Chapter 14 - Who the hell are you?.
Schtance came toward Aren at a slow walk, her back straight and her hands down, while Aren's heart beat so hard he could hear it in his temples, sweat ran down his face, his hands shook faintly, and his breath came out ragged, forcing its way through a dry throat.
He held a crooked unsteady guard with his fists up and tried not to take his eyes off the Aisengarder as she came almost all the way in, leaving less than an arm's length between them.
After a short pause she tipped her head to one side, and Aren jerked, close to throwing a fist first.
Schtance ran her eyes down his body unhurriedly, then brought them back up to his face, and one corner of her mouth shifted.
She stepped back, stood half-turned and flicked her right wrist toward him, inviting the first strike.
Aren could hear only his own heart, beating loud enough to drown out the stands and everything beyond this patch of arena, though his legs refused to move.
Schtance let out a small breath, and in the next second she spun her whole body at once and threw a fist at his face, so Aren got his forearms crossed in front of him at the last instant and the hard blow ran through the bones, and the ground went out from under him, taking him four paces back.
Elara's cry came from above, and at the railing Bernard tore up from his place, closing his fists and looking down with a whitened face.
Aren lay on his back looking at the gray sky, with the burn and the pulsing running through his arms, then turned onto his side, braced a palm in the sand and tried to even out his breathing.
Hearing nothing around him but the noise of the stands, merged into one muffled roar and pushing through the ringing in his head, he raised his head and saw Schtance walking unhurriedly toward Hart, who lay by the stone wall.
Aren got up fast with a deep breath, the familiar aching pain from the day of his awakening starting up again in his head.
Schtance, for her part, stopped and turned, seeing Aren on his feet.
"So what did you get up for?" she said, sighing and starting toward him at the same slow walk.
"You do understand where this leads."
Another brainless idiot. What a backward people… , she said inside her head.
Meanwhile Aren narrowed his eyes a little, catching how his attention had begun to sharpen, settling on details that had meant nothing to him before. The sway of a shoulder with every step, the hair lagging behind the turn of her body, the angle of the right arm carried a little lower than the left.
When she had closed enough distance, the smallest shift flickered through her right shoulder, and after it the mechanical arm came forward in a straight punch, and Aren took his body aside from it, losing his balance for a fraction of a second.
Schtance straightened and turned her head toward him, and a short pause hung between them, broken by a lunge forward with acceleration enough that Aren could not catch it.
The blow landed in his chest and threw him back five paces this time, so that he came down on his backside and raised a cloud of sand.
In the same second Schtance was already closing, bringing her leg up in a straight kick to his head, and Aren threw his body aside as her leg struck the sand.
Bracing on that same leg buried in the sand she turned and threw the next strike in a horizontal arc at Aren, still sitting in the sand, but he arched his back away and the leg passed centimeters from his face.
He got up fast and retreated several steps, getting his breath back, while Schtance stood with her eyes lowered, and only then brought them across to Aren.
"Why aren't you attacking?" she asked.
"What is the point of your stunt if you have no intention of even attacking me?"
Aren did not answer, closing his shaking hands harder into fists.
"I've had enough of this. Time to finish this circus."
Schtance came at him again, but this time he managed to slip it, taking his head off the line her fist went through.
The next blow to the body he took on crossed arms again, staying on his feet, and in the series after that he let a strike through to the shoulder.
A stir went through the stands, where Leo, standing at the very railing with his mouth open, leaned forward, and Elara, gripping his sleeve, did not let her eyes close.
Schtance did not slow, and into each next combination she added new unorthodox angles of attack, changes of rhythm, transitions from the arms to the body.
With each exchange Aren was a little earlier, at first only moving off the line of the blow, then starting to put his forearm at the right angle and knock the arm aside.
He's slipping them differently than at the start…Something changed in the gap between the strikes… , Schtance thought.
She added tempo, attacking with acceleration on the approach, so Aren let a blow through to the chest, then another to the shoulder, but the third strike of the same series went into a block that was exactly where it needed to be.
After several exchanges more they came apart unexpectedly, and Aren went on holding his guard, with almost no shortness of breath and no tremor left in his hands.
He's starting to irritate me, Schtance said in her mind.
She evened out her breathing and reconfigured, changing the placement of her feet and the angle of her elbows and distributing her weight differently, so that her whole figure took up the Aisengard combat stance.
Aren studied that stance closely, the familiar background pain in his head still there, rising as new combat information went in.
Suddenly Schtance closed with a sharp lunge and began attacking in a different style, where the elbows went in horizontal arcs, with fast transitions into knee strikes in the low zone.
The first elbow Aren did not catch, and it clipped his shoulder, though the second knee thrust he took on crossed arms, folding but holding.
