Now, how in hell had that damn wizard dodged that?
He crept on, all too aware of the closeness of the walls, of the weight of the earth over his head.
Then-was that a light?
He moved a little faster, careful still to make no sound. The tiny spot of light became a flame in the distance, then a sconced lamp with another just beyond it. Dayme hovered at the edge of the darkness and listened.
A low voice rode on the stagnant air. Impossible to distirguish the words, but by the rhythms and stresses, Dayme thought it some kind of chant. He saw nothing ahead, though, so pressing against the wall, he ventured on into the light.
He stopped again. A too-familiar scent wafted through the tunnel. Dayme sniffed. His brows knitted together for an instant, and he clenched the hilt of his sword.
A death smell hung in the air, the unmistakable odor of rotting flesh. Too many years in the Rankan arenas as a slave and as an auctoratus had made him familiar with that stench. Gritting his teeth, trying not to breathe too often or too deeply, he followed the scent and the voice.
A shriek ripped through the tunnel. The fine hairs on Dayme’s neck rose straight up. A woman’s voice! Another cry echoed after the first, then a pause, and a long series of screams and broken sobbings.
Dayme abandoned stealth and ran forward. The chant had risen to match the intensity of the screams. A mad cacophony of sound swirled around him. He ran wide-eyed and fearful, yet the fear did not stop him. It drew him, instead, until he found the entrance to a side room off the tunnel.
He realized at once the tunnel’s original purpose. He was surely close to the palace by now, and this was an old escape route used in times of emergency, built by the Ilsigs, perhaps still unknown to the current Rankan occupants. The side room was full of empty weapon racks where fleeing men might once had grabbed swords before emerging aboveground in the Promise.
But not all his arena experience had prepared him for the rest of the sight.
In the light of a dozen oil lamps Dayme saw the bodies of Asphodel’s missing prostitutes. They hung by their necks from metal spikes driven deep into the walls, twisted ropes biting through the bloated flesh of their throats. Plainly, though, they had been killed before they were hanged.
The first few women had merely been stabbed through the hearts. The purpled, crusted wounds showed visibly on their bare breasts. The next one had been disemboweled; the flesh of her belly had been peeled back to reveal emptiness; she looked like nothing more than a gutted fish. The mutilations grew progressively more cruel. The skin and muscle had been sliced from one, leaving the organs in full view. Another had been left relatively intact with only dark holes showing where the organs had been removed. On yet another body the visible veins and arteries had been precisely, surgically opened, making a strange and gruesome mapwork.
Blood had stained the wall a nauseating color where the corpses hung. Old puddles and rivulets of blood had dried and crusted on the floor beneath them.
Dayme reeled at the insanity of it.
He fixed his eyes on the center of the room. Bound upon a crossshaped altar a woman screamed again, her terror filling the chamber and the tunnel beyond. It was the whore he’d followed from Shipri’s niche. Whatever entrancement her captor had placed upon her had faded. Her feet and wrists bled as she struggled in her ropes.
At her head stood her captor. The wizard’s eyes snapped open and fixed suddenly on Dayrne. The chant died in his throat. The gleaming knife he’d brandished over the prostitute turned point first toward the gladiator, and he snatched a second dagger from a table of instruments close at hand.
Outrage smothered any thought of fear. Dayrne started across the room, raising his sword. The wizard stepped swiftly to the altar’s far side, putting his victim between himself and his unexpected attacker. As he moved he brought the points of his two blades together and barked a short command in a language Dayrne didn’t know.
A pain stabbed the gladiator’s heart. The breath rushed from him, and he clenched his teeth. Still he forced another step forward, fighting the sudden agony. The pain struck him again, and as he took another step, yet again stronger than ever. His knees buckled; the arcane fire in his chest consumed his strength. A red tide flooded his vision. His fingers trembled with seizure on the hilt of his sword.
He forced his head up, expecting a death stroke from one of the daggers. The wizard had felled him easily; Dayrne was helpless at that moment. Yet, his foe kept his place behind the altar and his victim.
Then, Dayrne saw fear, not triumph, on his foe’s face.
Fighting the pain, he crawled back toward the entrance. With each retreating step the pressure on his heart lessened. He leaned on the jamb and slowly pulled himself to his feet, gasping for one good breath.
The wizard lowered his blades. A fine sweat sheened on his brow, and the glow of the oil lamps lent him a strange countenance.
Still, the fear was unmistakable; Dayrne saw it in those dark. deep-set eyes.
The prostitute cried piteously. “Help me'” she begged Dayrne. “Don’t let him kill me, I’m with child!”
Dayrne stayed by the door. He needed a moment to recover his strength and to think. For all the wizard’s apparent power, he feared Dayrne. Why?
“Don’t just stand there like a worthless eunuch!” the whore shouted when her rescuer didn’t move. “He’s going to-”
The wizard frowned and touched her temple with one finger. Her head sagged back before she could say another word. Her eyes fluttered shut. She sighed, then went limp.
But almost instantly, her lids snapped open again. She screamed and cowered away from the wizard’s hand as far as her bonds allowed.
The wizard roared in frustration, grasped both his blades in his right hand, and seized the woman’s hair in his left- He jerked her head up then sharply down on the altar. She let go a short gasp as her eyes rolled and closed. A fine trickle of blood oozed down the cross under her head and dripped to the floor.
“I get so tired of the noise,” the wizard said in exasperation.
Dayrne leaped across the threshold, but his foe was just as fast. Again the points of the blades touched, and again he shouted in that strange tongue.
Dayrne screamed as fire exploded in his chest and a rush of tears halfblinded him. But he kept his feet and flung himself at the altar. Wideeyed, the wizard sprang back against the wall, clutching the daggers in shivering hands.
“Whatever god has siphoned my power, I’ve still more than enough for you,” the wizard hissed. But his voice quavered.
Dayme sprawled over the altar and over the woman’s limp form, his fingers clutching her thighs for support. He sucked for air to relieve his tortured lungs and tried to fight the weakness that numbed his limbs. He lunged with the point of his sword, but his strength faded too swiftly, and his foe retreated beyond his reach.
The wizard flattened against the wall, and his fear was a tangible force. Then, fear turned to anger as he realized Dayrne’s impotence. “All the way from Carronne I came to this miserable dung-hole!” He was still careful to keep his blades touching and pointed at the gladiator. “The tales had reached even that far of the strange affairs transpiring here, stories of gods and demons and dead souls that walked the streets. Clearly, there was power here for the taking, and who deserved it more than I? So I came disguised as one of the laborers who build your walls.”
Dayrne hissed through his teeth, barely able to form words. “Human sacrifice? Never in our empire-not even in this rotten town!” He tried to glance over his shoulder, wondering if he could make it back to the safety of the entrance where the wizard’s spell didn’t reach. But he knew that was useless. It was a struggle even to raise up on one elbow and look his foe in the eye.
“The sacrifices are to placate whatever god has stolen my magic!” The wizard dared to come closer. “In Carronne I was a hazard-class magician -curse the fate that brought me here! My simplest spells go completely awry. All those stories of power-there must be some secret!”
“No secret,” Dayme managed. “Go back to Carronne.” He dragged one foot, then the other, under himself and tried to stand. It was useless.
His heart hammered against his ribs; the room spun crazily. The wizard’s face swam out of focus. “Tasfalen’s,”-he fought to get the words out”magic burned out!”