Ahead, the guards had gone through all the bags and sacks and, having pulled off some hapless woman’s veil, now conferred among themselves. After a moment, one of them led her into the tunnel, and not even the men she was with protested.
The line started moving again, and before long Carissa and her companions were shuffling up to face the soldiers. The guards’ uniforms were fancier than she was used to seeing-trimmed with gold braid and piping-and huge purple flags emblazoned with black moons flanked the tunnel opening, proclaiming Old Xorofin’s status as the administrative heart of Beltha’adi’s empire, but beyond that, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other Esurhite city she’d encountered in this wretched land. Dark, dirty, and stinking, right down to the familiar stench of rotting flesh now wafting out of the tunnel. Esurhite jurisprudence demanded public display of its sentences; thus at every city’s main gates there stood a grisly promenade of impaled miscreants, some still alive and moaning, others long dead, but all reminding visitor and native alike of the severity of Esurhite judgment.
A wave of aversion flooded her. For a moment she thought she absolutely could not walk through another one of those gauntlets of death. She was certain if she tried she’d go insane with the horror of it. She drew a deep, shaky breath and horror transmuted into anger. What was the matter with these people that they couldn’t bury their dead? That they had to decorate their cities with rotting corpses? They were all mad. Mad!
Cooper handed their travel papers to the sour-faced officer and submitted to the pat down initiated by the officer’s subordinate. Philip and Eber were also searched for hidden weapons, but the women were left alone. Their two small bags were pawed through and cast aside, and just when Carissa was sure they’d passed muster, the officer in charge asked about Newbold. Something about trailing hounds and Beltha’adi.
Cooper replied calmly, in flawless Tahg, having absorbed the language as thoroughly as he’d absorbed his trader’s role. The animal was an old friend, past breeding age, he said. If the Great One wished to have him, he would gladly give him up, although he had much finer, more vigorous animals at home in his kennel that the Supreme Commander might find more to his liking.
The guard scowled at the dog, and the dog ignored him, his droopy brown eyes as dull looking as ever. With his aged white face, Newbold certainly did not appear a creature befitting a Supreme Commander. But with these men, one never knew. Most of them were so desperate for advancement they’d seize upon anything with the least bit of promise.
Beside her, Philip stood stiffly, as tall as Carissa herself now, though he hadn’t yet lost the leggy look of adolescence. He’d proved himself a promising swordsman of late, hardly unexpected for the son of Master Larrick, and if he’d had a sword, Carissa did not doubt he’d be on the verge of unsheathing it. Cooper had warned him this might happen, made him agree not to protest if they took the dog. But now, in the face of it, she was not sure he would comply.
Fortunately it did not come to that. With a grunt, the officer thrust the yellowed papers into Cooper’s hands and motioned them into the stinking tunnel as he turned to his next victims.
By the time they reached the inn Cooper had been instructed to seek, Carissa’s mood had darkened from anxious, impatient discontent to a fullblown foulness that had her snapping and spitting at everyone. When Peri tried to help her remove the veil and headcloth, she slapped the girl away and yanked them off herself, angrily tossing them in a heap on the ancient, filthy carpet, despite the likelihood a staffid-or a rat-would find its way into their folds. And when the girl brought her the food they had sent upfish stew heavily laced with onions-she shoved the bowl away with such force it hit Peri’s arm and tipped over, spewing its noxious contents across the table. That set off an eruption of vitriol that ended with the girl cringing and weeping in the corner.
Which only triggered another flare of annoyance and a stern order to be silent. Peri complied as best she could, and in the ensuing quiet Carissa’s anger turned to a self-loathing so bitter she nearly wept herself.
“Forgive me,” she said finally. “You deserved none of that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
It’s this city, she thought. Dark and cramped and stinking. Swags of onions everywhere you look, sewage in the streets, the guards and the mist and the people always afraid and suspicious. And those horrid statues of Khrell! Squat, uglyfaced little men with fires burning in their bellies, they sat on every corner. She hated them with a passion that was truly irrational. As if they symbolized all she detested about this land.