The third strike he closed correctly, putting his forearm up and killing most of the force.
How does he manage to defend and slip this well? she went on with her inner monologue.
Schtance released a series with a feint of a straight to the face that turned at once into a short hard strike to the body, which Aren bought the first time, though he managed to block the next combination of the same kind.
He memorized it. In two repetitions…
On one of the following evasions, when her body came forward with the blow, Aren turned and attacked with a knee that landed on the block at her body, then sprang aside from the counter and broke the distance with it.
Schtance straightened and turned to him slowly, her amber eyes throwing off an aggressive glow in the shadow of her face.
But in that same second the menace in her look gave way to surprise, as her brows went up and her eyes widened.
Aren stood in that same Aisengard stance, his leg set at the right width, his right elbow covering part of his body and his left shoulder drawn back to the right angle, and the fear had gone out of his eyes completely.
I don't understand what's happening… but somehow… I see… no… it's as if I feel her movements with my own body.. and the more I see… the more I understand… the easier the pain in my head gets , Aren thought.
Taking a short breath, he suddenly decided to attack first, breaking forward in a lunge that came out poorly but closed the distance fast, as Schtance moved aside and answered with a counter that he took on a block.
Aren threw several combinations using the same linkages she had attacked with, and Schtance herself slipped and counterattacked, seeing as she did that this time he blocked every attack and went aside at once, breaking the distance.
They stopped ten paces from each other, as the sand raised between them settled slowly.
I was wrong… He isn't simply adapting… He's copying… He's learning.
The lieutenant ran her eyes over the whole of his stance, carrying the thought on.
Perfect setup. Every advantage of the stance is being used correctly. Who is he?
At that time Vector Fray, seated in the boxes, leaned his elbows on his knees, crossed his fingers in front of his face and watched the arena without looking away, while Edith held her eyes on him for a moment before moving them back to the arena in silence.
The first strike came from Aren again, closing the distance and throwing a fist into her body, then into her side, then going aside and attacking once more, giving her no room to reconfigure.
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Schtance stepped back and put her forearm under the first blow, closed the next with a second movement, occupied with holding her position under the pressure.
"He… he knows how to fight?…" said Leo, gripping the railing with both hands and not taking his eyes off the arena.
Bernard did not answer, standing with his eyes wide open and looking down.
What is going on, Aren?… Where from?…How? , ran through his head.
Aren went on pressing with combinations to the head and transitions low, slipping the answering movements and attacking again.
I… I can see all of it… I'm going to do it… I'm going to do all of it!
At one point Schtance opened up for a fraction of a second, and Aren's right hand was already on its way to that spot, with the right weight and the turn of the hip behind it.
But suddenly her mechanical hand caught his fist in mid-motion, the fingers closing hard around the whole of it and squeezing with rising pressure, as Aren tried at once to tear his arm free.
In that same moment a narrow blue glow was building in the gaps between the plates of the prosthetic, along with a mechanical hum inside the housing, and then a heavy energy impulse struck out of her arm and threw Aren backward.
He hit the sand with his back and rolled across it face down, coming to a stop with the ringing in his head.
"Not bad," she said, straightening slowly and lowering the prosthetic along her body.
"You picked up the Aisengard hand-to-hand technique in a few minutes of combat and adapted to my attacks. If it weren't for the way you look, I would have decided you were one of us."
She shook the mechanical arm out, and a deep resonating sound passed through the inside of the prosthetic.
"But even with phenomenal learning ability…" she began, walking slowly toward him.
"…you failed to account for one important fact. In Aisengard we run combat training every day. We work with each other, honing every form of fighting… Did you really believe you would have a chance against someone who has worked constantly with masters just as good, and often better?"
She stopped a few paces off, the last of them driving into the sand with particular force, as Aren slowly raised his body and his face out of the sand.
"What is more… Hand-to-hand combat is a measure of last resort. The primary and far more effective form of combat remains the use of mechanical prosthetics and catalytic energy."
Schtance turned her arm over, and the plates shifted in motion, transforming into a long blade that she swung at him at once.
Aren barely got clear in time, though even so the blade managed to open a long cut across his chest.
Pressing a hand to the wound, he brought his eyes from his own chest to Schtance, feeling the fear come back.
Schtance stood half-turned with the blade prosthetic aimed off to the side and watched him without changing her face.
"Aren!" Elara shouted from the stands, as Schtance drove forward.
He got clear as long as he could, ducking under the horizontal strikes, shifting to the sides, moving off the line of attack, but the blade caught him every other time.
A cut across the left shoulder. Across the side. Across the right forearm, already aching from the first blows.
Each of them was shallow, but the blood came, and with every evasion after that his movements grew heavier.
