Arena

  “She told me to go back to Manderia,” Callie said.

  “Maybe you should. Maybe we all should.” He paused to study the rock walls looming around them and rubbed the back of his neck. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Meg said it’s a trap.”

  He looked at her sharply, his hand still on his neck.

  She had a sudden suspicion. “It’s not . . . you aren’t feeling—” “Trogs? Not yet.”

  Garth and Rowena had another shouting match that evening. It didn’t last long, but it soured the mood, and most everyone turned in early, Callie included. Her sleep was fitful, though, plagued by unsettling dreams. She was motoring along the white road in a golf cart when Garth appeared beside her at the wheel. Suddenly the road turned steeply upward and she gripped his arm in fear, only to find he’d become her father, who told her not to be a baby and stomped on the accelerator. The cart engine squealed, and they lurched up the vertical road until gravity overwhelmed them, pulling the cart off backward, tumbling down and down and—

  She screamed and woke up.

  When the screams kept on she realized they weren’t hers. The whole camp had roused, in fact, some resting on propped elbows, others sitting up, clutching their weapons and staring at Pierce. He thrashed and raved on his bedroll, and for the first time, Callie made out some of his words. “No! Leave her alone. Leave her—noooo!” The last word keened out in an agonizing scream that abruptly cut off.

  No one moved. Pierce lay on his back, panting, one arm flung up across his face. Callie felt sick and cold. What had he endured?

  After that, sleep was impossible. The hard ground pressed against her hips and shoulders, and she couldn’t get comfortable, could only lie there, mind racing from worry to worry. It was a relief when dawn finally came.

  They crossed the Fire River using a hidden shelf tucked behind a waterfall. By noon they had settled at the juncture of two rugged canyons, waiting there while Garth, Whit, and Thor went downstream to Hardluck. They returned several hours later with the confirmation Whit had sought, Garth strutting and crowing his confidence. In three days, he declared—a week at most—they would reach the rim.

  The trio brought back flasks of ale with which to celebrate, and before long things got wild and crazy. Callie sat in the shadows and watched. Afternoon cloud cover had turned the world gray, misting them with a light drizzle, and whether because of that or her dreams or the two Watchers she’d seen earlier that day, she found herself reluctantly sharing Pierce’s sense of approaching disaster.

  The next day they set out for the elusive Canyon of the Damned. As Garth consulted his map they crossed one deep ravine after another until they came to what the map labeled Thornwall. It was aptly named, for as far as they could see, thick, thorny growth scrawled across the slopes, curling around a graveyard of fallen trees. Sometimes they walked hundreds of yards without touching the ground, clambering over dead trunks and thickly matted branches. By midmorning Callie’s dragon-hide vest was a net of scratches, the sleeves of her T-shirt torn in a dozen places. Her hands, arms, and face were bloody, and her right knee throbbed from when she had slipped and slammed it against a hidden log. She was battered, bruised, and exhausted, and her only consolation was that she was not alone.

  Around noon they dropped into another canyon and came to a deep, swift-running river.

  Pierce forded it first, riding the current downstream and across, and then returning to play anchor on the opposite bank as everyone else pulled themselves over. Afterward, as he and Garth stood together on the bank coiling up the rope and speaking quietly, Callie grasped something of the relationship they must have had before Pierce’s encounter with the Trogs. Garth had been on a downslide after the failure of his mountain expedition, reviled and deserted by most of his friends. But not Pierce. It said a lot for Pierce’s sense of loyalty and courage—maybe for the stock Garth put in him, as well. Or had at one time, anyway.

  Leaving the river, they climbed again into the matted underbrush and fallen logs. After hours of toiling up and down and around Callie was ready to drop. More than that, she understood clearly how impossible it would be to find one’s way through this nightmare web of drainages without a map. They spent a chilly, miserable night trying to get comfortable on beds of brambles. With no place to build a fire, they ate trail rations and drank cold water. Sleep, difficult before, became impossible.

  The morning dawned damp and colorless, and the group roused their stiff, protesting bodies to continue on. Mutiny rumbled in the ranks, as doubts about the map’s validity were voiced with increasing frequency. The only thing stopping an eruption was the fact that going back was unthinkable.

  And then, as the afternoon waned, they slogged over yet another ridge to find their troubles were just beginning. The thorn wall finally ended in an open meadow, beyond which rose the cleft they sought— an immense dark slash carved into the bowels of the earth. Massive curtains of stone overlapped in a gray giant’s corridor hung with shifting mist. Distant harrylike shapes soared through its ragged fringes, and they could just make out the trail, snaking threadlike across the sheer walls until it disappeared into the clouds.

  One by one they staggered to a stop, gaping in astonishment and dismay.

  Callie swayed with dizziness. The thought of climbing that edifice, of perching on that narrow trail with all that space below made her stomach churn and her hands go cold and damp.

  It was a long time before anyone spoke.

  Then Rowena exploded. “A road? There’s a road here and we’ve been busting our rear ends for two days over all this”—she motioned to the rear—“garbage?”

  “That’s not s’posed to be there.” Garth pulled out his map.

  Map or not, Callie could plainly see the wide earthen path beaten into the grass along the meadow’s outer edge—headed back the direction they had come.

  “It’s not on the map,” Garth proclaimed.

  “I thought the stupid map was supposed to have been confirmed,” Rowena snapped.

  “It was. And anyway, why assume that road would’ve helped us? It probably peters out in a few miles.”

  “Ha! It probably heads right into Hardluck.”

  “Aw, you’re just looking for something else to gripe about. If you don’t like it, go back. You can always kiss up to one of those wimps at the temple.”

  “Better than kissing up to you!”

  Rowena stalked down the hill toward the road. The rest of the group shifted uncomfortably, exchanging uneasy glances. Then Pierce struck off toward a group of trees on the far side of the meadow, triggering a general exodus. Before long they’d made camp, their fires snapping cheerily beneath bubbling stew pots.

  The group was uncharacteristically quiet that evening. Sight of the canyon had sobered them, Callie most of all. She had expected a boulder-clogged cleft in whose bottom they would walk, not this ghastly, sheer-walled gash with its spider’s thread of a trail. The appeal of returning to Manderia beset her with a vengeance, countered immediately by the knowledge that she’d never be able to find her way back. Not over the terrain they’d just come through. And she couldn’t imagine Garth agreeing to copy his map just so she could go back.

  There’s the road, though, she thought. Rowena had not yet returned from her investigation. Maybe it did lead to Hardluck.

  She stood up.

  And sat down again. How can you be such a coward? The only reason you’re considering this is because you’re scared of the heights. Which is pretty sorry, don’t you think?

  Rowena had still not returned by the time Callie finished eating, so she went out into the dusk to look for her. Following the road along the base of the ridge they’d labored over earlier that afternoon, she came eventually to the edge of the thorn wall, and sure enough, the road tunneled straight into it, dead and living branches woven into dense walls around a passage whose end she could not see.

  “Having second thoughts?” Garth’s voice startled her,
and she turned to find him coming up behind her.

  “Yes.”

  “Reckon you’re not the only one,” he said. “But this doesn’t look much better.”

  “No.” Rubbing her arms against the chill, Callie started back toward camp, uneasily aware of the fact that they were alone out here.

  “The hardest part’s behind us, though,” he said, moving in step beside her.

  Not for me. She considered telling him about her acrophobia. It helped to have one person who understood—a “safe person,” one therapist had called it. Someone to talk sense to her when the fear overwhelmed her, someone to cling to until the panic passed—or get her to safety should she need it.

  “We’ll be at the top in a day,” Garth said. “Two at the most.”

  “And then what?”

  He smiled at her. “Why, I’ll walk you through the exit gate myself.”

  “But you don’t know where it is.”

