Саймон Хоук - The Broken Blade

Livanna had been trained since childhood, and she was now a very old woman. It was impossible to guess her age. She looked about seventy, but she was a senior templar, which meant she had to be at least twice that age or even older. She had not yet even cast her spell, and already the room was thrumming with energy.

Ankhor nervously moistened his lips and gripped the arms of his chair to keep his hands from trembling. As a trader, he had learned never to reveal uncertainty and always act as if he was in the superior position, but it was not until that moment that he truly understood just what kind of power Livanna had at her command. He swallowed hard. He could not afford to reveal weakness, but he felt afraid.

With her back to him, Livanna softly spoke the words of the spell, mumbling them under her breath. Ankhor could not make them out, and doubted he could have understood them even if fully audible. The old spell scrolls so jealously guarded by adepts were written in old languages, more guttural and sibilant, harsher to the modern ear. And the more complex the spell, the more complex the incantation.

As Livanna spoke the spell, the room became tenebrous and the air crackled with thaumaturgic discharges, jagged little bolts of energy that surrounded her, fine as spider webs. Ankhor had seen adepts cast spells before, both preservers and defilers, but Livanna was no ordinary adept. She was a senior templar of the Shadow King, with several human lifetimes worth of training and experience, and the power that flowed through her came from Nibenay himself. An ordinary adept would never have survived it.

A wind rose within the room, billowing her robes and snuffing out the candles. Ankhor tightly gripped the arms of the chair, gritting his teeth as he felt all the nerve endings of his body start to tingle. Then bright blue bolts of thaumaturgic energy lanced out from Livanna’s palms, converging on a spot about ten feet in front of her, in the center of the room.

Where the twin beams met, an aura formed, growing brighter and expanding slowly as Ankhor watched, shading his eyes against the glare. It was as if a hole had opened in the air, a brightly glowing tunnel through space and time, and through that tunnel came a figure, a dark silhouette surrounded by the pulsating blue aura that illuminated every corner of the room.

Ankhor felt his breath quicken as the figure stepped into the room. A large, powerful shape, it was outlined by the glare—a figure at least six and a half feet tall. And as the glow diminished and contracted, until it was no more than a fading, faintly sparkling aura surrounding the massive form, Ankhor’s eyes slowly readjusted, focusing on the rippling, corded muscles of the naked figure.

“Kah,” he said softly.

It was a little over a year ago that he had first seen her fight in the arena of Balic. It had not been the first time he had witnessed gladiatorial combat, nor even the first time he had ever seen a mul fight in the arena, but it had been the first time he had ever seen a female of the breed. Female muls were rare. It was far easier to breed males, and both genders had to be specially bred, for all muls were born sterile.

An artificial crossbreed of dwarves and humans, muls did not occur in nature. Dwarves and humans could not breed together, and the secret of producing them had been discovered many years ago by a demented apothecary named Mulak. Working in his laboratory with vials and magnifiers and beakers, he had somehow found a way to stimulate the fertilization of a female dwarven egg by human sperm, producing a viable egg that he had then implanted in a human female slave, theorizing that a dwarven female would have been too small to bear the offspring. He was more than correct in his conclusion. The resulting birth was so traumatic that it killed the human mother, and ever since, no human female had ever survived the process that gave birth to the creatures that bore the name of their creator—muls.

The conception occurred in an apothecary’s laboratory, and female human slaves then bore the child—if such it could be called—to term. Ankhor wondered what it must be like for the hapless women consigned to such a fate. Was it even possible that they could feel any spark of a maternal instinct toward the unnatural creatures quickening within them, knowing that their birth would bring about an agonizing death? He shuddered at the thought as he stared at the large figure looming before him in the darkness.

Livanna made a pass with her right hand, and the candles all reignited in the lamps, bringing light back into the room.

Ankhor swallowed hard as he stared at the coppery-golden skin of the mul standing before him. Her head was completely bald, accentuating the pointy, swept-back ears that lay close against her skull. Her eyes were yellow-gold, deeply sunken and hooded by a prominent ridge of brow. Her mouth was wide and thin-lipped, her chin slightly pointed, and her cheekbones high and unusually pronounced. Her nose was not as wide as that of most male muls, and it was blade straight. Though Ankhor had seen her fight before, he had never seen Kah up close, and he was surprised to find that she was beautiful—in a terrifying way.

Her shoulders were almost twice as broad as his, and her chest thick with muscle, making her breasts look small. She had almost no fat on her at all. Her powerful back muscles fanned out from her sides like wings, accentuating a narrow and extremely muscular waist. Her abdominal muscles stood out in sharp relief, and her long arms were corded with thick muscle. Her thighs and calves looked as if someone had taken a chisel to them. She lowered her head and went down to one knee before him. She did not speak, for she could not. She had been born mute.

It felt strange to see her kneel like that before him. It was perfectly right and proper, of course. He was an aristocrat, after all, and a high-ranking member of the merchant class, and she was but a lowly slave. He had bought her, and she was now his property. But she was a magnificent creature with a powerful presence, and he had seen her kill a dozen men in the arena.

The first time he had seen her, he had wanted to possess her. Not sexually, for she did not appeal to him that way, but the way one wanted to possess a fine crodlu mount or an exquisitely crafted weapon. To own a thing like that would confer not only status, but power. She was a legend in the arena of Balic, and when he saw her fight, he immediately understood why.

Kah fought with a savagery unlike anything he had ever seen. It was not the savagery of a berserker, but that of a predatory beast. Her opponents were not merely antagonists, they were prey, and when she stalked them in the arena, it was like watching an animal on the hunt.

By the time he saw her, she had already firmly established her reputation, and she no longer fought in matched pairs. She always faced several opponents, sometimes half a dozen or more, and despite being outnumbered, she struck fear into them all. And she exulted in the kill. She enjoyed killing the way most men enjoyed sex. It was both a pleasure and a release for her, and a feeling of conquest.

Ankhor had immediately sent his agents to enter into negotiations for her purchase. At the time, he had not yet formulated the plan he had in mind for her; he only knew he wanted to own her, like a dangerous pet. The arenamasters of Balic had not wanted to sell. She represented a huge investment for them, not only in terms of the original purchase from the breeder who produced her, but in all the years of training they had given her. And she was their most popular attraction. The citizens of Balic packed the arena to see Kah fight, and they had cheered themselves hoarse with her every victory. The arenamasters already had a plan for her. If she survived, and there was little question that she would, she would probably earn her freedom, and she could then become a trainer, producing skilled fighters for their games.