The Cabal pits had been recreated for a vaster audience.
Stands, luxury boxes, vendors, waiting pens, the sands, the elephants, the speaker's pinnacle-all of it centered on a single figure. Jeska. The unhealing wound on her belly had festered into a wound on the world.
Leave the Mirari sword here. It can do me no more harm and can do you no more good. Leave the sword, and leave the forest giant that it pins.
I will let you go from the cave, from the forest. You have set right the evil within me. Now, you must set right the evil within you.
Go, Kamahl. Take your army. Bring back Jeska.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: OPENING DAY
From the top of the central pillar, Phage watched the elephants race. They really were magnificent beasts-so powerful, so fast, so full of blood. They were down to twenty now. The ones that remained had to dodge the ones that had fallen. Phage had planned on the corpses providing obstacles, but she hadn't realized that every time the beasts came in sight of their slain kin, they would trumpet and charge the giant lizard scavengers and set in for a ferocious melee. It was all the handlers could do to drive off the remaining beasts and resume the race.
Down to thirteen.
The crowd loved it. Most of them had never seen an elephant. Now, they saw fifty of them and watched forty-nine die. It was merely the opening act, the diversion that kept everyone happy while they got seated.
Half the world was getting seated. Twenty thousand filled the lower reaches, and twenty thousand more flocked across the bridges and rode the courtesy barges. Once they had seen today's entertainments, there would be fifty thousand tomorrow, and then eighty thousand, and then a capacity crowd of one hundred thousand.
Braids had brought all these people. She had traveled the whole continent of Otaria, taking with her a taste of the coliseum's splendors. To yokels, she presented a freak show. To families, she showed a menagerie of exotic creatures. To magistrates, she offered an arena for the resolution of disputes.
The coliseum was everything to everyone. The rich enjoyed luxury boxes replete with every pleasure both legal and illegal. The poor crowded on dusty benches and screamed their lungs out. Braids had proven herself a human Mirari, knowing just what each person wanted and providing it-for a price. She had arranged walk-in one-day passes and boat-in week-long excursions with full accommodations.
By the end of the week, the coliseum would have paid for itself. By the end of the month, its revenues would have outstripped those of the pits.
Only one elephant remained-bloodied but unbowed. The crowds cheered it with almost vicious approval. The animal meanwhile stomped stupidly beside the bone piles of its kin. It bobbed its head in manic distress. Its handlers jabbed it with short hooks, leading it toward the animal paddock.
At the arena's edge, Braids announced the next spectacle. She opened her throat to two worlds-reality and dementia space-and wove the sound together into a bellow that reached for miles: "Come one, come all to the newest, truest wonder of the world! Come see beasts you have only heard of. Come see beasts that have never been! Leave behind your weary world. In the Grand Coliseum, every man is a king. Every woman is a queen. Every child is heir to the riches of the world!"
Braids was both the coliseum's promoter and one of its star attractions. Even as elephants died below, many folk watched Braids capering above.
"Behold the brutality of beasts. View the vendettas of warring clans. Witness the wonders of history.
"Get ready now for the battle of the centuries-the War!" crowed Braids. "Look here to the south and behold the heroes of Dominaria!"
A thick wooden door swung wide, and from it emerged two great gladiators.
The first, a seven-foot-tall giant of a man, wore a tan and maroon jumpsuit and bore a huge polearm.
The crowd responded with a furor of cheers and boos in equal measure.
Beside him stood a very different figure-tall and gaunt, with ash-blond hair and goggles that looked like gemstones. The fidgety light that played at his fingers promised impressive combat spells. The mage raised a hand to a violent ovation… and a pelting rain of rubbish.
The crowds didn't care who won or lost, but only that the men fought.
A fight there would be, though in keeping with the century-old tradition, these two gladiators would begin on the same side. They strode from the doorway, leading a continent of humans, elves, dwarves, minotaurs, and Keldons. This team- the Dominarians-would square off against the Invaders.
"Every last one of them is a condemned murderer, but fear not! They all are well controlled by our handlers. You will see them pay their debt to society and reenact a critical battle in the history of our world. Now, behold to the north, the Invaders!"
Another door swung wide, and from it emerged a horrid host. A scaly demon led his team out upon the sands. Demons were rare in the extreme, ancient creatures that had evaded a century of hunters, but they had not evaded Phage's folk. This one had a head like a sack of skin stretched across a skull. Horns jutted up all along its shoulders. Its torso was an amalgam of cable-taut muscle and metal framework. Its legs and arms were living mechanisms as well. The thing trudged forward, lifting its minuscule eyes to the crowd and raising clenched claws at them.
They cheered as much for it as they had for the defenders.
Behind the demon came a horde of beasts-huge serpents, enormous crabs, scaled wurms, rhinos with metal horns, giant ground sloths fitted with claws and spikes, and a host of gibbering dementia creatures only dreamed in ruined minds.
A roar went up from the Invaders, and an answering roar came from the Dominarians. The crowd itself took up the shout. The two sides charged together, and their cries shook the coliseum. The sound spun through concentric rings and flew out the parabolic arena as if a single great beast had awakened upon the world.
Atop the central pillar, Phage stood in the black throat of that hungry beast. She had created it out of swamps and stone, out of the throng and its darkest desires. Now she need merely feed it and watch it grow.
The warriors converged. Horns and blades rushed in to meet steel and spell. Minotaurs crashed head on with rhinos. Already bodies fell to the sand.
Feed it and watch it grow.
Something flashed in the stands. Phage looked toward the light-a mirror in the hand of Zagorka. She was signaling for Phage to come down to the grandest luxury box of all-the royal box of the Cabal.
Phage nodded. Braids was her voice to the world outside the coliseum, and Zagorka was her voice to the world within. The old woman would not have called unless the summons was urgent.
Following the rails atop the pillar platform, Phage came to a narrow set of stairs. She descended around the capital to an iron band that wrapped the column. The band was as wide around as a man. In each of the cardinal directions, it sported a massive cable that stretched to the coliseum's wall. These lateral supports for the column provided quick access from it down to the stands.
Phage lifted a metal hook from a holder full of them, looped the thing onto the cable, and pushed free.
She dangled high above the epic battle, gaining speed on her way toward the stands. Hook and cable began to spark, a bright tail behind Phage. Folk below pointed. An avid cheer rolled up for the slender, black-garbed woman. She was the architect of this new spectacle, and they loved her for it.
Hurtling like a comet, Phage soared toward the wall. She raised one foot and set it on the cable to slow her descent. Even so, as she came down she leaped free and rolled. The hook clanged brutally against the wall. Phage could have broken her own fall, except that a fat man carrying drinks ducked under her. She landed, smashing him to the ground. For a moment, her outline formed a rotten well on his body, but then he was gone.