As the oghul dropped on top of her with a force so heavy it crushed the wind from her lungs, Jondralyn knew she had lost again. She felt as weak and useless as a newborn foal under the weight of a giant bear. Anjk quickly put her in a headlock between his gnarled legs. The foul stench of the oghul’s groin, covered by naught but a ragged gray loincloth, hit her with a force far greater than had the open-handed slap from his meaty paw. The oghul flipped over in the dirt, twisting her awkwardly between his coarse legs so that she was looking straight up at the sky, unable to move.
The arena was silent for a time, then roared back to life with another wild storm of boos, the sound carrying over the city of Amadon, filling Anjk Bourbon’s small courtyard. As she lay there, pinned between the oghul’s heavy legs, she looked at the blue sky above and listened to the crowd. It was the end of the second match of the final four. And from the gusto exhibited in the baying and booing of the crowd, Jondralyn knew that Squireck Van Hester had just won. Had he vanquished Val-Ce-Laveroc or Val-Rievaux? There was little chance the crowd would react with boos unless it was for the Prince of Saint Only. Only the championship bout remained.
The jubilation emanating from the arena during the first match of the day between the oghul, Shkill Gha, and the first Vallè had been far more riotous. She did not know who had won, though. Jondralyn wished she were there. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe she was in the arena now. She wondered why she had chosen to forego the final fights. Why did she have to so rigidly adhere to this training routine? Why was she trying so desperately to find discipline in her life? Things were much easier without the burden.
The oghul released his hold and her neck was free.
“You defend against my club like the gnarled hairs that guard an oghul whooman’s poosy!” Anjk stood and grinned a wicked grin. “You just scratch and prick and do nothing but irritate! Then I clobber!” The street folk—mostly urchins, dwarves, and other oghuls—gathered along the stumpy, crumbled stone wall around Anjk’s courtyard laughed uproariously at his wit. Anjk continued, “You pay me much. That is only reason I train you. You have no hopes of being good fighter.”
Jondralyn stood slowly, rubbing her shoulder. The more time she spent with this brutish oghul, the less she could figure out what she was to learn from him. It seemed the blood-thirst was on Anjk badly today, evidenced by his overly raw and swollen gums and his ornerier-than-normal demeanor. Jondralyn just wanted to leave before the foul fellow sank his teeth into her neck and tore off a chunk of her flesh.
A slim-faced oghul in filthy clothes—one whom Jondralyn had not noticed there before—jumped the crumbled stone wall at the southern end of the small courtyard and sauntered toward Anjk. Seeing this new gray-faced fellow approach, Anjk turned to her. “Training over today. You go now.” He pointed toward the smithy.
Glad that the day’s training was done, Jondralyn picked up her sword and left the courtyard to the jeers of the dwarves and gap-toothed urchins and other less-than-savory-looking oghuls gathered on the wall. Once inside the oghul’s smithy, she looked for a pan of water to wash the stink from her neck. Benches and tables were lined with clubs and mauls and maces and a few short, thick-shafted spears. As she waded through the spiked gauntlet toward the door in the opposite wall, a hanging forest of curved scythes and heavy oghul sabers nearly sheared her hair. It was an unkempt obstacle course strewn with anvils, cauldrons, tools, and weaponry of all kind and make—none worthy of a princess. The sword that would—as Val-Draekin said—steal Jondralyn’s soul was not amongst the battered and crude implements Anjk had either found or forged with his foul oghul iron-craft. She spied what looked like a horse trough amongst the junk against the wall. Surely Anjk doesn’t sup from a trough like a common mule? That was probably exactly how oghul-kind preferred to take their drink—hunched over and lapping at it like dogs.
The trough was full of naught but an oily-looking sludge, plus it smelled like oghul arse. A spout was mounted on the wall and a rusted handle to a pump was nearby. She leaned her sword against a bench and yanked up and down on the pump until a stream of what looked like clean water trickled from the spout into the sludgy trough. Looking about for a bowl or cup to hold under the spout, she found the next best thing—a shelf full of pewter wine goblets. She filled one with water and drank greedily.
