Chapter 25 The Challenge
"Young Tarah," Besana says, a subtle tsk in her voice.
"My, my. I thought you had more sense than this.
When we left you in the valley, I thought to myself 'You should probably kill her, to be safe.
'" Besana shakes her head, her cerulean eyes fixed on me with mock regret.
Araine has taken a fighting stance to my right, but Besana ignores her entirely, continuing her narration.
"'But no,' I thought. 'She is young, and ignorant of the ways of the world.
Let this be a lesson to her,'" Besana's voice hardens, "'that those not strong enough to protect what they have, do not deserve to have it.
' I thought you had learned, Tarah," her tone becomes almost a snarl, "that you did not deserve your treasures.
" She waves one elegant, corpse-blue hand towards Cherry behind me, and Vakhrin over my shoulder.
"I thought you had learned, Besana," Araine speaks up, in a hard, commanding voice, "that you will never win a battle against me."
Besana's lips twist with distaste as her eyes go to the female dragon beside me.
"You are a fool worse than your mother, little Araine.
With your hopeful dreams of the future, and your sermons about the good of all Dragomira.
You have never opened your eyes to what we are.
" Besana spreads her arms, claws glittering at the ends of her fingers.
"And you do not even have ignorance as an excuse. "
As she speaks, more figures step out of the shadowy tunnels around the room. Figures blue and green, both. Five, ten, fifteen of them. I see viciously grinning Edythe, but not Inobar, among them.
"Your reign is about to end," Araine whispers, and her voice is made menacing without any effort, by the sheer hatred in her eyes, aimed at Besana like a blade.
"And you won't have any excuses either. I have told you, a hundred times if I've told you once, that if you did not stop with your mad games and your reckless endangerment of our secrets, I would put an end to you. "
Besana blinks at her, listing her head to one side.
"Ah, but little girl, I am not afraid of you.
You have always been weak. Soft like your father.
Deluded like your mother. A combination that has made you into something worse than either of them ever was: a believer.
" The word is spit like a curse, or a joke.
"You don't just hurt for us, and you don't just hope.
But you actually think that things will get better.
" A dark, rollicking laugh. "Fool child, you only get what you take. You cannot win wars with words."
"Oh," Araine breaths quietly. She crouches down, two fingers pressed to the stone floor, her eyes on Besana.
"I thought I spoke plainly. I am about to take.
" She brings her fist down on the stone.
One rap, two, three, until the ground vibrates faintly beneath us and slivers of stone fly up from the place she strikes.
There is a rumbling from the one empty tunnel in the cavern, the tunnel that leads to the outside. One naked man, Jeksu, comes tumbling into the room. And behind him trickles five, ten, fifteen green and blue human shapes, Perilya among them. No Raku.
"I am about to take," Araine rises from her crouch, a smile twisting her mouth, "your head."
Besana's cold amusement falters for the first time, and her lips curls back in a snarl. "You mean to challenge me?" She flicks out a hand to indicate the force Araine has summoned.
Araine lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "I thought I might need a contingency plan." This is spoken partly to me, as she half-turns her head to meet my eyes over her shoulder.
"You think I will fight you in the ring?" Besana sneers.
Araine's eyes go hard and bright. "If you don't," she speaks clearly, "then your authority is forfeit. No one will follow a Dragomira who shies from a challenge." Araine casts her eyes out upon the ranks of Besana's followers, some of whom are nodding faintly.
Besana's teeth clamp so hard together I can practically hear them grinding. "What are the terms of your challenge?"
"If I win, the Ithymian princess, the manticore, Tarah, and her human man all go free. It was your authority that brought them here. And when you lose, dead or alive, they are free."
Besana hisses, "And if I win, their heads will be on spikes, flung at the feet of the basilisk king by tomorrow morning."
Araine rolls her eyes. "If that is what you wish. Though how it will gain you any satisfaction, when the king was the one who banished his daughter in the first place, I don't know."
