Sahalik, at least, seemed to think that they had a chance. The next day he and Shani took Kayan and Jedra out onto the practice field together and taught them fighting strategy.

"You'll be up against a dwarf named Lothar," he told them. "He fights with a curved sword, sharpened on both sides. Given your little display yesterday, Jedra, I think we'll give you a club, and Kayan, you'll have a spear." He tossed their weapons to them. Jedra's club was presumably the very one he would use in the arena, but Kayan's spear was only a shaft of wood with a rag tied around the end.

Shani carried the curved sword, also made of wood. "Pretend she's shorter and slower," Sahalik said, laughing. "You will fight and I will watch, and when I shout 'stop' I want you to freeze, and we'll examine what you're doing right or wrong. The basic idea is for Kayan to keep Lothar busy with the spear while Jedra beats him to death with the club, and if he gets too close, Jedra drives him back until Kayan can use the spear on him. Neither of you are to throw your weapon, and no fair spearing him in a vital spot until the crowd gets enough blood to be satisfied. Clear?"

"Whose blood?" Jedra asked.

Sahalik laughed again. "Anybody's blood," he said. "They're not choosy." He stepped back and shouted, "Go!"

Shani immediately leaped at Jedra and slashed at him with her curved sword. He jumped back, but not far enough, and the blunted edge caught him on the forearm as he raised his club to ward off the blow.

"Stop!" Sahalik shouted, and Shani froze. Jedra and Kayan froze a moment later, Jedra with his club still upraised, Kayan with the spear aimed somewhere between Shani and Jedra.

"You've just lost your right arm," Sahalik said. "And

ayan, you're about to spear your own companion in the side when he jumps back from the blade. All right, try it again."

They ran through the mock battle dozens of times, but never got beyond the first few seconds before Sahalik stopped them and pointed out another flaw in their strategy. By the end of the session, Jedra had a score of new bruises from the blunt sword, and his head felt overstuffed with all the advice he'd received.

They just had time to eat and catch their breath before they were at it again. This time Sahalik concentrated on their attacks, showing them how to harry Shani from two sides and disarm her.

"What about psionics?" Kayan asked at one point. "If we can use that in the battle, then why don't I just stop her heart-well, the dwarf's heart," she said with a wicked grin at Shani, "and be done with it?"

"Two reasons," Sahalik said. "One, that way isn't bloody enough for the crowd, and two, you won't be allowed to. You'll be handicapped by the temple psionicists to whatever level they decide is fair. We won't know what they'll allow you until you get into the arena, but don't count on much. Maybe the ability to dull your own pain, or boost your stamina if you start to fade too soon, but with two against one they're not going to let you have psionic weapons, too."

"But-" Kayan turned around, looking across the field at their psionic guards. "I thought we could use whatever we wanted on the battlefield."

Shani said in a soft, sinister voice, "Oh, that could be arranged. Of course, then you'd be fighting even more capable opponents on both the physical and the psionic level. Is that what you want?"

Kayan shuddered. "No," she said. She seemed to shrink a little, her former bravado completely gone now.

"Cheer up," Sahalik said, slapping her on the back with enough force to make her stagger. "Lothar's about as psionic as a rock. If you can give him a hangnail with your mental powers, it's better than he can do to you."

Kayan nodded. "That's a relief," she said, but she didn't sound sincere.

The next two days they practiced with thick leather armor that Sahalik said would stop all but the hardest sword blow, though the scores of cuts in it and the dark bloodstains around them didn't lend Jedra a whole lot of confidence. It did at least soften the blows from Shani's mock sword, even when she gave it all her strength. Sahalik also gave Jedra a small round shield to defend himself with while he bludgeoned her with his club. He gradually lost his fear of her weapon, and began to fight back like a true gladiator.

Kayan jabbed and swung her spear as directed, but the fire had gone out of her eyes after Sahalik's unwelcome news about their limitations. She hardly spoke to Jedra, on the practice field or in the evenings.

The day of the games dawned like any other on Athas: hot and sunny. Jedra was awake long before dawn, though, going over everything Sahalik had taught him time and time again. He didn't feel ready to face a hur-rum beetle-the harmless humming pet of the rich- much less an armed, intelligent dwarf.

He didn't know. Sahalik seemed genuinely interested in having his charges win their first battle, but that could all be an act. He could be laughing uproariously inside at the thought of sending them into the arena unprepared.

No. Jedra was being paranoid. Wasn't he?

He hoped the dwarf, Lothar, was psyching himself out the same way, but Jedra doubted if he was. The few dwarves he had seen before weren't imaginative enough to worry about something ahead of time. Even so, how could Jedra bring himself to kill another intelligent being? He didn't know if he could do it.

Shortly after dawn he and Kayan and the two other gladiators were given a hearty steak breakfast, then marched down the hill to the stadium. People cheered as they passed and shouted encouraging things like, "Tear their guts out!" or "Die with glory!" Jedra tried not to throw up on anybody, but it was hard without Kayan's help.

As participants, they went in through their own gate on the city side of the ziggurat, through a torch-lit corridor beneath the immense stone mass to the cool subterranean pens beneath its arena-facing edge. As the holding area filled with people, though, it soon heated up even there, and the stink of the sweaty, unwashed gladiators, at least half of them afraid for their lives, soon became nauseating.

It seemed like they waited forever for the stands to fill and the games to start, but when the king stepped to his balcony and the crier took his cue to announce the first contestants, Jedra suddenly wished it had taken longer. As a new and unpredictable team, he and Kayan were up fifth, right after the executions.

They couldn't see the battles from their holding pens. The voluntary gladiators could, but not the slaves. They could only wait in the pit and listen to the clash of weapons and the roar of the crowd. Jedra grew more nervous by the minute as one execution after another sped past, and when he took Kayan's hand in his she didn't pull away.

"We'll survive this," he told her.

"Why?" she asked him. "Just to fight again next week?"

"We're buying time," Jedra said. "We'll eventually find a way out of here. Maybe Kitarak will come back for us."

"Hah. He's too smart to put himself in this situation twice."

Jedra was about to protest, but the crowd cheered as the final execution drew to its inevitable close, and Sahalik stuck his head over the railing and said, "All right, you two. You're on."

Guards led them up the stairs to the packed sand floor just inside the arena entrance. Bright sun streamed in from beyond. Lothar the dwarf stood there in stark silhouette, wearing a few plates of kank-chitin armor over his chest, legs, and forearms. He looked them over appraisingly as they approached him, taking in their worn leather armor over every vital part of their bodies- armor that did nothing to mask their terror-then he smiled. He had only one tooth sticking down from the top.