Under the Crimson Sun

CHAPTER EIGHT

For the first few days, Gan and Rol fought in the undercard.

Gan’s initial fight against Krackis was actually the longest of their matches. It was immediately followed by Rol’s first fight.

Like Gan’s, it was against a goliath.

Unlike Gan’s, it ended with one punch.

Rol walked out onto the arena floor to gasps of disgust, as three of those lesions had grown on his face, marring Rol’s irritatingly attractive visage.

The goliath who faced Rol was less verbose than Krackis-he would almost had to have been-and focused entirely on staring at Rol.

But as soon as Jago told them to start fighting, Rol threw a right punch to the goliath’s head, which whirled from the impact so fast it broke the goliath’s neck, and he fell to the floor in an instant.

The real problem, though, was that the lesions wouldn’t go away.

They showed up everywhere, red and hideous, like giant bumps on his skin.

Calbit and Jago brought in healers, but none of them were able to do any good. But he wasn’t sick otherwise, just covered in lesions, so they kept fighting.

And they kept winning.

After a week, the guards came to bring everyone up for the undercard fight-but they didn’t open the cubicle doors for number four.

Gan ran up to the door, peering through the barred window. “What’s going on?”

“Who cares?” Rol was behind him, sitting on his bunk, staring ahead into the air. Rol’s listlessness in the cubicle was almost as worrying as his fierceness in the arena.

“Hang tight,” the guard said. “You’re the main event tonight.”

With a sigh, Gan said, “Great.” He turned to Rol. “Maybe now we can start talking about escape plans?”

Still staring ahead blankly, Rol said, “I’m working on one.”

Gan blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said I’m working on one.”

“Were you going to share this with me?”

“I haven’t finished it yet. I didn’t want to talk to you about it until I was sure it would work.”

“Are you sure it’ll work now?”

Rol finally looked at Gan with bloodshot eyes. “Honestly? Not really. I think it’ll fail. That’s why I didn’t mention it.”

“So why’d you mention it now?”

“Just making conversation,” Rol said with a shrug.

Gan sat down next to him on the bunk. “Something’s wrong, Rol.”

“Really? What was your first clue, the garbage on my skin?”

“This goes back to the Great Road, Rol,” Gan said intently. “You took down that anakore singlehandedly. What happened out there?”

“Nothing happened. I went to take a piss, I came back, I killed an anakore. And then I came here and am getting lesions on my skin. You now know everything I know.”

Gan snarled. “There’s got to be more to it than that.”

“Brilliant observation.” Rol threw up his hands. “Calbit and Jago have had a dozen healers in here, and they don’t know anything.”

“Yeah.” Gan leaned against the wall. “So we keep fighting?”

“Until I come up with a good plan. Or you do, but let’s face it, that’s pretty unlikely.”

That prompted a chuckle from Gan. “Well, that was nice.”

“What?”

“Verbal abuse of me-you almost sound like your old self …”

The pair of them sat alone for a while after that, until the guards came to bring them up the spiral staircase.

They were alone in the waiting area. Stepping forward toward the rusty metal gate, Gan looked out at what he could see of the crowd, which was primarily those in the front rows opposite where the holding area was. It was only about five percent of the full crowd in his line of sight, and since it was expensive front-row seats, they were the most fanatical and devoted fans of the arena.

Which meant they were holding up signs that expressed their love for Gorbin, sometimes with a simple declarative like GORBIN’S THE BEST, others simply with his name or a crude drawing of his face. Some children were in his line of sight, and many were carrying small dolls that bore Gorbin’s likeness.

Jago was standing in the center of the arena again. “Tonight is a very special night here at the Pit, as Gorbin will once again take the arena-but against two new foes. These are vicious killers from beyond the wastes. You’ve seen them in the early fights, and they’ve won each and every single time. Now they’ll take on the greatest fighter in the Pit’s history-Gorbin.”

Boos for that. Nobody wanted to see Gorbin defeated. But the boos were surprisingly subdued.

And that’s when it finally hit Gan what was wrong with the crowd noise. There wasn’t enough of it. Last time he was in Urik, the seats shook from the din.

He turned to Rol. “The crowd sounds quiet.”

“It’s what they usually sound like,” Rol said with a shrug.

