Arena (50 page)
“No!” The cry rang sharply, tinged with desperation.
The guard froze. Callie turned her head to see Pierce launch himself into the curtain, his body seized in midair, spread-eagled, jittering with blue-green-gold incandescence. Despite Mira’s assurance that this was a pleasant experience, he screamed, the sound mingling with Callie’s own shriek of denial.
It held him for an exceedingly long time. Sparks flew along his limbs and up the poles. The curtain flickered as the blue and green drained into his body. He shuddered and twitched and screamed until only blackness swirled around him. Then, in a blinding flare, he was hurled out, staggering for balance as the crowd erupted in a savage cheer. Horrified, Callie watched him veer drunkenly into the line of guards—
And drop all pretense of incapacitation as he slammed into the nearest giant, shoulder to belly, the two of them falling in a tangle of legs and arms. Seconds later blue fire flared from the pile. The short triple bursts found their marks with deadly accuracy. The guards to either side of him dropped like empty garments. Then he was up on one knee, his SI pointing toward the box where the Partas stood openmouthed with astonishment. Three blue lances cut the air, and Guivas crashed forward to the floor, a gray vapor trailing briefly behind him and vanishing.
By then Pierce had taken out the guards closest to the other prisoners and was running for Callie, the guards beyond her diving for cover. Behind him their fellows had recovered their wits and began firing on him as the spectators scrambled to escape. Callie could see the lances of light striking his body, but this soon after exposure they didn’t faze him. He loomed over her, his face awful. Sweeping the SI from side to side as he continued to fire, he gripped the ankle shackle that held her, wrenched it out of the stone, then did the same with the wrist restraint. As she scrambled down, he upended the whole table, pulling it from its moorings in a display of superhuman strength that left her awestruck. Pushing her behind it and using his own body to shield her further, he fired at the crowd. Civilians and soldiers alike fled in panic.
New firing broke out from the side of the stage, aimed at the soldiers shooting at Pierce. Whit and the others had commandeered their dead guards’ weapons and had taken cover behind the fire curtain’s control box, which was now raining plumes of sparks and smoke. Pierce stood over Callie, taking hit after hit, and firing as if nothing was happening. But he was bleeding now. The wounds closed quickly enough, but clearly his invulnerability was fading.
Then his weapon’s beam turned purplish pink. Paled. Sputtered. He looked down, surprised, then dove behind the table as his enemies quickly took advantage. Blue fire danced off the stone, filling the air with a fine vibration. And stopped.
Crouching with Pierce behind the table, Callie looked into the gun barrels of four huge guards. The nearest guard reached for her, then staggered back as the floor lurched. She heard a low rumble as the other guards looked around in alarm and people started screaming. Down the hall toward the open doorway, she saw the floor undulate like an oily black sea, and the rocking intensified, bouncing her hard against the tile. The fire curtain’s poles whipped back and forth, spewing sparks as plaster chunks rained from the ceiling. To the right a pillar cracked with a boom, half of it peeling away to fall on screaming, fleeing Splagnosians. Thinking she needed to get under a doorway, Callie pushed herself to her feet, only to be thrown back into Pierce. He pulled her close as rocks pelted them, and another pillar gave way, thundering down the length of the hall. She clung to him as the ground churned and the dust thickened and the ceiling came down around them. It seemed the awful roar would never stop, that the floor would never stop rocking, that surely they would be crushed at any moment.
But they were not. And gradually the tumult slowed, the screaming stopped, and the world fell back to stillness. When Callie finally dared open her eyes, she found a slab of ceiling angling inches above her, one end propped on the overturned table.
She and Pierce sat up together, coughing in the settling dust and looking around, astonished to be alive. Voices at the chamber’s far end drew their attention to their friends, staggering up from the rubble. Aside from them, though, and a few residual trickles of plaster, nothing moved. Chills crawling from scalp to heels, Callie realized they alone had survived.
Beside her Pierce was surveying the wreckage with a horror that had nothing to do with the carnage. When he finally looked at her, his face was dead, his eyes bright with tears.
“Oh, Callie,” he whispered, “what have I done?”
And for the first time it dawned on her that going through the fire curtain had killed his chances of using the exit portal anytime soon.
“Why didn’t I wait?” He stared at the floor, layered with dust and rock. “Why didn’t I trust him?”
