by Jeff Gunzel
She didn’t move at all when the light clicking sounds of the thick iron lock being fiddled with echoed softly down the walkway, nor when the thick wooden door opened then slammed shut. Even the sound of several heavy boots pounding the stone floor as they got closer and closer to her cell were hardly enough to make her raise her eyes.
When she finally spared a glance toward the wall of bars, there stood before her what she at least partially expected. Four heavily armored guards stood there just glaring at her, but the little, bald man with the long, thin, gray beard sure looked out of place with this bunch.
The funny-looking little man just waved his hand in a dismissive flick, and the soldiers turned and left without question. That simple display actually said quite a bit to Addel, as it proved he had some real authority here. “Well, hello there,” came the high-pitched, scratchy voice. “My name is Berkeni. And to whom am I speaking with this evening?”
She cracked a small, sarcastic smile as she leaned her head back flush against the stone wall. “Are you the one they’ve sent to kill me?”
“Why, nothing of the sort!” he replied, looking a touch offended. Then he quickly raised an eyebrow. “That is not to say that I couldn’t...if I wanted to.” She actually let out a soft laugh, but her smile faded quickly, feeling stupid for having been caught off-guard by the little man’s dry humor.
“Don’t tease me, old man. If you are going to kill me, then let’s get on with it. If you want something else from me then just say it.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to embrace death nor hold it in such high regard...old lady,” he said with a sudden hardness in his voice. “From what I can gather, you still have a pulse, and as to whether or not that luxury remains will depend completely on your cooperation.”
“Or what? You’ll put a sword in my hand and send me off to the games?” she replied with a sheepish grin. “I’ll bet I can make it at least two rounds.”
Berkeni moved up close to the bars. “They tell me you betrayed Dragot and provided aid to the Gate Keeper. Is this true?”
“What does it matter what I say? You will believe whatever you want and then find reason to execute me. To be perfectly honest—” The words hung in the air for a moment as she looked away. Berkeni stood with his hands on the bars, patiently waiting for her to finish. “To be honest...it’s exactly what I deserve!” She buried her head in her knees and began to sob uncontrollably.
She couldn’t stop no matter how hard she tried to control her flooding emotions. The shame of what she had done flowed through her like a river. She thought helping Eric had cleared her mind, freed her soul, but it wasn’t enough. The shame of crying like a child in front of the enemy so he would be given one final opportunity to laugh at how pathetic she was before sending her to the afterlife was overwhelming. She thought about her poor family, who had to hide their shameful child and could never lead a normal life; about her betrayal of humanity. It came raging through her in the form of unrelenting emotion that couldn’t be controlled.
Berkeni watched the volatile scene unfold, but his face remained hard as stone... as did his voice. “You still haven’t answered my questions! Did you betray Dragot? Did you aid the Gate Keeper?”
“Yes...yes!” she screamed with tears running down face; her entire body convulsing with uncontrollable sobs. “But what does that matter? It’s such a token gesture in the light of my complete betrayal to humanity. Has my small, pitiful act of courageousness saved my soul? Do I deserve to be forgiven after aiding that snake for as long as I did?”
She rose and hobbled up as close to the bars as quickly as she was capable. Berkeni stood his ground, not backing up an inch. His face remained cold and emotionless. She looked hard into his eyes as she grasped his hands through the bars. He never pulled back or even tried to resist. “Please...kill me. Release me from this torment. The guilt—it feeds on me from the inside. Just make it end!”
She dropped to her knees while still holding his hands. Berkeni was nearly impossible to lie to. There was no doubt of her sincerity. She had indeed betrayed Dragot and helped Eric. Nor was there any doubt that she indeed wanted to die. The guilt of all she had done before switching alliances was breaking her soul.
“I will not kill you,” he said at length. “That would be the easy way out, and you owe a debt.” She began to sob again, only much softer this time as she retracted her hands and placed them on top of her head. “Instead, you will work toward your salvation. Earn the right to rejoin humanity once more!” Then he reached through the bars and gently held her chin, raising her head so she now faced him. Her face was twisted with pain, her good eye bloodshot, flowing with tears.
In the softest, kindest voice, he whispered, “You will aid me personally as my assistant. I promise you, not only will you have the chance to redeem yourself for the sins you have committed because of a lack of options, not because you are inherently evil—I also offer you revenge on the serpent who stole your life!”
In an instant all the sadness in her belly turned to a smoldering fire she hadn’t felt in years. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so alive.
Chapter 6
Athel took several deep breaths before stretching down to touch her toes. With knees locked out and legs perfectly straight, she placed her palms flat on the ground while her gaze drifted past her shins to the stone wall. She wore no clothing that would hinder her physically, aside from a black cloth thong and a thin, tight, black wool strap across her nipples that added support but did nothing to contain neither the top nor bottom of her breasts.
Standing back up from her bent-over pose, she reached high toward the ceiling with her palms facing up. Her sharp release of air made a slight whistling sound through her two silver teeth, turning into a fine vapor mist that levitated into the ever-cool room. She then clasped her palms together and brought them down in front of her chest, holding the position for some time.
