A Dream of Mortals (Book #15 in the Sorcerer's Ring) (13 page)

Darius sat in the small stone courtyard with
the other gladiators, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, nursing a
terrible headache. He leaned back slowly, checking his body as he twisted and
turned, and he felt a thousand shooting pains. Covered in scrapes and bruises
and cuts, he felt as if he had been run over by a boulder after that fight in
the arena. His hands felt swollen, stiff, and it hurt them just to open them.
His limbs, too, felt stiff as he tried to stretch his elbows, to lean back, and
he wondered how he’d be able to fight again. He needed time to recover, and he had
a sinking feeling that he would not get it.

As Darius looked about, he felt a sense of
sorrow and guilt than hurt him more than his wounds. He saw Raj and Desmond and
Luzi sitting nearby, all nursing wounds, each staring into the void. Darius
assumed that they, like he, were mourning Kaz.

Darius felt a pit in his stomach as he thought
of him. He and Kaz had practically grown up together, had trained for countless
days together, Kaz always the biggest and strongest of them all, always winning
every competition. At first, Kaz had even been somewhat of a bully.

But over time, he and the others had bonded
with Kaz, who had always been there for him, and who now had laid down his life
for Darius. Death now hung over all of them, now a reality, as his group of
friends had shrunk from four to three. He knew that death could come for any
one of them—and that nothing could stop it.

Darius sensed that the others were thinking the
same thing as they sat there, staring, nursing wounds. He saw several of the
boys who had joined them in the arena were also missing, dead, and he knew their
dwindling ranks did not bode well. It was a small miracle, he realized, that
they had won the first match. They might not get so lucky the next time, he
knew. He felt sure that the Empire would throw at them even more intense
opponents, more intense weaponry. They wanted a spectacle, and it would only be
a matter of time until he, and all of the others, died here in this place, as
objects of entertainment for the Empire.

Darius sneered, hating the thought. He had
always wanted to die in battle, on the open field, fighting for a cause he
cherished. Not this way. Not as a captive for a savage’s spectacle.

Darius saw the despondent faces on all the
other gladiators, boys he did not know, their faces scratched up, their bodies
scarred from the bout, and he suspected they felt the same. They all stared
into nothingness as if staring at their looming deaths. All of them sitting
here, waiting to die.

Darius closed his eyes and shook his head. He
no longer feared death. A part of him, he felt, had really died back there,
with his men, when they were ambushed inside the walls of Volusia. His heart
was still with his dead brother, whom he had led to slaughter. A part of him
felt as if he had no more right to live.

Darius was startled by the sudden slam of an
iron cell door, and he looked up to see the Morg strutting into the courtyard,
accompanied by several large Empire guards. He glared down at all of them
disapprovingly.

“None of you should imagine for a moment that
you will survive this,” he boomed out, looking at each and every one of them. “You
got lucky today, with only a few of you dead. But tomorrow will be another day,
and most, if not all of you, should die.”

He surveyed their faces.

“Only one of you will survive this, if any of
you. The last man standing after the third match, if any of you even make it
that far, will be granted his freedom—of sorts. He will be shipped off to the
Empire capital, where he will fight in the grandest arena known to the Empire.
It is not quite freedom; it is more of a delayed death. Because for true
freedom you would have to win there, too—and no one ever has. They make sure of
it.”

Morg’s eyes stopped scanning as they fell on
Darius. His scowl deepened as he took several steps forward and locked eyes with
him.

“You fought well today,” he said. “I’m
surprised. I didn’t think you had it in you. You’re useful to me as an object
of entertainment. For that I’m going to reward you: I will bring you to a separate
arena, where you will have a chance to fight alone, unchained, in matches for
entertainment, and not for the death. You will live many years and be treated
well.”

Darius, feeling a great injustice rising within,
stood his ground and faced Morg.

“I will leave this place,” Darius replied, “only
if my brothers can join me. Otherwise I will stay behind, and fight with them.”

Morg looked at Darius, disbelieving, and his scowl
deepened.

“The offer is for you only—not for your
friends. If you remain behind, you will die with them.”

Darius clenched his jaw.

“Then I shall die with them,” he replied,
unwavering.

Morg’s eyes widened.

“You would die then, for your friends?”

Darius stared back.

“If I abandon my friends,” he replied, “then I
have never truly lived.”

Morg shook his head, grimaced, then spat at
Darius’s feet.

“I will enjoy watching you die tomorrow,” he
said. “You, and all your friends.”

“Don’t enjoy it quite yet,” Raj chimed in. “He
might just surprise you. And if he does—I am sure he will kill you first.”

Morg smiled, a cruel smile, turned, and stormed
from the courtyard, his men falling in behind him, the iron door slamming
behind them as they left.

