The Silent Tempest (Book 2) (28 page)

Thillmarius almost looked pleased to see
him when they arrived at the arena. The Prathion lore-warden walked toward
them rather than wait, and he had a faint smile on his face.

“Tyrion, Byovar,” said the Prathion,
nodding in their direction.

He even said my name first,
noted Tyrion. The world had grown strange and unfamiliar. In the
past, he could have never expected such a thing from one of the She’Har, much
less from his old tormentor.

“You seem cheerful,” observed Tyrion.

“Things have gone well for me lately, and
perhaps for you also,” said Thillmarius.

Byovar frowned, “You go too far. Nothing
has been decided yet.”

Tyrion looked at the Illeniel She’Har,
“What hasn’t been decided?”

“We are forbidden to speak of it,”
responded the Byovar impassively.

“Am I not a child of the grove now?”
reminded Tyrion, deciding to push his luck.

Thillmarius put a friendly hand on his
shoulder, an almost alien gesture for the She’Har. “Let it go for now,
Tyrion. You will be informed once the elders are done, and personally I
believe you will be pleased.”

“I would rather know now…”

“Enough,” ordered Byovar, brusquely.
Normally the Illeniel lore-warden was the more gregarious of the two She’Har.
Things were definitely afoot.

Tyrion closed his mouth, frustrated, but
Thillmarius stepped in to fill the awkward stop in the conversation.

“Lyralliantha emerged from her meeting
with the elders yesterday. I spoke with her,” informed Thillmarius.

“She did?” said Tyrion. “I have not seen
her yet.”

“She gave me a message for you, before
being summoned back,” said the dark skinned lore-warden.

“Summoned back?”

“The elders still debate. She was sent to
give notice to the lore-wardens before returning to them,” explained
Thillmarius.

“And her message?”

“She told me to tell you to do nothing
rash until she is done,” said the Prathion.

Tyrion’s heart skipped a beat, disturbing
the calm he had worked hard to cultivate that day.
Does she know somehow?
He
had told no one of his bargain with Brigid. There was no way for Lyralliantha
to have any inkling of his terminal plans for the day. Unless there was a spy
in Albamarl.

He quickly dismissed that notion. None of
his children would know enough to give him away, even if they wanted to. It
was technically possible that a Prathion might have sneaked into his home,
though. What if one of them had been in his room?

They would have had to wait
days, risking discovery the entire time, just to overhear that one conversation.
It simply wasn’t possible, but he still stared at Thillmarius with
suspicion. “Why would she say that, I wonder?”

The Prathion lore-warden almost laughed,
“You have led an exciting life, Tyrion. Perhaps she knows you too well.”

Koralltis’ voice rose above the noise of
the many She’Har talking in the treetop balconies that ringed the arena. The
murmur of the crowd gradually disappeared, and Tyrion noticed that the number
of Illeniel She’Har attending the event was even higher than usual.

When he had first begun fighting in the
arena, the Illeniels never came. They hadn’t been represented since they had
no slaves of their own, and their elders were philosophically opposed to the
practice, but he had changed that. Over time, his unmatched record of
victories slowly drew more of them to witness his battles. Now the Illeniel
Grove had a much larger group of new humans entering the matches, and their
interest had returned anew.

“Win for us, Tyrion,” said Byovar,
standing next to him. “The entire grove stands behind you.”

He glanced at the lore-warden.
Us?
“I am not fighting today.”

“They are,” said the Illeniel She’Har,
pointing at the holding cells where the teens from Colne were being held.
Almost all of them were inside a cell now, except for Piper and Blake, the only
two whose abilities had yet to manifest.

Tyrion turned away in irritation, heading
for David’s cell first, since he had just been named. “They will do what they
must,” he replied.
But only to survive, not for yours, or any other
She’Har’s amusement.

Opening David’s door, he found the boy
within shaking with fear and adrenaline. “Are you ready?” he asked.

David nodded, but almost stumbled as he
stepped out.

“Deep breaths, boy. Too much adrenaline
will get you killed. Clear your head,” he cautioned, leading his son to the
edge.

David’s fight was against a Mordan slave,
one who had already won several bouts in the past. His opponent began
teleporting at random, making it difficult for the young man to attack him.
After a few minutes of cat and mouse though, David drew a wide circle around
himself some seven feet across before using it to create an especially potent
shield. Then he straightened his arms at his side, closing his eyes as if in
meditation.

Thillmarius clapped, “I remember you doing
that once.”

“The shield is too big,” noted Byovar.
“His opponent can just teleport inside it.”

“That’s the point,” said Thillmarius,
glancing at Tyrion knowingly. “He doesn’t have your special tattoos, though.”

“He won’t need them,” Tyrion answered the
lore-warden. “His opponent isn’t a She’Har, nor does he have the strength to
protect himself from my son’s close assault.”

It was a good trick, although if the
slaves had been permitted to watch the matches in the past, it would have soon
become useless. Since they were kept in the dark, unable to watch the fights,
none of them had ever caught on. It made it difficult for them to learn from
other’s mistakes.

David’s opponent was cautious, and he
continued to move about outside the shield, testing it now and then, but
eventually he realized that it was far too strong for him to break, nor was it
causing David any difficulty to maintain it.

He should attempt to disrupt
the ground, or starve David for air,
thought
Tyrion, but the Mordan mage did neither.

Instead he began to teleport more quickly,
attempting to disorient the young man standing inside the fortified shield.
Tyrion smiled. David had already won.

Seconds later the outcome arrived, violent
and bloody. The Mordan slave teleported within the circle, hoping to surprise
the boy from Colne. David’s arm blade destroyed his opponent’s shield and
continued on to nearly bisect the other man.