Then the plates of the prosthetic transformed again, so that the construction took the form of a mechanical cannon's barrel, with an energy charge starting to gather inside it.
The first shot came out with a short cracking sound and blew apart a piece of the stone parapet behind Aren's shoulder, sending the fragments down and drawing a swelling roar out of the lower rows as the spectators pushed back.
The second charge landed closer, the third smashed a stone slab two paces away, and Aren rolled behind the corner of the barrier, breathing through his mouth and pressing a hand to his wounded side.
The blood came from several places, and with every movement after that his legs held a little worse than before.
Then he saw Schtance turn the prosthetic the other way, aiming the barrel at Hart, who lay unconscious by the wall, and Aren tore toward him with a roar.
Got you, fool.
Schtance corrected her aim at once and fired along the calculated trajectory, and the charge hit its target exactly, throwing Aren back and driving him into the stone wall.
He fell face down into the sand, showing no sign of life, as his consciousness began sinking slowly into darkness.
A heavy silence stood over the stands, shot through with scattered voices, and nobody in the lower rows came near the railing.
"AREN, NO!" Elara's voice broke, and she clamped her mouth with her palm, looking at his body with eyes full of tears.
Schtance slowly lowered the prosthetic, and the plates folded back into the form of a hand with a quiet mechanical movement, while she went on standing half-turned, looking at her opponent's motionless body, and then raised her eyes to the boxes.
Fray held his eyes on Aren, then glanced at Schtance, who let a short pause run before she turned and started toward Hart.
"Aren! Get up! Do you hear me?!" Leo burst out, leaning out over the railing.
"AREN! GET UP!"
Meanwhile Aren's consciousness was in a deep darkness where there was nothing but cold, the same cold he had felt just before waking on the riverbank.
But suddenly, in the middle of all that darkness, eyes began to open, white and glowing, appearing one after another and growing in number until there were more than a dozen.
Each of them hung in the space with no body and no form and looked straight at Aren, and after that inhuman voices began to sound, laying over one another and speaking in a language unknown to him.
They went on rising until the painful sound filled the whole space, so Aren grabbed his ears, squeezing and grimacing under the pressure, while his whole life in the Golden Flow went past in front of his eyes. The riverbank, Elara's face over his own, Leo with his homemade mechanisms in his hands, Bernard's forge, the heat and the ringing of metal, the lights of the summer festival, Aris's face as she came down off the saddle at the gates, the arena stands, the sand underfoot and Hart at the wall.
Then all of it broke off at once, and a deep silence came.
He slowly took his hands off his ears and looked around, seeing the giant eyes still watching him closely.
In the next second they all spoke together, merging into a single rhythm.
"Rise."
The sand right by his face flew up in a small wave when Aren shuddered with a deep breath in.
Schtance was on one knee in front of Hart, checking his condition, and turned sharply.
Aren was braced on his hands with his torso raised, trying to get his breathing back, with the blood still running from the wounds.
Surprise froze on Schtance's face, and she rose slowly and turned to him.
He worked one knee up with difficulty, then braced a hand on it and pushed himself onto his second leg with a pained breath out, barely holding his balance.
Schtance breathed out deeply, and the plates of the prosthetic came into motion.
I don't understand. How is he still standing?… Never mind, it makes no difference. He won't be able to get clear now.
The barrel came up and leveled on Aren, who stood with his head hanging down.
Slowly raising his face, with sand caked onto it in the blood, he saw the light already running through the plates of the prosthetic, and the glow of a gathering charge coming out of the barrel.
At that moment Bernard's words surfaced in his memory.
"They cover themselves in a shell of energy, reinforcing their defense. By concentrating energy inside the body they heal their wounds faster and tire less."
The charge formed and Schtance fired, while inside Aren's body a dormant particle flared with energy that spread through every cell of him, going off in a chain reaction.
Aren extended his hand, and a single word flashed through his head.
Guard.
The charge reached him, and the roar of the blast raised a cloud of sandy dust, covering the whole section of the arena in an impenetrable curtain of sand and smoke.
The stands froze and waited as the sand settled slowly.
When the outlines came through it, Schtance's brows drew together at the bridge of her nose and her mouth came open, while the stands began to hum with a bewildered rising roar.
Leo and Bernard looked down in frozen shock, and Elara held her hands at her chest, not taking her eyes off the arena.
A two-meter half-dome of dense blue energy stood in front of Aren's extended hand, holding its form and having withstood Schtance's shot, while the tattoos across his whole body glowed with that same blue light, and the wounds had stopped bleeding without closing.
He slowly lowered his shaking hand, and the half-dome dispersed.
Queen Edith and Sir Aurey traded a slow look, while Sterling held on to the railing of the box, looking down with no less surprise.
