Judgment

CHAPTER 1

Kamahl stared at the black spot on the floor where his friend's body had been just moments before. The spot that had once held a tortured soul now held nothing more than charcoal and dust. Kamahl hadn't killed his friend, he had merely sent his body on to Fiers. No. Kuberr. That was the god of the Cabal. "Well, Kuberr. I hope you'll accept a body sent to you by a proper barbarian funeral pyre," grumbled the big barbarian as he knelt to honor his fallen friend a moment longer. "Chainer, you once wondered if you would have made a good barbarian. Perhaps I have sent you to Fiers after all, so you can find out. Wouldn't that be the final irony of our friendship?"

Kamahl scraped his brass-skinned hand through the dust chat once was his friend and clenched a pinch of the blackened powder in his fist. After wetting the index finger of his other hand, he jabbed it into the cavity of the fist-into the remains of Chainer in his palm. He then withdrew the finger, now covered in wet, black dust, and brought it up to the bridge of his nose. Pressing the black paste against his skin, he drew a line down over his nose to his mouth and then stuck the finger into his mouth to suck off the remaining dust. Kamahl repeated the process three more times, drawing black, smudgy lines on both cheeks and across his forehead.

"I send you on to Fiers but keep a part of you with me to guide my way to the Brass Halls, where we will all remain after the return of the Lady," he intoned. For the first time in his life, Kamahl found himself hoping that the old dwarven legends were true. "Perhaps you can find peace there, Chainer, even if it does mean eternal life amongst the dwarves."

As Kamahl rose from the ritual, he glanced once again at the Mirari, still lying on the floor where Chainer had dropped it right before the end. It seemed like an eternity since he had first seen that accursed orb. Kamahl was still full of hope at the possibilities that the power of the Mirari could bring, if only he could gain it for himself.

"Full of hope and full of pride," the barbarian said to his friend's ashes. No. Kamahl hadn't killed Chainer. His friend had died when he became a slave to that power. The one man who had ever wielded the power of the Mirari and survived had been consumed by that power in the end. How could Kamahl ever hope to find the strength to control that much power?

He must try. He had made a promise to a friend. An oath. And death does not revoke an oath, it forges the bonds of the oath into steel. Standing over the small, fist-sized orb that he had chased across a continent and back, Kamahl hesitated but a moment before leaning down and swiping it into his hand.

Once he held the Mirari, Kamahl wondered why he had ever hesitated. It was the most beautiful object in the world. The Mirari drew his gaze down into its sleek, steely depths, down into a world where rust-colored mountains met cool, azure skies, down into a world where he stood at the top of the tallest mountain, his huge sword held high with the Mirari attached to its pommel, silver light streaming out from it in all directions, down into a world where barbarians from every tribe bowed before him, cheering his name.

Holding his sword point down before him, Kamahl smiled as he looked from the Mirari to the great mountain, from the barbarian throngs at his feet to the cloudless, blue sky above him. His smile faded. For high in the sky, Kamahl could see the face of a barbarian staring down at him-a face with four coal-black lines freshly drawn across the nose, cheeks, and forehead. His face.

Kamahl shook his head to clear the vision from his mind. "No! That path leads to madness," said the tired and inured barbarian as he dropped the orb back into the rubble. "That path leads to destruction."

Kamahl scanned the hall, looking for his sword. "All I need to conquer the mountains is my strength and my sword… If I can find it."

A glint of steel in the comer caught the large barbarian's attention. He walked over, stooped down, and tossed several cask-sized chunks of rock out of the way to dig out his sword. Kamahl's father had given him this sword upon his completion of Balthor's Judgment and becoming a man, just as he had gotten it from his father. The sword had towered over Kamahl at the time. Now the pommel only reached his chest when he stuck the point into the ground.

Clearing the last of the debris from atop the sword, Kamahl stared at the weapon with a mixture of wonder and dread. The mighty weapon lie there, gleaming in all its glory, with the Mirari attached to the pommel.

Kamahl might have stood there all day, staring at what moments ago had been merely a dream, wondering if his own power or the orb's had caused the fusion, the unmistakable sound of swords being drawn from scabbards broke his reverie. The brass-skinned man thrust his foot forward and popped the two-handed sword straight up into the air. Catching the hilt in his right hand, Kamahl whirled around on his would-be attackers, swinging his sword in a wide arc.

The surprised Order soldier looked at the severed haft of his own blade and then down at the swath the huge sword had cut across his chest. With blood streaming down his armor, the soldier crumpled to the ground next to the top half of his own sword.

