At last, the king opened his eyes and took his hand away from his victim’s neck. The slave’s one good eye rolled back in its socket. His bloody mouth gaped in a silent scream. Then the wretch tumbled to the terrace in a heap.
Ignoring the dying man, the king glared at Dorjan and shook the bone amulet at her. “There are two more of these somewhere in my ziggurat!”
Dorian’s jaw fell slack. She shook her head in denial, but could not utter any words.
“The slave’s thoughts were easily read and quite specific on this matter,” said Kalak evenly.
The slender templar moved backward two steps, the color draining from her face. “You’ll have them by dusk, King Kalak.”
Kalak shook his head. “Not from you.”
Dorjan looked away, avoiding the king’s gaze in a useless effort to save herself. “Mighty One, give me-”
Her plea ceased in midsentence as the king fixed his narrowed eyes on her face. The power of Kalak’s assault was so great that his attack flashed briefly in Tithian’s mind as well as Dorjan’s. Tithian almost screamed as the image of the Dragon’s body appeared in his head. Its immense tail lashed back and forth angrily, and a cloud of yellow gas billowed from its sharp-toothed maw. Its staffs were pointed away from its body like weapons. At the end of one rod, a ball of red lightning crackled. At the end of the other, a small green flame licked the wood.
Just when Tithian feared Kalak’s anger would inadvertently destroy him too, the Dragon faded from his mind. Dorjan began screeching as her head shook violently. A wave of astonished murmurs rustled along the terrace as the jozhals and their overseers stopped to stare at her display.
The high templar watched his rival’s pain in grotesque fascination. Certainly he was happy to be rid of her, but her impending demise was a sobering reminder of the price any templar might pay for his power.
Dorjan’s screams quickly became a feeble wail, then she abruptly fell silent and lifted her chin. Her eyes went blank, although Tithian fancied for a moment that he could see red lightning crackling and flashing deep inside them. Yellow smoke began to seep from the woman’s nose, and a gout of green flame spewed from her mouth. Tithian stepped away, narrowly avoiding injury as a ball of emerald fire engulfed Dorjan’s head.
The woman dropped to the terrace in a lifeless heap. In uneasy silence, Tithian watched her head burn down to a pile of ash until Kalak drew his attention away by handing him the bone amulet.
“Congratulations. You’re my new High Templar of the King’s Works,” said Kalak. “Finish my ziggurat in three weeks-and find the other two amulets.”
ONE
THE GAJ
Rikus slid down the rope and dropped into the fighting pit, eager to finish the morning combat before the day grew hot. The crimson sun had just risen, sending tendrils of fire-colored light shooting through the olive haze of the morning sky. Already the sands of the small arena were warm, and the rancid odor of blood and decaying entrails hung heavily in the air.
In the center of the pit waited the animal he would fight, a beast that Tithian’s hunters had captured somewhere in the desert wastes. It was half-buried in the shallow entrenchment it had dug. Only its scaly, rust-orange shell, about six feet in diameter, showed above the sand. If it had limbs-be they arms, legs, or tentacles-they were either tucked inside this dome or hidden beneath the sand churned up around its body.
Attached to the near end of the shell was the spongy white ball of its head, with a row of compound eyes spaced evenly across the front. Three hairy antennae crowned the pulpy globe, all of them pointed toward Rikus. Over its mouth dangled six fingerlike appendages, flanked by a pair of mandibles as long as a man’s arm.
Caught between these pincers was the savaged body of Sizzkus, a nikaal. He had been the beast’s keeper, at least until the evening before. Now the corpse hung between the creature’s vicious hooks, partially coated with blood and sand. Sizzkus’s pointed chin rested on his scaly chest. From beneath his black mop of hair stared a pair of vacant, lidless eyes. His three-clawed hands were draped over the beast’s pincers, which had crushed his shiny green carapace into a splintered tangle. In a half-dozen places, pinkish ropes of intestine looped out of gashes in the nikaal’s hide. By the number of wounds on Sizzkus’s body, Rikus guessed that he had not died without a hard fight.
Rikus found it surprising that the nikaal had been forced to fight at all, for Sizzkus had been extremely cautious with new creatures in the pit. Not long ago, the nikaal had explained to Rikus that monsters, as well as the so-called “New Races,” were developing in the desert all the time, but most quickly died out because they were not strong enough to fight off the other creatures of the wastes. Those that did survive, however, were the most vicious and dangerous of all, and worthy of a beast keeper’s caution.
Rikus looked away from the mangled corpse and removed his fleece robe, revealing a scarred, athletic body clad only in a breechcloth of drab hemp. Slowly he began to stretch, for he had reluctantly come to realize that his youth was behind him, and his battle-worn muscles would now pull and tear when cold.
Fortunately for Rikus, his body did not outwardly show its maturity. He took great pride in the fact that his bald pate was still taut and smooth, his pointed ears still lay close to his head, and his black eyes remained clear and defiant. His nose still ran straight and true, and there was not so much as a hint of loose skin beneath his powerful jaws. Below his brawny neck, his hairless body was composed of knotted biceps, hulking pectorals, and bulging thighs. Despite the initial stiffness caused by old wounds and poorly mended bones, he could still move with the grace of a rope dancer when he wished.
Rikus had weathered his decades as a gladiator remarkably well, and there was good reason. He was a mul, a hybrid slave bred expressly for arena combat. His father, whom he had never seen, had bestowed on him the strength and durability of the dwarves. His mother, a haggard woman who had died in the slavehouses of far-off Urik, had given him the size and agility of men. The brutal trainers who had raised him, whom he recalled as hated tyrants and murderers, had coached him in the ruthless arts of killing and survival. But it was Rikus himself who was responsible for his greatest asset: determination.
As a child, he had believed that all boys trained to be gladiators. He had assumed that after they fought their way through the ranks, they became trainers and perhaps even nobles. That illusion had lasted until his tenth year, when the lord who owned him had brought his weakling son to see the practice pits. As Rikus had compared his own tattered breechcloth to the frail boy’s silken robes, he had come to understand that no matter how hard he practiced and no matter how talented he became, his skills would never win him the privileged status into which the youth had been born. When be reached adulthood the frail boy would still be a nobleman, and Rikus might still be his slave. On that day, he had sworn to die a free man.
Thirty years and as many brief escapes later, he remained in bondage, but he also remained alive. Had he been anything but a mul, he would have been dead or free by now, either killed as punishment for his repeated escapes or allowed to disappear into the desert after it became too expensive to hunt him down. Muls were too valuable for either option, however. Because they could not reproduce their own kind and because most women died while carrying or giving birth to such big-boned babies, muls were worth more than a hundred normal slaves. When they escaped, no expense was spared to recover them.
Rikus’s status was about to change, however. In three weeks, he would fight in the ziggurat games. The king himself had decreed that the winners of the day’s contests would be freed, and Rikus intended to be among that number.
As the mul finished stretching, he glanced again at Sizzkus’s lifeless body, wondering how such an experienced handler had fallen prey to what appeared to be a relatively slow and clumsy beast.