Chainers Torment

CHAPTER 15

"Ladies, gentlemen, and other," the overhead voice boomed. "Welcome to the main event."

Chainer and Kamahl stood side by side, casually checking their weapons. Chainer loaded a charcoal disc into his censer and held it out to Kamahl. The barbarian snapped his fingers and produced a tiny, explosive blast of flame that engulfed the charcoal. Chainer let the disc drop into the censer, loaded the Dragon's Blood in after it, and waited for the smoke to begin wafting upward.

"Much obliged," he said. Kamahl grunted and nodded. He was not one for pre-match chatter.

"Tonight," the announcer continued, "they're red- hot and blackhearted. They're going for their twelfth consecutive team win, a Cabal City record. They are the Cabal's own Chainer and Kamahl from the Pardic Mountains!"

The cheers got louder with each match. Chainer waved his metal hand to acknowledge the crowd, but Kamahl ignored them. Now that he had spent some time with the big man in and outside of the pits, Chainer was getting a clear idea of the difference between barbarians and Cabalists. Kamahl only relaxed immediately after a match. Before and during, he hardly spoke a word and never so much as cracked a smile. Partnering with Kamahl had been hugely rewarding for Chainer, but it had also cured him of the notion that he should have been a barbarian. The mountain people were driven harder by their own nature than the average Cabalist was by the sternest overseer. Chainer mentally thanked Skellum for instilling a sense of discipline, but also the good sense to enjoy the time between fights.

The announcer continued to drone on. "Our champions have their work cut out for them tonight, however. The Master of the Games has sanctioned this match as a grudge match, one with no restrictions. The contest is over when all the contestants on one side either yield or are incapacitated."

"I wish they would tell us these things before we get out here," Kamahl grumbled.

"That's part of the fun," Chainer said.

"Requesting the grudge match, and representing the Order's late, lamented northern Citadel, please welcome Lieutenant Devon's crusat squad!"

Lt. Devon was another aven warrior, and though his wings were stunted, Chainer fully expected him to fly with the aid of the Order's magic. He was armed with a long pike. The rest of Devon's squad consisted of two troopers, a white-robed mage, and a huge stone beast with the head of a lion and the body of a ten-foot- tall man.

While the announcer continued with the introductions, Kamahl leaned over to Chainer and said, "What's a 'crusat?' Every toy soldier I meet these days calls himself crusat."

Chainer was pleased that Kamahl was actually speaking before a match, and that the barbarian had used Cabal slang to describe the Order. It made them seem more like a team.

"Crusat is a kind of holy war," Chainer explained. "They used to declare them every year or so, back in the days when they were trying to wipe us out once and for all. Pianna put a stop to all that, but now that she's gone, a few of their hard-liners have revived the concept."

Kamahl grimaced. "So we're fighting a death match against fanatics with a spiritual grudge against you."

Chainer nodded. "That's about the size of it." He smiled. "Should be fun, eh?"

Kamahl grumbled. "I usually like there to be more of a reward waiting for me when I fight for my life."

Chainer darkened. "As soon as the First offers the Mirari again, you'll get your chance." He nudged Kamahl. "What's that statue-looking thing?" Chainer asked.

"They're called megoliths. Animated stone, or some such thing. I've fought them before."

"Like a golem?" Chainer was eager for another crack at an Order golem.

"Sort of. They aren't carved before they're animated like golems are. They just sort of… come into being in the shape they have. Watch the pieces," he warned. "Sometimes you can hack off a piece, and the piece keeps fighting."

"Thanks," Chainer said. He gestured with his smoking censer. "Look, they're burning incense, too."

Kamahl looked. "Seems more like a prayer ceremony to me. I think they're blessing the bird- man."

"Think that'll make him fly?" Chainer said. He started spinning his censer around his head.

"Probably." Kamahl's voice had gone flat again, indicating that his mind was not on the conversation. The prep horn sounded. The match was ready to begin.

"You want the bird-man and the mystic or the statue and the toy soldiers?"

"I'll take the statue. I want to see if it melts or burns," Kamahl drew his massive broadsword. "Watch the mage. She's not armed, so I expect she's got some magical surprise in store for us."

