The Verdent Passage

by Troy Denning

  The gaj jerked its head to one side, smashing the outer edge of its mandible into Rikus's hip and sending him staggering backward. The mul paused and frowned at the beast, trying to figure out what made it so special in Tithian's eyes. There was no doubt that the creature was powerful, but he was far from impressed so far. Had he been carrying a bladed or pointed weapon, the gaj would have been dead when he made his first feint.

  "Something's wrong with it," Rikus called over hit shoulder. "The hunters must have blinded it when they captured it."

  Boaz erupted into a fit of high-pitched laughter.

  Neeva called, "Just hit the damn thing and see what happens!"

  Gnashing his teeth at his partner's sharp tone, Rikus turned back to the gaj. Pointedly ignoring the beast's vacant red eyes, he strolled to one side of its head. He gave the white sphere a sharp rap, and the stick landed with a dull throb that felt as though he had struck a mattress filled with straw.

  One of the hairy antennae lashed out and wrapped it self around the stick, then wrenched the weapon free of Rikus's hand with an effortless flick. The astonished mul leaped away and somersaulted backward to put more distance between himself and the gaj. As he sprang back to his feet, the guards and Boaz roared with glee. The mul frowned, as angry with himself for allowing the gaj to surprise him as he was with the guards for laughing at his careless.

  The gaj did not move, although it was using its bristly antenna to swing Rikus's stick through the air. After a moment of watching the creature, Rikus realized that it was performing an awkward imitation of a defensive figure-eight pattern—the same pattern he had traced through the air after Sadira tossed him the weapons.

  Immediately the mul realized two important things about his opponent. First, it seemed the antennae atop its head were more akin to tentacles, for he had never before seen an animal use an antenna as a grasping organ. Second, the gaj was a lot smarter and more observant than it appeared at first glance. The beast was mimicking a formal fighting pattern, and he doubted that it was mere chance.

  Rikus turned, growling, "So, you want to do a little stick fighting?"

  He began whirling his remaining stick in a series of randomly changing patterns, then advanced on the gaj behind the blurred, whistling shield he was creating with his weapon.

  As the gladiator stepped within striking range, the front side of the gaj's shell rose two feet off the ground. Rikus glimpsed a pulpy white body and a tangle of knobby-jointed legs. Suddenly the beast withdrew its head beneath the shell, taking the singing stick along with it. The shell dropped back to the ground. The gaj's barbed mandibles, all that remained visible of the head, clacked once and reopened menacingly.

  "Now what, Rikus?" cried a guard.

  "Crawl under there and fight it!" suggested another.

  His face reddening with embarrassment, Rikus looked over his shoulder. Only Neeva's face remained serious.

  Even Sadira was grinning at his predicament.

  "This thing doesn't want to fight," he called. "Why don't three or four of you come down here instead?"

  His challenge brought a fresh round of chuckles from the spectators, but none of them volunteered.

  Rikus placed his stick between his teeth and circled around to the gaj's side, where its pincers would not be able to seize him. He squatted down next to the shell and grabbed the underside of the lip, then heaved with all his might.

  The carapace rose from the ground, and something clattered inside. Rikus heaved harder, pushing it higher. Six canelike legs shot out and planted themselves firmly in the sand, three to a side. The shiny black limbs were about as thick as Rikus's forearm, divided into five segments by a series of knotted joints. Each limb ended in two-pronged claws that now clutched at the sand in a futile effort to hold the shell down.

  With the singing stick still clenched in his teeth, Rikus shifted his grip and lowered his body again so that he could push the shell the rest of the way over. This time, it required more effort to raise the beast. On the opposite side of its body, the gaj had extended its legs well beyond its shell and was using them to counter its attacker's efforts. Nonetheless, Rikus was slowly lifting one side. Even a creature like the gaj was no match for the dense muscles of a mul.

  The carapace rose higher, and the legs closest to Rikus left the ground. The mul saw that, beneath the shell, the gaj's body was divided into three white sections: the head, a narrow midsection from which sprang all six legs, and a bloated, heart-shaped abdomen. At the end of the abdomen was a ring of red-tinged muscle.