“Yeah, when we’re out there-but we’re the undercard. This is the main event of the Pit of Black Death, and I’d swear to you there’s not even a hundred people out there.”

Rol shrugged again. “Maybe people are tired of the arena.”

Gan scratched his chin. “Or maybe they’re tired of watching Gorbin win all the time.”

“Presenting Gorbin’s first challenger of the evening: Rol Mandred.”

Rol shrugged a third time. It seemed to be all he did anymore. “Guess I’ll have to take him down, then.”

The guards guided Rol toward the gate, which obligingly rose with its usual metallic squeal. Rol stepped into the arena.

The boos intensified, but they were still fairly subdued.

Rol and Gorbin circled each other. Gorbin looked kind of bored, which Gan suspected had something to do with the crowd’s reaction. The last time he was there, the hairless mul had stared intently at his opponent from underneath the bone ridge on his forehead. He had looked fierce and intimidating. The crowd fed off that.

With nothing to feed off of, though, they were listless.

Then Rol did something Gan had never seen his friend do in all the years they’d known each other.

He grinned.

Rol didn’t grin. He smirked, he smiled-especially if he was chatting a woman up-and he laughed sometimes, if the mood struck him.

But he never grinned.

In the arena, the two opponents circled each other. Neither took his eyes off the other, waiting for the other to make the first move.

The mul still looked bored, and Rol was still grinning that damned grin, but otherwise they were focused.

Finally, Gorbin made the first move, swinging a massive fist at Rol.

Rol caught it in his left hand.

A gasp rippled through the amphitheater-and the holding area as well. Muls were quite strong, and Rol, for all his might, was only a human. There was simply no way that Rol should have been able to just catch a mul’s punch without any ill effects.

Yet Rol looked as if he’d just caught a lightly tossed ball.

Gorbin looked stunned, staring at his fist in Rol’s hand as if he’d never seen anything like it. And indeed, he probably hadn’t.

Rol then punched the mul right in the nose while letting go of Gorbin’s fist. Rol’s fist struck Gorbin’s nose with a meaty thud, blood flying from his nostrils, and he fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

The crowd went completely quiet.

Walking over to the fallen mul, Rol looked down at him. “That the best you can do?”

Snarling, Gorbin wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, then leaped to his feet and started throwing dozens of punches. Rol was able to counter some of them, and some struck full on. Rol didn’t fight back, just let Gorbin hit his arms, keeping his elbows in so that Gorbin didn’t strike his stomach or chest.

Then Rol grinned again.

Gan’s heart skipped a beat. “What the hell is wrong with you, Rol?”

Rol let loose with a quick kick that slammed into Gorbin’s stomach, causing the mul to blow out a big breath and stumble backward. Not letting up, Rol kicked him again and punched him in the face a few more times.

Gorbin’s face was caked with blood from his nose and mouth, and he was breathing very heavily, spitting blood onto the stone floor. Rol was still grinning.

Then Rol grabbed Gorbin’s arms and lifted the mul-who had to weigh twice what Rol had ever been able to pick up before-and threw him across the arena floor. Gorbin hit the stone ground and skidded along to the obsidian wall.

Still the crowd was silent.

Gan looked at what he could see of the audience from the holding area. The signs had been lowered; the dolls of Gorbin’s likeness were being clutched for dear life, as if to ward off the mul’s apparent defeat.

Rol ran over to Gorbin’s prone, broken form, and stepped on one of his arms. The snap of bone echoed throughout the subdued amphitheater. Then he picked Gorbin up by that arm-causing the mul to scream in pain-and threw him toward the holding area.

Backing up instinctively, Gan watched as Gorbin slammed into the metal cage with a clang.

Struggling to get to his feet, Gorbin said, “I don’t understand-I’m the biggest and the strongest. I should be winning.”

Walking over to stand over Gorbin, Rol spoke in a quiet tone that Gan could barely hear. “There is no ‘biggest.’ There is no ‘strongest.’ Because there’s always someone who’s stronger and bigger. And sooner or later that person finds you.” Rol then kneeled down on the mul, his knees pinning Gorbin’s chest. Despite just wiping the floor with the greatest fighter in Urik, Rol didn’t even sound winded. “When that person does find you, it’s your time to die.”

