Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (19 page)

“What’s going on?” asked Khalous. “I thought
I told you I’d handle this.”

Stoneman released the priest. “He was
sleepin‘ near the women, captain—Sister Ariella, Dana, and one of
’em orphans ain’t more ’an thirteen.”

Watching from his campfire, Brayden strained
to hear all their words.

“I thought I made it clear to you that you
were to have no interactions with any of the women or girls,”
Khalous said to the nervous priest.

“My lord, I am just—”

“You’re just a womanizing fiend,” Khalous
said. “Now I don’t have time for alleged rapists, so you’ll do as I
say or you can make your own path home.”

“I told you,” Placidous began, “and I told
the magistrate, it wasn’t rape. She turned on me when—”

Stoneman cuffed him in the side of the head
just hard enough to shut him up. “Rape or no rape, what’s a
so-called priest a the Allgod doin’ sleepin’ wit’ women anyway?
Ain’t ’at against them rules?”

Placidous lifted his hands in surrender. “I
am seeking to make amends for my wicked ways. I truly am. I mean no
harm to anyone.”

“You can make amends all you want,” Khalous
said, “but you’ll do it away from the womenfolk.”

“It’s cold,” the priest said. “We all need
to help each other keep warm.”

“Stoneman?” Khalous said.

“Sir?”

“How would you like to keep our priestly
friend here warm for the remainder of our journey?”

Stoneman flashed a wicked a grin. “Love to,
sir.” He grabbed Placidous by the nape of his neck and dragged him
off to another campfire.

Brayden flinched when he noticed Khalous
look his way. He spun around, but he knew he had been spotted.
Behind him he heard the crunching of the captain’s boots. He
sauntered up to the fire where he stopped next to Brayden and sat
down on the grass.

Khalous dropped another log on the flames
and stoked it with the toe of his boot.

“I’m supposing you heard most of that,” he
said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Best to keep it to yourself for now. I
don’t know the whole story, and it’s none of my business really. I
just want to keep everyone calm and safe until we get to the
monastery.”

Brayden agreed.

“Sir, can I ask a question?”

“Yes.”

“What’s going to happen to us?”

Khalous inhaled long and deep and then
exhaled just as slow. His gaze drifted upward toward the stars and
he thought for a while before saying, “I’m still trying to figure
that out. You and your brother will be men soon, and Dana, well,
she’s a woman now. It’s time the lot of you learn to make your own
lives. But there’s a part of me that…” but he left his last
sentence hanging.

“Sir?”

“I want to teach you to fight,” Khalous
said. “I made a promise once, and I’ve never broken a promise my
whole life, but keeping this promise means doing some rather
extraordinary things, and I’m just not sure that’s the best thing
to do right now.”

“You made a promise to who?”

Khalous looked at him. “Your father. I
promised him… well, it doesn’t matter what I promised him. The
point is, I need to take care of you, and the only way I know how
to do that is teaching you how to defend yourself.”

Brayden felt his stomach growing anxious at
the mention of learning to fight. He knew how to swing a sword and
aim a bow, but he had never seen combat, nor did he want to.

“What do you mean ‘fight?’” he asked. “Fight
who?”

“The Black King,” the captain said
matter-of-factly.

Brayden’s stomach did a summersault up into
his throat where it stayed for a moment or two.

Khalous patted him on the knee. “Don’t worry
about it now, my prince. Rest. We’ve a long journey ahead of us
tomorrow.”

The captain’s retreating footsteps failed to
overpower the nervous thumping of Brayden’s own pulse. Like most
boys throughout the realm he had long admired the valiant knights
of Aberdour and the famous soldiers of history, but he had never
imagined what it would be like to become one, and he didn’t want
to.

He let his eyes wander to the sky above, a
dark navy blanket rupturing with thousands of gleaming stars. For a
moment he imagined he was back in Aberdour, reclining in the grass
of the castle’s courtyard, or perched in the window of one of its
many turrets, gazing up at the sky. He imagined there was no Black
King, and that there had been no invasion.

And for a moment he didn’t feel afraid.

