Epic Of Ahiram (Book 1) (53 page)

The bitter tone of this last sentence surprised Garu. “I don’t…I mean… it was Ibromaliöm who asked me.” Garu knew he was speaking the truth, even though it was only the partial truth.

“And how did he convince you?”

“He offered to waive all outstanding debts I had with him.” Garu could see that Tanios was processing what he had just told him.

“ You may go, but stay with your escort. There is a murderer in these corridors, and we do not know when he will strike again.”

“Thank you, Commander Tanios, for your solicitude.” He added with a hushed voice, “If I were you, I would keep a close eye on Ibromaliöm. His hatred for the men of Baal knows no bounds.”

“I shall remember this, my dear Garu, now go in peace.”

Garu walked to the table and looked at Tanios. He picked up the door handle and left the room quickly.

Tanios stayed in the room a little longer, pacing. He looked at the place where the handle sat a moment ago, wondering why Garu was lying. When he placed his hand above the knob, he did not feel any heat dissipating. The handle was cold. Tanios knew enough about magic rituals to know that the current arrangement was an incantation for Baal. It would be foolish to ask Baal to act against its own, especially against members of the sacred Temple of Baal. Ibromaliöm knew better than to ask that from Baal. Evidently, Garu was lying, but why?

He could have placed both of them under arrest, but then the King would have been forced to reveal to Bahiya that magic was being performed in his castle, which would spell the doom of the kingdom. Instead, the King would order the immediate release of the two judges. Better to escort and keep an eye on them, rather than risk a useless confrontation with His Majesty.

He wondered if he was looking for two murderers instead of one.

Only time would tell.

“I have said it before and it bears repeating: hope is our greatest enemy, the scourge of the human heart, a cruel ploy of the Pit to lure man into the depth of darkness. Hope is an illusion, for the gods have decreed the fate of man to be what it is: a painful trek into oblivion. All we can do is avoid a worse fate by falling into the Pit, and this is precisely where hope will lead us.

“Every priest of Baal is a sworn enemy of hope.”

–
From the Teaching of Oreg, High Priest of Baal

Night had fallen; cold and damp. Thick clouds brooded over the unlit plaza while a dense fog blanketed the lake and valley. The crowd, twenty thousand strong by now, huddled on three large wooden structures that slaves had erected hastily that morning. Intermittently, a
hookah
(water pipe) would light up; an ephemeral bright spot swallowed all too quickly by the muted darkness.

Up ahead, burning torches lined both sides of the western road from the spot where Ahiram had climbed during the Game of Bronze, back to the plaza—a two-hundred-yard stretch. As the evening grew old, the fog crept up, swallowing a few torches. They sputtered and blinked in the whitish swirl like the pupils of a phantasmagorical dragon. All eyes were trained on that spot, waiting for the athletes to burst into their final sprint to the finish line.

The disaffected merchants stood by their empty carts, having sold out as early as noon. No one had expected the crowd to swell up the way it did. A tall, burly merchant, wearing an open shirt—revealing a chest so hairy a gorilla would have been jealous—stood staring at the lit path. To relieve his boredom, he took a silver coin stamped with the effigy of the King and began tossing it up, catching it with great ease. He tossed the coin once more, sneezed, and the coin fell to the ground. It bounced on the stony surface, and the ringing sound it produced jarred the night, startling the nearby spectators. It bounced again and landed on its edge, spinning as it followed a semi-circle. The coin hit a tiny pebble that tipped it forward. It wobbled for a moment, then fell into a muddy puddle, face down.

As if on cue, a pack of coyotes deep within the forbidden forest howled, shattering the quiet. A young girl, not yet ten, buried her head in her father’s chest beneath the thick blanket that kept her warm. Her younger brother sitting next to her—still holding the bell he had rung two days ago—scolded her, “Stop it, Misty, Ahiram is fighting for us. Show courage.” The merchant blushed, picked up the coin and wiped Jamiir’s muddied face. He then stuffed the silver piece in his pocket and stood still next to his cart.

Two days ago, a smaller crowd derided and jeered the Silent, thinking his participation a cruel joke at their expense—yet another attempt by the Temple to crush their fighting spirit. Tonight they began to believe in the impossible. His victory meant the difference between freedom and slavery, life or death for the Kingdom of Tanniin. Their glimmer of hope born when Ahiram won the first Game had now grown into a fierce flame fueled by their thirst for freedom.

The arbitrators had told the crowd about this morning’s earthquake. Since no one outside felt it, persistent rumors convinced the crowd that the high priestess had used Baal’s dark sorcery to cause the earthquake in an attempt to kill the slave. A few hours later, another rumor began circulating: the King had consented to the death of their hero. Hot anger simmered behind the stoic faces, anger directed at the King and the Temple. Whispers of three men of Baal turning into monsters which stalked the castle seeped through the crowd. Bahiya did this to three of her own men, the story went, but Commander Tanios and his Silent killed the monsters. These rumors were music to Soloron’s ears who grinned beneath his cowl.
Everything is proceeding as planned
, he thought, satisfied.
Soon, Taniir-The-Strong Castle will be ours.

Meanwhile, the four judges stood by the finish line waiting for the athletes. “Look at all these people,” whispered Ramany in Hylâz’s ear. He was visibly afraid. “They are so quiet. Do you feel the muted anger hovering over them like a dark cloud?”

Hylâz looked up. “Well, there are no clouds hovering over them. I am not certain that was a good choice as far as metaphors go.”

