Chapter Five Fiernara, of the Wild and Pure
CHAPTER FIVE
FIERNARA, OF THE WILD AND PURE
F OOTSTEPS ECHOED OVERHEAD in a steady pitter-patter, audible even through the stone walls of the armory.
Lythlet sat with a spear on her lap, hands kneading the wooden haft.
Desil was beside her, resting his wrists on the crossguard of his sheathed sword.
They were not alone; the other pair of first-rounders were pacing the floor, waiting to be called by the match-master.
They were Oraanu, their pale skin offset by night-black hair, and they bore the same sharp chins and high nose bridges.
Judging from their shared features, they were brother and sister.
The man paused his pacing to glance in Desil’s direction. “You’re Desil Demothi, aren’t you?”
Desil looked up. “Yes,” he answered, offering his hand for a shake.
The man grabbed it, heaving it up and down. “I heard we’d be fighting before some famous bloke, but I had no idea who. I was there during your final brawl last year—bloody brutal, from the first blow to the last.”
Desil paled, casting an uncomfortable side glance in Lythlet’s direction. “And you are?” he deflected quickly.
“Taovi.” He jabbed a finger in his partner’s direction. “And that’s my sister, Una.”
Una waved shyly in Desil’s direction, cheeks flushed red. Her handsomely dark eyes seemed unable to peel themselves off his face.
Desil, oblivious as ever to the effect he had on most young women, politely tilted his head toward Lythlet. “This here’s Lythlet. We’re hoping to pay off my debt with conquessing.”
“Much the same here, mate,” Taovi said, seating himself beside Desil. “We’re in a bad spot at the moment with our father’s gambling habits, so we’ve come hoping to nab a jackpot.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know what we’re fighting today, would you?” Una said hopefully. “We tried prying it out of the man briefing us, but he was as tightlipped as a clamshell.”
“We had no better luck with the match-master,” Desil answered ruefully. “Seems it’s a well-kept secret in the arena.”
At that moment, echoes of Master Dothilos’s absurdly clear baritone penetrated the walls of the armory: “ Taovi and Una Sesona! ”
“That’s us.” Taovi rose, reaching out for his sister.
“All the best,” Desil said. Lythlet bowed her head at them, hands steepled by her chest to express her hopes for their safe return.
Taovi grinned. “Thanks, mate. Listen, when all this is done, how about we head out for lunch?”
“Keen,” Desil replied, slapping Taovi’s offered hand playfully, yet again impressing Lythlet with his ability to make new friends wherever he went.
Taovi and Una left, his axe and her sword glinting as they disappeared down the corridor. The sound of the audience chanting and stamping their feet came muffled through the stone walls.
Lythlet shut her eyes, cutting her vision into black. Perhaps the aural experience of Taovi and Una’s match could educate her in time for her own, guiding the brushstrokes of her imagination over the tabula rasa of her knowledge.
The incoherent rabble of the unseen audience reached her ears, the air shaking with their anticipation.
Perhaps there were a hundred spectators today, faceless folk cheering with coins clinking in their hands.
Then Master Dothilos’s ringing baritone came through the stone walls, loud and clear and unforgiving.
“Today’s match is dedicated to none other than fair Fiernara, she of the untamed wilderness and the pure of heart!” he bellowed, voice amplified by a speaking-trumpet. “We begin, as always, with a prayer to bless today’s matches.”
“ Hoo-rah! ” the spectators cheered.
Lythlet imagined him spreading his arms wide, bowing his head and inviting the rest to follow, playing the role of a shrine-master. Perhaps there was one of the twenty-four texts of the religious canon before him, the pages flipped to the prayer he’d selected for the day.
Solemn gravity inflected in his baritone, Master Dothilos read the Prayer of the Pure-Hearted aloud:
O Wild Fiernara
Make me an instrument of thy unbridled spirit
To live ever-seeking the immaculate light hidden within the darkness of every soul
His recitation come to an end, he maintained silence for the requisite twenty-four seconds of meditation.
Lythlet lifted one eyelid to confirm a hunch: Desil had shut his eyes to join the prayer, tapping a bead on his rosary, the one for faith which Fiernara represented.
The silent prayers ended, and Master Dothilos’s voice, sonorous as it echoed, reclaimed her attention: “Today, we shall witness these two conquessors gain their honor and pay tribute to our ancestors by battling a sun-cursed beast in a showcase of strength that only the unbroken youth have. First—an oath! By the blood of your ancestors, do you proud Oraanu children vow to salt the earth with the blood of the demons that once gave death upon your ancestors?”