Battling her own horror and dread and rising anger, Callie had no words of comfort. He closed his eyes and speared his fingers through his dusty hair, shaking his head. She wanted to hit him, scream at him, and fall sobbing into his arms all at once.
The others congregated silently near the crushed fire curtain, looking around in bewilderment until John’s voice broke the spell. “Hey, look! Is that a passage beyond that crack?” He gestured toward the only patch of sky-painted backdrop remaining at the rear of the curve, rent now by a yard-high crack. Evvi investigated and confirmed there was indeed a passage, and one by one they disappeared into it.
Callie stood. “Are you coming?” she asked Pierce.
He swallowed, opened his eyes without looking at her, and got up.
The crack led into a corridor lit by a glowing white line in the floor. They stood in silence, puzzling over it, and then Evvi said, “Hey! I can feel the link again.”
The others looked at her, first in surprise, then in blankness as they sought their own connections and found them.
Callie hesitated, still entangled in the riot of emotion that gripped her. Beside her, Pierce sagged against the wall and closed his eyes. To her surprise, the tightness of his jaw immediately loosened, and the anguish between his brows softened as pain gave way to peace and renewed purpose. His gaze caught her own, and she could almost feel the warmth of the link through it. Elhanu had forgiven him. Again.
She turned away, chagrined by the sudden memory of her own wish that Pierce do exactly as he’d done—go through the curtain and save her, no matter the cost. She had trusted no more than he.
Chastised, she took her own failure to the link and found the wondrous warmth she craved. He wasn’t even surprised. It was as if he had known all along. . . .
And knowing, he’d be able to make it all work out. Wouldn’t he?
Footfalls and shouting sounded outside. Even in the midst of disaster the surviving Splagnosians weren’t going to let them go without a fight. She wondered if Cephelus had already found a new body.
Together they hurried up the serpentine path through a honeycomb of intersecting corridors. Without the lighted line they would have been hopelessly lost, and Callie gave thanks that the Splagnosians apparently couldn’t see it. Behind them, the shouts and footfalls waxed and waned erratically, but never actually caught up. It wasn’t long, however, before she realized Pierce was failing. Stopping to face him, she saw blood wreathing a walnut-sized hole in his thigh and numerous stains marring his tunic. He was disturbingly pale, and the pain in his face was now purely physical.
“You’re hurting,” she said. “We’d better stop.”
“I’m fine. It’s just taking longer to heal.”
“You’re not fine.”
“The longer we wait, the worse I’ll get.”
She pressed her lips together and did not argue with him, but his pace continued to slow. Finally, when they stepped into a grotto from which several corridors opened, she insisted he rest, and he let her push him onto a rock, still protesting his wounds were not serious.
“Don’t lie to me,” she said, pulling up his tunic to examine him. “You haven’t a clue how bad they are.”
He pulled the tunic back down before she could see anything. “It doesn’t matter, Callie.”
She frowned at him.
Then Whit and John entered the chamber, the others right behind. “Someone’s following us,” Whit said. “Not Splagnosian—at least he’s not wearing armor. And he’s sneaking, like he doesn’t want us to know he’s there.”
“Just one?” Pierce asked.
“Sounds like it.”
“Maybe he can’t see the guide light,” Evvi said.
“A lot of good it’ll do him to find the portal, then,” Pierce said, standing up.
“NO!” The rough bellow echoed off the stone walls as a wild-haired man lurched through the doorway behind them. He wore bloodstained leathers and held a Zelosian riot gun low across his body. His one good eye was ringed with white and was full of madness.
Screaming invectives, he insisted they couldn’t be here. “I’m the one who worked for this. Not you.”
“Garth, we can both go,” Pierce said, reaching for his weapon.
“You’re not going anywhere, you traitorous bone sucker! None of you are!”
Callie’s eye flicked to the firing lever of the riot gun, saw it was on automatic, and understood—Garth meant to shoot them all. In that instant everything seemed to slow down and clarify. She saw the tendons in his arm ripple, contracting his trigger finger as she dove for the floor, seemingly miles away. Whit was bringing his weapon slowly around as Pierce launched himself at Garth. Two green beams slid out of the riot gun, penetrating Pierce’s chest one after the other as he hung in space. Then momentum carried him into his target, and both men fell, the gun clattering aside. Callie scrambled for it, but Garth rolled free and recovered it first.
