Garth looked back up at Zarel and saw that the Grand Master was now staring straight at him and he could sense as well the barely suppressed rage, the man struggling with the temptation to order a massacre if need be in order to get at him.
Garth let the slightest of smiles crease his features and he bowed with a mock disdain. Again, the mob standing at the edge of the lines of fighters saw the interplay and, again, there was a smattering of applause.
Zarel remained silent, his features turning crimson. To those farther away the interchange was not visible and the long delay was becoming tiresome. A restless stirring swept the Plaza. Zarel looked away from Garth and back out across the Plaza and the crowds fell silent.
“Today is the first day of Festival!”
A numbing explosion of cheers erupted across the Plaza, so loud that Garth felt as if sound had almost taken physical form. Looking around him he saw the arrayed fighters were being swept up in the excitement, eyes wide, breath coming in short gasps, some of them raising their arms in an involuntary gesture as if already within the fighting circles.
Zarel rose up and floated off the high dais, lightning swirling around him, and again there was the trumpeting, the drums, the high minor chord shrieks of the organ. He came to a hover above a great platform sheathed in solid gold and resting on great wheels that stood as high as two men and which was drawn by half a dozen mammoths in harness. With a hundred trumpeters sounding a fanfare, the head of the procession started off while yet more explosions erupted overhead. A solid phalanx of warriors marched in formation around the Grand Master’s juggernaut-like dais and the mob pushed and shoved to let it pass, with more than one unfortunate falling beneath the feet of the mammoths or the great grinding wheels of the platform.
Behind him came Ingkara, marching in the place of honor, since it was one of their own who had won the last Festival and thus gained the honor of being the chosen servant of the Walker. Behind them came Fentesk, for placing second, then Kestha, and finally Bolk. The great mob surged around them as the procession made its way across the Plaza. A stampede erupted as the spectators rushed down the side streets, streaming ahead of the procession to form up at the gates of the arena.
The procession skirted past the vacant spot where the House of Oor-tael once stood and Garth, sensing that he was being watched, looked up to see Kirlen turning and gazing back at him. He lowered his head in respect, half expecting yet another lashing probe, but there was none.
The procession reached the great thoroughfare that led from the Plaza and down a long, sloping road for a thousand fathoms to the gates of the city. Every rooftop was crammed with spectators, the colors of the mob now intermingling, the supporters of the four Houses cheering themselves hoarse with excitement as their favorites passed. And yet again a chant arose…
“One-eye, One-eye, One-eye!”
Garth lowered his head and yet still the cry echoed around him. For a brief moment he looked up and there was a flash of dark hair and stained leather armor on a rooftop, and then she disappeared.
The procession finally reached the gates of the city. The heat under the noonday sun was intense, even for this autumn day, the air thick with smoke, incense, dust, and the smell of unwashed bodies. Dozens were passing out now, falling, those around them robbing the sunstruck. Great barrels of wine and beer were opened at nearly every street corner, with mugs full of drink going for a copper, the cheap brews inflaming the mob to an even wilder hysteria.
Garth breathed a sigh of relief as the procession of Bolk warriors finally passed under the gate and, for a brief instant, the noise and sun were blocked out. As the procession emerged out the other side, Garth finally saw the arena below and he felt his blood quicken.
The arena was built into a natural, bowl-shaped valley just outside the city gates, just to the south of the harbor, which was crammed with shipping. The fighting area measured over three hundred fathoms across, the entire circumference ringed with seats that rose up for over a hundred rows, providing seating for more than three hundred thousand spectators. On the sloping ground that stretched from the arena up to the city wall hundreds of thousands more who could not get tickets were gathered to watch the spectacle, though all they could hope to see was the struggle of antlike creatures far below. Already the sloping ground was jammed by the mob, while down below in the arena, those who could afford seats were already streaming in and filling the stands.
As the procession made its way down the hill the cheering within the arena rose up to greet them. The head of the procession finally turned and went beneath a high-arching gate and stepped out into the center of the arena and the multitude roared with an insane frenzy, so that Garth felt as if he was facing the attack of a demon howl. The arena was clearly divided into four areas, marked by the fluttering pennants waved by the spectators. The procession, still led by Zarel, moved across the center of the arena floor and then broke in four different directions, each group of fighters taking positions in front of the sections of the arena reserved for its supporters. The fifth section was on the western side of the arena, directly beneath the tote board, which would show the odds for each of the fights. Here would sit the nobles and well-heeled merchants, as well as the fighters and warriors of the Grand Master, where they could catch the afternoon breeze wafting in from the sea. Directly in front of this section, out on the edge of the arena floor, was the high throne reserved for the Grand Master of the Arena, Zarel Ewine.
As the Brown contingent of fighters reached its section Garth breathed a sigh of relief. The formation came to a halt and then broke ranks to take seats in a shaded viewing stand resting on the edge of the arena floor. The procession had done nothing to help his still-throbbing hangover. The howling of the mob echoed back and forth in the arena, intensified, it seemed, by the heat, swirling dust, the smell of unwashed bodies, and the thick, heavy scent of greasy food cooking in hundreds of stalls that lined the top ring of the stadium.
Again there was the fanfare of trumpets and, surprisingly, the mob settled down almost instantly, a silence for which Garth was immensely grateful.
Across the far side of the stadium Garth saw the antlike figure of the Grand Master step forward, while from out of a tunnel set into the side of the arena came a procession of hooded monks bearing a great smoking brazier. The mob sitting in the arena came to its feet and Garth looked around to see that his fellow fighters now stood with heads bowed.
The Grand Master approached the brazier, raised his hands, and the flames leaped heavenward, black smoke coiling straight up into the sky, spreading outward on the faint wisp of a breeze coming in from the sea.
“On the third day of Festival shall come the Great Walker of Realms Unknown to take his tribute and the fighter chosen on the arena floor.”
Zarel’s voice, enhanced by magical powers, projected to the farthest ends of the arena, washing over Garth like a wave.
“In three days’ time let us find the fighter who shall be worthy to be known as servant of He Who Rules over All!”
“So be it!”
The reply was roared out by half a million voices, but Garth stood silent, except for the faintest of curses escaping his lips that was lost in the wild insanity of screams.
CHAPTER 11