The Verdant Passage

by Denning, Troy

  “Focus?” Neeva asked.

  “Dwarves choose a purpose for their lives,” he said. “I’ve chosen to fight in the ziggurat games. If I abandon that purpose, I’ll become an undead creature after I die.” Yarig gazed into Anezka’s feral eyes. “Go with Rikus and Neeva. You were a halfling, not a dwarf. You were meant to be free.”

  Anezka shook her head and clung to Yarig.

  Ignoring the pair’s sentimental moment, Neeva said, “We’ll need a plan, Rikus. With templars lurking all over the place, we can’t expect to walk out of here easily.”

  After the feeders, I’ll help, the gaj offered, clamoring at the gate of its cell. You must take me.

  “No,” Rikus said. “We can’t fight our way out, so we’ll have to use stealth. With you along, we wouldn’t have a chance.”

  I’ll hide us, it countered.

  Wishing that the gaj could communicate with more than one person at a time, Rikus relayed to Neeva what the beast wanted. She shook her head.

  “We’re doing this on our own,” the mul declared.

  No! Take me or I’ll tell the feeders where you’re going.

  Rikus frowned and relayed the threat to his partner, then they studied each other for several moments. “We have no choice,” Rikus growled.

  “We need a better plan,” Neeva complained. “There’s no way under the two moons we’ll sneak that thing over the wall.”

  After feeders, I’ll hide everyone, the gaj repeated.

  “How?” Rikus asked.

  Trust me.

  “I don’t trust you,” Rikus insisted.

  The gaj did not answer, but an idea occurred to Rikus. “One set of feeders will come into the animal shed, and one set will leave,” the mul said. “We’ll use their wagon to haul the gaj out of the compound.”

  Both Neeva and Yarig smiled. “Just because I’m not going with you doesn’t mean I can’t help you escape,” the dwarf said.

  Neeva used her hands to make a stirrup for Yarig, boosting him high enough to slip out of the gap in the ceiling. He used the rope and pulleys to open the gate. The four gladiators left their pen, taking with them Neeva’s trikal and Anezka’s cudgel. They did not bother with Rikus’s sword or Yarig’s warhammer, for both were in disrepair.

  Outside the pen, the shed was nearly dark, with only a few faint rays of flaxen moonlight shining through the hide roof. The wild clamor of the impatient animals was louder than ever.

  “Neeva, you and Anezka sneak over to the entrance and take a look outside,” Rikus said. “See if you can find the templars.”

  Neeva nodded, then she and Anezka started down the path toward the entrance.

  Remember me, the gaj demanded. Leave, and I’ll tell the feeders where you’re going.

  Rikus grabbed the rope in front of the gaj’s gate and began pulling. “We’re not leaving you, but you must do as I say.”

  Yes. I promise.

  Rikus peered through the iron bars. The gaj crouched on the other side of the gate, two of its antennae flattened against its head. Where Neeva had torn off the third one, a new, small stalk waved tentatively. The gaj had closed its mandibles, and its compound eyes were staring at the floor.

  Hoping the creature’s meek demeanor meant it would be as cooperative as it had promised, Rikus pulled on the rope. A wave of pain shot through his injured rib cage, causing him to groan.

  Yarig stepped toward the gate to help. Before he grasped the iron bars, he peered at the gaj and ordered, “Back to the other side!”

  The creature obediently scuttled across the stone floor. With a deep groan, the dwarf lent his strength to assist with raising the heavy gate.

  Without warning, the gaj leaped, shooting across the pen in a rust-colored streak. It struck Yarig straight on, its barbed pincers snapping shut around the dwarf’s neck before he could scream.

  Rikus released the rope. The heavy gate crashed down on the beast’s shell, trapping it halfway out of the pen. Its canelike legs scraped madly at the stones of the pathway.

  Oblivious to his sore ribs, Rikus leaped toward the gaj’s head. Blood poured from the barb punctures in Yarig’s throat.

  “You lied!” Rikus yelled, smashing his fist into one of the gaj’s eyes.

  Lying is a useful thing, it replied, unimpressed by the blow.

