The Mountains Rise (19 page)

Garlin arrived early the next morning to collect Daniel.

“Time to prove your worth, Tyrion,” the warden told him.

“The arena?” asked Daniel as they walked.

Garlin nodded
.

A few minutes later Daniel spoke again, “Which grove does your talent come from?”

“Mordan.”

“Can I ask what talent that gives you?”

Garlin snorted, “You don’t know much yet. Those with the Mordan gift can teleport.”

“Teleport?”

The warden was walking in front of him, but with a brief surge of aythar he was suddenly
behind Daniel, his wooden sword pressed painfully against Daniel’s back. “Teleport,”
stated Garlin, not bothering to explain further. He waited a long second before sheathing
his sword and resuming his previous gait.

“How far can you go?” probed Daniel.

“Anywhere I can see or anywhere I have ever been,” said the other man.

“So you could escape…” said Daniel with a sense of inspiration.

Garlin touched the necklace at his throat, “For me to be somewhere beyond the limit
they have set me
, would mean death.

“There is no escape, resign yourself to it, baratt. For you there is only battle
and pain. Learn to enjoy it
,
or let one of them kill you if you cannot bear it. Those are your choices,” said
Garlin, a hard note entering his voice.

Daniel fell silent
,
and soon they had reached the arena. As before
,
he was placed in a small room that occluded his magesight, to await his turn.

Without being able to sense the outside world
,
he was unable to judge the passage of time. Knowing that he would soon be fighting
for his life ate at his nerves
,
and he paced the small room. He tried sitting, closing his eyes and relaxing, but
his inner tension grew until it was unbearable and he was forced to his feet again.
The wait was much longer than it had been the last time. He was certain that hours
passed, but whether it was one hour or ten he couldn’t have guessed.

The door opened and the wardens gestured him forward. Moving with assurance, based
on his previous time in the arena
,
he took his place without being directed. The announcer was speaking loudly to the
crowd
,
and they cheered as he said the opponent’s name. Daniel only recognized one word
, ‘Mordan’.

The crowd grew quiet when the name Tyrion Illeniel was announced. Raising his eyes
to the She’Har lining the balconies
,
Daniel couldn’t see Lyralliantha, but his mind found her
,
and after that he was able to spot her standing on one of the upper platforms. She
was too distant for him to see her eyes
,
but it felt as though their gazes met. As if in response to his attention
,
she turned away, putting her back to the arena.

The chime sounded
,
and the lights changed from blue to red. The blond haired man on the other side
of the arena smiled and raised a close personal shield around himself, walking slowly
forward.

Daniel saw no sign of strange animals being summoned
,
and his foe didn’t vanish so he guessed that those must have been special talents
of other groves. He had seen a warden teleport twice now, so he had some idea what
to expect, especially after Garlin’s demonstration.

If I stay in motion
,
it will be more difficult for him to use his ability to ambush me,
thought Daniel
,
and even as it occurred to him the blond man disappeared. He leapt forward, fearful
that his enemy was going to appear behind him.

The blond man laughed, having teleported to another position almost a hundred feet
to Daniel’s right. He sent a light probing blast of pure aythar at Daniel, testing
his shield before teleporting again a few seconds later. He reappeared this time
fifty feet directly ahead of Daniel.

Scrambling to change direction to avoid his opponent
,
Daniel went to his right but then had to switch again when the man showed up in yet
a new place.

“Keep running little rabbit!” shouted his opponent. “I will choose the time and place!”

This is stupid.

Stopping in his tracks
,
Daniel sent a flicker of aythar along his index fingers, drawing a broad circle around
himself roughly seven or eight feet in diameter. As soon as it was complete he sent
a surge of aythar into it creating a powerful shield around himself.
His enemy sent several more probing blasts at it
,
but unless he was concealing his strength it was readily apparent that he wouldn’t
be able to penetrate it.