Oddly, Gorbin’s blood-caked face brightened at that. “You mean I don’t have to fight anymore?”

“Nope.”

“Thank you.” Gorbin sounded incredibly relieved.

To Gan’s amazement, it seemed that-when Rol grabbed the sides of Gorbin’s hairless head and yanked it to one side, snapping the mul’s neck-Gorbin died happy.

However, Gan had someone else’s happiness on his mind-not so much that of a dead fighter, but that of a restless crowd who had come there to watch the latest in a series of predetermined Gorbin fights.

The silence extended for several seconds.

It was broken by Jago, who was grinning even more widely than Rol had been.

“My friends, we have ourselves a new champion! For the first time in a decade, Gorbin has been defeated!”

More silence.

Gan was seriously worried that the crowd would riot.

Then one person in the audience bellowed, “It’s about damned time!”

Someone else-or it might have been the same person, Gan couldn’t tell-started to clap.

Then another.

Soon the applause started to spread throughout the arena.

That was followed by cheers and yips of joy.

After a few seconds, one of the incomprehensible yells started to coalesce into something understandable:

“Rol! Rol! Rol! Rol!”

At once Gan was relieved and frightened. The former because the crowd seemed to accept Rol’s victory. Indeed, they were embracing it, having gotten over the shock of Gorbin’s defeat.

The latter because what he just saw was completely impossible. There was no way, none, that an unenhanced human of Rol’s strength and talent-considerable though both were-could have wiped the floor with any mul like that, much less a mul as talented as Gorbin.

Something was wrong with Rol, and Gan needed to find out what it was.

He really wished that Feena was there …

Rol’s hands hurt.

That was the worst part.

No, the worst part was the headaches. They were awful.

No, the worst part were the horrible lesions that kept sprouting on his skin and would not go away.

No, the worst part was that those lesions would sometimes pop and smear red ooze all over everything.

No, the worst part was constantly being forced to fight for the pleasure of other people instead of being paid for it like a sensible person.

No, the worst part was that Rol was starting to forget who he was.

Yes, that was definitely the worst part.

He tried not to think about it too much.

Besides, that was only sometimes. Most of the time he knew damn well that he was Rol Mandred, that he was a human, that his best friends were Fehrd Anspah and Gan Storvis, that he hired himself out as a rent-a-thug, and that his parents were named-

He couldn’t remember his parents’ names.

But he tried not to think about it too much.

His hands hurt.

Some nights, when he slept-on those rare occasions when he could actually sleep, not toss and turn in the “cubicle” that Calbit and Jago had put him and Gan in-he dreamed about the red liquid. But in the dream, the red liquid was swirling madly in a whirlpool. Unfamiliar images crashed onto his consciousness like dunes overflowing during a sandstorm: a large golden vortexlike eye, a strange creature with gray skin but with shoulders covered in red crystal, a female wizard turning a tiefling into stone …

Plus phrases he did not recognize: the Elder Elemental Eye, Bael Turath, Voidharrow.

That last one he heard a lot in his dreams.

But then he woke up. And he tried not to think about it too much.

Sometimes he thought that he was better off not thinking at all. Just giving in to all of it.

That would make life easier.

“Rol, you okay?”

For a moment, Rol panicked. He knew the voice, knew it, as certain as he knew his own name was-

What was his name?

Gan. That was it. No, Gan wasn’t his name, Gan was the name of the person talking to him. His own name was Rol Mandred. He knew that.

He always knew that. Except when he didn’t.

“Rol.”

“I’m fine.” His voice sounded weird. “My hands hurt a little, but I’m fine.”

He looked around the cubicle, but couldn’t see Gan.

Maybe he was imagining Gan. Maybe he was imagining all of it. Maybe Gan didn’t exist. Maybe it was all a dream and he’d wake up from it soon.

Maybe the red liquid was the reality and Gan was the fantasy.

Yes, embrace the Voidharrow …

“Rol, listen-”

“Shut up.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Not you. The other voice.”

“There is no other voice, Rol. It’s just me.”

