42. Aemon
42
W hen I was a boy, one of the servant’s children—a pretty girl I followed around like a puppy—asked me, if I could know the date and time of my death, would I want to? My answer then was “yes” so I could go on adventures and live life to the fullest until I died. I’ve since concluded that that boy was an idiot because knowing you’re about to die is fucking terrifying. It’s not the being dead part I’m afraid of. It’s the way I will die that has me trembling in my boots.
How will it happen? Will I be swallowed whole by a basilisk or eaten alive by a horde of giant lizard creatures, like those poor bastards were the last time I was here? Or maybe they’ll dunk us head-first into a vat of boiling oil and shout and clap as our skin melts from our bodies. Gods, this is doing a number on me. I’ve always considered myself a strong man, but right now, I feel every bit the fragile human .
I look up and down the metal pole we’ve been chained to while we wait to be led into the arena, for our turn to die. I’ve counted eleven people—some fae, some human—their expressions ranging from abject horror to resignation. There’s a fae woman in the back of the line wailing hysterically, and a human a little ways up from her reciting prayers under his breath. I wonder if he’s praying to Casmir to save us or to Morgana for a quick death. I wish I had faith like that, but I stopped praying a long time ago, when I finally realized no amount of prayer would ever bring my parents back.
Footsteps approach us from behind, and all the prisoners twist around as far as our bound wrists will allow to watch a fae male step from between the mass of guards at our back. He’s got that self-important air about him all rich assholes seem to exude, like the rest of us should be honored simply to be in his presence. His thin hair hangs limply to his shoulders, framing his sharp features in white. Silver chains like spiderwebs dangle from the points of his ears and every single one of his long fingernails is lacquered a bright red and festooned with gems. All except the index finger of his right hand where he wears the ashari—the point already crusted with blood.
He raises his hands like a prophet of the gods and speaks to us in ümbrian. The prisoners surrounding me let out a collective breath, and I watch as one of the guards—a male with stringy white hair braided halfway down his back—begins lowering thin chains over their heads, each of them bearing a key. I’m fairly certain I can deduce what’s happening, but I lean toward the bald male in front of me anyway and ask, “What did he say?”
He glances over his shoulder, and with a calm I can’t even begin to surmise, shakes his head. Right, he doesn’t speak Ferinees .
“They’re giving us a key to our manacles,” says a female voice behind me. I twist around to find a fae lady with matted white hair, her eyes swollen and red from crying. She gives me a grim smile and continues, “We have to get out of them first.” She pauses while the guard places a chain with an unremarkable silver key around her neck, then waits for him to do the same for me. Once the guard has moved on to the bald fae, she continues in a low voice, “Then we have to fight off whatever they have in store for us, if we want to live.”
A tiny ray of hope swells in my chest. “How often do prisoners survive this?”
Her eyes soften. “They don’t.”
Well, she snuffed that out quick. “Ever?”
“Not that I know of.”
Fuck.
I’m so caught up in our discussion, I don’t notice the guard with the braided hair walking back down the line, but she does. With a squeak, the fae female ducks her head like she’s suddenly become fascinated with our bare feet. A crack of pain on the back of my skull thrusts my head forward, while a voice shouts, “Ishka,” in my ear, which I’m guessing means something akin to “Shut the fuck up.” I whirl around, ready to fight the bastard with my forehead, if necessary, but he just backs out of my reach, a self-satisfied smirk on his pasty white face.
“Oh, yeah. You’re really tough when the other guy’s in chains. Let me go, you fucking coward, and see what happens.” I lunge at him, and the guard startles back a couple more steps. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. ”
That pisses him off. He leaps at me, grabbing the chains connecting my wrist to the pole and jerking them, hard. The metal shackles cut into my skin as pulls me down, so we're nose to nose and spatting the words in broken Ferinees, says, “You see the glogameth hunt, human?” He slowly drags the point of his ashari down my cheek, leaving a line of blood in its wake. I could yank my head away, but I don’t. I hold that bastard’s stare without so much as a flinch. “They like playing with their food,” he continues, “which makes for a great show. You never know if they roast you or tear you apart. Maybe they start with your toes and”—he walks his fingers up my chest—“chew their way up, or they bite your feet and pull until your hands rip off in these”—he taps the manacles circling my wrists—“then leave you to bleed in sand. But one thing is certain, I will be happy to see you die.”
