Page 8 of Ironhold, Trial Two

That doesn't sound like a question. Or if it is, it's one she already knows the answer to. She knows far more about what it means to be a beast whisperer than I do. I try to imagine what it is like when I connect with a creature. She's right, it's as though I can feel their presence in the moments before I make contact.

I nod my agreement.

“So how many can you feel?” she asks.

“I'm not sure that I-”

“So concentrate,” Lady Elara says, making a demand of it. “Stop talking and focus. Close your eyes. Do it.”

The sharpness of the command is a reminder of the difference between our positions. She is a noble, there to teach. I am a slave gladiator, and now her student.

I do what she asks, closing my eyes and concentrating, trying to feel the space around me. I reach out with the part of me that is buried deep inside, trying to feel the presence of every animal I can. For several seconds I am just standing there, awareof nothing but my breathing. This does not feel like the grand magic she has in mind.

Then I feel something close by the scurrying presence of a mouse. I can feel its needs and its wants, and somehow in feeling that I start to push past it. I feel more mice. I feel beetles climbing the walls. I feel a spider waiting in its web. Still, my mind expands.

I feel the great beasts in the cages somewhere far below. I feel the presence of the shadow cat, still healing from its last time in the arena. I feel the Ironhide, down in its pen, feel great lizards and deadly chimeras. I connect to each in turn, my mind an ever expanding web of presences, almost too many to take in. I feel my awareness rippling out and out, taking in more with each ripple, with new beings there, new senses, new ways of experiencing the world.

“How many animals can you feel,” Lady Elara asks.

I open my eyes. “All of them.”

Chapter Four

I leave Lady Elara’s room feeling a sense of exhilaration. I have reached out and touched the minds of more beasts at once than I might have thought possible before all this.I can still feel their presence like a whisper at the back of my mind, or perhaps a collection of whispers waiting for me to give one of them more attention than the others, waiting for me to truly listen to one and know everything it is thinking and feeling.

I head through the noble part of Ironhold, and it is not long before I come to a familiar spot. There is a kind of temple space within it, large and open, filled with statues of great heroes of the Colosseum. It is a place that reminds me that Aetheria is serious about its reasons for running the games. It truly is a place that believes that physical power and magical strength are heroic, and that there is something great and important about fighting and dying in front of others.

I move through the space, considering the statues. There are small plaques attached to them, stating the names of the gladiators commemorated, and giving me something of their stories. Here is Deathin, who slew three great snakes with nothing more than a short sword. Here is Justinian, who leapt from the colosseum floor to defend the emperor of the time in the middle of an assassination attempt.

At the back is a statue of a woman, who seems to be sitting on a pile of sleeping beasts as if they are a throne. The plaque attached to the statue has been removed by someone, but I know what I am looking at: this is a beast whisperer.

“What are you doing in here again?” I recognize Vex’s voice even before I turn. He is as richly dressed as always, the arrogance on his face clear. Up close, I can also see the scars there. The healers of the Colosseum are skilled, but there arelimits to what even they can do. I can hear the anger in his tone, and there is hatred in his eyes as he stares at me. I'm the reason he has the scars after all. I'm the one who summoned a shadow cat to my side in the middle of a bout, using it to face him where I could not do so hand to hand.

“I don't need your permission to be in here, Vex,” I say.

“You have no connection to any of this,” he replies. “My ancestors fought in the Colosseum. My family has sent its sons for generations. It is in our blood. We still remember that it was a once a holy rite, not just an entertainment.”

I have heard that before, that there was a time when the games only featured volunteers from among the people of Aetheria, wanting to demonstrate their skills before the gods, and give thanks for the powers they had gained. It is not that now, though. It is a place where people are forced to enter, their blood spilled the entertainment of the masses, rather than for anything holy.

“And wouldn't it be good if people were given a choice about whether they fought?” I say to him.

“You're just a coward who can't even kill,” he replies.

“You should be grateful for that,” I point out. “The emperor wanted you dead. Ichosenot to kill you.”

“And now you think I should be indebted to you for that?” Vex snaps back. His hands are balling into fists, but my eyes are more on any small objects around the room. Vex’s talent is for making weapons sail through the air at his command, so that his foes must face swarms of knives, buzzing around them like bumble bees.

I shrug. “I’m just saying that there is no reason for us to be enemies.”

“There is every reason,” he insists. “I know what you are, beast whisperer. I know about the prophecy. If you weren’t here,the emperor would already have had you quietly killed. No one will care if you die here.”

So he hates me as much for what I am as who I am? That's hardly news. I know that Vex is aware that I am a beast whisperer. I have hardly hidden it well. He's right though, in a curious way my status as a gladiator protects me even as it endangers my life. People are so certain that I will die out on the sands that they are not simply having me killed. They don't think they need to.

“Do you know who this is?” I ask him, gesturing to the statue. “I assume you know every statue here.”

“That is Valerian, foulest of your kind. They say she could control any beast, that she could make them turn on themselves, tear out their own throats. Then she decided that was not enough. She tried to use her beasts to take power. They say it took a hundred men to bring her down. Like all your kind, she was feral in the end.”

“Make up your mind, Vex,” I say. “Am I a coward or am I a feral animal, determined to rip your throat out?”

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