Kamahl ignored them. He wrapped one arm around Zagorka and the other around her mule. His staff cast a long black shadow over the creature. It shuddered its life away, blood forming a red pool across the stones. The rusty hue of other spots told that this was an approved remedy for those who refused the toll. Kamahl had his own remedies.
His hand tightened on the century staff, and he lowered it atop the fallen beast. One corner of his mind dipped down to drink from the myriad trickling pools at the core of his being. The waters of the perfect forest welled up in him. Another corner of his consciousness reached out to this wreck of a creature. Kamahl dipped his fingers in the pool of blood and touched the ragged wound.
"Wake again, noble beast. Wake," he whispered.
Kamahl opened his being, becoming a conduit for the waters of life. They flowed up through him and coursed down his arm and into the beast. Water and blood mingled. The wound ran afresh, but the red flow poured in rather than out. Resh knit to flesh, and skin closed over meat. The mule's lungs convulsed, pumping blood out its nose and mouth and sucking air in.
Chester bellowed. He struggled up from the dust and blood and shook his ragged pelt to get rid of both.
Despite the foulness, Zagorka wrapped the beast in a glad embrace. "You saw what he did. He raised my beast from the dead!"
"No," Kamahl said quietly. "I am no necromancer. Life lingered, or I would not have been able to awaken him."
The Cabal soldiers had withdrawn to a wary distance, their swords still leveled. The captain managed, "What of the toll?"
"Yes," Kamahl responded. "What of the toll? Aphetto will be richer to have Zagorka within, and me as well. I stake my life on it. Send report to the First that Kamahl, slayer of Chainer, has returned. If the First wishes to exact a toll, he may do so."
The captain's face rumpled uncertainly. "We are to charge our tolls without exception."
Kamahl lifted the century staff in bloody fingers. "Would you like to see my other powers?"
The soldiers backed up again, and the captain shouted at them to clear the way.
Kamahl gestured to Zagorka and Chester, who straightened their necks and walked proudly through the gauntlet of soldiers. Kamahl followed. As they passed into the echoing archway, Zagorka nudged the barbarian's hip.
"You're not just a healer."
"I did not raise him from the dead," Kamahl replied.
"You raised him from something. He's two hands taller than he used to be.
Kamahl stared wonderingly. Indeed, the mule had grown, nearly a foot in height and perhaps a hundred pounds in weight.
Together, Kamahl, Zagorka, and Chester navigated the switchback path from the cliff down to the pits. Each step brought them into a darker, wetter place. They watched the grand noble estates rise on their pinnacles. They saw the marketplaces and guildhalls grow across the wide plateaus below. All was swallowed as they entered a subterranean passage of stalactites and rocky rivers. They spoke little within those passages, the unsteady clomp of Chester's hooves making racket enough. No one passed them on the way down, though glimpses through the murk showed other folk walking far ahead and far behind.
In time the way widened into a cold grotto. Stony arches opened to either side. These niches held lighted scenes of great pit fights of the past. The figures looked so real they seemed to be the fighters themselves, preserved by the taxidermist's art.
Ahead came voices, laughter, cheers-the true fights. Kamahl's staff did not draw him that way. It tugged toward a small door on one side of the passage.
"We must part company here," Kamahl said. He lifted an eyebrow. "Surely you don't have business in the pits?"
"Surely I do. What business is there outside the pits, in Aphetto? You don't think I'd come to a pesthole like this just on a lark."
Kamahl crossed his arms over his chest. "What business?"
"The First has put out a call for mule teams," she said, whapping Chester on the side. "That's us. A mule team."
"Why would he possibly want mule teams?" Kamahl wondered aloud.
"Don't know. Don't care. Thanks to you, I got a giant mule team." She nodded. 'Take care of yourself, Kamahl. This place eats up nice folks."
"You take care of yourself as well, Zagorka."
She waved off the comment. "Oh, I ain't nice folk." With that, she and Chester clomped toward the sound of cheers and laughter.
Kamahl turned toward the door and the labyrinth beyond. Once he had pursued his friend Chainer through such a tortuous maze. In the end, just before devolving into madness, Chainer had granted Kamahl the Mirari-an act of altruism. Still, many in the Cabal thought Kamahl a murderer. That belief granted him a fearful respect, which proved useful. Kamahl tried the door, but it was bolted.
A slim panel drew back, revealing a pair of yellow-glowing eyes beyond.
"I am Kamahl, slayer of Chainer."
A tremor moved through those eyes. "You are not Kamahl. Kamahl could not have raised a beast from death."
Grimly, Kamahl realized that word of his deed had traveled faster than he. "I am Kamahl, slayer of Chainer and raiser of mules. Let me pass."
"What business have you in the pits?"
"You have my sister, Jeska."
Something like humor played in those lemon eyes. "There is no one here by that name, but you are welcome, slayer of Chainer and raiser of mules, to come see for yourself." Multiple bolts slid back, and the door creaked open to a black passage. "Forgive the darkness. Those who know these ways need no light, and those who do not know them will never need light again."
Kamahl pushed through the doorway. His century staff tugged him eagerly forward, its butt rapping the ground like the cane of a blind man. "She is here," Kamahl said to the door guard. "Send word ahead that I am coming. Anyone who seeks to deter me can expect the fate of Chainer." Kamahl did not wait for a response but strode down the darksome passage behind his pounding staff.
Word did precede him. Along the ever-winding, ever-descending way were checkpoints, all of which let him through. Kamahl's threat had not won him passage: The Cabal would not be threatened. They let him believe he bullied his way along because they had some grinning plan underway. They wanted him to go below and find what he would find.
Unerring, the century staff led him past the quarters of dementia summoners, below the practice chambers, beyond the beast pens, and to the slave grotto. It was a long, low cavern segmented into cells. Each held a fighter-slave.
Kamahl reached the grotto's black iron gates, bristling with spikes. There he halted. His staff jittered excitedly, straining toward the cells. "Open, in the name of the slayer of Chainer."
Something arrived. It came with a rush of hair. It landed on the stony ground before him, and Kamahl realized he didn't know where it had come from.
"Braids," he said by way of greeting.
In the dim light of that place, the dementia summoner's scarred face glowed with enthusiasm. "Kamahl. What happened to you?" She sniffed. "You smell like compost."
"Where is Jeska?"
She shrugged, wiry shoulders shoving back her braids. "Dead."
The word made his heart flail. If not for the staff, he might have believed it. "No. She is here. I've walked across forest and desert and into the pit to find her. She is here."
Braids shook her head slowly. "No, I remember quite clearly. Jeska died in the Krosan Forest. She died from your sword. You were too busy killing a merman to save her."
Kamahl tried to step past her and grab the gate.
Braids was too quick. With preternatural power, the little woman spun him aside. "Jeska died in the forest. Someone else was born from her corpse. I took her away and called her Phage. I changed her, retrained her. She is unbeaten and unbeatable."
The facts piled up in Kamahl's mind. Braids had taken Jeska from the forest to the pits and had made her a champion of the Cabal. "I want to speak to… this Phage."