Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [128]
This time the crowd at least had noticed Caelan’s victory. Clapping and throwing him kisses, some people even tossed flowers his way.
He turned his back on them and walked into the darkness.
It was a repeat of the previous routine. The sword was wrested immediately from him. At the bottom of the ramp, he climbed into the tub of water again, washing off the grime and blood—although what could wash his heart?
Numb, he walked with heavy footsteps into the holding cell. Another man waited there before him, a lithe individual with a handsome face and skin the color of soot. Their gazes met briefly, then broke.
Sighing, Caelan seated himself on a stool and closed his eyes. His father’s face floated in his mind, stern and disappointed. His first kill. And all he could feel was shame.
It was as though something important inside him had suddenly crumbled to ashes. Even during the long years of uncertainty and grief since he’d been taken from home and sold into slavery, he had always been intact inside. He might grieve and he might mourn, but he had never been broken. Now he wondered why he should feel so flat and empty within. He wanted to go back, to reclaim what he had lost, but he knew it was impossible to do so.
This, then, must have been what his father knew, all those years ago. Beva had tried to warn him against becoming a soldier. Agel even had understood what it meant totake life. But Caelan hadn’t listened. He had been so full of his boyhood dreams and ambitions, so eager for glory.
Was this glory now? To win? To hear the erowd cheer approval? To have flowers tossed at him?
Was it a suitable tribute for the blood on his hands?
Caelan’s hands were trembling. He sat on them so the other man would not see, and told himself to stop this. He could not tear himself apart every time, not if he was to survive this ordeal.
It was the fault of sevaisin. If he’d only remembered to break the joining before he thrust the final blow, it wouldn’t have been so bad.
Even now, he thought he could hear an echo of the sword, still calling to him, still singing in his blood. Beneath his wretchedness, he knew something even more alarming: he had been born to battle. The weapons knew it. That’s why they had called to him so strongly all his life.
What am I? he wondered.
He had no answer to that question, but he understood why he could not do well with the fake weapons in practice. They were not real. They could not speak to him.
The third victor came in, breathing hard and looking exhausted. He drank water, but scarcely had he dropped the dipper back into the pail than the door opened and the guards entered with the final lots.
“No free-for-all?” the black man asked. His voice was smooth and deep. He alone seemed completely fresh.
“Not today. The emperor doesn’t like them.”
Caelan reached in the tub. His tag was numbered three.
“One and two, step lively.”
The black man and the one who’d just arrived went out. The door was slammed shut for what seemed like forever.
An hour passed, perhaps an eternity. Finally the guards came for Caelan and took him up the dark ramp for the last time. He did not know who his opponent was to be until the door opened and he was shoved out into the sunlight. He saw the black man holding both a dagger and a broadsword, waiting some distance away in the center of the largest ring.
Caelan had the same weapons. He could not handle both at once, so he tucked the dagger into the waist of his loincloth and settled a two-handed grip on the broadsword. The weapon was incredibly heavy and long. Blunt-tipped, it was made for hacking, not thrusting. Not until he tried to lift it into readiness did Caelan realize how exhausted his shoulders were. His arms felt leaden.
But the weapons were already hot and alive. He could feel them against his skin, humming with purpose. But to enter sevaisin again was too draining. It took tremendous amounts of energy. He was