She understood. Like called to like. She walked steadily toward him. A small smile came to his lips and to hers. She opened her arms as well. They two, who could not touch any whom they would not kill-they could touch one another. It was an extravagant intimacy in their utterly solitary lives. They embraced. Death battled death. Skin poisoned skin. They felt the physical press of another being and were in that moment as father and daughter. Still, they were not the same. Phage's body burned with inner fire while the First's was unutterably cold.
The embrace ended. The small smiles that had begun it were lost in soured expressions.
Phage wasn't sure whether she regretted the hug or regretted its ending. She stepped back but lingered near the man.
"Phage," he said simply. He shook his head. "Phage, whose secret name is Jeska. Welcome."
"The Cabal is here," she replied ritually.
"The Cabal is everywhere," the First answered. Without moving his eyes from Phage, he said, "Braids, whose secret name is Garra, welcome."
"The Cabal is here," Braids said, bowing.
"Yes, we know, little daughter," was the unusual reply. The First took a step forward, and his attendants moved with him as if they were a living robe. "Oh, do not look chagrined, Garra. I owe you a great debt for finding and healing this one. At first I was displeased to see the sister of Kamahl in my chambers." He flicked a glance at Phage. "Yes, I had meant to kill you in these arms. Sometimes death holds a delightful surprise." He took another step, bringing his retinue along. "An execution became a birthing. An enemy became a daughter."
He lifted his hands upward-gray and stony, like the hands of a statue. "Here is the power of the Cabal, the embrace of death. None can kill death. None can kill us, yet our power limits us." He stopped before Phage and seemed to consider. 'Tell me, little daughter, why do we run these games in the pits?"
Phage ran her finger along Kamahl's stomach, bringing corruption. "It is the embrace of death. None can kill death. None can kill us."
Fondly, the First patted her cheek. "You have listened well, but you're too dogmatic. This is a pragmatic question. Garra still has something to teach you."
Braids simultaneously smiled and flushed. She blurted, "We run the pits for money."
"Precisely, little daughter," the First said. "Blood sport is for money. Money is for power. Power is the currency of hearts. The more blood sports we arrange, the more money we make. The more money we make, the more power we wield. The more power we wield, the more hearts we rule. We run the games for dominion-nothing less."
Phage nodded, memorizing that utterance as if it were a holy credo.
"We rule hearts, Jeska, not rot. How can we rule a heart that we rot away to nothing?"
"We cannot," she answered.
The First smiled. "I have plans for you."
He turned his back to them for the first time. Bringing hands up, he gestured toward his portrait on the far wall-a full-length, larger-than-life oil painting. Two of his hand servants retrieved a set of stairs that had waited in one dark corner and positioned them in front of the portrait. The First glided slowly toward the stairs, all the while seeming to grow smaller as the painting expanded.
"We have grown too poisonous here in our trickling pit. What hearts can we gather in a place so dark and deadly? Only dark and deadly hearts. Cutthroats, cutpurses, and guttersnipes; barbarians, beasts, and bastards. They bring precious little money with them, and each has an elaborate scheme for doubling or trebling it It is hard to deprive them of their coin and harder to reap hearts among folk who have none. Fruitless. Pointless. We have become too poisonous.
"No. We need a new vision. I want to draw in everyone, not just the dregs. I want the purest hearts, the youngest and sweetest. I want the least guarded purses. I want the world to come to our blood sports, to be entertained, to be trained and taught, to be rectified and transformed. I want arena combat to become the center of every community, the ground of all being."
Phage had not felt nausea at the man's presence, but she felt it now as she glimpsed his vision. A suffocating terror took hold of her at the first inkling of what he had planned and the fact that she was to bring it into being.
"We need a new vision," he repeated, hands lifted as if in praise of his portrait. He took a step up the stairs, and another, and a third. His raised hands pierced the black canvas before him and jutted through. A fourth step, and the First pressed his face through the portrait. What had seemed oil paint shifted around him, allowing him to pass. He disappeared into the enchanted portrait.