"You lie!" Besana spits, fire in her eyes. Many of her followers murmur and shift at Araine's words, but none speaks up. "The princess was stolen from him by that girl there." She flings out a finger to point at me.
"No," Araine says steadily. "The liar line of kings has produced another liar.
He gave his daughter over into Tarah's custody eight years ago.
And all the stories that have spread since then about her disappearance were spread by him.
To continue the filth his ancestors once circulated about our people.
The lie that we are the ones who cannot be trusted. "
Besana is speechless for a moment, breathing hard. The men and women in the audience are gaping. Will this be enough, I wonder? Will this convince them to let us go?
"Either way," Besana whispers, voice trembling with cruelty as she points a claw at Cherry. "Either way, the princess is his daughter. The continuation of his line. She is as guilty as the rest of them!"
"Then we must fight," says Ariane, widening her stance, "for I disagree."
Jeksu—hastily pulling on a robe that he has produced from thin air, it seems—explains it all to me on the way down to the arena.
We take the walking tunnels instead of flying there, because we are heavily surrounded by the sharp edges and watchful eyes of Besana's people.
Besana and Araine have flown ahead, Hamish and Edythe with them.
"A challenge is a sacred custom of the Trove, established long ago to keep us from dissolving into anarchy, with constant bloody brawls in the tunnels over every petty disagreement.
Any Dragomira of the Trove may challenge another over any dispute, provided both parties have an array of witnesses on their side agreeing to see justice carried out after the battle is over.
"
"So that's why Araine had all of you waiting in the wings?
Why she summoned you?"
Jeksu nods as we pass into a long, sloping hall lit with torches.
I cannot see the end of the passage ahead for how steeply the floor curves downward.
"We are her witnesses. Agreeing that if Besana wins the challenge, we all must stand aside and let her kill you.
"
Well, that doesn't sound great.
"But it sounded to me, before, like there was widespread disagreement over what to do with Cherry.
That everyone had an opinion, and was getting a say.
All of those people would just stand aside now and let her be killed?
"
Behind us, Cherry and Marton walk beside the stretcher that carries Vakhrin, born by several of Araine's dragons.
"That is where it gets more complicated," Jeksu admits.
"You've noticed how possession is a very important concept for Dragomira?
"
"Yes," I say drily.
Being Dragomira myself, that would have been hard to miss.
"Well, since Besana brought Shireen and Vakhrin to the Trove, they are technically in her possession.
The only reason she was listening to outside opinions before.
..Well, it was a bid for power. To do something cunning and impressive that would draw large numbers of the undecided members of the Trove to her side.
"
"That doesn't sound too complicated.
"
"No," he admits. "But.
..there are some members among the Trove who don't view possession in quite the same way.
" His voice is odd, and I pay greater attention.
"No?"
"No.
Some people believe, and have long believed, that the Trove should be a.
..collective. That it is a collective already, and that everything here belongs to everyone here.
And that we should all work together for the good of all of us.
"
"That sounds...like what Araine believes," I note.
Jeksu grimaces a bit.
"Yes..."
"What does that mean, in terms of this challenge?
"
"It means," and here Jeksu drops his voice, moving so close to me that he's practically breathing into my ear, "that even if Araine loses, we don't have to follow through with what we promised.
"
I pull back, stunned.
"But—" I cut myself off, mindful of the enemy ears around us.
Jeksu has spoken too low for them to hear, and most of their attention is focused greedily on Cherry anyway.
I begin again in a whisper, "That sounds.
..precipitous."
"It is.
" His expression is serious. "It means..
.It sets a dangerous precedent, for the law of the Trove.
To go against the terms of a challenge. We don't want it to come to that.
"
"We want Araine to win.
"
"She will win," says Jeksu.
I don't know him well enough to say if he's trying to convince himself.
"And...what does losing mean, for Araine?
Is this...a fight to the death?" I remember what Araine said, about taking Besana's head, and I shiver.
It could end up going the other way.
"A challenge continues until one party concedes.
