The Broho was entertaining his audience, handling the razor with elaborate flourishes, always just in control. Abramm knew full well the man was trying to scare him, knew also that he had succeeded. But he was not about to show it.
“That’s a long nose he’s got there,” one of the onlookers called. “Maybe you should give it a trim.”
By now Abramm’s command of the Tahg was good enough he could catch nearly all the meaning-and wished he couldn’t.
A muttered comment at the back of the group sparked them all to laughter. Zamath laid his fingers to opposite undersides of Abramm’s jaw and flashed the blade before him, close to his nose. “It is long,” he agreed. “But without it he wouldn’t be as pretty. And Katahn wants him pretty.”
He lifted Abramm’s chin and slid the razor up his throat. Abramm gripped the chair’s arms and fought the compulsion to swallow.
‘Am I making you nervous, your highness?” Zamath mocked. He pulled the blade back, then drew it along Abramm’s brow, scraping away the beads of perspiration and shaking the moisture free. The guards laughed again.
“Yelaki!” they called. “Yelaki hashta.”
Yelaki-coward. He’d heard a lot of that last night.
Zamath leaned over him and laid the razor along his other cheek. A few swift strokes and it was clean, the blade coming to rest disarmingly against the lobe of his left ear.
“Aye, Zamath!” one of the men called. “He could fight as well without the ear, and it’ll be hidden anyway. Cut it off.”
“Aye, Zamath. Add the Kiriathan prince to your Dorsaddi chieftain!”
“Cut him, Zamath. Let us see him squirm.”
The razor pressed upward. Abramm kept his eyes fixed upon the planes of pink-and-red canvas overhead, his arms aching from the death grip he had on the chair. With effort he forced himself to breathe regularly.
Pressure mounted against the point of his earlobe’s attachment, and then a tracery of pain laced outward along neck and scalp and cheek. Something hot dripped down the side of his neck.
Zamath leaned close, putting his face eye to eye with Abramm, his filed teeth gleaming against the darkness of his mouth. His eyes flashed with madness.
“Your life is in my hands, yelaki Kiriatha,” he whispered. “You are weak, and I am strong.” His voice had grown harsher, oddly resonanced. “With a twitch I could take your ear. Or cut the vessel beneath it and watch your life’s blood spurt across the deck.”
His breath was fetid, his lips close enough to kiss. “Have you ever seen it?” he rasped. “I can make it shoot like wine from a barrel, rich and red with elak’a.”
The drip down Abramm’s neck now trickled over his shoulder and chest. Sweat beaded his brow again, and the pain was making him sick. He wanted to look anywhere save into Zamath’s face, but that was what the Broho wanted-cringing submission. So he stared unblinking into those mad eyes and refused to be cowed.
“Zamath!” Katahn’s voice cut into the spell. `Aren’t you finished with him yet?”
The slow upward cut of the knife halted, and then with a sudden final jerk, Zamath pulled away, cursing under his breath. Abramm swallowed hard, feeling faint, the side of his head shrieking its agony. The maniac must have cut off half my ear, he thought. But he could not move his hands to find out, could only sit and endure as the blood ran down his neck and over his chest.
Katahn pressed through the dark-clad men, took one look at Abramm, and turned on Zamath in a furious tirade. The Broho stiffened, lips skinning back from his teeth as the light flashed off the razor in his hands. Katahn halted. In that moment they reminded Abramm of two vicious dogs, faced off, not quite sure who was the stronger.
Katahn stood stiff and straight, silent now, staring hard. The air crackled with challenge, and Abramm recalled that Katahn had been a famous arena warrior himself. There was more than the weight of past glories in that stare, however, for suddenly the Broho deflated. Wheeling wordlessly, he flung aside the razor, pushed between two guards, and stepped out of sight.
Katahn turned to Abramm, grabbed his jaw and swung his face sideways to examine the ear. He fingered it gently, sending white starbursts tumbling past Abramm’s vision.
“It’ll heal,” the Brogai lord pronounced finally. “Sew it up and get him dressed.” He glanced in the direction Zamath had taken and muttered, “I should cage that madman.”
