Steel Maiden (9 page)

The high priest sighed and straightened his
sleeves. I found it odd that while he claimed magic was evil, he
chose to use it himself.

“But I find myself with a tool of
opportunity. Therefore, I’m giving you two options, Elena. You can
choose death, or you can choose to redeem yourself as my champion
for the Great Race. What will you choose?”

I raised my brows. He already knew what my
answer would be.

If I agreed to be his champion, I might be
able to escape with Rose to Girmania or Espan. I did my best to
keep my expression blank although I smiled on the inside.

“And if you think of escaping,” said the
high priest as though he had read my mind, “think again. I will
send other champions along with you, and if you leave I
will
hear of it.”

He paused and turned to Baul with a cold
smile on his face.

“What was the name of the person who hid
her?”

“Rose Fairfax, Your Grace,” said Baul.

I wanted to cut out his tongue.

“Rose,” purred the high priest. “Hear me
now, Elena. If you try to leave or if you try to escape, I will
torture Rose until she begs me to end her life.”

My lips trembled, but I couldn’t find my
voice.

“There’s more. If you do not win this race,
if you do not return with the stone, my red monks will hunt you
down and kill you. Not only will they will hunt and kill your
beloved Rose, but after that we will kill every miserable soul in
the Pit, even the children. I will spare no one. The stone is
important to me. I will not accept failure.”

The high priest watched me and seemed to be
greatly entertained.

I set my jaw. The red monks were ruthless
assassins. There was no hiding from them. They would sniff you out
like attack dogs and kill you in the blink of an eye.

His eyes narrowed.

“And if you try to save your village by
warning them, I will know, and I will destroy them. And it will be
your
fault. So think on that before you do anything
foolish.”

I wanted to spit in the high priest’s face.
It was always about them. Everyone else was dispensable.

“The race will start in Soul City, and the
champions will head west to Goth, in the Heart of Arcania, inside
the Hollowmere. Should you agree to race, then your task will be to
recover the stone and bring it back to
me
.”

I had heard of Goth. It was another
continent, west of Anglia. It was the realm of the dead.

“If I win this race and retrieve your stone,
do I get a full pardon?”

I knew this was a long shot, but it was
worth asking. I would keep my promise to Rose.

“Yes.”

I knew he was lying. There was no way he’d
let anyone with magic survive. They’d hunt me down and kill me. But
I had no other choice.

For a long moment, nobody moved or said
anything. I hated these self-proclaimed Gods, but when I saw the
shock and outrage on Brother Edgar’s face, I felt new courage.

I looked the high priest in the eye and
smiled.

“I’ll do it.”

CHAPTER 9

T
WO WEEKS HAD PASSED since I’d met
with the high priest in all his horrible glory. I had been thrown
into the temple’s prison until the day of the race.

At first I wasn’t sure what I’d expected,
maybe a room in one of the priests’ temple houses? It became quite
clear that although I was their champion, I was to be treated like
a condemned prisoner. I
was
a prisoner. Any which way I
looked at it, it all came back to the same thing—I was a pawn in
the high priest’s game.

But players have the potential to alter the
overall outcome. Players can always break the rules of the game.
And for the past two weeks, all I could do was make plans on how to
break them. I would turn the tables on the high priest. I
would.

I was fed cold stew of unknown meat once a
day, just enough to keep me from starving, and a bucket of water
for drinking and washing. I didn’t use much. I didn’t know how long
I’d be stuck in here. The almighty high priest could easily change
his mind.

I closed my eyes and rested my head against
the cold stone of my cell. Darkness had been my closest friend for
the past days. My bed was a pile of filthy blankets on the stone
floor. My only company was these four walls and the guard that slid
my meal through the slot in the door once a day. The stale air
stank of urine, blood, and despair.

Every waking hour in this sewer infested
cell, I thought of Rose. She had kept me safe all this time, only
to have her efforts wasted by my stupidity. Perhaps she had known
about my healing abilities. I wished that she had trusted me enough
to tell me if she had. Maybe if I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone to
such lengths to steal from the very people from whom I should have
been hiding. Had my mother and Rose feared that I’d be forced into
a game? A race?

The truth was I was terrified to possess
these healing magic powers. How could I have not known all these
years? I had never been sick, but had I ever broken a bone or cut
myself? I racked my brain but I could not remember any broken
bones, or anything that would have revealed my secret early on. So
many questions died with my mother. Only Rose knew. I was sure of
it. And I would ask her as soon as I’d finished with this race.

I shoved Rose out of my mind and replaced
her with the other person who occupied my mind. I thought of Mad
Jack. I thought of the muscular tanned skin under his shirt, his
straight nose, his haunting dark eyes, and his full lips. I thought
about how they would feel on my own lips, and how his rough
calloused hands would feel on my skin. There was nothing else to do
in this shit hole but think. I thought about how he would look
without his clothes, and I wondered if he’d be a gentle lover.
Would he be as rough and wild as the reputation that preceded him?
I didn’t know why I thought about him so much. He
had
betrayed me after all. It was his fault I was here in the first
place. As the days passed, I would think of him often. At first
bitterly, but then my tears would come, and I’d remember the look
of pain that flashed in his eyes before the guards beat me, and I
couldn’t stay mad. It was almost as if he had tried to tell me
something…but what?

“You’re such a fool, Elena,” I whispered to
myself and suppressed my yearning for Mad Jack. I had enough to
deal with without getting emotional over a street thug. I deserved
better. Rose deserved better.

