"Why did it take you so long?" Nivea hissed.
Ixidor sniffed. "It was like you said, the serpent could smell a deception. I had to wait until it was gone before I could cast the false death."
"What about the ones killed first?" Nivea asked.
"None of them were killed. That was a minor illusion, and a bit of acting on their parts. No, my dear, they're quite fine. Look." He nodded gently past the black mage, toward the wall of the arena. Shadowy figures shifted across the cut stone. Ixidor's remaining disks, lying in an arc behind the mage, had set up an illusory curtain of magic, behind which the avens and Order warriors advanced. No one in the crowd or the arena could have seen them. Even to Ixidor they seemed only wavering air, like a desert mirage. "They're all alive and ready."
Nivea gritted her teeth. "I hate the killing."
Ixidor smiled tightly. "We don't kill, and none of our people get killed."
"So far…" They had reached the marionette man.
He towered above them, preternaturally tall. His muscular arms were crossed over his chest. The black shocks from his fingers still whirled, flinging his cloak back behind him. "Well? Will you bow, or will you die?"
Ixidor's eyes blazed. "Before we bow, I must remove one final illusion." He lifted his hand, and before the mage could counter, simply snapped.
In a tight circle around the man, a shimmering curtain of force dropped to the sand, revealing twenty warriors of the Northern Order and the full contingent of avens. Four men grasped the mage's burly arms and forced them up beside his head. A fifth man rammed a squelching helm down on the mage's head and cinched the arm loops tight. The largest aven grasped the wizard's belt and hoisted him high on flapping wings. The once-fearsome necromancer now seemed no more than a trout in the claws of an eagle.
It all had happened in a breath of time-the gasp drawn by the crowd when they saw the living warriors. Now those full throats bellowed in joy. It was a strange sound. The crowd was unanimous for Ixidor and Nivea. Even those who had lost a fortune knew a good show when they saw one. Noble warriors and ignoble illusion-what better show could there be?
Ixidor beamed, clutching Nivea's hand and lifting it high in triumph. Side by side, they bowed to their adoring fans.
All the while, their foe wriggled impotently in the grasp of the bird-man.
"One of the things that's great about not killing them," Ixidor said through his fierce smile, "is it takes the judge awhile to declare a victory, and we get all that time for bows."
Nivea wore a sideways grin. "You enjoy this too much."
"You do too."
Only then did the death bell toll-a symbolic death for the necromancer, but a real victory for Nivea and Ixidor. The crowd's shouts grew to an ovation that rattled the rock walls of the pit. The best sound of all, though, was the roar of coin-gold and silver and electrum-from the coffers of the Cabal into Ixidor's own lock box.
"Enough to quit the pit?" asked Nivea hopefully.
Looking around at the two contingents, Ixidor said, "Not with all these mouths to feed. Next time we fight, it'll be enough. I'll make sure of it."
CHAPTER TWO: WHERE SPIRITS DWELL
“Sister…"
Jeska had been here, just here, within the hut of Seton. Now she was gone, along with those who had tended her. Tracks led away-nantuko and centaur, but no human tracks. They must have taken her out of the hut to heal her, taken her to some sacred spot… They must have been desperate.
Kamahl glowered at the empty hut. He had crossed a continent to save his sister, only to leave her for one final fight. Kamahl's sword had slain his old foe, and his neglect might have slain his sister.
Dragging his armor onto his massive shoulders, Kamahl set off to follow the tracks. They wandered through undergrowth, into a cathedral of ancient trees, and down a long slope above a holy stream. A mass of aerial roots made a palisade on the banks. The tracks ended there.
Jeska was gone. So too were the mantis men who had worked to heal her, and her protector, Seton.
No, he remained, or some part of him.
A hoof lay in the dirt on the opposite side of the tree.
Eyes pinned to the hoof, Kamahl circled the vast tangle of roots. His tan skin looked almost crimson amid the green. Rounding the corner, he saw a second hoof lying beside the first. The legs attached to them were skeletal. Bleached fur stretched across fetlocks and cannons. One more step, and Kamahl glimpsed the whole equine form.
