Only the Worthy (14 page)

6
moons later

Royce stood over
Mark and held the tip of his wooden sword to his friend’s throat as he lay on
the ground before him, and smiled broadly. Mark, clearly disappointed, shook
his head.

“Unfair,” Mark
said. “Can’t I win just once?”

Royce lowered
his sword and held out a hand; Mark took it, and Royce yanked him up.

“You fought very
well, my friend,” Royce said. “I just got lucky.”

Mark frowned.

“And all the
other times?” he asked. “Luck?”

“He has the edge
because he cheats. Haven’t you seen?”

It was a voice
filled with meanness, and Royce turned to see Rubin step out from the circle of
boys. The twins stepped forward behind him, and all three of them jumped down
several feet into the muddy pit Royce had been sparring in—a replica of the
Pits to come—and raised their wooden swords and faced him.

“Let’s see how
you can fight when it’s three on one,” Rubin added.

“I shall have
your back,” Mark said, raising his sword.

“No,” Royce
replied, stepping up alone. “It is my fight.”

No sooner had
Mark ascended the pit, when Rubin raised his sword and charged with a shout,
the twins behind him, all clearly intent on killing Royce. The tension between
them had been long simmering these past moons, and finally, it had exploded.

Royce was ready
for it. After all these moons of training with Voyt he felt stronger than ever,
ready to take on ten boys if needed, and he had been prepared for an ambush
since the day he had arrived on this isle.

Royce raised his
wooden sword and blocked the first blow, the clack of wood ringing out, then
spun his sword around with lightning speed and jabbed Rubin in the stomach. Rubin
keeled over with a whoomph.

Seth reached him
at the same time, slashing for Royce’s back, and Royce spun and blocked, then
spun his sword around and struck upwards, knocking his sword from his hand. He
elbowed him in the face, dropping him.

Sylvan charged
Royce, shouting, coming at him point out as if to run his sword through him.
Royce sidestepped, slashed him across the stomach, then brought his sword
around and brought it down on his back, sending him face-first in the mud.

Royce turned to Rubin,
sword point out.

Rubin raised his
hands.

“I give,” he
said, still on one knee.

Royce lowered
his sword—yet the moment he did, Rubin suddenly threw a clump of mud into his
eyes.

Royce, blinded,
clawed at the mud, unable to see. The next moment he felt a boot in his chest
and went stumbling back, landing on his back on the ground, disarmed.

“FIGHT!” cried
the boys up above, watching.

A moment later
Royce, still blinded and clawing at mud, felt Rubin’s heavy weight atop him,
his knees pinning down his shoulders. He then gasped, unable to breathe, as Rubin’s
fat palms wrapped around his throat.

Royce gripped
the boy’s wrists, struggling to breathe, but the boy had him pinned down.

“I’ve always
hated you,” Rubin seethed. He grinned. “And now the time has finally come to
send you back to the farm from which you came. No one will notice you’re gone.”

Royce heard a
sound and saw Mark jumping down into the pit. He rushed forward to save him—but
the twins blocked his way and he fought furiously with them, trying to break
through.

Royce,
desperate, losing oxygen, knowing he was going to die, felt that feeling again.
It rushed through him, from deep inside. It was a strength. A strength he did
not understand. He did not need to understand it, he realized; he just needed
to give in to it.

With a sudden
surge of power, Royce managed to break his arms free of Rubin’s grip, turn, and
throw him off. He then rolled and pinned him down himself.

Royce choked Rubin
as he himself had been choked. Rubin raised his arms and choked Royce, too. The
two of them lay in the mud, the hatred coursing through them both, choking each
other to death. Royce was losing air, but he took satisfaction in seeing Rubin losing
more.

Suddenly, Royce
felt a boot in his stomach. He felt himself kicked and the next thing he knew
he went rolling in the mud.

He looked up to
see several soldiers standing between him and Rubin, some stepping on Rubin’s
chest, too.

Voyt stepped up
and shook his head, looking down at Royce as he spoke.

“As much as I’d
love to see you two kill each other, today is not the day. We have more
important business.”

Hardly had he
finished speaking the words than a horn sounded. It was the horn of gathering.
Something important was happening.

Royce and the
others got to their feet and gathered around Voyt. Rubin and the twins lined up
on the far side of the circle, and Royce could see them fuming, vowing to get
vengeance when the time came.

“BOYS!” Voyt
boomed, and they all fell silent as he demanded their attention. “On this day
some of you will become men. You will survive the final test, and your training
will be over. Others of you will die. Your initiation has come.”

