final ten assembled on the central platform, Seris looked at the line-up with a sinking feeling. He tried not to be judgmental, but he was certain at least one of them had a name that ended in “the Barbarian”, and another appeared to be suppressing hysterical laughter. Seris’s gaze stopped on a slim figure near the end, wedged between a man with a compulsive wink and a woman who looked like she could kick over a rhinoceros.