The centaur had been stabbed in the back. His corpse was horribly gaunt. His pelt had been sucked in over ribs and spine. The skin across his chest was tight like the head of a drum. Lips and eyelids and nostrils had widened grotesquely, fixing his face in a silent scream. It seemed that the knife in his back had drawn out his insides, and he had imploded.
Kamahl stood in silent reverie. His armor dragged him down, the weight of war. He knelt beside the body, and deep grief moved through him. He and Seton had fought side by side in the pits. They had become comrades and even friends. Seton had suffered a terrible fate, and in defense of Kamahl's sister. What worse fate did she suffer?
"Sister… Jeska…" Kamahl closed his eyes and clenched his hands on his knees. He had caused it all. He had struck the unhealing blow across Jeska's gut, the blow that even mantis druids could not heal. If she lived, no doubt the wound remained. If she had died, no doubt she had died at his hand.
Kamahl's armor was suddenly too heavy. Red and massive across his shield arm, it was like the claw of a crab. He reached up and undid it. The plates slid to crash on the forest floor. Once, the armor had counterbalanced Kamahl's huge sword. Now it too was gone.
The sword. The damned Mirari sword. It had killed dozens in the pits and hundreds in Kamahl's homeland-and Jeska herself. He hated that sword. If Kamahl still had it, he would have broken it and tossed it away. It was too late for that, though. The sword had found its final resting place, buried in another unhealing wound.
"Laquatus." Kamahl scrubbed the stubble of his shaved head.
Instead of tending his sister, Kamahl had battled Laquatus. He had driven his sword down through the merman and spiked him to the forest floor. There could be no more fitting end for the Mirari sword than that-a grave marker. Once, it had led Kamahl into murderous warfare. Once, it had driven him to slay endlessly. Now he was done with killing. The Mirari sword marked not only Laquatas's grave but Kamahl's own.
What was a barbarian without a weapon? What was Kamahl without killing?
He lingered there beside Seton, where his sister had lain. The old Kamahl would have snatched up his sword and gone out for revenge. The new Kamahl knelt. He was a changed man. A strange stillness filled him. He had never been still in his life. Always before fire had burned within. He had channeled its fury, had ridden the power of chaos. Now the fire was quenched, the chaos diverted. Stillness reigned.
Kamahl did not feel peace but panic. How could he live in utter stillness?
But it wasn't utter stillness. Even beneath his knees, there was movement. Growth. The power of the forest was not like the power of the fire. It was slow, patient, inevitable-creative rather than destructive. Kamahl sank his fingers into thick tufts of grass. Hot air breathed from the blades. Cool water moved through the veins. Smooth roots sank through crumbling soil. The grass trembled with life.
Kamahl's breath softened. He listened, felt, sniffed. Stillness deepened around him, and the whispers of life grew to shouts. Always they had spoken to him, but he had never heard. Now he listened.
This is not our true voice, they told him-not in words but in significances. This is the sound of travail. This is the sound of your sword buried in the heart of the wood.
Kamahl trembled. His sword had claimed one more victim. To spike Laquatus, he had pierced the ground. The Mirari sword, which had wreaked such havoc in Kamahl's own homeland, now stabbed the heart of the Krosan Forest. He had seen the ravages begin-rampant growth in the grove around the sword. Trees thrust up into the sky. Vin
es swelled and tangled. Flowers budded and burst in wide glory. These strange mutations hadn't come from Laquatus. They came from the Mirari.
Kamahl had to rise, to act. His damned sword called him again.
It almost hurt to move, to break the stillness. Still, Kamahl stood. He had listened to the forest and could not ignore its plight. Let him draw the sword and heal the wood. If he was to save his sister, let him begin by saving the forest.
Kamahl turned and strode back the way he had come. Soon the trail became difficult. The forest shuddered and groaned with startling life. Vines snaked along the ground and fattened. Leaves sprouted and rattled while the ancient boles that bore them cracked, grew, and cracked again. The rampant growth had spread far indeed.
Pausing, Kamahl stared forward, past pitching treetops and undulating carpets of moss. He glimpsed the royal ziggurat at the heart of the forest. At its base lay Laquatus, pinned by the sword. It was the epicenter of the growth wave. Kamahl climbed toward it.