They have every opportunity to give up before their own death, but it doesn't always happen that way.
Some people don't give up." Jeksu seems uncomfortable as he says it, and I wonder if Araine is one of those people.
If she doesn't give up. From what I've seen of her so far, I have to think so.
We reach the end of the hall, and conversation is silenced as two of Besana's people stride forward to wrench open the double doors.
Black night waits beyond, and wide open space, lit all around by the glow of torches.
We trickle out into a massive stone bowl, carved all around with rows and rows of benches, wide enough to accommodate dragon and wyvern forms. We're about midway up the stands, looking down into the stony pit of the arena, with the far peak of the second Trove mountain looming straight ahead of us.
Down in the pit, four human shapes wait, facing each other two on two, as we pick our slow way down to them.
As we draw near, I hear that Araine and Edythe are arguing.
"—don't know what you mean," Edythe is saying, an ugly little smile on her face.
"Dammit, Besana. Bring your lapdog to heal.
I know why Raku isn't here. I know Inobar has him somewhere.
He is mine, and I want him back."
"That was not part of the agreed upon challenge," says Besana blithely.
Araine snarls. "This is not about challenges.
This is about the people of the Trove. My people.
You have no right to hold him—"
"And you had no right to free my prisoners!
" Besana nearly screeches, her eyes on fire.
"Yet you snuck around and did it anyway.
"
"Bring him out, Besana, or I swear there will never be peace between our people again.
You know Raku is beloved by all."
Besana, affecting great indifference, checks her human fingernails and shrugs.
But after a moment, she whistles, a high, sharp note.
Two wyverns come swooping out of the mountains overhead, and one of them is Inobar.
My stomach lurches.
In his claws is a slack human form, with black hair and bright green skin.
Jeksu sucks in a breath beside me.
The wyverns land in the pit at the same time that we take the last set of steps down into it.
There is the smell of blood on the stones here, old and new, most of it manticore.
Inobar shifts into his human form—dropping Raku in the dust—and, completely naked, dips a low bow before Besana, who smiles warmly at him.
That smile, at least, is familiar. It looks just as it did when she smiled at me in the valley of the Werewood Forest. I wonder if this one is real.
"My lady," says Inobar, "allow me to fight this challenge for you.
"
Besana only presses her lips together, looking both annoyed at the offer and regretful that she can't accept.
Her eyes go to her people, mostly wyverns but some dragons too, who are watching.
"But of course I will fight the challenge myself.
"
Inobar lifts out of his bow, and when he does, I see his face in the torchlight.
And one of his eyes has gone a solid, milky white.
Blinded. It is the eye that Marton struck with his dagger to save my life.
When Inobar's gaze lands on us, his face spasms with a momentary, incredible rage, his lips pulling back from his teeth.
But he masters himself in the next moment, becoming cool-faced once more.
My gaze darts to Marton, who is wide-eyed as he stares at Inobar.
The other wyvern who arrived with Inobar, a young man, has picked Raku up off the ground and is helping him walk in our direction on unsteady legs.
Raku's eyes look a bit dazed, but otherwise he seems intact.
Jeksu hurries forward to take his brother from the wyvern's arms, and they start again in this direction.
Jeksu settles his brother into a seated position on the first ring of benches, where Vakh's stretcher has also been laid out, Cherry still hovering near him.
Raku clings to his brother's arms, eyes trying to blink into sharpness. "Jeksu," he slurs, "Brother. There are wyverns in the tunnels."
"Well I guess so," says Jeksu, sounding like he doesn't know whether to laugh or worry.
"Am-bush," says Raku meaningfully, listing to the left.
"Will he be alright?" Cherry asks anxiously, eyes on the dazed dragon.
"He'll be fine," says Jeksu, frowning as his brother swats at invisible insects in the air around him. "Head injuries, even the ones that usually kill humans...our kind can recover from. But you know that," Jeksu remembers quietly.
"Yes." Cherry stares down at Vakh. Touches him lightly on the temple. "Yes, I know that."