Skymaster, p.10
Skymaster, page 10
part #3 of The Guildmaster Saga Series
"No spark in you," the Northerner said from the darkness. "Like this one. You'll never last."
Rasim turned to see her gesture at another boy, perhaps a few years older than Rasim, who sat huddled at the back of the cage. He was both small and quiet, and his coloring, even in the faded light, was extraordinarily beautiful. His hair and eyes were black, and his golden-toned skin had a translucent quality that gave it an unearthly depth. His cheeks glowed with red warmth, as if he was lit from within, and he looked, all in all, like he had already given up his grip on this world. Siliaria would welcome him, Rasim thought, and then, as the boy shifted, saw that he was draped with a horse's pelt. Only the Shenryalan clans wore those. Siliaria wouldn't come for this boy, then. His gods would be led by the Horse King, whom the Shenryalans said ran across the sky each night and lit the stars with each fall of his hooves.
"I'm Rasim," he said to the Shenryalan boy, and while the boy didn't answer, the Northerner did. "He doesn't talk. Can't or won't, I don't know, but he doesn't. Won't fight, either. He sits against the wall of the arena, and nobody dares come close to him."
"Why is that?" Rasim looked at the woman, who shrugged.
"One part the way he looks, all gold and ghostly, I reckon, and he's only little when he stands." She was silent a moment. "And maybe one part that there's a Northern giant with a blade between him and them."
"He's your new partner?"
"Aye, he's my partner now."
"So you'll turn on him, when it's your life or his?"
The big woman shrugged again. "Maybe. Or maybe I'll win the hearts of the crowd by defending him, and we'll both go free."
Rasim straightened, his spine scraping away from the rough walls. "What?"
"It's the sweet they dangle for us, to keep us fighting. Once in a while, a crowd favorite is granted their freedom. Almost nobody lives long enough to become a favorite, though, never mind fight their way free."
"Have you? You've been here long enough to betray at least one partner."
The woman gave him a hard look. "They know me."
"But do they love you?"
Her jaw tightened and Rasim turned a faint smirk toward the sands outside. "Not since you betrayed him, right? And that's the real reason you're hoping you don't have to kill the Shenryalan. They'll never forgive you for killing a boy and you'll never be free. How'd you end up here?"
"You've got a lot of questions, Ilyaran."
"Rasim. My name is Rasim."
"I don't care."
Rasim, under his breath and in his own language, muttered, "No wonder they don't love you," and aloud in her tongue said, "Maybe if we work together we can all go free."
"Escape, you mean? No one escapes. There are two exits at ground level, Ilyaran, and only one is used by the living. That's the one you came in through." The Northerner came forward again, dangling her fingers through the bars to gesture around the arena. "Everybody who's not noble—merchants, commoners and slaves alike—all enter through those gates. The animals are brought in the same way, but on different days."
"Animals?"
"Big cats. Wild dogs. Birds taller than a man that kick like mules. There are half a dozen or more cages just for the animals, like kept with like to keep down on the killing. Slaves come straight to these pits, eight or ten of them. At Festival, there are thirty or forty in each cage like this one."
Rasim looked around the confines of their cell in shock. "They'd have to be stacked."
"Aye. They allow betting on who or how many will still be alive every morning. You're lucky. The cages are as empty as I've ever seen them, right now."
"Lucky? Doesn't it make us more likely to die out there?"
"Better there, for the crowds, than in here over a scrap of earth to sleep on."
"You have a strange idea of luck."
"My luck has kept me alive this long," the Northerner said. "Don't scoff at it."
"I still think our chances are better if we make a team." Rasim left the cage doors to examine the walls. They weren't mud after all, or if they were, it was the hardest mud he'd ever seen. He knocked on a section, then nursed his knuckles. Water could wear it down eventually, but it was almost stone. He might be able to work it. "What is this stuff?"
"Sticks bound together and slathered with some kind of hardening mixture. You can chip your way through it, but not fast enough to escape, if that's what you're thinking. They're always reapplying it. The cells get new coats about once a year."
Rasim looked over his shoulder at her. "How long have you been here?"