Peri ventured from the corner and timidly cleaned up the mess, then took the bowl away, returning with a fresh portion of stew, a piece of dark bread, and a cup of the vile Esurhite kassik. With most of the water unfit to drink, the bitter, mildly alcoholic poor-man’s brew was their only alternative. Carissa loathed it. But she drank it.
Cooper strode in a few minutes later, his face tight and angry.
“What now?” she asked as he dropped onto the grimy, musty pillows across from her.
“The boy. He’s gone off to find his brother. Probably be picked up before the night’s half over.” He pulled the corba of stiff green felt from his head and threw it on the table before him. But if that’s what he wants, so be it. It’s no concern of ours now.”
Peri set his food before him, and he picked up the bread, pulled off a hunk, and dipped it into the stew. Only when the bowl was half empty did he speak again. “Seers say the rains’ll come early this year. Maybe as soon as three weeks.”
Kinlock had been wrong about there never being any wind here. For two or three weeks in late spring, land and sea alike were lashed by a furious, nearcontinuous succession of storms. Violent winds and pounding rain blew off roofs, knocked over trees, and turned dry wadis into angry, churning rivers that flooded the lowlands and stopped all travel for the duration.
She tore off a piece of bread but couldn’t bring herself to dip it in the oily stew. “We’ll be gone by then.”
“Will we?” He regarded her from beneath gray-sprinkled brows, his face eerily underlit by the oil lamp on the table.
She ate her bread and said nothing.
“They say some kind of sickness broke out in the Sorite sector a couple days ago.”
“Probably onion poisoning.”
He cocked a brow.
She gestured at the swags on the walls. “They live with them, breathe them, eat them. It can’t be good.”
“They’re saying it’s plague.”
“Hmm.” She ate another piece of bread, grimaced as she chased it down with kassik. “So what have you learned about him? Will he be on display tonight?”
“The innkeeper’s sent someone to find out.” He fell silent, concentrating on his eating, and she felt his disapproval, radiating from him alongside the heat from the lamp between them.
Finally his bowl and plate were empty. When Peri came to take them away, Carissa sent her mostly full bowl, as well. As the door closed behind her, Cooper spoke. “We shouldn’t be here, milady. Whether he wins or loses tomorrow, there’s sure to be an uprising. They’ll close the gates if that happens. Start in with the searches.”
“Then we’ll just have to see him tonight, before it all starts.”
He blew out a breath of frustration. “Lass, the White Pretender is not your brother. He-“
“We don’t know that. If-“
“We do?” he roared, coming up off the pillows to glare over the table at her. She stared at him, shocked.
After a moment he sagged back. “You do,” he added softly.
Suddenly she was shaking, her stomach pulled into a hard knot. Suddenly she saw the fear that had fueled her tantrum earlier-the cold, keening terror that Cooper was right.
Game authorities claimed the White Pretender was a real Kiriathan prince, but Game authorities were renowned for bending the truth if it served a monetary-or political-purpose. Many believed they were doing so now. Why else was the Preten
der always costumed, wigged, and painted whenever he was in public? Why else was he always whisked away so swiftly to a private cell after the contests? Rumor said the man was blond and blue-eyed, but no one Cooper had spoken with had ever seen him uncostumed.
“The Pretender’s a born warrior, lass,” Cooper said gently. “How can he be Abramm? You of all people know what your brother was, why he took those vows. He was a gentle boy-sensitive and smart-but he was not strong.”
“Yes he was. He was? Remember the time we tried to run away to sea? And everything went wrong and I broke my arm and he rowed me all the way back from Bertran’s Isle in that storm? He saved my life that night.”
`And nearly lost his own.”
She looked down at her bite-marred hands, twisting one of her gold rings round and round. It was true. Abramm had been sick for weeks after that adventure.
