Citadels of the Lost (38 page)

T
HE COLISEUM WAS a grand oval structure and the center of entertainment in Rhonas Chas. Situated south of the spires of the Myrdin-dai Abbey down the aptly named
Vira Coleseum
and overlooking the
Paz Vitoras
plaza across from the Nekara Fortress enclosure, the Coliseum had once been a combat training facility for the Legions of the Empire. It still served this function although its primary interest for the citizens of the Empire had evolved into its violent, often bloody and, through rare accidents, occasionally deadly pageants which were staged by the Nekara for the entertainment of the Emperor and his court, ostensibly under the guise of informational reenactments of battles from long past or even recent history. The Nekara had produced an entire series of such pageants during the War of the Nine Dwarven Thrones, proudly displaying captured dwarves dressed as warriors. The dwarves always lost, of course, each one engineered through their Devotions to faint three to four blows following any blow that made them bleed. Each of these impressed Devotional slaves would then be taken below the Coliseum to where the Nekara kept their healing beds and be repaired and placed under new Devotions in time for the next performance. They could thereby come back to die before the crowd again the next day—or die twice for matinees. Occasionally, something would go wrong during the performance and an actual fatal blow would be struck that was beyond the arts of the healing beds and the slave would be killed outright, if unintentionally. The owner of the slave was always handsomely compensated for the loss and, if truth be told, the crowds returned in part to see if such an accident would happen again. But now the dwarves were no longer news, their kingdoms conquered by the Legions of the Emperor and the pageant of the Ninth Throne had completed its run. The public was getting bored with reenactments of the Aergus Coast Barons' Rebellion or the Benis Isles Campaigns—this was old killing.

The public wanted fresh stories and fresh blood.

Thanks to the recent actions of the Legions of the Northern Fist and the rapidly spreading notoriety of the young elven woman by the name of Tsi-Shebin Timuran, the public would have its wish fulfilled. It was in her name, so the story now was told, that the Legions had marched northward against the Drakis Slave Rebellion. On the haunted expanse of the Shrouded Plain they met, and it was here that a new victorious story had been forged by the Fist of the Imperial Will. Tales of the victory had spread quickly through the Empire and were at the heart of nearly every conversation in Rhonas. So it was natural, indeed, anxiously expected—that the Nekaran Prefects should stage a spectacle in the Coliseum reenacting that glorious triumph as soon as permissible.

It was then, thanks to an idea forwarded by Liau Nyenjen, head of the Ministry of Thought, that the Nekara were given a special dispensation. For the good of the Empire, the Nekara would be permitted to
schedule
the death of one human at each performance. The Nekara balked at this idea. First, they reasoned that a regularly scheduled execution at every pageant would be an expensive proposition. The resulting escalation in human prices on the slave market would prove a boon to many in the outer provinces where the occasional human slave found under House Devotions would soon fetch their masters unheard of prices at the expense of the Nekara. Worse, the public might come to expect—even demand—more and more executions as they became hardened to the killings in the pageants, causing further escalation in costs. However, when Liau mentioned that Tsi-Shebin Timuran herself would perform each execution, the Nekara could see their potential returns expanding far beyond the risks involved and the new, sensational pageant was created.

At each performance there would be one exceedingly unfortunate human who was crowned to represent Drakis in the battle as it was portrayed. His fate was sealed and well known to everyone attending—except, perhaps, to the unhappy human at the center of the pageant. These “enhanced reenactments” were so popular among the elven populace of the city that additional performances and matinees had to be scheduled, resulting in a serious supply shortage of human males.

The hopes of the Nekara for a quick profit by the staging of the most violent to date of their spectacles, however, could not have been dreamed of to the extent that they were now enjoying; for the seneschals of the court had announced that the Imperial Box was to be made ready. The Emperor himself was attending the opening performance.

No price was too high nor favor too dear that it could not be traded for a place in the Coliseum that day.

The face of the Emperor was on every coin of the realm, carved into the ornamentation of every building, and depicted on statues in every plaza, garden, and courtyard both public and private throughout the Empire.

It was not a good face.

It was privately joked throughout the Empire that the Emperor, whilst a child, had so often assumed the countenance of practiced disgust over everything that his features had frozen that way. His upper lip was drawn back in a perpetual expression of disdain, showing his sharp upper teeth even when his mouth was ostensibly closed. The upper eyebrows were thin lines drawn back from the dull black eyes. His chin was particularly sharp, accentuating the long, narrow point of his nose. He constantly wore the long crown of his office; a golden wreath trimming the central headpiece that completely covered his elongated head in an opalescent shell. That the crown was also rumored to cover the fact that the Emperor had no hair on his head at all was never spoken aloud by anyone higher than the Fourth Estate and, therefore, was never heard within a thousand steps of the Emperor's ears.

