Spellbreaker (63 page)

The crowd's chanting dissolved before coalescing into a slower, more ominous rhythm. The bruiser advanced. Dhrun threw himself sideways, away from his opponent and just barely within the circle. The bruiser crouched and advanced again. Dhrun scrambled to regain his feet, moving faster than he had before. For a moment, it looked as if he would make it to safer ground. But then, seeing how close he was to the ring's edge, he faltered and stuttered his feet.

The bruiser rushed forward then and threw an overhand punch at the younger man's ear.

But somehow the punch struck only air. Dhrun had rolled onto the ground. He had caught the bruiser's wrist and pulled down, while at the same time, he jammed his foot into the bigger man's gut and his own back onto the ground. The lines of Dhrun's thigh muscles jumped into sharp relief as he used the force of the bruiser's attack to flip him over and out of the ring.

With a comical expression of shock, the bruiser found himself on his back. His flailing legs knocked over an unfortunate bystander.

The crowd erupted into cheers and curses. Sunlight glinted off brass and silver rupees changing hands. A huddle of men surrounded Dhrun, hauled him up to his feet and began slapping his back and arms as if he were on fire. Dhrun's smile was so bright, it hid his swelling lower lip and the blood running freely down a cut in his eyebrow. He was turning around, beaming at the men he had just made slightly richer.

Then he caught sight of Leandra. Their eyes met and she did not know what he saw in her face because she did not know what she felt. Guilt most likely, or pity. He was so much less than he had been, and she had made him so. His smile wilted. Self-hatred washed through Leandra as she realized that she had ruined his victory, this small joy. She smiled at him, but her heart continued to shrivel.

One of the men gave Dhrun an especially hard clap on the back, and Leandra looked away. Wanting to be alone, she hurried down the steps and through the crowd. Several men were holding back the bruiser as he called for a rematch. Some men grew quiet when they noticed her, but most were drunkenly oblivious. Dhrun was smiling again and talking loudly of an ancient goddess of victory called Nika. Maybe one or two would pray to her.

Suddenly everything seemed disgusting to Leandra. The men were too close and smelled of sweat and alcohol. The day's humidity was made thicker by the smell of kitchen waste: fruit rinds and fish heads in the sun. She pushed her way back into the compound.

The dim privacy of the hallways provided welcome relief as she made her way to the pavilion. Blessedly, the stairway was empty and she made it to her room without seeing another soul. She threw her new book on the bed and went to the window.

She set her hands on the sill and felt the great extent of her guilt. She thought of how beautiful Holokai had been, a captain, a creature of the open sea. And yet, in the end, he had been an animal, simple and vicious. He had killed some poor prostitute to get his son. Maybe a dozen prostitutes. Food and sex and progeny. That's what drove him. But, on some level, that's what drove everyone. Maybe every soul on the earth was simple and vicious, even the gods. Especially the gods.

Then she remembered Thaddeus, his long and languid intoxicated dreams. She felt the bite of nostalgia for when she and Thaddeus had been lovers, their intoxicated minds and bodies entwining through long, balmy nights. That had been just before the discovery that Thaddeus was screwing most if not all of the women in his immediate vicinity. Then she saw his aspirations as an addict's empty delusions.

Leandra had killed both Holokai and Thaddeus. Had they deserved it? She'd paralyzed her father and brought about the deaths of two of his followers. She'd torn out the part of Dhrun that was most beautiful and most deadly. How could he go on living as a husk of what he had been?

Leandra felt like a child overwhelmed by emotion. Maybe it was the stress hormone. She cursed herself and balled her hands into fists. But she could not move her mind from her own pain and wretchedness. She remembered then her first lover, Tenili. She'd thought he was a Verdantine merchant, madly in love with her. He'd come to steal her away from her mother and the miseries of her lifelong disease. But he had been a refugee god. He had not loved her, only wanted to trade her to the empress. Leandra could still remember watching her mother's draconic teeth sinking into him.

