The mul stumbled backward, shocked by the anger in their voices. When the company came no closer, Rikus recovered his composure and returned to the edge of the balcony. This time, he gripped the stone rail to prevent himself from retreating again-and to keep his hand from trembling.
“I had to save the rest of the legion,” Rikus said. Once again, he shouted to make himself heard, for the company had resumed its chant. “You were doomed anyway.”
Drewet led the company another pace closer, and again they shouted, “Hurray for Rikus!”
The mul’s knuckles turned white, but he did not step from the railing. “What do you want?” he asked. Though he tried to speak in a demanding tone, there was an undertone of dread and fear in his voice.
This time, only Drewet spoke. “Tell us why,” she demanded, moving closer. Tongues of flame began to lick at the underside of the stone balcony.
“I told you,” Rikus answered, feeling his legs begin to quiver. “To save the legion.”
The rest of the company came forward. “Hurray for Rikus!”
As they resumed the chant, it was all the mul could do to keep from turning and running. “If you want my life, then come and try to take it,” he yelled.
With a trembling hand, he reached for his sword.
Don’t, you fool! commanded Tamar. Until you bring me the book, your life is not your own to throw away. When Rikus moved his hand from his scabbard, she continued. Your warriors only wish to be dismissed. They are in pain.
How do you know? the mul demanded.
Look at them, Tamar said, a bemused note in her voice. Any fool can see they suffer the agony of their deaths. They would have abandoned their bodies long ago, had they been able.
Rikus turned his hand to the railing. “You’re free to leave.” After a moment, when the company continued to chant his name, he yelled, “Go. Leave your pain behind you!”
“Tell us why!” Drewet screamed.
She rose into the air until she hovered in front of the balcony. An orange tendril lashed out and touched Rikus’s sling, instantly setting the bloody cloth on fire. Screaming in alarm, the mul pulled his aching arm free, then ripped the rag from his neck and flung the flaming thing into the square.
Drewet’s company moved closer and chanted his name more loudly. Thinking that he had been a fool to listen to Tamar’s advice, Rikus retreated to the back of the balcony. Drewet followed, moving so close that the heat of her flaming form stung his skin. He drew his sword and held the blade in front of himself.
The Scourge won’t protect you, Tamar warned.
But she won’t listen!
How do you expect the warrors to accept their fate when you will not accept the onus for choosing it? Tamar asked. If you shrink from your destiny, it will destroy you-and I have no wish to find another agent to recover the book for me.
I am not your pawn!
Tamar let her silence be her reply.
At his back, the mul heard Neeva’s voice. “I’ll get Caelum!”
“No,” Rikus said, accepting Tamar’s advice. Though he distrusted the wraith as much as he despised her, the mul did not doubt that she was trying to save his life. As she had pointed out, she still needed him to recover the book. “I need no protection from my own warriors.”
Keeping his eyes fixed on the pillar of fire in front of him, Rikus slowly sheathed his sword and moved forward. Drewet backed away. When she was once again hanging over the square, the mul stopped and looked down at her company. They continued to cry his name, their voices bitter with resentment and pain. Rikus studied their tortured forms for several moments, his heart growing heavy as he accepted the full burden of what he had done.
At last, he was ready to dismiss Drewet’s company. “You died so I could win the battle,” he called, fixing his gaze on the flaming pillar before him. “I would do it again.”
The chanting stopped, and Canth looked up from the mug of bitter-smelling broy that a friend had poured for him. Like the rest of his fellows, the burly gladiator and his fire-mates had made their camp at the western end of town-as far away from Rikus and his company of dead disciples as they could.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Canth said, setting his square jaw. “What do you suppose Rikus is doing now? Has he taught Drewet and her troops a new song at last?” He supressed a shudder.
“Who knows?” replied Lor, a brown-skinned woman with a bloody bandage on the stump of her sword arm. She held her mug out to Jotano, a quiet templar who had endeared himself to the gladiators through his uncanny knack for finding broy or wine when others had to make do with water. “I’ll wager that whatever he’s about, it’s no good.”
“A dwarf told me he’s learned sorcery so he can be a king like Kalak,” offered Lafus, a stooped half-elf with an unusually broad face and a bald pate. “The dwarf heard it from Caelum himself.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Canth. “The Rikus I know doesn’t care about kings or magic. I say the ruby has taken over his mind-and it’s going to get us all killed.”
Lafus, always as ready to argue as he was to fight, countered the generous claim. “Because you once shared a stadium pen with the mul doesn’t mean you know him.” He snorted. “How do you account for those monstrous things in the square?”
Jotano shook his head. “Those are unquiet spirits, longing for rest, not creatures raised by magic.”
Canth nodded. “And you templars know your magic. Besides, I’ll believe Rikus’s word over that of a sun-sick dwarf any day,” he countered. “What makes you think Fire-Eyes knows what Rikus is doing?”
“My dwarf contact says it came to Caelum from Neeva,” said Lafus, his lip turned up in a triumphant sneer. “That’s why she won’t lie with Rikus anymore.”
In a drink-slurred voice, Lor declared, “Then I’ll lie with him.” She raised the stump of what had been her sword arm. “Maybe his magic will grow my hand back.”
She chuckled grimly, but the others looked away in uncomfortable silence.
After a moment, Canth faced Jotan. Hoping to counter the powerful case that Lafus had made by invoking Neeva’s name, the square-jawed gladiator asked, “What do you hear in your company’s camps, Jotano?”
The templar shrugged and refilled Lor’s empty mug. “It matters little to the templars whether Rikus is learning sorcery or controlled by it,” he said. “Magic is power, and it is better to have a powerful master than a weak one.”
K’kriq burst into Rikus’s room. “Come quick!” he said. “Need you.”
“For what?” the mul demanded. He sat up and placed his legs over the edge of the bed. During the last three days, he had risen from it only once, when he had gone to dismiss Drewet’s company. “Is Hamanu sending another army?”
“No,” K’kriq said. “Just come.”
Rikus forced himself to stand, gritting his teeth against the pain it caused. The spear puncture in his shoulder was already scarred over, for Caelum had used his magic to heal it long ago. Many of his other wounds, including most of the charred holes where he had been spattered by lava, were still in an awful state.
The canker on his chest, especially, had grown even more disgusting. Tamar’s ruby now resembled the red pupil of an eye, looking out on the world from a black iris that oozed a constant stream of foul yellow bile. The pestilence had left his arm swollen and useless, a source of constant pain that sometimes made him gasp.
Rikus put on his robe, then followed K’kriq down the mansion hallway. Like all the other buildings in the village, this one had not escaped the ravages of the fires the legion had set during their first retreat. The whole building stank of charcoal, and the ostentatious murals on its stone walls were lost beneath deep layers of soot.