The crowd's cheers dropped to a communal gasp.
With both hands on the haft, Ixidor muscled the blade down toward Phage's brow.
Phage caught the blow in one slender hand. Her grip was implacable. She yanked, as she had done to the other pikemen just before ripping away their arms.
Unlike the pikemen, Ixidor released his hold.
Phage pulled the weapon away, quickly reversed it, and hurled it at Ixidor.
Futilely, he flung himself backward.
Once again, Nivea saved him, her pike intercepting Phage's in midair.
Ixidor crashed to his back on the sand.
The strike cost Nivea everything. While her weapon tangled with the other pike, her back was toward Phage. The silk-garbed woman stepped up behind her and wrapped her in a strange embrace-a killing embrace. From arms, hands, hips, and legs, rot spread onto Nivea's body. It was not mere gangrene but a living virulence that voraciously ate flesh. Gray skin and muscle sloughed from bone, which in turn went to ash.
Nivea flashed one final, desperate look to Ixidor. "Remember me!"
"Nivea!"
Her face rotted away. Her eyes dissolved to nothing. In mere moments, the rot had swept through her hair and down to her toes.
She was gone, utterly gone.
Ixidor meant to fight. He flipped over to rise, to charge, to kill, but his legs wouldn't move. It wasn't cowardice that made him weak. He wished nothing more than to kill or die. It was horror.
One moment, Nivea was there. The next, she was gone. It was as though the world had disappeared beneath Ixidor's feet.
The death bell tolled once. Once for Nivea. An amazed hush filled the stands. Half of the undefeated pair was dead, and the other half was down before the novice.
Clutching the sand, Ixidor raised an animal shriek and struggled to rise, at least to get off his groveling belly. He lurched to his side, to his back, not wanting to grant Phage the victory The death bell tolled again, now for Ixidor. He was too late.
The crowd surged to its feet, a thousand fists in the air. The bellow of triumph filled every mouth.
The roar struck Ixidor and curled him like a pill bug. He crouched at last in true surrender.
Nivea was gone. His world was gone.
Carrion vermin swarmed out across the arena. Barbed legs flung sand as they went. They tore into the pile of dismembered warriors.
The bristly beasts swarmed past Ixidor. Some took experimental nips from him but found that blood still ran beneath his skin. He didn't care.
A dementia summoner bounded from a prep pen, her braids flying gladly in the air. She came up beside Phage and bowed deeply to the crowd. A voice above, magically amplified, announced the winner-"Phage, champion of the Cabal by trainer Braids."
Again came that crushing shout. Ixidor crouched beneath it like a man trapped in pelting hail. Everything ceased to exist. Only numbness remained.
*****
They had moved him out of the pit, they must have, but Ixidor could not remember it. He seemed forever to have lain here on the floor of his apartment.
Legs moved past-human legs, booted. Cabal officers ransacked the place. His disks lay in disarray. In one corner, counterfeit coins made a gleaming pile. Ixidor's clothes had been ripped down from hooks and tossed to the floor or seized for payment. Nivea's jewelry "No!" Ixidor screamed and lurched up. He got his feet beneath him and glimpsed the gold and jewels. A meaty hand slammed the case closed, and another crashed down on his head.
*****
Again he crouched on his belly in the posture of surrender. This time, though, he was bound hand and foot and gagged and strapped to poles that dragged through sand. Grit covered his skin and scratched his eyes. Squinting against the glare, he saw two giant lizards ahead of him. They lumbered across the hot sand. Harnesses on their backs creaked as they dragged the travois forward. A couple Cabal stewards walked to either side of the beasts, applying sticks to their necks.
Ixidor tried to croak, "Where am I?" but the gag allowed only a moan.
One burly steward glanced back with annoyance and began upbraiding his comrade. An argument ensued, ending only when the other steward retreated, drew a knife, and cut the leather thongs across the travois.
Ixidor tumbled off, hands and feet tied, gag firmly in place. The sand was hot. It burned his face as he flopped against it.
Ahead, the lizards kept up their slogging pace. They dragged the travois away across the dunes.