Her retainer sighed again. “Just for the sake of argument, let’s suppose you are right. Let’s suppose it is him. Did you think to walk up to Lord Katahn and simply buy him free? It won’t happen. Whoever this Pretender is, he’s beyond the status of a simple gladiator. The way he challenges the Supreme Commander, mocking his claims of divine destiny? And with the Dorsaddi calling him Deliverer?” He snorted. “I’m not big on politics, but even I can see the man has to die. And there’s not a blessed thing we can do to stop it.”
A mist had sprung up around him, and her throat ached fiercely. “I won’t believe that,” she whispered. “There’s got to be something.”
“Now you’re sounding like Philip, with his talk of Eidon making us a way,” Cooper said. There was, for once, no mockery in his voice. Only profound sadness. He shook his head. “Think, lass. Do you really believe little Abramm could have become this man who is renowned for his skill at killing people?”
She could not speak, could hardly breathe. The mist grew thicker.
He reached across the table to touch her hand. “It isn’t him, Carissa. You have to face it-Abramm died on the galley ship. And this White Pretender is exactly what his name implies-a pretender.”
The ache in her throat sharpened to knifelike pain, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She swallowed but could not find her voice. Finally she looked back to her hands now in her lap, rings glinting softly in the shadow.
A knock at the door saved her from having to speak. It was a man from the inn. Cooper went out to talk to him and returned shortly, settling onto the pillows without speaking.
“It was about the Pretender, wasn’t it?” she prodded.
He picked up his cup of kassik, sipped from it, and finally nodded. “He’ll be fighting tonight, as we guessed. A last-chance, all-comers challenge.”
He sipped again. The lamp flickered between them, and from the great room below came the sound of muffled laughter and off-key singing.
“I want to go,” Carissa whispered.
Cooper shook his head. “The innsman said there’ll be no seating-not even standing room-by now.”
“We can catch him along the way, then. When he goes back to the warriors’ compound.”
“He won’t be going back. They’re keeping him and the Infidel in the Val’Orda itself. To forestall possible rescue attempts.”
He fell silent, watching her. She studied her hands a moment more, then lifted her head. “I want to see him, Coop.”
“Lass-“
“I have to.”
He set the cup down, pain furrowing his brow. But what difference will it make when after tomorrow he’ll be dead, regardless?”
She swallowed down the lump in her throat, but her voice trembled nonetheless. “Because if it is him, I want to see him-at least see him once more before-” Her throat closed, and she looked into her lap again, blinking back tears.
After a moment Cooper sighed. “Very well.”
The great Val’Orda stood at the midst of Old Xorofin, linked by a long plaza to an Ophiran temple now devoted to the worship of Khrell. Unlike the city, which was disappointingly small and dirty, the amphitheater lived up to its reputation of greatness. Five concentric rings of torchlight marked its quintuple stories, illuminating the series of bas-relief arches that encircled each level. Some framed niched statues; others looked more like openings to interior chambers. Flags hung limply among the torches at the top, interspersed with huge, dark bird-forms perched on slender pillars. At first sight it stole the breath and numbed the mind, so big it was, looming over them like a glowing, gargantuan crown.
Largest and finest of all the southland amphitheaters, the Val’Orda was one of the few remaining wonders of Ophir’s architectural prowess. It was here that the Games’ final championships were always played out, here that the strongest warriors triumphed, here that all the greatest contests in the history of the Games had been fought. Tomorrow, it would be here that the insolent White Pretender and his Infidel received their long-due comeuppance at the hands of Beltha’adi’s personal guard, the vaunted Broho.
The people were out in force, swirling around it, jostling among the myriad merchants’ booths that encircled it and clogged the great plaza before it. The aroma of barbecued goat, fried spima, and sweet, sweet foaming fig filled the air. Musicians, dancers, and jugglers vied with the peddlers banging their pots for the crowd’s attention. From time to time a lion’s roar echoed over the merrymaking.
It soon became apparent that the innsman had been right about their not being able to see any of the matches. People stood in thick, pressing masses before all the main gates. Only the gate leading down into the warrens beneath the arena floor offered egress, and though Cooper fought her all the way, in the end that’s where they went.