He gazed down on the combat taking place on the arena floor below him with placid contempt. The Impress slaves that were taking the roles of the Army of the Prophet were obligingly doing their part to fall unconscious as they bled at the hands of the advancing elven warriors representing his northern Legions. The slaves were putting on a good show of battle as they were being pressed into a line of ghostly spirits—or, at least, fine representations of ghosts provided by the graces of the Myrdin-dai—who fell to the ground whenever they were pushed beyond the line of what the narrator had called the “Shroud of Spirits.” This part of the spectacle bored him. He had already heard the reports of the battle from several different representatives of the various Houses, Orders and Ministries who had been directly or indirectly involved in the attack. He knew the pageant below them to be largely true although, perhaps, the manticores in the actual battle fought harder than those being wounded now on the arena floor below him.

And, of course, there had been no actual Drakis in the battle at all. The Emperor preferred to think of the unfortunate human desperately struggling on the arena floor as being more of a symbolic representation of Drakis rather than any actual creature. All story, he decided, was largely symbolic and should be modified where the truth became inconvenient.

He certainly could not deny that the populace loved it.

The Coliseum was packed from one end of the tiered bowl to the other, every available space taken up by teeming throngs of elven citizenry. With every blow struck and every fallen enemy before them, they cheered wildly.

“Wejon?” the Emperor said with his usual sneer. “Who is this you wanted me to see?”

“She is coming, my august lord,” Wejon Rei said to the Emperor from his seat just behind the Imperial throne.

“But the pageant is nearly finished.” The Emperor shifted slightly on his enormous chair. “The enemy is nearly vanquished. What more is there?”

“Only a few moments more, O glorious one,” Wejon urged softly. “I do not think you will be disappointed.”

“I don't know why I let you talk me into coming to this,” the Emperor said to the Myrdin-dai master. “So far, this has proved to be a waste of an afternoon. If you and Ch'drei had not been so insistent, I would have never . . .”

The Emperor was suddenly aware of a hush falling over the audience crowded into every available space of the Coliseum.

From the southern entrance, a single figure emerged. She was a young elf in a tattered dress who stepped barefoot onto the bloodied sands of the arena floor. She walked past all of the still bodies of the fallen “traitors.” A single human struggled and screamed wildly, his arms and legs pinned to the ground by the long tridents of six elven warriors—each in resplendent armor. He was the last human remaining alive on the field and knew that his moment of drama was about to be fulfilled.

“Who is she?” the Emperor whispered, unwilling to break whatever spell the woman was casting over the crowd.

“She is Tsi-Shebin,” Wejon whispered back.

“The
actual
Shebin?” The Emperor was genuinely impressed.

“Yes, my glory,” Wejon said. “She plays the role herself at every performance.”

“Indeed?” The Emperor raised an Imperial brow. “Every performance . . .”

Shebin strode over with reluctant steps, her face downcast, a picture of shame and despair. As she came upon the held human figure of Drakis, she picked up his sword from the ground. Then she stood over him, raising the blade high above her head and shouting to the expectant crowd.

“The traitors lie! You are
not
the Drakis who has taken our lands, our honor, and our future! The
real
Drakis has fled to the north, where he plots in darkness to return and take from all our nation what he has already taken from
me
!”

Shebin turned to face the quivering human on the ground below her. The crowd in the Coliseum held their breath in delightful anticipation.

“But you shall
not
take from us
ever again
!”

Shebin plunged the sword downward into the chest of the prostrate human. Her thrust was carefully planned and the response was always the same. Blood gushed up the sword from the wound as she turned the blade, coating her hands and forearms. Then, Shebin pulled the weapon clear of the dying creature, turned, and with her arms now falling to her sides and her head once more bowed in sadness, slowly walked off the field, reluctantly dragging the tip of the sword through the dirt behind her.

The crowd erupted in deafening cheers.

The Emperor watched from his box, his eyes fixed on Shebin as she continued to walk from the arena, holding her pose and never acknowledging the crowd or their thundering approval. She was a symbol of the war . . . and she played the part well.

The Emperor stood and with him all the attendants in the box rose as well.

“Wejon, I believe you petitioned me for a private audience,” the Emperor said as he left the box. “That can now be arranged.”

The great oval of the Emperor's throne room was completely deserted except for three individuals. Two were seated on large chairs set slightly to one side in the center of the hall. The third sat on a throne floating on a cloud just higher than the two set on the polished marble of the floor.

All three waited in silence. One of those seated wore the robes of the Fifth High Priest of the Myrdin-dai. The other, an older woman of frail and mean countenance, wore the robes of the Keeper of the Iblisi. The Emperor had not spoken from his floating perch on his cloud-top throne and thus neither of his companions, more earthbound, deigned to speak.

The gates of the throne room opened at the far end of the great hall. The figure of a young elf woman entered, her long hands held demurely in front of her as she walked; her slippers making a swishing sound as she made her way across the polished marble floor. Her elongated head was bowed as she walked; her black-eyed gaze cast down to the floor. The rim of her white hair was carefully coiffed upward around the bald crown. The dress she wore appeared to be torn in places but that was merely an effect of the cut and tailoring of the dress. The fabric was new and glittered slightly with silver threads woven into it. It had become all the rage in the Imperial City known as the “Shebin” for the woman whose tragedy and legendary sorrow had inspired it.