His servants startled. The two skull attendants leaped for the stairs and bounded up after their master. They ran headlong into a solid painting on a solid wall. Eyes spun in their faces as they staggered back.
From beyond the portrait came a dry laugh, and the voice of the First. "Only one may pass." A hand servitor climbed the steps and gingerly prodded the canvas, but it did not give. The First spoke again. "I have been waiting a long while for one such as you, little daughter. Come."
Trembling, Phage approached the stairs.
His arms had meant to kill her, so tightly they held her. When she didn't die, they held her tighter still.
Phage ascended toward the looming image of the First. Her hands rose as if in praise. Her fingertips clove through the fabric. Oil and canvas parted from her killing touch. She stepped again, and her face buried itself in his painted stomach. She pressed through to a place of deep darkness and great cold.
This was not a room sketched out in crude physical dimensions. The height, width, and depth of this space were magic functions. Time was a vector of sorcery. Phage did not exist here within her poisonous form but rather as a focused intentionality. She felt like a will-o'-the-wisp, a drifting point of light above primordial waters. The First occupied a similar aspect, and for a time the two lights only spun in orbits about each other.
Then, the peaty waters beneath them gathered and coalesced. Something formed. A low archipelago of islands emerged from the swamp, with a wide, low parkland at its center.
You will bring a new arena into being. You will build it in the swamps at the center of the world. On the large island, a great coliseum took shape. Across the smaller islands, roads and bridges converged in a vast web on that central place. // will be clean, bright, and safe, and best of all-cheap. So too will be the matches you schedule-bloodless duels, battle reenactments, ocean combats, gladiatorial games, animal races. With them, you will draw all the world into our web, you will draw their open purses and untarnished hearts. Once we have them, we will have it all.
It was never wise to speak to the First without invitation, but she and he were the same, motes of light streaming about each other above a vaporous vision. You would conquer the world with entertainments?
The First paused, as if startled by her umbrage. In a moment, he answered gladly, We will draw them in with entertainment, but the fights must become more. You will schedule battles to the death, yes, but only between condemned killers, and they will be offered not as entertainment, but as object lessons in morality. The people will slowly come to see the arena as the place where ultimate justice is meted out.
This time, she did not question, but only said, Yes. It will be a simple thing to schedule grudge matches between folk who have a common grievance. The level of violence, of lethality, will be commensurate with the gravity of the offense. Border disputes will be to first blood. Cuckolds will be to maiming. Wrongful death will be to death. You will encourage all folk to settle their conflicts in the arena, not in the streets like dogs. You will allow them to hire gladiators to represent them. Once again, such matches will not be called entertainment, but trials of justice.
Yes.
You will teach the people to come to us for entertainment, for morality, for justice, for community, for meaning, for purpose, for life. You will train them in this great coliseum, and you will build arenas at the heart of every city and town. You will move us from the pits to the c
enter of civilization.
Even without a body, she could still tremble. Yes.
The vision was complete. The future had been laid indelibly into the lines of her soul. She would bring this new world into being.
While you build this new spectacle, I shall destroy an old one.
In the primordial waters, Phage thought she glimpsed her brother, struggling away across a sandy waste. He must die?
Only one man in the world could take you from me, Phage. Soon, no man can.
The motes twined about each other in one final swift dance before they parted, retreated, solidified into clumsy bodies staggering out through the larger-than-life portrait of the First.
*****
They followed him from his private chambers, they who knew his mind about most things and they who were his hands. The servants of the First had packed a bag for him-armor, weapons, rations-and had cleaned the sword he had not wielded since he was a fighting mage. It was as if the First were marching to war, but he did not reveal his mind to them.
The First strode to the glass doors, and his servants followed, holding pack and weapon belt ready. The First paused. Servants gingerly cinched the weapon belt on his waist and positioned the pack on his back. They all wished to ask him where he went, but none dared. With a silent nod, the master of the Cabal strode alone out the glass doors. He left his servants behind.
What terrible business would require the First to use his own hands?
CHAPTER SIX: VISION'S FUGITIVE
Sun struck the sand like a mallet on a drum, continuous and thundering. Wind roamed the dunes, tearing apart anything it found.
It found Ixidor. As he trudged, grit gnawed his sandals to strips and heat blistered his feet until the water within boiled. His burnt brow was scaled with salt, and his muscles were so dry they rasped in his skin. Instead of eyes, he had dead hunks of glass in his skull.
He had lost the one thing worth looking at: Nivea.
She appeared as she had throughout a day and a night and a day-white and gleaming, with arms wide open. She was not in that burning desert. Nivea stood beyond the sands, her feet grounded amid grass. She stood in a beautiful place, and she invited him to join her.
Ixidor clambered toward the vision, but she retreated, her eyes clouding.
Don't weep, my sweet, he said, though his breath made no sound in his dry throat. Don't weep for me. I will join you. I will run across this desert and catch you and join you.
There was only one way to join her. His body could not pass that shimmering portal. Only when it was torn away could he be with her. Sand and sun were his allies, picking at his flesh with small hands, the fingers of Phage.
Phage. She stalked the comers of Ixidor's mind, pursuing his visions. She closed in on her quarry and leapt. Her hands took hold of Nivea. Light turned to darkness and life to rot. Once again, Nivea dissolved to nothing.
She had died a thousand times during the day and night and day. Each time, grief ripped into Ixidor anew. He watched his only hope dissolve into blinding tan below and blinding blue above.
Eyes of glass reflected the razor horizon.
Ixidor trudged. He would die; it was a certainty. The Cabal was very efficient. He would die and join Nivea, but only after every tissue flaked away and every hope fled into the killing sky. He would die by degrees, a penance for letting Nivea die in an instant.
In truth, he would die slowly because he could not give up life. The survival instinct was stronger than the blazing sun and the winnowing grit. Even without hope, he walked on.
And then, hope: a green spot in all that gray. Water, plants, life.
It was a mirage, of course, like the others. Still, false hope was better than no hope. It drew Ixidor, and he strode toward it.
If this oasis were a mirage, why need it be a small, mean place? Why not something grand? Ixidor squinted. Why not date palms and coconut trees? Those slender slips of tan along the edge-why shouldn't they be gazelles? What about a wide pool-pure, clean, and charged with fish?
Ixidor tried to take a deep breath, though his lungs felt fused. He walked faster. His legs crackled like stilts. Closing his eyes, he imagined the oasis, willing it on the world.
Why not paradise? Why not life?
He opened his eyes. It was gone-not only his vision of palms and pools, but even the green wedge. It all had been but a fold in the air, a trick of the heat.
Ixidor shuffled to a halt. There was no reason to go on. He wondered how far he had come and looked back across the ridges of sand. His footprints stretched away over two dunes. A breeze had followed him, erasing his steps as he made them. Even now, a dozen tracks drifted in a brown ghost on the wind. It was as if he had gone no distance at all. The desert was an endless scroll, rolling out before him and rolling up behind.
Ixidor dropped down to sit on the sand. It burned his backside. He didn't care, waiting for the pain to ease. He needn't march himself to death. He could simply sit himself to death.
How long he remained there, he wasn't sure. He might have slept. Orange sand and blue sky began to tumble over each other. Shapes appeared in the heavens-leviathans swimming amid faint stars. They dived toward Ixidor. He did not cower away. A pod of kraken flew past his ears. Their tentacles spread and closed to propel them over the sand. They left snaking trails of dust in their wakes but were not fast enough. The leviathans jabbed down. They bit, caught, killed, ate, and swam back to the stars. Only thin red trails told of their passing.
When Ixidor awoke, one side of the world had turned dark. A wall of black cloud boiled up out of thin air: a desert thunderstorm. It held the promise of rain and shade and cool. It would wash him, slake his thirst, would fill hidden wadis and lead him where the water went. Salvation was coming from the brutal skies.
Ixidor sat and waited. He smiled, knowing it would all be over soon.
The storm galloped across the desert, darkening as it ate ground. In its heights, leviathans sported and swam. Kraken and jellyfish twirled their helpless tentacles in the eddies while schools of silvery fish churned the squall nearer to Ixidor. It was very close. He heard it-moaning wind and rumbling thunder-though sound only barely outpaced the i racing thing. Droplets came down with dry, crackling reports.
Then Ixidor knew: This was no rain cloud but a dust storm. The only promise it held was death.
Still, he sat. It would be over soon.
The storm billowed like a brown curtain across the dunes. It rushed upon him. The last of his footprints were snuffed out. The wall struck him.
He could not keep his eyes open. Lids and lips clenched. Head curled down. Even though he knew he would die and meant to die, the survival instinct was strong. He lifted his collar up over the bridge of his nose, and his breath felt cold against his chest.
The storm roared until it filled his ears with sand. The wind battered him numb. He tried to shift, but already his legs were buried. It wouldn't be long now. He was dying by the slow murder of particles.
Nivea, you came to me while I fought to live. Come to me now as I fight to die. Bring your brilliant vision and wide-open arms. Ixidor's voice made no sound in the sandy space between his shirt and his chest. Still, she should hear. He spoke the words beside his very heart. The dust eats me as Phage ate you, and we will be together.
She did not come. No light pierced the dust. No voice came except the roaring wind. The only hand that clasped his was a hand of sand.
He was buried to the waist.
I don't want to die. Why not live?
Ixidor struggled to rise. The sand held him down. He dragged his arms from the entombing ground and dug around his sides. Each handful he scooped only slid back. His legs trembled to escape. The sky poured more grains atop him, inches piling up every moment. He desperately fought to break free, but the storm was equally desperate to kill him. His collar slipped down off his nose, and the breath he took clawed through his lungs.
That was it. He had to stop digging to pull his shirt up,
and then coughed blood while the sand filled in around him. From chest downward, it clutched him in a giant hand. Sand rose like flood waters and swallowed him to the shoulders. It poured down until only the crown of his head remained, then that too was gone.
All grew strangely quiet except for the fast panting of his breath. The air in his shirt was stale. How deeply would he be buried?
Nivea, listen. I will join you, yes, but not now, not yet. Save me. Dig me free. Come, my angel, and save me.
He willed light into darkness, life into death. He willed Nivea into being and made her come and save him. If it was all a dream, it might as well be a grand one.
Nivea came to him with angel wings that sang as she flew.
She glowed last in his mind before nothing glowed there again.
*****
Ixidor awoke beneath a sky riddled with stars. The air was cold, but the sand breathed heat all around him. He sighed. He could breathe. The sand was gone from lips, ears, and eyes. He lay cradled in the lap of the desert.
What had happened? What of the storm? He had been buried alive.
Ixidor sat up. By starlight, he could see dunes undulating to a distant horizon. He also could make out, near his leg, the deep well in which he had been entombed. The sand retained the shape of his body.
Someone had dug him out.
"Hello!" He could speak-even shout. "Hello!" There came no answer from the dark desert. Who would have dug him out, cleaned him up, and left him lying here?
"Nivea!" Ixidor stood, a smile spreading across cracked lips. "Where are you? I know you're here." He laughed, holding his hands up. "I know you're here. Nivea, come to me. You've given me life. You could have taken my life and brought me to be where you are but instead you saved me." He laughed again.
The sound was eaten by the vast darkness.
Ixidor quieted. He wasn't saved yet. If Nivea had dug him from the sand, she had only brought him from a swift death to a slow one. "Lead me. Lead me from this place to somewhere I can live."
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