He paced up and
down the ranks, and Royce’s heart pounded as he did, wondering what lay in
store.

“You will
journey from here as a group, descend into the Cave of Madness, and retrieve
the Crystal Sword. It is guarded by a Mantra, a beast that has killed many
before you, and will kill many more to come. For you, those few who have
survived these moons, this is your reward. This is your privilege. A chance for
a life fighting in the Pits. And a chance for a glorious death.”

Royce caught
Mark’s look, his face filled with dread, as were the faces of the other boys.

“Beyond the
Fields of Ore lies the entrance to the cave. You will go as one, and you will
learn, finally, to fight as one. For if you do not, you will surely die. You
will need each other, more than you ever have. If you fight together, you may
survive. Only the worthy will return. And it is only the worthy whom I wish to
see again.”

A group of
soldiers stepped forward, and Royce noticed that they each held a weapon,
draped in a cloth of scarlet velvet. Voyt nodded and they removed the cloths,
and Royce gasped to see twelve stunning swords revealed, shining, with platinum
hilts, crafted of a finer metal than he’d ever seen.

Each soldier
stepped forward and handed each boy one sword. Royce reached out and took his,
holding the hilt with one hand, its blade with the other. He was in awe. It was
a thing of majesty. Its steel was black, carved with the insignia of the Black
Isle, while its hilt was flanked by long, silver prongs. Its blade was long and
sharp, the sharpest he’d ever seen, made of a metal he did not know. Royce
raised the sword, and it felt like lightning in his hands. It was the greatest
weapon he had ever held.

“These are the
weapons of men,” Voyt said. “Not of boys. For it is men you have become here in
the Black Isle.”

He paced,
looking them up and down.

“Here, on the Black
Isle,” Voyt continued, “we give our initiates swords
before
they are
initiated. That way if you die, you will die holding your reward in your hand.”

He paced up and
down the ranks, and Royce examined the sword, gleaming in the morning light,
and felt himself welling with pride. Whatever happened, whatever was to come,
he had earned this, and no one could take that away from him.

“In the Cave of
Madness,” Voyt boomed, “you shall find the scabbards and swords of many boys
who held swords like these before you, and who died before you. They are men,
too. There is no shame in dying. Only shame in fear.”

A horn sounded
again, and as the group dissembled, Royce found himself exchanging glances with
the eleven other boys, who all looked stunned. They all looked as if they were
staring death in the face.

A Mantra
, Royce thought.
He had read about them as a boy. A horrible and cruel monster. A beast of
legend. He shook his head. There was no way they could survive.

Slowly the group
of boys came together, and as one, they turned away from the clearing and began
the long trek across the plains. One foot in front of the other, they marched
across the barren wasteland before them, under the cold, brilliant sunlight of
another dawn. All walked in silence.

They walked
slowly, reluctantly, across the wasteland, even Rubin and the twins, for the
first time not harassing anyone. It was a solemn death march across the barren
rocks, each step taking them closer to the cave, somewhere at the far end of
the isle.

It was when the
sun hung high in the sky that Royce looked up and stopped short with the
others. They stood at the edge of a precipice. As he looked down, a gale of
wind struck him in the face. Royce stood there, gaping with the others. None
said a word.

There below sat
a massive mountain, and in its side, a gaping entrance, a hundred yards wide
and high, to a cave. It appeared to be the entrance to hell itself.

There arose an
awful smell from the cave, blown on the wind all the way to here. Royce could
feel the waves of heat, too, coming from what must have been its breath. He
felt the tremor beneath his feet, heard the snorts of a massive creature
lurking far below, somewhere in the blackness.

He looked over
at his brothers in arms, and from their faces it looked as if some of them had already
died.

Without another
word, they all took the first step, descended together, as one, into the very
depths of hell.

Genevieve stood
in the bleachers, high up, towering over the crowd below, and looked away in
revulsion as the crowd roared at the spectacle. The stadium shook as men and
women jumped to their feet, cheering. She couldn’t believe the viciousness that
so moved these people. What she would give to be anywhere but here.

Genevieve turned
to go when she suddenly felt a hand grab her arm roughly and yank her back.

She looked over
to see Moira, her sister-in-law, looking back sternly, unnoticed amidst the
chaos.

Moira quietly
shook her head.

“You are a noble
now,” she warned. “Act the part. Unless you want to find yourself locked in a
dungeon.”