Abramm breathed a sigh of relief.
Abdeel sewed up his ear and shortly released him from the chair. But the humiliation was not over. With much laughter and jeering, the guards dressed him in white doublet and stiff, puffy breeches that ended at midthigh. An only slightly exaggerated rendition of the latest trends in Kiriathan fashion, it was so copiously trimmed with ribbons and lace he felt like a cloth merchant’s notions rack. High-heeled white ankle boots and a faded purple cloak completed the ensemble.
Next he was tied down again and a short, slender man-one of Katahn’s personal servants?-came to paint his face. White lard-textured pigment provided a mask over which the man drew thin red lips in a wide jester’s smile and long black lines radiating from his eyes. A curly white wig secured with a golden headband-his crown?-completed the costume.
All the while, the guards roared with laughter, mocking him with mincing gestures and high-pitched voices and falling upon each other in their mirthmade infirmity.
Beneath the paint, Abramm’s face burned. Rage and frustration knotted in his chest, twisting his stomach painfully. It had been like this in the arena last night, marching before that jeering crowd, pelted with rotten fruit and old sausages, the anger and bitterness simmering higher and higher until he was actually looking forward to the chance to silence their laughter.
He joined Meridon by the railing outside the canopy, and if it were not for knowing it had to be Meridon, Abramm would not have recognized him. He also wore a dandified doublet and ballooning breeches, both emerald hued. The doublet and under blouse were unbuttoned at the chest to reveal his shieldmark. Like Abramm he wore a long curly wig-his was black-and face paint, all white, with a red sad-mouth brushed in over his lips, drooping black brows, and a small black tear inked in on one cheek.
As they eyed each other Abramm muttered, “I suppose I look as ridiculous as you do?”
“We’ll have our vindication, my lord.”
Katahn strode from the stern cabin, wrapped in furs against the day’s dank chill, his Brogai amulet gleaming on his chest. Shettai followed, swathed in black today with a sheer half-veil covering her lovely face. At the sight of his Kiriathans, the Brogai lord grinned widely and nodded. “Perfect. Get them cloaked, and take them over as soon as my boat returns.” He pulled a large gold watch from the pocket in his tunic, glanced at it, and nodded again. “The timing should be perfect. Remember-be discreet. If you draw a crowd, you’ll be late.”
His son Regar and the red-robed priest, Master Peig, came on deck then. The priest scowled at Abramm but said nothing as he followed the others over the side. Shortly the shore boat heaved away, oars flashing as it glided through Vorta’s bustling harbor toward the dock and the gray-walled city looming above it.
Cloaked, cowled, and escorted closely by Zamath, Abdeel, Dumah, and the others, the Kiriathans drew little more than casual interest on their walk from the dock to the Ul Manus Arena. Built on a low hill at the city’s midst and crowned with the colorful banners of the twenty-two Houses of the Brogai, the arena’s entrance ramps thronged with arriving spectators. Zamath bypassed these for a busy service tunnel that descended into the arena’s stinking, bustling underbelly, where a network of low-vaulted chambers housed rows of iron-barred cages along a curving central aisle. Men, women, and children occupied those cages, as well as beasts of all kinds, both predators and prey. The Games, Abramm had learned from his talks with Katahn, were not so much about fighting as about killing and death. Death, Esurhites believed, was a part of life and not to be feared. Great power was released at the moment a soul was liberated from its fles
h, power that might be conferred upon those who witnessed it. For some it was a spiritual experience, a linkage, however brief, with the power of Khrell himself.
And so, there was not only combat between equals, not only the great dramas played out in all their gory finality, there were sometimes simple contests of hunter and hunted, the lion against the lamb, albeit controlled and directed by a Game Master for maximum suspense and impact.
Hearing about it in Katahn’s spacious gallery over a game of uurka and a cup of tea was quite different from suddenly finding himself a part of it all. Those people in that cell over there, scrawny and dead-eyed men, women, and children-they were no warriors. And if not warriors, they must be victims, herded into the ring to act out some past event or prognosticated future.
