Arena Page 10

  “Because they’re idiots.”

  “You can’t just dismiss it like that.”

  Rowena exhaled forcefully and rolled her eyes. “All right, let’s go. I can see you’ll be second-guessing forever if we don’t.”

  As they returned to the green Callie glimpsed a brown-haired man in jeans and leather vest walking out the main gate. “Hey!” she cried. “Isn’t that—” But he was already out of sight behind the wall.

  Rowena stopped beside her. “What?”

  “I thought I saw—” Pierce? He’d been more disdainful of this temple than Rowena. “Never mind.”

  They headed down the temple’s gauntlet of colonnades toward a glass-walled sanctuary at the far end. Here and there, robed worshipers gathered in small groups, watching the newcomers with quick sidelong glances. Dim corridors led off into the recesses of flanking buildings, while overhead walkways supported large electronic screens bearing digital images of the gate on the cliff, now hidden by the temple itself. Callie was amazed. Considering the primitive state of the rest of Manderia, the temple was the ultimate in state-of-the-art technology. Where had all this equipment come from, and how was it powered?

  The sanctuary was a large auditorium that stairstepped down to a window-backed stage overlooking a small grotto. Water trickled down the grotto’s rock face to a pool nestled in mosses, vines, and sprays of grass. Inches above the pool’s surface hovered a flat white stone surrounded by jets of water, while overhead, distorted by the building’s glass walls and ceiling, they could just make out the shimmering gate atop the cliff.

  “Must be siesta time,” Rowena said, glancing around the empty hall.

  “May I help you, ladies?”

  A young man in an iridescent gray robe had come up behind them. Smelling faintly of sandalwood, he had thin blond hair, hazel eyes, and a round, cherubic face with a dimple in his chin.

  Rowena waved him off, but Callie asked what people did at the temple.

  The youth looked at them quizzically. “You are interested in serving Mander?”

  “We’re interested in getting through that gate up there.”

  He smiled. “Then you have come to the right place. The manual says no one can pass through the Gate without Mander’s help.”

  “I don’t remember it specifying a name,” said Callie. Not that she’d read that much of it, but it seemed to her she’d surely have noticed a name if one had been there.

  “Nevertheless,” Wendell insisted, “Mander is the True Benefactor.”

  “How do you know that?” Rowena asked, propping a hand on one shapely hip. “I mean, no offense, but there are at least thirteen other benefactors who make the same claim.”

  The youth—man?—regarded her with surprise, a crease forming between his pale brows. “I don’t know about them, but the manual says if you sincerely desire the truth, it will be made evident to you. Would you like to see the Grotto of Ascension?” He gestured with a pale hand to the stage and pond below.

  Callie said they would—Rowena huffed exasperation.

  As they descended he told them his name was Wendell, and that he had been serving in the temple over two years. In another six months his period of service would end, and then he could ascend to the Gate himself.

  They reached the bottom as two robed supplicants entered the grotto and knelt beside the pool.

  “Can we go down there?” Callie asked.

  “I’m afraid only the Faithful are granted entrance. Those two are beginning their final purification for the Ascension ceremony tomorrow night. You’re welcome to stay and watch.” He smiled at her again.

  “So what kind of service do you all perform here in order to earn this little ride?” Rowena demanded, scowling at the grotto.

  “We serve in the meal dispensary or in the clinic, clean the temple, work the gardens, sing, meditate, pray.” With his pale skin and soft grublike hands, Callie thought he must have done much of the latter and very little of the former. Was there a hierarchy, then, with new converts assigned to hard labor, while the experienced Faithful followed more cerebral pursuits?

  “We also bring food to the Sitters,” he went on, “and read Mander’s Meditations to the climbers. We hope it will move them to cease their futile efforts, but it rarely works. When they finally fall, we bury them.”

  Callie recalled the spiderlike forms on the vast, rough rock, the dangling body struggling for a hold. What if that man had not found his hold? What if he’d pulled his friends down with him? She shuddered, glad that hadn’t happened.

  “So your term of service is what? Three years?” Rowena asked, fingering the short blond hair on the side of her neck. Her glance caught Callie’s—Told you.

  “It varies,” Wendell said, “but three years is standard, yes.” He paused. “How long have you been here?”

  Rowena lifted her chin, her mouth hardening. “Long enough to know better.”

  “Longer than three years, I guess.”

  “At least we’re free.”

  “No one in this world is free,” Wendell said quietly, and Rowena had no response to that.

  Callie watched the supplicants for a moment, then asked, “Did you say that in six months you will be ascending to the Gate?”

  “If I decide so, yes.”

  “If?”

  “I have a home here. And I find joy in helping others to ascend.”

  They stared at him. Finally, Callie said, “You’ve seen these ascensions, then?”

  “Thousands of them. As I said, we’ll be performing one tomorrow night.”

  “But how do you know they’re going home?” Rowena persisted. “How do you know when they walk through the Gate, they’re not just vaporized? Do you ever see them again?”

  “Of course. They send us holograms assuring us of their arrival and encouraging us to persist.”

  “Holograms can be faked,” Rowena pointed out.

  He smiled. “I guess it boils down to faith.”

  “You mean check your brains at the door when you sign on.”

  The crease marred his brow again. “Do you ladies have a place to stay for the night? We have plenty of rooms.”

  “We’ve made arrangements, thank you,” Rowena said. “And speaking of that, we’d better be getting back.” She seized Callie’s arm and steered her toward the stairway before he could say any more.

  As they started up the stairs Callie pulled free. “Good grief, Row, you didn’t have to be so rude.”

  “Aw, he would’ve kept us there all day—‘Do you want to see the gardens? Do you want to see the dispensary? Can I show you the mop room?’ ”

  “He was just being nice.”

  “He was just trying to get us to stay. They get points for new converts, you know.”

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about this temple.”

  “They’re all the same. I’m sure he gets points. He’s probably trying to think of some way to call us back right now.”

  “He was only answering our questions.”

  Rowena wasn’t listening. “It all boils down to faith, huh?” she muttered. “Faith in what, I’d like to know? Mander? The manual?” She snorted. “ ‘Serve me for three years and I’ll release you.’ You’d have to be an idiot to buy into this. I’ll put my faith in myself, thank you.”

  “Well, you have to admit,” said Callie, “it is a little nicer than sleeping on the hard ground and always worrying about Trogs.”

  Rowena cast her a disgusted look. “Maybe you oughta stay, then.”

  She took the stairs two at a time. Annoyed now, Callie followed more slowly. At the top, she glanced back. Sure enough, