Arena

  She giggled as he growled and kissed her, one hand sliding over her skimpy tee.

  Embarrassed, Callie averted her gaze.

  LaTeisha rolled her eyes, and John the Viking said, “So did Pierce tell you where we’re going?”

  “To a canyon that cuts through to the Inner Realm?”

  “Two months max, and we’re home.” John slapped his thighs.

  “I understand the last party to try it ended up mostly dead.”

  “That won’t happen to us,” Garth said. “We got experience. And we’re tough. What about you, pretty one? Wanna come along?”

  “I, uh . . . was kind of set on checking the gates for myself.”

  “See?” Rowena elbowed him. “They always have to find out for themselves.”

  “Yeah, but so did we, babe.” Garth grinned at Callie. “So happens, you’re in luck. We’ll be stopping at Manderia for supplies b’fore we hit the canyon. If you can wait a few weeks, you can check out your gate there.”

  “Manderia? Is that a town?”

  “Yup. All the gates have towns. I guess people get that far and don’t know what else to do.”

  “Did ya hear about those folks over in Devon who’re building a dirt ramp?” John said. “Figure to walk right on up to the top.”

  “Morons,” Garth scoffed. “They’ll die of old age ’fore they finish. But we all gotta do what we gotta do. Me, I’ll keep searching. There’s a weakness somewhere in this bloodsucking prison, and I’m gonna find it.”

  He spoke with such sudden conviction Callie almost believed him. No one tittered or made snide remarks. They all just stared soberly into the fire.

  Finally John and Whit went to rattle through the equipment out in the dark. Talk started up again, revolving around the day—observations, plans, private talk in which Callie had no part. Presently LaTeisha and three others left the circle, replaced by the four who had been on watch, including the bald, red-bearded Thor.

  When it was time for bed, Rowena gave Callie a light brown sleeping bag that provided little padding against the hard ground, but amazed her with its ability to trap warmth. She’d hardly settled in before she had to peel the covers back. Eventually, though, she managed to get reasonably comfortable. Around her, soft rustlings faded to rhythmic breathing and, in some cases, snoring. The fire crackled, its smoke wafting intermittently over her, and somewhere an owl hooted.

  She watched Garth pore over his map, tracing a thick finger across its surface. Firelight gleamed on his black ponytail and beard and flickered across his strong brow. He reminded her of the Marlboro man— not as handsome, but powerful, capable, and utterly self-confident. He might be a little crude, but he was the kind of man you could respect— the kind of man other men followed.

  Funny how much safer she felt tonight than last.

  Yes, he was following a path opposite the one she’d been instructed to take, but if he and all his friends—who’d been trying to escape this arena for years—couldn’t find the true Benefactor, was it reasonable to think she could?

  In subsequent days Callie’s ambivalence mounted. Though she fully intended to read through the manual’s unencrypted portion before week’s end, she never found the time. Up at dawn and on the move till dusk, it was enough to eat and do her share of the camp chores before falling exhausted into her sleeping bag. And that was on the nights they actually made camp.

  Nor did it help that the few times she did wrangle a spare moment to read, she received more ridicule than enlightenment for her efforts. While she paged through fine print detailing biomes, ASBs, and hand-warmer construction, her companions complained incessantly about people not pulling their weight, and idiot rookies who always had to “see for themselves,” and the endlessly annoying mites that always emerged in force whenever the book was brought out.

  “The thing’s a nuisance,” Garth grumbled. “You should give it to the mites and be done with it. It’s not like you need it for anything.”

  He annoyed her with his pushing, but though she promised herself she would not let him discourage her, in the end the manual migrated inexorably to the bottom of her pack’s lowest section, forgotten and neglected. As Garth said, she had no immediate need for it, and the less she read it, the less she thought about reading it. Days turned to weeks until, eventually, even when the opportunity arose and the thought occurred, she found herself unable to muster the effort to get it out.

