D. MacHale - The Rivers of Zadaa

Saint Dane was trying to kill me.

But I wasn’t giving up. I threw my arm up and caught the full brunt of the blow. It didn’t even hurt. My battered body was beyond pain at this point. My brain couldn’t process it anymore. I deflected the blow from my head, but the force was so strong it knocked me onto my back. Saint Dane leaped at me, ramrodding the end of his weapon into my ribs. Once, twice, again. I knew he must be breaking bones, but I couldn’t feel anything anymore. The demon got right into my face.

“Beg me to stop,” he hissed angrily. He hit me in the ribs again. I looked into his eyes. They had returned to lightning white…and were mad with rage. “Beg me,” he demanded. I felt his spittle land on my cheek. His anger had turned to frenzy. There was no plan here. No plot. No trickery. He had lost it.

“Thisis the way it was meant to be, cretin,” he growled. “This is what the future holds, for you and your like. That is the promise I made, and I will keep it.” He hit me again, but I was beyond caring. “You will beg for my forgiveness and mercy.”

I looked up at him. I can’t begin to tell you where I got the strength or the brass to do this, but I smiled and croaked out, “Dude, you are talking to the wrong guy.”

He froze. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because he couldn’t believe I had that kind of brass either. At least, that’s what I hoped. But the shocked look on his face quickly turned back into a fury that I feared would finally put an end to this beating, and my life. He reared back and let out a howl like a wild animal standing over fallen prey. He looked back down at me and raised his weapon. This was it. End of the line.

“Stop!” I heard a voice call out.

Saint Dane snapped a look to the crowd. He hesitated long enough so that two Ghee warriors had the chance to run in and pull him off me. Somebody had saved me. There was somebody out there who took pity on a poor Rokador. But I didn’t recognize the voice. I was flat on my back and barely able to move, but I painfully turned my head to where the command had come from.

Standing in the crowd was a new spectator. He wore a dark purple robe that covered his head. It looked familiar, but I didn’t know why. How could I possibly know anybody on Zadaa? I then remembered where I had seen him before. It was at the zhou battle. He was the mysterious guy who was in the tier above me, watching the fight. Whoever this guy was, he was my new best friend. He took a step into the circle, and I was surprised to see that the Ghee warriors backed away from him and knelt down on one knee.

Who was this guy?

He walked up to me and said in a soft, compassionate voice, “This is not what we are about.” He then took off the robe to reveal a tall, dark-skinned guy who wore an incredibly ornate, bright red tunic with an elaborate design around the neck. He held out his hand to me and said, “I am Pelle, heir to the throne of Zinj. We will take care of you.”

I looked at the guy’s hand. For a moment I thought about reaching up for him. After all, he was my new best friend. Instead, everything went black and I passed out.

Thefirst thing I saw was Loor.

I had opened my eyes a crack. Only a crack. That’s as far as they’d go. I guess it was because they were swollen from the pummeling I’d gotten. But I didn’t have to open them far to recognize Loor. She was sitting close, looking at me. The expression on her face didn’t change when I opened my eyes. I think that’s because my eyes didn’t open far enough to even look like they were open. But I could see her, and she looked fine. And worried.

“How long?” I asked, though I have no idea what it sounded like because my mouth felt about as dry as that sand farm where we met the Tiggen guards. When she heard me croak, Loor snapped to attention and came to my side. She knelt down near my head, which made me realize I was in bed and not still lying in the Ghee compound.

“Pendragon!” she exclaimed. “I was afraid you would never wake up!” There was true feeling in her voice. She sounded worried, relieved, concerned… all those good emotions I wasn’t sure she actually had in her. At least as they applied to me, anyway. It made me feel much better. Okay, maybe notmuchbetter since I was a swollen mass of throbbing pain. But I figured I should take the good stuff where I could get it.

“Water?” I asked, and immediately realized I had just asked for the one thing it was probably impossible to give. But I got it. Loor held a cup to my mouth, and I took a sip. It felt good on my lips, and in my mouth, but I coughed when I tried to swallow and blew most of it back out again. What a waste of an eighth of an ounce of liquid gold.

“Oops” was all I could say, lamely.

“Again,” Loor ordered and gave me another sip.

I was in more control this time and was able to take a sip and swallow. The water helped to lubricate things a little, so I was able to speak without sounding like Frankenstein’s monster.

“How long?” I asked again.

“Since the fight?” Loor asked.

I nodded. It hurt to nod. I was about to find out that doing a lot of things was going to hurt. Including breathing, eating, moving…pretty much everything including blinking. Yes, it even hurt to blink.

“You have been asleep for twelve suns,” Loor answered.

Twelve suns. The days on Zadaa were around twenty-four hours long, as far as I could tell. That meant I had been unconscious for nearly two weeks, give or take a sun. I think Loor must have seen the surprise on my face because she quickly said, “You were given herbs to help you sleep, and heal.”

Oh. So I had been drugged for nearly two weeks. I guessed that was better than being in a coma from having been beaten into mush. I was slowly focusing, which wasn’t such a hot thing. My mind was coming around, but that meant I was becoming more aware of the sad and painful shape I was in.

Everything hurt. Everything. Except my toes. My toes were cool. Woo-hoo! I thought of asking for a little bit more of that herb she had mentioned so I could slip back into dreamland, but decided I should stick around in reality for a while. Looking around, I saw that we were in a small room with stone walls. It looked very much like Loor’s home in the Ghee pyramid, but there wasn’t much in here except for the bed with the grass mattress that I was lying on, a stone chair where Loor had been sitting, and a low table that had some cups on it. Loor must have seen that I was trying to get my bearings because she said, “This is where the Batu care for the sick and injured.”

I was in the Batu hospital. It looked straight out ofThe Flintstones. I wondered if some goofy pelican would show up and deliver my medication. I know, dumb thought, but give me a break. I was hurting, and drugged.

“Saint Dane?” I whispered.

“Gone,” was Loor’s answer. “I asked many of the Ghee if they knew him, but nobody had ever seen him before. I believe Saint Dane turned himself into a Ghee warrior solely to…to-“

“To beat me into jelly,” I said, putting it bluntly.

“I am ashamed that I could not help you, Pendragon,” Loor said, dropping her head in embarrassment.

“Don’t be,” I croaked. “There was nothing you could do. I know that.”

She nodded like she knew it too, but she was definitely feeling bad about the whole thing. Maybe not as bad as I felt just then, but bad just the same.

“We will avenge you,” she said with venom. “Of that, I swear.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “But that might be what he wants. Everything he does is about pushing us into doing things that help him. He may have beat me up just to get you to go after him. We can’t fall into that trap.”