He gives me that fucking smirk again, and I want to punch it off his smug face, but seeing as my hands and feet are chained, I go for the next best thing. “Fuck you,” I say, leaning in just a hair before I draw back and slam my forehead into his nose. There’s an audible crack and blood gushes down his face. He wails and stumbles away, his hands cupped around his nose as if trying to collect the blood before it hits the ground. I grin at him, ignoring the way the movement tugs at the cut on my cheek and sends blood trickling down my face.
The guard runs off—for a towel, I suppose—but the exhilaration from that small victory dies a quick death when the arena erupts in applause, signaling the end to this last bout, and lucky me, I happen to glance through the iron gate just in time to see a male ripped in half between two giant wolves .
Exactly what every fighter wants to witness moments before they go into battle. The wolves settle in for their dinner, but soon a few fae dressed in red race onto the arena floor. They aim their bull whips at the ground, just short of the creatures’ feet, each strike cracking against the hard stone and sending up tiny plumes of sand into the air. The wolves refuse to give up their prize, however, dragging the two halves of the dead man along with them, as the fae herd them into another arched tunnel.
They don’t even bother to clean up the blood and guts littering the floor.
No sooner have I finished that thought than the gate directly across from ours slides open. The entire arena goes silent, waiting to see what will emerge from the tunnel. The same rotund male from the last time I was in the arena, steps onto the sand, hand waving to the crowd. Laughter and jeers rain down from above. The male stops in the center of the floor, clasps his hands together in front of him and waits for the crowd to quiet. After a few minutes and a lot of shushing, the announcer addresses the audience. His voice is clear and powerful, the sound booming through the arena. Whatever he’s saying gets the crowd riled up. Some spectators boo, others hoot and cheer. I may not be able to understand what he’s saying, but when the crowd breaks into thunderous applause, I know exactly what it means.
Time’s up.
“Est tempros,” shouts another guard from the head of the line. He bangs the side of his fist against the archway wall, then slides open the lock on the gate. We’re ushered through and across the arena as quickly as the chain between our feet will allow. And I wait, heart in my throat as, one-by-one, the other prisoners are uncuffed from the pole and dragged to the wall circling the arena floor, their feet leaving long trenches in the sand when they refuse to walk. Along the upper part of the wall, shackles, set about a meter apart, dangle from chains bolted into the stone. There, the guards pin the prisoners in place while they latch the metal around their wrists. My stomach drops and any spark of hope I’d been hanging onto dies as I recognize the cruel trick. They’ve hung the literal key to our freedom around our necks, but bound our wrists above our heads, so we can’t reach them.
“Aemon,” a voice shouts, and I don’t need to see her face to know who it is. I follow the sound into the stands, scanning for that speck of black hair in a sea of white. And then I see her. She’s barely visible up there in the slave master’s box, but it’s her, I know it, and it’s the fear of Katya watching while I’m ripped apart that steels my spine. An idea strikes. Far-fetched and relying way too much on luck, but it’s something.
So, when the guards come for me, I don’t fight them. I walk along and stand with my back to the wall while they secure the manacles around my wrists. I make sure to keep my palms as open as possible—this would be so much easier if they hadn’t doused me with wolfsbane, but if this body is the only one I have to work with, then it’ll have to do.
More prisoners are brought in through another tunnel and cuffed to the wall, until the entire thing is lined with bodies—some of which are human, but surprisingly, most of them are blood fae.
“That’s you? You’re Aemon, right?” asks the fae female, who was standing behind me in line and is now shackled against the wall to my right.
Brows pinched, I answer, “Yes. Who are you? ”
“I’m Mave.” She tips her head up to where Katya is seated. “She was so worried about you. I’m sorry she has to see this.” She lets her head fall back against the stone. “Mother, I just hope it’s quick,” she says, voice cracking. She lets out a sob. There’s nothing I can say to her that wouldn’t be a lie, so I don’t say anything. Instead, I turn my attention back to the present situation. There are six tunnels leading into the arena—evenly spaced, like the spokes of a wheel—each with three to four prisoners spanning the area between them. The creature… What did he call it? Glogameth? It could come out of any one of those tunnels.
I scan the floor. There are swords and daggers, even an ax strewn about. The nearest that I can see is a long sword only a few steps away. That’s going to have to do.
Then, that blasted gong sounds, and all the gates open at once.