  What she did need to learn in order to survive in the wildlands off the white roads she received in full measure from her Outlander companions. Tough and canny, they knew all the tricks. Whether in trouble or at rest, they worked with an oiled efficiency that amazed her. They showed her how to recognize sand mite habitat and Trog spoor, how to spot redclaw runners under the sand, how to keep to the side of a ridge instead of walking along the top where she’d be sighted, how to run and drop when fired at, and how to handle SLuBs and rifles.

  For her part, she was certain they were impressed with her ability to match their rugged pace. After a few days of proving herself not an imbecile, she was assigned her turn at guard duty, and Garth started sending her on scouting forays with Pierce. She suspected this was because no one else would work with him. He’d been sullen since the Trog attack, speaking only when spoken to, and then only in monosyllables. Evenings he’d slip in to grab some food, then return to the fringes, keeping to himself.

  Garth dismissed it as sulking, but it was clearly more than that. As the weeks passed, Callie realized Pierce was a deeply troubled man, plagued by horrific nightmares during which he jerked and grimaced and screamed, or curled whimpering into fetal position. Often, his cries woke the others, who’d watch him intently for a while and then go back to sleep as if they were long used to it.

  One morning, after a particularly harrowing night, Callie asked Rowena and LaTeisha about it. The three of them were returning from the latrine, which at this site was positioned well up the hill from camp. She half expected them to shrug it off. Instead both women stopped and glanced at each other.

  Then Rowena said, “I don’t suppose he’d tell you himself, would he? Trogs had him for three weeks last winter.”

  Callie stared down the hill toward the jumble of camp, small figures moving back and forth as they packed. She felt suddenly cold.

  “We’d given him up for dead,” Rowena went on. “You know Trogs eat most everything they lay their hands on. But then we saw him two weeks later, shackled and walking among them. He’s given them a lot of trouble over the years—maybe they recognized him and were paying him back. They get a charge out of torture, you know. And they didn’t spare him a lick. You should see his back and chest.”

  “How did you get him away?”

  “We didn’t,” LaTeisha said. “We found him a week or so later wandering the desert, dehydrated, covered with burns and welts, one arm broken. He was almost catatonic. It took weeks to bring him around. He still won’t talk about it.”

  Rowena pulled a scalloped leaf off the oak at her side and ripped it into strips. “The worst part is, we never know how he’s going to react anymore. Sometimes he’s cool and collected, just like old times. He fights like a demon, and nothing can get to him. Sometimes he goes into a blind panic.” She stopped and went on more softly, “Sometimes he just curls up like a baby. That’s the worst.”

  She met Callie’s gaze. “I expect you’ve seen that one.”

  The sick feeling returned, along with the memory. It was tempered now with a new, sharper pain of empathy. “I’ve seen all three of them,” she whispered.

  “Well, then, you know. The only good to come of it is that he can sense them now when they’re near. It’s saved our necks more than once.”

  Rowena tossed the remainder of the leaf to the ground. “Garth’s right, though. Pierce is a liability. And it’ll be worse in the Inner Realm. They say its crawling with Trogs twice the size and strength of those we’ve got here. If he doesn’t get his act together, he won’t survive.”
/>
  She glanced at LaTeisha, then trudged down the hill. The black woman followed, leaving Callie behind, buffeted by memory—the sour stench, the massive body, the burning, inhuman eyes. . . .

  Three weeks at their mercy. Three weeks to be their plaything.

  I’ve misjudged him. Badly.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Crowded within the embrace of its thick outer guard wall, Manderia’s jumble of stone buildings, wood-shingled roofs and narrow streets seemed straight out of the Middle Ages. Quaint shops beneath second-story living quarters offered bakery items prepared in wood-burning ovens. Others peddled hand-tanned leather, handmade shoes, pottery, tin pots, and armor—there was even an apothecary stocked with herbs. Donkey- and goat-pulled wagons abounded, and chickens, cats, and scrawny dogs roamed streets where raw sewage ran down a central gutter. Smoke veiled the rooftops, and soot coated everything.

