Win

by Vera Nazarian

  Nothing happens.

  We grow bolder, and for the next few minutes we examine the stone from all directions. Chihar takes out gadget instruments to measure various physical readings. Lolu has her own arsenal. Neither of them finds anything out of the ordinary. Meanwhile Kateb uses his favorite knife to scrape along the fault lines between each wedge then uses it as a lever, trying to pry portions of the stone outward.

  I concentrate on examining the stone and its surrounding area. But every time I turn my head I see Horus or Anubis or Bastet, their shadow-figures mingling among our group, walking slowly around the center stone like sentinels. And when I blink, they are replaced by others. Sometimes there’s my brother Gordie, standing with his hands in his pockets and rocking on the balls of his feet as he looks at me. . . .

  “Well, I’ve had enough,” Brie says brashly after a while, expressing my own mood entirely. She sits down on the slab with her feet hanging off the ledge and takes out her water flask then proceeds to stare hard at empty space as if someone’s there—in her mind there probably is and she’s dealing with it. “I say we’ve done our duty here, so now we either park here for a while, or disappear back into the deep. Who’s with me?”

  “Yes, screw those symbols, I’m done,” Lolu echoes her.

  I turn my head and suddenly my heart lurches.

  The Yellow Artist is here. He’s standing right next to Chihar, directly behind him, and casually looking over his shoulder at his instrument display. How did he get here unseen?

  The Artist has both his uniform sleeves rolled up and there are line drawings in white ink covering his dark skin up to the elbows—the same symbols we’ve seen on the pyramid stones. Apparently he’s standing here, drawing the symbols on his own skin, very likely copying them from our own tablets and gadgets—because there’s some kind of stylus or pen in his hand. . . .

  In that split second I notice these details just as I make a small sound of alarm.

  Brie, Kateb, and Chihar turn around. “Hey!” Lolu exclaims from the other end of the summit.

  Suddenly it’s mayhem. . . .

  The Artist springs backward, away from Chihar, in a limber catlike move worthy of Kokayi the acrobat. And then without saying a word he jumps off the edge of the summit slab and heads downhill, leaping from block to block at an impossible speed.

  But my teammates go after him with exclamations and cussing. Even Chihar, normally the least aggressive among us, runs down the slope, careful to find his footing as he leaps down the blocks, calling out in outrage, “Thief! He took my notes!”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get him!” Brie calls out, far down the slope already.

  I remain in place, stunned and sluggish in my reflexes, but full of racing thoughts.

  “Heh, not very likely,” Avaneh says next to me, shaking her head in mild disdain at the others. She and I are the only ones still left here on the summit. “The Yellow is long gone. They’re chasing a ghost.”

  But I don’t listen to her because in that moment, just as the sky starts paling along the horizon, my peripheral vision catches the sight of someone who makes my breath stop.

  Aeson.

  My Bridegroom is standing before me in his usual confident stance that I’ve come to love so well, with his arms folded at his chest as he watches me. His golden hair is loose and glorious, tendrils stirred by the gusts of wind, and the lean beautiful angles of his face are shaped by the artificial illumination and the seeping pre-dawn light.

  “Aeson!” I whisper, frozen by the beautiful vision . . . because, yes, I realize he is not real, he is not here.

  And yet. . . .

  “Aeson,” I repeat, my hands trembling, moving restlessly along the fabric of my uniform shirt. “Oh, how I miss you! I didn’t think you’d be here, I didn’t expect—”

  “Why would you think so, im amrevu?” Aeson asks in his deep, rich voice that immediately caresses me like balm, its familiar resonance making all the nerve endings along my skin come alive.

  “Well . . .” I whisper. “I thought you might either be watching me right now from up there on the cliffs or at least resting at home—oh, Aeson, I hope you’re getting some sleep! I mean, I know you’re not here but out there, and it’s just so good to see you, but I’m so worried you’re not sleeping! See, I’m fine! So I want you to please rest, at least for a little while!”

