by Jon Kiln
Now Fraad’s son was on his stomach, facedown in the dirt. Grabbing his opponent’s flailing arms, Draken pulled them behind the boy’s back and hitched them up toward his shoulder blades with all of his considerable force. There was a sickening crack, and the boy’s face scraped along the ground, his mouth filling with dust even as he took a deep breath with which to scream.
Draken held both the boy’s hands in a vice grip in one of his own and used his free fist to slam a driving punch into the boy’s kidney from behind. The soft flesh there yielded, and the older boy was robbed again of his scream as he hitched in for half-breath after half-breath, just trying to get enough air.
Draken didn’t realize the spectator’s circle had gone quiet. He didn’t realize the only sounds were the pathetic whimpers of his opponent and his own animal grunts as he worked his devastation on him. He’d forgotten there were other people there at all, until he felt an angry hand on his shoulder, yanking him off the older boy.
It was Pul. “Enough!” he hissed through clenched teeth in a low voice only Draken could hear. “You want to kill him?”
But Draken did want to kill him, he realized. He wouldn’t have stopped on his own. The pleasure of violence and strength had overcome him in an irresistible rush. Not just that, but competency had also manifested itself, and it was like a high. He did know how to fight. He’d been built for it. Not only his body, but his mind.
Pul turned to the other kids. “I’d say he won,” he said, with none of the vehemence he’d used with Draken. He tried on a smile. “Wouldn’t you?”
Draken was glad for Pul’s grin as it seemed to defuse an odd, angry energy that had permeated the ring only a moment before. The ring seemed to agree, but once the bets had been paid (no one had bet for Draken except Pul), the group slowly dissipated. Fraad’s boy was helped home by three of his friends who treated him like he’d accomplished some kind of heroics worthy of their reverence. Even though it wasn’t even two-and-a-half hours past noon, the fun and games seemed done for that day. Draken had ruined it.
But at least Pul went home with a pocket full of coins. Draken didn’t ask him about it later, and Pul never ended up offering to split the money.
Chapter 4
“You’re tired,” Draken said. “Go to sleep, and we can talk more in the morning.”
Maradi shook her head, but wasn’t able to stifle the yawn that overtook her face. “No,” she said, “I can keep listening.”
“But maybe I can’t keep talking,” he said. “Not yet. Maybe I need to sleep as well.” He motioned to Maradi’s mother, who had been watching them for the last few minutes, perhaps hoping Draken would send the girl in for the evening. She came in response to his wave, and came out again once she’d seen Maradi to bed.
She was a short woman, thick-bodied but with delicate features. “Has my daughter been of service to you?” she asked.
“Whom do you serve?” Draken asked in return.
The woman gasped, falling to the ground in holy worship. When she stood, she said, “Kohlel. The same as my daughter.”
Draken again uttered the brief, ancient prayer on her behalf, sending her supplication to the heavens in a way she could not.
“I’m sorry. I forgot,” she said.
He motioned with his hand to indicate it was of little importance.
“Before you were a monk, whom did you serve?”
He looked up at her then, startled. What a cheeky woman! It was not technically against the Doctrines to ask such a question, but few would. The monks were holy. Their pasts holy. Too full of manna to be trifled with. But he told her, anyway, amused by her boldness. He figured he’d return the shock she’d given him.
He said, “Rada.”
He was not disappointed.
“Rada!” she nearly yelped. “And you became a monk! I did not even know such a thing were possible!”
“It’s rare,” he admitted.
“How rare?”
He smiled. “I am the first in this era.”
“Not since the war?” she said in disbelief. “Then you are truly worthy.”
“No,” he said. “I have failed in my duties so far.”
She smiled at him. “How else could it be? Rada never plays by the rules!”
“True, but monks must. And now I serve them all, so…”
“I suppose you do,” she said, sounding a bit deflated. “I would offer to let you come in, but I know you won’t, not even to sleep on my floor.”
“Then thank you for not offering. I don’t like telling people no.”
“A least let me bring you a blanket.”
“As you wish.”
***
She was the first one he saw the next morning as well, but now her attitude was gone. She looked worried, or more than worried.
“It’s my daughter,” she said without preamble. “Her Sickness.”
Draken’s mind couldn’t process it. The scant grass beneath him seemed to move and squirm as if it were alive. He sat up, and the world tipped forward. Her Sickness? The disease had been raging in the country of Drammata since before Draken was born, but this Northern area of Merreline, with its countryside pastures and not a city to speak of, had gone almost totally untouched. So why her? Why now, right after he’d told the girl of how his own father had succumbed to it?
“You must be wrong,” he said.
“I pray that’s so.”
She took his hand and led him into the house.
“Where is the girl’s father?” he asked, but dropped the line of questioning when the woman looked shamefully at the floor. “It’s all right,” he said, and went deeper into the small house. Maradi’s room was not hard to find.
She looked up as he came in, and smiled. She didn’t look sick. “I’m sorry I haven’t been out to listen to you yet,” she said. “Mother asked me to stay inside for a while.”