  The Outlanders planned to exchange their wares for supplies the afternoon of their arrival and depart by dawn the next day, so after settling into an inn near the east gate and staking out their sleeping quarters—the luck of the draw won Callie a berth in the stables—everyone set out on their various errands. Rowena’s responsibility was to show Callie the Gate.

  She’d gotten her first glimpse of it over a week ago, flashing on the cliff line like a beacon. Even from miles away, she’d felt an unexpected thrill—and then a rising, inexplicable attraction. More and more often she had found herself staring at it, transfixed by its shimmering beauty and longing to see it more closely. Ironically, now that she had arrived, she couldn’t see it at all, as Manderia’s grimy buildings obstructed the view. She’d see it again, Rowena assured her, when they reached the temple, perched on the hillside above.

  As they walked through the surprisingly busy city the implications of its existence began to dawn on Callie with foreboding weight. Primitive as it was by modern standards, its construction had required considerable planning, time, and effort. No fly-by-night affair, it was a place of roots, a place people had clearly settled into for good.

  “I guess they’ve resigned themselves to their fate,” Rowena said when Callie voiced her observation. “They probably think they’re making the best of it.”

  “You mean they’ve given up.”

  “That’s one way to put it. But remember, some of these folks have been here almost twenty years.” She glanced at Callie. “Blows your mind, doesn’t it?”

  It did indeed. So much so that Callie decided not to think about it further. They dodged a cartful of reeking cabbages as it trundled by, wooden wheels thundering over the cobbles. When they could hear again, she gestured at a storefront across the street, where machine-knit T-shirts and denim jeans were displayed in the window. “I thought our captors provided that stuff.”

  “They do. It just takes a lot of hands to get it out this far—traders selling to traders selling to traders. You know.”

  “But if the traders get it from the aliens, where do the aliens get it?”

  “Some people say there are cities of civilized Trogs in the Inner Realm that make it all.” Rowena stepped around a pile of fouled, chicken-pecked cabbages. “That’s possible, I guess, but I think it’s stolen from Earth. They steal people, after all, why not hiking boots?”

  “Did you say civilized Trogs?”

  Rowena grimaced over her shoulder. “Hard to believe, I know. Rumor says the trade route comes down through the canyon we’re looking for. I don’t know how ‘civilized’ they are, though, since I’ve heard they mainly trade in slaves.”

  “And this is where you guys want to go?”

  “If it is where all the goods come from, and the goods do come from Earth, well . . .” Rowena grinned. “Where there’s a way in, there’s a way out.”

  Before long the street emptied into a square ringed by dull-colored awnings. On the far side, midway up a wide stone stairway, stood a young man in a pale jumpsuit. He was raving something about death and Mander, but most of his words were rendered unintelligible by the extreme passion with which he shouted them. The crowd ignored him.

  “Watch this.” Rowena crossed the square and mounted the stairway. The man appeared not to notice. Even when she was about to run into him, he ignored her, continuing to rant as she walked right through him.

  Callie gasped, and Rowena stepped back into view, grinning broadly.

  “Hologram,” she said. “Isn’t that something?”

  Studying the image, Callie saw now that it wasn’t as substantial as she’d thought. The stair and doorway showed through first an arm, then a leg, then a shoulder. “Where does it come from?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest.” Rowena joined her again.

  “Mander is not the way out!” the image screamed. “Don’t let his lies ensnare you!”

  “Not from the temple, I’d guess,” she added as they left the square. “I’ve heard the aliens project them to confuse us.”

  They came finally to the gate road. Cutting straight through the city, its humped center and spongy white surface shed dirt, sewage, and debris like Teflon. Despite the surroundings and the heavy travel it received, it remained as white as the one Callie had first been deposited upon weeks ago. Two times wider than any Manderian street, it channeled a cool, fresh breeze and led them to the square where the walls of Manderia met the walls of the temple. Various flimsy booths stood outside the doubled gates, offering trinkets, modern clothing, and greasy-smelling food. Past that, the white road continued on, bisecting an empty greensward.