  “You know I have to be with you,” he says softly, taking a step closer toward me, but still out of reach. The look in his lapis lazuli eyes is very intimate, intense, and secret—the kind of look that he has only for me. It wrenches my heart, and my fingers reflexively move to the inner breast pocket of my shirt where the precious folded silk is once again hidden away, his black armband of honor.

  “I see you found it,” Aeson says with a light smile, without taking his eyes off me. “I put it back in your pocket after Stage One was over. I had it cleaned overnight but forgot to tell you about it.”

  “Oh . . .” I whisper, reaching into the pocket next to my heart, and taking out the folded piece of black fabric. “Of course, I have it right here!” I say, looking at the silky material, examining it with all my heightened focus as my fingers gingerly feel the smooth texture. My hands shake slightly as I run a fingertip over it and then clutch it with both hands in sudden desperation. “Yes, you’re here! I’m so glad! So glad!”

  And then prompted by longing, I raise the piece of black fabric to my lips, pressing it convulsively, inhaling the shadow of his scent. . . . “Please, don’t leave me, please . . . please. . . . Aeson, please don’t fade away . . . I know you’re not here, but please just stay for a little while longer—”

  Aeson, oh Aeson!

  For some reason I look up in that moment, the fabric of his armband still at my lips . . . and Avaneh the Warrior stands very close to me, strangely so. She’s looking at me with her unblinking, vivid blue eyes, watching me fondle and kiss the black armband.

  Just like that, Aeson is gone.

  I glance down, and there’s a knife in Avaneh’s hand.

  I freeze. Something about the way she holds it makes me feel a pang of cold.

  For one intense moment we stare at each other.

  And then she lets go of a held breath and blinks first. “I—can’t,” she says. “I can’t do it.”

  “Avaneh?” I say, slowly lowering my hands and the folded square of black fabric. “What? Do what?”

  In answer Avaneh flicks her knife and retracts the spring-blade.

  “I cannot . . . kill you,” she says, putting the weapon away in her sleeve, with methodical movements. “Because of that—” And she nods at the black armband. “I have orders, but not—not with this. I didn’t know—didn’t expect it would be here, that he’d give it to you—”

  I frown, trying to understand what is happening. “What are you saying?”

  Avaneh continues to stare at me, and her own face is fighting to repress emotion, but her usual impassive mask is slipping. “I am—I must—”

  I take a slow step backward. “You’re an assassin,” I say softly.

  “Yes.”

  My heartbeat is pounding. Panic is rising because for once I’m seriously unprepared and I’m all alone here on the summit. I’m also just not thinking clearly, not with all these voices clamoring in my head. . . .

  “I have orders to kill you,” Avaneh says in a calm, almost resigned voice. “It is my reason for being in the Games.”

  I take another careful step back. “Who sent you?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “I see,” I say in a faint voice, while my fingers are inching toward the nearest weapon in the outer pocket of my bag. Can I reach it in time before she stabs or slashes me? How did I miss her intent?

  Slowly, Gwen. Don’t make a sudden move. . . .

  I shouldn’t be surprised—after all, it’s the Games and I’m surrounded by potential hostiles everywhere—but somehow I am. I’ve grown to trust my teammates, having gotten used t
o them with a false sense of complacency, forgetting that we’re all working together only temporarily. . . .

  “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this,” Avaneh continues. “All this time, waiting. . . . Getting you all alone. It would’ve been a clean, easy kill. . . . Too bad.”

  My frown is now the result of confusion. “So—you’re not going to kill me?”

  Avaneh watches me with her stark blue eyes. And then she lowers her gaze. “No. I cannot dishonor the greatest mark of the hero. It’s against my code. For as long as you bear his armband, even if you’re not wearing it, you share in the honor. Which means you’re beyond my reach. . . . Regretfully for me.”

  “I—I don’t quite understand, but—thank you,” I say, loosening my shoulders somewhat, though I’m still tense as a spring.

  “No, thank him—your Imperial Bridegroom,” Avaneh says quietly, flexing her fingers lightly. “I spare you because of what he is—and I don’t mean the Imperial Crown Prince, but a hero of Atlantida.”