The Northerner shifted one big shoulder. "Long enough. Look to the sky, Ilyaran. The sun's coming up high. Rest while it's hot. There will be fights tonight."
13
He slept, and woke a little before sunset. It came early to Moran, though not as early as it had in far-northern Hongrunn. Not as abruptly as it came to Ilyara, either. Rasim was used to a quick end to the day in his desert homeland, but in Moran it lingered a little while. Well-dressed men and women came through the gates as the light faded, and torches were lit to illuminate the arena. Poorer folk in less-handsome clothing came later, once it was dark. Even entry into the arena seemed to be done by rank. They were all loud, though, poor or rich. Rasim looked for Nasira, but didn't see her, and wondered if he was glad or not.
"Ilyaran." Rasim turned away from the door to catch a water skin the Northerner threw his way. "They'll bring us out to show us off and start the fights soon. You may not get another chance to drink."
"Thanks." Rasim took one sip of warm, sour water and curled his lip. An reflexive, unplanned whisper of witchery purified it and he drank deeply, then coughed and pulled the skin away from his mouth to stare at it.
"It's foul," the Northerner said with a shrug, "but it's better than being thirsty. Drink up."
"No, it's..." Rasim handed her the skin, still staring at it. Nasira had forbidden him the use of seawitchery, and mindkiller didn't wear off that fast. In fact, he'd be surprised if the water in the skin hadn't been laced with the drug, to keep him compliant. He watched as the Northerner took a cautious sip, then a deeper draught before gazing at him in astonishment.
"It's sweet." She strode to the Shenryalan boy and offered him the skin, saying something in his language. Suspicious, he shrugged one arm out of his horse hide blanket and took the skin. Rasim finally saw what the Northerner had meant when she said the boy was only little when he stood: his head and torso were about the same size as Rasim's, but his limbs were short, maybe only about half as long as Rasim would have expected. There were a dozen or so people in Ilyara with that shape to their bodies who visited the Seamaster healers when aches settled in their bones. The boy took the skin and tried a tentative sip before his face cleared. He drank more deeply, finally lowering the skin to frown between Rasim and the tall woman. After a moment he wet his lips, then spoke roughly. The Northerner rocked back on her heels, eyebrows lifted. "You can talk." To Rasim, she said, "He says you're a sorcerer."
"We call ourselves witches, but it might mean the same thing. I'm a journeyman in the Seamaster's Guild. You speak Shenryalan too? Can you teach me?"
"You're not going to live long enough to learn. What can you do with that magic, Ilyaran?"
Rasim shook his head. "I shouldn't be able to do anything with it at all. I..." He trailed off, trying to reach for the Moranese river. He should be able to get a sense of it, at least, even from the distance they were at, or maybe an awareness of water in the mountains that the arena backed up to, but his sensitivity seemed to end at his fingertips. "There's a drug they give us. Mindkiller. It stops us from using our witchery unless we're commanded to, and I was forbidden to use it at all. I shouldn't have been able to cleanse that water."
"But you did." The big Northerner was suddenly in Rasim's space, crouching so she looked a small distance up at him, instead of looming over him. "What does that mean?"
"I really don't know. I...let me..." Rasim moved away from her to place his hands on the mixed-mud wall. He had no sense of stonemastery anyway; even when the witchery flowed through him he couldn't tell until the stone moved, so there was no distress in not sensing it as he pressed against the wall.
A change so imperceptible he might have imagined it shifted the wall beneath his hands. Dizziness swept him and he stepped back, gesturing at the wall. "Is it...different there?"
The Northerner, frowning, stood to run her hands over the space he'd touched, then flattened her palms against the wall. "Here. There's a—I can feel the shape of your hands. Small hands," she said with a sniff. "Mine are twice the size of yours. What'd you do?"
"You're twice the size of me." Rasim sat down hard, still woozy. "I—I've learned a little stonewitchery. It's...unusual to be able to use more than one magic, but I can. I thought I might be able to use the stonemastery because I'd only been forbidden to use water magic, but I can use it too. Just not very well."
"Are you usually good with it?"
A laugh tore from Rasim's throat. "Sort of."
