She put the vegetables and meat to cook above her fire of conjured charcoal, set the bread on a grid of conjured wire to warm, and turned her attention to her rooms.
She would make these two rooms into a tiny palace for one night, testing her ability to conjure right up to its limit, something she had never dared do before. Why, she didn't know; perhaps because it would have reminded her too much of Elibet, who had been able to conjure almost anything. Perhaps because the Panterras of the city would have condemned her for flaunting such conjurations.
Before the sun set, scent filled the air-from the conjured oil burning in her lamps. She still had no furniture, but rather than conjure anything that required construction, she magicked up great swaths of colorful silks, and soft, puffy nondescript shapes to lounge upon. Streams of brilliant sparks and plumes of luminescent mist followed
her hands as she directed her conjuration across the ceiling and down the walls. Draping the entire outer room in festoons of red and orange and yellow, she worked until the place resembled the inside of a luxurious tent, then conjured up pads of velvety mage-cloth as thick as her thumb to serve as carpeting.
She turned her attention briefly to her food, but it was cooking nicely, so she completed her conjurations in her sleeping-room. This she draped in blues, from sapphire to midnight, and created a huge puff of material, as soft as a cloud, to sleep on. It took up most of the room.
As she completed the last of her conjurations, she felt the last of her power run out, as if it were water and she a jug. For a moment, she was exhilarated. No one she knew had this much power! What she had just done would have taxed the conjuration of anyone but the Queen herself! She had mostly limited herself to creating a length of material to drape around her soft body for clothing, a pallet to sleep on, something to augment her plain, dull food, and wood or charcoal to burn in the winter. She had, infrequently, decorated and lit her sleeping room and had of course practiced creating small objects of many lands. Yet she'd had no idea she could conjure this much at once! Her power had grown.
But immediately depression set in again. What did it matter, anyway? Conjured material wasn't good for anything permanent. By this time tomorrow it would be gone. Assuming she was still alive to care.
In this subdued state, she ate her dinner-carefully, to make each bite last-and gathered her courage for the difficult task that lay ahead of her.
For when the sun set, she had an appointment with Xantippe, the slave-keeper of the arena, to select her opponent for the fight tomorrow.
"I suppose you know you left it too long," Xantippe said rudely, as she let Xylina in through a set of double-locked doors set in the yellow stone wall of the arena itself. Xylina had swathed herself in a wrapping of dark cloth, and the dusk itself had hid her from curious eyes as she slipped from shadow to shadow. She had not wanted anyone to see her. The encounter in the bazaar had been bad enough.
Xantippe brought her down a set of torch-lit stairs, across several corridors, and finally into the slave-quarters. The arena-slaves were kept confined beneath the arena itself, in cells holding one man each. The grizzled, battle-hardened veteran of hundreds of arena-fights glanced at Xylina, who carefully controlled her expression, even though her palms were damp with nervous sweat and her stomach knotted around her illusory meal. She swallowed, hoping she wouldn't vomit with fear. "If you'd come here earlier in the year, like the other girls did, you'd have had a better choice in opponents."
Easier, Xantippe meant. While the men confined here for the womens'-trials were never inferior or diseased specimens, there was a certain amount of choice insofar as size or agility went-or rather, there was at New Year's and at Midsummer, the days when Xantippe combed the slave-markets for new stock. Now-the men left were the ones even the bravest girls feared to face, and for good reason.
Most were battle-captives, which meant that they already knew how to fight. And even though they would be facing their opponents bare-handed, that gave them a distinct advantage. They had learned how to kill; had experience in killing. For all their training, the Mazonite girls making their trials-by-combat had never had that experience.
The rest were simply formidable. Damnably formidable.
Forbidden by their keeper to speak, they sat or stood in their cells, staring back at Xylina as she paced the cold, torch-lit stone hall, examining them.
There were around a dozen of them. Fully half of them leaned against the back walls of their cells, staring sullenly at her, despising or hating her, but unwilling to chance punishment for displaying that hatred aggressively. Most of the rest sat on their bunks and stared somewhere over her head, faces blank, eyes unfocused. One or two looked away, carefully, as Xantippe glared at them.
One, however, did not stand at the back of his cell. Instead, he posed defiantly right behind the bars confining him, massive, muscular legs braced apart, fists on his hips, chin up, glaring directly at both of them. Xylina in particular.
She glanced at him, feeling a kind of electric spark leap between them-not of attraction, but of recognition. Here, perhaps, was someone who loathed her as much as she loathed herself.
Hatred struck her like a palpable force, and she stopped, forced almost against her will to return his stare.
He was huge, perhaps the largest man she had ever seen. The top of his shaggy, ill-kempt head loomed high above hers. His shoulders were broader than a prize bull's, his chest as deep and as heavily-muscled. Eyes the color of storm-clouds glowered at her from beneath coarse black hair and heavy black brows. Sweat gleamed from the curves of sharply defined muscles in his shoulders, chest, and arms. His blocky face could have been carved from granite, and the scowl-lines seemed permanently graven there. No racing-stallion possessed more powerful legs. His hands, by contrast, were not the hard, heavily calloused implements of labor she had expected, but were manicured, clean, and scrupulously cared for.
Xylina stared back at him, wondering what he saw. Certainly she didn't look like much of an opponent. Small, slim, with full breasts and long, slender legs-wheat-gold hair down to her waist-surely there was nothing in her to inspire such a look of virulent, poisonous malevolence.
And yet she could have been as hardened a warrior as Xantippe, for there was no softening in his expression. If anything, his expression grew crueler as a shadow of a smile crossed his lips.
It was not a pleasant smile-it had no sense of good humor about it. But it did promise horrors if he ever got his hands on her. She could well imagine what he had in mind. Rape would be the easiest, simplest thing that he would do to her. She returned his vicious, rage-filled gaze, transfixed, hypnotized by what she saw there.
He wanted to get his hands on her. He lusted not merely for her body, but for the vengeance he would have once he got her. And no one would stop him, if it happened in the arena. In fact, he would be freed and set loose on the border of Mazonia. This was the only time a man had a free hand to strike back without penalty at the women who enslaved him. In this case, at the person of a single girl, not yet officially a woman.
For a girl of the Mazonites had to meet a man in single combat, no holds barred, in the arena. And she had to do so after she began her courses, but before her seventeenth birthday-or face exile. He was trained to fight from the moment he was selected for the arena. She must prove that not only could she conjure, she could do so under pressure. Xylina would be allowed to use her formidable ability at conjuration as her chief weapon. She would be permitted to conjure anything she pleased to use as armor or as weaponry. But she had to do whatever she intended before her opponent reached her, and she must use whatever she conjured effectively. If she was to survive.