The Gladiator

by Jon Kiln

  He’d only been a heavy drunk for a couple of years, but the craving hit him now as if he’d been a lifelong veteran of the pastime. What he needed now more than anything, more than even a boon from his gods, was something with alcohol in it. But, with no drink to consume, he instead said, “You wanted to see me?” to Pul, eyes on the grass.

  “Where to start?” Pul said, something almost like amusement in his voice. A strange sound when mixed with the visage of his mask. Bear-masks where not known for their humor. “How about we go from most mundane to most sublime? For starters, you owe me money.”

  “What?” Draken said. “I owe you nothing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pul laughed, this time without any trace of humor. “Did I say you owed me money? I meant the other me. Lupin Defol.”

  Draken looked at his brother in disbelief. “How—”

  “Please,” Pul said, “even if I wasn’t Lupin, or rather, if he wasn’t me, I would know the name of Mr. Defol. Your dirty laundry is all over the Figan underworld. Those debts are very real, and you can’t prove that I’m not Lupin, or the other way around. I would just have you arrested on the spot, but it seems all the soldier-police in the immediate vicinity have… disappeared.”

  It was true. Still no one had come. This monastery was far enough from a city to not be noticed by civilians, but certainly there were patrol routes everywhere this close to Figa that would have spotted the blaze by now.

  “What did you do to the soldier-police?” Draken asked, the rage in his blood threatening his composure. He knew anger, however justified, would be a mistake at this juncture, but that wasn’t enough to subdue him.

  Ignoring the question, Pul said, “So that takes us to the sublime. And, it brings us to your choice. You owe me much more than money. Or, I guess I should say you owe E’ghat everything that you are and ever have been. He still wants you, still has a place for you. You need only return. And as a bonus, if you choose to come with us now, all those pesky debts will go the way of all those soldier-police.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “Or would you rather kill?” Pul said pointedly. “You don’t know what you want. Look what happened after you left our order. You became so faithful to your Rada, didn’t you? And what did it get you? A lot of whoring, addiction, debt, disgrace! You became a lush. A stinking, worthless rag for Figa to mock.”

  “Yes,” Jace said, serenity on his face despite the nervous tenseness of his body. “I’d still like to hear how that part happened.” Pul looked at the man with what Draken could only guess was shock. The mask made it hard to tell, but Draken didn’t think Pul would have seen Jace’s lighthearted attitude coming. “I mean, I like a good story, and I don’t like being cheated out of the ending.”

  Pul seemed to study him. “Very well,” he said. “We have much to discuss, anyway, whether you think so or not, Draken. If you two would be so kind as to walk over to my companions, they’ll bind your hands and blindfold you. I’ll see you two this evening at a place of my choosing.”

  Draken weighed his options, finding them heavy and few.

  “Trust our gods,” Jace told him. “I feel good about this.” The monk smiled, and the still-strong light of the flames beside him gave his grin a devilish hue.

  “Yes,” Pul said. “Trust our god.”

  Chapter 29

  When the blindfolds came off Draken saw only trees, a ring of them too dense not to have been planted that way, encircling a raised fire pit and many decrepit benches. A fire burned in the pit as if it had been transformed from the one Draken watched tear down the monastery when the blindfold had gone on. It was a large area, and Draken wondered how something like this could be a secret place, if indeed it was. Above him, night rolled along, its twinkling stars like punctures in the darkness, revealing the heavens behind. He guessed they’d been blindfolded for about four hours. The flickering firelight on the trees was hypnotic, since the trunks were so uniform. It was as if there was only one tree and a hundred reflections.

  Other than himself, Pul, and Jace, the place was totally empty. Pul didn’t have his mask on. It lay next to him as if set aside as an afterthought. Draken wondered if Pul would know Draken would notice that, and if it were a trick to make Draken think Pul had less reverence from E’ghat than he cared to admit, an attempt to make Draken let his guard down.

  “Don’t be fooled,” Pul told them. For a moment it felt like he’d been reading Draken’s thoughts, but then he said, “there is a bear-mask hiding for every tree you see here, waiting to stop you if you run. And they won’t just kill you, monk,” he spoke to Jace. “I’ll make sure that there is a great deal of pain between your capture and your death. As for you, Draken, they won’t kill you at all, but it will mean the end for Carella, Dayda, and Tayda. E’ghat does not need them.”

  At this, Draken wanted to lash out, at least to call his brother a list of horrible things, but he knew such a thing would do nothing to protect his family. The family that had once been his.

  Pul sat and motioned for his prisoners to do the same. Draken and Jace took seats, so each man had a third of the fire to himself.

  “You know why you went whoring, don’t you?” Pul said.

  Draken only stared at the flames.

  “It’s not because Carella isn’t pretty enough. She’s always been a beauty. It’s because you missed the kind of love Sula gave you. She was the best in bed. The absolute best.”

  At this, Jace looked at Draken in surprise. Draken bowed his head in embarrassment or shame.