“Spare me your sarcasm, Hylâz,” snapped Ramany. “This is serious. There are at least twenty thousand people here, and they are angry.”

Hylâz pointed to the hills west of the plaza, which the fog had spared. “Can you count the number of pit fires on that hill?” he said softly.

“By Tanniin’s horns, there are hundreds of them,” whispered Ramany.

“More,” said Ramany in a halting voice. “Thousands. I’d wager there are at least forty thousand people waiting over there.”

“What? Forty thousand more?” gasped Ramany, “You mean we’re surrounded by a mob sixty thousand strong?”

“Calm down,” snapped Hylâz. He then whispered, “do not speak of being surrounded. Pray the slave wins this Game.”

Ramany shivered. Even though the air was cold and wet, he was sweating. He dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. “You’re right. The slave had better win these Games now,” he said, as he glanced fearfully at the crowd, expecting it to rise any moment now and savagely rush toward them. Slowly, he turned his back to the plaza and focused on the empty road. The torches’ flames were swaying in the wind, threatening to go out, but the arbitrators kept a close watch.

“What happens if no one wins tonight?” he asked, after a while. “I mean, what happens if none of them can get out of the mines?”

“The rules are binding,” whispered Garu in their ears, causing them to jump from fright. “Calm yourselves,” he snapped. “I repeat: the rules are binding. No team can be declared a winner unless they cross this line. We have no other choice but to wait.”

“How long do we have to wait before we declare forfeiture?” asked Ibromaliöm, matter-of-factly.

“If no team comes forth by the stroke of the third watch of the night,” recited Hylâz, “then, and only then, judges are authorized to declare forfeiture provided there is unanimous consent and all other avenues have been duly examined and declared null and void.”

A quick glance at the giant hourglass standing nearby told them there was still a half hour to go.

Despite the late hour and their tiredness, they kept staring at the road. Ramany could not stop shivering. He refused to consider what would happen to him if Ahiram did not win this round. Nearby, the entrance to the Cave of Bronze stood like a gaping wound in the side of the mountain. The caves were shrouded in a deafening silence that the moan of the westerly wind broke intermittently, like a mourner lamenting the fate of the departed.

Time stretched lazily and still no team came forth. Garu stood apart, brooding while Ibromaliöm paced with a deliberate slowness, lost in thought, unconcerned by the current events. Hylâz and Ramany stepped away from the two other judges.

Hylâz, glanced behind his back to check that Garu was not eavesdropping, “What if…how shall I say this…what if all teams have been incapacitated, what would happen then?” He glanced nervously at the crowd.

“Well, you heard the head judge. I suppose we would have an incapacitated winner,” replied Ramany.

“But that would be dreadful,” said the judge in a squeal.

“I will go further,” added Ramany. “It would be most dreadful.”

“Are all Games this…” Hylâz seemed at a loss for words to describe the current Games. This was his first participation as a judge.

“Eventful?” suggested Ramany.

“Yes, I suppose this is the word I was looking for. ‘Eventful’ would describe these Games rather aptly, would you not say?”

Ramany closed his eyes and rubbed them gently. “I would go further. I don’t remember another Game that was this eventful, except perhaps when a group of commoners managed to fool the judges by pretending to represent the Kingdom of Oronoque. They took part in the Games, only to meet their fate.”

“They all died?” gasped Hylâz.

“All of them,” replied Ramany somberly.

“What happened then? How did the crowd react?”

“The crowd rioted against the Temple and nearly stoned the judges to death. In the end, to keep the peace, the King exiled all four judges.”

“When did this happen?”

“During the Game of Gold.”

The wind blew forcefully, and the moaning from the cave intensified. Hylâz looked reproachfully at Ramany who shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes.

In the far distance, a shout tore through the silence like a knife cutting through ice. The crowd stood as one man, and all eyes were now on the empty road wondering what this shout meant.

They heard the shout again, and the silence settled in once more like a heavy blanket. A low rumble filled the plaza as the crowd began to question the meaning of these shouts. Small groups formed in animated discussions. Garu did not seem to pay heed to the shout, but Ibromaliöm stopped pacing and was looking toward the mountain.

“Ibromaliöm woke up,” whispered Hylâz, but Ramany shrugged his shoulders in irritation.

Ibromaliöm’s evasive behavior displeased Hylâz profoundly, and Garu’s seeming disinterest in the Games disappointed him. He was convinced that most of the events of the past few days could have been prevented had the judges been better prepared. Mostly, he blamed Garu’s lack of leadership. Had he been leading effectively, the slave would have been humming a different ballad by now, but what is done is done.

“Look, someone is coming,” shouted a man from the crowd, pointing in the direction of the path that the procession had taken this morning.

Hylâz and Ibromaliöm looked and saw four members of the Silent carrying a dead man. Carefully, they laid the body on the ground, then the leader of the patrol approached the four judges.

“Greetings, Your Honors.”

“Greetings to you, young man,” replied Garu. “What tidings do you bring us tonight?”

“Sad, I am afraid, Master Garu. We have found the body of this worthy contestant in the lake.”

“And to what team did he belong?” asked Ramany.

“The Team of Baal, Your Honor.”

“You went through the walls of fire to retrieve the dead man?” asked Hylâz. “I am impressed.”

The Silent blushed with embarrassment.

“Actually, my dear Hylâz,” interjected Ibromaliöm sarcastically, “I most certainly need not remind you that these so called ‘Walls of Fire’ are entirely under the control of the arbitrators. As you must know, they are lit for the Games and extinguished once the last contestant has gone through them.”