J. Robert King

Onslaught

PROLOGUE: THE UNHEALING WOUND

Jeska clutched the wound in her belly and curled up in a soft bed of soil. Centuries of humus had made this a lovely place to lie, a likely place to die.

Jeska didn't want to die.

She wasn't home. Instead of her people, tawny-skinned and golden-eyed, she was among mantis folk. Instead of her brother Kamahl, who had carried her across the continent to be healed, she was tended by an ape-faced horse-man.

"It's all right. It's all right," Seton soothed. "This is a place of ancient power. It will heal you, if any place can…" Already, the mantis folk had told him she would not live. "The infection has gotten under your skin, that's all. It's just skin deep."

Jeska shook her head in denial and pain, and ferns clutched her thrashing hair. All around her, trees twisted into the sky. Birds and bushbabies and other things stared down from the green fronds and sent forth strange whoops of laughter.

Kamahl said she would be healed here. He hadn't said she would die.

She would die.

Jeska let go of the unhealing wound and gripped the arms of the centaur. Her fingers stained his flesh red and black. "Tell me what I must do. You are a druid, a healer. How can I live?"

Seton glanced up, seeking the support of the mantis folk. They were gone. They had withdrawn. He looked longingly at the forest, as if he wished to join them. "I should bring back your brother."

"No! Don't abandon me. It's bad enough to die among strangers, but to die alone…"

"It's going to be all right "For you! Oh, what I would trade to be in your skin instead of mine. Tell me what I must do to live."

His simian face was grieved as he stared down at her. Then there was something else-terrible pain. Seton shuddered and reached up over his shoulder. He gasped a breath and blood poured from his mouth. Eyes fixed in horror, he toppled forward onto her.

Jeska shoved at him. "Seton! What's happening! What are you doing?"

A new voice came, a woman's voice. "He saved your life-if you have the will to claim it. Do you, Jeska? Will you embrace a nightmare to live?"

Jeska stared over Seton's still shoulder but could not see who spoke. Her own strength failing, she said only, "What must I do?"

CHAPTER ONE: IMAGE AND TRUTH

For some, pit fighting was about killing. Just now in the pit, a gigantipithicus ape and a griffon tore each other apart. The air shimmered with feathers and fur, and the stands boiled with cheers. Avid faces peered down in concentric rings from the height of the arena. The crowds loved killing.

Ixidor shook his head, averting his eyes from the arena gate. He did not wish to see the fights as they were. He wished to see them as they should be. His hands flashed through a series of paper disks. Each showed a contingent of noble warriors arrayed for battle, striking blows, deflecting attacks, advancing, falling, fighting, prevailing. In pen and ink, Ixidor had rendered the scenes with such clarity they sank away from the page as if to imprint themselves on reality. Shortly, these images would become reality-and victory. Image magic.

For Ixidor, pit fighting was about art.

He paused in shuffling the disks and reached out to his partner. His hand settled on her knee and his eyes on her figure. She was more perfect than any art. Beautiful, brilliant, bold, garbed in white robes and bedecked in jewels-she was everything he was not. How Ixidor, a gawky artist with jutting jaw and unkempt hair, could be the companion of this gleaming angel, he would never know. Perhaps she needed him. After all, a work of art needed an artist.

"The avens aren't ready," Nivea said as if in a trance. Though she grasped his hand, her mind was faraway, tapping other creatures. "We can't count on them for this fight."

Ixidor's angular face split in a bemused grin. He fished a disk from among the others. It showed a contingent of bird-men advancing with pikes foremost. Crumpling the thing, he threw it to the floor of the prep pen. "Avens've been worthless for a couple of seasons. I'm not going to waste time with them anymore."

Nivea smiled-not because of his words, but because of another summoning she prepared. "Still, the Order refugees are raring to go." Nivea herself had once been part of the Northern Order before it was decimated. "They'll be enough."

Deftly, Ixidor moved the appropriate disks to the top of the stack. He closed his eyes, imagining the armor he would grant the Order soldiers. Nivea would summon warriors to the pits, and Ixidor would wrap them in image magic. She commanded reality and he illusion. They had not been beaten yet, and today would be no exception.

Though her mind still moved among magical mercenaries, Nivea's attention had shifted. "How much will we make… if we win?"

"When we win," corrected Ixidor, "we'll make plenty."

"Plenty enough to quit the pits?" Nivea asked. The visionary light had left her eyes, and she fixed them on Ixidor. "I hate all the killing."

Ixidor flashed her a winning grin. "I know, but we don't kill, my dear. We subdue."

"What if we get killed?"

He kissed the back of her hand. "We can't get killed, not while we're together. Who can stand against us? None so far."

"So far," echoed Nivea.

"Come on." Ixidor stood and stretched. In one hand he held his paper disks, and in the other he held the hand of Nivea, lifting her from her seat. He drew her up beside him and wrapped her in his arms. "Look in my eyes. What do you see?"

Nivea stared. "Confidence. Cockiness. Courage."

"Look closer."

Her gaze grew more intent. "I see myself."

"Yes. As long as you are in my eyes, I am complete. As long as I am in your eyes, you are complete. How can any of these half-hearts compete with us?"

The worry left her face, and the smile that formed there was radiant. "You always know what to say."

"You mean I'm always right."

She shook her head ruefully. "I mean you almost always know what to say."

Ixidor laughed, and Nivea joined him. This was as much a part of their pre-fight ritual as preparing their magic. They could not truly fight together until they could laugh together. The sound of it tuned their souls.

Beyond their laughter came an agonized shriek from the griffon. The crowd roared ecstatically, and the death bell tolled. The gigantic ape bowed amid a flurry of lost-wager stubs. Pit vermin scuttled out and dragged away every shred of the bird-lion.

Before the ovation could die down, the gate before Ixidor and Nivea swung open, and the two emerged onto the pit floor. They lifted their hands together to hail the crowd, and they laughed.

The clamor united Ixidor and Nivea, no longer two entities but one. Some teams were sundered by that roar-each member fighting as if alone and dying the same. Not these two. Ixidor and Nivea were utterly amalgamated.

They were crowd pleasers, despite the fact that they rarely killed. Crowds loved beauty almost as much as blood, and to watch Ixidor and Nivea fight was to watch beauty.

Ixidor turned, gazing out at the pit. It was a deep, black well, ringed round by tiers of seats. Spectators bunched out like violent flowers. Faces lit with anticipation, human and inhuman-elfin, aven, centaur, barbarian, simian, and unnatural combinations thereof. AH shone with the same bloodthirsty light.

"We belong here together," Ixidor said, his heart pounding.

"We belong together," Nivea replied. She pivoted and bowed before the roaring crowd.

The cheers fell suddenly away, as if choked by a killing cloud. Ixidor felt a dark presence at their backs. Still clinging to Nivea, he turned. Together they saw.