  As Rikus pushed the shell perilously close to tipping, the gaj curled its abdomen forward so that the ring of muscle pointed toward its attacker. The muscles tightened and opened a hole the size of the mul's thumb. There was a loud hiss, and a puff of gas brushed the gladiator's face.

  Rikus immediately spat the fighting stick from between his clenched teeth, letting it fall to the sand as he dropped the gaj. He spun away and ran several steps before he dropped to his knees and retched. His throat was filled with such a burning stench that he could hardly stand to breathe, and his skin tingled beneath a moist, foul-smelling substance.

  "Think the creature is helpless, Rikus?" asked Boaz, smirking at the stricken gladiator.

  Rikus tried to respond, but all he could manage was to gasp a few breaths of fresh air. He grabbed a handful of sand and rubbed it over his face, trying to scour the stinking mist from his cheeks.

  "Rikus, you're sick!" called Yarig. "You need help!"

  "No!" Rikus yelled, managing to bellow the strained reply. If the mul was to win his bet with Boaz and save his friends a lashing, he could not have the dwarf rushing to his rescue.

  Hoping to stop Yarig from rushing to his aid, the mul rose to his feet. To his surprise, he stumbled and nearly fell again. He still felt nauseous, and his head was spinning as though he had just downed a gallon of wine. The thing had poisoned him!

  Through his blurred vision, Rikus saw that his efforts had only added to the dwarf's determination. Yarig stepped toward the rope that dangled into the fighting pit. "I'm coming, Rikus!"

  "Stay where you are, Yarig!" ordered Boaz. "I'll decide when Rikus leaves the ring."

  Of course, Yarig showed no sign of obeying, but through the haze, Rikus saw Neeva intercept him. Though she was no match for the dwarf's strength, the woman managed to detain him long enough for a pair of guards to present their speartips to his throat. The dwarf reluctantly stopped moving.

  Rikus's vision was just clearing when both of his fighting sticks sailed over his head and clattered against the rock wall. The mul spun around to face the gaj, his head reeling from the quick motion.

  The creature had climbed out of its shallow burrow. Now, standing on all six legs, the crest of its shell was slightly higher than Rikus's head. It was clacking its mandibles and flourishing the hairy tentacles atop its head, and three of its red eyes seemed fixed on the gladiator.

  Without taking his eyes off the gaj, Rikus stumbled back toward the wall to retrieve his sticks. On the deck above, the guards and Boaz were talking quietly, but Neeva and the other slaves remained silent.

  The gaj scuttled forward, its great pincers opened wide. Not wishing to be trapped against the wall, Rikus moved out to meet his opponent, his sticks whistling through the air as if they were whips. The gaj mirrored his approach, whirling its head stalks in small circles as if they were ropes.

  Rikus gave a battle yell and ran forward at the best pace his shaky legs would carry him. He lifted a stick to strike shifting the other into a middle defense. In the same instant, the gaj's body sank nearly a foot as it gathered its legs beneath itself.

  Realizing that it was about to surprise him again, Rikus immediately kicked his feet out from beneath himself. He landed flat on his back with a hard thump. In the same instant, the sprang. The thing's huge body descended on him, its barbed mandibles clasping where he had stood just a moment before.

  Holding his sticks like daggers, he jabbed at th
e underside of the creature's soft thorax. The ends of the sticks sank several inches into the soft tissue. Rikus had no way of telling whether he had injured the gaj, or even whether it had felt the blows.

  The gaj lifted the back of its shell, and the gladiator saw the tip of its abdomen curling toward him. Rikus kicked at it with all his might and held his breath. A hiss sounded near his feet. The mul withdrew his sticks and jabbed at the gaj's thorax three more times, then rolled, beating his way through a tangle of slashing legs to pass from beneath the carapace.

  As the crimson rays of the sun touched his face and he dared to breathe again, Rikus glimpsed Sadira and the other slaves standing at the edge of the wall, just above the rope that dangled into the pit. The guards who surrounded them seemed more interested in what was happening in the arena than watching the slaves.

  The mul scrambled to his feet. "I'm fine!" he called, stumbling backward as he used his sticks to parry a rapid series of wild slashes from a pair of black, jointed legs.

  The gaj spun around to face the gladiator with its mandibles. As Rikus feigned a charge, its pincers again closed on empty air. The mul leaped past. He brought his sticks down on the pulpy mass of its head in a rapid cadence of lightning-quick strokes, snapping his wrist as he struck to add velocity to the blow.