"Done," Chainer said. The starting horn sounded. Devon's squad spread out, with the megolith in front and the troopers flanking it. The mage touched the lieutenant's wings, which burst into bright, glowing light. Devon yelled, "Attack!" and sprang into the air, trailing white light behind him. The mage stayed where she was, safely out of harm's way.

Or so she thought.

Chainer hardly needed the Dragon's Blood smoke at all anymore, but he liked starting the match with it because it partially hid his actions. While Devon was soaring overhead, looking for an avenue of attack, and the ground troops were marching forward, Chainer shuddered and unleashed a razor-clawed harpy with his metal arm. The filthy, screeching bird-woman dropped greasy feathers as it rose into the air, rushing to meet Devon headlong.

Chainer then dropped his real arm down by his side and let a foot-long spider fall onto the arena floor. Chainer was sure no one noticed the arachnid as it scuttled to the edge of the pit and began making a wide arc toward the white-robed mage. In the pits, he thought, there is no place to avoid the match. Kamahl, meanwhile, had charged into the advancing wedge of Order members and started hacking. His blade bounced off the megolith with no visible effect, but Kamahl was fast enough and his strokes wide enough to keep both foot soldiers at bay while he tried to find a seam in the stone thing's hide.

Chainer's harpy was doing better than he had expected. It had latched onto Devon's pike below the blade and was using its weight to drag the lieutenant down to the ground while it struck at him with her other claws. Devon tried to pound the harpy's grip loose, but it only clenched tighter. Chainer thought he knew why the officer hadn't simply dropped the pike.

Right on schedule, Devon waved his hand and cast a spell on his weapon. The point of his pike burst into white-hot flame, which blinded the harpy and seared its flesh. It screamed and reflexively released Devon's pike. The aven warrior promptly drove the weapon clean through the harpy's body. The harpy twitched, and Devon let gravity tear the gruesome husk loose. En route to the ground, the harpy disappeared. The crowd roared.

Devon wasted no time in celebration. He raised his pike overhead, screeched out a triumphant war cry, and dived toward Kamahl. As Devon dived, the megolith caught Kamahl's blade and then lowered its shoulder into Kamahl's chest. Kamahl grunted and staggered backward, but he managed to drop one of the foot soldiers as he went with an elbow across the bridge of the nose. Kamahl was now five feet away from the megolith and the remaining trooper, with Devon bearing down on him from above.

"Any time you're ready, partner," he shouted angrily. Chainer laughed, and then there was a scream from the Order mage at the far end of the floor. Chainer's spider had leaped onto her face, and she was struggling to keep its inch-long fangs from piercing her flesh. Without the mage's assistance, Devon lost control of his forward motion. Instead of swooping down at Kamahl, Devon was now simply falling out of the sky. There was a ripple of laughter and applause from the spectators.

"Leave the bird-man to me," Chainer readied a weighted chain. He whipped a smooth, rounded weight toward the falling aven. Devon tried to block the incoming chain with his pike, but he was off balance and out of position. The weight would have slammed into the point of his elongated chin, but Devon jerked his head aside at the last moment, and the heavy ball buried itself in his temple. Even Chainer winced at the sound.

The rest of the squad hesitated as Devon crashed lifeless to the arena floor. Kamahl drew a throwing axe from his back, charged it, and let it fly. It slammed into the megolith's chest and exploded, knocking the megolith back a step and the remaining foot soldier off his feet. Kamahl weathered the blast like an oak in a summer squall.

When the smoke and debris from the blast had settled, Chainer saw that the megolith was missing a huge scoop of stone from its chest. It was otherwise unaffected, however, and it resumed its exchange of blocks and blows with Kamahl. Annoyed, the barbarian sent a stream of liquid fire shooting from the end of his sword into the megolith's face, melting and distorting it. The stone beast pressed on. Like the golem that had killed Deidre, it really didn't need its eyes to fight.

Kamahl inexplicably dropped his sword then, and Chainer saw a look of confusion cross his partner's face. Both foot soldiers were on their feet again, and Kamahl made one last effort to pick his sword up, but it wouldn't budge. He was forced to dive away from it as the foot soldiers slashed at him with their weapons.

Chainer saw that the mage had managed to neutralize the spider and was in a prayer stance once more. She must have done something to Kamahl's sword. Chainer grew angry, both at himself for going easy on the mage, and at her for taking advantage of it. He positioned both hands and sent an eighteen-foot long python shooting across the arena. It latched onto the mage's arm with its venomless fangs and quickly wrapped her head and torso in its crushing coils.

Kamahl seemed angry, too, angrier than Chainer could remember. Most things that made Kamahl angry didn't last long enough to make him really angry, but the megolith seemed to have driven him over the edge. With flames shooting from his hands, he grabbed one of the foot soldiers by the throat and lifted him off the ground. The man's flesh sizzled and popped until Kamahl threw him into his fellow trooper, tangling both men into a painful, confused heap. The crowd oohed. Then Kamahl leaped onto the megolith and wrapped his huge hands around the thing's head. "Kamahl, get off!" Chainer shook off visions of Deidre and readied another weighted chain. Kamahl was much faster than the megolith, however. He dug his superheated fingers into the stone giant's jawline, and Chainer saw two axe-shaped bursts of red form inside the megolith's torso. Kamahl dropped off just as the megolith reached up to crush him. Kamahl dove away, rolled, and conjured a large warhammer in each hand. He charged back at the megolith, ducked under its crushing fists, and brought both hammers together with a boom.

There was a seismic shudder that cracked the stone floor, and the axes planted in the megolith's chest exploded.

This blast was different from the previous one. It was three times as strong, for one, and doubly constrained by the megolith's own body and the powerful vibrations caused by the hammers. There was a muted flash and a muffled boom, and a network of cracks raced across the whole of its body. Smoke poured from its half-melted mouth. It was standing completely still. The crowd was silent.

"Chainer," Kamahl called. He pointed at the frozen warrior. "Give that thing one last tap, will you?"

Chainer sent his weight straight into the thing's chest without hesitation. The dense crystalline creature had been transformed by the intense heat and pressure of Kamahl's magic into something far more brittle. When Chainer's weight struck it, the husk of the defeated megolith shattered into a fine, white sand that was littered with a few larger shards of broken glass.

For a moment, there was no motion or sound on the arena floor. The foot soldiers were unconscious, Devon was dead, and the megolith was dust. Even the mage was completely helpless in the python's grip. If Chainer didn't call it off, she'd soon be a meal for a nightmare. A single pair of hands started clapping from the stands. The applause grew, louder and louder until it was a roar. The competing chants of "Chainer!" and "Kamahl!" began.

"Your winners, ladies and gentlemen… Chainer and Kamahl! This marks their twelfth consecutive win!"

As the announcer prattled on, Chainer went over to his partner. Kamahl looked at him sullenly.

"That was fun," the barbarian said, "but next time, you get the megolith."

Chainer laughed and slapped Kamahl on the shoulder. "Agreed." As the crowd continued to cheer and chant, he took Kamahl's hand in his and raised them both high in the air.

Veza floated once more in the forward cabin of the empress's transport. She was alone, unaccompanied but for a handful of scribes and a quartet of Llawan's savage barracuda bodyguards. There were no air breathers on board, so all of the leviathan's internal and external compartments had been flooded for this fact-finding mission.

Llawan moved quickly in the wake of Aboshan's death. She and her leviathan full of Mer aristocrats descended on the ruins of the imperial palace before the sand had settled, and she quickly installed herself at the hub of a rapidly spinning wheel of circumstance. While her servants led chants of "the emperor is dead! Long live the Empress!" in the public byways, her peers stirred up support among the rich and influential. Llawan herself addressed the population as a whole, rallying her subjects via magical broadcast and bulletins posted throughout the empire. Her message was direct: Aboshan was dead, and his policies should be interred with his bones. The widowed empress announced a lavish funeral for her husband to be held at an undetermined time in the future. On that same day she staged a rally wherein all of Aboshan's informers were chained at the neck and driven out of the capitol, and all his secret surveillance files were publicly destroyed.

While the common citizen embraced her return, Llawan was less popular among the merchants and generals. The trading sector of Mer society had never done better than they did under Aboshan. As long as the imperial transaction tax was paid in advance, Aboshan's government was extremely friendly to all forms of commerce. He controlled the trade routes to and from Mer population centers, and those who paid for the privilege were allowed to move and sell their goods unmolested. All others were usually attacked by bandits-who wore imperial uniforms-beaten, and robbed down to the clothes they wore. Aboshan had made it extremely profitable to do business with him and extremely dangerous to do otherwise. For the pragmatic capitalists of Mer, it was a comfortable situation, one that they were not eager to change.