In her haste, the goblet slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor with a splash. Her muscles were sore and her balance seemed off. Cursing, she picked up the goblet, filled it again, and drank deeply, more carefully this time. Fatigue washed over her as the cool water quenched her parched throat. She filled the goblet again, pouring the liquid over her head, scrubbing down her neck. The overspill of her washing was adding to the spreading wetness on the stone floor.
She heard the two oghuls just beyond the door to the smithy. Anjk’s deep voice was the loudest. “The prince will surely die with what I just give you.”
Jondralyn froze, wine goblet still in hand, eyes on the rectangle of yellow light bleeding into the room from the door still open to Anjk’s training yard. She tore her gaze away, searching for an escape. But the door to the street was farther away, closed. She could never make it through all the junk without knocking into something and causing a terrible commotion. She thought about tying a black scarf about her face—the one she kept in her pocket to avoid recognition as she traveled to and from the oghul’s smithy. But that seemed pointless now. She remained motionless, hardly daring to breathe, eyes back to the open door. “Is a rare oghul mixture I sell Arkbishop Spenkcerville,” Anjk Bourbon continued. “The rarest. Much expensive. The Arkbishop has money. No?”
The other oghul spoke, his voice mousy. “Shkill Gha was wounded in his fight with the Vallè swordsman, Val-See-Layvearok.” He couldn’t quite pronounce the gladiator’s foreign name. “Nasty, filthy creature, that Vallè. Took it to our oghul kinfolk. Odds are, the Prince of Only will win the tournament. This will help greatly to kill him.”
“Spread on Shkill Gha’s blade,” Anjk said. “One scratch and the Prince of Only die. One pinch cost more than all I own. When can I expect payment, G’Mellki?”
“You get pay when the poison does its job,” the one named G’Mellki answered. “No sooner. The final fight starts soon. I must get this poison to Shkill Gha or neither G’Mellki or Anjk get paid.”
“If Arkbishop Spenkcerville does not pay,” Anjk roared, “I find G’Mellki, and I kill him!” Anjk’s great bulk blocked out the light of the doorway as he stepped from the courtyard right into the smithy, not ten paces from Jondralyn. He once more carried the deadly-looking iron-studded maul. Her wine goblet slipped and hit the floor with a clang.
At the noise, Anjk Bourbon spotted her. His liquid brown eyes sparkled with malice as he growled, “You hear things you shouldn’t.” He brandished his maul, hunched shoulders bunching, slabs of muscle flexing beneath the taut gray skin. His leathery lips curled back, exposing rows of jagged teeth behind slavering jaws. The oghul had a look of determination on his rough-hewn face. But as much as panic wanted to send Jondralyn running, she gathered herself and snatched up her sword.
With a roar that shook the smithy, Anjk hurled himself at Jondralyn, his maul upraised, swinging for her face. She lunged at the oghul, sword now firmly in hand, point aimed at the oghul’s heart. She knew her attack was nothing if not suicidal as Anjk’s heavy maul arced toward her head.
But the oghul slipped and fell in an ungainly sprawl, his maul swinging wildly over Jondralyn’s right shoulder whilst her own sword found its mark. It plunged deep into the oghul’s rough chest. Anjk slumped against the trough as the maul fell from his grubby paw, his body finally sliding down to rest in the pool of water.
Jondralyn held tight to the sword as the oghul hissed one last curse through his yellow teeth and blood dribbled from his slackening jaw. She yanked on the sword. But the weapon protruding from the dead oghul’s thick chest remained stuck as if fixed in stone. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she
tried to wrench it free.
She saw the other oghul in the doorway—the one named G’Mellki. The smallish oghul, hearing the commotion, had stepped back into the room. Their eyes met. Whereas Anjk’s face was flat as an oar blade, this oghul’s was as thin and narrow as a hatchet, but no less greenish-gray and repulsive. Jondralyn, hand still fastened to the hilt of the sword in Anjk’s chest, watched the slow, animal-like blinking of the smallish oghul’s heavy gray lids. The ugly fellow quickly sized up the scene, turned, and fled.
Jondralyn gave one final tug on the sword lodged in Anjk’s chest and pulled it free. She took a deep breath, fatigue forgotten, and darted to the chase. If what she’d heard was true, one of the five archbishops, Spencerville, had paid for the poison the oghul was going to spread on Shkill Gha’s blade. She had to stop the oghul from reaching the arena.
