The Gladiator

by Jon Kiln

  By the time the person came back, Draken was able to flit his eyes open long enough to get a look. He’d been right about everything except the color of robe. This one was soft pink. Twin hills on the person’s chest revealed that she was a woman, but there were no other obvious clues. All of her features tended toward the feminine, but none of them would have seemed absurd on a man of her same age.

  “Name?” he managed to whisper without setting off a powder keg in his mind.

  She handed him a mud-ceramic cup, and its warmth was welcome in the palms of his hands, even though he wasn’t too cold. Mugs like this were cheap, but they always reminded Draken of home; it was the kind of mug you gave a child because it didn’t matter if it broke. Even in the height of his glory in the arena, he’d had a number of these mugs in his cupboard.

  “Kheda,” she said. It was an unusual name. One he’d perhaps never heard before. He told himself he would remember to ask about its origins later. “You are a monk.”

  He sipped the tea, and the flavor of chamomile and other soft herbs bloomed in his mouth and belly. He nodded. Even though he would rather have kept that a secret, he knew there was no point in trying to deny it. By now news would have spread all around Merreline about what had happened at the monastery. Nearly everyone in Drammata held the monasteries and monks in high regard, but none so much as these folk in the north. That was only one of the reasons he’d chosen it as a place of new beginning and renewed service to his gods.

  “You are the one who fought and fled.”

  Again, he nodded. Already, he was feeling a bit more up for conversation. Whether that was the result of the soothing tea, or the woman’s equally tender voice, he couldn’t say.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “It’s not really my business.”

  “What is your business?” he said, even though he’d already guessed.

  “Is it not obvious to you that I am a shaman?” Although she spoke in the light tones of jest, the indirectness of her response gave him pause. It was not unreasonable that he had become paranoid over the years—not with his past terror, guilt, and betrayals—but he decided to give this shaman the benefit of the doubt.

  “Forgive my thick tongue, but you are a shaman?”

  It would have been easy for her to lie, and she may have been lying, but it still made him feel a little better when she said, “I am.”

  He nodded. This was a good place for him now. Someone who would treat his hangover without judgment (at least, spoken judgment) and without asking for any money. He would pay her, but at most what he could spare from his meager savings would be a token gesture, much less than a person would normally pay a healing shaman for such attention and remedies.

  Maybe the serendipity that he’d been found by someone who recognized his monkhood even with his robe peeled down to the waist was a sign of Rada’s understanding and forgiveness. He knew that technically all the gods were to be equal to him now, but he wasn’t the only monk to continue having a favorite even after taking the vows. When he prayed, it was usually to Rada, and only sometimes to Dramm-Teskata.

  Or maybe it was just luck. Maybe Rada had turned his back on Draken long before the recent transgression of attracting so much trouble to the monks and breaking his vow of peace and soberness. Could Draken blame the god if he had?

  An unexpected wave of self-revulsion and self-pity overwhelmed Draken at this thought. So much rushed into his consciousness from the blackened corners of his mind it was hard to even sort it. Carella, and Dayda, and Tayda. Sula. Pul. Debbin. His gambling, drinking, his unfaithfulness. Above all, his fall from grace.

  Even though he’d been imbued with an affinity for the “struggle” from his god, even though his father had primed him to receive and embrace his destiny of greatness, even though every fiber and bone of Draken’s own being seemed to sing to this singular purpose, he hadn’t become anything. A champion in a fighting pit. An entertainer. And even that he’d squandered, given a little drink, trauma, temptation, and time.

  He was crying, and the motions racked his aching head. Embarrassed, he wished to turn away, but there was nowhere to hide in her tidy bed.

  The shaman soothed him with one of the low, rumbling songs some of the finer healers knew. There were no words, just a seemingly-random mix of hums and ooo’s and ahh’s. Her voice was not deep enough to produce every tone he heard, but he knew it was partly an illusion. Something akin to a magician’s trick, but with a very different purpose in mind. She hugged his head, applying expert pressures with her palms and fingertips, and his headache began to fade. She worked so professionally that his mind never wandered to the intimate.

  Even if he’d tried to resist the charms of her methods, he would have been soothed. But he didn’t resist at all. He gave everything he had over to letting himself be calmed, and cured however briefly.

  But when he dropped back into sleep—there might have been a sleep aide in that tea as well—she could not comfort him further. She could not keep his dreams from replaying the past.

  Chapter 17

  Sula convinced them of many things in the year that she lived in Draken’s rooms. She convinced them that she had used secret contacts to force the bear-masks to leave the city, that she was their only hope of receiving word regarding future revenge attempts by the followers of E’ghat, that she loved Pul with all her heart and that it was safe for Pul to reciprocate.

  But when he looked back, Draken often thought the most astounding thing she’d convinced them of was that she herself was above suspicion.

  And they had trusted her. Not just Pul, who at least had the excuse of hormonal blindness, but Draken too. Draken had thought for a long time about what his excuse might be, and he’d never been able to come up with one. It may have been as simple as the fact that he liked Sula. Since she was with his brother there was never an expectation of anything romantic, nor even the entertainment of the idea. They’d been real friends, and Draken had precious few of those.

