Kagan looked at the crushed walkie on the floor, then to Mallos. I was getting through to her.
“Mallos isn’t a Bedoowan,” I said with authority. “You can’t trust him!”
She sniffed back her tears, looked at Mallos, smiled, and said, “Of course, Mallos is not a Bedoowan. He came to us many years ago from the far side of the ocean and has been my most trusted advisor ever since. Why do you tell me things I already know?”
Oh well, so much for my brilliant plan. She already knew. Kagan reached to the table next to her throne and grabbed a piece of purple fruit. It must have been past her feeding time, which was probably every five minutes. She took a big sloppy bite and a river of purple juice ran down her chin and landed on her ample chest. I wanted to puke. When she spoke, it was with a mouth full of fruit goo. Did I mention I wanted to puke?
“Why are you trying to get the Milago to make war with us?” she asked in her squeaky, annoying voice. It was weird; she sounded all innocent, like a three-year-old asking why the sky is blue. Was it possible that she didn’t know how bad the Milago had it? Was Mallos really the guy who was calling the shots and using this creepy, child-woman like a puppet? I figured I’d better answer carefully.
“Because they have horrible lives,” I said. “They live in dirty, mud huts and they don’t have enough food. If they don’t mine enough glaze, they are murdered. But the worst thing is, they’re dying. The air in the mines is poisoning them. They want to fight because they are desperate for better lives.”
That about summed it up. I didn’t want to accuse the Bedoowan of taking advantage of them, that might get her mad. But I wanted to paint a picture of how bad the Milago had it. If Her Royal Chubness didn’t know these things before, maybe now she would think twice about what her people were doing and have a little sympathy.
She took another juicy bite from her purple fruit and stared at me. What was she thinking? Alder and Loor watched her, waiting for her reaction. Mallos looked bored. Kagan then tossed the juicy wet fruit pit on the floor. Instantly a Novan servant appeared from behind the throne, cleaned up the pit, then disappeared again. No wonder this woman was so fat. She didn’t have to lift a finger to do anything.
Kagan then said innocently, “That is how it always has been. The Milago dig for glaze so that the Bedoowan can trade it for lovely things. It has been this way forever.”
Wow. Could she really be so clueless? She didn’t think there was anything wrong with the Milago suffering and dying for them. I glanced to Loor and she had the same look of dumbfounded surprise on her face that I’m sure I had. Alder just kept looking down at the floor. I think he already knew where Kagan’s head was. I wasn’t sure of what to do next, but I had to say something.
“And what do the Bedoowan do for the Milago in return for their hard work?” I asked.
Kagan cocked her head in surprise, as if I were asking something she had never thought of before. It reminded me of the way Marley turns her head and her ears go up when she hears a strange sound. Before answering, Kagan reached for another piece of purple fruit and started gnawing on it. She made these little grunting, slurping sounds that turned my stomach. What a pig. The whole while she gazed off into the distance, as if she were giving some serious thought to the question I had asked. I couldn’t wait to hear the answer because from what I saw, the Bedoowan do nothing for the Milago except abuse them. Alder and Loor waited for the answer as well. Even Mallos looked at the queen in anticipation.
Kagan took another messy bite of her fruit, swallowed, then looked right at me and said, “Your questions make my head hurt.” She then looked at Mallos and said, “Kill them.”
Whoa, bad response. Instantly the knights grabbed me and started dragging me and Loor and Alder toward the door.
Loor put up the best fight. She screamed back at Kagan, “It does not matter what happens to us! The Milago will not be slaves forever!”
That was very bold and all, but I was kind of thinking itdid matter what happened to us. The knights dragged us out into the corridor and toward the stairs when I heard Mallos calling from behind.
“Wait,” he shouted. “I wish to speak with that one!”
That meant me. The knights stopped dragging me along and Mallos approached us. He looked at me for a long while, as if sizing me up.
“Remember what happens here today, Pendragon,” he said seriously. “This is how it will be. There is no hope for you. Halla will fall, and you will fall with it.”
He then looked at the knights and ordered, “Take them to the box.” As the knights dragged me away, Mallos called, “Remember, Pendragon!”
What was he talking about? I expected him to say something like: “The Milago are doomed!” or “You will all die a horrible death!” or some other nastiness. But instead, what he said made no sense. What is Halla? Osa had said something about Halla before she died, but I had no idea what she was talking about. More important, if I was about to die, then why did he tell me to remember what was going to happen? The way things were going, I wasn’t going to live long enough to have time to forget. Believe it or not, as scared as I was, Mallos’s words gave me hope. They reminded me that this was actually a larger battle than it seemed. It wasn’t just about the Milago and the Bedoowan. It was about the future of the whole territory of Denduron. If Mallos threatened that he would always defeat me, then he must expect there to be more battles. And maybe that meant he wasn’t planning to kill us after all. At least that’s what I hoped.
The knights dragged the three of us to the circular stairway. I expected them to bring us down to the prison area, but instead we went up. We climbed one more flight of stairs and were then hurried down a wide corridor to a wooden door with a heavy lock. One of the knights pulled out a big old key, opened the door and shoved us inside. Behind us, the door slammed with a booming crash and we found ourselves in the dark. I think we were all too stunned and scared to look around. Not that there was anything to see.
“Is this it?” asked Loor, sounding bold as ever. “Is this where we will die?”
“No,” said Alder. “This is not where we will die.” Alder seemed pretty calm about the whole thing. It was strange. Alder was a pretty nervous guy in general, but now he acted all casual in the face of certain death. I guess of the three of us, I was the only one who was actually scared. No fair.
“How come you’re so calm?” I asked.
I didn’t like his answer. He said, “Because this is the holding area. Nothing will happen to us here. When they are ready, they will bring us to the horror.”
I guess that meant Alder wasn’t being casual, he was in a state of shock. He knew this was the calm before the storm. Something was coming and the thought of it was so horrible that it frightened him far beyond the point of showing nervousness.
“What will they do to us?” asked Loor.
She didn’t have to wait for an answer. A door creaked open on the far side of the room and bathed the place in bright sunshine. Once the sun came in I saw this was a cell, with shackles on the walls and leg irons on the floor. Two knights in full battle gear stood at the open door. One of them motioned for us to come outside. We knew we had no choice, so we walked toward the sunlight. Loor took the lead, but before she went she turned to us and said, “I will not die without taking some of those Bedoowan animals with me.” She then turned and left, with Alder and I close behind.
When we stepped into the sunshine, I was blinded and had to shade my eyes. Before they adjusted, I got a strange feeling. I think maybe it was the sound, but I had the feeling we weren’t alone. Once my eyes adjusted I realized that not only weren’t we alone, we were standing in a huge stadium along with thousands of other people. This was the Bedoowan version of a sports arena. It was open air. Above our heads was blue sky-we were on the top level of the Bedoowan palace. Two days before when I had looked across the inlet to the bluff above the palace, I thought it was just barren land. But now I realized that from where I was I couldn’t look down into this arena that was dug below the surface.