  My pulse continues to race. “What was it? I mean—how did it happen, what did he do exactly?” Awkward words spill out of my mouth.

  Avaneh makes an odd bitter sound and again looks up at me sharply. “What? You don’t know?”

  I shake my head slowly.

  “Then it’s not my place to tell,” Avaneh says in a hard voice, taking a step back.

  “Okay. . . .”

  We continue standing at a fair distance across from each other. There’s a long difficult pause, all the while the sky continues lightening with dawn.

  The Egyptian gods whisper. . . . In those moments it seems that Hathor, the goddess of protection and love stands right next to me, and I can almost understand her soft murmurs in my ear. . . .

  Avaneh breaks the silence first. “If you want, you can take me as your Kill. I will not resist, and you’ll have all my earned AG points—which are many.”

  My lips part. “Oh, no!” I say. “I would prefer not to—I don’t want to kill you. I really don’t.”

  For the first time a fine smile comes to the Warrior’s lips. She nods to me, and her expression loosens, just for a moment, from its closed-off constant mask. Suddenly she seems so alive, and so very young. . . .

  “Look,” I say, feeling the fundamental change in her and relaxing my own guard as I take a step toward her. “It’s okay, I get it. You had orders, and it’s tough. . . . And I’m so sorry if it gets you in trouble, but—I can tell you that having you on my team has been a really good thing, and I appreciate working with you. It’s been an honor for me, to be honest, to have your skills here. And there’s no reason that we can’t continue cooperating—”

  Avaneh turns her head slightly, and I watch, unsure of what she’s doing, as she holds up her equipment bag, and then sings the short sequence to make it levitate. The bag rises in the air. Avaneh wraps one arm around it, and with the other she salutes me in a curt military way. “Imperial Lady Gwen Lark, I regret my orders. You are not what they say you are. And I am honored to know you.”

  And then Avaneh sings again, and holds on to the bag with both hands.

  I watch as she commands it to move, and the bag floats, taking her from the edge of the summit and over the abyss, and further yet, out into the open air in the direction of the ocean.

  “Avaneh! Wait!” I say. “Where are you going? You don’t need to go! We can work together now!”

  The woman Warrior turns to look at me, as she hangs on to the bag, even as it continues moving away.

  “We may not,” Avaneh calls out to me from the distance. “I disobeyed my orders, but I keep my honor. May you win!”

  And with those words, Avaneh the Warrior suddenly lets go of the bag and plummets into the abyss below.

  Chapter 69

  “Avaneh!” I scream, watching her fall just as the first sunrays pierce the horizon. The Egyptian gods clamor all around me, drowning out the pulse in my head, or maybe it’s the swell of Games audience noise coming from the cliffs. . . .

  In that one terrible instant of sunrise, I’m stricken. I stare at the bizarre sight of an abandoned equipment bag, a small dark object silhouetted against the paling sky, continuing to fly away solo, while its owner, Avaneh Lehatut, proud Red Warrior, is gone.

  Just like that.

  Hel, the sun of Atlantis breaches the horizon line, and its fiery corona enters the field of vision, incandescent white.

  A living, strong, remarkable human being is gone because of me.

  No, not because of me. . . . Yes, because of me.

  I squint, forcing myself to turn away, grateful for the anti-glare lenses over my eyes. I’m trembling uncontrollably and my right hand clutches Aeson’s black armband, while tears pool in my eyes and run down my face, so I have to wipe them with the back of my hand. . . .

  “Gwen Lark! Gwen Lark!” the audience starts to chant in the distance.

  What the hell? I swing around and glare in the direction of the cliffs.

  Why are they calling out my name? Do they think I caused Avaneh’s death? Are they going to award me ridiculous AG points for this?

  “Hey, Lark! What happened?”

  Brie Walton is back, climbing up to the summit with a grim expression on her face. The rest of my teammates are behind her, interspersed with divine figures of Anubis, Khnum, Thoth, and Horus, and glimpses of strangely familiar figures of people from my high school in Vermont. . . .

  I don’t reply and stare at them in silence.