Kamahl surveyed the now-crowded hallway. He held his sword, glowing red-hot from cross bar to tip, firmly in both hands and pointed it at the throng of Order soldiers blocking his path.

"I'm in no mood for you today, Order butchers," growled the barbarian.

The eyes of the stunned soldiers in the front ranks darted back and forth between their fallen comrade and the angry barbarian as they began to back away.

From behind, a voice rang out, "Hold to, men! He has the orb." The lieutenant stepped forward, pushing his men out of the way to face Kamahl. "You have done a great service to the Order today, barbarian," he said, smiling. "The Cabal is finished. We owe you a debt of gratitude. Just give us the Mirari, and you may leave unharmed."

"Take it," spat Kamahl as he thrust his sword toward the lieutenant's smiling face. The lieutenant dived underneath the stab and rolled to his feet beside Kamahl. The other Order soldiers advanced, moving in as Kamahl's balance rocked forward after the missed attack.

Kamahl used his momentum to cany him past the first rank of soldiers, then buried his six-foot-long sword into the chest of a sergeant in the second rank. The barbarian swung back around to face the soldiers he left behind, the body of the sergeant still impaled on his sword. He flung the limp body into the advancing soldiers. All three flew back through the rubble-strewn hall into Chainer's chambers, landing with a dull thud.

Kamahl shifted his attention back to the lieutenant, whose sword and armor now glowed from protective enchantments.

"We know who you are, Kamahl," said the lieutenant, stepping forward as he spoke, but Kamahl noticed a quiver in the man's voice. "You are the Butcher!" he continued. "You destroyed the Citadel, killed Captain Pianna and Lieutenant Kirtar. Now you have destroyed Cabal City, killing the Cabal First and who knows how many innocent people. While I applaud the death of any Cabal member, you will pay for every Order death with your head."

Kamahl knew better than to refute the myths that sprouted up around him, especially to an indoctrinated member of the Order. "I have no quarrel with you, Order man. 1 have what I came for. Let me leave, or I will add you to the list of the dead." With that, the barbarian turned on his heels and advanced on the last two Order soldiers barring his path.

"Face me, Butcher!" screamed the lieutenant. Kamahl could hear the soldier running up behind him. Without even glancing back, Kamahl whipped his sword up over his head, bringing it straight down behind him in a fast arc. The tip of the sword met the top of the lieutenant's helmet, and Kamahl's biceps bulged as he drove the sword down through the officer's skull, chest, and abdomen, never once touching the enchanted armor or sword. With a screech, Kamahl's sword drove down into the floor, giving the lieutenant a third leg.

Kamahl released his sword, which stayed perfectly still holding up the frame of the dead lieutenant, and stared at the two remaining soldiers, privates both.

"Leave. Now," he stated, simply. Glancing first at each other and then briefly at the barbarian and the carnage behind him, the two privates turned and fled back down the corridor.

Kamahl turned back to the Order lieutenant, who now resembled a scarecrow more than a soldier. Grasping the hilt of his sword with both hands, the barbarian heaved the sword out of the stone floor and high up over his head once again, allowing the limp body to crumple to the floor beside his dead soldiers.

"You never told me your name. 1 guess I won't be able to add you to that list after all," muttered Kamahl as he wiped the blood from his blade on the lieutenant's pants.

Kamahl sheathed his sword, no longer glowing with the power of the orb, slung the sheath over his shoulders, and trotted down the hallway looking for an exit.

The pit was dark and silent. A single ray of light penetrated the gloom from the hole Kamahl had blasted in the wall during the battle Chainer had started just an hour earlier. That contest was to decide the fate of the Mirari but had instead sealed the fate of both Chainer and the Cabal. Picking his way through the dead bodies and pools of blood, Kamahl glanced one last time at the box where Chainer had presided over the pit for the first and last time.

"Goodbye my friend," said the barbarian.

The chaotic scene outside the pit was dramatically different from the deathly calm inside. Looters smashed windows and grabbed goods. Gangs of thugs roamed the streets picking fights. Children stood by ruined homes and tossed bricks, shards of glass, or broken chunks of mortar at Order patrols, dogs, and any adult who came too close.

While technically a city of thieves and cutthroats, Cabal City had been, until an hour ago, an orderly town governed by the power of greed-governed by the Cabal. But then Chainer had used the Mirari to try to destroy the city, to wipe the Cabal clean so he could rebuild it in his own visage. The Cabal was no longer here. Orderly greed had been replaced with wanton avarice.

