Sobered, Caelan watched them until they were out of sight; then the guards put him in a holding cell, where he drank liberally from a water pail and waited until the other victors came in. They in turn looked drained, excited, or bored with the whole business.
Caelan did not think he would ever be bored. Right or wrong, killing was nothing to be indifferent about.
When there were six of them present, the door slammed open and they again drew lots. This time Caelan’s opponent was Bulot. His momentary confidence faded, and he counseled himself to take care. Bulot hated him and would be a far more dangerous opponent than the first man.
They filed out, paired off as before. Orlo stood in the passageway, and when he saw Caelan he blinked in approval but said nothing.
Caelan’s chin lifted a bit higher and he squared his shoulders. Inside, he tried to make himself quiet and ready.
Back around to a door, back into the darkness and the ramp that led upward. At the top, a short sword was pressed into his hand and the blindfold whipped off as he was pushed out into the sand of ring three.
This time, Caelan kept his eyes squinted to protect them while they adjusted to the sunlight. He jogged forward and spun around quickly, expecting Bulot to charge him straight out of the door, which the man did.
Wiry and strong, Bulot was far different from Caelan’s first opponent and twice as dangerous. He skipped over the sand, small but light-footed. His quickness was disconcerting, and he was utterly familiar with a sword, which Caelan was only now holding for the first time.
Bulot swung, lunging hard. Caelan stumbled back, momentarily forgetting his training. He defended himself clumsily, and felt a razor-sharp sting of pain slash his arm.
Looking down, he saw a cut already dripping blood. It wasn’t deep, but it hurt. The sight of his own blood soaking into the sand was mesmerizing.
But Bulot was already charging again. Regaining his concentration, Caelan forced himself to spring aside. Again, he was driven back under Bulot’s expert charge, getting no chance to set himself or find his rhythm. Bulot’s eyes were flat with menace and deadly purpose. Yet as he met their gaze, Caelan felt a shiver pass through him.
Although he was not actually touching the man, Caelan experienced a jolt of sevaisin. The joining was quick, momentary, and yet suddenly Caelan understood what Bulot was thinking, the pattern of his strategy, and his whole plan of attack.
Caelan shifted aside a split second before Bulot struck. Surprise flashed across Bulot’s face. Again, Caelan anticipated him, but this time Caelan did so with a feint of his own, and only Bulot’s own quickness saved him from being spitted on the end of Caelan’s sword.
The blade began to hum as though the metal was warming, coming alive. At first Caelan thought he was imagining things. It was a trick of acoustics, something in the roar of the crowd, but this time when he raised his sword in a quick parry and the two blades crashed together, Caelan’s sword sang shrilly.
The sound was for his ears alone, and it vibrated through the length of him. He was deep in sevaisin, joined with the weapon in a way he had never experienced before. Not only did he know what Bulot intended, but now his sword was telling him secrets of its previous victories in the hands of others. How to pause, how to move, how to parry and thrust, the correct angle of the swing—back and forth—in deadly rhythm.
Now he understood the footwork and the arm action, how the two worked in deadly concert. For the first time it all made sense. He had found the language of fighting, and nothing Bulot tried fooled him. Caelan’s own body, his muscles and heart and blood all sang with the sword, harmonizing effortlessly.
Bulot began to tire. His attacks grew more desperate, his risks bigger. Again he barely managed to fling himself back from Caelan’s sword, but this lime he stumbled and nearly tripped over his own feet.
Caelan sprang, seeing the opportunity, and sank his sword deep into Bulot’s side. The impact shocked him; then death agony washed over him in a tide that sent him staggering back. He left the sword in Bulot’s side, his own hand tingling with a fire he could not flex out.
In his madness, he had forgotten to sever the joining. Bulot’s death seemed to extinguish him as well. The sky went dark. His vision left him. He could hear nothing. There was only a brutal pain in his heart, as though the organ had stopped.
Then somehow he found a breath, then another. His heart started thudding again, and his sight returned. A second later he heard the crowd screaming and chanting, “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
The door to his ring was open, and a guard was gesturing furiously. Caelan stared at him stupidly a long while before he finally understood.