Since then, Leandra had hated her mother. But now, as Leandra looked on the city, she lined her own life up against her mother's. Were they so different? Hadn't Leandra consumed Thaddeus and Holokai? Her mother's judgment and her swiftness to act had lain upon Leandra's life like lead. But had Leandra not judged both the empire and league? Had her own swiftness to act not started a war?

She found herself gazing up at the volcano, wondering where her father was. Perhaps he'd made it to the shores of crater lake, that massive reservoir of hydromancers and divine language. Her mind wandered farther. There had to be some way of using the lake's dispelling waters against the empire. But how? Catapults perhaps? Water deities to spray it up on the enemy fleets? It seemed phenomenally poor planning, on the part of Ixonian civilization, to lock away such energy.

The sound of a door sliding open made her turn. Dhrun stood in the doorway, his youthful face uncertain. He had bathed, changed back into his red lungi and white blouse. His hair hung down to his shoulders. Apparently a few of the wrestling spectators had indeed prayed to Nika and she had used the prayers to repair their body. The swelling was gone from Dhrun's lips and there was no evidence of a cut or stiches near his eyebrow. He was also slightly taller, slightly more muscular.

Leandra stood up straighter. “Your throw at the end was excellent.”

His smile was uneasy. “I thought so.”

“Well…” she said impatiently, “come in.”

Dhrun slid the screen shut behind him and walked toward the window. “Lea, are you angry that I wrestled?”

“Why should I be mad?”

“I just saw you on the street … and…” His dark eyes searched her face.

“I was only curious. I didn't mean to distract you.”

“What's the matter?”

She turned to the window. “Nothing.”

“You've never worried about distracting me when I wrestled before.”

“You were never … never like this before.”

Silence radiated off of him; it scared her a little that she could not tell its quality.

At last Dhrun said, “It was harder wrestling with only two hands. But I still can do it, and I can still win.”

“Good. That is very good.”

“Will you tell me what's bothering you?”

“I said nothing is the matter.”

He stood beside her and they both looked out at the bay. Two catamarans were patrolling about a mile out of the harbor.

“When I was a boy,” Dhrun said, “I lived in a nothing of a farming village on the eastern side of the big island. The land is poor and the people are poorer. Whenever the crops failed, many starved and others left. Two of my older siblings died in bad years before I was born. Anyway, the wrestling matches on Bright Souls Night and the Solstice Feasts were the most exciting thing that ever happened. They would make a circle of taro leaves and then put the two youngest kids into the ring. Whoever could push the other kid out stayed in the ring. When I was ten, I stayed in the ring until a sixteen-year-old pushed me out. And when I was sixteen no one could push me out.”

He paused to shift his weight. “On the last Bright Souls Night I ever spent in my village … when I was seventeen … they had the best wrestlers for five villages come to our festival. None of them could push me out. When the festival ended, and they put the crown of ferns on my head, my mother came up to me, crying like someone had just died. She told me that everyone in the village had contributed to make a tournament prize. Everyone knew I was going to win, so they had donated rupees to send me to Chandralu. That's when I realized that my mother was crying because they were sending me away from her. Of course I couldn't understand. I was angry with her, I think. Not fair that I was, but I was. I couldn't understand why she wasn't happy for me. I thought she was being a foolish old woman and that I'd see her whenever I came back from the city.”

Leandra studied his face as he looked off into the bay. “And you haven't seen her?”

“My first year in the city was rough. The older wrestlers with more experience all had the drop on me. I was cheated and robbed. I slept on the street more often than not and was too ashamed to send word back. But a couple of the other wrestlers took pity on me and showed me some moves. By year's end, I was winning enough matches to live under a roof. I sent a few messages home and a few rupees. But before I traveled back to that tiny town, I wanted to be successful, somebody my village could be proud about. I won a few smaller tournaments, but it always seemed as if I should win just one more match before I went back. Things changed though when I got involved in the blood sport and the cult of Dhrun.”

“Life got more complicated?”

