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He could see the fighting pits now. Bannon gingerly touched his cracked ribs and felt pain resonate through his bones. He cursed Kor and his companions under his breath, then cursed himself for failing. He wanted to see Norukai heads roll, blood spouting from the stumps of necks as the men tumbled to the ground, felled like those poor yaxen at the butcher house.
If only he’d had Sturdy …
In the combat pits, the fighters were shirtless, their scarred, well-muscled bodies glistening with oil and sweat in the torchlight. They practiced against each other, using swords and shields. Two dour morazeth trainers lounged back on stools, critiquing their moves. Across the passageway, Bannon could see a much larger barred cell, and with a jolt he recognized it. Ian’s cell. His heart skipped a beat.
“Sweet Sea Mother!” He gripped the bars and drew in a deep breath, but his chest felt like a shattered bottle. He forced himself to breathe more calmly, then called out in a hoarse voice, “Ian, are you there?”
He saw figures moving in his friend’s chamber. The champion’s cell. Because of the angle, he couldn’t see much, only the shadows flickering and spilling out. When they came into view, he saw that one figure was Adessa, leader of the morazeth and trainer of the arena fighters. Her breasts were bare, small, and hard as if her feminine curves had been distilled down to tough muscle. Her brown nipples were erect and so sharp they looked like weapons. Indifferent to her nakedness, Adessa casually wrapped the black leather strap around her chest. A moment later the scarred and steely-eyed Ian stepped up beside her. He glistened with sweat, as if he had just engaged in personal combat.
Seeing him, Bannon cried, “Ian! I’m over here. I—”
The other young man just looked at him. His flat metal gaze slid over Bannon as if he weren’t there at all. Ian retreated into the unseen corners of his spacious cell. When Adessa opened the barred door to exit, Bannon realized the gate wasn’t even locked. Apparently, Ian and these warriors were prisoners by their own choice, held captive by training, reward and punishment. He remembered his friend’s cold stare, the angry twist of his lips.
Bannon wondered if these fighters had been so indoctrinated or their wits so addled by numerous head blows that they didn’t actually want to be free. Maybe they had forgotten what it was to be free. The fighters in the open training area kept dancing around each other’s blades, thrusting and parrying, yet maintaining silence all the while. Even when one struck a severe blow against another, his opponent didn’t cry out.
After closing Ian’s barred door Adessa crossed the passageway to Bannon’s much smaller cell, moving like a lioness ready to strike. Bannon stood his ground, but the look in the morazeth’s brown eyes made him falter. She grabbed the bars of his cage and used her key to work the lock. He heard a click, then a snap of springs, and she yanked the cell door open.
“You’re awake, and you’re alive—for now. Tell me, Bannon Farmer, are you worth my time?” He faced the hard woman, sensing that she was a bully just as his father had been. His heart thudded in his chest, but he had long since stopped being frightened of bullies. He had finally stood up to his father, but if he’d done that years earlier, then his life—and his mother’s—might have been much different.
Bannon faced her. “I am a guest in Ildakar. My friends Nicci and Nathan will come for me.”
“Your friends are weak and have no power here.”
Bannon remembered when Nicci had faced the Lifedrinker, destroying the evil wizard just as she had destroyed Victoria. He thought of Nathan slaying the monstrous selka who attacked from the sea and the dust people who crawled out of the desert sand. “My friends have a great deal of power.”
“Not power that counts,” Adessa said.
“Then Amos will come to free me.” Bannon tried to sound convincing. “He’s the son of Sovrena Thora and Wizard Commander Maxim.”
Adessa’s close-cropped black hair glistened with sweat. Her lips quirked in a razor smile. “Who do you think brought you here?”
Bannon’s heart sank as he slumped down on the wooden pallet. He knew she spoke the truth. He realized that no one would help him, not now. Nicci and Nathan would eventually notice he had gone missing and they would track him down—if he could remain alive long enough. “I just wanted to give Ian his freedom.”