Slowly he returned to Bulot and drew out the sword. Blood gushed with it, leaving a dark stain in the sand. Bulot’s eyes stared sightlessly at the heavens. Feeling sick, Caelan raised his bloody sword high in the victor’s salute.
Across the arena, he saw the emperor’s box this time. Unmistakable, with its flying banners of the imperial two- headed eagle, the box was filled with people in expensive dress. Servants moved about constantly, bringing fresh drinks on trays while others held up sunshades against the relentless light. Still others fanned and kept flies shooed away. Caelan squinted, but he could not make out the emperor’s features. The man leaned over and said something behind his hand to his companion, a younger, dark-haired man in blue.
The prince was holding a tube to his eye and staring in Caelan’s direction. Conscious of ownership, Caelan raised his sword again, although he wasn’t sure whether the prince was actually looking at him or doing something else.
This time the crowd at least had noticed Caelan’s victory. Clapping and throwing him kisses, some people even tossed flowers his way.
He turned his back on them and walked into the darkness.
It was a repeat of the previous routine. The sword was wrested immediately from him. At the bottom of the ramp, he climbed into the tub of water again, washing off the grime and blood—although what could wash his heart?
Numb, he walked with heavy footsteps into the holding cell. Another man waited there before him, a lithe individual with a handsome face and skin the color of soot. Their gazes met briefly, then broke.
Sighing, Caelan seated himself on a stool and closed his eyes. His father’s face floated in his mind, stern and disappointed. His first kill. And all he could feel was shame.
It was as though something important inside him had suddenly crumbled to ashes. Even during the long years of uncertainty and grief since he’d been taken from home and sold into slavery, he had always been intact inside. He might grieve and he might mourn, but he had never been broken. Now he wondered why he should feel so flat and empty within. He wanted to go back, to reclaim what he had lost, but he knew it was impossible to do so.
This, then, must have been what his father knew, all those years ago. Beva had tried to warn him against becoming a soldier. Agel even had understood what it meant totake life. But Caelan hadn’t listened. He had been so full of his boyhood dreams and ambitions, so eager for glory.
Was this glory now? To win? To hear the erowd cheer approval? To have flowers tossed at him?
Was it a suitable tribute for the blood on his hands?
Caelan’s hands were trembling. He sat on them so the other man would not see, and told himself to stop this. He could not tear himself apart every time, not if he was to survive this ordeal.
It was the fault of sevaisin. If he’d only remembered to break the joining before he thrust the final blow, it wouldn’t have been so bad.
Even now, he thought he could hear an echo of the sword, still calling to him, still singing in his blood. Beneath his wretchedness, he knew something even more alarming: he had been born to battle. The weapons knew it. That’s why they had called to him so strongly all his life.
What am I? he wondered.
He had no answer to that question, but he understood why he could not do well with the fake weapons in practice. They were not real.
They could not speak to him.
The third victor came in, breathing hard and looking exhausted. He drank water, but scarcely had he dropped the dipper back into the pail than the door opened and the guards entered with the final lots.
“No free-for-all?” the black man asked. His voice was smooth and deep. He alone seemed completely fresh.
“Not today. The emperor doesn’t like them.”
Caelan reached in the tub. His tag was numbered three.
“One and two, step lively.”
The black man and the one who’d just arrived went out. The door was slammed shut for what seemed like forever.
An hour passed, perhaps an eternity. Finally the guards came for Caelan and took him up the dark ramp for the last time. He did not know who his opponent was to be until the door opened and he was shoved out into the sunlight. He saw the black man holding both a dagger and a broadsword, waiting some distance away in the center of the largest ring.
Caelan had the same weapons. He could not handle both at once, so he tucked the dagger into the waist of his loincloth and settled a two-handed grip on the broadsword. The weapon was incredibly heavy and long. Blunt-tipped, it was made for hacking, not thrusting. Not until he tried to lift it into readiness did Caelan realize how exhausted his shoulders were. His arms felt leaden.