  As it often did when he dreamt of the past, Draken’s mind returned to the day Debbin was murdered.

  He was nineteen, and his standing in the arena had not just blossomed, but exploded. There were no other fighters that held a candle to his popularity, and his name graced not only the lips of the residents of Figa, but those of the residents in the southern arena circuits of Whey and Eda. It was rumored that he even had some fans in the eastern countries with names so foreign they were usually just referred to as the Far Easts, collectively.

  His prowess had also spiked. His fighting in the arena left spectators in awe, but also something more than awe. People were afraid of him in a primal way. It only added to his intrigue. The rage he embodied in the extremities of the pit was so opposed to his normal smiling celebrity face that it was disconcerting.

  There were moments when he would look back on both his skill and brutality in the pit, and he admitted, only in his private heart of hearts, that he even scared himself. Who knew what he was really capable of?

  He’d met Carella three times at dancing balls for Figa’s elite, and for almost no reason beyond the fact that she was achingly beautiful he’d chosen her to be his bride. His wedding was only two months away, and preparations were in full-swing. Not that he had to do much. Even his servants had servants, and the tizzy of activity that constantly surrounded him and Carella ended whenever he went to his rooms.

  No one was allowed inside except him and his brothers. He’d given Carella some manure-stinking excuse about fighter superstition. He said only family members proper could be allowed in his quarters, and until they were married, they’d just have to meet in her apartment.

  Of course, his real reason was Sula. Pul had moved a lot of his things there, and was for all intents and purposes a permanent fixture around the house as well. Sometimes Draken felt it was no longer his home, but theirs, and they’d deemed him worthy of their charity by letting him remain.

  That morning, Pul was off at some news-caller
meeting or another, feeding prewritten lines about Draken’s strategies, his training, his impending union to socialite-beauty, Carella Tessin, and of course, the number-one question news-callers had been asking since the beginning of Draken’s career: when he was going to hire a trainer. This was the easiest question of all for Pul to answer, because the words were always the same: “At this time, Draken has no plans to join with anyone, in any capacity, in the pit.”

  What was not rote, however, was the conversation Sula and Draken had while Pul was gone.

  Draken had been staring at the arena pit, where fighter-hopefuls trained with each other, two-bit trainers, and sometimes their fathers, if they happened to be retirees of the same. Since the murder of the last magistrate, it had been determined that the arena didn’t actually need to install someone new in his place. Now the bureaucratic council ran the entire Figa circuit, and the rules regarding appropriate training times had become much more lax. Draken didn’t mind. The height of his rooms ensured his privacy, and there was almost always something interesting to see; a kid accidentally getting cut, a trainer losing his temper, someone whose style was so pitiful it gave Draken an inner chuckle at their expense.

  Soon he would move into the manor Carella’s father had had built for them. He knew he’d miss this view of the arena, but he also knew it would be a social mistake to maintain this residence here. Too many rumors as to why he needed such a private space.

  His mind playing with a number of ideas, not dwelling on any for long; potential aesthetic augmentations that might be made to his sword, what he’d like to order for dinner, and, most pressingly, his approaching wedding ceremony. He didn’t love Carella. He’d never loved anyone romantically, nor did he strictly believe in the concept as it was espoused in the popular stories and songs that so thoroughly pervaded the city’s more “cultured” residents. But this mostly social union was still sure to bring its perks, and his mind was on the one that would surely come to pass after the ceremony.

  In short, Vgar was as far from Draken’s mind as the land from which he’d sprung. So he was shocked into attention when Sula said, “Tell me about when you killed the mountain fighter from my homeland.”

  Her tone suggested this was purely a casual remark, a curious whim that had entered into her mind to speak only moments before she had done so. She pitted olives in her accustomed seat in the couch furthest from both window and door.

  He faced her, leaving the practicing boys without witness, and said, “Why do you ask?”

  She didn’t look at him. “I may not have believed in his cult, but he was still of my blood, wasn’t he? Even more than just any random Edan. The cult is not large. It’s more than possible he and I were related in some way.”

  “Did you know him?”

  There was only a small beat between his question and her reply, but it was there. She said, “No.” The minute pause might have meant nothing, Draken was experienced enough at reading others to know one couldn’t always read intent in every signal, but it still piqued his inner warrior. He affected the same casual air she offered him, but in his mind he was tensing for battle. A battle of wits, maybe, but a fight nonetheless.

  “Then why do you want to know?”

  “It’s not like there’s much else going on. Humor me. Soon, I’m assuming I’ll have to find another place to live.”

  “That’s right,” Draken said, relieved that she’d brought it up first. Of course she’d have to leave before the wedding. The sooner the better.

  “So consider this a goodbye gift.”

  He laughed in an attempt to cut the tension. “Goodbye? I didn’t think you were leaving town. I assumed you would stay with Pul.”

  “I will. But once you are married you will be beyond the reach of my close friendship, don’t you think?” He nodded. She said, “So in a way, it will be goodbye. So for my present, I want you to tell me about when you killed him.”

  “What’s my goodbye present?”

