by Kobe Bryant
A young Star Stealer girl in a torn mud-colored tunic came forward and offered Vera an olive-green scarf. Vera got down on one knee. “Hey, that’s really nice of you,” she said. “I know you guys aren’t big on the Junior Epic Games. But how do you feel about taking my track jacket in exchange?” She pulled off her silky purple jacket, revealing a simple white T-shirt, and handed it to the young Star Stealer. Then she wrapped her head in the scarf. “That’s better. This hair was making me crazy. And it’s too identifiable, if anyone sees us.” She turned to Fortunus. “And now a hand lamp.”
Fortunus rummaged in his bag and handed Pretia a small light. She switched it on and shouldered her backpack.
“Good luck,” he said.
“We don’t need luck,” Vera announced. “We have talent.”
“You’ve got a good friend there, Pretia,” Fortunus said. “You two are a perfect team.”
And with that, Pretia and Vera dashed into the tunnels.
The hand lamps bounced erratically. Pretia tried not to stumble on the unfamiliar ground without sacrificing speed.
“Vera,” Pretia said, “what’s your plan with the guards?”
“I told you not to worry about it,” Vera replied. “And maybe we won’t even see any guards.”
“Let’s hope,” Pretia said. Guards would surely recognize her and take her back to her parents.
They ran on in silence. The only noise was the hollow echo of their footsteps.
After ten minutes they saw the glow of a hand lamp on the ceiling up ahead. Pretia skidded to a stop. She clutched Vera’s arm, pulling her back.
Vera broke free. “Let go,” she hissed.
“Wait,” Pretia urged.
But now Vera had grabbed her hand and was dragging her forward, yanking her down the tunnel.
“What are you doing?” She’d spoken too loudly. Her words boomed in the tunnels. No doubt the guards, or whoever was up ahead, had heard them.
“Just follow my lead,” Vera hissed.
“Who’s there?” came a deep male voice.
“Hide!” Pretia said frantically. But Vera seemed determined to keep going. In an instant they were face-to-face with two Phoenician guards. Vera twisted her fingers around Pretia’s arm, making the skin burn. “Stop it. Let me go!” Pretia yelped.
“Trust me,” Vera said under her breath.
“Who are you?” one of the guards thundered.
“Tell them,” Vera said calmly.
“I’m—I’m,” Pretia stammered. What was her friend doing? “I’m . . .”
“This is Pretia Praxis-Onera.”
“And who are you?” the guard demanded of Vera.
“Her kidnapper,” Vera replied.
“Let her go,” the other guard ordered.
The first guard looked at Pretia. “Princess? Are you okay?”
Pretia nodded. She wasn’t sure what Vera was up to.
“Let us pass,” Vera commanded.
The guards snorted with laughter. “You have to be joking,” said one. “You’re just a kid.”
“Really?” Vera said. Pretia heard the familiar competitive note in her voice.
The first guard stepped toward them. “You cannot escape,” he said.
“I can and I will unless you let me pass with the princess. I’m the fastest runner in Phoenis. I’ll outrun you easily.”
Vera was going to outrun the guards?
Suddenly Vera’s plan started to make sense to Pretia.
“Hand her over,” one of the guards insisted. “This is your last warning. Otherwise we will handle this with force.”
Vera dropped Pretia’s wrist. “You’ll have to catch me first,” she said. “I’ll beat both of you.” And then, quick as a flash, Vera was racing back in the direction from which they’d come.
The two guards hesitated for a moment. Then the first one chased Vera. The second guard looked at Pretia deferentially. “I’m glad you are safe, Princess.”
Pretia stood up as straight as she could, thinking fast. “Guard,” she said, in her most regal voice. “That girl, whoever she was, is faster than you think. She’s the one who led those guards on a chase from the Temple of Arsama. She’ll get away a second time.” She summoned her most authoritative tone. “As Princess of Epoca, I order you to give chase and catch her.”
“And leave you here?” the guard asked.
Pretia stared him down. “What did I say?”
“But . . . but, Princess,” the guard sputtered.
“Go!” Pretia pointed in the direction Vera had departed.
The guard stutter-stepped, then sprinted off after his partner.
Pretia didn’t waste a moment before racing in the opposite direction, deeper into the tunnels toward Hafara.
By her calculation and the Star Stealers’ estimation of distance to the prison, she was more than halfway there. If she hurried, she could reach the dreaded River of Sand in less than ten minutes.
She picked up the pace. Eventually, the sound of her echoing footsteps changed. The tunnel had widened into an enormous cavern that seemed to be the exact size of the Crescent Stadium—an underground replica, a deep, dark mirror image. She cast her lamp around. She stood on what looked like an old running track. Around its inner edge ran a sludgy black mass—the River of Sand. And on what seemed to be an island in the center of roiling quicksand rose stadium seats that reminded Pretia of the Games Pit at Ponsit.
She shuddered. Below those seats were the imprisoned Star Stealers.
She shone her lamp into the river. It moved with a current so powerful that it sent actual waves of sand crashing over the edge by the prison. Only the gods could have created something so remarkable and monstrous.
A voice broke the muffled silence. “Help!”