Daniel lifted his arms, flattening his hands out as he crossed them over his chest
in an ‘X’. He kept the vision of what he wanted in his
head
,
and he felt the lines that traced his arms in his mind. He stopped just short of
actually putting any of his strength into what he had envisioned.

The other man smiled wickedly before teleporting again, this time showing up just
outside Daniel’s circle. He laughed when he saw Daniel flinch. “Your shield won’t
stop me, wildling. I can kill you at any time,” he mocked.

The man began teleporting rapidly, barely stopping in any one place before moving
again.
He laughed
while Daniel jerked and shuddered in response, expecting him to appear beside or
behind him at any moment.

He’s trying to deaden my reflexes, force me to react over and over until I get used
to it and relax.

Daniel closed his eyes and forced himself to relax, watching his opponent vanish and
reappear once again.
He’s waiting until I stop flinching, and then…

He had grown utterly still
,
and as the man appeared behind him his arms flared with a blaze of
deadly power. Whipping his arms outward he spun, the blades of force that extended
from his hands nearly touching the boundary of his shield barrier. First one and
then the other cut through his opponent’s shield, continuing onward through unresisting
flesh.

The Mordan mage died instantly, his body falling in three gruesome pieces to the ground
before Daniel. The crowd had become silent and all eyes were on him.

Drunk on
adrenaline and exultant in the rush of power that filled him Daniel raised his bladed
arms to the sky. He felt alive in a way that he had only experienced twice before,
when he had killed his two previous opponents. The girl had sickened him, but he
remembered it anyway. The rush of being alive.

And still the crowd did not cheer.

Filled with joy and rage simultaneously
,
he screamed at the She’Har on the balconies, “Go fuck yourselves
,
you bastards! I am alive!”

He had no idea how many of them spoke the human language, but as the adrenaline receded
and his body lapsed into shaking
,
he knew his words had been foolish.

“Learn to enjoy it, or let them kill you,”
Garlin had said.

“I’ll cho
o
se the former and dare them to try,” Daniel
muttered to
himself. “Either way I’ll die eventually, but at least I won’t do it cringing and
crying.” A calm grew in him as he made a new resolution in himself.

As he was led back to his room in Ellentrea
,
Garlin spoke, “We’ll have to whip you for your insolence back at the arena.” He
glanced over at the other warden.

Daniel’s face hardened, “Do what you must.”

They whipped him until his resolve broke and he begged for mercy
,
and then they continued
until he finally fell unconscious from the pain.

***

A few days later Daniel sat in his room, mad with boredom and solitude, waiting for
Amarah to bring his morning meal.

The time was drawing close
,
and he felt ashamed to admit that it was the only thing he had to look forward to.
When she entered at last
,
he stood immediately, greeting her with as much warmth as he could muster, “Good
morning, Amarah. You look even lovelier today. Surely the sun has kissed your cheeks
to endow them with such a glow.”

Her eyes flickered toward him before returning to the floor. He couldn’t see whether
she was blushing through her weather-beaten skin, but her aura told him quite plainly
that she was.
Amarah was far from what he had once considered attractive, but he had begun to
crave the subtle fragility lent to her by her innate femininity.

She placed the tray down and made for the door, but once again he blocked her way.
“Do you have a boyfriend, Amarah, or a husband perhaps?” he asked.

“I don’t know this word, ‘husband’, but we are not allowed to mate, if that is what
you mean by ‘boyfriend’
.
Such things are not permitted,” she said as if the idea shocked her.

Daniel ran his hand along her thick, slightly coarse hair. Being so close to a woman
after so long alone made his pulse quicken. “Names aren’t permitted either, Amarah,
but yours sings from my lips each day when you enter here.”

She glanced up at him, eyes widening slightly. “Stop, we’ll be punished.”

He leaned down
to whisper in her ear, “Daniel. M
y real name is Daniel. ‘We’ll be punished, Daniel’ is what you should say.” He took
the edge of her ear lightly between his teeth, letting his warm breath out softly.