“You should not have done that,” Luzi said,
coming over to him.

“You should have taken your freedom,” Desmond
said.

Darius shook his head and remained silent.

“No man left behind,” he replied. “Not now, not
ever. That’s what friendship means.”

Darius could see the respect and gratitude in
his brothers’ eyes, as each stepped forward and clasped his forearm.

“You bring great honor to Kaz’s memory,” Desmond
said.

A look of worry etched across Luzi’s face.

“I still can’t believe Kaz is dead,” Luzi said.
“I don’t understand it. He was the biggest and strongest of us all. If he has
been killed, what hope is there for any of us?” His face morphed into panic. “I
have to get out of here,” he added. “I have to get out of here!”

Luzi ran across the courtyard and began
pounding on the iron door. Darius watched him, surprised, as he began to
realize that Luzi was having a nervous breakdown.

“Shut him up!” one of the other boys yelled. “He
keeps banging like that and they’ll come back and kill us all!”

“You should have let me kill him back in the
arena,” uttered a dark voice.

Darius turned to see Drok standing beside him, glaring
back through his narrow eyes.

“It would have been clean and smooth,” he
added. “And I only would have had to kill him once.”

Darius was filled with a fresh wave of rage as
he recalled Drok’s attempt to kill Luzi back in the arena.

Drok began to strut across the courtyard,
toward Luzi, and Darius rushed across the courtyard, forgetting all his pain,
and stood between them, blocking his way. He stared Drok down, and Drok looked
back in surprise.

“To get to him you’ll have to go through me,”
Darius said.

The boy grimaced back at Darius.

“I should have killed you back there, too,” Drok
said. “I will be glad to do it now—you and your pathetic little friend.”

Drok charged Darius, and as he did, he
furtively reached down, grabbed a handful of dirt off the floor, and threw it
into Darius’s eyes.

Darius, not expecting it, was temporarily
blinded, and the next thing he knew he felt strong arms around his waist,
tackling him, driving him down to the ground. He fell backwards and hit the
ground hard, every muscle in his body sore, as the boy wrestled pinned him down.

All the other boys immediately gathered around.

“FIGHT!” they shouted. “KILL HIM!”

After Drok’s performance in the arena, his
attempt to kill the other boys, Darius knew they were cheering for him.

Darius struggled to get the sand out of his eyes,
to catch his breath, and he felt hard knuckles across his cheek as Drok punched
him in the face, again and again.

As he swung again, Darius reached up and this
time caught his wrist in midair; at the same time, he managed to roll, getting
on top of Drok, and punched him in the face twice.

Drok kicked Darius between the legs, leaned
down, and head-butted him, and Darius felt a world of pain as the boy rolled
back on top. Darius swung around and elbowed him across the jaw, and the boy
collapsed beside him.

Darius rolled out from under him and caught his
breath.

Desmond, Raj, and Luzi appeared, each grabbing the
boy from behind and yanking him to his feet, each grabbing one arm.

Darius gained his feet and stared him down.

“Finish him off,” Desmond said.

“Finish him off for good,” Luzi chimed in.

“KILL HIM!” the other boys chanted.

Darius looked long and hard at the boy,
struggling to break free, and realized that he could kill him. Not here. Not
while he was captive.

“No,” Darius replied. “Let him go.”

The second they let him go, Drok lunged for
Darius, snarling, blood dripping from his mouth. He rushed to tackle him, but
this time, Darius, prepared, waited for the last moment then stepped aside. As Drok
rushed by, Darius reached back and elbowed him across the jaw.

Drok fell face-first into the dirt.

He lay there, moaning, and Darius saw him reach
out and close his fingers around a handful of dirt, and Darius realized this
time that he was about to throw another fistful of sand.

Darius stepped on the boy’s wrist, pinning it
to the ground, right before he could spin around and throw the sand. Darius leaned
back and kicked the boy with his other boot in the face, knocking him onto his
back.

But Drok was hardy. He rolled and rolled, got
to his feet, and stood there, facing Darius, bloody but indestructible. He turned
and raced for the wall, grabbed a wooden training sword off the rack, and faced
Darius.

“Darius!” came a voice.

Darius turned to see Raj throw him a wooden
sword; he caught it in midair and raised it just in time to block Drok’s first
blow.

Darius and Drok sparred back and forth with a
great clacking of wood, slashing and parrying, pushing each other back and
forth. Darius had to hand it to the boy: he was quick and relentless and driven
by hatred.

Yet he was not as fast as Darius. Darius’s
training with Raj and Desmond came back to him, and he put all his skills to
good use, slashing and striking a hair faster than Drok, and was about to land
a blow—when Drok caught Darius off guard and swept his foot out from under him.