  The gaj struck him with its hairy tentacles. Bands of searing agony shot through the gladiator's arms and chest. His entire body seemed to be burning from the inside out, and Rikus feared that he was about to burst into a ball of flame. The mul screamed.

  He tried to leap away. His sluggish legs wobbled. Blazing pain seized his shoulders and torso. Rikus ignored the torment, forcing his body to perform his will. It half-obeyed, and the mul felt himself toppling over backward. Letting out a great bellow, Rikus called upon his legs to catch him. They felt as though they were made of stone, but they obeyed and caught him before he fell.

  The gaj retracted its head, opening its pincers. Rikus stepped backward and lifted his lethargic arms. The gaj's head shot out from beneath its shell and the mandibles closed around the mul's midsection. He felt four sharp blows as its barbs sank into his abdomen.

  Rikus did not attempt to twist free. Even in the terrible pain he was suffering, he realized the futility of struggling against the pincers. Instead, gripping his weapons as if they were a pair of dirks, Rikus jabbed at the closest pair of eyes. As the sticks struck home, the red facets of the compound eyes collapsed inward. A shudder ran the length of the gaj's body.

  It gripped Rikus more tightly.

  Neeva appeared at the mul's side, a guard's spear in her hands. She jabbed the point at the gaj's head. Rikus dimly heard Boaz screaming at her. As Neeva's weapon descended, the creature intercepted the shaft with a bristly tentacle, then jerked the spear from her hands and flung it across the sand pit.

  Yarig appeared on the other side, followed closely by Anezka, who Rikus suspected had entered the fray only to support her partner. The dwarf swung the heft of his weapon at the beast's head as if it were a cudgel. The halfling thrust her spear's point beneath the gaj's mandibles, striking for the underside of the head.

  When their attacks landed, Anezka's spear sank well past the obsidian point. The gaj countered by using Rikus like a mace, whipping him from side-to-side and battering the would-be rescuers with the mul's massive body. The other three gladiators went sprawling.

  Rikus glimpsed Sadira sneaking up on the beast's flank, armed with nothing more than a handful of sand. "Get out of here!" he cried, astonished that the slave-girl would risk her life to save him.

  He was being shaken so violently that his words were garbled beyond all recognition. Rikus stabbed once more at the gaj's injured eyes. This time, two of the beast's antennae intercepted his blows. The hairy stems wrapped themselves around his wrists. Waves of pain shot up both arms, and the gladiator's muscles contracted so tightly that he feared his bones would be crushed. He screamed and tried to yank the tentacles from their roots, but found his arms could no longer obey him.

  The third tentacle slapped him in the side of the head, encircling his brow. His mind exploded in sheer white agony. Rikus could see nothing, hear nothing. He felt his chest contracting and expanding as he screamed, but that was all.

  Inside his head, a swarm of thumb-sized beetles appeared out of the chalk-colored emptiness that now isolated him. All of the beetles looked like the gaj. Slowly they scuttled through the air to the surface of his mind and began to eat away at it, leaving behind wispy tendrils of pain as they crawled over its rippled terrain. Gradually they created a net of blistering torment that enveloped Rikus's mind completely.

  The net began to draw inexorably tighter, and the mul's panic, his memory, and even his will to fight began to fade. Soon he could feel nothing but the horrid fire of his agony, smell nothing but the bitter odor of his own fear, and taste nothing but the dry ash of his thoughts slipping away.

  Finally, even those bitter sensations faded. The mul was left with nothing but the long fall to oblivion.

  TWO

  The Sorceress

  Rikus stopped screaming.

  The mul's fighting sticks tumbled from his thick-fingered hands. His shoulders slumped, his knotted knees buckled, and his dark eyes rolled back in their sockets until only the whites showed. The gaj raised its black pincers, displaying the gladiator's limp body as if it were a trophy. One hairy tentacle remained wrapped around Rikus's brow, holding his head upright, and the others still clasped his wrists.

  Sadira stopped a dozen yards from the gaj's side. She had to fight to keep from gagging as she smelled the last whiffs of a fetid vapor. The mul's body hung limply in the beast's black pincers, with blood from the barb punctures streaming down his legs and dripping from his toes.

