This day, however, was different. Makhatar kept him close from the day’s earliest light. He knew not why, but the chatter was all about the coming entertainment. The expected spectacle was all anyone could talk about.
—
Jdes prepared a gate. Threaded magics began their spiral, opening the way. G’rkyr prepared to enter. Dierá walked behind him. She was certain all was lost.
Moments before they stepped away the miraculous happened. The Morkurhedwa returned with Takhbarre. He was bound and chained, which seemed to please Jdes more than the sight of the Morkurhedwa. Dierá knew then that his hatred of Drakón was even keener than hers. Useful information.
“Cevis al’Der was not part of the agreement,” Takhbarre shrieked.
G’rkyr struck Takhbarre and scoffed. “You were given a choice.”
“I’m Prince of Praxix,” Takhbarre replied. “I’ll not proceed until our terms are clear.”
G’rkyr indicated to the Morkurhedwa that they should remove the chains, and they did. Takhbarre was pushed through the gate against his will. G’rkyr and Dierá went next. Jdes pulled himself through on the final weaving of power.
They emerged not on a world or moon, but in a nexus. Much like Dierá’s shadow-created hollows, this place existed outside of the ordinary world. It was a place between places; it connected paths of several gate clusters. Arrival here gave Dierá a glimpse of how Jdes opened gates so easily. It made his aura as radiant as a star, and the dull tracings between him and the Morkurhedwa visible. Her lesser aura and lesser tethers to G’rkyr and Takhbarre were visible as well, but masked by his far greater luminosity.
She was careful to keep to the shadows behind G’rkyr and Takhbarre. Jdes did not need to know her inner strength.
Takhbarre continued his protestations even as Jdes showed G’rkyr the way out. The Morkurhedwa exited with G’rkyr, Takhbarre, and Dierá. Jdes did not. He kept the exit open until the Morkurhedwa had secured the exit point and returned, closing the gate and leaving G’rkyr, Takhbarre, and Dierá alone in a dark tunnel.
G’rkyr did not need to speak the word on his lips for Dierá to know this was Cyvair. Takhbarre had already told her this by his demeanor. The Drakón seemed to know immediately, either by scent or sense. It also could have been his brief embrace of The Abundance. Dierá felt him reach out to it, but she thought she blocked him before he touched it. For long moments afterward, his complaints stopped and his eyes never left Dierá’s.
“You want this thing,” he told her. “I no longer trust them, but I trust you. Give me your word on what we agreed to and that you had no part—”
“—My word,” Dierá said. G’rkyr started to say something; she cut him off with an icy stare. “That was between G’rkyr and his. I am as betrayed as you.”
“Then I’ll do this thing for you, Athania Dierá Steorra. When I’m done, you’ll return to me what’s mine.” Takhbarre regarded Dierá, but he did not wait for her to respond. “This tunnel is for one of the old off-world gates. Disused now but still connected. If we continue along it, we’ll come to the central thruway.”
Dierá turned to G’rkyr. “You are the prince’s champion and protector in this place. Nothing more. Don’t forget that.” Her words carried her annoyance. Her hold on G’rkyr seemed less than she thought. She wondered what report Jdes would give Nük T’nyr. Not that it would matter; nothing would matter soon. His disloyalty was nothing compared to what was ahead.
—
Martin settled into the holding area below Makhatar. In contrast to her viewing area filled with posh seats and wide aisles, this area was bare and little more than an expanse of washed stones. Gerhold was at his side. The other could do little else. Martin still held the leash of his collar and dared not release it.
Those in Makhatar’s entourage seemed to speak their minds plainly and openly. Now they complained loudly of this or that perceived slight. It was all about the view, the seats, the food, the drink. The pecking order applied here as well. Those at the top were the most vocal; each rung below, successively less so. Martin spoke only in quiet whispers and only when he was certain Makhatar’s eye was not on him. He missed Tandy, the books they shared and the simpler life in hearth service.