Malium. Merek hated this part of the empire.
The entire region was a sandy wasteland of mostly barren soil
occupied by a diverse range of strange natives.

Unlike the other ten provinces of Efferous,
Malium, a southeastern bubble of the continent, had nothing to
offer anyone except sand, miserable heat, illegal games, ugly
people, and slavery.

The locals of Malium disgusted him even
more. They were an immodest and superstitious lot, adorning their
bodies with obscene amounts of piercings and jewelry while covering
themselves in fabrics that wouldn’t be considered clothing anywhere
else in the world. Most of the locals lived in villages on the
southern outskirts of the region, but they often conglomerated
around larger cities where they would mooch off travelers and slave
traders.

Merek looked down from his horse at the
disgusting rabble of native Efferousians crowding the road.

“If Efferous were a donkey, Malium would be
its ass,” he quipped.

Riding next to him in a long cloak and hood,
his head shielded from the sun, Patryk chuckled. “So what does that
make us?”

Merek kept a tight watch on his purse as he
and Patryk meandered their horses into a city called Slavigo, which
sat on Malium’s western border. Crude in its design, Slavigo was a
sprawling place built in a rush by greedy men so eager to turn a
profit that they never considered how to erect a proper city. The
streets were narrow and dizzying, the buildings were lopsided and
short—nothing was taller than two stories.

Merek followed Patryk deep into the heart of
Slavigo, the hooves of their horses scything the sand and stone
road. After some time the closely-knit buildings gave way to a
broad fighting arena that overlooked a two-story hole in the
ground. Men fought men. Men fought beasts. Beasts fought each
other. And no event was more popular than the enorbear fights. The
massive, bear-like animals were imported from Edhen. After their
gentle spirits had been crushed, they were turned into vicious
fighting machines, an exotic spectacle for bloodthirsty
tourists.

“Tell me we’re not meeting here,” Merek said
as he dismounted his ill-tempered horse. Patryk had loaned him the
beast, which hadn’t proven to be the best-trained or most
intelligent animal, although it was certainly well aged.

“What’s wrong with The Pit?” Patryk
asked.

“Is that what they call it?”

Cages filled with exotic animals lined the
front of the arena. There was a large cat with brown spots that
looked malnourished and afraid. It growled at Merek as he passed.
The cage next to it contained a wingless dragon, about the size of
a large dog, with an iguana’s head encased in a leather and metal
muzzle.

“What’s that for?” asked a man perusing the
cages.

“So he don’ spit at yeh,” said the beast
master. “Burn right through yer flesh, it will.”

“See that?” Patryk said, pointing over
Merek’s shoulder to a white tower in the distance. To his
amazement, it stood higher than two stories. The whitewashed stone
gleaned in the sun brighter than any of the beige buildings around
it. “That’s where we’re headed.”

Patryk greeted a large brown-skinned man at
the entrance to the arena. He wore a slim leather vest that exposed
his muscled arms and chest. They embraced, hand-to-hand,
shoulder-to-shoulder, and Merek saw the brown man whisper something
into Patryk’s ear. His friend then motioned for Merek to
follow.

A two-story wood and sandstone arcade
encircled The Pitt through which spectators gazed down at the dirt
battlefield below. The arcade itself was stifling, uncomfortably
dark, and crowded with a mob of gamblers and crooks.

Merek found himself reaching for his purse
just to ensure it was still there.

A monstrous roar ripped through the arena.
The sound startled Merek and excited the throng of onlookers who
crowded toward the open archways of the arcade. Through a gap in
the crowd Merek saw a massive brown animal, twice the height of a
man, walking on its hind legs toward its opponent. It had the head
of a bear, only it was several times larger.

Curious, Merek inched closer to the balcony
to get a better look. In the arena below he saw two enorbears
circling each other like titans of ancient lore. The oversized
bears growled through angry teeth, glared through narrow black
eyes, and swiped at each other with thick claws.

Merek turned away, disgusted by the
spectacle. On Edhen, the enorbear was considered a sacred animal,
and though Merek had never been one to subscribe to the religions
of his homeland, an engrained sense of respect for the enorbear had
been passed on to him nonetheless. Enorbear fights were illegal on
Edhen, and for the first time Merek found himself wishing they were
illegal on Efferous as well.