So while Llawan held meetings and exerted influence and tested loyalties, Veza was sent to inspect the newly formed Otaria Chasm. By all estimates, an area of over a thousand square miles of land was now a half a mile below the surface, and the northern tip of Otaria had become an island. No one had done a complete survey of the new sea, but there were bound to be some human settlements, people, and animals who had been caught in the catastrophe. The law of the sea said that anything below the waves is Mer territory, however, and Llawan was eager to have this new addition to her empire explored, catalogued, and quantified. In the name of the empress, Veza was commanding the survey mission.

A cephalid officer and Olsham the mystic swam into the chamber. "M'lady Veza," Olsham said. "We are approaching the chasm. It is time."

Veza stared straight ahead. "I will return to the bridge once we've made visual contact." The officer swam out, and Veza floated alongside Olsham in silence while the mystic softly clicked and keened to himself.

The great wound Aboshan had made in the above-air continent slowly materialized out of the murky waters ahead. Veza shook her head as Olsham's prayers increased in pitch and volume. The chasm was huge, so wide that Veza couldn't even see the opposite wall from where she stood. She remembered the shock wave that had passed through Llawan's transport. Whatever caused the cave-in must have forced millions upon millions of gallons of water out of the area. As soon as the initial force was spent and the ground had finished caving, those same millions of gallons had rushed in to fill the new valley.

Olsham stopped chanting and opened his eyes. "Please excuse me, ma'am. I would like you to return to the bridge now." Veza started to object, but Olsham said, "Please. Go. I will perform the ritual alone."

Veza nodded, then darted down the connecting chamber into the belly of the ship. The captain was waiting for her on the bridge. "We're ready to enter the chasm, ma'am. Is the spellcaster ready?"

"He's performing the ritual now. How long till we get there?" "If we maintain our present course and speed, about half an hour."

"That should be plenty of time. When Olsham is done, this ship will be Llawan's eye, recording everything that passes around it. The crystal gemstone Olsham had installed will store it. All we have to do is cover the distance, and the empress will have a complete and detailed survey of the area."

The cephalid captain scowled. "I hope it's going to be that easy, ma'am. Any idea what we're going to find in there?"

Veza shook her head. "But," she added, "nobody does. That's why we're here."

Olsham completed his telemetry ritual and teleported himself back to Llawan City shortly before the leviathan entered the chasm. The ship and the crew were in top form, and they made excellent progress through the first two-thirds of the sunken zone.

Veza knew the ship was collecting and transmitting volumes and volumes of information back to the empress, but as far as she could see, the canyon contained little more than a strong current and its own stark, rugged beauty. The forward chamber commanded impressive views of sunken rock formations and a remarkably wide assortment of colorful seaweed and small fish. She would have to study the data she had gathered, but unless there was some hidden treasure, the chasm was little more than a scenic cruise.

"What in nine hells is that?"

Veza had been spending most of her time on the bridge with the captain, helping him plot the best course for the empress's purposes. The scrying screens weren't as picturesque as the forward cabin, but the screens could provide a view in any direction. Currently, they were looking forward and starboard, where a large, shadowy form was coming straight at them.

"It's a large animal, sir," one of the crew called out. "Undetermined species."

"Captain," Veza said. "Is it a natural phenomenon? Could a large predator already have staked out a territory this far in?"

The captain shrugged. "It's possible. Change course."

"It's still closing, sir. Captain, I think it's a razor ray."

The captain nodded grimly. "I think you're right."

On screen, the huge, black manta grew larger and larger. It was almost as large as the leviathan, with bony spines alongside its head that jutted forward like horns. Its tail ended in a curved barb like a scorpion's and had two red poison sacs visible at the base. Veza knew these vicious animals had first been bred hundreds of years ago, when the dominant sea powers all employed living warships.

The rays had become more specialized and horrible since then. Most leviathans had an innate primal fear of the rays, so that even they avoided being gored or envenomed, and even the larger ships often panicked and quit the field.

"Can you give me a better view of its markings?" Veza said.

"What for? Get out of my way, woman."

Veza caught the captain by the shoulder. "Captain," she said. "This is still my mission."