His place in the order was unclear. It seemed he and Gerhold were part of a new sixth ring. It also could be that they simply had to establish themselves in the fifth ring—that of the Trykath pets of the first ring Drakón and titans.
The confusion was due in part to their sharing rooms with Trykathians, Alvs, and Dwëorgs alike. Clearly, the Alvs and Dwëorgs were a rung above the Trykathians. They were treated better, given more opportunity.
The crowds in the stands were dividing into cheering and jeering mobs. More and more poured into the seats and viewing areas. The stomping of their feet and clapping of their hands rose to a deafening roar. Wager papers traded hands. Vendors hawked their goods.
Makhatar’s titans and Drakón placed many wagers. Most were against one they called the Soulless. There was no shortage of those in other high-placed viewing areas willing to take those bets. Attendants ran the wager slips back and forth by the handful.
Foodstuffs also were plentiful. Though all were castoffs from those higher up, it mattered not. A half-eaten cake discarded by a titan, a roasted shank tossed aside by a Drakón, or whatever else happened to be cast off was indeed better than anything he had ever found in Tandy’s kitchens. He meant Tandy no disrespect, but her cooking could not compare.
Martin tripped over Gerhold as the Trykathians, Alvs, and Dwëorgs fought for viewing positions at Makhatar’s feet. The sudden pain brought a strange numbness. He held his head against what he knew must be stinging pain, touched moistness, felt nothing.
All thought slowed. Martin realized he heard shouting and the banter of those around him, but he was outside it all. Makhatar projected her thoughts into his own. She called him to her side. “Stand ready,” she told him. “The games begin.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Beneath a vaulted dome of stone, enveloped in absolute darkness, Yarr could not see the moons or suns, yet still felt them. In the same way he felt the wind. He could smell nothing save copper and ash, but he could imagine much more. The beating of his foe’s heart, somewhere out there in the great arena. The clash of steel that came. The restless howling of tethered beasts with their mouths gaping in anticipation of the taste of flesh. Of his flesh.
He heard movement above his head, felt it beneath his feet. “Almost time,” he told the others in Cikathian. “Be ready.”
“They will come at us quickly, from all sides,” someone else said. Yarr thought it was Sytek, one of the leaders of the Dwelmish group.
“No,” he countered. “We are away from the commons. Our platform lifts at the masters’ feet. Keep in the direction I face, put the suns behind you. Be warned, there are beasts near.”
“They say ktoth are undying, that they can cross the distance of two double strides in one leap, that they have teeth as long as arms, that—”
“Ktoth are the least of our worries,” Dhon said. He was a Fhurtroll and he did not fear death. “There’s Empyrjurin out there or worse. No sense worrying about any of it. Others are doing exactly what we’re doing—waiting.”
“I don’t care about any of them,” another voice said.
“Do care,” Yarr said. “Those with a cloth tied on the right are with us. Group and work together. Don’t break and divide. Keeping together is our best hope.”
Dhon moved to stand next to Yarr. “Fight as Yarr said, and you might live to see another day. They never reckoned on this. It will surprise.”
What little there are of us, Yarr added in thought. His goal had been to convince many tens. They could have fought back; they might have been able to revolt. What he had been able to gather without fully revealing his aim was eighteen tens. Among them, Yarr, Xerc, and Dhon were the most experienced. If others changed sides, there would be more, but this he could not co
unt on.
Yarr touched the coin medallion of Beqheth in his inside pocket. It seemed superstitious, this belief in her as the Mother of the Warrior, but who was he to judge otherwise. The Trojk Master believed. She had seen him through eight spectacles. With as much of the mob against him as for, he needed all the help he could get. He heard their boos and jeers. When once they had revered, calling him the Undying One, the Greatest of the Supremators, they now loathed. They called him The Soulless One, The Accursed, The Blight, and on and on. There was no end to their curses. It worsened as more and more bet against him and lost. They wanted his death now as much as he wanted his life.