Opening her bright green eyes for a moment, she gazed around her private training facility. Crude wooden dummies that were nothing more than smooth, thick posts dug deep into the floor with replaceable pegs flaring out in all directions were scattered about the room in no particular pattern. The wooden floor was covered with thin white carpet, dingy and hole-filled but still slightly better than nothing.
Five oil lanterns flickered away while casting shadows off the training dummies, making them appear to have many more arms than they actually did. There was only one small weapons rack in the corner containing nothing more than a steel-tipped spear and two short-swords. No pictures or art of any kind aided in covering the drab, cold, stone walls.
She listlessly reached her hands high into the air once again, but this time continued the path backward until her palms were placed firmly on the floor behind her. With her body now contorted into a backwards arch, she lifted her feet toward the ceiling, then over her hands once again, completing the slow-motion handspring.
Athel dropped down into a split position with her feet flared out to the side, then reached out as far as she could, placing her heavily muscled stomach flat across the floor. Smooth, dark skin tightly stretched over defined shoulder and back muscles glistened with sweat, reflecting the light flickering from the lanterns as she reached out. The floor itself clearly seemed to be the only limit to her remarkable flexibility.
She pushed off the ground and slowly slid her legs back together, once again standing in her original position. Athel stalked over to the corner of the room with a little bounce in her step, feeling warmed up and limber despite the constant damp coolness of the room she was long used to. Reaching down, she grabbed her two gleaming half-moon blades from the floor and without hesitation began a series of vicious twirling movements as flashing steel began to dance all around her.
The Dronin-blade style differed from others because nearly every thrust was meant to kill. There was no feeling-out process or probing shots meant to test an opponent, and certainly no defensive tactics to speak of—just an offensive e
xplosion meant to overwhelm the enemy quickly. Athel’s reputation for being one of the best was certainly well earned.
In a sudden explosion she tore through the wooden dummies with frightening speed, throwing her full weight behind each leaping and spinning slash. Once solid wooden arms now flew in all directions as the loud cracking of wood being annihilated by cold metal echoed off the stone walls in the small room. Twisting and spinning, with all her momentum behind each and every slash, she paused on one occasion only to drop into a low, coiled crouch, then jumped into a vicious bladed uppercut, splitting the top of the dummy clean in half.
When her dance of carnage was complete only seconds later, she gazed back to see what was left of her assortment of wooden victims. Broken wooden arms with surprisingly clean breaks lay scattered about the floor. A few unavoidable splintered shavings lay here and there, but it was all large pieces of cleanly sliced wood for the most part. She breathed heavily, light steam forming in the air with every puff as she glided back over to where her pile of clothes lay.
The only drawback to the Dronin-blade style was the extensive use of energy, which had the potential to tire the combatant quickly. Of course, the only way to expose this weakness was to hold on long enough for the effects of fatigue to take place—a theory no one in the games or otherwise had ever been able to test to this point.
Although Athel never heard the door open, she knew Grandling was standing in the room. She never made a move for her clothes as she turned slowly and leaned against the cold wall, eyeing the big man up and down with his long, braided beard spilling over the front of his chest. Virtually naked, she finally shook her head back and forth with an exaggerated rattle while raising both palms in an impatient shrug. “Yes?” she said as the silence went on for far too long.
His wandering eyes snapped into focus at last. “Your father wishes to speak with you.”
She let out a long sigh. “Fine. Where is he?”
He paused a moment as his wandering eyes seemed to be acting on their own once more. With great effort, he raised them again and replied, “He is in his den, making final preparations. He awaits you, my lady.”
“Preparations for what?” she asked. He turned his back on her and left the room. She just shrugged and went back to her waiting clothes pile. As she dressed, her mind began to race a bit.
Because of the blood running through her veins, it was true she held a marginal amount of authority in Dronin, but as far as the amount she had earned in her father’s eyes, it was immeasurably small. They rarely saw eye to eye on anything, and he certainly didn’t respect her opinion on any business matters. So what could he be preparing that she was somehow now to be involved in?
She suddenly felt foolish for giving the small matter this much attention. He undoubtedly needed her to run an errand or some other such menial task that any servant was more than capable of. When she protested as she always did, he would point out how he could only entrust this task to her and no other, then she would reluctantly become his errand girl for the hundredth time. They had been round and round with this familiar dance many times before.
After strapping her inverted leather sheaths to her back, she headed through the door. Down the stone hall she stalked, always on the balls of her feet. Her fully trained body permanently remained ready for combat even if her mind was a thousand miles from it. However, she walked a bit faster than usual. Something tugging at her thoughts spurred her on. Even though she had already reasoned out the clear stupidity for this meaningless visit, she needed proof for some reason.
The hall flowed into cross choices of right and left. She nearly began running as she broke left past the stone statue of a fallen warrior. When she approached the gray wooden door with two white stand lamps on each side and one black oil lamp lit just above, she turned the knob and drove her shoulder hard into the door, making quite an entrance to a startled Corzon. He quickly raised his head from his dark-stained wooden desk, a freshly dipped feather still in his hand as it dribbled a single drop back into the bottle.
“What is it that you need?” she blurted out impatiently while glancing around the den she had seen many times before. Ten books leaned in various lopsided directions, slanting this way and that as they leveraged against each other in the old gray wooden bookcase built for fifty. The stuffed black bear in the corner that used to frighten her as a child remained fixed in its eternally frozen pose, standing up on its hind legs like it was about to attack.
He placed the feather back into the inkbottle in an unusually careful fashion, like a person who was trying to stall but was completely out of ideas as to how to extend the matter. He scooted his chair back from the desk and stood up, clearly having great difficulty looking Athel in the eye. “Come, walk with me,” he said in a soft, almost caring voice.
She was now sure this had to be serious as he continued with his odd mannerisms. “What...what is going on? Tell me right now!” He simply dipped his shoulder sideways and scooted past her out into the hall. She followed quickly. Walking right next to him like a shadow, she constantly turned to him, glaring, analyzing, wanting him to say something, but he didn’t. They marched together as one in silence until they found themselves out in the street.
“Are you going to tell what is going on or not?” she barked as her beads rattled around angrily.
In a strangely calm voice, he replied, “You know, I remember your mother.” Her nose crinkled up in confusion. Sure, he had told her stories of her mother before. In fact, he had blamed Athel many times over the years for the passing of his beloved wife, Marlin. “I wish the two of you would have switched places,” he told her on several occasions, with not a care in the world of how his stinging words bore into her heart. Marlin had died shortly after giving birth to Athel, and Corzon never seemed to be at peace with that heartbreaking reality.
“What does she have to do with anything right now?” Athel asked, wondering if he was about to blame her for the death of his wife once again. Part of her tensed a bit for the possible backhand. He never seemed to need much of a reason to deliver one.
His expression didn’t change at all. He just kept walking, his eyes glazed over like he was somewhere else all of a sudden. “When I first attained my position of rank, I was young and insecure; ignorant of the ways of the world. What if the people don’t respect my authority? What if they rebel against me? What if—”
He stared off in the distance as his eyes went out of focus. Then he finally looked back down at Athel with an odd smile on his face, like he was reliving a childhood memory or something. “What if they can tell I’m afraid?”
“I...I don’t understand. What does any of this—”
“You see, your mother, Marlin, was my rock. My source of strength, if you will.” He flashed another creepy smile at Athel that made her shiver. She remained completely silent, having no idea what was going on here. Has my father gone mad?
They seemed to be heading in the general direction of the arena. Athel had been so caught up in the bizarre conversation, she had hardly been aware of her surroundings...until now. The streets were nearly abandoned. All the shops were closed down and there wasn’t a single person in sight. “Where is everybody?” she shrieked, feeling stupid she hadn’t noticed this until now.
He made a ticking sound with his tongue as he nudged his head to the side, much the same way someone might call a dog, before marching on at a brisk pace. She hurried to catch up, feeling very small all of sudden. It seemed the whole city was in on some big secret, but yet she had somehow been kept in the dark.
When they arrived at the arena, Corzon didn’t enter the lower gate, but instead began climbing the steps leading to the upper level. Athel lagged behind with her head held low, feeling very confused and now even a bit frightened.
“You see, I always had your mother to depend on during moments of weakness,” he said out of nowhere as they continued to climb. “She gave me strength when I needed it most. When I was sad or depressed,
she could always snap me out of it with nothing more than a few words and a flash of her beautiful smile. But she’s gone now, Athel, gone, and I’ll never ever see my source of inspiration again.”
He stopped and turned toward her one last time when there were only a few steps left. “The enemy is at our doorstep, and I can’t show weakness,” he said, almost looking sad now.
“What enemy? What bloody enemy? What are you talking about?” she screamed in frustration, almost in tears.
“You see Athel, you can never replace that great woman who was stolen from me. One of the last things she ever told me was, ‘Don’t ever be afraid of greatness. Take what is rightfully yours, and crush any and all who stand in your way.’”
With that, he climbed the remaining few steps to look out over the arena. Athel had to force herself to finish the climb. There could be no doubt she didn’t want to see this, but her worst nightmares could never have prepared her for this. The surreal scene turned her blood to ice.
All of Dronin’s army was spread into squared formations across the frozen sand. Thousands of men armed and ready stood at attention in absolute silence while holding one hand across their chests. Even the combat slaves were standing at attention, in their own lined formation off to the left of everyone else. She could see her good friends Timith and Hasur standing with them, faces cold and focused on nothing.
The Steel Maidens stood in a long line at the front of the army, each covered in full black leather armor. They were easily as beautiful as they were deadly. Sexuality was as great a weapon as any, and they had been trained to use every tool at their disposal.
Corzon walked up to the edge of the banister. His booming voice was loud and true as he stretched his arms into the air. “The witch of Taron has used her lies and deceit to trick her people into turning against us. She is mad with power and must be stopped before it is too late!”
Weapons waved in the air as battle shouts filled the arena. He made one last sweeping gaze over his massive army before drawing his long-sword and holding it high. “TO WAAAAAR!” he screamed at the top of his lungs while bloodthirsty battle cries seemed to shake the stone walls.