Whit’s weapon finally discharged, its blue lance burrowing into Garth’s shoulder, hurling him back against the wall. He pushed off, gazed about wildly, and fled a blaze of pursuing fire.
Callie rushed to Pierce, who was now struggling to rise. Bright blood soaked the front of his tunic in a huge, spreading stain, but again he refused her attentions. “I’m not gonna make it anyway, and you’ve got to reach the portal.”
“I’ll carry you,” Whit suggested.
“No. Garth won’t know which way to go if there’s another fork. He’ll wait for you—try to take you out once he knows the way.”
“Ah, Pierce, why would he do that?”
“Because we prove everything he believes to be a lie. Because he’s whacked out from too much fire curtain. Because he’s being driven by something other than his own passions.”
For a moment, no one spoke. They stood panting, looking at one another in surprise.
Then Whit said gravely, “You mean a Tohvani?”
“I mean Cephelus himself. He had to go somewhere after I killed the Partas.”
“
Cephelus
was in the Partas?” John asked, wide-eyed.
“We can’t just leave you,” Whit persisted.
“You don’t have a choice, my friend. Please.
Go!
” The black man regarded him unhappily but finally turned away. As he and the others disappeared up the dark corridor, Callie turned to Pierce. “I’m
not
leaving, so don’t even suggest it.”
“Callie, one of us has to make it.”
“You said yourself it’s close now. Just get up and let’s go.”
“I can’t.” His body trembled under her touch, and his skin felt cold. His breathing was coming fast and shallow. It was like reliving the nightmare in the Cauldron cave all over again. “Everything’s getting numb and fuzzy,” he murmured.
She grabbed his tunic, strange little whimperings issuing from her throat. “Please, Pierce. Don’t do this. You have to go on.”
His eyes were starting to glaze. “Look at me, Cal.” He slid his hands through the blood on his chest. “I’m all shot up. And you know I can’t go through the portal this soon.”
She struggled to breathe. “We could wait. Hide out until you’re better. Even go back. They could heal you. We could live here—”
He pressed a hand to her mouth. “Go home. You know that’s the right thing to do. Splagnos is a ruin. And even if it wasn’t, you don’t want their lies.”
“Oh, Pierce, I can’t do this.”
“You have to.”
“It’s not fair. If not for you, the rest of us would never have made it. You don’t deserve an ending like this.”
He smiled ruefully. “Yes, I do. I took the bait . . . tried to do it myself when I very well knew better. More than anyone else . . . I knew. This is exactly what I deserve.”
Her throat was tight and hot. Tears blurred her vision. “Oh, Pierce . . .”
He stroked her cheek. “It won’t be as bad as you think. Trust him, Cal.”
“I love you.”
He smoothed her hair, then cupped the back of her head with his palm and drew her down to him, kissing her gently. Even in the kiss she felt him slipping away, and when they drew apart, he was gray.
He touched her tears. “Find me. On the other side.”
He was gone.
She sat blankly, shivering, her hands touching him, then pulling away. She kept expecting him to open his eyes, for it all to be a dream or a joke—anything but reality. But the stillness in him was utter, and it was the stillness that finally got to her. She backed away on her knees. “No!” she murmured. “You weren’t supposed to leave me. We were supposed to go through together. How can I do this? I can’t. I can’t!”
She stood up, wanting to run or scream or do something, but she could only shake her hands helplessly.
Peripheral movement drew her eye as two Aggillon emerged from a lighted opening in the rock, a gurney floating behind them. Chilled, she watched them place Pierce’s body gently on the table. As they left one of them looked into her eyes, jolting her as nothing else had.
He wasn’t totally lost to her. Not yet. But if she didn’t reach that portal, he would be.
Seizing his SI, she fled up the corridor. The passage undulated, angling increasingly upward, and soon the steepness slowed her to a walk as she struggled to control the noisy rasp of her breath. She wanted to hear whatever might lie ahead—and at the same time, not give her own approach away. She rounded a bend and stopped in surprise at finding two more Aggillon with another body—Meg’s this time. Numbly she watched them bear her friend away and close the door behind them. It was splattered with blood. So was the floor.
