Beyond the Pool of Stars

by Howard Andrew Jones

Mirian had never been to the arena in Crown’s End. It was apparently part of a wider circuit, the dubious crown jewel of which was a pit fight held somewhere in the Shackles. There, monsters and oddities were thrown against each other before cheering crowds. At many outlying arenas, like the one in Crown’s End, creatures were pitted against criminals intended as practice targets, though there were a few warriors who earned glory weeding out lesser monsters.

  The arena itself was an ancient stone structure resembling Kalabuto’s temples, though there were certain architectural oddities Mirian would have gladly examined some other time. The town’s folk of Crown’s End were already filing in for the dawn showing, where prisoners were usually put to death prior to a day of bloodshed punctuated by musical interludes.

  Mirian knew Rendak was probably slated for execution in this opening event, and it was all she could do to remain silent, hood shadowing her face, while Jeneta spoke with the pair of surly guards at the side gate.

  They proved less than receptive. “Sister, these murderers don’t want any word from Iomedae.” The broken-nosed guard picked at a tooth with a dirty fingernail.

  Jeneta’s response was solemn. “Iomedae’s call is insistent.”

  “She can insist all she wants,” the other guard said, laughing. He was a light-skinned Ijo man, probably of mixed blood, his dyed hair a bright yellow.

  “Perhaps this insistence is more to your liking.” Jeneta extended her hand and turned up her palm to reveal a small coin purse. “A donation to your fraternal organization.”

  The blond laughed while his companion took it and peered inside. “Well, well. Looks like maybe you can save some souls, if you hurry. Normally I don’t like to rush in the mornings, but I’m feeling pretty thankful for your fraternal generosity and all.”

  “Especially thankful,” said the blond to his comrade, “so long as you remember me.”

  Broken-nose grunted, then unlocked the gate behind him and motioned the trio to follow. They were led into the corridors below the arena, where they were greeted by an astonishing mixture of aromas, none of them pleasant. Strange beasts growled and hooted in the distance.

  “You’re in luck,” their escort said over his shoulder. He carried a battered lantern in one hand, and it shined on the pitted stonework floor as they walked. “Usually the humans are the first ones out and there’d be no one to pray for. But we got in a troupe of bloodthirsty frillbacks last night, and we’re letting them entertain the crowd. Shake things up a little, you know?”

  Mirian felt her nostrils flare and her voice rose. “You mean the lizardfolk are already on the arena floor?”

  “Out or on the way.” The guard stopped before a long span of rusty metal bars, and the scent of unwashed humanity increased. He lifted the lantern and shined it into a mass of men blinking in the sudden onslaught of light. A dozen of them huddled against the walls.

  “On your feet, boys! I’ve been paid good coin to get your souls saved by Iomedae!”

  Mirian spotted Rendak immediately. He sat rubbing his eyes with a grubby hand. Shirtless, dirty, disheveled, he looked little different from his companions.

  “We want a word alone,” Mirian said.

  “I can’t do that, I’m afraid.”

  Up top, Mirian heard the roar of the crowd and a flare of trumpets. At any moment her friends were going to be released into the arena, against the gods only knew what monstrosity.

  It was time to improvise.

  She drew the wand without really thinking. The guard stared at it, then reached for his hilt. Ivrian grabbed his arm.

  The guard was far stockier than Ivrian and easily fought him off, but in the intervening moment Jeneta stepped forward and thumped him on the side of the head. He staggered, and in an instant the priestess had him pressed to the bars, left arm raised between his shoulder blades.

  The guard gasped in pain. “You’re no priestess!”

  Jeneta gave Mirian a dark look. She had specifically asked that no violence be done to the guards.

  “No one has to die.” Mirian took the guard’s sword. “So long as you have sense.”

  In moments the prisoners were milling in the corridor and Ivrian told them to make their way out through any exit they could. Likely there were real convicts among them, but Mirian had no time for niceties, and she hoped their escape would add to the confusion. She ordered the guard to pull off his shirt and armor before she locked him up, then ordered Rendak into the garb.

  The salvager stared wide-eyed at them as he dressed. “I can’t believe you’re alive! Did Gombe make it?”

