Arena (47 page)
“Will you give me your love?”
“Garth, please.”
“Love?” Rowena grabbed his arm. “What do you mean by—”
Callie charged, driving her shoulder into the woman’s side and carrying them both into Garth. He staggered, losing his hold on Pierce, as with a bellow, he flung both women off. By then Callie had her hands on the belt, swinging Rowena around to make her fall first. One yank on the Velcro, and the object was hers, though no one noticed because Pierce and Garth were now grappling with each other on the ground. Fastening the belt around her waist, Callie sprang for the fire curtain, whirling inches from the undulating membrane. Garth had Pierce pinned on his back, a knee in his belly, hands once more on his throat.
“Let him go!” Callie screamed. “Or I’ll blow this thing out of existence.”
She sought the link and power flooded through it, igniting the field in her clothes. Behind her the curtain flickered and crackled with its interference.
Garth’s face peered over his shoulder, blazing yellow-green. “Do it, and I’ll kill him.”
Coldness clenched her middle, but she hung on to the connection. “Don’t you get it, Garth? You can’t kill him. You can only send him home.”
“Fine, then. I’ll send him home!”
But during the distraction Callie had provided, Pierce had grabbed a rock with his free hand and now slammed it into Garth’s ear. He reeled backward, shook his bloodied head, and then lurched at Pierce with a roar. But something flew out of the prisoner’s stall—Whit’s rock?—to hit Garth square in the forehead, toppling him like a felled tree. Simultaneously Callie was tackled by one of the others, crushed into the ground by his weight. Rocks dug into her side, and pain flashed outward in nauseating waves. She couldn’t breathe. Dirt filled her mouth. Then the weight lifted. Light flared, and twisted currents zapped between the fire curtain’s poles.
“Get him!”
“Aiee! I can’t see.”
“He’s got a gun.”
She forced herself up and crawled toward the shadows, pain wracking her body with every breath. She must’ve cracked a rib.
One of the curtain’s poles popped like a Fourth of July sparkler, fountaining a plume of blinding sparks and white smoke. Dark figures scrambled about, shielding their eyes and yelling for weapons. She heard a
zip-zip-zip
and crawled faster, flinching under recurring showers of sparks. The tang of ozone burned her nose.
She was certain she was crawling undetected, but at the margin of shadow someone grabbed her arm, hauling her over a low wall. As she recognized Pierce, she stopped struggling and collapsed against him. They hid there in the shadows a few minutes, catching their breath, then set off for the interior. He had one of the short-barreled riot guns, and she bent down to pick up a good-sized rock, wincing at the pain in her side. Together they stole around a partition into deeper shadow.
Garth’s people had their weapons out and were clustered into groups, one backed around their fallen leader, another guarding the fire curtain and the two men repairing it. A third group blocked the stairway leading topside, their hand-lamp beams stabbing wildly through the darkness. Apparently all their prisoners had escaped.
Callie crawled after Pierce as they inched toward the hub’s center, but they’d not gone twenty yards when a commotion erupted on the stair, and new, more powerful lights speared the darkness. Then the rapid, high-pitched zips of weaponry overlaid the sputtering fire curtain. Someone screamed. Someone else started shouting, but the words were lost in a thunder of footfalls.
“Splagnosians!” Pierce muttered. “Come on.”
A glance back showed Garth’s men running, their wounded slung over their shoulders like sacks of grain. The Splagnosians clattered after them, shouting and firing, as Pierce and Callie picked their way through the darkness in the opposite direction, moving as fast as they could with bare feet. They soon met up with Whit, LaTeisha, and John, and shortly thereafter the rest of the group joined them. Between them they had two weapons, no boots, and one belt.
“We’ll find a place to hide,” Pierce said. “If Garth was right about his reputation, they should be satisfied with him.”