"How was I to know?" The Northerner sounded offended.
"You weren't. Nothing. It wasn't you, it's..." For a moment Rasim considered trying to explain his former weakness with water witchery, and how he'd come to be strong in it, and almost as swiftly, rejected the idea in favor of simplicity. "Yes. I'm usually good with sea witchery, and I'm sorry I laughed. I'm scared and confused and I don't think I have enough magic right now to protect myself out there, so I think I'm probably going to die tonight, which isn't helping."
"You just used two magics, Ilyaran. How strong do you need to be to survive?"
"I just used two magics and now I can hardly stand up," Rasim snapped. "I need to be able to move, and I need to be able to feel the magic past my fingertips. Usually I would expect to be able to feel the river, or maybe even farther."
"Gods of night and stars." The woman sounded impressed for the first time. "That far? And now it's only what you can touch?"
Rasim nodded grimly and the Northerner fell back a step. The Shenryalan boy spoke again, gaining her attention, and from her expression, she didn't like what he said. She responded and the boy shrugged, looking away. After a few seconds a familiar look crossed the Northerner's face, and Rasim scrambled to think where he'd seen it before.
When it came to him, he almost laughed. Desimi. It was the look Desimi got when he'd reluctantly come around to deciding Rasim was right about something. Whatever the Shenryalan boy had said, the Northerner had agreed without wanting to. "All right," she said sharply. "I'll keep you alive tonight, but, Ilyaran? I expect this to pay off."
"It will." That, Rasim decided, was probably not a promise he should make, but he was determined to keep it. "What is your name?"
The woman scowled at him, then sighed explosively. "Agnet. Can you use a blade, boy?"
Rasim turned his palms up, searching for the faint calluses that had been there. "Not well."
"Heh. At least you're honest. They'll give us a range of weapons to run for. Get something with a long handle and get your back to the wall. I'll do the rest." Less audibly, but clearly still meant to be heard, she muttered, "How I've ended up watching over two little boys after all this time..." and shook her head.
Rasim couldn't even protest the phrase. He was, whether he liked it or not, small, and though the Shenryalan boy hadn't risen yet, his short limbs meant he probably wasn't taller than Rasim. Besides, compared to Agnet, even Prince Lorens was little. Rasim shook his head. "How do you know we'll be selected to fight?"
Agnet tilted her head, a motion somehow like a shrug. "You're new meat. They probably wouldn't let you die tonight, but if you acquit yourself well, tomorrow we'll have a huge audience."
"Aquit..." Slow realization sank through Rasim and raised chills despite the warm evening air. "Do you mean, if I kill somebody?" At Agnet's nod, sick resolve formed a knot under Rasim's breastbone. He was not going to kill anyone. Even if it cost him his own life, he was not going to kill anyone. It was no use telling Agnet that. At best she would think he was a fool, and she'd certainly spend a lot of time trying to convince him he was wrong. Neither of them needed the distraction. Rasim nodded and turned his face away, gazing at the arena through the iron bars.
Shadows leaped and danced on the sand, making monsters of a half-dozen men who walked out, in formation, to deposit the promised weaponry in the middle of the arena. Their mere presence woke a roar from the crowd, though none of them so much as smiled as they broke apart to walk purposefully across the sands to half a dozen cages, including Rasim's. He scrambled to his feet, backing a few steps away, and ran into the Shenryalan, who had risen to stand behind him, silent and wraith-like. Rasim was nearly a foot taller than he was, although the other boy's shoulders were as broad as Rasim's. He smiled faintly at Rasim's apology, and brushed past him as the cage door opened. Rasim, heart pounding, followed him into the arena.
He'd thought the crowd was noisy when they passed through the gates. He'd thought they were loud when they cheered for the guards who had placed the weapons and released the slaves. But the cage walls had muffled the sounds then, protecting him from their intensity. Outside in the open arena, their cries were a physical blow, an impact that struck Rasim and rattled his breath away. He faltered, but Agnet pushed him forward relentlessly. Struggling for air, he glanced back at the giant Northerner and saw, to his shock, that she was grinning. Not a grin to hide fear, but a broad, anticipatory grin that only grew wider when a portion of the shouts turned to jeers and hissing.