Darius stumbled and fell on his back and Drok immediately
raised his sword, lunged forward, grabbed its hilt, and brought the point
straight down for Darius’s throat.

Darius rolled out of the way at the last
second, the tip went into the dirt, and he swung around and knocked the sword
from Drok’s hand, then regained his feet.

Drok, in a rage, took his wooden sword and
broke it over his knee, making its tip jagged, then charged and screamed,
aiming to plunge his sword right through Darius’s heart.

Darius waited and waited, calm and collected,
then at the last second he stepped aside and elbowed Drok across the throat,
knocking him flat on his back.

Drok lay there, unmoving, and as he slowly reached
for his wooden sword, Darius kicked it out of the way.

Darius knelt down beside him, grabbed the
jagged sword, and held the sharp end to Drok’s throat. His hands trembled as he
pondered whether to kill him.

“KILL HIM!” the other boys yelled, gathering
around.

Drok grimaced back, blood pouring from his
mouth.

“Do it,” Drok urged. “You’d be doing me a
favor.”

Darius finally threw the sword away.

“No,” Darius said, “I shall not do you that
favor. It would be dishonorable to kill you while you are defenseless. And I
shall not sully my honor, not even for the likes of you.”

Darius stood and grimaced down.

“The arena shall decide who shall live and who
shall die,” he concluded. “And if there be a true God out there, tomorrow, you
shall die.”

Volusia stood on the balcony, atop the immense
golden dome that rose from the center of the capital, and watched the horizon with
growing interest. There, rising up in a cloud of dust, was an entourage of
seven black chariots, born by the largest black horses she’d ever seen,
bursting through the desert day. What surprised her most was not the size of
the carriages, or the horses—or even their speed—but the fact that the legions
of Empire soldiers camped outside her city parted ways for them immediately. A
sea of bodies opened up, deferred to these oncoming carriages, and Volusia
realized that clearly, this entourage of people, whoever they were, were given
a great deal of respect.

The carriages continued charging, right for the
capital gates, and Volusia wondered who could be so insolent as to think they
could approach.

“Who heads for our gates?” she asked Koolian, one
of her sorcerers, who stood beside her with a dozen other advisors, studying
the horizon.

He cleared his throat, a grave look on his
face.

“Goddess,” he replied. “Those before you are the
Knights of the Seven. They represent the four horns and two spikes of the
Empire, and are the direct representatives of the Great Council. They represent
the collective force and negotiating power of all the Empire.”

“There is little that all Horns and Spikes agree
on, Goddess,” Aksan, her assassin, said, stepping forward on her other side, “but
if there is one thing they share in common, it is the Great Council. A word
from the Great Council is a word from all the Empire. One dare not defy them. One
cannot defy them.”

“You would be wise to host them graciously,
Goddess,” her commander, Gibvin said.

Volusia watched as the gleaming black carriages
tore through the desert, right for her gates, so proud, so regal—and so
arrogant—clearly not expecting anyone or anything to get in their way.

“And what, do you suppose, they want with me?”
she asked.

“They only come for one reason,” said Gibvin, “to
dictate terms. They will make you an offer, and they will only make it once.
Whatever it is, you would be wise to accept it, Goddess.”

She turned to him defiantly.

“This is not just the capital’s council,” he
said. “This is the Great Council, of all the men. They represent not just one
city, but tens of thousands. They do not just have armies—they have sorcerers,
too, as powerful as yours—and an infinite number of men to lose. I implore
you—do not provoke the beast.”

Volusia studied him, calm, expressionless, then
turned back and watched the entourage approach the golden doors of her capital.

Her soldiers, down below, looked up at her,
waiting for a response.

A thick silence hung in the air, as Volusia
stared down, debating.

“Goddess, I beg you,” Gibvin said. “Do not keep
them waiting. Open those doors at once.”

Volusia waited some more, the entire city so
silent one could hear a pin drop, then finally, when she felt ready, she slowly
nodded.

The gates were opened at once, and the chariots
raced in, right for the golden dome, for her, as if they knew, without a doubt,
that she would let them in.

*

Volusia sat around the Grand Council table,
opposite the representative of the Knights of the Seven, and studied him with
curiosity. He was not at all been what she had been expecting. She had expected
a great warrior of the Empire race, a hardened man, large, strong, donning
armor, bearing weaponry.

Yet she saw before her a simple man—a human
being, no less—with intelligent eyes, wearing a brown robe, hands folded neatly
inside them. He sat there calmly, looking back at her expressionless, perhaps a
slight smile on his face, as if he had no fears in the world. And yet somehow,
Volusia found his calm demeanor even more fearful than all the great warriors
of the Empire. She sensed he was a man with unlimited powers at his disposal,
who meant every word he said.

“You are very brave to come here with no
guards,” she said, breaking the silence.

