Shadowed By Wings (42 page)

The threat was implicit. Any who fouled him with rock or produce would be decapitated. No one dared hurl missiles after that, for fear of missing me and striking the Auditor.

Our procession continued to Arena, Waikar Re Kratt far at the fore, magnificent upon his ostentatious beast, followed by his gaudy Holy Wardens and esteemed bayen lords.

The noise of the crowd was bewildering, the unbridled hatred in the faces screaming at me stunning. Perched upon tiled rooftop, hanging out window, leaning from balcony, packed tight along alley, faces both elegant and coarse shouted for my death. Fingers all sheathed in wooden or metal talons clacked angrily at me:
clitter-clack, clitter-clack!
The hailstorm was deafening. The shadow of Arena bathed us all in cool gloom.

Our procession turned a corner: The entrance of a gated tunnel leading into the stadium gawped at us. Waikar Re Kratt calmly rode his destrier beyond the guards at the entrance and led us down into Arena’s dank depths.

I felt I was descending into the esophagus of a massive, primitive beast, and I swooned and wondered why I’d been so foolish to put myself in this position, wondered why I had not fled with Daronpu Gen when I’d had my chance.

“You perform shortly,” the dragonmaster growled at me, his face a mottled half-moon in the gloom. The ground above us, the slick walls on either side of us, rumbled as if from a slight, ceaseless earthquake. The muted trumpeting of onahmes and the low, furious roar of bull dragons reverberated down the dank tunnels.

I could almost understand the braying dragons, in my fear. Could almost hear words, conversation, snatches of song.

“Are you listening to me?” the dragonmaster cried.

“Yes.”

“Temple wants your death over and done with. Re is the first bull slated to enter Arena.”

“You’ll be there with me?” My head floated several feet above my shoulders.

“Yes.”

“Who else?”

“Dono. Ringus. Three inductees.”

My gaze wandered over the apprentices crouched about the tunnel floor, each rubbing grease over his limbs so that blows and whiplashes might slide off instead of breaking skin. Their lips moved as they muttered the komikonpu walan kolriks. Firelight from a single guttering torch played like demon tongues over their grease-slicked bodies.

“It’ll be a blood bath,” I murmured.

“Is the Skykeeper near?” the dragonmaster demanded. “Can you summon it yet?”

I countered his questions with my own. “How quickly can you arouse Re? How long must I last out there?”

“None of the chosen inductees will have presence of mind enough to arouse the bull,” he muttered. “And Dono’ll be concerned only with striking you down.”

“And Ringus?” I glanced at the effeminate servitor who had, so many months ago, witnessed the transfiguration of my mother’s haunt from pigeon to specter. Who had, but weeks ago, witnessed the bizarre benediction I’d received from the destrier that had carefully placed my head in her maw.

“You need to summon the Dirwalan, understand?” the dragonmaster growled. “Summon your Skykeeper, girl, and use your damn bludgeon to strike others down!”

“I won’t … I can’t …” The words were lodged in my throat, my vow withering under the onslaught of fear.

The dragonmaster grabbed my hair and pulled my face right up against his.

“Kill any apprentice that comes near you. Or you’ll die.”

“It’s time.”

Ringus stood beside me, his lean body shining with not just grease but a thin film of sweat, from where he’d spent every moment since our arrival in the dark bowels of Arena practicing with whip and poliar and readying his muscles for combat.

I pushed away from the wall I was leaning against, the bludgeon and vebalu cape I’d been assigned at my feet. I stiffly bent to pick up my cape, muscles gone suddenly rigid from fear. The rusted clasp had been badly bent by its previous wearer; the hook snagged out at an angle, sharp and curved as a miniature scimitar. With difficulty, I snapped the rusted clasp closed over one shoulder, felt the weight of the chain heavy against my throat.

Ringus still stood before me, nervous, uncertain. He tossed a look into the pockets of dark behind him, lit here and there with inadequate, guttering torchlight.

“You remember what you saw the other week, hey,” I said hoarsely, my eyes on his. “Remember how the destiny wheel spun, before my kidnap. I’m not your enemy, Ringus. And the grace of the One Dragon touches all who touch me.”

His narrow larynx punched up and down and he licked his slim, sweet lips. With a barely perceptible bob of his head, he turned and walked away from me.