Amarah’s body shifted, leaning closer to him
,
and he saw her aura flicker with growing arousal, even though he had done nothing
to manipulate it directly. Her passion was entirely her own.

Responding with fierce
fervor
,
he pulled her tightly against him, for once grateful for their state of nudity.
There was no hiding his desire, nor did he need to. Amarah growled into his
chest, stretching up on her toes in order to grind herself against him.

Daniel bent his knees, lowering himself to reach her when a sudden s
earing pain shot through him, burning along his nerves from his neck to his spine
and in both directions, destroying any erotic thought he might have had. Amarah screamed
as well
, releasing him and falling to the floor in agony, clawing at her throat.

The pain was brief, disappearing after a short span of seconds
,
but it had left him breathless with its intensity. “What the hell was that?” he
said aloud.

“I told you we would be punished,” said Amarah as she quickly got back on her feet
and ducked out the door.

“It sounded a lot sexier the first time you said it,” he said despairingly to the
empty room.

Daniel was
depressed
,
even more deeply than before. His failure with Amarah the day before had
destroyed the one thing he secretly dreamed of, the last hope he had of the pleasure
of feminine company. In the weeks he had been trapped in isolation
,
he had never been punished by the necklace for pleasuring himself. But such things
grew old rapidly. For some reason the She’Har had set things up to make certain their
slaves never did anything similar with each other.

He still dreamed of Kate almost nightly, at times waking from dreams that seemed so
solid they made his heart ache. Reaching out into the darkness as
she faded from in front of him,
he found only cold air beneath his fingers.

There was no one to see him crying in the dark.

The next day he practiced with his shields and shapes again, but after a few hours
it grew boring. For what must have been the hundredth time
,
he wished he had his cittern. All his life he had taken its music for granted, first
listening to his mother play and then learning himself. Since leaving home there
had been no music.

The people of Ellentrea seemed to be completely ignorant on the subject. He had yet
to hear even a hint of a melody sung or played when he was escorted in or out of the
town of captives. Given Lyralliantha’s confusion and Thillmarius’ remarks
,
he was beginning to suspect that music simply didn’t exist among the She’Har and
had been forgotten by their slaves.

If I had my cittern I would at least have some solace here in this dark
space
.

Glancing around his tiny room
,
Daniel’s eyes lit upon the flat
,
wooden ‘stump’ that rose next to his bed, forming the table that served as his only
piece of furniture aside from the bed he slept on. His senses had long ago told him
that it was composed of a solid piece of wood that had grown up with a gnarled internal
pattern. It was easily large enough to form the body and neck of a cittern if one
could cut and shape it properly.

Angry and frustrated he used his power to cut the uppermost foot of it neatly off,
leaving a bare scarred stump. The wood was damp, still wet with living sap
,
but he thought that if it dried without cracking
,
it might be usable. Taking his prize he stashed it under his bed, wondering if the
She’Har would discover the damage he had wrought upon the root that formed his tiny
home.

He was already regretting his action
, his back tingling at the thought of being whipped again.

What’s done is done.

In l
ess than an hour the wardens came.

They entered his room and immediately pointed at the damaged ‘table’. “Outside,”
commanded Garlin.

Cold sweat beaded on Daniel’s brow as they marched him into the open air and brought
out the red whips that had dealt him so much pain in the past. “Please,” he told
them, desperate, “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I won’t do it again!”

His answer came by way of the first touch of a whip on his back
,
and soon he was howling in agony.

Later he lay on his small bed, unable to summon the tears that he felt. Life had
become nothing more than a succession of pain and boredom, punctuated by adrenaline
soaked battles in the arena. He found himself looking forward to his next summons
to
fight
. It was the only time he felt even a modicum of control over his own life.

***

A few days later he was standing in the arena again staring up at the balconies crowded
with She’Har come to enjoy the fruits of their blood sport. Across from him stood
a tall woman, lean and muscular, with short cropped hair. Daniel had failed to hear
her name, or more importantly the name of the grove she had gotten her gifts from.