Twice before, Kamahl had seen the power of the Mirari manifested with disastrous results. The first time was in the Citadel, capital city of the Order, when Lieutenant Kirtar brought a final and irrevocable order to the city, freezing all within the orb's extensive radius in the perfection of icy crystals. The second use Kamahl had only seen from afar but had been able to piece enough information together to know that the Emperor of the Mer Empire had set off the Mirari for some unknown reason, flooding much of northern Otaria and destroying the Mer capital in the backwash.

Today, his friend Chainer had succumbed to the power of the Mirari and unleashed the demented terrors inside his mind upon Cabal City. The blue sky had tuned a mustard color, and the landscape of the city had been replaced with a kind of hell. Now, the sky was blue once more, the streets were again made of stone, and the hellish creatures that had spewed forth from Chainer's mind were entombed inside Chainer's crypt for all time.

But the Cabal was no more, and Cabal City was quickly destroying itself without the control that the Cabal had given its citizens over their own demons.

"I swear I will not succumb to your seductive power," Kamahl muttered as much to himself as to the Mirari. "Either I will control you, or I will bury you deep beneath Otaria if I have to. But I will not allow you to destroy lives again."

Kamahl stood for a moment surveying the riots raging through the streets, watching the ebb and flow of the chaos swirling around him, looking for an opening that would allow him to discretely leave the pit and make his way out of the city. Unlike the natural chaos of fire, which obeyed certain rules he had learned early in his life, human chaos offered too many variables to discern a meaningful pattern.

I could wait for nightfall and slip out amongst the deepening shadows, thought Kamahl, or I could just try the direct approach. He strode out into the street, keeping a wary eye on the looters, gangs, and unwanted urchins of Cabal City.

As Kamahl walked down the street, the rioters parted before him as waves part before the prow of a ship. And like a ship cutting through the waves, Kamahl built up and make of people behind him, as the citizens of Cabal City, who moments before had no purpose left in their lives but to finish destroying their own city, found purpose once again in the object that had destroyed their lives.

Kamahl could hear the calls and murmurs coming from his wake.

"He has the orb."

"Challenge him for it."

"I challenge you, barbarian!"

"No, I do!"

The challenges multiplied as more people joined the wake, but Kamahl looked closely at each new member of his entourage as he passed and felt safe. They were all shop workers, kids, and students. None of them had the air of a jack, a pit fighter, and none seemed willing to attack.

Order patrols held back as well while the procession moved through the streets. Whether the two privates Kamahl spared earlier had spread the word of his newfound power, or whether they merely didn't like their odds against the growing band of angry citizens, Kamahl didn't know and didn't care. He would much prefer to leave the city without having to wield his orb-empowered sword again.

That hope faded as Kamahl came to the hill leading up to the gate. At the top stood Bullock, a burly dementia summoner Kamahl had seen in the pits but had never faced.

"Hail, Bullock," called Kamahl as he began up the hill.

"Stop where you are, barbarian," called Bullock. "The orb belongs to us. I challenge you in the name of the Cabal for the orb."

"But the Cabal is no longer here," replied Kamahl, continuing his ascent up the hill.

"I am here," said Bullock. "That is all you need care about." With that, the cabalist clapped his gauntleted fists together in front of his face and began murmuring his dementia summons.

Kamahl stopped halfway up the hill and reluctantly drew his sword. He had hoped to get closer to Bullock before the summoning began, but that couldn't be helped now. Bullock was a devotee of Chainer's style in the pit. He used his dementia monsters to soften up and distract an opponent, then moved into melee for the win. But where Chainer manifested chains that he whipped around and flung with deadly accuracy, Bullock used his fists, with the nasty addition of spikes that grew out of the gauntlets he wore.

Kamahl was more than a match for Bullock on any normal day, but he was exhausted from the fight with Chainer and couldn't afford to let the large jack wrestle him to the ground. Better to stay at range for now, thought Kamahl, setting his feet on the incline and holding the massive sword, glowing red-hot again, in front of him.

Bullock spread his forearms apart in front of his face, creating a dark, roiling cloud of energy. From that cloud sprung three large, black lions with long tentacles where their manes should be. The monstrous felines advanced on Kamahl, spreading out to either side, their tentacles whipping back and forth.

Kamahl had seen this ploy before. The cats would encircle the jack and wrap their tentacles around his limbs, immobilizing the fighter so Bullock could enter the fray unmolested. What Kamahl didn't know was how long those tentacles were, a fact he learned as the first creature flung several tentacles toward Kamahl's hands from nearly twenty feet away.

