Chapter 36

T he next day, standing on the platform of warriors as Rihad reads the assignments of the new combatants, I don’t feel like I’ll be enough, despite the roaring of the crowd. Dutifully, I jolt in momentary dismay as Rihad announces Hantor’s name, holding my startled expression long enough that the Lord Protector gets his moment of preening. Unmitigated ass .

The moment he glances away I wipe all emotion from my face.

Hantor, of course, leers at me, clearly delighted at the opportunity of our coming battle. My mind still swimming with Nazar’s revelation, I stare at Miriam. She gazes back solemnly the whole while, and I try not to squirm beneath her scrutiny. Has she guessed I’m not really Merritt, at long last? Surely she would have alerted Rihad if so, and yet—how can she not know?

Or does she know…and she’s merely holding her tongue, for reasons of her own? Is she also acting the part of the warrior, in the only way she can?

Once again, I think about the women of the marauder tribe, angry and independent and strong. Once again, I can see them as warriors, for all that they aren’t nobly born. In another setting, any one of them could have worn the band.

Suddenly, there’s a guard at my side. I step out as another wave of cheers soars through the air. I follow silently as the guard threads his way through the remaining warriors, then we enter the narrow tower—the same one I’d entered to fight Kheris and his serpent. According to Nazar, Hantor’s Divh is less imposing, but I still hear his follow-up admonition in my mind. A warrior does not prejudge an opponent, neither to fear nor to discredit him.

Nazar’s gentle words are scattered, however, as the guard’s sharp voice cuts across my thoughts. “Hold a moment. Lord Protector Rihad bade me give you this news.”

I halt, turning around in surprise. The guard is new to me, and his face is impassive, his eyes hard. When he sees I am listening, he continues, “Hantor, the warrior you fight, is responsible for your squire’s injury.”

Of all the things that could come out of his mouth, that’s the last thing I expect. “What?”

“It happened two summers ago. The squire Caleb beat Hantor in a mock combat with rods and boasted that he should be the highest warrior knight of the Second House, despite the bloodline that made Hantor eligible at birth. Hantor paid men to attack the squire, to sever his arm with an axe.”

I stare, but there is something about this tale that makes it eminently believable. I can see Caleb taunting Hantor in this way, never realizing the danger he was courting. I can see Hantor working to ensure Caleb paid for the slight.

“Why are you telling me this?” I barely hear my own voice, but the guard’s expression doesn’t change.

“Lord Protector Rihad bade me give you this news,” he says again. “And this as well: The standing guard of warriors for the Protectorate must be made of those both strong and noble.”

He turns and resumes climbing.

I don’t take note of any of the risers beneath my feet, and it’s only by some miracle that I don’t fall down the stair entirely, into the arms of the trailing guard. I step out on the fighting platform. My mind fights against the impossibility of the images racing before my eyes. I perform the motions of my station by rote as the horns blast high above me. A shouted command penetrates my fog, and I look up to find Rihad staring down at me. He’s close enough for me to see him nod, as if confirming the words of the guard. Then another horn sounds. I lower my gaze to Hantor.

The boy grins at me, all teeth, as his hand shoots into the air, his right fist curled at his heart. I mimic the movement more slowly, barely able to hear the trumpet blast.

This is no man, I remind myself. This is a boy who acted in petulant fury to silence a threat he couldn’t quell with his strength alone.

And yet he has a Divh. That makes him a dangerous warrior…and he shouldn’t be a warrior. He’s nothing more than a weak and spiteful coward.

Lord Rihad’s words pound through my mind. “The standing guard of warriors for the Protectorate must be made of those both strong and noble.”

Hantor doesn’t look noble or strong. He looks almost feral as he pumps his left fist. Now beginning to burn with a leading surge of anger, I summon Gent.

As I do, I look beyond the boy to the monster at the far end of the tournament field.

Hantor’s Divh is a worthy opponent for most, but he’s no match for Gent, I know in an instant. My anger grows in size and stature like Gent behind me, snuffling with interest at his combatant. This will be no fight.

Hantor’s Divh is smaller, for one, but also wide and thick, a four-legged creature with a bony outer shell that I suspect betrays a soft underbelly. His head and back is covered with spikes, and the thick ridge on his brow bone no doubt serves as a battering ram to any creature or object unfortunate enough to find itself in the Divh’s way. Even now, he swings his head back and forth, and I realize his eyes are on either side of his head, set too far back. I frown. For all his ferocious stature, this is a creature of defense, not offense.

A good army has all sorts of warriors, attackers and defenders alike. But while Hantor’s Divh can survive deep into a tournament by bravado and speed, he can’t fight ably against a Divh the size of Gent. And Rihad must know that.