Taovi and Una’s responses were inaudible, but from the audience’s cheers, they had said the right thing.
Lythlet was about to ask Desil what to say for the oath, but Master Dothilos’s next words cut her thoughts in half: “Bring out the beast!”
She braced herself, straining her ears for anything else. A hush had come over the audience. Metal squealed from somewhere. An unearthly snarl sounded, faint in the armory, but enough to make goose pimples rise on her arms.
Then a cacophony ensued, one that jarred her imagination’s brushwork into frenzied, indecipherable streaks.
She could not reconstruct the right visuals to match the hysterical screams, the garbled shouts, the collective gasps from the audience.
Even the match-master’s frenetic commentary made little sense without a view of the ongoings.
Then one definitive shriek rose to the forefront.
“ Forfeit! ” A woman’s voice, deeply distressed. Una.
There was no response from Taovi.
Lythlet paled, opening her eyes. She exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Desil.
More sounds—the audience jeering, the match-master calling his servants to rein in the beast. A clatter of noise approaching the armory from both sides: from the left, a physic emerged, already unwinding a roll of linen from his medicine bag; from the right, two of the match-master’s servants carrying Taovi in on a stretcher, Una sobbing hysterically as she trailed after them, hair in disarray, clothes torn.
Where Taovi’s arm once was, now a trail of blood leaked from a ruptured socket. His chest heaved with ragged breaths, whispering of hope yet for him, but his eyes had an eerie, lifeless look to them, of one’s soul teetering over the edge of death’s canyon.
Desil clutched Lythlet’s arm tightly, the sight unnerving them.
“Head on,” a servant snapped at them. “Master Dothilos will be calling you any minute now.”
What in Kilinor’s name did they fight? Lythlet thought, a gnarled knot of anxiety swelling in the pit of her stomach. A quick glance at Una, inconsolably crying as she held her catatonic brother’s head in her hands, told Lythlet not to bother her.
Desil pressed his hands over Una’s. “He’ll be all right,” Desil said, looking worriedly at her. Una only sobbed harder, hugging her brother tighter.
The servants chased them away once more, and Lythlet and Desil wound their way toward the fighting grounds.
“A miserably quick match!” Master Dothilos shouted, voice becoming clearer as they neared the end of the corridor. “Let us pray we see more promise in our next contestants: Desil Demothi and Lythlet Tairel!”
The resounding echoes of “Tairel” were swallowed by a bellowing horn. Unseen hands wound up the portcullis before them.
“ Hoo-rah, hoo-rah, hoo-rah, ” the audience chanted, feet stamping in tempo. It was deafening, a far cry from the barren soundscape the arena had been just hours prior. Somehow, it reminded her of the guttural chanting mourners declaimed at funerals, magnified a hundred times.
As if they’re welcoming conquessors to their graves.
She stole an anxious glance at Desil, and together they plunged into the arena.
Bright baltascar lights overwhelmed her, addling her senses. Was she really buried deep beneath the heart of the city, far away from real sunlight? It felt like the wrath of a desert sun was upon her shoulders.
The chanting faded with a gesture from Master Dothilos, who stood upon a podium by the spectator seats. A rumble of private chatter remained throughout the crowd, some whooping at the sight of Desil.
“Demothi, Demothi!” they hollered, and he bowed politely in their direction.
Less than a quarter of the seats were filled, but for such a large arena, that was still a remarkable crowd, hundreds of spectators staring down at them.
All at once, eyes slitted over in merciless mercantilism homed in on her, weighing her value as they weighed coins in their hands.
Some frantically rifled through their beaded coin purses to make last-minute bets with the bookies trawling through the aisles.
A man with a scarred face stopped one for what seemed to be a friendly chat, no coins exchanging hands.
Her gut clenched tightly. She was no more than a commodity stripped naked before a hungry market, a racehorse they would ruthlessly beat to the finish line if it meant they’d win.
Everything dissolved into a wordless mass of noise in Lythlet’s head.
She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, suddenly intensely aware of how tightly her lungs were caged against her ribs.
She steeled her gaze onwards, curious about the spectators.
These were folk gambling their coin on the odds of her surviving or not—what were they like?