After a second, Rol realized that he couldn’t see Gan because Gan was in the cubicle across the hall. Now he remembered-once they became the new main event, Gan and Rol were each given their own cubicles. That was just a stupid name for what was really a cell, just like any other. Rol had been in plenty over the years, so he knew what they were like, and this was most definitely a cell, no matter what they called it. Like that time in-

He couldn’t remember where it was.

“Rol?”

Grimacing, he tried to recall that time when he was in that cell. There was a woman-there was always a woman-and her husband got a little peeved the way husbands always did, and did they take it out on the woman who cheated? No, they took it out on Rol, who was just having a bit of fun, and they threw him in a cell. They were quite humorless, the magistrates in-

Why couldn’t he remember the city-state where he was imprisoned?

“Rol?”

“Gan, do you remember where it was when I was imprisoned for sleeping with that girl?”

At that, Gan actually laughed. “Seriously? Rol, you’re gonna need to be considerably more specific than that.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Rol, we need to work on escaping this place.”

“What? Why?” Rol knew that Gan was right, but he couldn’t remember why Gan was right.

Speaking very slowly, Gan said, “Because we’ve been enslaved, you jackass.”

“Right, right, I knew that.” Rol tried to force himself to focus. It was just so hard …

He wished he could remember how they got there. It had something to do with Fehrd, but he could no longer recall how Fehrd was involved. Or even where Fehrd was. He should have been with them.

Gan was talking about something that may have been important. It was hard to tell with Gan, since he was always talking. “It’s gonna be a lot harder now. Ever since you became the featured attraction, they’ve hired a lot more security. The crowds’re bigger too.”

“Why is that?”

“You, you moron.” Gan sounded angry; his yelling made Rol’s headache worse. “You beat the unbeatable fighter. People actually give a frip about the fights in this arena for the first time in years. Calbit and Jago hired about a dozen mercenaries to supplement the other guys, and some of them even have metal swords. The patrols are all random too-haven’t been able to find any kind of pattern. I gotta tell you, we had a better chance of escaping before you killed that mul.”

“What the hell choice did I have?” Rol screamed, and slammed a fist into one of the cubicle walls.

His hand no longer hurt, oddly, and a large chunk, and several small chips, fell to the floor from the stone wall.

“Will you please calm down?” Gan said. “You’ll bring the guards, and then we can’t talk.”

“Maybe I don’t want to talk to you. In fact, Gan, I’m sick of talking to you. All you ever do is talk.”

“Good, that’s good.”

Rol frowned, confused. “What’s good?”

“You’re complaining about me. That’s a good sign that you’re you.”

“Of course, I’m me. Who else would I be?” Rol asked that question despite not being entirely sure of the answer.

“I wish I knew.” Gan spoke with tremendous emotion, so much so that Rol blinked in surprise. Gan usually didn’t speak quite so strongly. “Rol, ever since that night in the desert, you haven’t been yourself-in any way. You’re ridiculously powerful, and you look more and more like you’re diseased. I’m scared.”

Gan never admitted to being scared of anything. At least, Rol didn’t think he ever had. It was hard to recall specifically.

Hell, he still couldn’t remember his parents’ names. And his head still hurt.

“We have to get out of here, Gan,” Rol said. “I don’t care what it takes. We need Fehrd to make a plan.”

There was a long pause before Gan replied to that. “Fehrd’s dead, Rol.”

Rol had forgotten that.

In fact, he still didn’t remember it, and wasn’t sure that Gan wasn’t lying.

No, that was crazy. Gan wouldn’t lie to him.

Would he?

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Remember, Rol, that Black Sands thug killed him. They were fighting with staffs, and then the leader took out a knife and stabbed him with it.”

Rol didn’t remember that at all. But it didn’t sound right, somehow. “Why would he stab him if they were fighting with staffs?”

In a voice reeking with incredulousness, Gan said, “He was the leader of a band of thieves-on what planet do you expect him to behave honorably? Hell, I don’t expect you to behave honorably, and you’re the closest thing to an honorable person I’ve ever met.”

That surprised Rol. Somehow Gan saying something nice to him didn’t match with what he expected Gan to say.

Things were obviously worse than he thought.

But he couldn’t think straight, so that wasn’t surprising.

