The Bolk fighters returned to the stands around Garth, the winners beaming with pride, the losers looking crestfallen, gazing nervously up at Kirlen, who ignored them with haughty disdain. Their contracts for the forthcoming year were now worth less and she would not let them forget it.

The last of the fights over, stretcher-bearers raced out into the arena to carry off the unconscious and the dead while from out of the access tunnels entertainers charged into the arena-dwarfs, jugglers, fire-eaters, and petty magicians. Several dozen wagons, drawn by zebras or tigers, bears, and even a mammoth, came galloping out. Mounted on the back of each wagon was a small catapult and, at the sight of them, the crowd came to its feet and pointed nervously, wondering why the Grand Master was bringing heavy weapons into the arena.

The dwarfs manning the catapults cranked them back, loading the firing arms with clay pots, and pointed their weapons toward the crowd.

An angry cry started to swell and wherever the weapons were pointed the mob struggled to back away. The dwarfs, laughing with insane delight, fired the weapons. A loud roar rose up and Hammen, curious, stood up to watch. The pots slammed into the stands and burst open. There were gasps of amazement from the mob and then a mad scurrying, for the pots contained prizes-sweetmeats, lottery tickets, and, most surprisingly of all, copper, silver, and gold coins.

A wild cheering erupted as the catapult teams moved around the edge of the arena, reloading their weapons with yet more pots and firing them into the crowd, which now rushed back and forth in a mad frenzy to catch the prizes.

Hammen, shaking his head, sat back down.

“Wish you were up there?” Garth asked.

“You’re damn right I do, rather than having to sit down here and get nothing.”

A catapult, drawn by mammoths, raced past, firing a clay pot nearly the size of a man up into the arena.

The mob howled with delight and a rippling of cheers honoring Zarel rose up.

“Masterful,” Garth said, shaking his head.

“It doesn’t take much to win a mob back, especially when the winning back is paid in gold.”

“Do you know anyone on their catapult teams?”

“No. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

Hammen looked over at Garth and smiled wickedly.

“Do you want to rob them? Is that it?”

“No. I was just wondering.”

“I have a friend who could find out. He owns a little illegal business.”

“What kind?”

“Potions and such. Get rid of a spouse that’s become tiresome, seduce a girl who won’t say yes, even get some courage when you need it, those kinds of things.”

“And his customers?”

Hammen smiled wickedly.

“Some of the highest. Nobles, great merchants,” and he lowered his voice, “and Uriah, the captain of Zarel’s fighters. It’d be easy enough to find out through him. My cousin says he’s shooting his mouth off all the time about how important he is and all the people in court that are beholden to him.”

Garth turned away at the mention of the dwarf’s name.

“Something wrong, Master?”

Garth smiled sadly and looked back.

“No, nothing. I want to talk with this friend of yours after the game. Could you arrange it?”

“A potion for a certain Benalish girl?”

“Damn you, no. Just arrange the meeting, will you?”

Hammen, laughing softly, nodded.

In front of Zarel’s canopied throne the blind and deaf monks now started to draw out the names of the next round of contestants.

A great cheer erupted when two favorites, both of them ninth-rank fighters-one of them Varena-were pitted against each other. The other names were posted one after the other and the mob rushed to place its next round of bets in a wild frenzy of excitement.

Hammen looked back expectantly at the stands behind him where the mob sat.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he suddenly announced, and, leaving Garth’s side, he went up to the barrier where a bent-over man who looked somehow familiar to Garth stood waiting. There was a quick and furtive exchange, a handshake, and Hammen came back.

“I bet everything we had on Varena,” he told Garth quietly.

Garth nodded and looked back to where the bent-over man stood.

“He looks familiar.”

“He should. He was in prison just down the row from you. I got him out in the confusion.”

“I take it he doesn’t have much love now for the Grand Master.”

Hammen chuckled as if Garth had just uttered a comment of incredible stupidity.

“Does he know as many people around here as you?”

“He should. He’s head of one of the brotherhoods.”

“Tell him to meet us tonight.”

“Master, not again.”

“Just do it when you go to get our winnings.”

The trumpets sounded the warning and the entertainers cleared the arena area, followed by the wagons, which fired their last round of pots, one of them winging directly over the Bolk fighters to crack open at the edge of the stands. Dozens tried to leap over the wall to gather up the prize only to be met by the Grand Master’s guards, who beat them back with clubs and the flats of their swords, those getting clubbed howling and cursing, those farther up in the stands roaring with delight at the entertainment.

The trumpet sounded the final time, the fighters marched out, and Garth stood, catching a glimpse of Varena as she went to a circle at the far side of the field. Again there were several red banners marking blood matches, one of them causing the crowd to gasp with amazement since it was a sixth-rank fighter against a second, a matching that was little short of suicide on the part of the weaker.

“Some of them do it because they’re crazy, others on the long shot of winning a satchel of spells that would take them decades to earn in the older way of gathering mana and studying,” Hammen declared with obvious disdain.

Zarel stood up and again made the ritual pronouncements, his arms raised heavenward. He dropped them.

“Fight!”

Again there was the wild explosion of spells, the flashes of light, creatures appearing to do battle, clouds of dust and cyclones of fire. In one of the circles a giant spider appeared, causing the caster of the spell to be disqualified when he lost control of the creature, which stampeded out of the fighting circle when it was set upon by a pack of wolves. The spider raced toward the edge of the fighting floor, heading for the grand stands, the crowd panicking, abandoning their seats and stampeding. Fighters of the Grand Master raced after it, striking it repeatedly with fire, turning it aside just as it reached the stands. Several of the spectators were caught by its spray of acidic poison, disintegrating into bubbling clouds of pulpy steam before the spider was finally destroyed. The fighter who had lost control of the spell walked away dejected, stripped of his spider spell as penalty, though the spectators gave him a warm round of applause for the exciting show, which would be talked about endlessly in the days to come.

One by one the fights ended. The sixth-rank versus second-rank death match dragged out longer than most had expected, ending when the second-rank fighter finally turned and tried to run away. He was chased for more than a hundred fathoms across the arena by his taunting opponent, until Zarel, disgusted, stood up and, raising his hands, blasted him into oblivion just before he ran through the circle where Varena and her opponent were fighting out a classic match of spell versus counterspell that had the mob on its feet.

Garth watched the fight intently, mentally noting the spells she was forced to reveal.

“Unless she’s holding back, she’ll have no secrets now in the later matches,” Hammen noted calmly. “Too bad for her. But then again, Master, you’ll have to face her sooner or later, so it’s to your advantage.”

All the other matches were finished but still the two fought on, the crowd falling silent when there was a lull, cheering or groaning in turn when one or the other seemed to be getting an upper hand. Twice Varena was knocked down, once by a charging berserker that crashed through her line of fire creatures, and again by several attacks from black knights. She finally turned the fight around when her opponent cast a black spell of life draining, for which she held a counterspell that gave her additional strength rather than weakened her, regaining what she had lost from the previous assaults. She pressed forward, relying heavily on fire spells mixed with swirling storms of ice, and her rival finally collapsed into unconsciousness, his power drained.