  “He did.” Mirian started to say more, but she heard a plaintive, soaring melody from the arena above. By now she recognized the birdlike sound of a lizardfolk song, and guessed its meaning.

  “What’s that?” Ivrian asked.

  “A lizardfolk death song.” Mirian cursed and searched the surrounding halls, which stretched darkly in every direction beyond the pale pool of lantern light. The rest of the prisoners had already run on. “Damn it! Which way to the arena?” She spotted a faint light to what she assumed was the north, nodded to herself even as Rendak was spoke.

  “Mirian,” Rendak said soberly, “it’s too late for them. What can you do?”

  “Oh, I’m good at distractions. Ivrian, give me your ring.”

  He pulled it off. “You’ll need help—”

  “Get out. Get Gombe and get the jewels to Eleder. We’ll follow if we can. Meet us where the tunnels empty. Just like we planned.

  Mirian left them with the lantern and hurried toward the distant light, and the death song of a people.

  34

  Blood in the Sands

  Sylena

  The crowd pitched meat and fruit at the frillbacks, booing and hissing, and guards deployed along the wall leveled crossbows and shouted threats at the creatures, who continued their song.

  “At least they haven’t said anything,” Rajana said.

  The frillbacks brandished their swords at the crowd.

  One of the guards along the bank shouted a command, and a crossbow bolt thudded into the thigh of the male frillback. He shouted and threw his sword almost to the top of the fourteen-foot wall.

  There was a trumpet blast and the disgruntled crowd shifted its attention to the harried-looking announcer. “You wanted killer lizards? Well, I’ll give you one! A thunder lizard from the savage, beating heart of the Mwangi Expanse!”

  The large gate directly beneath the speaker’s stand ground open and a yellow-and-green-striped lizard twice the height of a man stalked out, upright on huge clawed feet. Its great head swiveled to examine the arena and the crowd. Its maw opened to reveal sword-length teeth.

  And then it caught scent of the frillbacks, roaring a low, deafening challenge, and trotted forward, its clawed front arms twitching.

  “This will be the end of them,” Sylena said. Below, the male frillback limped for the wall where his sword lay. The thunder lizard hooted and dashed at him.

  The female dove, waving her own sword, but the beast paid no heed. Just as the male frillback turned, sword raised, the monster’s great maw swept down over his head and chest. The frillback’s rib cage disintegrated in a single pulverizing blow. The beast lifted him into the air and blood sprayed into the stands. Women screamed.

  The female frillback roared defiance. She ran forward and slashed the front of the monster’s leg.

  It let out a choking roar, dropping the half of the frillback body it hadn’t swallowed, and swept its tail at the female, who threw herself aside.

  “Yes, yes,” the spokesman cried from his platform. “We try to find you only the bravest here at the Crown’s End Arena. It seems the first frillback was a lover, not a fighter. Too bad for him, eh? But we have more surprises in store for you today. Much better surprises. Feast your eyes on this!”

  The female dived to the left before one huge foot could stomp her to paste. The great head snapped at her, missed.

  “Don’t thin
k we just mean to have you watch the creature eat! No! For you see, we have another frillback. A killer among killers! A man-eater! Think what he’ll do when confronted by the beast who slew his nestmate!”

  And the third lizard man stumbled into the arena—the problematic one they’d called Jekka. They’d given him the strange axe the female had carried. He held it in his left hand. In his right he bore the frillback staff, a scythe-like blade attached.

  Jekka’s tongue snaked out and his mouth widened to reveal sharp teeth. His skin color darkened and spots of red appeared among dark green scales as his frill rose. He let out a low growl.

  The thunder lizard snorted at the sound and turned. Its tale whipped into Kalina and sent her flying into a wall. She struggled to rise.

  Jekka trotted forward as if he meant to meet the monster head-on.

  “Look at his daring!” the speaker cried. “This one’s no coward!”

  The thunder lizard’s attention was distracted by the crowd’s cheers, and it raised its head to snuffle along the arena rim. By straining, its small eyes could just see over the top, presumably finding the noisemakers of great interest. Sylena knew a tingle of fear as it stepped within ten feet.

