Page 41 of Shroud of Eternity (Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles 2)

Nicci saw that Bannon had gulped his entire goblet of bloodwine. He was flushed and angry, and now he spoke more loudly. “We’ve seen how the Norukai attack helpless villages.” He stabbed his fork with a clang onto his plate. “How you prey upon the innocent.”

Kor’s eyes smoldered. The other Norukai seemed annoyed, but they let their captain speak for them. “We don’t prey upon the innocent—we prey upon the weak. That is how nature works. We cull the herd of humanity. Some die, and others are put to good use as slaves. We are the strong, so we do as we wish.”

Bannon clearly wanted to start a fight. Fortunately, he had not been allowed to bring his sword to the banquet, or he might have provoked a bloody brawl.

Nicci touched her companion’s arm, and he froze, though he still looked ready to explode. Turning to the slavers, she used a different weapon. “If you are so powerful, Captain Kor, then explain something we found on our journey here to Ildakar.” Her blue eyes flashed, and the others paused, waiting to hear what she would say. “We encountered four Norukai … or at least, four Norukai heads. They had been skewered on high spikes, left to rot in the road as a warning. Were they weak?”

Angry mutters rippled around the banquet table like the sound of a distant thunderstorm. Both the sovrena and the wizard commander looked uncomfortable, but they made no excuses. Amos glared at Bannon, who didn’t seem to care.

“Perhaps they were just there as decoration,” Nathan said flippantly. “Not a very good one.”

Thora said, “Beyond our protective shroud there are many hazards. Who knows what happened to the other Norukai? Since it was well outside Ildakar, it has nothing to do with us.”

Yorik gulped another goblet of wine, finishing his first bottle and pouring from the second.

High Captain Avery marched into the banquet hall as the final dishes were being taken away. He bent close to Thora. “Is there anything you desire, Sovrena?”

“Why, yes.” She reached up to touch his hand. “We have another pleasure party this evening. I would like you to attend as my personal guest.”

The handsome captain nodded. “As you wish, Sovrena. I will serve Ildakar in any way I am required.”

Beside her, Maxim rolled his eyes and turned a hopeful look to Nicci, but she gave him a cool stare from across the table.

Nathan said uncertainly to the fleshmancer, “Andre, shall we discuss ideas of how to intensify the Han we mapped out on the chart of my body? I would like to devote more time to the problem.”

“Not tonight, dear Nathan. We must have time to relax and recover, hmmm? You should rest and gather your strength.”

The Norukai drank the rest of the bloodwine at the table while Amos and his friends offered to guide the brutish guests to the lower levels of Ildakar. They did not extend the invitation to Bannon again, and he did not seem disappointed.

CHAPTER 29

Bannon’s anger made him see red shadows as he strode out into the darkness. He had no interest in carousing with Amos and his friends, especially if they were with the loathsome Norukai. Amos had promised to help him with Ian for two days now, made offhand reassurances, but Bannon had seen no real interest there.

Therefore, he would try to do what he could on his own. After having seen what had happened to his poor friend, who was alive but still destroyed, he felt a dangerous restlessness.

The Norukai sickened him. They had laughed and snorted during the banquet, gorging themselves on roast yaxen and bloodwine … and the council members greeted them as welcome visitors, respected merchants. In the slave market Bannon had watched the battered captives hauled onto the platform for sale. Any one of them might have been Ian as a young man, clubbed and abducted from a peaceful cove on Chiriya Island.…

Bannon blinked hot tears out of his eyes as he stumbled into the middle levels of the city. The boulevards were busy with evening customers. Taverns and restaurants served food and drink, while shopkeepers stayed open late, hawking their wares to nobles out for an evening stroll.

Bannon knew where he had to go. He made his way past the large and eerily empty combat arena and went directly to the tunnel opening in the sandstone outcropping that led to the training pits.

Torches in iron racks flickered outside the tunnel, but he saw no barred gate, no guard. Bannon drew a breath, focused his hazel eyes, and entered the dark passage.

His hand strayed to his hip. He wished he had brought Sturdy, but his hosts had insisted he leave the blade in his room. Ildakar was supposedly a perfect society, so why would anyone need weapons to defend themselves? But one of the city guards had recently been murdered, so the streets were indeed dangerous … to certain people, at least. Bannon had sensed the unrest among the people like rot spreading through a barrel of apples. Without his sword, his hand clenched into a fist instead.