But the weapons were already hot and alive. He could feel them against his skin, humming with purpose. But to enter sevaisin again was too draining. It took tremendous amounts of energy. He was not used to so much contact. He did not believe he could protect himself if he needed to.
He crossed the ring while the crowd roared and stamped its feet. They were crying, “Amarouk! Amarouk!” over and over. Caelan realized that must be his opponent’s name.
The black man’s eyes were steady and alert. His muscles rippled beneath his skin as he raised the broadsword, but he let Caelan come to him.
Caelan knew this meant he would have no time to get set. He knew also that it was Amarouk’s right. The man was already the favorite, marked as today’s victor. Knowledge of that shone in Amarouk’s face, but he was far from cocky.
He crouched slightly, settling his haunches the way a great cat might before springing.
Caelan stopped in his tracks, slightly too far away for combat, and heard the cheers change to boos. Caelan barely heeded them. Something felt wrong to him. A broadsword was a weapon of war, requiring a shield or heavy armor for protection. Two seminaked men hacking at each other would cut each other to ribbons. What was the dagger for? To finish off the business?
Orlo had not trained him for this. The weapons were both humming, but not in harmony. They did not belong together. He could not do this.
Abruptly, Caelan turned and flung his broadsword away. It went spinning through the air, sunlight flashing along its blade as it landed with a thud and little puff of dust at the far side of the ring.
A hush fell over the crowd, broken by chatter here and there. People were gripping each other’s arms and pointing.
Even Amarouk’s eyes widened in surprise.
Caelan didn’t care. His own doubts were spinning in his mind, calling him a madman and worse. He closed everything away and sought severance. With a snap, everything was cut off. He entered the coldness, isolating himself, and waited for Amarouk to strike first.
The black man didn’t like it. His expression changed from surprise to annoyance, then to fleeting satisfaction. Circling, he closed in on Caelan, who circled with him, dagger held loose but firmly, wrist taut.
With a yell, Amarouk lifted the broadsword with both hands, swinging it in an arc as he lifted, the whole motion smooth and correct. He was clearly a master of the weapon, but even as he swung Caelan’s senses were alert and prepared.
The sword’s motion grew slower and slower. Caelan ducked and lunged, coming up under Amarouk’s arm. His dagger thrust hard, but Amarouk shifted away barely in time.
The dagger tip skidded through hide, slicing along a rib without doing any real damage.
But the blood splattered red on the sand just the same. The crowd shouted and groaned, all in the same breath.
Fury flared in Amarouk’s eyes. He swung again, and again Caelan dodged the broadsword, dancing too quickly for it to reach him. With an oath, Amarouk tossed the unwieldy weapon away, eliciting a cheer from the crowd.
He drew his own dagger, and Caelan’s grew hot in his fist. The blade was suddenly screaming through him, driving severance away just as Amarouk came at him with a bloodcurdling yell.
Caught half off-guard by the changes inside himself, Caelan barely met Amarouk’s charge. They slashed and parried and circled. Amarouk leaped, kicking at Caelan’s head. When Caelan dodged, Amarouk drove his dagger at Caelan’s chest. Caelan twisted and blocked with his own weapon. The two blades locked, and they were straining against each other with all their strength, feet digging deep into the sand, arms trembling between them.
Then Amarouk reached out and gripped Caelan’s hair.
The physical contact brought sevaisin with a jolt that enabled Caelan to thrust him back. Amarouk went sprawling, still clutching a plug of Caelan’s blond hair in his fist.
Caelan, acting without thought, broke one of the principal rules of short knife fighting: he flung his dagger at Amarouk.
The blade hit its target and went through the meaty part of Amarouk’s arm, pinning it to the ground. The black man screamed and writhed over, pulling out the dagger with a grunt of agony. Blood ran down his arm in a crimson stream, and he raised the dagger in his other hand.
Caelan ran for the nearest broadsword and scooped it up just as the dagger flew past him harmlessly and thunked into the wooden wall.