  Jekka ran on, lifting one of the weapons. Sylena was a little startled to see it had changed from a scythe to a spear. How had that happened?

  The frillback was looking at her.

  No. Surely it studied the thunder lizard, which had finally turned to face him with a roar that shook the stands. The crowd shouted approval.

  Jekka released the spear, but the cast flew wide of the monster’s head. It was a terrible throw, arcing up over the stands, up—

  “Atok!” she screamed. It was pure reflex, because she knew Atok was dead. It was just that he had been there for so many years to shield her.

  Rajana’s black-clad bodyguard put his hand to her shoulder and leapt onto the railing, knocking the spear aside with a sheathed sword. The spear clattered harmlessly along the stony bench.

  Sylena gasped in horror and shoved her sister’s bodyguard aside, peering over the rim. Unfortunately, the monster completely blocked her line of sight.

  “Sister,” Rajana hissed. “Get down! Get back! You’ll call attention to yourself!”

  “I want to see him die!” Sylena leaned out and to the left, far enough that she could just see the frillback sprinting. The thunder lizard pursued, its footfalls shaking the walls, head thrust forward to snap Jekka in half.

  Suddenly a huge, white-furred ape thing with four arms climbed out of an open cage door. It reared back and beat its great chest with two of its fists.

  The thunder lizard growled and halted to consider the new development. Jekka bolted clear.

  The crowd murmured in puzzlement, and Sylena glanced at the speaker, who was in frantic consultation with a red-robed official. Clearly the events weren’t going according to plan for anyone.

  Two rhinos charged onto the field, the sun gleaming from scythe blades fitted over their horns, and the crowd shouted in joy. It looked like things were shaping up for a bloodbath.

  Sylena leaned down and picked up the lizard man’s spear, ignoring her sister’s demands that she stop making a spectacle. Jekka was in plain view. If he got close enough, she wouldn’t even have to wait for something else to kill him.

  And then she heard her name, shouted from below. She looked down.

  Impossibly, Mirian Raas stood directly beneath, alive and well and pointing a wand. As the glowing emerald bolt streamed for Sylena, she almost managed a scream.

  But then the bolt struck her face. Wailing through her ruined mouth, she lost her balance and plummeted to the arena floor.

  35

  The Thing at the Shoreline

  Mirian

  She blasted the nearest guard in the face. As he dropped to the hallway floor, Mirian brandished her sword at the other. She’d hoped he’d back away, but these men were professionals, armed and armored, and he apparently thought he stood a good chance against a woman in a robe.

  She parried high in his swing, shouted the wand’s activation word, and sent him clawing at his bubbling neck.

  She’d never get used to what the weapon did to people. She stepped past the dying man and depressed the lever in the pillar beside him before finishing him off with a merciful thrust. The cage opened into the arena, and the two large rhinos tramped out into the rectangle of sunlight, pawing and snorting, swinging their metal-tipped horns left and right. The moment they were gone, Mirian used the jailer’s keys to open the pen and enter the stinking enclosure.

  She’d already opened one cage to set loose a huge, four-armed white gorilla. Between the monsters she released outside and the prisoners she’d freed within, chaos reigned. She hadn’t even been challenged until she arrived at the rhino pen.

  She worried about setting such dangerous monsters loose in the arena with her friends. But without a distraction, they had no hope at all.

  Now, as she peered out the open doorway, she saw the gorilla turning to roar at one rhino even as the thunder lizard chased another. She looked up along the rim, and that was when Desna truly smiled, for who should she see but her brother’s murderer.

  “Sylena!” she cried.

  The moment that pale face looked down at her, she blasted. The wretched woman fell screaming, landing with a crunch six feet to Mirian’s left. Even over the rest of the arena noise, Mirian could hear the sizzle of the acid as it ate away at Sylena’s face.

  For once she felt no pity for a victim of the weapon’s work.

  “Jekka!” she shouted. “Jekka, over here! Kalina!” She’d spotted the lizard woman limping along the side of the enclosure, hand pressed to one arm.