  To the left of the gaj, Neeva returned to her feet, clearing her head with a violent shake. On the other side of the beast, Yarig had already stood and was lifting his spear in preparation for a charge. Anezka, whose spear remained lodged in the beast's head, was standing farther away than Sadira, studying the creature with a look of confused anger.

  On the wall surrounding the pit, Boaz screamed, "Let the spineless mul die!"

  Though it would mean a severe punishment later, none of the slaves obeyed the trainer. When the gaj had lashed the mul with its bristly tentacles, the unfamiliar sound of Rikus screaming and the sight of his retreat had left no doubt that he was in trouble. Yarig had slapped aside the spears pointed at his throat, then slid down the rope to help his friend. Out of loyalty to her dwarven partner, Anezka had followed almost immediately. In the same instant, Neeva had plucked the spears from the hands of a trio of guards and dropped down into the sand, not even bothering with the rope.

  To everyone's astonishment except her own, Sadira had slipped past the confused guards and followed the gladiators into the pit. No doubt Boaz and all the others believed she had lost her coquettish head and rushed into the pit out of panic, but that was not the case. Sadira had entered the arena so she would be close enough to cast a spell if there appeared to be no other way to save Rikus It now seemed as if the mul would be torn into pieces by the time the other gladiators freed him from the gaj's pincers. If the mul was to be saved, Sadira would have to use her magic—an act that would almost certainly place her own life in peril. In Tyr, as in other Athasian cities, only the king and his templars were permitted to use sorcery. Those who defied this law were put to death.

  More importantly, anyone who understood the basics of spellcasting would know that Sadira had not attained such powers on her own. Tithian, her owner and the man who would likely interrogate her, would deduce that she was connected to the Veiled Alliance, the secret society of sorcerers dedicated to overthrowing the king. Doubtless he would want to know why the Alliance had recruited an agent in his pits. If he caught her alive, he would try to force the answer from her through a long and agonizing torture.

  Even with all these considerations, Sadira had no choice but to use her magic. Rikus
did not know it yet, but the Veiled Alliance had plans for him at the ziggurat games. Too much depended on those plans to let the gladiator die.

  Preparing to cast her spell, Sadira took a deep breath and looked for some indication that the fighters were at last gaining the upper hand against their nemesis. She did not find it. The gaj was keeping both Yarig and Neeva at bay by using Rikus's body like a massive hammer, and Anezka seemed at a complete loss without her spear.

  "Neeva, Yarig, cover your eyes!" Sadira yelled.

  Neeva frowned. "What?"

  "Just trust me," Sadira said sharply. "It's for Rikus." Without waiting for a reply, the half-elf leveled her palm toward the ground and spread her fingers. Shutting out all other thoughts, she focused her mind on her hand, summoning the energy she needed for her magic. The air beneath her palm began to shimmer, then a barely visible surge of power passed through the air, entered her hand, and moved through her arm.

  To the untrained eye, it might have appeared Sadira was extracting her magic from the ground, but that was not the case. While it was true that she drew the power for her magic from the life force of Athas itself, like all sorcerers she could only tap this mystic power through plants. The energy flowing into her body came to her from the smoketrees, needlebushes, and hornbushes surrounding Tithian's slave compound. The ground was only a medium for transferring it.

  When Sadira had gathered enough power for her spell she closed her hand and cut off the flow of energy. If she took too much power too rapidly, the plants from which she was drawing the life force would die and the ground holding their roots would become sterile and barren. Unfortunately, few sorcerers were so careful with their powers, and it was their carelessness that had reduced Athas to a wasteland.

  Now that Sadira had gathered enough mystic energy, she uttered the incantation that would give shape and direction to her magic, then threw a handful of sand at her target. A flashing cone of scarlet and gold spouted from her fingers and shot toward the gaj's head in a sparkling beam of radiance. As it reached the beast, the stream broke into a froth of emerald bubbles, each of which burst into a spray of red or blue or yellow or any of a hundred other vibrant colors. Even to Sadira, who knew what to expect, the display was dazzling. The brilliance of all the clashing colors set her mind to reeling, and only the fact that she had known what the spell would do saved her from being stunned by the resplendent spectacle.