She lifted her arms, fingers flickering inward, toward herself, like she was inviting all their attention. Like she wanted it, whether it was good or bad. Rasim faltered again and Agnet stalked past him, taking the lead. Her skin glowed reddish under the torch light, the fire's colors bringing out the sunburned undertones that Northerners couldn't seem to avoid even when they tanned. The boys fell into her shadow, into her shadows; there were many, born from the ever-changing torch light. Rasim relaxed just a little, as if he'd stepped into a safe place, although he knew the Northerner's shadow could no more protect him than a stray bolt of sunlight might.
The audience was impossible to see as anything more than a seething black mass. What light there was focused on the arena, making them the bright spot at the heart of a vast dark circle. Rasim wondered if any of his crew were out there, or any other Ilyarans, free or slave. Wondered if Nasira was there, shouting for his death like thousands of others. His hands worked themselves into fists so tight that his fingernails, short as they were, cut into his palms. He felt small and even more powerless than he'd been when he fought the sea serpent. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run, and his pride wouldn't let him cower before the shouting throngs.
A voice thundered across the stadium, so loud it had to be carried by skywitchery, though Rasim had no sense of the flitting, incessant power that he associated with Skymasters. Nor could he understand a word of the announcement, but its meaning was clear enough: Here are slaves, prepared to die for your entertainment. The speaker shouted something: a name, Rasim realized, as a slave across the arena stepped forward to renewed shouts and cheering. Six names were called, in all. Agnet's was the last. She swept Rasim and the Shenryalan boy along with her as she stepped forward into the light. Rasim kept his feet through force of will alone. He had never heard anything like the pounding roar of so many voices. Not even the worst storms the Waifia had weathered beat at him the way their voices did.
Four of the names were repeated, and those four—as well as the slaves with them—retreated to their cages again. Agnet was left with her cellmates, and across the arena, another, larger group gathered in anticipation. "Dennel," Agnet reported. "He and his are ruthless. They'll go for the range weapons, the maces and the spears. Get to the spears first and get your back to a wall." She caught the Shenryalan's eye and he nodded, but before Rasim could ask if he'd understood, the skywitch-assisted voice boomed out again and suddenly everything was in motion.
Agnet surged forward in flat-out run, astounding Rasim with her speed. No one that big should be that fast. He had thought she would move like a lumbering buffalo, all heavy slow mass, but she had the speed and elegance of a lioness at the hunt.
He sprinted along in her wake, the Shenryalan at his side, but Agnet's long legs and determination let her outpace them handily. By the time they reached the stockpile of weaponry, Agnet had already seized two sheathed swords and slung their belts over her shoulder. She snatched up two more unsheathed blades and spun them in a glittering, deadly circle as Rasim grabbed a stave of his own and, shoulder to shoulder with the other boy, began to back toward the distant arena wall.
The man Dennel reached the weaponry at about the same time they did. He was thicker than Agnet and not as tall. He took up a flail that looked like it weighed as much as Rasim did and swung it a few times, his grin showing several missing teeth. The ones he had left were healthy and strong: violence, not sickness, had taken the ones he lacked. Then he selected a mace for his off-hand weapon, and nodded with satisfaction.
He had three others with him, two men and a woman. The men looked confident as they took up their own weaponry—swords, like Agnet had chosen—and the woman looked terrified as she selected a spear like Rasim's own.
Agnet and Dennel moved away from the weapons, sizing one another up. Agnet's hands loosened and tightened around her sword hilts, her head lowered as she watched her opponent. His mouth pulled an open sneer, like he was tasting the air. He could probably taste Rasim's fear, despite the fact that the boys had backed up against the arena wall and were as far away as they could get from the thick slave.
The two other swordsmen circled toward them, knowing easy targets when they saw them. The woman, gripping her spear as if she could squeeze life out of it, edged around Dennel and Agnet, her frightened gaze locked on the Northern woman. Rasim wanted to cry out a warning, but knew if he drew Agnet's attention, Dennel would press the advantage and attack with his terrible flail. He had to trust Agnet knew the other woman was there.