  Rikus struck again, aiming for a spot just behind the three stalks. The beast countered by slapping the gladiator with an antennae, sending a bolt of searing agony down the mul’s side and paralyzing his left arm. He punched with his right hand.

  The gaj slapped Rikus across the face. Images of gray, empty nothingness floated through the mul’s mind, and he felt himself stumbling. The beast clubbed him with its mandible, knocking him halfway across the corridor.

  Rikus glimpsed the gaj as it wrapped its stalks around Yarig’s head. Painfully gasping for breath, the mul returned to his feet.

  He has no thoughts! the gaj exclaimed, disappointed. He’s dead.

  With a casual flip of its head, the beast tossed the dwarf’s limp body aside. It turned toward Rikus, then pumped its shell up and down in an attempt to dislodge itself from the gate.

  Gathering his strength, the mul rushed for the gaj. As it opened its pincers, Rikus leaped into the air. He sailed over the huge mandibles and planted both feet in the center of the beast’s head. The flying kick dislodged the gaj and knocked it back into its pen. The mul threw himself to the left, landing on his belly as the gate crashed down only inches behind him.

  Rikus crawled away and lay on his stomach. He could do nothing but force his throbbing ribs to draw breath. The animals in their pens screeched madly, stirred into a frenzy by the sound of fighting and the smell of blood.

  At length, the mul saw torchlight farther down the pathway. Anezka rushed past, pausing to drop a black bundle of cloth in front of Rikus. She kneeled beside Yarig’s body and closed the dwarf’s lashless eyes, touching her brow to each one in some halfling sign of affection that Rikus did not understand.

  Neeva stepped to the mul’s side, a torch in one hand. In the other she held a pair of spears and an obsidian dagger. She wore a black templar’s cassock similar to the one Anezka had dropped.

  “What happened?” she asked, laying the weapons aside and helping her partner to his feet.

  Rikus pointed at the pen. “The gaj attacked Yarig,” he said. “It was lying about coming with us.”

  “A little trick it learned from Tithian,” Neeva observed. She touched her heart, then held her hand out to Yarig in the gladiator’s traditional gesture of farewell.

  Rikus motioned at the equipment Neeva had brought.

  “What’s this?”

  “We met the feeders and a pair of templar escorts at the door,” she reported. “They didn’t last long.”

  Rikus picked up a spear and went to the gaj’s pen. The beast crouched in the corner, its eyes and lethal stalks turned toward the gate.

  “This is for Yarig,” the mul said, flinging the spear through an opening.

  The shaft struck the gaj in the center of its antennae. It let out a high-pitched squeal and pulled its head beneath its shell.

  “Will that kill it?” Neeva asked, holding her torch over the cage so she could see inside.

  “Not for a few hours, I hope,” Rikus answered.

  You have not beaten me yet.

  The squealing did not cease as the gaj sent its message, but the creature lifted its shell and pointed the tip of its abdomen at Rikus and Neeva.

  “Time to leave,” the mul said. He pulled his partner away from the pen just as the gaj sprayed the corridor with fetid vapor.

  Neeva helped Rikus don the black cassock she and Anezka had procured for him. It was a snug fit, but the mul hoped it would get him as far as the gate. If someone came close enough to notice how tight the robe was, Rikus felt confident he could handle any problems that might arise.

  When they were ready to leave, the mul picked up Yarig’s body, certain that the dwarf would
not want to be buried in Tithian’s slave pits. “Are you coming with us, Anezka?”

  The halfling nodded.

  The three gladiators started toward the entrance, Anezka holding the spear, and Rikus and Neeva each carrying obsidian daggers in their pockets. They left their customary weapons in their cells. Trikals, staves, and warhammers would have drawn unwanted attention to the trio.

  When they stepped out of the shed, Rikus pulled the cassock’s hood over his head. Though it was early, neither of the moons sat very high in sky, so the evening was reasonably dark. In each of the towers, the mul saw the shadowy forms of a templar and two guards.

  The feeder’s four-wheeled cart sat to the side of the door. A putrid stench rose from the various dead and almost dead animals lying in its wagon. “Let’s get this unloaded,” Rikus said. “We’d better feed the animals so they’ll be quiet.”