The chamber’s center was a maze of thick, slanting beams, half buried in mounds of earth and stone. They found a series of pockets— crawling with mites, but better that than Splagnosians—and portioned the group into three of them, Callie cramming with Pierce, John, and Tuck into one five-foot-long cavity. Pierce took the belt and sat on the outside with the riot gun, staring into the darkness. Callie huddled beside him, her rib aching dully. She was not at all worried. This was like on the mountain when the goats had distracted their mutant pursuers, only now it was Garth who would provide the distraction. They might have to wait a while, but she was confident they had weathered the storm.
In the darkness she could see nothing, but she could hear Pierce’s heart beating under her ear. He smelled of sweat and dirt, the odor strong but not unpleasant, because it was his. Around them the mites chittered and began to move again. She flinched as one crawled over her foot, clenching her teeth to keep from squirming. The shouts, thumps, and zaps faded to silence as the mite, leg-tips pricking through her trousers, explored her hip. She wanted to brush it aside but had nothing to do it with, so she shifted slightly, hoping to discourage it from further exploration.
Pierce’s arm tightened about her, and he whispered, so faintly she could hardly hear him, “Something’s out there.” In an instant her confidence evaporated. What was it? Some monster of the dark? They had no weapons, no boots. How would they fight it off? And if they did, wouldn’t that draw down the Splagnosians?
She pushed away the fears and touched the link, feeling calmness return.
Suddenly voices and footfalls erupted in the darkness, stunningly close. Light pierced their burrow, sending renewed alarm firing through her. It was only reflected light from a lamp they couldn’t see, but it seemed bright as day. Pierce held her tightly, and beneath her palm, his heart raced. Why had the Splagnosians come back when they had Garth to chase?
From somewhere close a deep voice said, “We’ve got the exits covered. Must we come in after you, or will you do this the easy way?”
No one said a word.
Low voices conferred. Then the original speaker said, “You will not be harmed if you cooperate. If you resist, however, I can make no promises.”
How can we resist with two riot guns and no boots?
Pierce’s chest rose and fell with a resigned sigh. Then he crawled out of the hole. Reluctantly she followed. Whit, Gerry and the others were already emerging from their respective hiding places. One by one they stepped into the light, and when Pierce stood up, squinting before their visored, armored captors, a visible start went through them.
“That’s
him!
” one of them hissed.
Soft laughter followed. “We’ve got him,” the one who appeared to be the leader said, apparently into some communications link. “Looks like we’ve got his whole bunch.”
There was a pause. Then, “No. We’ll get them at the other end. These are the ones we came for anyway.” He turned to someone standing in the shadows behind him. “Rest assured, you’ll be well compensated.” As his men surrounded their captives, light played across the figure’s face—Rowena.
With a satisfied smirk, she turned away, escorted into the darkness by one of the Splagnosians.
By the time their captors prodded them into an armored transport and chained them to the bulkhead, Callie had stopped reeling from the shock of betrayal and capture and had come to terms with the fact that they wouldn’t be sneaking into Splagnos after all. Elhanu had arranged a different way to get them in—one commensurate with his sense of humor.
When they were in Hope, the Aggillon had sung a ballad about a Guide and three witnesses from a sister compound of Rimlight’s whom the Zelosians caught. Resisting the torture and attempted brainwashing, the trio was put to work on the lowest level of a blood-crystal mine near the Splagnosian border. They had been there a year when the Splagnosians bombed the mine. Too deep to suffer the devastation that rocked the upper levels, the witnesses escaped in the ensuing chaos and used a military caravan to smuggle themselves into Splagnos. When the caravan dropped them at the door of the palace, it was a simple matter to find the portal.
Callie encouraged herself with that story now, certain she and her friends were right where Elhanu wanted them.
A day of bone-crunching travel brought them to Splagnos City where they were separated by sex, then stripped, dunked in several foul-smelling pools, and finally bathed in clear, warm water. After that, plastic locator devices were fused around their ankles, and they were dressed in knee-length tunics and sandals. Though their captors took everything else, they left Callie her engagement ring. She had no doubt the “oversight” was deliberate.