  Finally, Brie and Kateb and Tuar all arrive on the uppermost stones, together with Kokayi, Lolu, Zaap, and Chihar. Everyone looks dazed and at the same time strung out, throwing anxious glances around them. A few people shake with nervous tremors.

  “That bashtooh Yellow Artist,” Kateb announces with an angry flick of his knife. “We lost him. It didn’t help that several of us were seeing duplicates at that point. . . .”

  “Stupid hoohvak disappeared inside,” Zaap says with a sullen look and a frown. “I was right behind him, but followed his ghost by mistake.”

  “Yes, this hallucination state is extremely inconvenient.” Kokayi snorts, rolling his eyes, as he switches lightly from one foot to the other and flexes his wrists.

  “And now look, the other teams are coming this way.” Tuar points down-slope, where far below we see Contenders emerging from the interior and climbing upward. “We need to get out of here. Where’s Avaneh?”

  I blink and then take a deep breath. “She’s gone.”

  My voice sounds thick and hoarse. . . . I point at the dark, solitary speck of an airborne equipment bag still moving away in the distance.

  Brie watches me with a curious look. “Gone, how? Did you kill her?”

  At once the others freeze and stare at me.

  I part my lips, breathe. The words come quietly. “No. She was going to kill me. And then she didn’t. She chose to fall. . . .”

  “What?” Tuar says in a rough voice. His hazel eyes become very intense. “What happened?”

  “I said, she’s dead!”

  Unexpected even to myself, my voice lashes out like a whip so that the others visibly flinch. My fingers grip the black armband, covering up most of it inside my fist.

  Most, but not all. . . .

  Brie immediately looks at my closed hand but says nothing.

  “Maybe,” I reason out loud, “maybe it was my fault, and she died because of me. But she was an assassin. And it is the Games, so it doesn’t matter now, does it?” I finish on a hard note. It’s as if a stranger is speaking instead of me.

  Tuar nods. “It is the Games. Contenders die.”

  Another long moment of silence.

  “Let’s go,” I say sternly. I sniffle my nose once to clear it, and put away the wadded up black armband inside my interior pocket with trembling fingers. The others pretend not to see what I’m doing—but now they know; they can see and recognize the black fabric, the hero’s armband, probably from a mile away. What must they think
?

  There’s no time to wonder.

  While the audience comes alive again, seeing the various Contenders converging here, we don’t waste another moment. We leave the pyramid summit, climbing down several levels, and escape into the interior.

  The next few hours are a jumble of shadowy stones and endless climbing through the bowels of the pyramid. I move in a daze of exhaustion and shock, in a crowd of ghosts and slithering voices, some of which are real people, my teammates. We’re moving aimlessly, not exactly pursued by anyone at this point, but driven to move nevertheless.

  As the morning advances, it’s easy to lose track of time. The only constants are the usual interior twilight, the random gusts of cool ocean wind between the stones, and the muffled swells of audience noise coming from the distance outside. The pyramid rearranges itself on the hour, but we know the routine so well by now that it’s almost easy to avoid the great blocks, as we pull each other out of the way.

  All this time and we still haven’t come upon another vacant Safe Base. Twice we had approached areas where the four-color beacon lit up the nearby stones, and heard Contender voices (as opposed to auditory hallucinations), only to backtrack quietly. Kateb suggests that we might try to return to the same Safe Base that we’ve occupied before and had to abandon in a hurry.

  “No,” Lolu says, stopping her climb and giving Kateb her trademark glare. “Everyone knows where it is now, not safe.”

  “Besides, it’s probably occupied by someone else,” Brie adds, then cringes at something or someone invisible next to her, a personal ghost.

  So we end up taking our rest breaks in random locations.

  Sometime before Noon Ghost Time, we have to stop again because Zaap suddenly flounders, almost losing his footing, then cries out and doubles over, holding his stomach.

  “Hurts . . . hurts . . . hurts!” the Animal Handler boy mutters, rocking back and forth, then sits down on the nearest stone, clutching his middle.

  “What happened? Are you ill?” Chihar says, stopping next to him.