He plunged into a thicket. It deepened around him. Burrs scratched along his limbs, and thorns lengthened to pierce his skin. Branches doubled and redoubled. Kamahl wished for his sword to hew inward, but the impulse immediately felt false. Kamahl could not take the heart of the forest by violence. He was part of the wood now.
Wrapping fingers about a pair of branches, he drew them steadily aside and stepped between. Tendrils twined around his wrists. They released only grudgingly as he straggled through the thicket. Thorns ripped his wolfskin cape to tatters.
Kamahl escaped the thicket, but the forest floor was no more forgiving. Roots writhed across the ground, grasped each other, clawed and dragged at his boots. Stumbling over one jealous root, Kamahl barged against a swollen tree. Bark grated his bare arm and opened a series of abrasions.
It seemed the forest would demand a blood toll to let him pass. Kamahl was prepared to pay. It was absolution for what he had done to Seton, to Jeska, to the very wood.
A great willow reared up before him and tossed its ugly head. Branches lashed the ground, ripping away humus. They would rip away Kamahl's skin just as easily. A single man could not battle a whole wood.
Kamahl knelt. He dug his fingers into a deep carpet of moss. The voice of the wood clamored to him again, but this time he did not listen. He only spoke. "If ever I am to right the wrongs I have done, I must survive to do so." He said the words quietly, as if to himself.
Someone or something heard.
Through lashing branches and thrashing roots, a path formed. It seemed like a part in thick hair, rising straight up the hill toward the ziggurat.
Kamahl shivered in wonder. He was becoming part of the wood, and it was becoming part of him. He rose and picked his way up the slender trail. He could not have taken the forest by violence, but he now walked a peaceful path inward.
To either side, chaos ruled. Trees grew so massive they lay down like giant strands of hair. Some stretched for miles and continued to grow. Around them, briar thickets mounded. New shoots rammed their way up into sunlight, thickened, and flowered.
The growth wave struck more than just flora. A line of beetles on a nearby log split their skins and emerged larger to split again. A crow followed them up the log, growing as they grew. It feasted on the smallest bugs, its black wings bristling wider with each beakful. The last beetle it snatched up was the size of a cat-and the crow the size of an eagle. Deeper in the wood, a stoat fled an encroaching bramble. The creature's legs lengthened. Soon it seemed a lanky wolf, and then a shaggy pony.
All this mutation came from the blow Kamahl had struck. He leveled his eyes up the narrow way. Even the royal ziggurat was warping. It had become a mountain of tangled wood. Formed of four ancient trees in five tiered terraces, the ziggurat once had lifted hanging gardens above the forest floor. Now the four trunks had nearly fused, and their bough clashed brutally. Foliage choked the one-time gardens, and massive caterpillars gnawed everywhere.
Ten more strides brought Kamahl to the tumulus where he had stabbed Laquatus. The ground had mounded up like an infected boil, but the source of that infection…
"Where is Laquatus?" Kamahl paused and stared.
The body and the sword were gone. At the peak of the tumulus opened a narrow hole. He strode to it and looked down a deep black well. It shook violently, the epicenter of the tremors. Kamahl squinted down the shaft. Something glinted there, something unmistakable.
"Mirari."
Kamahl had chased that bauble across the continent. He had been rid of it. To take it back was to doom himself. To leave it was to doom the forest.
Kamahl knelt. He reached down into the shaft. His hand slid easily over the familiar hilt. The Mirari burned feverishly, violently. Kamahl tightened his grip. He took a deep breath. It would be simple. He needed merely to pull it out. One simple move would change everything.
The sword did not move, but something within the sword did. The Mirari beckoned. It would end these torments and make all those unhealing wounds inconsequential. He needed only to draw the sword and Kamahl would transcend all that was trivial.
His hand tightened. It was best for the forest and best for him.
Kamahl released his hold. He drew his arm from the hole and sat back on his heels. The Mirari reflected his own wishes, the very impulses that had nearly destroyed him. He could not draw the sword so long as he wanted to draw it. His heart thundered, and his breath came in rags.