He just needed to rest. Maybe then his hand wouldn’t hurt so much and his head wouldn’t hurt so much and he’d start to remember things again. Like his parents’ names and how Fehrd died and where it was he was in that cell and …

Give in to the Voidharrow and all-

“NO!”

“What is it?” Gan sounded concerned.

Rol shook his head. “It’s fine. Really, I’m fine, I just-” He moved to rub his eyes, then realized that his fingers were covered in lesions. No, they weren’t lesions anymore, they were red pustules that made it impossible for him to even touch anything.

He snarled. “We need to get out of here.”

“I’m open to suggestions as to how.” Gan let out a very loud breath. “I wish Feena was here.”

“Who the frip is Feena?”

Impatiently, Gan said, “My sister, you moron. She-” He cut himself off, then whispered, “Someone’s coming.”

Rol hoped it was someone who could make his hands not hurt.

A new voice said, “Stand, whaddayacall, away from the door.”

Actually, Rol realized it was an old voice: Sasker, one of the guards. He always came with three other guards, all armed with metal swords.

So Rol stood back from the door.

It creaked open to reveal Sasker, along with the usual three guards. Their swords were out.

“Time for your next fight, and-” Sasker stopped short and stared goggle-eyed at Rol. “What the frip happened to you?”

Rol had no idea what he was talking about. “I’m the same as always.”

“Not hardly. Your face is all, whaddayacall, covered in crap.”

One of the thugs said, “Maybe we should have a healer look at ’im.”

Sasker looked at him as if he was insane. “Right, another one. Calbit hates payin’ for healers, and they sent, whaddayacall, half a dozen to look at this guy. ’Sides, it’s time for the fight.”

Defensively, the thug asked, “What if it’s contagious-like?”

The look on Sasker’s face didn’t change. “You’re bein’ paid to keep the fighters in line. You ain’t bein’ paid to, whaddayacall, think. So shut the hell up.” He turned back to Rol. “Get up, Mandred. Time to earn your keep.”

“You don’t pay me.”

“Fine, earn Calbit and Jago their keep, then. C’mon, let’s go.”

At that point, Rol could do the walk to the arena in his sleep. The three guards were at triangle points around him too far for him to grab, but far enough away to be able to effectively use their swords if he made a false move.

His hands really, really hurt.

They brought him into the waiting area and then Jago started doing his routine, and Rol could barely hear it over the crowd noise.

The noise just would not stop. Rol tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away, and he tried to listen to something else, but there was just the noise and nothing else and it was just making his headache worse and worse. He needed to find something else to listen to.

Embrace the chaos, my friend. Spread the seed and everything will be yours.

That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but somehow, that voice-that annoying voice, that voice which had been in the back of his head since that night in the desert and that would not go away no matter how many times he tried-didn’t make his headache worse.

In fact, right then, hearing the voice, the headache went away.

And his hands didn’t hurt.

So finally, after not listening to the voice, after wishing the voice would go away, he embraced the voice.

He barely paid attention to Jago as he droned on about fights and battles and other nonsense. The crowd was cheering, but he paid even less attention to that.

All he saw was the thri-kreen facing him in the arena.

Spread the seed …

The thri-kreen skittered on all his legs across the arena, trying to avoid Rol, then jumping up onto his hind legs to slice at Rol with his pincers.

Spread the seed …

Rol smiled. He’d faced the thri-kreen before, and usually ducked and dodged his pincers, mainly out of a desire to keep the pustules from bursting.

Suddenly, that was just what he wanted.

A pincer came at his face and Rol didn’t move. It cut through one of the pustules, causing a minor bit of pain in Rol’s cheek and sending red ooze spraying out onto the thri-kreen.

Dimly, Rol registered the gasp of the crowd. Jago had taken to blaming Rol’s “affliction” on his nonexistent trip to the Beastbarrens, where he met “strange creatures beyond all possible imagining” and that one had done that to him.

So naturally there was concern when one of the strange red bumps that were covering him burst all over the thri-kreen.

That concern no doubt elevated when the thri-kreen started to scream.

Rol’s smile widened. The Voidharrow would not be denied. It would spread and bring magnificent chaos.

And deep down in the darkest recesses of Rol Mandred’s mind, that thought terrified him. And the fact that his terror was so deeply buried while he was outwardly thrilled at the very concept terrified him even more.