His heart was beating fiercely, filling him with strength and vitality,
demanding that he fight to survive. As the light shifted from blue to red he walked
forward, using his fingers to direct his aythar, sketching several large circles in
the earth around him.

Her first attack came without warning, a fierce blast of force that tested the limit
of the shield he had placed closely around his body. He ignored it, continuing to
walk toward her. His magesight had already told him that his strength was greater
than her
s
. If he could avoid being blindsided by some unexpected ability
,
he felt certain of victory.

The woman knelt, hands picking at the stony soil around her
,
and when she stood again he could tell she held several small rocks in the palm of
one hand. Daniel thought of Kate and her prodigious throwing arm.
If she thinks she can kill me with such small rocks she’s sadly mistaken.

Flicking one stone into the air
,
the woman sent it hurtling toward him with blistering speed, propelled by the force
of her aythar. It struck his shield,
hard.
If
his defense hadn’t held it
might have caved in his chest. As it was
,
he staggered, caught off-guard by the powerful impact. A second stone slammed into
him
,
and his shield shattered, sending waves of pain through his head.

Falling
,
Daniel hit the ground, struggling to collect his wits. Hesitation meant death.
Rolling sideways he made it into one of his circles and sent a desperate pulse of
power to raise a new shield with it.
His head was throbbing with the effort. Another stone hammered into it almost as
soon as it came up
,
and he felt the impact with his mind. The world swayed around him.

If she’s a Mordan
,
I’m dead,
he thought.

The woman was sending a steady barrage of small rocks against his shielded circle
but Daniel was recovering. Putting forth more of his power the shield stabilized,
forming a barrier too strong for even her deadly stones to crack.

Stretching out her hand
,
the woman clenched it into a fist and pulled it downward, snarling, and the earth
fell away beneath him, opening into a pit. Daniel dropped into it
,
and the soil closed over his head, encasing him in an earthen tomb.

Using a shield to push outward, Daniel fought to shove the dirt away, to reach the
surface again. Claustrophobia assailed him
,
and
his heart was filled with fear;
he had only the air still in his lungs. Time was not his friend.

The earth held him tightly, reinforced by his opponent’s strength. Already underground
and buried by
a large amount of heavy soil
,
he was fighting an uphill battle, unable to muster enough strength to force his way
free while she used her power to keep him down. His magesight showed her close by
now, gazing down at the dirt and rock that covered him. She was smiling.

Chest burning
,
he gave up trying to escape and sent his power further outward, clawing at the loose
soil of the ground above, whipping it into frenzied whirlwind, filling the air around
his enemy with a savage flurry of sand and grit.

His assault seemed to surprise her
,
and her focus faltered. Shifting his power, Daniel thrust downward
, against the earth beneath him,
while shaping the shield around him into a spear-like form. He rocketed skyward,
shooting up from the ground like some fearsome revenant come back from the grave.

She recovered quickly however, sending more rocks to slam into his shield as his whirlwind
died away. Daniel put all his strength into the shield around him to keep her stony
assault from breaking it. He couldn’t afford to be stunned again.

The woman advanced as he retreated backward. Sparing a small bit of power
,
he drew another circle on the ground, but rather than stand in it he continued his
withdrawal. Seconds later she stepped
across
it, never taking her eyes off her fleeing opponent.

Daniel changed tactics instantly, sending a surge of aythar into the circle, trapping
his foe within a powerful shield. Suddenly panicked
,
she struck out with her aythar, attempting to break free, but her strength was nowhere
near great enough. Daniel was charging toward her, blades of
energy
enshrouding his arms.

The earth vanished beneath him once more but he was ready for it, creating a plane
of force beneath him
as he ran
to prevent
a
fall. Reaching the circle
,
he scythed his arms forward, releasing the shield the instant before they touched
it.