“Rovi?” Pretia cried.
“Pretia? Is that you?”
She scanned the track with her hand lamp. “Where are you?” Pretia called.
“I’m in the river,” came Rovi’s voice. He sounded panicked.
“Where?” Pretia screamed.
“I’m holding on to the edge. But the current is so strong.”
“Keep talking, Rovi. Keep talking.” Pretia tried to focus on the direction from which his voice was coming.
Although the cavern distorted sound, she sensed that Rovi was off to her right. Moving quickly but carefully, Pretia hurried along the edge of the old track, keeping an eye out for her best friend.
“I can’t hold on much longer,” Rovi said. Pretia could tell that he was near tears.
“Sing,” she said. “Sing the Ecrof fight song.”
The cavern was silent for a moment. And then the familiar words of their school song filled the chamber. With each step Pretia took, Rovi’s voice grew stronger.
Rovi stopped singing. “Where are you?”
“Almost there,” Pretia assured him.
“I’m sinking,” Rovi cried. “Hurry!”
Pretia cast the lamp into the darkness. There was Rovi—or what she could see of him. He’d sunk up to his waist in the river. His hands clung frantically to the edge of the crumbling track.
Instantly, Pretia threw off her backpack, fell to her knees, and grabbed him under the arms. She couldn’t even manage to free him by an inch. She tried again. He sank deeper.
“Stop!” Rovi said. “It’s no use.”
Pretia shone her lamp across the quicksand river toward the prison. “What were you planning to do?”
“I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted to get to Hafara. Issa’s there. In that games pit.”
“I heard,” Pretia said. “Vera told me.”
“You saw Vera?”
“She found me in the tunnels and we came straight here. She had to lead some guards on a chase so I could make it to you.”
> “I think you’re too late,” Rovi groaned. He twisted desperately in the quicksand.
“Don’t,” Pretia said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Struggling seems to make it worse.”
“What are we going to do? What if—?”
“Don’t worry.” She sat down on the track next to Rovi and placed a hand in his hair. “I’ll think of something. I promise I will.”
But her thoughts were blank.
24
ROVI
A GAMES PIT
Rovi couldn’t fight back his tears anymore. Thankfully, it was dark enough in the cavern that Pretia couldn’t see him cry. This was it. He was stuck and there was no escape. He’d tried to save Issa, at least. There was comfort in knowing that he had tried to do whatever he could for his friend. He hadn’t been selfish or a coward. But he had failed.
“Let’s sing something again,” he said. “Please.” Anything to take his mind off what was happening.
“The Dreamer anthem,” Pretia suggested.
“All right.” They sang, but Rovi’s heart wasn’t in it. His voice kept cracking. And he could detect the note of false cheer in Pretia’s voice.
She broke off singing and stood up. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No,” Rovi said. “It isn’t. I’m sinking. I can feel it. It’s over. I’ve ruined everything. I can’t save the Star Stealers. I’m going to get us disqualified from the 4x400, and I’m going to lose my medal for House Somni.”
“Rovi, stop.” Pretia herself was near tears. She squatted down and looped her hands under his shoulders. He heard her take a deep breath and felt her tense, preparing for a last try to save him. “One . . . two . . .”
“Stop!”
Someone was approaching them, carrying a hand lamp. “What are you doing?”
“Vera!” Pretia exclaimed.
“Let him go,” Vera shouted. “That’s quicksand.”
Rovi felt Pretia release him. “I know it’s quicksand,” she said.
“Don’t pull him. Each time you tug, the quicksand will pull in the opposite direction. And it’s stronger than you are,” Vera said.
“Get me out of here,” Rovi pleaded.
Pretia braced herself, ready to grasp him again.
“No!” Vera said, stepping between them. “We have whole deserts of it in Alkebulan. I’ve seen it swallow animals. Big animals. Lions and elephants. Fighting it is the worst thing you can do.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Pretia demanded.
“Not yet,” Vera admitted.
Suddenly Pretia bolted upright. “But I do. We’re going to swim.”
“Swim?” Vera asked.
“No way,” Rovi protested. “You don’t know what it’s like in this stuff. It will drown us.”
“I don’t think so,” Pretia said. “It’s not going to be fun, but I think it can work. When I was tested by the tribunal, they put me in a water tank that turned into a whirlpool. The motion of this quicksand river is sort of like that whirlpool. Look how it’s crashing on the opposite side.”
She pointed to where the powerful river was sending waves of sand up over the edge by the prison.
“You have no idea how powerful those waves of sand are!” Rovi exclaimed.
“We need those waves,” Pretia said. “We’re going to use them. You can feel the sand moving, right?”
“Of course,” Rovi said. “I can barely hold on.”
“Well, it’s just like a whirlpool. And whirlpools pull you to the center. We want to go to the prison—the center, right?”
Rovi didn’t like the sound of this. There was no way to swim in the quicksand.
“I thought we wanted to get out of here,” Vera said. “We need to get back for our race.”
“Not without the Star Stealers,” Pretia said. “We can’t leave them.”