  “I’ll know when I need to. I can feel it.” He gazed up the road toward the ominous cleft, obscured by the gathering gloom above the trees and the slope of the meadow. “Of all the things I’ve done, all the ways I’ve tried to escape, this one feels most right. Come on.” He caught her hand and led her faster along the road. “I wanna show you something.”

  They passed the camp and the trees, then crossed a grassy slope downside of the road and entered another grove of spindly pines. “I figure they put us here to test us, see,” he said as they entered the wood, “to find out which of us will figure it out.”

  She regarded him doubtfully.

  “It makes perfect sense. The stories about the Inner Realm, the fact that every single false benefactor has forbidden his followers to try the cleft, all the mumbo jumbo about not being able to get out on your own. It’s a ploy.”

  And Meg? Was she a ploy?

  “And even if it turns out we do have to go through one of those Benefactor’s gates, at least we’ll be up there. Ah, here we are.”

  She came around him to find a quiet glade and a gleaming pool of water. In the gathering darkness it glowed with a green phosphorescence. “It’s beautiful!” she cried.

  “Warm, too. Feel it.”

  She dropped to her knees. “Incredible! How did you know about this?”

  “It’s on the map.” He sat on the grass beside her.

  “And you didn’t tell the others?”

  “I’ll tell ’em in the morning.” He leaned back on his elbows, grinning at her.

  A thrill went through her, excitement and fear—and a small voice telling her she was a fool.

  “Do you ever wear your hair loose?”

  His regard was so frank and suggestive, Callie blushed and averted her eyes. “Sometimes. It’s not very practical out here, though. I’d probably get it caught in a bush and have to cut it off to get free.”

  “And what a shame that would be.” He fingered the end of her braid, rubbing the plaited texture. She sat very still, galvanized by his touch, its indirectness all the more stimulating.

  “Rowena had long hair when I met her. She cut it off a few years ago.” He lay there, tugging at her braid, then said, “There are no bushes around here. Least not that you’d get caught in.”

  She shifted uneasily and glanced around. “Maybe we’d better go back.”

  He released her braid and sat up. “Maybe we should.”

  Somehow he had gotten very close to her. Blood pounded through her again. A wild, sweet song surged to override her voice of reason. You’re getting in over your head. You really don’t want to do this.

  Garth watched her intently and, when she didn’t move away, leaned forward and kissed her.

  CHAPTER

  10

  He pushed her to the ground, kissing her hungrily. Her body responded with treacherous enthusiasm, her flesh burning, blood pounding. But when his hand slid under her shirt she came to her senses.

  What am I doing?

  She pulled her lips from his. “Garth, wait.”

  He kissed her neck.

  “I don’t want—this isn’t what—”

  His mouth closed over hers—she pulled away again. “Garth, stop. I don’t want to do this.”

  He pushed himself up to gape at her with glazed eyes. “What?”

  “I don’t want to do this.”

  He stared at her stupidly, then bent to kiss the hollow of her throat. “Are you kidding? You can’t lead a man to the water hole and not let him drink.”

  “I didn’t lead you here.”

  “Oh, yes you did, babe.” He nibbled her ear. “You want this just as much as I do.”

  “Come on, Garth.” She pressed her hands against his chest, trying to wriggle out from under him. Her efforts only seemed to impassion him. He told her how beautiful she was, how much he loved her, how he couldn’t live without her. His caresses grew rougher, his breathing ragged, and she began to struggle in earnest, but it was like being pinned by the Trog. Apprehension uncoiled in her belly.

  Then, out in the dark wood, a branch cracked, followed by a soft voice. “She said no, Garth.”

  Garth froze, and Callie pushed away from him, gaining her feet as she frantically attempted to straighten her clothing. Her face burned and her hands shook.

  Garth stood up, frowning into the darkness. “Pierce?”

  A figure detached itself from the shadows and approached.

  “We need to talk,” Pierce said. His eyes flicked to Callie, his face like stone.