Genevieve stood
there, numb, and slowly turned and looked back down at the spectacle. There,
below her, was the muddy fighting pit, its steep walls rising twenty feet so
its fighters could not escape. In its center, on the muddy earth, lay a man,
dead, face up, a spear in his chest. Next to him stood another man, wearing a
grotesque mask shaped like a lion. He looked up, raising his arms and beating
his chest, soaking in the adulation of the crowd. He paraded around the pit
like a peacock, having just murdered this man in cold blood.

The crowd could
not get enough, and each cheer was like a knife through Genevieve’s heart. She
hated this place. Hated these nobles. Hated everything this savage kingdom was
about.

What she hated
most of all were her thoughts of Royce. There, below, was his future, awaiting
him. It was awful. Worse than death. And it was all because of her.

Perhaps that was
why Altfor had dragged her here, Genevieve thought. She looked over and saw him
standing there, clapping, his face so smugly self-satisfied like all the
others. She could hardly believe she was married to this man.
Married
.
The thought turned her stomach. Six moons had slowly passed, too slowly, an
agony of waiting to hear from Royce. Yet no word ever came. She did not know if
he was even alive. Yet she dreamed of him every night. In most dreams he was
reaching for her, his fingertips grazing hers, just out of her grasp.

Genevieve
sighed, shaking the thought from her mind. It could be worse, she told herself.
At least Altfor had not made her sleep with him. He’d even allowed her a
separate chamber, a separate bed, and this allowed her to feel like the
prisoner she wanted to be. She wanted to share the isolation and pain that
Royce felt.

Genevieve looked
over and noticed a girl standing on the other side of Altfor. She was young,
and stunningly beautiful. Genevieve had seen her many times before, always
getting close to Altfor. She saw her drape a gentle arm around his, and she
noticed that her husband did not shake it off. The girl looked at him with love
and affection as she batted her eyes up at him.

“You’re a fool,”
came a voice.

Genevieve turned
to see Moira staring at the girl with her.

“He will find
someone else, you know,” Moira continued. “He’s a man, and men have needs. They
do not like to be scorned. Keep ignoring him, and you will be discarded.”

Genevieve
smiled.

“Good,” she
replied. “There’s nothing I wish for more.”

Moira frowned
and shook her head.

“You still don’t
understand,” she replied. “Nobles are obsessed with titles. You’re a
wife
now. You’re part of this family forever. Whether you realize it or not.”

Genevieve
struggled to understand.

“But you just
said if he tired of me, he would let me go.”

Moira shook her
head.

“He would take
another woman, true, yet you would never truly be free,” she replied. “They
could never allow you to be out there, free, marrying someone else. Especially
not Royce. Not after all this. It would shame them. They would hide you away
somewhere. In a dungeon, most likely. Never to be heard of again.”

“Good,” Genevieve
insisted. “I do not wish to be free if my love is not.”

Moira shook her
head again.

“You are a
bigger fool than I thought,” she replied. “You are Royce’s only hope. If you
are locked in a dungeon, what hope will he ever have?”

Genevieve
blinked, pondering her sister-in-law’s words.

“But how does my
being married, being a noble, help him? It has done nothing for him thus far.”

Moira frowned.

“Because you
know nothing of the ways of nobles. And you have not even bothered to learn.
Nobles have power. Unlimited power, more than you could ever imagine. If you
were a true noble wife and mother, beloved by the family, you could do anything
you wish. With the snap of your fingers you could command anyone you wish. Save
anyone you wish.”

Genevieve felt
her heart beat faster for the first time since arriving here. She leaned in
closer to Moira.

“Yes,” Moira
said, excited. “You’d have power over Royce’s life. Do you wish to save your
beloved? Or would you rather wallow away in a dungeon somewhere in a cloud of
self-pity, while Royce, too, suffers and dies?”

Genevieve
pondered her words and felt a surge of optimism. For the first time, she wanted
to live again.

“Of course I
want to save Royce,” she replied. “I would give my life for him.”

Moira nodded.

“And do you
really think you will be able to save him, to gain any power at all, if you
allow your husband to go into another woman’s arms?”

Genevieve
thought about that.

“Don’t you see?”
Moira pressed. “Before you lies the steppingstone to power. If you want it all,
you must stop running from your role. You must embrace it.”

Moira retreated
back into the roaring crowd, and as they all began to disperse, the fights
over, Genevieve turned and looked at Altfor. There he stood, the girl still
with an arm on him. As she looked, she suddenly had a whole new perspective.
Moira’s words rang in her mind and she realized that she was right. This was an
opportunity before her. A lost opportunity.

She must go to Altfor
at once. Embrace him, love him.

Even if it was
the thing she wished for least in the world.

Through love
comes power.