  “We share that knowledge, you and I,” Pul said to Draken. “It’s one of the many things that make us close.” He grabbed a stick from the edge of the fire and prodded the coals nearest him. In the middle, large logs were well into their burning, indicating the fire had been lit hours ago. “You were always looking for her, I think. You went from woman to woman to woman, looking for one that could make you feel the way Sula did. But you couldn’t find her because none of those women believed in E’ghat. E’ghat gave Sula to you. A gift. A fine gift. And you spurned it.”

  Jace spoke to Pul as if the two were long-time friends. “Tell me what happened to Draken after the battle with Mirah.”

  Pul raised an eyebrow. “He’s told you that much? Good to know he’s not ashamed of what he did then.”

  “I am ashamed! I murdered that woman! I could have walked away!” Draken shouted, surprised by how little echo the fire pit and benches produced. They seemed to hold his words close, greedy for them.

  Neither Pul nor Jace reacted to this. Jace said, “He told me many things. Now I’d like you to tell me what happened next.”

  “Well, Draken was converted,” Pul said. “And no matter what he tells you, no matter how he remembers it, his conversion was sincere. He believed in E’ghat. I’ll never forget the way he looked when he slaughtered Mirah… There was such a fire in him. He mutilated her.” Jace nodded and Pul continued, “And he said the name of our lord three times. It was… almost too much for me. But then, I’m not a chosen vessel like Draken is. I’m a servant.

  “After that, Draken and Sula were very close. I renounced any claim I had on her, and she was with Draken from then on. But actually, the three of us were still close. I missed Sula, but there was no bad blood between us. I knew she had only been preparing us. She had never loved me the way I had loved her. Draken spent a lot of time reading the Canon of E’ghat.” Jace shivered, and Draken didn’t blame him. And Jace didn’t even know what horrors were in the tome. “He knew much about our lord. He began training with the bear-masks under Figa, more rigorously than I’d ever had him train for the pit. He became an even greater fighter. I thought he would soon become unbeatable.”

  There was clear admiration in Pul’s voice, and even now, after all that had happened between them, Draken couldn’t help but admire his brother’s acceptance of the way things were, as he viewed them. He didn’t begrudge Draken his greatness, as many brothers would have. He exulted in it.


  “We began our plans, and the bear-priests, an elite ring of three men and three women in Eda, sent us bits and pieces of their overall goals, but no one but them knows it all. Draken was as involved as anyone. He was ready to begin the overthrow of Figa.”

  Draken was glad this part of his tale could be told by someone else. He hated thinking how he had conspired with them.

  “The biggest question for us was, how to use his position?” Pul said. “We had already created the perfect lie to explain his absence. He’d been taken by the brothers of an insane street rat. A slum-hick who thought she was in love with Draken after seeing him in the ring. They’d taken him to a shanty they’d built to house him. We even had one thrown together that Draken could take the authorities to if need be. They could look all they wanted, but they’d never find a trace of the ones who’d kidnapped Draken after he’d ‘escaped.’

  “It was decided that he should return to the city and marry Carella. Of course, Sula would be his true bride, ‘married’ as they were by the circumstances that brought them together. He would go back to the ring, an unstoppable beast. I would return as his manager just as before.

  “Draken would then begin his subversion. He’d make comments, just here and there, that he wasn’t sure it was actually Rada that had given him his strength. Maybe it was Shinna. After all the astro-priests had said he was born under Shinna’s sky, and the official doctrine of the church states there is no such thing as a broken sky. This would worry him. Maybe it was Dramm-Teskata herself, giving him power over life, he wasn’t sure. He’d make a big deal out of not attending any services because of his confusion. As his manager, I’d disapprove. I’d want him to play the part of the devout supplicant, you see, for the sake of his reputation. I would then imply that many of the fighters were confused about religion, but that they said they believed in order to keep the public happy. I’d of course want Draken to do the same.”

  “Ahh,” Jace interrupted. “An interesting plan.”

  Pul raised an eyebrow. His face was much meaner than Draken remembered. Time had not been kind to him. “You’re a strange one,” Pul told Jace.

  “I like your plan,” Jace said. “To be honest, I like things that get people thinking. I don’t like the ends you would be shooting for, but I actually approve of this part at least. I’m sick of people saying they believe but not doing a thing about it. Better have the nonbelievers be true to what they think than fill the church with active hypocrites.”

  “Hmm,” Pul said. “In any event, that was our plan. The violence that we as bear-masks would eventually incite would then follow. This was a very Sula plan, you should understand. Remember, she lived with us for a year before making a move. The overall goal was sent from the bear-priests, but Sula handled all the specifics.”

  “So what happened?” Pul asked rhetorically. “Why didn’t it ever come to violence?

  “Well, Draken went back, as planned. He married Carella, as planned. I returned as manager. But there was something we didn’t count on, something no one could have guessed.”

  “Yes!” Draken said triumphantly. “Carella was devout to her core.” Pul scowled at him but Draken ignored it. “Everyone thought she was a socialite, and she was. But at her underlying center… she was like you,” he looked at Jace. “She believed utterly. Her beauty was legendary, and when I began to live with her, see her day-by-day, hear her sing and talk and pray… I learned her faith went all the way down, too. She is the greatest person I’ve ever known.”