Fray leaned back into his chair, slowly parted the fingers crossed in front of his face and lowered his hands to his knees, moving his eyes from Aren to Schtance, who did not move, studying what she was looking at.
What kind of magic is this?… This energy… clearly isn't a Waldruhm shell… and it isn't Helios light magic. The blue glow is close to catalytic, but catalytic energy is incapable of holding material form…
"Who the hell are you?" she asked.
Aren did not answer at once, straightening slowly and taking a deep breath, feeling his lungs take the air in with effort, and only then raised his eyes to her.
"If only I knew…" he answered.
"But right now… right now I'm… your opponent," Aren added, forcing his shaking fists up in front of his face.
Schtance frowned and glanced toward the boxes, where Fray was looking straight into her eyes, and she breathed out.
"I see."
The lieutenant raised her left hand, open palm to the stands, and turned her back on Aren.
"I surrender."
Silence froze over the whole arena, and in it Schtance lowered her hand in silence and walked toward the inner arches at an unhurried pace, until the darkness of the passage took her in.
Aren stood watching her go, as a quiet bewildered movement rolled through the stands, in which people traded looks and whispers among themselves, and then broke out at once into one deafening voice, spilling all the built-up tension out in a single moment.
Edith, seated in the boxes, parted her lips slightly, her eyes sliding toward Fray, who did not take his narrowed eyes off Aren.
Rising to her feet, the queen threw a glance at Alistair and Aurey, then went out of the main boxes and started for the arena.
Aren looked at his own open palm, out of which something had just come that he had not the faintest idea about, and the ground began to go slowly out from under his feet, though Aurey caught him before he fell.
Alistair was on one knee beside Hart, checking his condition, and made a short sign with his hand, at which several knights came down onto the arena, lifted Hart carefully and carried him away.
Edith stood next to Aurey and moved her eyes from the knight being carried off to Aren's face and to his cut clothing, through the tears in which the black runic tattoos showed, the ones that had been shining minutes earlier.
The queen's eyes narrowed, and she turned to Aurey.
"Let the Archiater see to him and to Hart."
"As you command," Aurey answered.
Edith turned and left the arena, as Leo climbed over the railing and landed in the sand in an awkward jump, then ran to Aren, slipping between the legs of a knight who tried to stop him, and stood next to Aurey, staring at Aren's face with a shaking breath.
"Aren! Is he alive?"
"Alive," Aurey answered, glancing at the boy in surprise.
Leo covered his mouth with his palm and turned away, trying to even out his breathing, as Bernard came down after him, and Elara appeared last, stopping at his shoulder, watching Aren in silence with wet eyes and holding her hands at her chest.
The roar of the stands had not settled yet when Schtance came up the side stairs and entered the main boxes without stopping at the entrance.
She passed Thorne, who looked her over in silence, and lowered herself into the chair next to Fray, who went on watching the arena.
"Ørk klartøm imperøbefaled nøn søvrastrøv."
[I made my order not to overdo it perfectly clear, I believe.] he said without turning his head.
"Rect."
[Yes]
"Ørk partøklar portøbær condømpøn."
[I am ready to take my punishment.] she added.
Fray turned his head and looked at her for a second.
"Nøsvi vøl resøløs dørk supå redøtur."
[We'll deal with it when we return.] he answered.
"Sømen nuncønå — optimøl tødu finøkompleted ån rectøkorrekt momøstund."
[In the meantime, well done ending it at the right moment.]
"Nøsvi skølv skrutøgransk hånir, nøn necødrep."
[We need to study him, not kill him.]
"Rectøkorrekt."
[Understood.] Schtance said.
Later, in a room of the castle wing, the sunset light came through a narrow window in a slanting band that lay across the stone floor.
The knight Sir William Grant, rescued after the Sacred Hunt, lay on the bed with his eyes closed and his breathing heavy and turning ragged.
Fragments came to him in his sleep, and the first of them held a giant forest with a darkness so thick that not one gap was left between the trunks.
Something dragged him along the ground, hauling him through roots and frozen deadfall, while a deep breathing went on right over his ear.
Light came next, vertical, running down from above along a trunk of colossal height, with roots as thick as a fortress wall holding up bark that climbed in endless rows.
Then it came out of the depths, among the roots and the light, colossal and motionless.
Three eyes set in a triangle on the silhouette of a giant stag looked straight at him, as the majestic antlers went up past the crowns of the trees.
After a short silence a deep and terrible voice rang out through the whole space, filling the knight's entire mind.
"Find. And bring. FIND HIM. FIND AREN."
The knight jerked upright with a cry, knocking the blanket to the floor, and for several seconds looked at the ceiling of the dark room, not understanding where he was and feeling his heart ready to jump out of his chest, while the distant roar of the city came from outside.