All around, the forest convulsed in torments of growth.
Despite the turmoil within and without, Kamahl calmed his mind. His consciousness sank to inner levels. He sought stillness and the mind at the center of stillness. The forest spoke in inference and impulse, in the running of sap. Only in stillness could Kamahl hear it. He reached a place of such quiet that the forest seemed to roar.
This all had been a test. The forest sought to know his mind about the Mirari sword. It wanted to know if he was truly done with the blade, for the blade was not done with him.
"I am done," said Kamahl, as much to himself as to the wood. "I wish never to touch it again, but I will draw it and break it if it will save the wood."
Take the sword.
Kamahl reached into the hole. His hand settled in its accustomed way around the hilt. The soul of the Mirari trembled. He tightened his fingers. Instead of drawing the blade, though, he was drawn by it.
Kamahl left his body. It seemed a cicada husk crouched above the hole. The contact of skin to metal to root had conveyed his soul into the millennial root bulb. He entered the forest mind.
It was not a consciousness so much as a vast place, the ideal forest. Suffused with plant and creatures, it was vital. Air lived. Ground lived. Water lived. There was no blue sky, for the blazing sun lived immanently-in glowing stamens and fox fire and infinite eyes staring out of darkness. There was no sea except omnipresent dew and ghostly mist. All was forest. All was life.
This was the inner stillness, deeper than meditation, deeper than thought.
Kamahl breathed. Air tingled in his lungs and suffused him. Myriad leaf-shapes filled his eyes, receding upward to white and downward to black. Warm and humid, the forest air clung to him. He wished never to leave.
Yet into that place of utter quiet intruded a single disquieting thought.
"Jeska."
Kamahl suddenly returned to his body. In fact he had never left it. He had not been drawn down into the forest mind but had let the forest mind rise up into him. The quiet place, the ideal forest, was within him. In its stillness, he had gained strength enough to battle legions.
Kamahl stood. He left the sword where it lay. It was too dangerous to draw. He no longer needed it, for his power came from within.
The forest had granted him a great boon. It would keep the sword within a knot-work of roots. Never again would the Mirari decimate a land, and if it made the forest grow bountifully, it was a willing sacrifice.
Kamahl had begun this rampant growth and could not end it, but he would serve
the forest as its champion. It had saved him and imbued him with power. Now he must go save another.
"Jeska."
*****
Kamahl reached the forest's edge. He had walked unafraid among plunging boles and spiraling vines, but now, he felt fear.
Beyond a ridge of saw grass lay a nowhere place-a dune desert. It was the utter antithesis of the forest. Nothing lived in it. There was only sand and sky. Once, scrub trees and creosote bushes had clung to the clay soil, but sandstorms from the north had buried them. Only endless and undulating dunes remained beneath a swollen sun. Night would come soon.
It was a place of terrible emptiness, but it lay between Kamahl and his sister.
He had known it would be here. He had provisioned himself with water-root, which would provide both food and drink for his journey. He had fashioned palm leaves into shields against the merciless sun. At his belt hung the shell of a freshwater clam, a tool for digging daytime shelters. He needed but one thing more- a weapon, one that drew on the strength of the living forest.
Kamahl retreated to the tree line. Absently, he raised a hand to a nearby bole, clutched the vine clinging there, and pulled it free. Plucking away the sucker stalks, he rendered the vine into a long whip. He lashed it once experimentally. The tip whistled angrily by, wrapped a sole head of saw grass, and cut it off. Kamahl had learned to use a bullwhip during his weapons training but always had preferred straight steel. No longer. A whip could steal a man's feet without stealing his life. Still, it would not be enough.
Kamahl hunted among the trees, seeking precisely the right staff. He found a likely branch, though it was long dead and as fragile as clay. Another bough proved too short, a third too narrow, a fourth too crooked.
All the while, the blood-red sun sank toward the west. Forest shadows lengthened, and the sea of sand cooled. It was time to set off.
Kamahl drew a long breath and laughed gently. He had been too easily drawn back into the weary ways of time. The sun swallowing course made no difference to him. Nor did the acquisition of a simple staff. He would set out not because he must, but because he would.
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