“I know,” Vera said. “Let’s do this. Rovi, the river has you because you’re struggling against it. You need to relax and become part of the quicksand. Technically, you’re supposed to lie back and float so it carries you along.”
“I’m not so sure about floating in a whirlpool of quicksand,” Rovi cried. “There has to be another way.”
“No,” Vera replied. “Pretia’s right. There’s no other way.”
“We’re going to work with the sand,” Pretia chimed in. “It will carry us to the prison.”
And before Rovi could protest further, both his friends had kicked off their shoes and were entering the river. They slid into the sand up to their waists, then their shoulders, so they were even with Rovi.
“Now let go of the edge,” Pretia said.
“No.”
“Just relax,” Pretia instructed.
Rovi was anything but relaxed.
“If we go under,” Vera said, “let the quicksand take you. It’s pulling us to the left, inward toward the prison.”
This was not remotely comforting. “What if we can’t get back to the surface?” he asked.
“Remember,” she said, “struggling will make quicksand pull you down, but if you relax, it will bring you back to the surface. Trust me.”
Rovi thought his heart was going to explode.
“The waves should help, too,” Pretia added. “They’ll lift us up over the far edge.”
The idea of being carried by a quicksand wave did nothing to calm Rovi’s all-consuming panic. “Are you sure?”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pretia and Vera exchange a covert glance. “Yes,” they said in unison. But neither sounded as confident as Rovi would have wished. Vera took one of his hands while Pretia took the other.
Once he had let go, he could immediately sense the powerful quicksand carrying him to the left. Rovi hadn’t realized how tired he’d grown from clinging to the edge. He couldn’t relax. The heavy sand and its strength was terrifying.
How had he held on for so long? The current was faster and stronger than he’d allowed himself to realize. It threatened to pull him away from his friends. He linked his fingers tightly through theirs.
No one spoke. The River of Sand created its own sort of noise—a mighty silence that roared.
Rovi could tell the current was winding them closer to the looming prison. The sand tickled his chin. “We’re sinking!” he said.
“I know,” Pretia replied, her voice tight and tense.
“We’re not going to make it to the prison before it pulls us under,” Rovi said.
Vera tugged on his hand. “Relax. You have to relax.”
“How?” Rovi said. But he wished he hadn’t spoken. The sand was in his mouth. He jerked his head upward and spat just in time. The next thing he knew, a blanket had been thrown over his senses. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t smell. He couldn’t breathe.
Every cell in Rovi’s body told him to fight, to tense, to panic, but somehow he resisted. He let his limbs grow loose and his thoughts float.
He could feel the whirlpool circles tighten. They were closing in on the prison.
But Rovi could feel himself growing dizzy. His mind was going black.
He was spinning away.
But before he did, he felt himself being lifted. The quicksand was raising him up. He was cresting one of the waves as it broke over the landing near the prison.
Rovi gasped. He could feel his breath returning. The wave broke, leaving him on solid ground. He rolled onto his back. He rolled again and again, until he rolled clear of the River of Sand.
They’d made it.
25
PRETIA
A RESCUE
Pretia felt someone tugging at her arm and she reached up to rub sand from her eyes. She cleared it from her nose and mouth. Rovi was pulling her to her feet. “Move, before you slip back in.”
She was dangerously close to
the river. Waves of sand crashed onto her legs.
“Pretia! Get up,” Vera shouted.
Pretia rose and combed her fingers through her hair. “Now what?”
“Now we enter the prison,” Rovi said.
Pretia fumbled for her hand lamp in her pocket where she’d stored it just before she’d fully submerged in the quicksand. It took a moment to flicker back to life. She cast its glow upward, where it hit the looming wall of the prison.
“Hafara is an old games pit,” Rovi explained. “That sloping wall above us must be the bleachers, and below them should be the pit. So there’s got to be a door at our level where they let the spectators in. Fortunus said that the guards come and go once a day using a bridge that they can lower from the far side,” he continued. “The door must be somewhere near where the bridge comes down.”
“Let’s hope we can use that bridge to cross back,” Vera said. “I don’t feel like another trip through the quicksand.”
They brushed as much sand as they could from their clothes. Pretia took the lead, dashing around the towering wall of the underground stadium. She bounced the light from her hand lamp up and down.
Suddenly Vera skidded to a halt, a finger in the air.
Pretia held the hand lamp up. Forty feet overhead was a metal walkway.
“And here’s the door,” Rovi said. He banged on the wall. “Pretia, give me the lamp.”
She handed it over and watched as Rovi took a brass key from his pocket.
“You’re sure that key works?” Vera asked.
“It worked to get into the stairwell,” Rovi said.
They all held their breath while Rovi fit the key into a rusty brass keyhole. He jiggled it. Nothing. He jiggled it again. And then, with difficulty, it turned. The lock clicked open.
Together, Pretia, Rovi, and Vera pressed their shoulders against the door. It opened easily, admitting them to Hafara.
They were in a stadium, but it was unlike any stadium Pretia had seen before. It was cold and forbidding. They stood on a circular stone walkway. Rising above them were bleachers, and more than twenty feet below, in a pit, was the remains of the fighting arena. Pretia shuddered at the thought of the blood sports that had taken place down there.