Troy Denning - The Verdant Passage

The creature’s bristly antenna remained about her calf. Neeva jerked her leg upward, twisting savagely. With a loud pop, the stalk separated from the gaj’s head. The beast emitted a piercing screech, then scrambled away. A few yards from the wall, it retracted its legs and head, and quickly lowered its shell to the sand.

“Get it off!” Neeva shrieked, violently thrashing about. She tried to reach the tentacle around her leg, but the intense pain caused her arms and legs to jerk with agonizing spasms.

Sadira reached out to help, but found herself facing the sharp point of a guard’s spear. “Don’t even move,” the man threatened.

Ignoring the guard’s threat to the scullery slave, Yarig tried to assist Neeva, but Boaz stepped between him and the screaming woman. “I did not give you leave to help her,” he said.

The dwarf sneered and tried to sidestep the trainer. A guard lunged forward, pressing his speartip against Yarig’s ribs.

As Neeva continued to flail and scream, Boaz looked to the guards surrounding Rikus, who still lay prone on the deck. “Is the mul dead?”

One of the guards shook his head. “He’s breathing, but that’s about all.”

“Then see if you can keep him alive,” Boaz ordered. “We can’t have our champion dying in his sleep. Lord Tithian would not find that to his liking.”

The guard nodded, then bandaged the mul’s wounds. Only a few feet away, Neeva continued to cry out in pain. No one assisted her.

Boaz looked at Sadira next. “What are we to do with you, my bewitching little wench? As I’m sure you’re aware, the penalty for spellcasting is death.”

The scullery slave met the trainer’s gaze steadily, though her heart was pounding with fear. “Lord Tithian certainly will want to question me before I’m killed,” she said. Feigning confidence, she forced her voluptuous lips into a smile. “But I can see how that might make you uncomfortable. After all, Lord Tithian would not be happy to hear that you sent his prize gladiator to fight the gaj with only a pair of singing sticks.”

“So I should just forget what I saw?” Boaz asked, meeting Sadira’s smile with a cynical grin.

“That would be in your best interest,” she replied, careful to maintain an even tone.

“I have nothing to fear from Tithian,” Boaz said. “To him, the mul is just another slave.”

As the trainer studied her, Sadira looked for any sign of the doubt she hoped Boaz was feeling. Only the depth of his concentration gave her cause to think she had succeeded. Regardless of what the trainer claimed, Tithian would indeed be upset if he learned how Rikus had been injured. Boaz could be certain that the story would surface if he turned Sadira over to their master for interrogation.

“Perhaps I should kill you now,” Boaz threatened. “I could always throw you to the gaj.”

“That’s your choice,” Sadira answered bravely. “But Lord Tithian would be cheated of his opportunity to question me. Eventually he would learn of the magic I used today. Even if your guards keep silent, I’m sure these gladiators will tell him. Or would you kill all of them, too?”

As the trainer considered his next response, Neeva finally ripped the gaj’s antenna from her leg and flung it into the pit. Her anguished cries quieted to a moan. The sudden calm seemed to inspire Boaz.

The half-elf gave Sadira a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll consider your advice.” He looked from the slave girl to the guard beside her, who was now holding the spear at her throat. “Lock her in the Break.”

Sadira cringed. The Break was an old storage house with dozens of small silos built into the ground. It was Boaz’s favorite punishment. She was not sure what horrors the Break contained, but there were many, many rumors. The one thing Sadira knew for certain was that no slave survived imprisonment in the Break beyond five days.

The guard took the young woman by the arm. As he led her. away, the half-elf cast a final look at Rikus. Now two guards attended him. They had ripped the mul’s robe into strips and wrapped it around his stomach, but blood still seeped from beneath the bandage at an alarming rate. Sadira was glad to see the bleeding, however, for it was the only sign of life in the mul’s inert form.

Boaz motioned to the guard holding Sadira. “See that she is bound and gagged.”

Sadira’s heart sank with this last order. With bound hands and a gagged tongue, she could not use her magic. It would be impossible to make the gestures or utter the incantations of the spells she would need to make her escape.

The guard nodded, then leveled his spear at Sadira’s back. “You know where we’re going.”

Sadira led the way across the deck to a short flight of steps. Directly ahead were a dozen squat buildings. Their walls were constructed from dun-colored bricks made of mud, and animal hides covered their roofs. Between the buildings shuffled a handful of gaunt slaves. They carried buckets of water and food to the cells that housed Tithian’s gladiators and, more importantly, to the pens which held the exotic animals his hunters had captured for the ziggurat games.

Beyond the buildings rose the compound wall, a mud-brick barricade twenty feet high, capped by jagged shards of obsidian. At each corner, a high, flat-roofed tower rose above the wall. The towers’ roofs were covered with scaly hides.

A pair of guards stood in each of the four towers. They wore no armor, for anyone dressed so heavily would soon faint in the searing heat of an Athasian day, but each guard was armed with a crossbow, a small supply of steel-tipped bolts, and a steel dagger.

The steel weapons, Sadira knew, were more for intimidation than for actual use. On Athas, metal was more precious than water and as scarce as rain. Tyr was unique among Athasian city-states in that it controlled a working iron mine. For their metal, other cities had to rely on hard-bitten bands of salvagers. These hardy groups of fortune-hunters searched out lost armories and treasure vaults in the ancient ruins which were buried everywhere beneath the sands of the desert.

The fact that Tithian entrusted his tower guards with metal weapons was a sign of the high templar’s incredible wealth. Even in Tyr, where iron was relatively abundant, a steel crossbow bolt cost more than a healthy farm slave, and the daggers were worth as much as a good gladiator.

Sadira’s guard prodded her in the back with his obsidian spearpoint. “Quit stalling.”

Resisting the urge to try a spell immediately, the half elf descended the stairs leading from the arena deck. At the moment, Boaz and the other guards would be quick to react to the slightest hint of trouble, and Sadira knew better than to think she could fight a half-dozen ready guards. She would have to bide her time, then count on stealth to make good her escape.

Sadira walked to the Break, a small building at the far corner of the compound. Here, a guard gagged her with a grimy cloth and bound her hands behind her back with a rope that bit into her skin. She was handed over to a pair of guards in charge of the Break, who pushed her inside. As she descended a flight of stone steps, the dank stench of offal and unbathed humanity washed over her. She almost retched, then nearly choked on the gag that filled her mouth.

Laughing at her plight, the guards took her by the arms and dragged her forward. The rays of the crimson sun permeated the hide roof, lighting the interior with a ruddy glow that made the place seem even more corrupt and sickening.

The stone floor of the hut was covered with heavy rock slabs. The guards led Sadira to the far side of the room, then pushed one of the stone covers aside. A hushed hissing, not unlike the whispering of a soft wind, rose from the silo below. The cell was as black as obsidian, but Sadira could see the scene below as clearly as if it had been lit by a torch. From her elven ancestors, she had inherited infravision, the ability to see ambient heat when no other light source was present.