If Carissa thought the streets of Xorofin stank, it was nothing compared to the compound of manure, blood, oil, sweat, and death that awaited in the warrens’ low stone corridors. Various rooms bathed in the warm light of orange fish-bladder lanterns held ranks of iron cells for men and beasts alike. Here and there, long ramps led up to gates opening into the arena itself, each incline clogged with hopeful spectators. No one seemed to know for sure which one the Pretender would exit from, however, until they found Philip and Newbold.
The pair stood near the north ramp’s base, and spying them, Philip waved them over.
“I think they’ll come out here, milady,” he said, gesturing at the heavy wooden gates atop the ramp. Those nearest were peering between the cracks where the doors met and offering commentary to those behind.
“There are at least six gates, Phil,” Carissa said. “How can you be sure?”
“Because this is the way they went in.”
`And how do you know that?”
He smiled at Newbold. The dog looked more alert and interested than she’d ever seen him, though that was hardly surprising given the situation. The lions alone had to be of interest to him.
“You’re saying he tracked your brother through all this?”
“I told you his nose is good. And the track was fresher when we first got here.”
“Perhaps we should go to the last gate,” Cooper said from behind her. “That way we’ll have two of them covered. Just in case.”
She glanced back at him, wondering at the annoyance his suggestion roused in her. It was eminently practical, but she didn’t like it all the same. Newbold had already proved himself once, and even if this tracking task was admittedly difficult to the point of straining believability, still it was something more than random chance.
“We’ll stay here,” she said.
Behind her, Cooper sighed his disapproval.
It was a good decision from one standpoint-if they’d gone, they wouldn’t have reached the other gate in time anyway. For they had no sooner settled in to wait than a great shout arose from the arena. It went on and on, so she knew the match must have ended.
Excitement dried her mouth and dampened her hands.
At the door, people hissed and cheered and groaned. She ached to see what was happening, suddenly consumed with fear that if it was Ab
ramm, he would be killed right at the last moment….
She could hear the Taleteller intoning something beyond the warrens’ din but could not discern the words. Her anxiety was at fever pitch when the doors ahead trundled open, pulleys and rollers squeaking. The crowd’s roar beat at her ears and throbbed in her chest. The group of dark-tunicked handlers who had stood foremost among the gathering atop the ramp hurried into the arena, returning shortly with two men, one in white, the other in green.
Carissa’s heart froze. The one in white was about Abramm’s height-but he was backlit from the lights of the arena, his face in shadow, and all she could make out was the white paint and the thin, laughing lips of a court fool. He was big, too-broad across the chest and shoulders, his build more akin to Gillard’s than Abramm’s. Blood stained his white ruffled doublet.
Beside her, Philip clasped her arm, excitement raising the pitch of his voice. “That’s him?” he cried. “It’s Trap for sure?”
But she had eyes only for the Pretender, straining to see past the paint and the shadow and the long curly wig, straining for a glimpse of the eyes. Someone swirled a dark cloak around his shoulders, pulled up the cowl, and the face was lost altogether. Others had done the same to the Infidel, but she hardly spared him a glance.
The handlers pushed forward now, surrounding their prize warriors with weapons bared. The crowd parted, screaming the Pretender’s name. Carissa held her breath. He approached. Only a single line of onlookers stood between them as he came even with her, startling her with his sheer physical size. She wanted to shove forward and rip away the cowl. Instead her eyes fastened on the only part of him she could see-his right hand. The strong, long-fingered hand was light-skinned, as a Kiriathan’s would be, but callused and scarred and stained now with fresh blood.
Then he was by her, and she saw only wide, dark-cloaked shoulders and the crowd closing behind him and his guards. Moments later, as he reached the bottom of the ramp and turned into the corridor, he disappeared from her sight.
She stood there, buffeted by those who surged around her, choking on disappointment. He had been close enough to touch, yet she still did not know if he was Abramm.