  “There are many boys, and men, in Eda who would love to have me stay in their home for a year. Even if they couldn’t touch me. A decoration. A beauty to gaze upon, feast the eyes upon, as I have been for you.” Her accent always became thicker when she spoke of her home. Draken was sure she didn’t notice. “That is and has been my gift to you.”

  He shrugged and turned back to the pitiful action below. Someone had been wounded, and badly. He saw the arena shaman had been notified, and he was attending to the boy right where he’d fallen.

  “There’s not much to tell,” he finally said, as the distant shaman’s hands moved around the body, feeling for the energies that were out of alignment. “I thought he was going to kill me, so I had no choice. You know all that.”

  “But I want to know what it felt like.”

  Something squirmed in Draken’s stomach. Was she talking about the rage he felt, sometimes, when he was a hare’s breath from losing control?

  “What do you think?” he said. “It was gross. It felt bad to kill another person.”

  “Oh?”

  Her tone was not as casual now. He turned back to see that at some point she had started looking at him, her olives set aside for the time being. Without wanting to, he explored her question, knowing what he would find. Yes, he had felt revulsion thinking about the act of ending the giant’s life, but that had been later, remembering. In the moment of the killing, however, he had felt ecstasy. Power distilled. He felt he had touched a pure river which could never be exhausted.

  But he said, “Yes. I didn’t become a fighter to kill people. I’m an entertainer, not a murderer.”

  She nodded, but there was something about that nod…

  And when he heard the frantic pounding at the door that could only be Pul, he knew. He didn’t know exactly, but that squirming thing in his belly truly came alive. He let Pul in and felt he could nearly have spoken the words before his brother did.

  “Debbin,” Pul huffed after his run, “killed… like the magistrate. The same… the same display of his innards at his doorway. The bear-masks are back.”

  And Sula shrieked, completely losing the sense of stately, mysterious womanhood that was her constant mask and being.

  “We must run! Now!” she yelled, flying to her feet as if she’d been launched from a slingshot. She was at the door in an instant, pulling it open. “I know what this means! There will soon be only one safe place in the city for you both. Follow me!”

  It was the truest testament at how she had utterly fooled them that Draken did not think twice before obeying. His instincts, already naturally keen, had been honed to a razor’s edge by his years of experience in the arena. And yet, he had been hoodwinked. Later, he would look back at this moment as one of the lowest of his life.

  They all ran. They hadn’t even made it down the corridor before a bear-mask slipped out at Draken from behind a pillar. The next moment, the man was dead, Draken having snapped his neck with a practiced move he had never used on anything but a fighting dummy. But too late, he saw his error. The bear-mask had given his life simply to be a distraction, though he may not have known how expertly Draken could kill with his bare hands, since his fame was as wielder of both sword and shield.

  Another bear-mask laughed, but not with the same depravity of a natural-born killer in the pit. It was a simple bark of triumph and relief. Pul was in the bear-mask’s huge arms, a razor against his neck.

  In a thick accent, unmistakably Edan, the man threatening Pul said, “Draken Wellstroma, killer of Vgar of the Bear, champion of the arena at Figa, you will be silent. You will hold your lips closed, for they now symbolize the skin of the neck of your only remaining brother. If your lips part, so does this skin.”

  Draken understood. His mind working overdrive, a million words he wished to utter, he still kept his lips tightly closed. Three others stepped from behind pillars farther down the passage. A total silence enclosed this level of the arena, as only the key fighters in the arena lived here, and none but the
y and their guests were allowed in. A year ago, Sula had slipped past security, but a group this size wouldn’t have had that option. Draken mourned the guards who must surely be dead now, but there were more pressing matters: his escape, his brother’s, and Sula’s.

  He cast his eyes about for her. The small, dark-skinned girl who had been a fixture in his home for a year, a constant companion if not an intimate one, stepped out from behind him, and joined the bear-mask.

  His mind understood, but his soul balked at the sight. And he almost spoke, but instead his eyes fastened onto the blade pressed so tightly up to his brother’s neck that there was already a dribble of bright blood there.

  The bear-mask said, “Sula will take you where we are going.” His accent was strong, but his words were clear. “You will walk with her as if nothing is wrong. When you get there they will chain you so you cannot move. She will return to your rooms and then escort your brother. You will both remain safe as long as you do nothing to draw attention to yourselves and nothing to betray our purpose. Any attempt to escape or get help will be the same as forfeiting your brother’s life. That goes for both of you. Nod if you understand.” Both the brothers did. “It will appear that you are walking with Sula alone, perhaps giving her a tour of the city, but we will be watching at every moment, even when you do not see us. Is that understood as well?” Again, they nodded.

  Without removing the blade from Pul’s neck, the leader of the band walked him to Draken’s door, which was still open. Two of the other bear-masks dragged the corpse of their brother into the room behind them, and then the door closed, and Draken was left alone in the silent hallway with Sula.

  He looked at her, unable to speak now that he was allowed.

  She didn’t smile, but she also didn’t appear sad. Softly, she said, “Don’t be surprised, and don’t waste time asking yourself how I could have betrayed you. Vgar was my father, and I am a true believer in the ways E’ghat. That’s all you need to know.”