  But Jekka still hadn’t seen, or heard. He was running from the thunder lizard, which seemed to have caught the attention of the four-armed gorilla. Closer at hand, one of the rhinos saw something it didn’t like and swept its head low to gore Sylena’s body. It flipped her into the air, and Mirian realized in horror that the woman was still alive in the brief moment before she hit the arena floor and was thoroughly trampled by the rhinoceros. The crowd seemed uncertain what to make of that particular spectacle, for there were both enthusiastic shouts and screams of terror.

  Kalina reached the doorway, and Mirian saw blood trickling from both her arm and her thigh. “Go on,” Mirian urged, “get out! Where’s Heltan?”

  “Dead! Mirian, what are you doing?”

  Mirian pushed Kalina toward the open gate. Jekka still hadn’t seen her. She lowered her wand and fired again. The acid spray hit the sand just past Jekka’s shoulder, right at the foot of the four-armed gorilla.

  She had Jekka’s attention finally, but had to fire once more to distract the thunder lizard as it lunged for a bite. Mirian tagged it in the snout and it lifted its head to growl in pain.

  “Jekka!” Mirian waved from the open gateway, and the lizard man turned on his heel, sprinting at full speed. He fell as the gorilla slapped him with one of its hands, but tumbled to his feet and kept running. Thankfully, the monster seemed more interested in challenging the thunder lizard and pushed into it with a demented scream of fury.

  Jekka was almost there when Mirian smelled brimstone.

  She whirled, sidestepped to avoid the bite from the massive, flaming hound with burning eyes that had appeared beside her.

  Mirian had neither the time nor energy to care who had summoned the thing. It caught her sword slice with its burning maw and tore the weapon from her grasp.

  Jekka charged in with Kalina’s laumahk. His was a mighty blow, backed up by the momentum of his long sprint, and sheared through the creature’s side. The flaming hound opened its mouth to howl as Kalina turned back and ran it through one burning flank.

  Mirian rushed past, the wounded lizardfolk following. She heard the devil hound shamble after, moaning in something between pain and ecstasy.

  With Kalina and Jekka beside her, she slammed home the bar on the pen. “Come on!”r />
  She scanned her friends in the light trickling through the bars. Jekka looked to be in better shape, though a crossbow quarrel stuck out of one shoulder and a shallow claw mark stretched across his chest.

  Kalina bled from half a dozen wounds, and there was a chunk carved out of her shoulder. Mirian fumbled with her hand and slipped the extra water-breathing ring onto the lizard woman. “You may need this. To breathe underwater.”

  “Mirian.” Kalina breathed heavily, as though she were working up energy to say something.

  “No time.” Mirian led them around a corner toward the largest floor grate only to find a squad of spear- and torch-bearing guards running their way. They ducked back as a spear clattered past.

  “You came back for us,” Jekka said. He laid a clawed hand, softly, upon her shoulder. “But I think we will die together.”

  “Not yet, damn it.” They raced past where the devil hound pushed against the door to the rhino pen, howling at sight of them. She was sure she’d seen a smaller grating.

  There.

  Just beyond the guards she’d slain lay a rusted metal grill through which dark water gleamed. She bent to it. Jekka dropped with her and the two gripped it by the bars and hauled.

  The grating was exceptionally heavy. She heard something pop. It wasn’t her back, though, but rather one of the bars bending in the hound’s pen.

  Mirian lowered the wand and fired, three times in succession. The first shot didn’t work, but the other two opened a steaming gap in the grill.

  The guards rounded the corner.

  Jekka planted his feet wide, swept a spear from the air with the laumahk.

  The hound roared, and the door to its pen slammed open.

  “Go!” Mirian shouted at Kalina. The lizard woman dropped through, narrowly missing the steaming acid.

  “You go!” Jekka sent another spear clattering. “I’ll be right behind!”

  The guards at the end of the hallway screamed at the appearance of the flaming, howling hound as Mirian dropped through the sizzling grate. Too late she remembered the air bottle she’d tucked into a pocket of the robe. She’d meant to hand it to Jekka, but under the constant assault there’d been no time.