“That's one way to put it. It was frightening and thrilling. There was death and kava and wine and criminals and beautiful women. I was twenty years old before I thought to travel home. It had been half a year since my last message from home. So I sent out a message and started to make travel plans, but the word came back that in the rainy season, a flood had destroyed the village's irrigation system. All the crops had failed and the entire village had been abandoned. No one knew what happened to my family. I hired several messengers to search for them but never heard back. I don't know if they looked or just pocketed my money.”

“Then what happened?”

“Half a year later, a distant cousin recognized me in a wrestling match. Afterward he told me that my father and uncle tried to take the family to another village farther inland. But when they got there, they found it filled with similar refugee peasants. My father and uncle decided to try the fishing villages by the coast. But on the road, bandits led by some wild boar neodemon robbed them and killed my uncle. By the time the survivors reached the fishing village, they were starving. When mother fell ill, my father was caught stealing. The villagers ran my family away. No one ever knew what happened to my father, but my mother died a few days later.”

Leandra didn't say anything. What was there to say? These stories were too common during the lean years. She wished Dhrun would look at her but he kept his eyes on the bay and the catamarans making slow and graceful turns. She reached over and took his hand.

Their fingers interlaced.

“What did you do?”

He smiled then, tightly. “Got drunk. Very drunk. Night after night. I took chances in the arena I had no right to walk away from. It hurt that I had waited. And the more I hated myself, the more chances I took in the arena. That's when Dhrun took me on as a lesser avatar. The year that followed was a bloody blur. Dhrun invested most of his soul into me. There was so much … so much of everything: blood, kava, wine, women, silver rupees, gold rupees. It was like a dream and a nightmare. It was only when Nika convinced us to form a divinity complex that the madness stopped. She saved us. Well, she did and you did.”

She squeezed his hand. “How's that?”

This time his smile was warmer. “When I saw you take down that pickpocket air goddess in the arena—by then I was a trinity but part of me that was a young man and … well … young men can fall rather hard for impressive and beautiful women. Then, when it turned out that you had a cause I could believe in—and my family had been pushed into their end by a neodemon bandit—it gave me a purpose.”

Leandra nodded.

“It helped me stop beating myself up for not going back to my village sooner. We think so often about our abilities, about how in the future we're going to be something brighter than we are now … but it's not true, having greater ability doesn't make happiness more uplifting or success more fulfilling. Pain and joy are what they are, no matter.”

“Very philosophical.”

His dark brown eyes peered into hers. “I don't want you to feel sorry for me.”

“I don't—”

“I saw your expression out on the street, and I don't want you pitying me or torturing yourself because you had to deconstruct part of me. I am not nearly as powerful, and maybe I'm not useful to you anymore, but out there in that ring, I proved that I can get by. I can win enough prayers to survive. And I still have”—he started to say something but then seemed to change his mind—“something of a cause.”

She laughed and looked away. “And what cause would that be? Because if your referring the idea of the Undivided Society, it's dead now that—”

“Lea, if you need to be forgiven, I forgive you.”

She laughed while turning back to him but then felt her heart collapse. In his earnest expression she saw Holokai, Thaddeus, Tenili. “You're being sentimental. You don't know what you're … God-of-gods damn it!” This last she swore as her eyes began to sting. She yanked her hands from his and gave her eyes an angry rub.

Dhrun said nothing, which was fortunate as she might have deconstructed his face off if he'd spoken. He waited until she finished rubbing her eyes. Then she angrily jammed her hand onto his and interlaced their fingers. If he was going to be affectionate and supportive, then he was going to have to be affectionate and supportive on her terms, damn it.

But when he waited patiently as she stared out at the bay and then gave her hand a gentle squeeze, her heart collapsed again and tears burned into her eyes.

She turned to him and felt his arms encircle her. She felt his warmth. She thought about all that she had done and all that she had lost. She thought of the disease burning through her. “We break so many things,” she found herself blurting. “Everything's broken and I don't know…”