Rihad, who bade his guard to tell me…

Hantor’s bone monster launches itself forward, faster than I would have thought possible for its stumpy size. I turn my hand, and Gent releases a huge, almost happy roar, the world around me suddenly swept over with the sound of his loping, pounding feet. I gaze at Hantor, but I can’t see through Gent’s eyes. I can only see Hantor, laughing at Caleb as his stump hung uselessly at his side, a stump where once had been a sturdy, powerful arm. Fury sweeps through me, and I lift my hand further a few degrees, then Gent is past me and launching himself at Hantor’s Divh. Gent’s right paw sails high, and the bone creature’s eyes follow it, missing the cutting swipe of Gent’s left fist until the very last minute.

The bone creature surprises us both by leaping straight up, missing the bulk of Gent’s blow but doing something that causes Gent to jerk back in surprise. A stinging pain erupts in my hand—not debilitating but unexpected. A flare of panic knifes through me, effectively slicing through my anger. Stupid! I shouldn’t have underestimated Hantor or his Divh.

Gent shoves out again, sending the bone creature spinning end over end over end as Gent straightens, clearly confused.

Hantor’s laugh startles through my consciousness. I refocus on the runt, and he sneers at me, jubilant at making the first cut. Suddenly, I flash back to myself just days before, standing in this very spot, startled and excited and foolish in my flush of momentary victory against Kheris’s serpent. I hadn’t pressed my advantage then, but I won’t be so foolish this time.

Hantor’s bone creature has no advantage. Even now I flicker back to viewing through Gent’s eyes and take in the lumbering beast. Its trick of gathering all four legs beneath it, then bounding straight up with the strength of all four, will take some work to get around. The spikes on its back and head are formidable, and as Gent has shown me and experienced himself, those spikes can detach easily from the creature to embed in paw or arm.

The two monsters circle, the bone creature dodging and weaving, almost dizzying in its dance. And that’s part of its strategy too, I realize. Feint and deception, until its opponent is off guard—then zeroing in for the kill.

I level my gaze again at Hantor. He’s too far away to hear me, so even if I want to rail against him, hurling accusations about his cowardly acts, I can’t. I can only lift my hand, angle my head, and stare daggers at him across the open space.

Gent moves closer to the bone creature, and I dimly hear the responding roar of the crowd. They want blood. And, I realize with no little amount of horror, I want blood. The blood of Hantor in exchange for the blood he’d spilled of Caleb’s—blood, bone, and sinew.

What am I becoming?

Gent roars, and his mighty paw swings in a wide arc, apparently poised to miss high again as last time. Instead, he widens his thick claws and jams them inward at the last moment, making the bone creature hiss and gather his legs beneath him, ready to jump to the side.

But Gent is too fast this time. Nazar’s words ring in my head, and Gent fights down the sword as Nazar has instructed, pressing in further, further, until he’s practically on top of the bone creature when it surges up. It springs higher into the sky than I would have thought possible, but Gent is right there with it and catches the trailing edge of its hind foot as it leaps away, turning it hard. The creature screams, and across from me, Hantor stumbles, his left ankle giving way.

The crowd stamps and howls, bloodlust raging in their cries. Gent moves forward to hold down the head of the opponent Divh like a pillow, keeping the bone creature on its back, its head and neck exposed. Its foot shakes violently, the creature in clear torment. Gent holds it still as I watch, his great head coming up as if he wishes to meet my gaze across the beaten creature.

Another curl of horror snakes through me…Hantor’s Divh is down—down! I can’t cause it more pain. I lift my hands slightly, and Gent shifts as well, easing his pressure on the beast. It can’t move; there’s no need to drive it to greater levels of agony. There’s no gain in it.

Even the redness has now cleared from the edges of my vision, and I realize the battle for what it is. Hantor is beaten, but there’s no honor in destroying the bone creature or damaging it beyond aid. Just as there is no honor in hurting the creature more, simply to hurt its warrior.

I shift my gaze to Hantor, seeing him tremble with the effort of trying to get his Divh to leap up and fight again. He’s frenzied for all his apparent stillness. He’s panicked too, and his eyes and mouth are rimmed with white. What must he have done to gain power, I suddenly wonder? What must he have been driven to, inferior by his very nature, yet thrust into the greatest position a boy could want?

What would it be like to be unable to rise to the demands the world made of you? Would it drive you to kill—to maim to ensure the safety of your position? I hold Hantor’s gaze with mine, but let no pity mar my expression. He doesn’t deserve it, and he wouldn’t welcome it.

Neither does Rihad, whose glare fairly sets my face aflame.

