Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (39 page)

“I’m sure he’d be happy to show you, but I don’t think now is a good
time. If anyone found out …” He spread his hands.

If anyone found out, the Gamer would lose everything-wealth, position,
family, even his Brogai status. He would be expelled from the caste, condemned to spend eternity in the Dark Abode and ostracized by all who did
not wish to join him there. No wonder Trap spoke in Kiriathan.

Abramm’s gaze dropped to the stone dangling in his fingers. “So now you
expect me to take it, too?”

“I’m sure his only hope is that you’ll wear it for the match.”

Abramm scowled at him.

“You know they’ll put you under Command if you don’t. I’d have made
you one myself if I could have figured a way for you to wear it.”

Abramm tightened a fist about the chain. The spore in his arm writhed
protest at being so close to the stone, goading his rising anger. It annoyed him
that Trap would think him so weak, so malleable…. Yet the memory of his
own body operating outside his control remained as vivid-and compellingas ever. He clenched his teeth, hating where this was leading.

“They promised to use only steel with us,” he said.

“You know they won’t. Not today.” The Terstan tugged at the fall of lace
under his chin, pulling out an errant fold tucked improperly under the collar
band.

Abramm’s arm tingled distractingly. He hadn’t refused Beltha’adi’s offer
of clemency yet. Maybe he would surprise everyone-himself included-and
accept it. Then there would be no fight, no need for Command, no need for
protection.

He stared at the opalescent stone and shifted uncomfortably, feeling
Trap’s eyes upon him.

“It isn’t going to … I mean, it won’t make me … you know.”

The brown eyes didn’t blink. “Only if you wish it.”

`And I will be able to take it off?”

“Of course.”

As if that mattered. Still, if he were to accept Beltha’adi’s offer-Oh,
plagues! You aren’t going to do that, and you know it! Besides, the first thing
they’ll ask you to do is turn on Trap, so what would you gain?

It seemed he had no good choices here, no matter which way he turned.

With a sudden jerk he shook the chain open and looped it over his head,
the stone thumping benignly against the ruffles on his chest. He scowled at
his friend. “Satisfied?”

“I suggest you put it under the doublet. If the Broho see it, they’ll snatch
it away.”

Exhaling annoyance, Abramm pulled the heavy satin away from his chest,
picked up the chain, and threaded the stone down behind the froth of ruffles
and the slick silk of his under blouse.

Feeling its warmth and hardness even through the silk, he shivered uneasily. “You’re sure I’ll be able to take it off?”

“You took it off before.”

“I know, but … it’s different now.”

Trap’s head jerked up, his gaze suddenly intent. “How so?”

“The color’s changed. And … well, I don’t know exactly. Why are you
looking at me like that?”

The Terstan’s intensity gave way to something that once again could be a
smile. “Because for the first time,” he said, “I think we might actually survive
this.”

A thunderous roar erupted from the amphitheater crowd around Carissa,
and she shuddered beneath her veils. Someone else must have died, she
thought grimly. What in all of Torments am I doing here? Cooper’s right. Even if
the Infidel is Phil’s brother, we can do nothing to help him.

When they’d ascended from the arena warrens last night, the boy had
been exuberant. It took real effort for him to curb his enthusiasm in the face
of Carissa’s disappointment at learning the Pretender was not Abramm, but
that hadn’t stopped him from persuading her to help him free his brother.
She wondered now what she had been thinking, for clearly there was nothing
they could do. Even Philip had no real plan. Eidon will make us a way, he’d
insisted. But, as usual, Eidon had yet to come through.

Perhaps if Cooper had not thrown such a fit she would have been more
reasonable. But when he outright forbade her to go, she grew incensed. And
when he said she was too weak to stomach what went on in these Games,
that she’d not last five minutes of them, she grew all the more determined. If
he could bear it, so could she.

She’d abandoned that contest early on, appreciating for the first time the
vision-obstructing mask propriety demanded she wear. Not only did it shield
her from the carnage, it kept Cooper from seeing just how deeply that carnage affected her. Twice already she’d nearly lost her breakfast, and now she
spent a good deal of time staring into the darkness beneath the eye holes,
scratching her staffid bites and hoping fervently that the horror would end
soon. I should have stayed at the inn with Peri.

Forced by the crowds to find their place in line outside the gates last evening, she, Cooper, Philip, and their hired retainer, Eber, had spent the night
dozing on the plaza’s dirty brickwork, and even so they just managed to find
seats. The necessity of entering the arena early meant they were there for
everything-from the first event, which entailed lions stalking a frightened
herd of broken-down horses, to an eternity of demonstrations by the
infamous Broho, brethren of the vaunted warriors who would ultimately face
the Pretender and his Infidel.

Members of the elite fighting caste of the Brogai aristocracy, the Broho
were said to carry the power of Khrell himself in their bodies. That power
enabled them to mutilate their own flesh with the tattoos, piercings, and
ritual self-infliction of wounds that proved their indifference to pain. It also
made them inhumanly strong and quick.

Lions, tigers, huge horned and armored beasts from across the deserts,
Andolen prisoners of war, barbarian slaves, sarotis-crippled Terstans, Dorsaddi
warriors-the Broho vanquished them all. They killed and maimed with
sword and ax, hand and foot, nail and tooth. Tiring of that, they vomited
gouts of purple fire that blasted away their adversaries’ chests or heads or
limbs.

Worst of all was the writhing veil of fear they sometimes set upon their
victims, coils of mist that wrapped them in a paralyzing terror neither man
nor beast could resist. Wailing, screaming, roaring, their eyes rolling wildly in
their heads, the victims stood helpless and pliant as the Broho tortured and
slew them, sometimes swiftly, sometimes not swiftly at all.

And this was merely practice for the final match of the day and the
famous victims whose deaths would last the longest yet.