Draken turned his eye questioningly at the girl’s mother, who shook her head stiffly, once. She hadn’t yet mentioned Her Sickness to Maradi.
Just when he was sure the woman was wrong, Maradi coughed, and all doubt drained from him like blood from a wide gash. That distinctive cutting sharpness of the cough, like a shard of glass in the throat and another in the lungs, was all he needed to hear.
“It-it’s a-all right,” he mumbled, flashing the most convincing smile he could muster. “I will come in later and talk to you here. Would you like that?”
“Yes, Brother Dimiter.”
He closed the girl’s door and motioned to her mother to follow him to the small mule stable outside. The early-morning sun didn’t do much against the chill, but the day had the quality of one that would grow warm by afternoon.
Once he was sure Maradi would not hear him, he said, “What is your name?”
“Hamma.”
“Hamma, I don’t know how this is possible. I am not sick. Are you?”
“No.”
“Then I can’t understand.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I understand.”
“What?” Draken responded. He couldn’t make out her tone or her meaning.
“Dramm-Teskata will take Maradi into service. It is, after all, Her Sickness. My daughter served you well, and Dramm-Teskata decided that was enough. Maradi is to be free from the pains of life and move on to what is beyond it. The service of our Dual Woman.”
“No,” he said, even as he saw the wisdom in her words. “No.”
If she spoke the truth, then it was his fault the girl was dying.
“Aren’t you happy for her?” the woman asked as she began to feed the mules their morning grains. There was nothing about her demeanor that suggested she was happy for her daughter.
“Yes,” he said by rote. It was blasphemy to deny, even in word, the opportunity for one to serve Dramm-Teskata.
If only they could all be so lucky.
Chapter 5
Thirty miles to the south, on the outskirts of a long-abandoned farming town th
at had dried up when the ground became blighted, three men sat in a circle, talking. Each of them had a bear mask pulled up high on their heads so their faces were unobscured. There were a few other men nearby, all with masks close at hand, servicing the horses and checking that their supplies of both weapons and foodstuffs were stocked and secure.
The three men spoke in hushed tones as the laborers worked on.
“How can you be so certain he’s in the north now?” one of them said, addressing their leader.
“Because he has allowed himself to become a coward,” the leader replied with contempt. “His gambling debts, which he does not even realize default to me, are enormous. So he could not have remained in Figa even if he wanted to. It stands to reason he’s fled somewhere.”
“That may be so, but we have no way to know which way he’d go,” the third man said.
“Maybe you don’t, but I know Draken intimately. He would never travel south after what’s happened. He’d do everything he could to stay clear of the country of Eda. He wouldn’t even want to go toward it.”
“He fears us that much?” the first asked, clearly not believing it.
“No,” said the leader. “He knows he is a match for any one of us. Any five of us, probably. But he fears our god, whether or not he admits that he believes in E’ghat.”
The third man nodded. “He will come back, if E’ghat wants it. We don’t need to worry.”
“E’ghat wants it,” the leader said, anger in his voice. “Count on it.”
“Then he will come back. When we find him.”
The leader calmed a bit. “If he’d gone east or west, he’d still be too easily recognized. There are circuits by the western shores, a large arena in Gamol, and circuits almost on the eastern border beyond the Radan Mountains, but in the north, Merreline, specifically, they don’t have arena fights.”
“Ahh,” the first man said, understanding.
The leader smirked.
“And when we find him,” he said, “hold nothing back. Remember, if he is truly one of the scattered, then he cannot be killed in battle. But he won’t hesitate to kill you, regardless of what costume he may be wearing.”
Chapter 6
The girl was dying as surely as Draken’s father had been dying. She had maybe days, maybe weeks, but surely no more than that. Hamma didn’t seem to blame him, or even Dramm-Taskata, which Draken thought was a show of faith beyond his ken.
He’d been there now for two nights, but he had still not slept inside the walls of their small farmhouse. He sat with the girl in her room and told her his story and tried not to think about how he might have brought her to death by helping her fulfill some greater purpose.
Better to live, he thought, than make a sacrifice of this magnitude, especially since she was innocent already. She’d been free from sin and had nothing to atone for. But still, he could not go against the will of Dramm-Teskata, for he had neither the power nor the means to do so.
He had asked Hamma not to listen to his tale as he told it to Maradi—not that he knew why he bothered—but he knew that when she had the chance to get away from her chores she sat in her room one thin wall away and listened as best she could. And soon he realized he was glad she had disobeyed him. He was glad someone else would know who he really was, and why he had no right to be a monk…
***
Two years in the arena, and Draken became their youngest champion-rank fighter. Not The Champion, as he had been too young to even attempt it, but still a force to be reckoned with. He brought paying customers by the droves, watchers and gamblers alike. At age fifteen, he entertained spectators with his strength and astounded them with his knowledge of the fighting arts.
The rumor that he served Rada despite having been born under Shinna’s sky could not be stymied, even though the myth of a child being born under the broken sky was apocryphal at best and heretical at worst. But still, many people believed the astro-priests who interpreted the heavens must have been wrong when Draken was born. Not that anyone blamed them. Those who served Rada were rare these days, and a broken sky between Shinna and Rada? A phenomenon that was rarer still. There was no other explanation how this boy, the son of a merchant, no less, dispatched larger, more experienced fighters not only routinely, but with style.