The barbarian slashed down in a circle, cutting the tentacles off at the tip. The strange feline howled, sounding more like a wolf than a cat. The second black lion leaped high in the air, lashing its tentacles down at Kamahl as it passed over his head. At the same time, the third creature bounded to Kamahl's left and whipped its tentacles toward the barbarian's feet.

Kamahl reached up at the tentacles above him, letting the ropelike membranes encircle his wrist and forearm. He pulled down hard and swung his body around, tossing the leaping cat at the creature to his left. As the two beasts collided, Kamahl raised his sword in his other hand, sighted on the tumbling creatures and let loose a jet of flame that engulfed both cats in a ball of fire.

The third cat landed its front paws on Kamahl's chest, slamming the barbarian onto his back and pinning his sword arm against the ground. The barbarian could hear Bullock chuckling as he advanced on his pinned foe.

"That's two thousand pounds of fury on your chest, barbarian. I doubt even you could lift it from that position."

Bullock was right. With the massive cat sitting on his chest and his left arm pinned to the ground, Kamahl could barely move. He tried to lift his head to see how close Bullock was, but the lion beast clapped its jaws over his neck, slamming his head back down onto the ground.

"I don't want to kill you, Kamahl," said Bullock. "Yield, and I'll just take the orb and let you leave, escorted by my friends of course."

Kamahl could hear the padding feet of two new beasts coming up beside him.

"I pledged my life to protect the orb," wheezed the barbarian through the pressure on his larynx. "If you want it, you'll have to kill me."

"If that is what you wish," came the reply.

Kamahl summoned his strength and punched at the beast's ribs with his free hand, trying to topple it. Just as his blow landed, a searing pain shot through his body as the tentacles from the two new beasts lashed at him, wrapping themselves around his arms and legs.

As the tentacles tightened their grip, cutting into his exposed flesh, Kamahl felt as if he'd been punctured by hundreds of tiny needles. Then a sudden wave of nausea almost overtook the barbarian, causing bile to well up in his throat. The beasts must be injecting poison through their tentacles, thought Kamahl.

"I do not wish to kill you," said Bullock, "but you give me no other choice. The Mirari belongs to the Cabal."

Kamahl heard the words, but they echoed inside his head as if his skull were a cavernous tomb. He had to focus through the pain, through the poisoned barbs, and locate Bullock.

"I told you," Kamahl rasped, barely able to form words. The Cabal is no longer here!"

"And I told you," replied Bullock. "I am here, and that is all you need care about."

This time, Kamahl closed his eyes and concentrated as Bullock spoke, focusing on nothing but the jack's taunt. Kamahl managed to twisted his left wrist just enough under the weight of the massive beast's paw to raise the tip of his sword off the ground. With the blackness creeping over him, Kamahl shot a beam of lightning from the end of his sword.

The bolt streaked up the hill and slammed into the knees of the burly Cabalist, disintegrating the cartilage that held the kneecaps together and ripping muscle from the bones of his legs. Bullock fell forward on his face, his legs no longer able to support his large frame, and passed out. His creations immediately faded.

No longer pinned to the ground but still groggy from the lingering poison, Kamahl slowly pulled himself to his feet and surveyed the crowd. As a show of strength, he raised the sword level with his shoulders and turned a complete circle, menacing the gathered spectators with the power of his weapon. None seemed willing to challenge him anymore, so Kamahl walked as steadily as he could the rest of the way up the hill before anyone grew brave. Luckily, his lightning beam had continued past Bullock's legs and smashed into and through the gate. Kamahl stepped through the hole and left Cabal City.

An hour later, as twilight descended upon the plains outside the city and some of his strength had returned, Kamahl came upon three familiar figures. The barbarian had brought with him several apprentices to the final battle for the Mirari. He had sent them all packing midway through the battle when he left to face Chainer. Kamahl was glad to have the company again. He was tired of fighting everyone he met.

"Well met, boys!" called Kamahl as he came up behind the three mountain mages.

The apprentices turned to face their teacher and almost as one, focused upon the Mirari attached to the end of Kamahl's sword hilt.

"You have it!" the eldest called before the other two could react.

"Yes," sighed the weary barbarian. "Though it cost me the life of my best friend."

"May I have the right to first challenge, Kamahl?" replied the eager student. "Only the strong shall prevail. It is the way of the mountain."