She tore from the smithy and into Anjk’s small courtyard just in time to see G’Mellki shove his way through a group of dirt-covered dwarves, leap the far wall, and dash off down the alley. Jondralyn’s legs churned under her, the soft sand of the training yard kicking up behind. The dwarves scattered as she passed by, her sword still in one hand. With her free hand on the wall, she leaped up and propelled herself over in one bound, landing cleanly, scarcely breaking stride. G’Mellki was a good fifty paces ahead, his gait more ambling than running. Still, the narrow-faced fellow was fast for an oghul.
As her quarry rounded a sharp corner and disappeared, Jondralyn uttered a vulgar oath. She had gained some ground, but the fellow probably knew these streets and alleys like the back of his own cracked and leathery hand. She flung herself around the corner just in time to see him disappear down another side alley.
After racing through a few more twists and turns, Jondralyn had again gained on him considerably. She soon found herself chasing the oghul down a more open thoroughfare, sparsely populated. What few people there were quickly scurried out of their way. With more room to run, she picked up her pace but kept her sword out in front of her, ready in case the oghul were to whirl about with an outstretched blade of his own.
Jondralyn closed in and nearly seized the fellow, but the oghul took a sharp turn and dashed into another side street. She turned and ripped down the new street too, now lagging over ten paces behind, two pigs rooting in the center of the lane setting her farther off course. A score of religious beggars were in the mud and dung beyond the pigs, and weaving through them bogged her down further. G’Mellki was small for an oghul—and agile, too. In this narrow and crowded alleyway, Jondralyn felt ungainly as she ran. A few toothless women in rags shuffled aside as she shoved by. She had fallen more than twenty paces behind the oghul now. He was passing under a vine-covered archway and into a crowded marketplace. People shouted as the oghul pushed his way through. Jondralyn followed, holding her blade high. She and the oghul broke from the crowd and into the open at about the same time, the oghul taking an abrupt right, leaping a waist-high brick fence. Jondralyn jumped the fence only to find herself face-to-face with a dusty yellow dog, barking up a storm. The deranged beast was wearing a spiked iron collar and trailing a length of heavy chain. It charged. She flung herself away. The dog hit the end of its rusted leash, whipping the snarling monster around by the neck.
At a full run, she chased the oghul around another corner. Jondralyn instinctively threw her left leg wide, narrowly avoiding smacking her knee on a water trough. But she slipped and fell, tumbling into the legs of a crowd of people. When she stood, she realized she was face-to-face with a gaggle of the worst scum Amadon had to offer—bloodletters. Filthier than dockside whores, these grotesques would stand about shady corners, waiting for swollen-gummed oghuls, then open the veins in their necks and wrists and fill flagons with their own steaming blood and sell it, slaking the thirst of their oghul customers.
Jondralyn’s eyes darted beyond the bloodletters to see that G’Mellki had run into a dead end not fifty paces away. A stone wall, twelve feet high, now blocked his path. Until now, G’Mellki had managed to avoid all such blind alleys.
The bloodletters stared at her, recognition dawning on some of their faces. Jondralyn knew that some streets in Amadon, without warning, could turn from familiar to sinister. She was lucky that this alley held only the few bruise-necked bloodletters and was empty of any brigands or outlaws. She realized she’d best cover her face soon.
As G’Mellki dragged a wooden barrel toward the wall, Jondralyn shoved her way through the bloodletters and sprinted toward him. G’Mellki climbed atop the barrel, grabbed the lip of the wall, paused to kick the barrel aside, and pulled himself over just as Jondralyn lunged for his grubby boots. She cursed as the oghul escaped her grasp, his footsteps slapping on the cobblestones beyond.
Jondralyn righted the barrel and threw herself over the wall, only to see the small oghul now moving through a wrought-iron gate and out of sight around a bend that sloped down toward the docks. Jondralyn reached the gate quickly and flung herself around the bend just in time to see the oghul, down a steep narrow alley, slip by a wagon laden with lodgepole pine logs, dip into a doorway, and disappear. Jondralyn darted down the uneven stones of the alley. She was breathing hard now. She sidled past the wagon of sharp, tar-smeared poles, and continued down the cobbled slope, checking what few doors there were. They all looked the same, and all were locked.
The alley came to a dead end at the bottom—another stone wall, this one about ten feet high. She looked back up the cobbled slope. The hatchet-faced oghul was removing the last of the wooden blocks from under the wagon’s wheels, releasing the wagon to lurch and rumble down the steep alleyway—its heavy logs now a rumbling, roaring forest of spears aimed right at her. Jondralyn’s heart thundered. The alley was narrow. There was nowhere to go. Her eyes darted about frantically. There was no escape.
At the last moment, she turned her back to the careening wagon, dropped her sword, and jumped for all she was worth, her fingertips barely grabbing the lip of the ten-foot-high stone wall above. With all her remaining strength—propelled by pure terror—Jondralyn threw her legs up and swung her body to the side as high as she could. Her momentum carried her completely over the stone wall just as the wagon full of logs smashed into it with the sound of thunder and a billow of dust and mortar.
Weaponless, she dropped to the other side . . . and found herself in a dirty little courtyard, smack in the center of five dour-looking men—one elderly, fat and bloated, the other four younger, all looking like ruffians in their patched shirts and ripped rough-spun breeches. The fat one pulled a thick-bladed shortsword.
Immediately, she turned and leaped again, grasped the lip of the same stone wall, scrambled back over, and landed atop the wrecked wagon and scattered logs that had nearly killed her moments before. Dust still billowed. She could hear the curses of the five men coming from the other side as they tried to climb over the wall after her.
She coughed. Her eyes quickly scanned the narrow alley, but G’Mellki had already slipped out of sight. She shuddered when she saw what the impact of the wagon against the wall had done to the logs under her feet. They were shattered and splintered and tossed about in every direction. The wall had buckled from the power of the crash. Had it struck her, the wagon’s load would have pulverized her to mush against the wall.
Weariness settled upon her as never before. G’Mellki was lost to her now. There was no use searching this bewildering maze of ruined stone houses and alleys rife with twists and turns. She coughed again and quickly pulled the scarf from her pocket, tied it over her nose and mouth. Now she could breathe again and, more importantly, travel back to the arena unrecognized. She gingerly climbed from the wagon of ruined poles and searched for her fallen sword. It lay atop the weed-encrusted cobbles under the wagon, undamaged. She could reach it if she crawled on her belly—but decided to abandon it where it lay when the head of one of the five ruffians appeared over the wall. “I see her, lads,” the dirty fellow said. “A pretty thing! Push me up.”
Jo
ndralyn wasn’t about to wait for the other four. She turned and bolted up the alley as fast as her tired legs would carry her.
She ran in hopes that she could still reach the arena in time and warn Squireck.
* * *
The Last Warrior Angels chose to embellish, ignoring truth. In their account, Laijon was stabbed in the neck by the Last Demon Lord and then nailed to the Atonement Tree. But I, his wife, was there as Laijon drank in those last breaths. I saw the wound in his neck. It was no treacherous stabbing. What I beheld was far more inglorious—it was as if the neck of my beloved had been shredded by the claws of a beast.
—THE MOON SCROLLS OF MIA
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
STERLING PRENTISS
7TH DAY OF THE MOURNING MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
AMADON, GUL KANA
The flesh under Sterling’s black-lacquered Dayknight armor itched—it itched something fierce and he could do nothing about it. He hated the damnable stuff. He would give all that he owned for the chance to remove the cumbersome scrap and relax as he awaited the final match. Sitting just below him in the king’s suite was Grand Vicar Denarius, resplendent in his clean cassock and priestly silk robe—and probably comfortable, too. The Quorum of Five Archbishops sat behind him as usual, Vandivor, Donalbain, Spencerville, Leaford, and Rhys-Duncan. Dayknights guarded them.
The king was not present. Nor was Jondralyn. Or Tala. In the absence of the royal siblings, the mood in the king’s suite was far less tense. Glade Chaparral and Lindholf Le Graven were two rows below Sterling. All afternoon they’d been fawning over Seita. It disturbed Sterling to see any human male, be they a lord’s son or not, make such an overt display over such a skinny piece of Vallè scum. The Vallè sickened Sterling on every level—especially the females, too hard and sinuous.
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