  According to Rowena, every gate had a temple, every temple a benefactor, and every benefactor an angle. Some demanded service for their help; others required sacrifice or offerings—usually of items found only in the Outlands.

  They passed through the double gates unhindered and crossed the yard. Stairs led to a colonnaded court crisscrossed with second-story, vine-clad walkways, but Rowena turned onto a secondary path before they got that far. The new path descended a forested hillside to a meadow, where it ribboned through silvery grasses to the cliff base.

  Callie stood at the meadow’s edge and tipped her head back, gazing up the soaring rock face. How high was it? A thousand feet? Two thousand? The cliff whirled, and she shut her eyes. When she opened them, the precipice still loomed over her, still very, very vertical. She could just barely see the Gate.

  About eighty feet up something moved, and she made out a trio of men, hitched together with a bright green rope. “They’re climbing it?” she gasped.

  “Yeah.” Rowena squinted up at them. “Won’t work, though. Rock gets crumbly at about two hundred feet.”

  “You speaking from experience?”

  Rowena nodded. “No one ever makes it past two hundred fifty. You ready to go back?”

  “Let’s check the end of the trail.”

  The pavement flared where it met the cliff, flanked by a jumble of fallen sandstone slabs. Etched into the rock at eye level was the familiar trio of interlocking circles now arranged around a central t. Callie fingered the carved grooves, then gazed upward again. The view was even more overwhelming from here. Carefully she studied the walls, the rock slabs, even the pavement. She had no idea what she hoped to find. A control panel? Cracks betraying a hidden passage? Some sort of instruction plaque?

  “People say this is a map.” Rowena traced the symbol with her index finger. “Some guy over at the Lunville gate made all these calculations— tangents, sun angles, the distances between the t and the center points of the circles. Supposedly if you added them together and went in the direction of the tangent to the cosine or something, you’d find a secret door. Far as I know he never has gotten it right.”

  Callie stepped back and scanned the cliff again. The climbers dislodged a brief shower of rock. A breeze whispered through the grass behind her and birdcalls echoed brightly in the quiet.

  Slowly she turned, grit squeaking under the soles of her boots. There’s nothing here. There’s really nothing here. Her gaze
swept the fallen slabs, the shimmering meadow, the dark forest cradling the temple’s white walls, and then, once more, the rough, ragged cliff shooting straight up from her feet.

  How could they do this? How could they put her down here, tell her to find this place, and have it be impossible to reach? It was outrageous, even downright cruel.

  But everyone had been telling her that for weeks. It was the whole reason her new friends were looking for their canyon.

  “Seen enough?”

  Callie drew a shuddery breath and tucked her anger back into its box. As she glanced around one last time she was surprised to see a man seated amidst the boulders. His robe matched the rocks, but his skin was tanned mahogany. He sat ramrod straight, legs pretzeled yoga style, eyes closed. A sparrow landed on his head, pecked at his lank hair, and flew away. He never moved.

  “A Sitter,” Rowena said. “Every gate has a few of them. There’s another to his right. And one behind the rock on his left.”

  “What’re they doing?”

  “Waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “If I knew that, maybe I’d be sitting with them.”

  A shout rang out from above, followed by a sudden rush of pebbles. Callie looked up and saw one of the climbers dangling at the end of his rope, bobbing against the wall as his companions called down worriedly from above. Little by little he stopped swinging, and soon hammer blows rang against the rock as he began to climb back up.

  “Idiots,” Rowena huffed. “Can we go now?”

  “I’d like to see the temple.”

  “What?”

  “The manual says there’s only one real Benefactor. Maybe Man-der’s the one.”

  “Maybe I’m the one.”

  Callie frowned at her. Rowena scowled back.

  “You said yourself,” Callie reminded her, “that you hadn’t investigated this temple.”

  “I don’t need to investigate it. It’s obvious they require some sort of service or there wouldn’t be a temple.”

  “Well, why do people go along with it?” Callie asked.