“Guess they’re gonna try cajoling first,” Evvi said as they came together in the changing room. A guard barked at her to be silent, so Callie only raised her brows in agreement.
They were then introduced to their counselors. Callie’s was a gorgeous redheaded giantess named Mira, whose friendly smile and honeyed voice could not have contrasted more with the soldiers’ sullen brusqueness. Bright, sympathetic, and cheerful, she escorted Callie to a spacious three-room suite where a meal of lemon-herbed chicken, buttered new potatoes, and tender asparagus awaited. Though the food was delicious, the utensils were annoyingly overlarge. Callie needed two hands to hold the glass, and with her feet dangling above the floor, she felt like a child, a sensation aggravated by Mira’s size and chirpy manner.
During the meal, the woman gushed over how exceptional Callie and her friends were. Most travelers never reached Splagnos, waylaid instead by the brutes in the neighboring cities who thought only of war and blood crystal. “And sex, of course,” Mira added. “They’re absolute perverts there. That’s why there are hardly any women in Zelos. But who wants to talk about them? You’re safe in Splagnos now.”
“I’d rather walk through the portal,” Callie said.
Mira smiled. “Eat your lunch, dear. When you’re finished I’ll give you a tour.”
“I don’t need a tour. I have no intention of joining you.”
“That’s what everyone says.” Mira patted her hand. “You’ll change your mind now that you’re no longer bound.”
“No longer bound?”
“Can’t you feel it?” She regarded Callie with Watcherlike intensity— of which, come to think of it, Callie had seen not one since they’d been picked up. There were none to watch them herded into the transport, none to watch them get out, none in the bathing chamber or reception rooms. . . .
Mira still stared at her.
No longer bound? What does she mean by—
Suddenly Callie realized she could not sense her link with Elhanu. Even after she squelched the instant reaction of fear and shock and
knew
she was doing nothing to quench it, no amount of mental groping could find it.
Mira smiled at her bewilderment. “Our energy shields keep him out. You’re free to think for yourself again.”
No
, Callie thought.
They couldn’t block it if—
Then she remembered Pierce teaching, weeks ago, that they wouldn’t feel the link once they entered Splagnos proper. It was a concession Elhanu made to Cephelus’s demand for fairness. The link would still function in terms of protection and direction of thought, they just wouldn’t feel it. Experientially they’d be on their own, them and their volition and whatever they truly believed. But knowing that would happen was not the same as experiencing it. She wasn’t at all prepared for this dismaying sense of vulnerability.
After lunch Mira showed her around Splagnos. Tucked beneath its bubble on the steep slopes of the towering Iron Crown, it was built of black basalt, the buildings polished to a mirrorlike sheen. Pale, spongy paths wound throughout, accented with colorful flower beds and a surprising amount of water—streams, fountains, and ponds shimmered everywhere. There was even a public bathhouse.
The Splagnosians themselves were no less disconcerting. Beautiful, graceful giants in muted robes, all made a point to welcome Callie graciously. Looming over her, they treated her as if she were Mira’s little girl, a role Mira actively encouraged. She took Callie to the palatial Halls of Government—seat of Splagnos’s dictator, the Partas Guivas— and then to the city square, the open market, and finally the art museum, which was hosting a reception for a new exhibit.
The museum was a lovely vaulted building with clean white walls and two hundred pieces of Splagnosian art. Most of it was too confrontational for Callie’s tastes, though Mira babbled on about innovation and passion of line and color. They strolled the garden, sipping fruited mineral water and nibbling butter cookies. In a tree-shaded courtyard, Mira settled on a basalt bench and pulled Callie up beside her. Across the way a trio of musicians plucked an atonal composition while two women clad only in strips of gold veil contorted before them. Unable to watch without squirming, Callie focused on the bed of purple iris beside her.