As Agis had anticipated, the elven chief shrugged at the sorcerer’s complaint, then motioned Agis forward. “Bring me the lungs and kidneys of your favorite goat.”
Without taking the chance of a reply the noble went to the elf’s side. He counted out ninety-five gold coins while the other nobles left the slaveyard with their purchases. Once Agis had paid the full amount, Radurak had his assistants bring the slave-girl forward, offering her hand to the noble with the words, “Take this woman to the nearest mountaintop. The moonlight there will be good for her skin.”
The half-elf cast a dismayed glance in the sorcerer’s direction. The old man angrily regarded Agis for several moments, then turned to the slave and said, “In the faro fields are whopping great windows. For now, you’ll be safe with him.”
Agis breathed a sigh of relief; the second half of the old man’s comment made sense. Apparently the spell had been a short-lived one and he could now hear and speak normally. He stepped toward the old man. “Before you go-”
The sorcerer cut Agis off by jabbing the tip of his cane into the noble’s chest. “The answer is no,” he spat. With that, the old man turned sharply away and stepped out of the makeshift slaveyard.
Motioning Caro to come forward with the sorcerer’s purse, Agis started to follow. “At least hear me out.”
The noble was stopped by his new slave. “My name is Sadira,” she said, stepping in front of him.
Agis tried to move around her, but she once again blocked his way. Fixing her icy blue eyes on his, she added, “I don’t know why you bought me, but I assure you, it was a waste of good gold.”
EIGHT
KALAK’S TREASURES
Tithian and three subordinates stood in the lowest room of the ziggurat, staring down at an iron trapdoor that had once been hidden beneath two layers of bricks. The low-ranking templars had discovered it a few hours earlier, while searching for the last of the Veiled Alliance’s hidden amulets.
“Go ahead,” Tithian said, motioning to the door.
One of the assistants, a half-elf named Gathalimay, kneeled on the floor. He released the lever holding the circular door closed, and it fell open with a loud creak. Gathalimay took a torch and peered into the darkness below.
“It’s a tunnel!” be called.
“We’d better see where it leads,” Tithian said.
He ordered one of the templars to stay behind, then took the other two and descended into the tunnel. They found a circular, man-sized corridor running eastward beneath the gladiatorial arena. It was lined with bricks of black obsidian that made the strange passageway seem supernaturally gloomy and dark.
“Who dug this, the Veiled Alliance?” asked Stravos, a wiry, gray-haired human.
“We’ll see soon enough,” Tithian said, motioning his two assistants forward.
After walking a time in the strange corridor, Gathalimay stopped and looked up. Above his head rose a small shaft, also lined with obsidian. He held his torch close to the cavity, but they could not see the top.
“Where does that go?” he asked.
“There’s only one place it can go,” Tithian replied. “We’re underneath the fighting floor of the arena. It must lead to a trapdoor concealed under the sand.”
The half-elf glanced around. “We aren’t near the prop room for the games, are we?”
Tithian shook his head. “We’ve gone too far. Those chambers and the shafts that lead up to the arena are closer to the middle of the field.”
“Why would the Veiled Alliance build a shaft like this?” asked Stravos.
“What makes you think the Alliance built it?” Tithian countered, motioning him and Gathalimay forward. “We’re heading toward Kalak’s palace.”
A short distance later, the tunnel ended. In the ceiling hung another trapdoor with a bas relief of the Dragon’s head molded into it. The beast’s sunken eyes seemed fixed on Tithian’s face, and its jagged-toothed muzzle gaped open as if ready to seize anyone who attempted to open the door.
Despite his curiosity, Tithian was tempted to leave the trapdoor closed. He had no doubt that they were somewhere beneath Kalak’s Golden Tower, which meant the tunnel could only be a secret passage connecting the palace and the ziggurat. He doubted that the king would be happy to know it had been discovered.
Unfortunately, he and his men had only recovered one of the two amulets that remained secreted in the ziggurat. He could not afford to ignore the possibility that the other had been planted in this tunnel or on the other side of the door. Besides, Tithian was curious. As the High Templar of both Games and the King’s Works, it seemed suspicious to him that Kalak had not mentioned this secret passageway. He wanted to find out as much about it as he could.
Tithian stepped away from the door and motioned to the half-elf. “Gathalimay, give Stravos a lift so he can open the door.”
Stravos’s wiry face went ashen.
“We’ll have a look around and cast a few detection spells,” Tithian said, more to reassure himself than the human templar. “If the last amulet isn’t there, we’ll close the door and forget we ever saw this place.”
Gathalimay created a stirrup with his pudgy hands, then Stravos swallowed hard and stepped up. When the gray-haired templar released the latch, the rusty door fell open with a loud creak. Dim white light shone down into the tunnel.
Tithian motioned the man through the doorway, then passed his torch up and followed himself. As Stravos reached down to help Gathalimay through the trapdoor, Tithian lifted his eyes to examine their surroundings.
He saw that they had come up facing the wall of a gloomy chamber. Suddenly a melon-sized globe of yellow-green light appeared in front of him. The sphere hovered four feet off the ground, a fuzzy, undulating, indistinct ball of glowing haze shaped vaguely like a bald head with a sagging chin.
“Lord Tithian?” asked the shaky voice of Agis’s aged valet, Caro.
Beneath his breath, Tithian swore at the spy’s bad timing. “I’m busy. Contact me later.”
The ball changed hue to deeper green and blurred even more. “This is the first chance I’ve had to sneak away in three days and it might be the last for another three. You’ll have to listen now or take your chances on hearing from me again.”
Tithian sighed, cursing the combination of dwarven obstinacy and Agis’s leniency that made Caro so insistent. He had turned the old valet to his cause after confiscating his old friend’s slaves. It had been an easy matter to undermine the dwarf’s loyalty to the Asticles family, for the high templar understood the power of both bondage and liberty as few other free men did. When presented with the option of dying in the king’s brick pits or earning his liberty by spying on Agis, Caro had opted for freedom.
“Hold the crystal away from your face,” Tithian ordered. “We’ll be able to see each other.”
He had given Caro a magical crystal of olivine that the dwarf could use to communicate with him. Just as he could see Caro in the ghostly light, he knew that his spy could see his own face in the crystal itself. Tithian’s words would sound like no more than a faint whisper to anyone except the person holding the crystal.
As Caro obeyed, the heavy furrows of the dwarf’s withered face came into focus. The old slave was squinting into the crystal, his wrinkled brow folded in concentration and his toothless mouth hanging open.
“What is it?” Tithian demanded.
The high templar listened impatiently as Caro told him about the meeting between Agis and the other four nobles, as well as the attack that had resulted in Jaseela’s injury. Tithian was not surprised by anything the dwarf told him, for he had expected his friend to respond to the slave confiscations by doing something foolish.
When the dwarf related the story of Agis’s purchase at the slave auction, Tithian’s impatience changed to interest. “What’s the girl’s name?” he demanded, temporarily forgetting where he was standing.