Yarr clutched at the spotted ktoth fur wrapped about his shoulders. It kept his muscles warm in the cold, damp pit. He heard the click of gears and the turning of pulleys. He lowered himself to lie on his back next to Dhon in the dirt. His thinness next to the troll’s hulk was as a twig to a tree trunk. “You ready, Dhon?” he whispered.
“Auy, Yarr.”
Yarr’s Alvish eyes allowed him to see Dhon’s huge, brutish face outlined against the darkness, and he heard in the voice a subtle dread. “This should not be our end. But like as not we cannot control our fate.”
“You’ve been a good friend. If we’re to die, then we die. It is the wish of the gods and damn them for it.” Dhon cleared his throat and sang, very softly,
Gods under fire and heaven
Fhur born, err I must go
Grim, she shall keep me
It is my own doing
Her blanket I shall wear
She shall keep me
Should she wish it
Under pall and thrall.
Yarr felt ferocity build in his heart, for that was part of a warrior’s tribute, but Fhurtrollen and not Alvish or Trykathian. The words walked the line between life and death. Both blessing and curse. They spoke of the duality of all things.
“I don’t intend for us to die, Dhon. We’ll use our numbers to our advantage.”
“It’ll surprise them, it will. I’ve always wanted to see the gods afeared.”
The blocks overhead pulled back. Light crept into the pit. Yarr and Dhon spun around, moved to a crouch, waited. Yarr wondered about what could have been had he been able to unite all Supremators. He turned his eyes up to the light so his vision adjusted to the brightness, or he would be blinded like so many others at the start of it all.
The walls fell. The great stage was revealed. The gathered throng roared.
He determined his location. It was as expected; close to the masters so they could watch his death.
Across the stage, he saw clusters of other groups. And more.
All the platforms were raised.
All the beast pens were raised.
Seeing this, he wondered if it were possible to win the day. He did not lose hope.
Yarr clasped hands with Dhon, started to speak. That’s when something hissed and roared, and Dhon cried out strangely. That’s when the screaming and shouting started, and Yarr’s group rose to their feet, surrounded by beasts, to face a thousand times their number swarming across the stage.
Yarr closed his eyes, and then jumped up with the rest of them. His hands gripped his spear, slung across his back was a great sword, and at his sides were daggers. He cast off his fur, wheeled around.
A lion-like rakor met him. It was black as death and big as any horse he had ever seen. He dug in with his spear, thrusting up and across. The rakor made the same sound as the one Yarr had been cloaked in, just louder and longer before it finally fell over.
Dhon was not as fortunate. He was set upon by three of the fierce eutoks—feral dogs with two heads. Yarr saw Dhon take the first, intervened before the second could land its brutal paws while Dhon dispatched the third.
“Gods!” Dhon shouted over the tumult and din. “What is this?”
“A wonder,” Sytek replied. “I’m proud to die as part of this.”
Yarr suspected it was the reenactment of some recent victory played out across the showground of the colosseum. He heard the watchers alternately cheer and jeer. It was eerie the way these sounds mixed in with the cries of great cats, the howls of dogs, and the baying of the creatures as yet unseen.
His hope was that he and his represented the victors. Somehow, though, he suspected otherwise. Someone among the masters had decided he was no longer useful, that it was past time for his death.
He rammed his spear home, felled one of the immense ktoth. He shouted, “No, never! Keep working together; live!”
The knot of the main battle moved to the center of the colosseum’s vast stage. There Sytek met the glorious death he wished for at the hands of eutoks who tore him to shreds.
For a time Yarr lost track of Dhon and the others. Around them others were breaking and running. Separated, they had little chance. Even the strongest of them died wholesale, for living nightmares stalked alongside the ktoth, eutok, and rakor; nameless nightmares who knew only death and killing.
Together they fought on. Yarr’s spear broke in the belly of some enormous grotesquerie. He broke out his sword. “Together, together!” he shouted desperately.
Somewhere close he heard the shriek of feral dogs. He slipped past a Fhurtroll hauling a pair of wounded Trykathians out of the main press of combat in the colosseum’s center, to meet the pack of eutoks.