When the trainers came around, even those legendary Champion-makers, Pul had to beat them off with a stick, sometimes literally. “My brother will take no trainer!” he told them almost daily, as much for the ears of anyone passing by as for their benefit. The semi-mystical idea that Draken would not allow his personal methods to be polluted with foreign ideas could only bolster his popularity.
When the time came for Draken to officially enter the Champion’s Trial, he was surrounded by fans. An informal entourage of women, single and otherwise, children who hoped to one day fight in the arena themselves, and even other fighters, followed him to the entrance where he would sign his name and prick his finger to smear his blood beside it, his oath that he would fight to the death if need be to retain the honor of the ancient arena.
Many people, fighters and spectators alike, were moving to get deaths banned in the arena altogether, rare as it was already, but this symbolic act of smearing blood would probably go on long after killing became illegal.
The arena in Figa was the largest in all of Drammata, and matched another in the Far East for largest in the known world. It brought in more money than every other non-food industry the city had, and aside from nobility, its celebrities were the most well-known individuals there were.
Even then, Draken knew of Carella, but she was little more than a face in the crowd. One droplet in the sea of his admirers. A very pretty girl whose family had a powerful social standing in Figa, but that was about it. He remembered her name because it had been his mother’s before Her Sickness took her years before the death of his father, but it was a common name in Figa, and that was as far as his interest in her went.
Walking into the arena entrance that day, there was a song in his heart and a smile on his face. He felt he deserved to be surrounded by admirers in this way. It seemed to be the natural order of things, especially since his father had told him he was destined for greatness.
He was beset upon by news-callers looking for a good story. He didn’t mind in the least. His oldest brother, Debbin, was a news-caller now, but Draken didn’t see him this day. Probably, he hoped to get an exclusive interview later on.
“Will you fight officially in the name of Rada?” asked a squirrelly man with a hard parchment in one hand and a quill in the other.
“You’ll be fighting grown men now,” said a tall woman similarly equipped to write down his responses to later be shouted from corners, rooftops, and squares. “Fighters who have trained and battled for longer than you’ve been alive. Are you afraid?”
Someone else with that distinctive news-caller’s voice, but who Draken couldn’t see through the throng of people, said, “Will you finally take a trainer?”
Draken remembered what Pul had told him about how to handle these situations, and instead of answering the questions, he smiled. It was all a part of the mystique, Pul said. It was well and fine to tell people you aren’t afraid, but it’s much better if they say it for you. The same went for everything in the arena. According to Pul, Draken’s words should be the devastating blows he landed, his answers in the way he dodged a punch, kick or blade when it seemed there wasn’t possibly time.
As the questions continued to rain down on him, so did another supplication he found much harder to resist: that of the girls.
“Do you have a woman?”
“I know how to feed a fighter!”
“Take me home!”
But Pul had warned him about that, too. You couldn’t catch Her Sickness from being with a girl, at least, so every young man hoped, but there were other diseases. And worse, a girl might think herself entitled to your winnings, your fame, simply because you chose to spend the night with her.
For now, he could exercise restraint. Soon he’d be rich enough to go to the henhouses where the safety of his trysts could be ensured and where they would add to his prestige instead of sully his name.
He signed his name slowly in front of the arena official, and in the same way they had every time he’d imagined this moment—his admirers in the crowd went almost silent. He felt the breath of several girls on his neck and found he didn’t mind it in the least. Then the official lanced Draken’s thumb, and he winced against the pain, hoping no one would see it. He may be a fighter, but good fighters were rarely cut, and he hated the sensation of having his skin opened even a little.
He smeared his blood next to his name, as if it didn’t bother him in the least, and everyone cheered. Even the arena official, a group known for their solemnity, grinned. It was the first smile he’d ever seen an official make, and that was when Draken knew he’d really made it.
Chapter 7
Vgar Rimaad was the only arena fighter Draken truly feared. Draken felt if he could best Vgar, then the current Champion would be a breeze. Vgar was new to the Drammata arena circuit, but he was no rookie, as Draken was. Vgar had fought for years in the southern countries of Eda and Whey until, as rumor had it, they’d been unable to raise enough money to appease him. Here, in a wealthy city within a wealthy country, Vgar could become as rich as an Edan prince. If he’d been born in Drammata, he would most likely already be a champion, but circuits highly favored citizens over foreigners, and so it was that Draken was paired with a man who would normally be in the league above him.
If Draken had been more superstitious, he might even buy into the other rumors he’d heard of Vgar: that he didn’t serve any of the four-five gods, but instead an older god that humans had never known. It was said that Vgar, nearly seven feet and over three-hundred pounds, was more bear than man, and that the one he served was more demon than god. Draken didn’t give credit to these baseless rumors, but that didn’t change the fact that Vgar seemed inhumanly brutal. He’d already killed one of his opponents this season, literally cutting the knifedancer in two with a powerful downward swing.