Ixidor chewed viciously at the gag. His teeth ground together. At last, he bit through and spit out the sodden rag.
"Where am I?" he shouted.
The stewards and their giant lizards were gone.
Ixidor gulped a deep breath. "Nowhere."
CHAPTER FOUR: SIBLING RIVALRY
Once in a previous life, Kamahl had approached Cabal City. It had been the glorious capital of pit fighting, and he had been a barbarian spoiling for a fight. Now Cabal City and Kamahl the Barbarian both were gone.
A new Kamahl approached a new Cabal city: Aphetto. The settlement inhabited a deep, wet canyon carved by a winding river. The waterway was no longer even visible, trickling through black depths two thousand feet below the cliff where Kamahl walked. He made his way along one of many overhangs. Stone shelves jutted above the snaking heart of the canyon. Mists from below draped each level in gray curtains of moss.
Kamahl strode toward the city's main gate, atop the cliff. From it stretched a number of suspension bridges. One led to the upper plateaus at the center of the valley, where royal estates perched. These lofty aeries were joined to each other by rope footpaths, looking like cobwebs. Another bridge led to the wide lower plateaus with their marketplaces and guilds: the city proper. There, all of Aphetto's conventional trades had their homes. A third bridge led in switchback steps to the fighting pits: the city improper. Kamahl would head down that path.
His sister was there, in the pits of Aphetto.
All during his march across the desert, he had known where Jeska was. The forest's power, its stillness, dwelt within him. In his hand, the century stalk became a divining rod. He need merely sweep the staff through the arcs of the compass, and it dragged him toward Jeska. Even now, the staff trembled toward the cliff's edge and eagerly pounded the ground. Jeska was below.
"Patience," he told the staff. It was a word unknown to him before that morning at the tumulus. Its meaning had only deepened during his long trek across the desert.
Ahead, the gates of Aphetto towered atop the cliff. Horns jutted from the archway, and spikes lined both portcullises below. A full garrison of soldiers manned it. Along the main road stretched a line of folk seeking entry.
Kamahl got in line with the others. He did not wear his armor, nor did he carry his sword. Even his wolfskin cloak was in tatters. Still, with tawny skin and massive physique, his profession seemed clear.
"Another jack," muttered an elderly woman to her mule. They seemed long-time companions. Their hair was the same gray-brown, bristly and bunched, and their shoulders had a similar stoop. They snorted simultaneously.
Kamahl did not respond to them, though his staff pounded impatiently on the ground.
The woman sighed and hung her head. She waved Kamahl forward. "If you're so impatient, go on."
With stony seriousness, Kamahl replied, "I am not impatient. My staff is."
The old woman brayed a laugh. "So say all men."
Kamahl was about to disagree but instead chuckled. "Yes. So we do." He tightened his grip on the overeager pole. "Still, I will wait."
"Suit yourself," replied the woman as her mule dutifully plodded up before the archway. A guard captain waited at a podium there.
The man wore Cabal black, and his face had the rumpled look of a dirty pillow. He glanced up from the ledger he kept. "Name?"
"Zagorka."
The man's eyes narrowed to steely slits. "Not the mule's name, yours."
"That is my name. The mule is Chester."
Through tight lips, the man murmured, "Chester and Zagorka. Business?"
"Zagorka and Chester," she corrected. "And our only business is being an old woman and an old mule."
The captain's nostrils flared. "You can't bring a pet mule into the city."
"All right, it's a pack mule, in the business of moving my stuff."
"There's a ten silver toll on all pack mules."
Zagorka shook her head and laughed despairingly. "What if he's not my mule but my brother?"
"You must pay the toll."
"Can't an old woman make her way in the world without every young man trying to tax her ass?"
"Pay the toll, or go back."
Zagorka's hands trembled before her as if she was about to grab the Cabal officer by the throat. "Don't you understand? I can't pay the toll, and I can't go back."
'Then there is only one option," the captain said, stepping forward.
His knife flashed, and blood sprayed from Chester's throat. The mule tried one last bray, but air gurgled in the wound. His legs seized up, and he dropped to the path.
"Its meat will be sufficient payment," the officer said.