Gent holds the bone creature still for another breath—then it’s over.

The horns sound in one long, clear blast. Gent has won this contest.

As I watch, my beautiful Divh pulls his shoulders back, tensing as he moves to stand away from the bone creature, to allow it to rise. He even lifts a great paw as if to steady the other Divh then shifts it gently away as the bone creature gets its feet beneath him. A curious buzzing starts in the crowd around us, but I hold my position, watching the bone creature test its injured leg.

At that moment, a movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention, and I step back as Hantor suddenly surges forward on his platform, his hands splayed wide no matter that the match has already been called. I turn my hands back, and Gent steps half in front of the bone creature, looming over it as it crouches down despite Hantor’s flapping arms. The injured Divh can’t do otherwise—Gent now has its good back paw trapped beneath his own clawed foot, and the broken paw can’t gain any purchase. The horns blast again, longer this time, and Gent wheels toward the platforms. Taking his paw off the bone creature, he swings his head up and down and lifts both his arms high into the air, then screams in outraged fury at…

Well, at Hantor.

My Divh’s roar is filled with anger and disdain and a cold wash of pain that I am sure Hantor can’t understand, won’t ever understand. He understands being rebuked, however, and he seems to be able to reason out why. His Divh is in clear agony, shuddering beneath Gent, and Gent even more clearly wants the Divh sent back to its own plane.

Hantor raises his arm, now obviously dizzy with his own injuries. The bone creature finally disappears.

Gent stops roaring and resettles his own feet, now that he no longer needs to trap Hantor’s Divh. He drops one of his mighty arms.

The other one he lifts toward me. As he had before when we’d fought on this tournament field. Fought and lost, even as now we’d fought and won.

I lift mine as well, the two of us moving as if to touch fingertips across the wide-open tournament grounds. We hold that pose for a moment where there is no breath, no true sight even, and I stagger beneath the onslaught of thoughts that Gent pours into me. Rage and loss, pain and fright. On some level, he’d felt more than just the power of my suggestion or command during the battle.

He’d felt all the emotions I’d experienced—indignation and horror, panic and fury—in the wake of Rihad’s message about the true nature of the warrior I was fighting. He’d felt it, and he sought to ease that pain, to make right what had been wronged, and finally to accept—as I was forced to accept—that some things could never be right again.

A breath later, my beautiful Divh disappears.

Silence blankets the tournament field for a heartbeat, then another.

Then pandemonium breaks out.

The roar of the crowd is so loud, it shakes the tower on which I stand. I barely hear the trumpet blast—can’t hear Rihad saying something high above me—but I throw up my other arm in a mimicry of what I saw from Kheris in his first battle at the tournament. I am the victor of this contest, the first of many that will be fought this day. Sound rushes over me, and I steady myself against the torrential wind that blows through the now-empty tournament field as if it had held its breath during the whole of our combat.

I’ve won this battle.

A guard pushes out onto the platform, and I turn to him, confused at his slow progress. And then I see something else.

Petals.

A pile of blue and white petals roils around my feet like a storm and blows off the platform into the field beyond. As I turn, horrified at the sight, I see that more petals are being thrown into the sky—or have been blown there, soaring over the assembled crowd. There’s more cheering and then the hands of the guard are on me, half pulling me to the door.

“Are you injured?” one of them demands.

“No—no,” I gasp as the door shuts behind me on the raging sound outside. “The petals—I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t mean it!”

“Too late now.” The guard standing at the top of the stairs is the one who had given me Rihad’s news about Hantor. “He expected you to kill the boy, you know that.”

That stops me short. “Hantor? But this is a tournament.”

“And people die in tournaments. You had every right to avenge your squire.” I feel the sanction in his words and swallow hard, thinking of Caleb’s grin, his irreverent words, his pride. The guard continues as he stomps down the stairs, “I served awhile in the Second House. The boy Caleb wanted nothing more than to be a banded soldier, and failing that, a regular soldier. He was good, he fought hard and well, and he would have done anything for his house. Hantor took that away from him.”

I stare at the man’s back and can feel the other guard’s glare behind me, no less chilling in his censure. Rihad might have expected me to kill Hantor, but so had these men. How many others thought that as well?

Any words I would offer die in my throat. I should say something, I know—defend myself, my actions. But what would it matter to this man, who’s already made up his mind about what is right and good? More to the point, how will Rihad choose to repay me for—unwittingly or not—ignoring his demand for blood?

Suddenly, I feel weaker than ever. I just want to be gone from this tower, this coliseum, this Tournament of Gold. There’s a darkness here that is leaching into my very soul, drowning out the Light.