I heard the rustling of keys and then a
click. I pulled myself together, and the creaking metal door swung
open.

“Get up. It’s time,” grumbled the stinking
prison guard.

Just seeing sunlight would be a major
improvement. I jumped to my feet, stretched, and didn’t bother
hiding my hopeful smile.

“You won’t be smiling for long, witch.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. Just because I
had some kind of magic didn’t necessarily make me a witch. Or did
it?

“So the race is today?” I managed.

“It is.”

I followed him through the dreary stone
corridors of the dungeons. My boots shuffled through puddles of
unidentifiable muck as we passed several cells along the way. They
echoed with moans and smelled of rotting corpses. I knew that the
stories I’d heard growing up were true when I had first stepped
down into the dungeons. The priests had destroyed the king of
Anglia’s castle but had kept the foundations. They had kept the
dungeons and had built their golden temple above them. It was
creepy and disturbing.

After a few moments of tedious silence, we
finally climbed up the staircase that led to the main floor of the
golden temple. I shielded my eyes from the flickering light as I
heard and smelled the guard disappear back down into the bowels of
the temple.

As my eyes slowly adjusted to the
brightness, I gasped. Four women stood in front of me and with the
indifferent stares they gave me, I knew instantly they didn’t like
me. Or at least they didn’t want me there.

They appeared to be concubines. They were
all dressed in the same see-through garb but in multiple colors.
They wore their leather collars proudly, like expensive trinkets,
as though they were wearing jewelry, and not the priests’ tethers.
I did my best not to stare at their glorious womanly curves. They
had bodies I could only dream of. I stared at their faces instead.
And even in their individuality, the shapes of their faces, lips,
hair and skin color, they all shared one trait—they were all
beautiful.

They frowned disapprovingly at me. I knew I
must look and smell worse than the sewer itself. My face burned
with shame. I looked like a complete fool next to these
goddesses.

My spirits lifted at the smell of rose water
and vanilla, however. These women looked and smelled delicious. It
seemed that only the rich, or concubines, could afford
perfumes.

“This way,” said a concubine with golden
hair that cascaded in waves of liquid gold behind her back. I knew
she must be the head concubine because she held her head high and
looked serious.

I might have smelled like the piss I was
forced to sleep in, but I wasn’t afraid of these women. I knew they
weren’t here to beat me. They looked too fragile and clean. I
didn’t argue and I followed her. The others fell into step behind
me.

I followed the head concubine down corridors
and hallways until I was dizzy. We passed a few priests who smiled
at the women but glowered when they passed me. I glowered back.
Finally we arrived at a bath area where four large square baths
steamed with water so clean, it didn’t look real.

“Take your clothes off,” ordered the head
concubine.

Who was I to argue? At this point, I didn’t
care about undressing in front of these women. We were the only
ones in the bath area, so I felt even more at ease. My clothes were
stiff with sweat and grime, and I was dreadfully embarrassed at my
filth. The water looked divine. They didn’t have to tell me
twice.

I peeled off my clothes and dropped into the
steaming bath. The hot water soothed my skin. I’d never been in a
bath this large, this glorious, and this hot. It was heaven.

The concubines held me, rubbed my skin with
hard bristle brushes, and washed my hair.

“Ouch! That hurt!” I yelled.

The red-headed one
tsked
. “You are as
filthy as the wild children, miss. We
will
scrub you clean,
no matter how much you fuss.”

She pursed her large red lips and began to
clean my fingernails with a hard brush. The women ignored my many
requests to be gentler and scrubbed me until my skin sparkled
red.

As they fussed over me, I examined the
concubines more closely. One was blonde, one was a redhead, and the
other two were brunettes. The one rubbing a bar of soap along my
right arm had her hair piled on top of her head in braids. The
other concubines wore red ribbons braided into their long locks.
The girl who scrubbed my legs had tanned skin that stood out
sensually against her see-through yellow robe. They all seemed to
know what to do without communicating, and I wondered if they had
bathed prisoners often. Every now and again, I caught questioning
looks between them. They didn’t have to say anything, but I could
tell they were mystified about me. There was also a hardness in
their eyes that I couldn’t explain.

I couldn’t suppress the feeling of dread
that shook me. I could easily have been one of them, a priest’s
love toy. Any of them could have been
me
.

Once they were satisfied that I was clean
enough, they dried me with plush white towels that smelled of
lavender.

“You’re
very
skinny. Do you know that
we can count your ribs?”

The head concubine was watching me. The
scorn on her face had disappeared, and there was pity in her large
blue eyes.

I was embarrassed. They had seen
every
inch of me, every imperfection. I wrapped my arms
around myself.

“I don’t need your pity,” I said rather
harshly, but I felt like I was being judged, like they wanted to
make sure I knew that I didn’t belong with them. What did they know
about me? Did they ever starve?

“There’s not much food in the Pit. We do our
best.” I glared at the blonde until she looked away, but not before
I saw the pink that stained her cheeks.

“She is skinny, but you can’t hide the fact
that she’s beautiful,” said the redhead. A frown wrinkled her
silky, milky skin. Her emerald eyes widened.

“Skin and bones and still stunning. How did
you manage to escape the priests looking like
that
?”

“Helen! Hold your tongue,” the blonde looked
over her shoulder. “We were told not to make conversation with
her.”