Under the Crimson Sun (the abyssal plague)

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Let her go, and the map’s yours.”

  Voras grinned, showing yellowed, broken teeth. “Nice try, mul. Tralk, get the map.”

  Nodding, Tralk moved cautiously toward Zabaj, keeping his bone knife at the ready. “Give it to me, mul.”

  Scowling down at the Raider with a look that Komir knew Zabaj had used in the arenas of Tyr back in the day, the mul held out the map. Tralk hesitated a moment and gulped down a swallow before actually snatching the map.

  He backed up slowly, keeping his eye on Zabaj the whole time.

  “Take a look at it,” Voras said.

  Komir stole a glance at his sister. Karalith was fidgeting. “Look, okay, it’s a treasure map,” she said as Tralk unrolled it, “fine, but like I said, it could take months before-”

  “Shut up.” Voras bellowed. “Tralk, talk to me.”

  Tralk peered at the parchment before him. “Who the frip is Sebowkan the Elder?”

  “Ain’t he the king of Tyr?”

  Voras frowned. “I thought he was that defiler from Nibenay.”

  But the fourth one, Komir noticed, had a faraway look on his face as he spoke very, very softly. “That’s one of the guys that ruled during the Green Age.”

  Tralk made a snorting noise. “Was that before or after the Orange Age?”

  The third one chuckled at that, but the fourth one still looked serious. “Look, this ain’t no joke. I knew a guy, right, and he told me all about Sebowkan’s treasure-that it was all lost-like.”

  “Was lost.” Karalith pouted as she said it. “We found it. We earned it.”

  At that, Voras laughed. “Ah, well, you see, my dear, the whole point of the Black Sands Raiders is that we take that which other people have earned.” He turned to Tralk. “Where is it?”

  “The woman’s right, it’s only a few days’ walk from here.”

  “Good. That map’s easier to move with than this setup. Bad enough we’re coming back to Zeburon without most of our people or our mounts. A treasure map will go a lot farther with him than a carriage full of worthless trinkets.” Voras suddenly threw Feena forward, and she fell facedown in the sand.

  “Oof.” came her muffled voice from the ground even as Zabaj moved amazingly quickly.

  “Feena.” Kneeling down beside her, Zabaj put an arm on her shoulder and slowly guided her to her feet.

  “I’m all right,” grumbled Feena as she spit sand out of her mouth and glared at Voras.

  Zabaj stared at the leader. “You have your map.”

  “And you have your woman. It’s tempting to kill you.”

  Zabaj smiled at Voras, showing his sharpened teeth. “You’re welcome to try.”

  “Perhaps another time. Please don’t try to follow us-we know this desert far better than you, and it won’t end well.”

  Slowly, never taking their eyes off the emporium’s carriage, the four raiders moved off with their newly acquired treasure map.

  As soon as they were out of sight, Komir let out a long laugh. “Well done, Lith.”

  Karalith took a mock bow. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “This is no laughing matter,” Zabaj barked. “Feena was almost killed.”

  Her tone sharpening, Karalith said, “Yes, but she wasn’t, because we gamed those imbeciles into thinking that treasure map that Gash screwed up was good.”

  Shooting her lover a glance, Feena then said to Karalith, “And I am grateful, Karalith.” She looked up at Zabaj again. “Those men were desperate-and I’m pretty sure they’re the remnants of the same group that killed Fehrd.”

  Komir nodded. “Didn’t need mind-magic for that. When Lith and I talked to some folks from the caravan back at Raam, several of them mentioned that only four of the raiders survived, and they ran off without their crodlus. Can’t imagine there’s more than one group of Black Sands like that in this region.”

  Tricht’tha rubbed two of her pincers together, a sure sign of agitation. “I’m just glad we had Gash’s map. What would we have done if he’d gotten it right the first time?”

  Karalith shrugged. “Something else. This is what we do, Tricht’tha.”

  “Next time,” Zabaj said with a growling undertone, “try to do it without endangering Feena.”

  “It’s not as if we chose to endanger her, Zabaj,” Karalith said sharply.

  Zabaj snarled. “You could have just given them what they wanted. What if one of them recognized the map for a fake?”

  Before Karalith could provide yet another sharp retort, Komir stepped in. “Zabaj, that wouldn’t happen-there are maybe six people in all of Athas who know about that impurity. It was just our bad luck that Belrik’s pet tutor was one of them-hell, that’s why Gash made that mistake in the first place, it’s not something that he would’ve needed to bother about under any other circumstances. There was no chance that a Black Sands thug was gonna know about that impurity.”

  Feena put a hand on Zabaj’s huge arm. “My love, it’s all right. Komir and Karalith are right, just leave it-”

  But Zabaj wasn’t having any of it. “And what if that one didn’t know about Sebowkan, and they thought it was crap?”

  Komir opened his mouth to respond quickly before either Karalith or Tricht’tha could, but a voice sounded from inside the carriage. “What is all that racket?”

  They all turned toward the carriage, where Torthal was sticking his head out the rear, his white hair flying off in all directions.

  “What is all this yelling about? Shira and I are trying to sleep.” He frowned. “Why aren’t we moving?”

  Komir was unable to help himself, he burst out laughing.

  So did Karalith and Feena and, in her own way, Tricht’tha.

  After a few seconds, so did Zabaj.

  “What’s so damned funny?” Torthal asked.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For the first few days, Gan and Rol fought in the undercard.

  Gan’s initial fight against Krackis was actually the longest of their matches. It was immediately followed by Rol’s first fight.

  Like Gan’s, it was against a goliath.

  Unlike Gan’s, it ended with one punch.

  Rol walked out onto the arena floor to gasps of disgust, as three of those lesions had grown on his face, marring Rol’s irritatingly attractive visage.

  The goliath who faced Rol was less verbose than Krackis-he would almost had to have been-and focused entirely on staring at Rol.

  But as soon as Jago told them to start fighting, Rol threw a right punch to the goliath’s head, which whirled from the impact so fast it broke the goliath’s neck, and he fell to the floor in an instant.

  The real problem, though, was that the lesions wouldn’t go away.

  They showed up everywhere, red and hideous, like giant bumps on his skin.

  Calbit and Jago brought in healers, but none of them were able to do any good. But he wasn’t sick otherwise, just covered in lesions, so they kept fighting.

  And they kept winning.

  After a week, the guards came to bring everyone up for the undercard fight-but they didn’t open the cubicle doors for number four.

  Gan ran up to the door, peering through the barred window. “What’s going on?”

  “Who cares?” Rol was behind him, sitting on his bunk, staring ahead into the air. Rol’s listlessness in the cubicle was almost as worrying as his fierceness in the arena.

  “Hang tight,” the guard said. “You’re the main event tonight.”

  With a sigh, Gan said, “Great.” He turned to Rol. “Maybe now we can start talking about escape plans?”

  Still staring ahead blankly, Rol said, “I’m working on one.”

  Gan blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I said I’m working on one.”

  “Were you going to share this with me?”

  “I haven’t finished it yet. I didn’t want to talk to you about it until I was sure it would work.”

  “Are you sure it’ll work now?”

  Rol
finally looked at Gan with bloodshot eyes. “Honestly? Not really. I think it’ll fail. That’s why I didn’t mention it.”

  “So why’d you mention it now?”

  “Just making conversation,” Rol said with a shrug.

  Gan sat down next to him on the bunk. “Something’s wrong, Rol.”

  “Really? What was your first clue, the garbage on my skin?”

  “This goes back to the Great Road, Rol,” Gan said intently. “You took down that anakore singlehandedly. What happened out there?”

  “Nothing happened. I went to take a piss, I came back, I killed an anakore. And then I came here and am getting lesions on my skin. You now know everything I know.”

  Gan snarled. “There’s got to be more to it than that.”

  “Brilliant observation.” Rol threw up his hands. “Calbit and Jago have had a dozen healers in here, and they don’t know anything.”

  “Yeah.” Gan leaned against the wall. “So we keep fighting?”

  “Until I come up with a good plan. Or you do, but let’s face it, that’s pretty unlikely.”

  That prompted a chuckle from Gan. “Well, that was nice.”

  “What?”

  “Verbal abuse of me-you almost sound like your old self …”

  The pair of them sat alone for a while after that, until the guards came to bring them up the spiral staircase.

  They were alone in the waiting area. Stepping forward toward the rusty metal gate, Gan looked out at what he could see of the crowd, which was primarily those in the front rows opposite where the holding area was. It was only about five percent of the full crowd in his line of sight, and since it was expensive front-row seats, they were the most fanatical and devoted fans of the arena.

  Which meant they were holding up signs that expressed their love for Gorbin, sometimes with a simple declarative like GORBIN’S THE BEST, others simply with his name or a crude drawing of his face. Some children were in his line of sight, and many were carrying small dolls that bore Gorbin’s likeness.

  Jago was standing in the center of the arena again. “Tonight is a very special night here at the Pit, as Gorbin will once again take the arena-but against two new foes. These are vicious killers from beyond the wastes. You’ve seen them in the early fights, and they’ve won each and every single time. Now they’ll take on the greatest fighter in the Pit’s history-Gorbin.”

  Boos for that. Nobody wanted to see Gorbin defeated. But the boos were surprisingly subdued.

  And that’s when it finally hit Gan what was wrong with the crowd noise. There wasn’t enough of it. Last time he was in Urik, the seats shook from the din.

  He turned to Rol. “The crowd sounds quiet.”

  “It’s what they usually sound like,” Rol said with a shrug.

  “Yeah, when we’re out there-but we’re the undercard. This is the main event of the Pit of Black Death, and I’d swear to you there’s not even a hundred people out there.”

  Rol shrugged again. “Maybe people are tired of the arena.”

  Gan scratched his chin. “Or maybe they’re tired of watching Gorbin win all the time.”

  “Presenting Gorbin’s first challenger of the evening: Rol Mandred.”

  Rol shrugged a third time. It seemed to be all he did anymore. “Guess I’ll have to take him down, then.”

  The guards guided Rol toward the gate, which obligingly rose with its usual metallic squeal. Rol stepped into the arena.

  The boos intensified, but they were still fairly subdued.

  Rol and Gorbin circled each other. Gorbin looked kind of bored, which Gan suspected had something to do with the crowd’s reaction. The last time he was there, the hairless mul had stared intently at his opponent from underneath the bone ridge on his forehead. He had looked fierce and intimidating. The crowd fed off that.

  With nothing to feed off of, though, they were listless.

  Then Rol did something Gan had never seen his friend do in all the years they’d known each other.

  He grinned.

  Rol didn’t grin. He smirked, he smiled-especially if he was chatting a woman up-and he laughed sometimes, if the mood struck him.

  But he never grinned.

  In the arena, the two opponents circled each other. Neither took his eyes off the other, waiting for the other to make the first move.

  The mul still looked bored, and Rol was still grinning that damned grin, but otherwise they were focused.

  Finally, Gorbin made the first move, swinging a massive fist at Rol.

  Rol caught it in his left hand.

  A gasp rippled through the amphitheater-and the holding area as well. Muls were quite strong, and Rol, for all his might, was only a human. There was simply no way that Rol should have been able to just catch a mul’s punch without any ill effects.

  Yet Rol looked as if he’d just caught a lightly tossed ball.

  Gorbin looked stunned, staring at his fist in Rol’s hand as if he’d never seen anything like it. And indeed, he probably hadn’t.

  Rol then punched the mul right in the nose while letting go of Gorbin’s fist. Rol’s fist struck Gorbin’s nose with a meaty thud, blood flying from his nostrils, and he fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

  The crowd went completely quiet.

  Walking over to the fallen mul, Rol looked down at him. “That the best you can do?”

  Snarling, Gorbin wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, then leaped to his feet and started throwing dozens of punches. Rol was able to counter some of them, and some struck full on. Rol didn’t fight back, just let Gorbin hit his arms, keeping his elbows in so that Gorbin didn’t strike his stomach or chest.

  Then Rol grinned again.

  Gan’s heart skipped a beat. “What the hell is wrong with you, Rol?”

  Rol let loose with a quick kick that slammed into Gorbin’s stomach, causing the mul to blow out a big breath and stumble backward. Not letting up, Rol kicked him again and punched him in the face a few more times.

  Gorbin’s face was caked with blood from his nose and mouth, and he was breathing very heavily, spitting blood onto the stone floor. Rol was still grinning.

  Then Rol grabbed Gorbin’s arms and lifted the mul-who had to weigh twice what Rol had ever been able to pick up before-and threw him across the arena floor. Gorbin hit the stone ground and skidded along to the obsidian wall.

  Still the crowd was silent.

  Gan looked at what he could see of the audience from the holding area. The signs had been lowered; the dolls of Gorbin’s likeness were being clutched for dear life, as if to ward off the mul’s apparent defeat.

  Rol ran over to Gorbin’s prone, broken form, and stepped on one of his arms. The snap of bone echoed throughout the subdued amphitheater. Then he picked Gorbin up by that arm-causing the mul to scream in pain-and threw him toward the holding area.

  Backing up instinctively, Gan watched as Gorbin slammed into the metal cage with a clang.

  Struggling to get to his feet, Gorbin said, “I don’t understand-I’m the biggest and the strongest. I should be winning.”

  Walking over to stand over Gorbin, Rol spoke in a quiet tone that Gan could barely hear. “There is no ‘biggest.’ There is no ‘strongest.’ Because there’s always someone who’s stronger and bigger. And sooner or later that person finds you.” Rol then kneeled down on the mul, his knees pinning Gorbin’s chest. Despite just wiping the floor with the greatest fighter in Urik, Rol didn’t even sound winded. “When that person does find you, it’s your time to die.”

  Oddly, Gorbin’s blood-caked face brightened at that. “You mean I don’t have to fight anymore?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thank you.” Gorbin sounded incredibly relieved.

  To Gan’s amazement, it seemed that-when Rol grabbed the sides of Gorbin’s hairless head and yanked it to one side, snapping the mul’s neck-Gorbin died happy.

  However, Gan had someone else’s happiness on his mind-not so much that of a dead fighter,
but that of a restless crowd who had come there to watch the latest in a series of predetermined Gorbin fights.

  The silence extended for several seconds.

  It was broken by Jago, who was grinning even more widely than Rol had been.

  “My friends, we have ourselves a new champion! For the first time in a decade, Gorbin has been defeated!”

  More silence.

  Gan was seriously worried that the crowd would riot.

  Then one person in the audience bellowed, “It’s about damned time!”

  Someone else-or it might have been the same person, Gan couldn’t tell-started to clap.

  Then another.

  Soon the applause started to spread throughout the arena.

  That was followed by cheers and yips of joy.

  After a few seconds, one of the incomprehensible yells started to coalesce into something understandable:

  “Rol! Rol! Rol! Rol!”

  At once Gan was relieved and frightened. The former because the crowd seemed to accept Rol’s victory. Indeed, they were embracing it, having gotten over the shock of Gorbin’s defeat.

  The latter because what he just saw was completely impossible. There was no way, none, that an unenhanced human of Rol’s strength and talent-considerable though both were-could have wiped the floor with any mul like that, much less a mul as talented as Gorbin.

  Something was wrong with Rol, and Gan needed to find out what it was.

  He really wished that Feena was there …

  Rol’s hands hurt.

  That was the worst part.

  No, the worst part was the headaches. They were awful.

  No, the worst part were the horrible lesions that kept sprouting on his skin and would not go away.

  No, the worst part was that those lesions would sometimes pop and smear red ooze all over everything.

  No, the worst part was constantly being forced to fight for the pleasure of other people instead of being paid for it like a sensible person.

  No, the worst part was that Rol was starting to forget who he was.

  Yes, that was definitely the worst part.

  He tried not to think about it too much.

  Besides, that was only sometimes. Most of the time he knew damn well that he was Rol Mandred, that he was a human, that his best friends were Fehrd Anspah and Gan Storvis, that he hired himself out as a rent-a-thug, and that his parents were named-