Uriah looked toward him and Zarel smiled as if all was as it should be. There would be time enough later for a special torment.
“Arrange the next fight for my amusement,” the Walker snapped angrily.
Garth watched the tote board and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that he would not yet have to face Varena. She would fight someone from her own House this time. As he exhaled noisily and turned away, he saw Norreen staring at him.
“She’s a friend. I don’t relish what I have to do.”
“You should have thought of that earlier,” Hammen said.
“Whichever way it turns out, whoever steps into the arena today is dead; I just don’t want to do it myself.”
He looked back over at Noreen, who was still looking at him.
“Are you jealous? Is that it?” Hammen taunted.
“A Benalish woman doesn’t need anyone outside her clan.”
Hammen laughed crudely and spit on the ground.
“You’ll both be dead anyhow in a little while, so the question is moot.”
Garth smiled and said nothing.
Out on the arena floor the next battle was joined and Varena was instantly on the defensive, her opponent, also from Fentesk, launching into a savage attack of liquid fire. She erected a wall to block him and he responded with an earthquake that shook the entire arena and tumbled the barrier down. Varena countered with aerial attacks by stinging insects, and even an outlandish balloon filled with goblin warriors. The balloon went down under the counterstrike of elvish archers, their arrows turning to flames which set the balloon on fire.
Twice Varena was knocked down by her opponent and the mob came howling to its feet, believing that the fight was over. And twice she recovered-the second time gathering enough mana to leap forward with a violent series of counterstrikes that her opponent parried with less and less strength. She moved closer to her foe, striking down his defenses. Then, with a final blast, she destroyed him, with a combination of fire striking from above and a psychic blast that drained her own strength but finished him.
She walked slowly from the arena field, her assistant rushing over to the body of the fallen to retrieve his satchel.
“It means I’ll have to face her,” Garth said quietly.
“If you live through this one.”
“Gilganorin of Ingkara versus Garth of Oor-tael.” The voice of the Walker was filled with amused sarcasm.
Garth stepped out of his corner and walked over to the neutral box, the crowd cheering lustily, bouquets of flowers raining down around him. He stepped into the neutral box and started to concentrate in preparation.
“Fight!”
Startled, he looked up. The Walker was laughing at the joke of having started the fight without warning.
Garth, bent over low, ran to one side of the arena as a black cloud snapped across the arena floor and came to a stop over his head, a rain of acid cascading down where he had just been standing. Next a fissure opened in the ground and he leaped back as stone giants emerged from the hole, their heavy granite war clubs crashing down, smashing the ground to either side of him. He struggled to erect a wall and they burst through it, their voices sounding like dark echoes from a ghostly cave.
He concentrated his thoughts and sent out attacks on his opponent’s mana, the force draining out of Gilganorin’s lands. The stone giants tumbled down into heaps of rocks. With a running bound Garth leaped over the fissure and laid out a line of living brambles and trees to form a barrier. Again he drew on the Craw Wurm but these were countered in turn by attacks of fire, which ignited the woods. The Craw Wurm, in turn, was destroyed by a dark elemental, which Garth then destroyed by an elemental that he conjured in response.
Gilganorin slowly started to move forward as well, diverting Garth with minor attacks of insects, rats, wolves, and undead. Garth countered each, and played out the same offensive, using creatures that required little mana to create while storing his power up for a killing strike. He sensed that he was gaining the advantage, Gilganorin being unable to store up mana as well, driven instead to the defensive, the countering of attacks, and resorting finally to protective wards to block attacks which could damage him.
And then, suddenly, to Garth’s amazement, Gilganorin simply stopped fighting and extended his hands outward, palms facing down to the ground in the signal of submission and surrender. Garth, nodding in acknowledgment, held his next attack back, sending the berserkers back into the oblivion from which they were conjured. He extended his left hand, palm downward, as a sign that he accepted the surrender while still holding his right hand high as a gesture of victory.
A gasp of amazement arose from the mob. There was a time when such an act was usually the end of a fight, when an opponent knew that he was beaten and it was senseless to continue. But this was supposed to be a death match.
“I asked not for a death match,” Garth shouted. “I accept your surrender. You may keep your spells.”
Gilganorin bowed low in reply and turned to walk back to his corner… and then he simply ceased to exist. A cylinder of blackness appeared to wrap around him, there was a shower of blood spraying out, and the cylinder of night was gone. All that was left was a smear of blood soaking into the sand.
“When I say it is to the death, it is to the death,” the Walker snapped peevishly, and then he turned his attention back to the woman he had been amusing himself with while the fight had been going on.
A gasp rose from the crowd and Garth sensed that even many in the mob had been offended, for Gilganorin was an old favorite, who for several decades had always survived into the final rounds and was noted for squandering his prize money on free drinks for his fans for weeks after a Festival.
Annoyed at the protest over the death of a favorite, the Walker turned away from his amusement and waved his hand. A cloud formed over the arena and the mob fell silent, not sure what he was about to do. He was, after all, the Walker, and though he might not have the power to take on half a million at once, he could certainly do damage to quite a few tens of thousands before being forced to flee. The cloud turned dark and from it a rain of silver trinkets began to fall. The mob struggled to pick them up, but even then there was no gratitude-it was simply money to be taken and nothing more.
The Walker leaned back on this throne, watching the mob.
“What is wrong with these bastards?” he asked silently, looking down at Zarel.
“You killed one of their favorites.”
“So what; he disobeyed me.”
“They might not see it that way.”
“Suppose I burn the city in reply?”
“That would damage you in return, my lord. For without the peasants and the mob, the mana, the power of the lands, forms more slowly. Next year’s tribute would not be as great.”
“Damn them,” the Walker hissed. He looked back at the woman, who waited for him and, with an angry curse, he pointed at her. In an instant her young, rounded body shriveled up, turning into limp folds of hanging leprous flesh, her face distorting into an obscene visage of running sores. She looked down at her body and started to scream hysterically. Laughing, he pushed her off the throne, so that she tumbled down the steps onto the arena floor. She continued to scream, until finally, annoyed at her whining, he pointed at her again. She melted down into a boiling mass of flesh. The mob, which had been watching the show, was silent, and the Walker looked at them, annoyed that they did not see the humor in what he had done.
He pointed to another girl and motioned for her to join him. Trembling, she ascended the stairs.
“Let’s have the final match. That ought to please them,” the Walker announced.