  Draken took a moment to compose himself. He hadn’t even noticed he’d risen to his feet. His thoughts of Carella had lifted him, it seemed. “One night…” he said, “I told her everything. Everything. Even about Sula. She was heartbroken, and left the manor for three days. When she came back, I was ready for her to leave me, but she didn’t. She told me that I wouldn’t have confessed to her if I didn’t want to change. She knew me well. She convinced me—”

  “She convinced him to sell us all out!” Pul shouted, his face red with the firelight and his own rage. “The tunnels were swarmed with soldier-police and scouts! Sula and I barely made it out with our lives!”

  “I don’t regret it,” Draken said, rising to his feet. “I don’t regret it. Sula filled my head with such… such sacrilege! But Carella set me free!”

  “She dragged you back to the filth of your four-five gods! She did you no favors!”

  “But, Draken,” Jace said, calm as a grass-blade in still air, “why did you give up faith?”

  “I never did.”

  “The gambling… the drinking… infidelity…”

  “Oh that!” Draken said with bitter acid in his voice. “I did that because I am the weakest soldier Rada’s ever had!” Draken said, tears standing out in his eyes, ready to fall at the slightest forward motion.

  Pul exploded, the purity and intensity of his fury eclipsing Draken’s sadness. “You are not weak! You are the strongest man in the world!”

  There was a quiet moment thick with tension. Jace looked deflated. “There are many kinds of strength,” he said to the brothers. “And maybe you are both right.”

  “He’s hasn’t told you the worst yet,” Draken said.

  “The one thing we can agree on,” Pul spat into the fire, which had no effect. He smirked at Jace, a face which said he was more than confident in his ability to shock the monk. “But why don’t you tell it, Draken? After all, you were there. I’m interested to know how it actually happened, and not just the sketchy picture I’ve drawn for myself.”

  Draken looked at his brother and made a choice. A choice to tell it exactly as it happened. He didn’t know why he wanted to do that, but it felt right. He divulged what he had thought, for a long time, been the final chapter in his saga with E’ghat.

  Chapter 30

  Draken was home alone. Carella had gone to her mother’s shaman who now lived almost in Egaf. She was retired, but Draken’s mother-in-law still swore she was the best there was for making sure the baby was growing well in Carella’s womb. They didn’t know yet that Carella would be having twins.

  Strangely, he didn’t think of E’ghat often these days. He’d been married for almost a year, and six months had passed since Carella had helped him gather the strength to turn in Sula and Pul, causing the sewers to be raided.

  Draken mourned the loss of his brother, both of them, actually, but at least he’d been able to convince the news-callers he hadn’t known Pul would be in the sewers with the people who had taken him. He hadn’t been able to completely betray his blood. But the fact remained that Pul was gone. Despite this, Draken was simply glad the nightmare was over. He no longer had to live his secret life in the shadows, a double agent for the priests of E’ghat, and for Sula and Pul. Carella had freed him of all that.

  He hadn’t yet felt the void that would later threaten to engulf his life, the one that he would try to fill with drink and women and the thrill of gambling. That void wouldn’t come until after the twins were born, though of course Draken didn’t know it. And even though he missed his brother, this was the period of Draken’s life he would look back on most often during his brief time spent at the Merreline monastery as the one time in his life he’d been deeply happy, with himself, his career, and his faith.

  At the time, he had no reason to believe this elation and inner piece would ever desert him.

  That evening was to be one of quiet reflection. His training regimen for the next arena season didn’t begin for two more weeks, so Draken settled in with the Canon, deciding to read again the legends of Rada’s ancient fighters, something he’d taken to doing since his return as a way to always keep his god in the forefront of his mind.

  Sula was far from his thoughts when she knocked on his door.

  When he opened it and saw her face, open and penitent, he felt many things. The first was shock, which was understandable. The next feeling was more of a mystery. He was… happy to see her, the way a person is upon running into a childh
ood friend unexpectedly. This feeling was pure, untinged from fear or anger or anything. He wanted to hug her. This led to the next feeling, the quickening of his heart and burning in his loins. He remembered her passion, and his body wanted to taste it anew. Then the anger came, the resentment, and the fear. He surveyed the lawn.

  “I’m alone,” she said, almost as if reading his thoughts, the way she had so many times in the year she’d lived in his rooms, and later when he’d lived in her domain in the sewers. “And so are you, I understand.”

  He still hadn’t spoken. The evening was overcast and dark for the hour, a light sprinkling of rain troubled the skyline. He doubted anyone had noticed her approach the manor where he now lived.

  “You’ll want me to come in, so know one does see me. I only want to talk. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

  And so he opened the door, and she stepped through.

  She looked around the entryway and made her way to the greeting room as if she’d been there before. She sat on the armless settee. “No servants?”

  Draken shook his head. “I don’t like having the house full of them all the time. No one is here right now.” He felt as if he were in a dream, one that could become a nightmare as easily as a fantasy.

  “This is nicer than your rooms in the arena. Better for a family man, anyway.”

  Something was stirring in Draken. He couldn’t define it, had felt nothing like it before. He knew only, somehow, that Sula had not anticipated this stirring. Whatever was waking in him was not part of her plan in coming to his manor that evening.