He laughed.

“I am a delegate of the Knights of the Seven,”
he replied. “I don’t need guards. No one would be foolish enough to attack me.”

Keeping his smile, he cleared his throat and
nodded gently.

“Goddess,” he said, “I have not come for
threats. I don’t believe them. Nor have I come to bargain. I come only to utter
the truth as we see it. You have started a great war here. You’ve taken by
force several divisions of the Empire army, and the Empire capital. You have
killed the Grand Council of the capital city, and along with them, thousands of
men. You rule the capital now,” he said, and sighed. “And yet even you must realize,
you rule it by force. Not by the choice of the Empire.”

“By force,” she repeated. “The same way Romulus and Andronicus before him ruled it.”

He nodded, smiling.

“True,” he countered. “And neither of those men
are standing here today.”

She nodded back, conceding his point.

“What you don’t know,” he continued, “what no
one knows, is that even the greatest, the most powerful, Empire leader answers
to someone. And that someone is
us
.”

She examined him coolly, this man, so
soft-spoken, yet with something about him that sent a chill up her spine.

“Out with it,” she snapped, impatient. “Are you
threatening, then, to take power from me?” she asked, her voice hardened steel.

He smiled.

“As I mentioned, I don’t threaten. Besides, in
you, we, the Knights of the Seven, see something much more interesting.”

She looked back, curious.

“As fate would have it,” he said, “you
represent a chance to finally unite the Empire. Romulus and Andronicus were
savages, ill-tempered generals who seized the throne by brute force. You, of
course, are no princess, either—and are, in fact, from what I’ve heard, quite
savage, too.”

He examined her.

“Yet you are young and beautiful,” he added, “you
ruled Volusia, as your mother did before you, and the masses, at least, can be deluded
by your appearance, by your pedigree, into thinking you are a pure and rightful
leader. Leadership, after all, is all about perception, is it not?”

He smiled as he studied her, and Volusia
narrowed her eyes, wondering where he was going with this.

“Then you have not come here with a threat?”
she asked.

He shook his head.

“I have come to offer you rulership—bonafide
rulership—of the Empire,” he said. “On behalf of the four Horns and two Spikes.
A rulership spanning half the Empire. From here all the way to the Espian River shall be yours. The Espian and beyond, the Knights of the Seven shall rule. Our
offer gives you more lands than you could ever dream. You will also have a life
of peace, and rest assured our armies—all of our armies—shall be yours.”

He got up and walked to the window, looking
out.

“Look outside,” he said. “Outside these city
walls, hundreds of thousands of men remain of the Empire’s armies. They camp
out there, waiting to avenge their commander, and they shall never forget.

“Behind them are millions more. Agree to my
terms, and those men you see will lay down their arms and answer to you. Romulus’s million men, too, on the way home as we speak from the Ring, will defer to your
command. As will the millions more men spread out amongst the Horns and Spikes.
You will have no more worries, no more fears, and everything you’d ever wanted
will be yours.”

He turned and faced her, his eyes aglow.

“Agree now,” he said, “and become Supreme
Ruler.”

He removed a long papyrus scroll from inside
his shirt, unrolled it, and placed it on the table before her. He held out a
seal, for her to stamp it, dripping with hot wax.

Volusia, dozens of her councilors watching,
walked slowly over to him, the room thick with silence.

Volusia took the stamp and examined it.

“You offer me half the Empire,” she said,
staring at the seal. “But a Goddess does not rule half the world. A Goddess
rules all of it.”

She looked down at him, her eyes piercing, and
he met her stare.

“I will have all of the Empire,” she commanded.
“Even if they are lands, as you say, that I will never reach, never see, never feel,
never touch—I shall know that
all
is mine. You may return to your Seven
and give them this message: they have one chance to lay down their arms.”

He laughed aloud, then shook his head slowly as
he rolled up his seal.

“I had expected you to be wiser,” he said. “You
realize, of course,” he added, “that you and all your men will die.”

Now it was her turn to smile.

“Everybody dies,” she says. “But not everybody
lives.”

Volusia took the wax and, still smiling,
suddenly stepped forward and crammed the burning hot seal into his forehead.

He shrieked and tried to resist, as the
insignia of the Empire was burned into his forehead, but she grabbed the back
of his head and held it, pushing deeper and deeper. When she was done, the
emblem engraved, she reached up with both arms and in one clean motion, twisted
his neck, snapping it.

He dropped, lifeless, down to her feet.

The entire room was silent, shocked, unable to believe
what they had just witnessed.

She looked up at her men.

“Cut his body into six parts,” she ordered, her
voice dark and commanding, “and send them to the four Horns and two Spikes of
the Empire. The head—send to the Seven.”

She smiled wide.

“I want them to receive my response personally.”