Kamahl had watched all this, certain Zagorka was a match for anything-but not this. She knelt and wailed over her fallen mule. Kamahl knelt too, and his size made it an ominous motion.
The guard captain drew back and barked orders. Cabal soldiers surged up, swords raking out.
Kamahl ignored them. He wrapped one arm around Zagorka and the other around her mule. His staff cast a long black shadow over the creature. It shuddered its life away, blood forming a red pool across the stones. The rusty hue of other spots told that this was an approved remedy for those who refused the toll. Kamahl had his own remedies.
His hand tightened on the century staff, and he lowered it atop the fallen beast. One corner of his mind dipped down to drink from the myriad trickling pools at the core of his being. The waters of the perfect forest welled up in him. Another corner of his consciousness reached out to this wreck of a creature. Kamahl dipped his fingers in the pool of blood and touched the ragged wound.
"Wake again, noble beast. Wake," he whispered.
Kamahl opened his being, becoming a conduit for the waters of life. They flowed up through him and coursed down his arm and into the beast. Water and blood mingled. The wound ran afresh, but the red flow poured in rather than out. Resh knit to flesh, and skin closed over meat. The mule's lungs convulsed, pumping blood out its nose and mouth and sucking air in.
Chester bellowed. He struggled up from the dust and blood and shook his ragged pelt to get rid of both.
Despite the foulness, Zagorka wrapped the beast in a glad embrace. "You saw what he did. He raised my beast from the dead!"
"No," Kamahl said quietly. "I am no necromancer. Life lingered, or I would not have been able to awaken him."
The Cabal soldiers had withdrawn to a wary distance, their swords still leveled. The captain managed, "What of the toll?"
"Yes," Kamahl responded. "What of the toll? Aphetto will be richer to have Zagorka within, and me as well. I stake my life on it. Send report to the First that Kamahl, slayer of Chainer, has returned. If the First wishes to exact a toll, he may do so."
The captain's face rumpled uncertainly. "We are to charge our tolls without exception."
Kamahl lifted the century staff in bloody fingers. "Would you like to see my other powers?"
The soldiers backed up again, and the captain shouted at them to clear the way.
Kamahl gestured to Zagorka and Chester, who straightened their necks and walked proudly through the gauntlet of soldiers. Kamahl followed. As they passed into the echoing archway, Zagorka nudged the barbarian's hip.
"You're not just a healer."
"I did not raise him from the dead," Kamahl replied.
"You raised him from something. He's two hands taller than he used to be.
Kamahl stared wonderingly. Indeed, the mule had grown, nearly a foot in height and perhaps a hundred pounds in weight.
*****
Together, Kamahl, Zagorka, and Chester navigated the switchback path from the cliff down to the pits. Each step brought them into a darker, wetter place. They watched the grand noble estates rise on their pinnacles. They saw the marketplaces and guildhalls grow across the wide plateaus below. All was swallowed as they entered a subterranean passage of stalactites and rocky rivers. They spoke little within those passages, the unsteady clomp of Chester's hooves making racket enough. No one passed them on the way down, though glimpses through the murk showed other folk walking far ahead and far behind.
In time the way widened into a cold grotto. Stony arches opened to either side. These niches held lighted scenes of great pit fights of the past. The figures looked so real they seemed to be the fighters themselves, preserved by the taxidermist's art.
Ahead came voices, laughter, cheers-the true fights. Kamahl's staff did not draw him that way. It tugged toward a small door on one side of the passage.
"We must part company here," Kamahl said. He lifted an eyebrow. "Surely you don't have business in the pits?"
"Surely I do. What business is there outside the pits, in Aphetto? You don't think I'd come to a pesthole like this just on a lark."
Kamahl crossed his arms over his chest. "What business?"
"The First has put out a call for mule teams," she said, whapping Chester on the side. "That's us. A mule team."
"Why would he possibly want mule teams?" Kamahl wondered aloud.
"Don't know. Don't care. Thanks to you, I got a giant mule team." She nodded. 'Take care of yourself, Kamahl. This place eats up nice folks."
"You take care of yourself as well, Zagorka."
