Dave Duncan - Children of Chaos

He grinned that terrible display of teeth again as he waited for the cheering to subside. "First—and I will add that he is an easy first, a man who displays courage, toughness, dedication, and honest bloodthirsty ferocity such as I have rarely been honored to witness ..."

Therek watched Snerfrik preening under the praise.

"—coming in well ahead of his nearest competitor, is... Candidate Orlad."

The hall stilled. Even the wind dropped for a moment, and the slave waiters froze, wondering what was wrong. In the distance mammoths trumpeted. As the Florengian hostage walked forward, dark eyes shining with triumph, five hundred pale eyes watched in total silence. He had been odds-on favorite to pass, but First ? Gzurg must be crazy. He'd drunk his brains away. Or been hit on the head too often. Put a filthy Florengian belly-worm ahead of fifteen honest Vigaelian lads?

And now Therek would have to hold the bastard's hands and listen to the freak parroting an oath he had absolutely no intention of keeping ... would have to put the winner's chain collar on him... And, oh horrors! would have to embrace him.

No, this was intolerable. This was an insult to holy Weru and Therek himself and the memory of those three sons who had died. The only good Florengian's a dead one . Something fatal must be arranged. Soon.

eleven

FRENA WIGSON

was fighting for her life with a black blanket of darkness wrapped around her head. Rushing water tugged at her ankles, trying to throw her down, while wind flailed rain back and forth. She was barely able to think in the tumult, certain only that if she fell she would be washed away and lost. And she must hurry. Danger pursued her. Its form was vague, a growling, fanged noise lurking in the storm, hiding its approach under the roar of the storm, but creeping ever closer as she fought her way step by step up the slope. She was in Skjar. The air reeked of Skjar. The alley was typically Skjaran, with rough timber walls tight about her, with unexpected outcrops of rock and sudden changes of level and grade. The walls were coarse where her hands pawed at them. Her breath came in painful gasps, a stitch stabbed in her side. Rain streamed over her face and soaked her clothes — tore at her clothes, as if the storm sought to strip her naked .

Meaningless rags and planks went swirling by her. She must be adjusting to the darkness, for she could make out a slight widening of the way, not worthy to be called a square, but a place where two alleys crossed, one steeper than the other. Windows were barred, doors firmly bolted. Water frothed and leapt over the stones, washing away the gravel of the road. Wind wailed in rooftops. She saw no one else around, but sensed the monstrous danger slithering closer to her heels.

A small door in one corner, a curiously misshapen shape between a wall and a rocky knob, held the answer. There was the salvation she sought. As she clawed her way along the wall toward it, fighting the rising water and the spiteful wind, she saw the crooked door begin to open. What lay beyond was blacker than the night, blacker than eternal space or bottomless caverns. Even the torrent in the streets did not dare enter there. Wider and wider, and a figure emerging, a less-dark darkness taking shape in that uttermost darkness ... a woman... smiling, beckoning ...

" Mother !" Frena screamed. She scrambled wildly toward the door, but the smiling figure retreated within, fading into the stygian black, still smiling, beckoning. Frena tried to follow and met resistance. She wanted to enter and someone or something held her back . " Mother ! Mother !"

♦

She sat up, trembling and choking. It was the same dream again, but knowing it was a dream made it no less terrifying. Her sheet was soaked as if she had bathed in it, and her head throbbed. Sweat was normal for Skjar, terror was not. The glimmering night lamp showed nothing wrong: sleeping platform, carved chests, delicately shaped chairs, mosaic and hangings, Ashurbian funeral urns ... all as it should be. But every time she drifted off to sleep she had this nightmare of her mother. By rights she should ring for Master Frathson, her father's oneiromancer, so he could explain the portents and look up the offerings required to avert the gods' wrath; but her mother had always mocked the old man and his skill. Dreams were phantasms sent by the Mother of Lies, she'd said, and best just ignored.

Frena touched the sore place on her shoulder, and her fingers came away black in the dim light. Blood and dark ... No, that wasn't right. Blood and ... something. No matter. In her dream straggles she had opened the cut the rock had made at Bitterfeld.

She could have rescued that man, had she realized in time what was happening. A bold effort could have done it: two chariots, two swordsman, and she screaming curses to frighten the mob. It had been when they turned away that the pack had gone for them.

Dawn could not be far off—she had been up until long after dark with scribes and tallymen and stewards, making plans. Time had frothed by in a deluge of meetings, decisions, edicts, and even a few temper tantrums to break down resistance. At dawn the invitations would go out, still warm from the oven, and by morning a sizable fraction of the population of Skjar would be working on her dedication.

The underlying ritual could not be simpler. A girl of poor family went with her mother to any altar of Veslih and offered the goddess a flower or a barley cake, making her vows without a single priestess in sight. It was the rich who showed off with banquets and parades, with the girl's mother driving her to the Pantheon, where all her family and friends and her parents' friends waited to witness. Then the new woman would make a vow and a sacrifice at each of the twelve shrines, before driving her mother home, leading the parade of chariots to the banquet.

Frena's problem was that the people she wanted to invite had almost all fled to the hills. Nobody would willingly miss a grand feast in the Wigson mansion, but how many could return before Father's absurd deadline? Three days? They would all assume she was being rushed into wedlock before the baby arrived. Even collecting food in time would be almost impossible. Guests must be given expensive gifts. And entertainment? She must have dancers and musicians, tumblers and mimers, even performing animals, but the professionals had followed their patrons to the hills. Arrgh!

She sat on the edge of her sleeping platform with her head in her hands. It throbbed.

On such a night...

On just such a night, three years ago, heat and worry had kept her from sleeping. She had donned a robe and gone downstairs to see how her mother was faring. For three days Paola had lain abed, bandaged and splinted, coughing up blood and suffering terribly. Healers would not normally accept a patient so grievously injured, so close to death, but Horth's wealth had persuaded one—braver or greedier than the rest—to offer an attempt at a cure. Paola had refused him. She had refused all aid from holy Sinura, and even holy Nula. She had persisted in her refusal despite her daughter's tears and her husband's entreaties. Although Horth had fetched the best extrinsic apothecaries and surgeons available, internal injuries were beyond their skills. Paola's life had been visibly ebbing away.

Yet that night Frena had walked in and found the sleeping platform empty, her mother gone, and Quera—that sad excuse for a night nurse—snoring in a chair. Somehow the immobilized invalid had vanished. Curiously, young Frena had not run screaming for her father. She had not wakened Quera, nor yet raised the alarm among the servants. She had run back to the inner court to search among the trees and flowers, knowing that the garden she tended personally was her mother's favorite place, the view she always wanted from her room. A trail of discarded clothes and bandages had led Frena to Paola's corpse, facedown under some bushes.