He walked deeper into the disturbingly dark tunnel toward the warren of warrior cells. If he could get Ian free, then everything would feel all right.

He heard a sudden movement and whirled, reacting as a pale figure lunged out of the shadows. Hard muscle slammed into him. A hand grabbed the front of his chest, threw him against the sandstone wall, and another hand seized his long hair, yanked it back.

Bannon swung his fist, flailed, and by sheer luck, connected with soft flesh. He heard an outburst of pain, a quick exhalation of air. He struck again, but the wiry figure kept attacking him, a dynamo of muscles and swift, successive blows. He took a punch to his ribs followed by a crack to the side of his head, and his skull struck the wall of the tunnel. Stars sparkled in his vision and he reeled, fighting back. A swift chop to the base of his neck turned his legs to jelly.

As Bannon began to slide to the floor, his attacker grabbed him by the back of the shirt and dragged him along. He could hear heavy breathing, but no voice, nothing beyond the ringing in his ears. He kicked out with his feet, tried to drag the heels of his boots, but nothing slowed his movement. Finally the darkness grew brighter around him, and he realized he had been hauled to the larger grotto with sunken fighting pits along with numerous warrior holding cells in side tunnels.

Trying to get his wits about him, he saw the young morazeth with light brown hair standing over him: Lila, wearing only a black leather wrap around her hips and another strip covering her breasts.

“Normally, I would kill an intruder,” she said, “but you sparked my curiosity.”

He wiped blood from his mouth and struggled to his feet. “Sweet Sea Mother, why did you do that?” He shook his head and the ringing began to clear.

Lila’s thin lips quirked in a smile. “For practice.” Her skin was covered with the branded symbols, but she wore them with confidence, like badges of honor rather than scars. “I could have kicked you in the crotch and dropped you like a stone, but then you wouldn’t be much for conversation.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Now tell me, why did you come here?”

“My friend, Ian,” he said. “I came for Ian.”

Lila sniffed. “Are you stupid as well as weak? He doesn’t want to see you. He made that clear earlier.”

“But I want to see him. I want to free him. I’ll do anything—can I pay for his release? Can I arrange for him to be pardoned?”

Lila blinked. “Pardoned? He has committed no crime. He is our champion.”

r /> “Ian was taken as a boy, ripped away from his home by Norukai slavers! Who knows what torments he suffered? And now he’s forced to fight in your combat pits.”

The morazeth gave him a withering stare. “He was a weak child with no future other than to be a dirt farmer on a dull island. Now he’s been toughened and trained. He has slain a hundred opponents. He is the champion of all Ildakar, and Adessa herself has taken him as her lover. By the Keeper, why would he wish to leave all that?”

“To be free,” Bannon said.

Lila sniffed. “No one is free. Every person is bound by chains of one sort or another.”

“I’m not,” Bannon said.

“Of course you are—or you will be. Perhaps your chains are your ignorance of the way the world works.”

Bannon brushed himself off, wiped more blood from his split lip, and tried to be businesslike. He brought out the gold coins Amos had given him in case he wanted “special services” from the silk yaxen, as well as the additional coins the doorman had given him. “I want to buy his freedom.” He held out the coins. “Real gold.”

She let out a scornful laugh. “A few coins? For the champion? Gold is not enough.”

“Then what would it take to free him?”

Lila seemed amused. “What do you have to offer?”

“Anything I have,” he said, swelling his chest.

She was unimpressed. “Then you have nothing of interest. Can you get a dispensation from the wizard commander? Or the sovrena? Would any member of the wizards’ duma speak on your behalf to transfer ownership of the champion?”

Bannon looked away. “Not yet.” He could ask Nicci and Nathan to make his case, but their position here was weak as well. They had used any goodwill to ask the wizards to help Nathan with his gift. His heart ached, and he felt true despair. “I’ll think of something.”

“Then you’d best keep thinking.”

Lila turned him around and herded him back up the tunnel. Ahead, he discerned a brighter swatch of night, stars and streetlights. “But I want to see Ian again.”

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