I need to put some lines on
their arms, or go ahead and give them tattoos,
thought Tyrion.
He almost didn’t have enough to finish him in
one shot after breaking the shield.

David roared, lifting his arms toward the
sky as the shock and relief of winning washed over him. It was a feeling that
Tyrion was well acquainted with, and for a split second he found himself
jealous. He missed the thrill of it, seeing the blood and knowing it was not
his own, knowing he would live another day.

Seeing the look on David’s face turned his
stomach, though. The boy’s triumph had flooded him with joy, and yet as it
faded he was faced with the realization that he had just butchered another
human being. Tyrion could read his son’s feelings moment by moment as
excitement slowly turned to disgust and remorse. He had lived it too many
times himself.

The remorse fades though, and
eventually the blood won’t disgust him anymore,
thought Tyrion.
The thrill of victory is a drug, and it will
start to call to him in his dreams, until life outside the arena begins to seem
dull and lifeless.

“Until he’s a dead husk inside, like me,”
muttered Tyrion to himself.

“Pardon?” asked Byovar, standing next to
him. “Did you say something?”

Tyrion shook his head, “No, nothing.” He
met David at the edge of the field and escorted him back to his cell. “Good
work.”

The boy looked up at him, guilt in his
eyes. He was vulnerable then, at his lowest point, ready to grasp at anything
that would lessen the self-loathing. “Really?”

Tyrion nodded, “It was you or him, and you
gave your enemy the gift of a swift death. Keep your head up, there is no
shame in that.”

Emma was next, and her match was decisive,
clear-cut from the beginning. She was fighting a Centyr mage. Marching
forward, she closed the gap quickly while her opponent summoned her first
spellbeast. Drawing lines in the dirt, Emma hemmed her enemy in quickly,
separating her from her magical ally and keeping the beast at bay until she was
close enough to finish the mage. At twenty yards it was over. Two rapid-fire
lances of power ended it, one to break the shield and the other to drive a hole
straight through the other mage’s forehead.

Tyrion was impressed by her speed and precision.
The girl walked back toward him with a face carved of stone. She had turned
her back on the whole thing the second it was over, a sure sign, to his eyes,
of what she was feeling, despite her taciturn expression. She didn’t quite
make it to the sidelines before she stopped, doubling over and vomiting onto
the dry earth.

He stopped Emma at the field’s edge,
giving her an approving look and then wiping the corner of her mouth for her.
She searched his face with desperate eyes, looking for answers for the pain she
felt.

Tyrion had none, so instead he smoothed
her hair, pushing aside a loose strand that had fallen across her forehead.
“You did well,” he told her. “You did as you must. She felt nothing.”

She nodded and let him lead her back to
her cell, but he could feel Kate’s eyes on them the entire time. He brought
Abby out next.

Kate leaned close after the girl had
entered the field, “That was nice.”

“What was?” he asked, looking at her in
surprise.

“What you did for Emma.”

Tyrion shook his head, “No, I was just
doing what was necessary. They’re vulnerable now. They’ve learned to kill,
but it still makes them sick. They need validation, reassurance, someone to
tell them it’s alright, someone to make them feel better about what they’ve
done. I’m just telling them what they want to hear—to make them better
killers.”

Kate reached up, tugging at his ear
painfully, “Stop it, Daniel. You always see the worst in everything, most
particularly yourself. Whatever reason you’re claiming, the kindness is still
your own. Don’t forget that.”

He looked at her in surprise, unsure how
to respond and once again found himself caught in her emerald eyes. “I’m
sorry,” he said.

Her expression turned curious, “For which
thing exactly?”

“Take your pick,” he said.

Abby’s match began, and their attention
turned again to the arena. Her opponent was a Prathion, and from the beginning
things didn’t go well. The Prathion mage vanished, but never reappeared.

Unsure how to respond, Abby drew a tight
circle around herself before creating a powerful shield.

“No!” growled Tyrion to himself.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kate.

“She should use the mist to equalize things,
or use the ground to find her opponent, instead she’s locked herself into one
position,” he explained. “It’s exactly the wrong thing to do now.”

“The Prathion can’t see her anyway,” said
Layla from his other side. “He hasn’t lowered his invisibility once.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Tyrion. “Some of
them have tricks you might not expect. I’ve fought Prathions before who could
remove only a tiny part of their veil, allowing them to see while being very
hard to detect themselves. Since he hasn’t come out once, I would assume this
mage is one of them.”

Layla was a Prathion herself, and it was
her turn to be surprised. “I did not know that was possible.”

Because none of your people
learn from one another. The only reason I know is because I’ve fought hundreds
and hundreds of fights and survived,
thought
Tyrion, but he didn’t say it. There was no point.

“I don’t see anything,” complained Kate.
“She’s just standing there.”

Tyrion and Layla both felt the earth move
then, directly beneath Abby’s location.

“He’s underneath her,” said Layla.

Tyrion had seen more, however, a tiny
flash of aythar almost too small to detect. “No, he’s—shit!”

Abby had felt the earth shifting as well,
directly beneath her shield. Releasing it, she stepped to the right, directly
toward the tiny flash Tyrion had seen, and in her haste she neglected to
replace the fixed shield with a more mobile personal one.

A grinning man appeared directly in front
of her, his hand sweeping up and out, sheathed in razor sharp aythar, aythar he
used to punch through Abby’s unprotected abdomen before ripping sideways,
tearing through her liver and one lung. She fell back, her eyes wide with
surprise. There was blood everywhere.