The crowd let out another thunderous roar, and for a moment she
thought she would suffocate behind her veil.

This is senseless. Admit he’s right, you idiot woman. Do you wish to live with
the memories of those brave men being castrated, blinded, and skinned alive?

She glanced at Philip sitting to her right, Eber’s silent bulk looming just
beyond him. He looked like a wax boy, his features frozen, pinched.

She touched his arm. “Philip, maybe Cooper’s right. Maybe-“

“Go if you wish,” he said, staring at the ring. “I’m staying.”

“But there’s nothing we can do-“

“I can witness his death. And I can remember it.” He looked at her, eyes grim and hard. “He will not die like the others.” His gaze shifted back to the
arena. “The Broho are not the only ones with powers, my lady.”

She frowned at him. Meridon was a Terstan, yes, with a Terstan’s alleged
powers, whatever they might be. But nearly a score of his kind had died here
already this morning, and their powers had done nothing to deliver them.
Why believe Meridon would be different?

She could not fault the boy for his hope, though. If it were Abramm down
there-and she was desperately thankful it was not-she would not have
been moved from this bench, no matter how dreadful it got.

The crowd’s roar had dwindled to a loud murmur. From the concourse
above, she could hear the annoying, minor-keyed melody of a trio of pipers,
accompanied by their drummer, wheedling amidst shouts of vendors peddling hot, spicy sausages, fried caterpillars called spima, and wine.

She risked a glance at the arena, found it empty but for the wide oblong
of stone sentinels encircling its perimeter. Gray daylight filtered through a
central hole in the great canvas ceiling stretched overhead, washing over the
churned and bloodstained sand. A faint mist shredded off the stones, drifting
upward toward the hole, a mist that had not been there previously.

She glanced left toward the arena’s end, where a huge stone image of
Khrell had been set into the second tier of seating, grimacing over the playing
field. Scarlet flames danced in its fat belly, their light shining eerily through
the back of obsidian eyes. Just below it, in the Ringside Tier, a large seating
box draped in red was filling now with red-robed, shaven-headed priests.
These were the Game Masters who would fashion the arcane illusions that
always accompanied the greatest tales.

A quarter of the way around the stadium from the statue of Khrell and
his priests, dead center of the oval’s length, was a similar box, this one draped
and garlanded in gold. For most of the day it, too, had stood empty. Now
various robed, furred, and bejeweled Brogai nobles were filtering into it, talking and laughing among themselves.

The box was nearly full when a sudden blast of the long-necked horns
from the musicians’ gallery cut through the crowd’s low rumble. In the wall
beneath the Game Masters’ box, a pair of tall doors trundled open. As the
fanfare continued, two black horses burst out of them and into the light, a
gilded chariot flashing in their wake. It carried a man armored and cloaked in
gold, holding his crescent-mooned helmet under one arm as he waved at the screaming crowd with the other. The chariot wheeled a circuit about the ring
so that all could see their Supreme Commander.

Beltha’adi was a short, beardless, broad-chested man with a hawk nose
and a gleaming shaven dome. Ranks of gold honor rings lined both ears, and
even from a distance one could feel the power of his personality.

Completing its circuit, the chariot stopped in front of the idol, and as
Beltha’adi dismounted, the crowd quieted. Then, before them all and with
great solemnity and flourish, he dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead to the sand. The stadium lights dimmed and Khrell’s belly fires flared,
eyes flickering as if the statue were alive. A cold sense of evil crawled over
Carissa’s scalp and she shuddered.

Beltha’adi rocked back onto his heels and stood, then rode his chariot
around to the royal box. Once he had taken his seat, the doors beneath the
idol opened once again to disgorge a line of gray-tunicked soldiers, marching
under the standard of the black moon on purple field. A moment later, doors
in the wall opposite them disgorged another line of men, these in Kalladorne
blue.

The sentinel rocks glowed with a pale light amidst ever thickening mists,
and the Taleteller began, his voice deep and resonating. He spoke of the great
struggles of the past and of the Brogai tradition of champions facing one
another to determine the outcome of a battle. “Our Supreme Commander
has continued this practice, requesting always from those who would stand
against him a champion, a man to fight him one on one.

“Today we give you a forthtelling of one such conflict, still to come. The
day our Great Lord Beltha’adi-Chosen of Khrell, Favored of Aggos, Champion of Laevion-faces the king of the Kiriathan pigeons on the northlander’s
home soil. A conflict sure to unfold not many months hence. Representing
the Great One himself is his champion Oriak ul Ranour, First Lar of the
Broho, defender of the Heart of Aggos, the undefeated master of the
Val’Orda.”

From the still-open doors under the statue of Khrell, a man seemed to
float into the arena, his long, black-skirted trousers hiding the movement of
his feet. He wore a deep purple tunic, belted at the waist, the sleeves rolled
back and tied. His bald head gleamed in the combined light of the idol’s fire
and the stones’ glow, scalp and face mottled with a network of tattooing.

Lines of gold honor rings ran up both ears. A long Broho elbana rode in its
black, lacquered scabbard at his hip.

Gliding away from the doors, he turned, fell to his knees before Khrell,
and pressed his forehead to the sand. Three times he did this, and when he
arose to face the screaming crowd again, the amulet at his throat flared purple
with the power of his god.

The mists had obliterated the canvas ceiling by then, blotting out all light
from above, so that the glowing sentinels stood out starkly in the darkness.
Those farthest from the idol shone the brightest, casting their blue-gray illumination on the doors they framed. As those doors opened, the crowd quieted and the Taleteller spoke again.

“Representing the king of Kiriath we have our very own Kiriathan champion, alleged descendent of the royal line of Kalladorne and also undefeated,
the White Pretender, and his Infidel, who will serve as his second.”