Which was exactly the role he and Trap were expected to play. Yes, they would be given weapons, but no one, not even Katahn, expected them to live.
As a Game official hurried up to them, Abdeel pulled back their cowls for inspection. The official had seen them unpainted last night, and now he started, then chuckled openly. His assistants laughed as well, exchanging dry remarks with the handlers as the official got down to business. He peered closely at the Kiriathans, making them turn around before him, then checked the number on his list against that on the bronze bands sealed-with magic, it seemed-round their wrists yesterday. Finally he examined the bands themselves and, finding nothing amiss, approved them for admittance.
`And you’re here none too soon,” he informed their handlers. “They’re up after the Dorsaddi Deliverer, and he’s in the wings right now.”
They were brought to a holding area before a pair of wooden doors, filled with men and women dressed in Kiriathan high-court finery-frills of lace and ribbon and satin-and long wigs of every color. Like Abramm and Trap, their faces had been painted white and onto that, in red and black, various comical expressions-prissy heart mouths or wide silly grins, round red cheek spots or mournful, downslanting brows complete with painted tear.
They sat or stood silently, staring at the floor, at the wall, or into space, their eyes dull and empty.
A young woman in a yellow gown sat dully on a bench, tears streaking the painted happy face she wore. She looked up as Abramm and Trap entered, examining them with dead, disinterested eyes. Old eyes, though Abramm guessed she was younger than he was. Two other women sat beside her, staring into space.
“Why are you here?” Trap asked one of the men in the Tahg. When the stranger only looked at him blankly, he repeated himself in Kiriathan.
That sparked a stirring of interest. The man’s eyes flicked from him to Abramm and back. “We’re your courtiers.” He hesitated, looking at Abramm again. “You’re supposed to defend us. It’s the Fall of Kiriath-Beltha’adi meets the Kalladorne king.” He flashed Abramm a look of bitter reproach, then turned away. “But they always give us imposters,” he muttered.
Abramm understood his feeling easily enough. Everyone here must know, despite their behavior to the contrary, who Abramm was. He’d been paraded around last night for all to see, spectators and fellow participants alike, his name blared out clearly, even accented by the Tahg.
They knew.
How many times had they taken part in this “Fall of Kiriath”? How many defenders pretending to be king had failed them already? Here, at last, their masters gave them the real thing, a man of royal blood, and instead of vindication, they could only believe he’d bring them the worst humiliation of all. For if they knew of him, they could only know what he had been-the weakest of the Kalladorne brothers. Little Abramm, the pious servant of Eidon. The smallest, the least talented, the poorest trained. A boy who’d spent the last eight years of his life studying how not to fight. In their eyes, having Abramm Kalladorne as their defender would be worse than no defender at all.
Looking at them now, with their eyes downcast or deliberately averted, none of them wanting to have to acknowledge his presence, he felt something harden within him. For the last six days he had dreaded this hour, knowing full well that fighting at practice was not in the least like fighting for real. Old doubts had resurfaced, strengthened by an all too vivid capacity to imagine the possibilities for failure. Would he panic? Freeze? Forget everything?
These warriors he would face had killed hundreds of times before. He had never killed a man in his life and wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it if he had to.
But now, seeing these people-his own countrymen, sharing his fate-a long-dead sense of duty resurrected within him. He was a prince of Kalla- dome blood, the object of his people’s respect and tribute, for which he owed them nothing less than the sacrifice of his own life to their service. Even his entry into the Mataio had reflected this, for he’d given up as much as any soldier-more, even-to do it, and all for the sake of the realm and the people within it.
If he was no longer Brother Eldrin, he was yet Prince Abramm. If he no longer served the Flames, he still served his countrymen. And now more than ever he understood the power and the reality of the threat that menaced them. When he entered that ring out there, he would be fighting not only for himself but also for the reputation of his family and his homeland and for these individuals who shared this cell with him. Individuals with faces and names, with eyes ashamed to look at him but whose ancestors had revered and trusted his own. He wanted fiercely to be worthy of that trust, to restore their faith, and most of all, to wipe the despair from their eyes.
