“I demand the satchel!”

Varena looked over coldly at Varnel, Master of the House of Fentesk, and shook her head defiantly.

“He declared me his heir out there by shouting my name. He also called for the sanctuary of his possessions. The fight waged against him was not a challenge fight and even if it was, those dogs don’t deserve to divide up what was his.”

“What right do you have to his possessions?”

“I made love to him this morning. That’s my claim.”

Varnel looked up at her hungrily and licked his lips. She looked back, cold, defiant, the faintest sneer of contempt lighting her features.

“If we could make that same arrangement, perhaps this incident might be forgotten,” Varnel finally said.

“You are my House Master and according to the rules that is as far as it goes. I made that clear the day I joined.”

“Damn you.” He stood up as if to challenge her.

“Fight me and you might win,” she said coldly. “But I’ll be dead and this place will be a shambles. You’ll also have a rebellion on your hands. You betrayed one of our House tonight. Do it twice and you’ll have nothing come the start of Festival.”

“Do you think they really care out there for One-eye? Most of them are glad he’s dead. They don’t give a good damn about honor, only their pay.”

“True. And most of them are now wondering, even if it is just a faint tugging, wondering if you might not protect them as well if the offer from the Grand Master was great enough. Kill me over this and that suspicion will be firmly planted.”

Varnel stood silent as if weighing the possibilities of trying to force both the satchel and more from her.

“Stick with weaker minds and bodies,” she sneered, pointing to the back of the room where several naked women lounged on a silk divan, watching the confrontation with detached boredom. “It’s safer.”

Laughing coldly, she slammed the door shut behind her, almost feeling pity for his concubines, who would know the darker side of his passion tonight.

It was well past midnight, exhaustion was finally started to take hold, and she headed for the hot baths to soak out the tension. She entered the steamy room, which was empty, and felt a momentary pang. It was, after all, only a passing encounter, if anything, even a bit of a game of power and control, but it had still been pleasant enough.

She undressed, keeping her satchel and his with her, placed them on a ledge next to the pool, slipped into the bubbling water, and stretched out.

It was time to leave this House, she realized. Varnel would not dare anything now, not on the eve of Festival. Beyond that he would have to make a show of defiance toward the Grand Master and refuse the return of the satchel. To do otherwise, after his miserable display of ordering the door bolted, would show a complete subservience. But once Festival was over, and most of the fighters had gone to their yearly assignments and chapter houses, that would be the time for him to get even for the humiliation before his harem and before the other fighters.

He, like the other House Masters, was not above arranging an “accident” for a recalcitrant fighter, such as a contract where a prince agreed to a hidden clause that if the fighter was killed, he’d receive a full refund. As she floated in the pool she felt a moment’s regret for accepting the sanctuary call of Garth and grabbing up the satchel. Why did I do it? Was it the powers the satchel contained or was it something else?

Damn!

She reached over to the small ledge where she had placed the satchels and was tempted to look inside and see what powers he had controlled. But he was not yet dead, she could sense that, and thus it would be a violation of the laws.

The laws. Who gave a good damn about the laws anymore? She was seasoned enough to understand the simple rules of survival, but somehow it still bothered her. The powers had perverted it all, changing it from at least an honorable profession into a selling to the highest bidder and the entertaining of the mob. No longer was there any sense of sessan, the intricate set of codes and rules that had once bound those who could control the mana. The fighting for sessan, for the simple gaining of powers, honor, and face were gone. Increasingly it was for the kill and the lust of the kill.

For Varnel it was a means of fulfilling his increasingly perverted pleasures. And for the fighters of her House, few cared any longer about the intrinsic joy of the discipline required to control the mana, caring instead only for what it could give them in this plane.

That thought now disturbed her as well. For what did the Walker think of this? He was, after all, the most powerful of any in this plane, the one who had obtained so much mana that he could now jump between realms of existence. For him the struggles of this realm were most likely as trivial as the fighting of insects under the heel of a little boy who could crush them at any time.

And yet, should he not know and care? If this world had lost its honor, then what of the sense of sessan of the Walker himself? In less than two days Festival would start, and at the end of it the winner of all would then go with the Walker, to serve as his new acolyte into the deepest of mysteries.

If I win, what will I learn then? she wondered.

Somehow the thought suddenly disturbed her-for the first time.

A less than pleasant smell wafted around her. Startled, she opened her eyes and sat up.

“Ah, what I was really hoping to see.”

Hammen was squatting by the edge of her pool like a frog sitting on a lily pad, his eyes bulging with unconcealed delight.

“What in the name of all the devils are you doing here?” she hissed, surprised not only by his stinking presence but also by the fact that she was embarrassed by her own nakedness. She reached out to a rack and fumbled for a towel to cover herself.

“You don’t need a towel,” Hammen moaned.

“Hammen!” someone said, and a hand came out of the shadows, slapping him across the back of the head so that he yelped softly.

Varena stepped out of the pool and snatched up her satchel at the sight of the stranger behind Garth’s servant.

“A Benalish?”

The woman nodded.

“Both of you stink like a sewer.”

“That’s how we got in here,” Hammen said, “and I must confess it was exciting to think that we were wading through water you might have bathed in.” Norreen slapped him again.

“If you’re found here, you’re both dead,” Varena whispered. “Get out now or I’ll have to take care of you both.”

Norreen’s hand dropped to the hilt of her blade and Varena let her towel drop, freeing one hand while she slung her satchel over her shoulder in order to fight.

Hammen looked at her wide-eyed and grinned before finally tossing over the small bag that Garth had given him.

She grabbed it, still keeping a wary eye on Norreen.

“We thought you might enjoy the game we propose,” Hammen said with a smile.

Racked with pain, Garth struggled to keep from screaming. There was almost a detached sense to the agony, as if he were watching himself from some place far away, floating above his body, while down on the rack he twisted and writhed.

He screamed, a wild, howling cry that was more rage than anguish, for his training had long ago taught him how to divert pain into places where it would not darken his body and mind. And yet the man who did this to him knew of such places as well and his invisible fingers probed into Garth’s soul, tearing at his thoughts, lashing him, cutting into his mind, and then attempting to reassemble the pieces.

There were no healing spells now, no blocks, no way of striking back, only the unrelenting assault to probe into the core of his existence. Finally there were but two paths left, to relent, to reveal, or to go down into the paths of darkness and the light which was beyond. Garth closed in upon himself and reached toward the second path.