An eutok leapt at Yarr’s chest and tore at him with its fangs while others went for his legs. He lashed out with his sword, cutting the first eutok nearly in half before turning on those at his legs. Finished, he wheeled around to find a group of Erlanders wielding spear and blade and forcing their way across the stage.
“Auy! Erland!” Yarr shouted.
Moving again, Yarr ducked the hilt of a S’h’dith warrior’s sword as the warrior sought to bash in the side of his head. He whipped around, blade flying, and he caught the S’h’dith in the ribs. The warrior hissed and came on, thrusting himself up in a jumping attack. Yarr bobbed away, loosed his sword and felled the S’h’dith from the air.
One of the other S’h’dith warriors spun around with a dagger in his hand, releasing it in a quick thrust, but Yarr knocked it down with his own blade. He came back around to strike, but one of the Erlanders had already finished the S’h’dith. The man flashed Yarr a fierce smile. “Élvemere!” he called, his voice bright.
Yarr grinned at the man, lifting his bloodied sword. The man’s eyes jumped up as something large tried to come down on Yarr from behind. It was enough of a warning to keep the beast from bowling Yarr over. He spun with this blade and shouted to the Erlanders in their own tongue, “Together, together! Rakor return!”
Together the Erlanders turned and plunged toward the rakor, forcing their way through the bunch of screaming beasts. Yarr joined them, as did others. One of the Fhurtrolls hacked out a rakor’s throat with his saber and then, as blood fountained from the big cat, grasped the thick mane and cut the head from the body.
Another Fhurtroll, seeing this, let out a fierce cry, and Yarr was pleased to see it was Dhon. “Xerc? The others?” Yarr shouted.
“Broken most!” Dhon shouted. He used his sword to point out where some were as he fought on. “Xerc and his are closest. They hold their own. Sytek and his?”
“Gone most. Sytek too,” Yarr replied. “Lost track of the others. Some few Dwelmish pushed past not long ago. These Erlanders broke through from the far side.”
Yarr felt a presence behind him, turned to see Jdost. Jdost smiled a bloody smile. He was missing several teeth but was otherwise whole. Yarr feared treachery, but this feeling was fleeting. There was uncertainty in the gargant’s eyes. The agreement between him and Jdost was a tenuous one; they had come to terms the day after Yarr bested the other on the training field. If the other Monsjurin guardians agreed, Jdost would fight with Yarr. Otherwise, the Monsjurin would fight for themselves.
Jdost raised Grekl, his blade. Yarr steeled himself. He had bested the gargant before and would do so again if needed. When Jdo
st kept his blade in the air, Yarr saw the gesture for what it was. A salute.
Yarr saluted the other openly, moved to Dhon’s defense. The three, gargant, troll, and Alv, became a working trio. Their blades delivered death while they moved as one across the field.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dark thoughts took Yarr through a half toll. The great stage was littered with dead and dying. Side tunnels opened to admit hawkers, gravers, and setters. Hawkers cleared the stage of corpses; gravers ended the dying; setters carried props in and out. It was all part of the continuance, the cycle of the spectacle.
Yarr and his regrouped once again while the masters unleashed new terrors. It seemed that all around him were succumbing to the will of the mob, that he must follow shortly.
As if in answer to his darkest thoughts, the worst of the nightmares stood before him. It was three-headed and seven-legged, with hindquarters as tall as Jdost. Its mouths were nests for teeth and little else. It came at him snarling and howling.
The mob cheered its arrival; Yarr cursed it. He turned his eyes around the colosseum, watching those who watched him for a moment. They were Drakón, titan, and those who, like the Master of Keys, had won a part of their freedom yet would never truly be free. They came to the games through a series of way gates that carried them from places all across the hundred worlds.
Usually it did not bother him that they came to watch death. Today was different. They reveled in blood, in ways he had not seen before. It was as if they had lost themselves to their decadence. He felt nothing for them save perhaps pity. Death was his because it was all he had. They had lives, or at least he liked to believe they did. Death did not have to be their all, and yet it seemed death was.
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