The crowd’s roar drew him to peer through the crack where the double doors met. He’d seen the arena last night, a walled oblong of sand surrounded by steeply rising tiers of seats. Now, though, the stands were packed with screaming spectators, making the smallish ring seem even smaller and more intimate.
At the moment black-tunicked warriors swaggered across the sand amidst bloodied figures in Dorsaddi ochre. As the few survivors were herded together by the victors’ subordinates, the champions strutted and postured before the audience.
`And so the Dorsaddi fell,” the Taleteller intoned, “and the SaHal remains dead to this day. Let all who defy the gods take heed. None can stand against the power of the Black Moon. None can-“
“NO?” One of the surviving Dorsaddi broke free of his captors. Dodging the bodies and preening victors, he challenged the gilded box on the far side wherein sat the elite of Vorta, among them the infamous Beltha’adi himself.
“You are wrong,” the man cried out in the Tahg. “Sheleft’Ai has not forgotten, nor will he suffer your arrogance much longer. Even now the Deliverer is coming to slay you. Within two years the sand will drink your blood and the Dorsaddi will rise again?”
He stood straight-backed and proud, his bloodstained robes swaying around him. No one moved or breathed, every eye fixed upon him.
From his distant vantage, Abramm could see no more than a slight shifting amidst the figures in the shadowed box-heads turning, a hand lifted-then, from the adjoining box, where sat the warlords’ Broho, streaked a violet plume of death. In an eyeblink it crashed into the Dorsaddi’s chest and exploded out his back. He stood for a moment, head high, chin up, as if it did not matter that he no longer had a heart. Then he pitched forward, falling in an attitude of supplication, his arms reaching out ironically to the great Beltha’adi before him.
Profound silence followed. Then a group of workers hurried out from the far gate to carry him away. The Taleteller began again, his deep voice making the doors shiver.
“None can stand against the power of Khrell. None can stand against the power of Aggos. Let all who defy them take heed and know: As Sheleft’Ai has fallen, so will they. All will bend the neck to Khrell. In his name, we will rule as we are destined and even the white-skinned infidels to the north, who strut in their debauchery, will one day eat the dirt before him.
“Hail Khrell! Hail Beltha’adi! Hail Destiny?”
“Hail Khrell?” the crowd roared. “Hail Beltha’adi! Hail Destiny!”
C H A P T E R
19
> The inner cell door squealed as Abdeel and Dumah hurried in with their charges’ swords, withheld as always until combat was about to begin. They strapped on the harnesses for both longsword and dagger, gave them grins that were anything but friendly, and hurried out again.
A moment later the arena doors swung open, and Abramm gasped to see what they revealed. The sand had vanished, replaced by a gleaming gold-andlapis court from which a long, marbled stair rose to a railed platform. White partitions, some appearing solid, others clearly illusion, rose up here and there around the set. High overhead a massive chandelier depended from a vaulted ceiling that looked for all the world like it must block the view of the spectators at the higher levels, and yet, he knew it did not. It was an illusion, like all the rest. Double-sided, appearing solid from one vantage and as the sheerest veil of gauze from the other.
But he was ready for that, having seen glimpses of the phenomenon in the parade last night. What astonished him was that this set was a nearperfect replica of the king’s court at Whitehill.
The courtiers had hurried out when the doors opened, busy taking up their positions, while Abramm stood entranced. Now he heard his own name blare across the arena, fractured miserably by the Tahg, and the crowd fell silent. With a glance at Trap beside him, he drew a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and stepped into the light.
It was only a moment before the laughter began, and once begun, it escalated quickly. People pointed and slapped each other’s backs; they screamed and squealed and howled, doubling over and falling on top of each other in their mirth. Abramm walked with his head high, his back straight, his eyes ahead, as he’d been taught as a child, ignoring them. Taunts flew out of the general melee. “Yelaki Kiriatha! Hashta kermaad!”
He slid into that place of calm detachment, as on the beach at Qarkeshan, thinking what a curious thing it was to be mocked and disdained by people who knew nothing about him. Even more curious that they should do it with such vehemence.