Jerking backward to avoid the deadly attack
,
the woman almost escaped, but the blade of his right arm caught her with its final
two inches, slicing through her shield and
cutting a deep gash in her left arm and breast. A second step forward and his left
arm-blade removed the upper half of her skull. Her body twitched and then went limp,
sagging back and sideways to strike the uncaring ground.

Daniel spat, clearing the grit from his mouth before lifting his arms to the sky.
Mad with adrenaline and vitality
,
he screamed at the sky.

And then the audience began to cheer.

It began slowly, hesitantly, as if the onlookers were embarrassed to show their support,
but it grew steadily until the sound reached a respectable level. Nothing quite like
what they had shown for Carwyn, but their cries lifted Daniel’s heart even further.

Leaving the field
,
Daniel was immediately flanked by two wardens, Garlin and one other
whom
he didn’t recognize.

“Nicely done,” said Garlin, congratulating him.

Daniel was immediately struck by the sentiment, it was the first time anyone had said
anything positive to him since he had been taken.

“He barely survived,” said the other man. “He won’t last another match.”

Angry
,
Daniel spoke without thinking
, “It’s a shame you’re a warden.
I
f
we met
in the arena
,
I’d teach you
a
lesson in manners.”

“Easy Tyrion,” said Garlin, “or we’ll have to whip you again.”

“Let the wildling yap,” said the other. “If he feels brave enough to bark at me again
,
I’ll show him so much pain
,
he’ll wish he’d never been whelped.”

Daniel gave the warden his full attention, studying him with his magesight, his own
body thrumming with pent up power
,
and his temper fired by adrenaline.

“Don’t do it, baratt,” cautioned Garlin. “Remember how he became a warden. You don’t
want to pick a fight with Lavon.”

Lavon was staring back at Daniel now, his shield flickering with fresh aythar
,
and his pupils dilated. His posture practically begged Daniel to try something.
A third warden approached, attracted by the tension in the air.

“What’s going on over here?” the new man asked.

Lavon’s attention wavered as he replied, “The boy here thinks he…”

Daniel struck instantly, his power slamming into Lavon’s shield like a hammer. The
warden’s
protection
collapsed
,
and his head vanished while the air behind him was filled with a red cloud of blood
and bits of brain and bone.

Garlin and the other warden paused, shocked at the sudden explosion of violence.
The stranger recovered quickly, creating the red whip the wardens favored, but Daniel
still had his shield up preventing the first strike from reaching him.

Garlin stepped back
,
and Daniel drew another small circle around himself, creating a much stronger shield.
The two wardens struck together, using focused attacks rather than their whips, but
the barrier held without any sign of stress.

“You don’t want to do this boy,” said Garlin, eyeing Daniel’s shield. The circle
he had drawn was too small for the warden to teleport within.

Remembering the way his latest opponent had used the ground Daniel reached out
,
and delving downward
,
he gripped the earth with his mind, ripping it upward in a wave beneath the two wardens.
Their shields protected them from being harmed
,
but completely failed to prevent them from being thrown by the surging earth.

Garlin and the other warden landed thirty feet away, stunned by the fall. On one
side of Daniel’s shield was a semi-circular moat, ten feet deep that had been left
when he sent the ground flying up and outward.

A slender line of power snaked out and wrapped itself around his circle shield. It
was formed of intricate patterns and strange symbols
,
and Daniel knew immediately that it was a She’Har
spellweaving. His magesight quickly revealed that Thillmarius was the source, but
before he could react the tendril began to constrict, cutting into his shield.

It held for a moment, as Daniel poured more of his strength into the circle, but then
the seemingly fragile line of power began to cut into it. A second longer and Daniel
was forced to release the circle before it broke, fearing the backlash. Before he
could do anything else
,
the spellweaving caught him,
tightening
around him and destroying his inner shield. Within seconds it had completely encased
his body and the world began to grow dim.

Before losing consciousness
,
Daniel wondered if he would prefer living or dying. Neither seemed like a good option,
but living was much more painful.