I picked up my bludgeon. It felt much, much heavier than any bludgeon I’d ever held before. My hands felt clammy. Teeth chattering, I wended my way toward the dragonmaster, who stood beside Dono and three other inductees. At my passage, the apprentices sprawled about the ground hissed like snakes and one voice—lovely, low, belonging to Eidon—began uttering the Gyin-gyin.

The dragonmaster looked at me, blood-marbled eyes glistening.

“Don’t fail me, Babu,” he growled.

With the dragonmaster at the fore, we then started up the dark tunnel, to the great dusty bowl of Abbasin Shinchiwouk. The elegiac sound of apprentices muttering the walan kolriks followed in our wake.

The three chosen inductees moved in stiff-legged terror. One wept silently, eyes protruding like those of a dead fish. One looked angry, held his poliar tightly, shivering. The third was being tugged up the tunnel by a rope the dragonmaster had fixed about his neck; I recognized him as the inductee who’d fled the exercise field upon first sight of Re. He began calling for his mother in a breathless whisper, over and over.

All of the three inductees were younger than nine years old.

Strike one of them down to save my own life? Watch Re rip their guts from their small, smooth bellies? Never. I would never stoop to such.

From where he walked alongside the dragonmaster, each footfall landing just slightly ahead of the Komikon’s, Dono looked at me. There was so much anger in that narrow, unshaven face, so much determination and bloodlust, that my footsteps faltered.

I wanted to say something to him, wanted to remind him of how we’d swung together on the same vine, as children, in the warmth of a summer twilight. We’d both come bawling from the wombs of separate women within the space of a week; we’d both nursed from the same breasts.

But my voice wouldn’t come, dammed by the fear freezing my blood and the fury raging through his.

To the great rolling, quavering sound of water gongs struck by the plethora of monks in the Arena tiers, Cinai Komikon Re led Dono, Ringus, three twiggy-limbed boys, and me through a guarded gate and onto the stadium grounds.

The sunlight after the tunnel was overbright. The lot of us came to a stop, blinded. At the sight of us, a low roar started up from the tiers of Malacarites packing the stadium. The eerie noise swelled, just like the gale that rips over a jungle canopy before a hurricane tears leaf and frond asunder. The crowd moved as it roared its disapproval; the tiers rippled as if alive. Awed and terrified, I craned my neck up, up, as the
clitter-clack
of more than two hundred thousand finger sheaths beat a hail of outrage upon my ears.

The amphitheater was roofless, but instead of a bowl of blue sky gazing down at me, huge arcing columns extended like protruding ribs toward Arena’s aerial middle. The massive, tapering spars did not meet at center, for no feat of Malacarite architectural engineering could yet make such possible. But to create the illusion of a roof, silver netting had been strung from rib to rib, festooned with objects that glittered and twirled, catching the sun rays, sending prisms and blinding diamonds of light dancing over the crowd below. Faceted mirrors, bells of hammered gold, and glass baubles encrusted with jewels glittered in the sunlight, though I could discern no individual shapes from the silver netting’s great height, only knew by stories I’d heard as a child what the objects were.

I was looking at the renowned Fa-Tigris Wamanarras, the Emperor’s Ceiling of the Firmament, each silver link and ornament polished and strung annually for Abbasin Shinchiwouk. The dazzling chandelier display looked impenetrable to a dragon’s eye, and only once in the history of Ranon ki Cinai had a bull attempted to perforate it and escape.

Far below the ceiling coiled the great ring of spectator tiers. Though I knew it not then, each tier jutted out somewhat. The subsequent concavity beneath the overhanging ledges, behind the knees of every seated or standing spectator, was called the iyamunas, the grottos. Whenever a bull launched himself into flight, either during shinchiwouk or when Arena reverberated with the wing beats and lust-bellows of the loosed onahmes, most spectators crouched into the iyamunas. Much infamous behavior took place then, consensual or otherwise, as thigh was pressed against thigh and breast against chest, while dragons swooped overhead in musky passion and a bull mounted whatever onahme landed upon the ground.

Those who chose through bravado or dignity to forgo the iyamunas ran the risk of being splattered by a cascade of onahme guano. Guano boys darted hither and yon among the stands with great baskets on their backs and shovels in their hands, the inebriated spectators either cursing or throwing coin at them.