Grudgingly, the captain ordered a closer view of the razor ray. The monster's wings had been dyed royal blue, and its two longest horns had been capped with silver. Across its belly, it bore the Mer characters for "land" and "sea" all emblazoned over by a huge stylized letter 'L.'

"Laquatus," Veza said. Then, in a louder voice, "Empress, if you can hear me-Laquatus got here first."

The leviathan's handlers screamed a split second before the ship rolled violently.

"We're hit, sir," called a crewmember. "A second razor ray just stung the carapace around the head. The leviathan was not hurt."

"She's panicking!" one of the handlers cried. "Do something!"

The ship launched into escape speed before the captain even gave the order. The cephalid handlers on the creature's brain were straining to keep her from fleeing at top speed until she was too tired to swim any farther.

"Evasive action!" the captain yelled. "Go, helmsman, go!" The leviathan surged away from the second ray, which followed close behind. Farther on, the first ray remained out of the chase and out of harm's way.

"Can we outrun them?" Veza asked.

"For a short time, but we'll get tired first."

"Can we fight?"

The captain shook his head. "We can ram them, but their stingers won't miss again. They only need about five seconds of con-tact to kill a ship this size."

Veza looked hard at the screen, then back at the captain. "How deep are we?"

"Doesn't matter. They can go as deep as we can."

"I don't want to go deeper. I want to go up."

The captain clicked something derogatory. "This is a deep sea vessel, ma'am."

"I know captain. But it's also a fish. Is this fish agile as well as fast?"

"She can turn back on herself without missing a stroke."

"Glad to hear it. Tell me, then, does this fish… breach?"

Realization sparked in the captain's eye, and he smiled at Veza. "Helm," he called. "Point the nose straight up. Maximum possible speed." He swam over to the ship's handlers to make sure they understood precisely what was expected of them.

The leviathan lurched and shot up though the chasm waters toward the surface. To Veza, it felt like gravity had shifted ninety degrees.

"Give me an aft view." The screen showed the ray close behind, accelerating to keep up with the leviathan's sudden burst of speed.

"We're almost at the surface, sir."

"Forward view." The screen now showed the surface, rushing toward them like a great liquid field.

"Maintain course and speed. On my mark, I want this vessel tucked and pointed straight down, back at the water."

"Aye, sir." The leviathan broke the surface and shot high into the air. The screen showed a huge wash of spray and painfully bright sunshine. Clouds in the sky rolled around the screen.

"Everyone hang on. Mark!"

Guided by her handlers, the ship wrenched itself into a U, then snapped back into its streamlined shape with its nose pointed downward. Veza, two crewmembers, and a handler were tossed around the bridge like beans in a can. Gravity quickly overcame the ship's motion, and the leviathan dropped back toward the sea.

Below, the razor ray had stopped just below the surface, confused about its prey's disappearance. The viewscreen showed a massive shadow fall over the submerged ray just before the leviathan's bony carapace came crashing down on it-with all twenty tons of leviathan behind it.

The scrying screen went black until the captain barked, "Aft view."

Behind them, the remains of the razor ray were no longer recognizable as anything that had ever been alive. A small cheer went up.

"Back to your stations!" the captain said. Before the crew could regain control of the leviathan, however, a blue-green beam lanced out of the second ray, the one with the silver horns. The beam splayed across the length of Llawan's transport, though there was no immediate reaction.

"Resume evasive action. Helm, get us deeper into the chasm."

"Helm is not responding, sir."

The captain swore. "Handlers?"

One of the robed cephalids swam up. "The ship is entangled, sir. She is blocked on all sides and cannot move."

"Damn." He looked angrily at Veza.

"What's wrong?"

"He's tangled us in sargassum. Whatever that spell beam was, it covered us in enough seaweed to choke this vessel dead in the water."

Veza struggled to think of something, anything, that would help them. She was interrupted by Laquatus's amplified voice.

"Greetings, Mer survey vessel. This is Laquatus. Prepare to be boarded."

The captain lowered his head, then lashed out at the console before him. Veza steeled herself for a reunion with the ambassador. On the screen, a half- dozen more vessels and behemoths swam into view, each wearing the ambassador's standard.

"And if the empress is by chance on board," Laquatus said, "let me add a hearty 'welcome' from the next Emperor of Mer."