  Mortified, she whirled and plunged into the trees. She stopped at the forest’s edge, panting, willing the frenetic pace of her heart to slow. Atop the rising meadow, campfires flickered against a backdrop of spruce, casting giant macabre shadows over the Outlanders. She felt cold and dirty and horribly guilty, for even though she knew she had not led Garth on, she had responded.

  She shut her eyes and rubbed her face with both hands. Never in all her life had she responded to a man as she had just responded to Garth Copeland. The way she had leaned into his early caresses, pressed herself against him . . . She groaned in misery, hating herself.

  Worst of all was Pierce’s expression as his gaze flicked to her and away in that dreadful mask of stone.

  She’d never be able to look him in the eye again.

  The low staccato of argument that had been chattering in the forest behind her grew suddenly loud. Before she could pick out any words, it broke off, and someone came thrashing through the woods toward her. Pierce burst from the shadows to her left and stalked up the hill toward camp. She expected Garth to follow. When he didn’t, she climbed the hill herself.

  Pierce was stuffing his things into his pack, his face tight with anger. She stopped at the line where light met darkness, hoping he wouldn’t notice her, and he didn’t. His things stowed, he slung the pack over his shoulders, picked up his rifle, and disappeared into the night, every eye in camp upon him.

  He’s leaving, she thought, alarmed. I should go after him. Go with him.

  Then Garth appeared at her side, grinning. “Sorry if I got carried away.”

  “Carried away? You’d have raped me if it wasn’t for Pierce.”

  She turned her back, but he jerked her close and whispered, “It wouldn’t have been rape, babe, and you know it.”

  Trembling, she tore free and stalked away.

  “I love a woman who plays hard to get,” he called after her.

  Her stomach was a hard knot by the time she reached her bedroll. At first she could only sit there, caught in a matrix of conflicting emotions, too scared to leave, too outraged to stay.

  “I wonder what that’s about,” LaTeisha drawled, breaking into her distress.

  Callie looked up to see LaTeisha sitting nearby on her own bedroll. Her SLuB lay in pieces before her, but her attention was on something across the camp. Callie looked around to see Garth stand up from where he’d been talking to Lokai and Thor and walk to his tent. Behind him, the two men frowned, then Lokai arose and lurched into the
forest.

  “Garth’s driving folks away left and right,” LaTeisha muttered. “You gonna be next?”

  “What?” Callie returned her attention to her friend.

  “Rowena, Pierce, Lokai. They’re bailing like rats off a sinking ship.”

  “I don’t think Lokai’s leaving. He didn’t take his things.”

  “Maybe he’s just going to take a leak. Sure looked like Garth was chewing him and Thor out, though. Or were they just getting the fallout?” She cocked her head at Callie. “Did he make his move on you, and Pierce interrupted him?”

  Callie’s face flamed.

  LaTeisha laughed. “Guessed that one right, did I? Don’t be shocked, honey. We were all waiting for it.” She wagged a piece of the SLuB at Callie. “And don’t think Pierce didn’t know exactly what was going on.”

  “You mean he was spying on us?”

  “I wouldn’t call it spying, but if he broke it up, it wasn’t any accident. I imagine he’d call it a rescue.”

  No question it was that.

  “I see you would, too,” LaTeisha said.

  What am I, an open book to everyone? She turned away and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  “And I thought you were falling for him,” LaTeisha added.

  Callie shuddered. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Would you have listened?”

  “Yes!”

  LaTeisha snapped the SLuB barrel into the handgrip housing and rubbed it with a cloth. “Okay, then, here’s more—rejection eggs him on. It won’t seem like it at first, but you’re a challenge now. Specially with Rowena gone.”

  “Great.” Callie lay back on her bedroll, resting her head on her hands.

  “He can be very charming,” LaTeisha added.

  “You speaking from experience?”

  Her friend snorted. The pieces of the SLuB snicked and clicked as she reassembled them.

  “How long before he gives up?” Callie asked.