Caelan left it quivering there and swung the sword around just as the second dagger came at his head. In severance, Caelan danced in the coldness, watching the dagger slow in midair as his senses heightened. He swung the sword and deflected the dagger. It went spinning harmlessly aside and landed on the ground.
Now Amarouk was weaponless and hurt. Pressing his injured arm to his side, blood still streaming, the man backed up from Caelan’s advance, looking from side to side as he tried to locate the remaining sword.
Caelan charged him, but Amarouk dodged and scrambled on his hands and knees to grab the sword. Lifting it just in time, sand flying from the blade, he blocked Caelan’s swing. Steel rang against steel, sliding until their grips locked.
They strained against each other, well matched in strength; then Amarouk twisted and managed to sling Caelan around into the wall.
Caelan’s shoulder ached from the impact, but rather than try to regain his balance, he slid down into a crouch and slashed at Amarouk’s legs.
The man danced back, but not fast enough. The blade sliced through meat and tendon, and suddenly Amarouk was down. The thews in his neck corded up like ropes as he tried to heave himself back up. He made it, kneeling with blood streaming around him, and screamed obscenities at Caelan.
Their swords clashed with a jolt that traveled up Caelan’s wrists. Caelan’s own flesh wound had reopened, and the blood and sweat trickling down his arm made the hilt slippery. He broke first, stepping back on his rear foot, then swung again. Now he did at last find the rhythm of the weighty sword. But even on his knees Amarouk refused to give up. He met blow for blow, the sword blades ringing out mightily again and again.
“Kill!” the crowd roared, on its feet now, fists shaking, voices screaming. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
And as he fought the valiant Amarouk, a corner of Caelan’s mind went back long ago to something his father had once said when trying to teach him a lesson in healing.
Opening his kit, Beva withdrew a copper scalpel and held it up so the firelight could flash along the burnished blade. “This is a tool with which to heal. It can assist life. It can also take life. Sometimes I must cut away that which is diseased and damaged in order to save life. Sometimes I must take life in order to grant mercy.”
He ran his fin
ger along the blunt edge of the blade. “Safety.”
Then he ran his finger along the sharp edge. Blood welled across his fingertip, and he flicked it at the wall, leaving tiny crimson splatters. “Danger. Everything in the universe has two sides, the aul and the zin, the brightness and the shadow, the good and the evil. That is how balance is maintained.”
Caelan sighed. He had no desire to listen to one of his father’s lectures.
“It is not necessary to walk among evil, boy, in order to fully understand good. By looking into good, you will find the evil. Do not go seeking more.”
Caelan frowned. As usual when talking to his father, he felt there were more riddles than answers. “So you’re saying that with every wrong committed, good is lost. Until one day the balance shifts and it cannot be regained at all.”
It was Beva’s turn to sigh. “No, boy. That is not what I’m saying.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In healing, sometimes we take the disease and turn it upon itself. It will kill itself when properly guided. There are many ways to the desired end. Many journeys, none of them more right than another, but all the same in result if needed.”
Within the vision, Caelan frowned. This no longer felt like a memory. They had never had this conversation. His father had not said these words, yet Beva’s face hung suspended in his mind. Beva’s voice rang in his thoughts.
“You’re saying I must kill this man,” Caelan said, faraway from the battle his body still fought with Amarouk. “You, Father? The peace lover?”
“Ultimate severance,” Beva whispered. “The taking with the mind. The creation of balance by first walking through shadows and out again into the light.”
Caelan felt split inside, as though he were losing his reason. The coldness was more pervasive than any he’d ever felt before, as though he’d become frozen to the marrow. His consciousness was gone. What was he doing? Fighting? Dying? He was lost to everything except this moment before his father.
“Don’t make me a saint, boy,” Beva said. “I have touched evil and walked with it. I have dipped my hands in it. I have drunk from the shadow, then left it, returning to the light of reason and sanity, back to doing good for humanity, back to life and the saving of it.”
Reign of Shadows Page 30