“The champion already has his freedom. He is doing what he likes, and he will die in the arena. He is my lover, and I may even let him plant a child in me. What man could be more free?” Adessa’s stomach was flat but marked with runes, as were her arms, her neck, and her cheeks. Her thighs were likewise a book of protective spell symbols written with pain. Adessa had a feral power coiled inside her and a simmering sexual ferocity that Bannon found more intimidating than her strength.
“What made you this way?” Bannon asked.
“I am a morazeth. I am a product of the most perfect training. I am currently the best and most successful, and I take my duty very seriously.”
“But I don’t know what the morazeth are.”
“We are your darkest nightmare.” Adessa stepped closer, and he could smell the perspiration on her skin. The glow of his small candles painted her arms and thighs a rippling copper. “For many thousands of years in Ildakar, long before General Utros came with his army, long before the shroud was erected, the morazeth have been fearsome fighters and trainers. Hoping to gain status, ungifted merchants, tradesmen, and artisans would offer up their girl children to become morazeth. Only the finest, most perfect specimens are selected for training, and of those only one in ten survives to be branded with the protective spell symbols.” She used her forefinger to caress the welts on her left thigh, tracing angles and swirls that wove a shield through her flesh and soul.
“Daughters have their skin branded inch by inch as they pass their training.” Her face twisted in a flicker of pain across her memories. “The weak ones who whimper are killed.” She stroked her palm over the panoply of arcane markings on her forearm. “We consider any smooth patches on our skin to be shameful marks, and we hide them.” Her dark eyes glittered as she leaned close. “Feel honored that we have taken an interest in you. We will train you so you can fight and die.”
“I can fight and die without your training,” Bannon said.
“But you will die more swiftly if you do not have it. But such training comes at a cost. Are you worth it? I assume you will be intractable, so I may as well start your lesson now.”
She withdrew a small cylindrical object like the handle of an awl from her hip. Because it was black, he had not noticed it against the leather of her wrap. She stroked her thumb down its contoured wooden side, and he heard a faint snick. A sharp silvery tip snapped out, a thick needle no longer than the first knuckle on his forefinger.
“Each morazeth has a special weapon like this. We call it an agile knife.”
Bannon wondered what she meant to do with it. The needle tip was too short to cause any real damage. “Is it poisoned?”
“Far worse than poison. It is composed entirely of pain.”
She jabbed the stubby point into his thigh, and with her thumb she touched an odd rune etched into the wooden handle. Bannon felt an explosion of pain ripple up and down his muscles, as if a great crash of thunder had struck him, concentrated in that tiny needle tip.
He screamed and collapsed, utterly ignoring the ache of his multiple bruises and the sharp edges of his cracked ribs. His movement dislodged the tiny agile knife, and the pain disappeared instantly, although the aftereffects made him shudder.
Adessa looked at him, disapproving. “That was your first lesson.”
Shaking, spasming, he got to his hands and knees and spewed vomit onto the cell floor. He looked up at her aghast, his jaw slack. With the back of his hand he wiped drool from his mouth. “What … was that?”
“It was pain,” Adessa said. “The agile knife has a spell-bonded symbol connected to one of the runes branded on our flesh.” She stroked the contoured handle again and smiled. ?
??It doesn’t take much to release it, and we have other symbols that can be used to make it kill; just the tiniest prick and you will either be dead, or you will wish you were dead.”
He panted. His thoughts were scrambled.
Adessa continued to stare at him. “Now get yourself up. There’s a water basin to clean your face.” She cast her glance to the passageway outside of his cell. Bannon barely focused on another figure standing out there, a slender female also wearing the scant black coverings of a morazeth. “I have already chosen the champion as my special pet, so I give you to Lila. She will know what to do.”
The young woman opened the barred door and entered his cell as Adessa departed, without even a glance back. Bannon wanted to lurch to his feet and knock Lila down so he could bolt out into the passageways and escape.
But he knew Lila would stop him.