Situated at regular intervals throughout the tiers stood canopied balconies, each emblazoned with a Clutch insignia. Daronpuis, bayen women, skilled ebanis, Clutch overlords, and tables groaning with wine flagons, wagering ledgers, fruits, cakes, and nuts crowded such balconies. On some, orgies would ensue after each shinchiwouk, the spectators intoxicated by wine, the scent of dragon musk, the spectacle of spilled blood, and the sight of a great bull pumping atop one onahme after another.

My dazzled eyes skittered along the tiers and stopped at a heavily garlanded balcony topped by a magnificent purple canopy bearing the cursive, elaborate insignia of Ranon ki Cinai. Ah. The balcony of the Ashgon. From where I stood, I saw the great man as nothing but a blurry plumed hat and mound of embroidered cloth sitting upon a great crimson throne. The gore-bellied man beside him was the Ranreeb of the Jungle Crown. I felt sure of it.

The Ashgon ponderously raised a hand. The monks throughout the stadium stopped striking their water gongs. The crowd fell silent. The air grew taut with expectation. My mouth went dry. My heart hammered even faster.

“Fan out,” the dragonmaster cried, and we apprentices began moving, placing distance between us. I moved as if in a dream, couldn’t feel my feet or legs beneath me. Perhaps I floated.

Two of the inductees stood together, paralyzed with fear.

Dono stationed himself to my far left, legs braced in a half crouch, facing halfway between me and the massive iron gate that held Re out of the stadium bowl. The dragonmaster stood crouched in his simian stance between myself and Dono. Ringus stood a goodly distance to my right.

Time stretched, sound elongated. I became aware of the dust under my bare feet: hot, gritty. A fly buzzed about my head.

The Ashgon lowered his hand.

A pause. Then the squeal and clank of rusty cogs reverberated through Arena as the great iron gates that separated Re from the stadium bowl were winched up. The crowd murmured, moved, rustled like a wind through a grove of trees.

Behind the series of gates, mighty Re bellowed.

His roar was my heart, thundering wild in my chest. I could not breathe, could not move, could not think as his blast of outrage distorted reason.

His battle cry stopped. It felt as if my heart, too, ceased.

The onahmes visible behind a gate adjacent to him bugled in response. A cloying wave of musk filled the air.

The iron gate in front of Re winched higher. Dono hefted his poliar and looked at me.

At that moment Re lunged forward.

My heart convulsed; my fingers went slack. The dragonmaster sprinted toward Re, yelling insanely. The crowd surged to its feet with a great cry.

Re altered his charge and swung toward the bellowing dragonmaster. Dono charged toward me.

“Mother!” I tried to yell, but no voice came from my throat, no power erupted from within me, and no massive otherworld form crashed through the Emperor’s Ceiling.

“Mother!” I screamed again, but still she did not come, she did not appear, she stayed away.

No. No. It was not possible, she couldn’t abandon me again, she would not, she could not …

She had.

I turned and ran.

There was nowhere to run to.

I slammed into the high coliseum wall, scrabbled ineffectually at it, bludgeon falling to my feet. Ten feet above me, leaning over the rail of the first tier, rishi spectators hurled insult, rock, and rotted food at me. The onslaught hailed down upon my head and shoulders. With a cry, I staggered away from the wall and sloppily turned about.

I saw, in the periphery of my vision, the dragonmaster cracking his whip at Re while Ringus darted toward the great beast’s testes. And I saw, direct in front of me, Dono, fast approaching.

My vision collapsed to encompass only Dono.

He slowed to a stop a short ways from me and adjusted his grip on his poliar. My body moved by rote: I back-stepped, took off my vebalu cape, and spun it into a rope, chain-end down.

As if we were wary partners in some primitive dance, we began circling each other.

“You’re my milk-brother, Dono,” I said hoarsely, mouth dry. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Dragonwhore. Deviant.”

“Don’t be Temple’s assassin. Don’t sell yourself to the Emperor.”

“You corrupted me once, Zarq. You won’t do it again.”

“Corrupted you!” I cried. “Look to Temple for corruption, not me.”

“Demon’s spawn. Djimbi get.”

And then, just like in my childhood, just as always throughout my youth, I couldn’t hold my tongue when I should have, couldn’t dam the anger and indignation flood-swelling within me.

“Ebani-basa Coldekolkar,” I shot back.

Ebani-basa Coldekolkar: Womb-Ripping First Son of a Many-Men Pleasurer. It was Dono’s inglorious, long-buried birth name, a name replete with a childhood filled with humiliation and mockery. It was a name he’d almost killed himself to get rid of.