She waved off the comment. "Oh, I ain't nice folk." With that, she and Chester clomped toward the sound of cheers and laughter.
Kamahl turned toward the door and the labyrinth beyond. Once he had pursued his friend Chainer through such a tortuous maze. In the end, just before devolving into madness, Chainer had granted Kamahl the Mirari-an act of altruism. Still, many in the Cabal thought Kamahl a murderer. That belief granted him a fearful respect, which proved useful. Kamahl tried the door, but it was bolted.
A slim panel drew back, revealing a pair of yellow-glowing eyes beyond.
"I am Kamahl, slayer of Chainer."
A tremor moved through those eyes. "You are not Kamahl. Kamahl could not have raised a beast from death."
Grimly, Kamahl realized that word of his deed had traveled faster than he. "I am Kamahl, slayer of Chainer and raiser of mules. Let me pass."
"What business have you in the pits?"
"You have my sister, Jeska."
Something like humor played in those lemon eyes. "There is no one here by that name, but you are welcome, slayer of Chainer and raiser of mules, to come see for yourself." Multiple bolts slid back, and the door creaked open to a black passage. "Forgive the darkness. Those who know these ways need no light, and those who do not know them will never need light again."
Kamahl pushed through the doorway. His century staff tugged him eagerly forward, its butt rapping the ground like the cane of a blind man. "She is here," Kamahl said to the door guard. "Send word ahead that I am coming. Anyone who seeks to deter me can expect the fate of Chainer." Kamahl did not wait for a response but strode down the darksome passage behind his pounding staff.
Word did precede him. Along the ever-winding, ever-descending way were checkpoints, all of which let him through. Kamahl's threat had not won him passage: The Cabal would not be threatened. They let him believe he bullied his way along because they had some grinning plan underway. They wanted him to go below and find what he would find.
Unerring, the century staff led him past the quarters of dementia summoners, below the practice chambers, beyond the beast pens, and to the slave grotto. It was a long, low cavern segmented into cells. Each held a fighter-slave.
Kamahl reached the grotto's black iron gates, bristling with spikes. There he
halted. His staff jittered excitedly, straining toward the cells. "Open, in the name of the slayer of Chainer."
Something arrived. It came with a rush of hair. It landed on the stony ground before him, and Kamahl realized he didn't know where it had come from.
"Braids," he said by way of greeting.
In the dim light of that place, the dementia summoner's scarred face glowed with enthusiasm. "Kamahl. What happened to you?" She sniffed. "You smell like compost."
"Where is Jeska?"
She shrugged, wiry shoulders shoving back her braids. "Dead."
The word made his heart flail. If not for the staff, he might have believed it. "No. She is here. I've walked across forest and desert and into the pit to find her. She is here."
Braids shook her head slowly. "No, I remember quite clearly. Jeska died in the Krosan Forest. She died from your sword. You were too busy killing a merman to save her."
Kamahl tried to step past her and grab the gate.
Braids was too quick. With preternatural power, the little woman spun him aside. "Jeska died in the forest. Someone else was born from her corpse. I took her away and called her Phage. I changed her, retrained her. She is unbeaten and unbeatable."
The facts piled up in Kamahl's mind. Braids had taken Jeska from the forest to the pits and had made her a champion of the Cabal. "I want to speak to… this Phage."
Braids laughed. "She's not a talker. She's a fighter. I can't take bets on talk."
"Let me in to see her, or I'll tear down these gates," Kamahl growled.
"You'd die trying," Braids responded. Her black eyes seemed tidal pools, filled with beasts. At a whim, she could call them forth. "You've been allowed this far, Kamahl, but no farther. You're being watched by everyone. Press your luck, and you'll be dead. You can't speak with her."
"Then I will fight her," Kamahl replied. "If she is a fighter, let her fight me. You cannot keep her from me in the pits.". Braids gave a frightening smile. "So clever. I'm glad I didn't have to spell it out for you. We've billed the bout as 'Sibling Rivalry' and scheduled it for the last slot today. Be in the prep pen by midnight, and you'll get to face Phage. You should know that she prefers to fight to the death."
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