“This way,” Patryk said.

He led Merek down a narrow flight of stairs
lit only by stark shafts of sunlight that pierced through the
cracks in the wooden walls.

Patryk stopped him on the landing where they
were as far away from listening ears as they could be in the
cramped pit. “Now listen. I know you’re excited, but there’s
something you’ve got to understand.”

“I’m not going to like what you have to say,
am I?” Merek said.

“The man who owns Awlin is a nobleman by the
name of Adairous Dolar. He’s the, uh, same man that I owe money to.
He’s here today betting on the fights and then he’s going to the
slave auction. This is our best chance of sneaking into his place
and plundering his vault.”

Merek held up his hands. “Wait. You want to
rob the very man you owe money to? Are you off your feed?”

“You don’t understand. This man has so much
gold he won’t know that the money I’m paying him with came from his
own vault.”

Merek shook his head in disapproval. Then he
shrugged. “What do I care? So what are we doing here?”

“I wanted to make sure that Adairous was, in
fact, really here, and I also wanted to prove to you that I wasn’t
lying about Awlin.”

Merek’s interested piqued. “You mean she’s
here?”

“We don’t have much time,” Patryk said. “So
I’ll let you say hi to your long lost sis, but then we need to
leave. I swear to you we’ll come back and get Awlin.
Understand?”

“Where is she?” Merek asked.

“Do you understand?” Patryk said with
careful enunciation.

Merek stepped back and regarded him through
a taut visage. “Yes. Now where is she?”

Merek followed Patryk’s instructions and
descended deeper into The Pit, relived to find the first
underground arcade significantly cooler, although no less
crowded.

The enorbears were tall enough that their
heads floated level with the feet of the second story spectators.
The two beasts continued roaring and swatting at each other,
tearing out tufts of fur and flesh in bloody streaks.

Merek walked down a long row of cages that
lined the outer walls of the arcade. The first cage contained two
copper-skinned male slaves in loin clothes and shackles. The second
cell contained a much larger group of male slaves, some lying down
on the rock floor, others seated on metal cots. They looked like
good stock for wealthy landowners in need of farmers and
woodsmen.

Merek wasn’t surprised to find the third
cage filled with scantily clad young women. Once those who had made
bets on the fights had claimed their money, they’d be ready to
purchase a slave, if not for business than for pleasure. He moved
his eyes from one frightened feminine face to the next, dreading
the moment when he recognized Awlin among them. Fortunately, such a
moment never came. He exhaled with relief.

With clammy hands he moved onto the fourth
cell. What stared back at him from the far wall was a face he
remembered more vividly than any other. Her green eyes hadn’t
changed, neither had her tiny frame or dirty blonde hair, although
it was a bit longer than he’d seen it last, and far more unkempt.
She was clad in a dirty brown shift, roped at the waist and
tattered at the hem.

When he said her name, her eyes shot upwards
and pierced him like daggers.

She rose to her feet, eyes welling with
tears of disbelief and joy. “Merek?”

He nodded, a single dip of his head that
brought the girl sprinting toward him. She plunged her arms through
the bars of the cell and wrapped him in the sweetest embrace he had
ever known. For a moment, Merek could do nothing but hold her.

“I can’t believe I finally found you,” he
whispered. “I’ve been looking for so long.”

“I thought you were dead,” she said. “After
the match, back in Turnberry, they said you had been dishonored.
They said the blood march had killed you.”

Merek shook his head. “We’ll talk about that
later. I’m here to get you out.”

“Thank the Allgod,” Awlin breathed.

“I just need you to wait a little bit
longer,” he said. “I have a job I have to do, but I’ll return
before dark. I swear it.”

Awlin’s hands clutched his shirt through the
bars of the cell, holding him in place. “You can’t go.”

Merek touched her face, cupping her smooth
cheek, wishing he had the strength to rip the cell door off its
hinges. “I won’t be gone long.”

“No. You don’t understand,” Awlin said. “If
you don’t get me out of here now you won’t find me again.”

“What do you mean?”