  They quickly did as the mul suggested, blindly throwing different sorts of meat into the pens without regard for the beasts inside. A few minutes later, the cart was empty. Rikus laid Yarig’s body in the wagon, then traded his dagger for the spear that Anezka carried and instructed her to lie down next to her fighting partner’s corpse.

  Rikus went to the front of the cart, where a single kank was lashed into the yoke. The docile beast stood a little higher than the mul’s waist. Its chitinous body was divided into three sections: a pear-shaped head topped by two wiry antennae, an elongated thorax supported by six thin legs, and a bulbous abdomen hanging from the rear of the thorax.

  Though Rikus had never driven one of the creatures, he had ridden in kank-drawn wagons enough to understand the basic principal. In his free hand, he picked up a long switch lying on the front of the cart, then tapped the kank between the antennae. To his surprise, the beast took off at a trot.

  “How much attention are you trying to draw to us?” Neeva demanded, jogging to keep up with the cart. “Slow down!”

  “How?”

  The blond gladiator snatched the switch from his hand and passed the end over the beast’s antennae several times. It immediately slowed to a more acceptable speed.

  They plodded down the lane, then turned right on the broad read leading to the back gate. Several tower guards paused to peer down at the wagon, but no one showed any sign of alarm.

  At last, the gate itself loomed before them. It consisted of a large wooden door hinged between a pair of small towers. This evening, each tower was manned by one guard, with a single templar supervising them both.

  Neeva steered the cart directly for the gate, not varying the kank’s pace. The tower guards and the templar watched the disguised gladiators approach without comment. A guard turned a wheel inside his tower, and the gate slowly started to open.

  The escapees passed into the dark shadows between the towers.

  “Wait!” called the templar.

  Neeva glanced at Rikus, and the mul nodded to indicate she should obey. The brawny woman passed the switch over the kank’s antennae until the cart stopped.

  “Did I see bodies in there?” the templar demanded.

  “Yes,” Rikus confirmed. “They insulted Tithian. We’re taking them out for the raakles.”

  “I’d better have a look,” the templar sighed, climbing down the ladder.

  Neeva gave Rikus a questioning look. He shrugged, then peered over his shoulder at Anezka. She was playing dead, with one hand tucked awkwardly beneath her back.

  The templar reached the ground, then went to the side of the cart. He was a human with a three-day growth of beard.

  “What have we here?” the templar muttered, reaching over the wagon toward Yarig’s neck. When his fingers came back sticky with blood, he grumbled with disgust and held his hand away from his body as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it. “They’re dead.”

  “Of course,” Rikus answered. “I killed them myself.”

  The templar regarded the mul with a disgusted look, then motioned the cart through the gate. Neeva hardly waited for it to open the rest of the way before she moved the little cart out from between the towers.

  A vast plain of rocky barrenness, purple-shrouded and as silent as death itself, lay before them.

  “Where do we go now, Rikus?” Neeva asked, urging the kank into a trot.

  “The estate of Agis of Asticles,” the mul answered. “Wherever that is.”

  ELEVEN

  UNDERTYR

  KTANDEO TAPPED THE BENCH WITH HIS CANE. “SIT.”

  Sadira obeyed immediately, but Agis ignored the command and remained standing. The three of them were gathered around the stone bench in the back of the Drunken Giant wineshop. They had drawn the shimmering curtain of lizard scales for privacy.

  “At last, we meet formally,” Agis said, holding both hands palms up in a formal gesture of greeting. “I am Agis of Ast—”

  “I know who you are,” Ktandeo said, pointing to the bench. “Now sit.”

  Sadira pulled Agis down next to her, anxious to avoid angering her contact any further. She and the noble had been trying to see Ktandeo since Agis’s conversation with Tithian. After two days of the pair making nuisances of themselves in the wineshop, the old man had finally come.

  As soon as the senator touched the stone, Ktandeo scowled at the sorceress. “I’m certain you know what you’ve done.”

  Sadira was not sure whether he was referring to her efforts to arrange a meeting with Rikus or to bringing Agis to the rendezvous point, but she nodded anyway. To the Veiled Alliance, both were grave offenses. “When you hear what Agis has to say, you’ll be glad I did.”

  “You’d better hope that’s so,” Ktandeo replied. “Otherwise—”

  Agis interrupted the old man’s threat. “Something terrible is about to happen in Tyr, and only you can stop it.”

  Before Ktandeo could reply, the red-bearded barman slipped past the curtain with a carafe of thick red wine and three mugs. Agis reached into his purse and withdrew several coins, but the old man laid his cane across the noble’s wrist.

  “I wouldn’t drink what your coins buy,” the sorcerer said.

  “You can drink what Agis offers you,” Sadira snapped, laying a hand on the senator’s firmly muscled knee. During the last two days, the sorceress and the noble had not spent more than ten minutes apart, and she had come to know him well. “He’s a better man than his peers.”

  “Is my hearing bad?” Ktandeo asked, sticking a thick finger into his ear as if to clean it. “I could have sworn I just heard a woman who kills templars defending a slave-holder’s reputation.”

  Sadira’s cheeks reddened. “The men I killed were petty, murderous scum, and they would have been the same whether they were free or slave,” she said. “Agis is a good man, and being born into a corrupt nobility doesn’t change that.”

  “Whether he’s noble or slave is all the same to me,” said the barman, holding out his hand. “His money is what matters.”

  Agis dropped a few coins into the server’s hand. The barman examined the coins briefly, then returned a small bronze disk to Agis. “If you think I’ll take this instead of good Tyrian currency, you’re mistaken. That’s no coin I’ve ever seen.”

  Agis slipped the disk into his robe pocket with an air of chagrin, then retrieved two proper coins to replace it. “I’ve no idea how it came to be in my purse. Please accept my apologies.”

  As the burly man left, Ktandeo raised an eyebrow in Sadira’s direction. “Didn’t you storm out of here the other night because you love that gladiator?”

  “What if I did?” Sadira demanded.

  Ktandeo waved his cane in Agis’s direction. “You’re talking as though you care for this one, too.”

  “I might,” Sadira answered, giving Agis a warm smile. He returned her gesture by looking slightly distressed. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Sadira understood why Agis and her contact seemed disturbed, but she did not share their prudish attitudes. Nothing in her background had taught her to consider romance
an exclusive commitment. Tithian had used her mother as breeding stock, and Catalyna, the woman who had taught her the art of seduction, had warned the young sorceress against becoming attached to a single man.

  “Perhaps we can discuss my visit with the high templar?” Agis suggested.

  “That’s what you came here for,” Ktandeo grumbled, eyeing Sadira coldly. “And it had better be important.”

  As Agis recounted his meeting with Tithian, Ktandeo grumbled about the liberties Sadira had taken by recruiting the noble in the Alliance’s name. He frowned at her when Agis revealed that the high templar knew the Veiled Ones wanted to meet with Rikus. However, when the senator described the pyramid and balls he had seen in Tithian’s memory, Ktandeo’s mood changed from one of petulance to one of apprehensive distraction.

  “Tithian knows too much about what you two have been doing,” Ktandeo said, his eyes thoughtfully fixed on the pommel of his cane.

  “There’s no doubt Tithian has a spy close to one of us,” Agis said.

  “It’s your manservant, Agis. I’m sure of it,” Sadira added.

  The noble disguised his reaction to the statement by lifting his mug and taking a swallow of wine. This was one area where they were not in complete agreement. When Agis had gone to meet Tithian two days ago, Caro had excused himself on the pretense of relieving his bladder. He had not returned until just before Agis left the stadium. Even then, Sadira had been suspicious of the dwarf’s prolonged absence. When she had heard about the interruption that ruined the assault on the high templar’s mind, she had immediately concluded that the dwarf was a spy and pulled Agis aside to warn him.

  “The dwarf who was with you at the slave auction?” Ktandeo demanded.

  Agis put his wine aside with a sour face. “When you look at what Tithian knows and what Caro could have told him, it seems likely,” Agis said. “I still find it difficult to accept. Caro’s been loyal to my family for two hundred years.”

  “You’re overestimating the strength of a slave’s loyalty,” Sadira said.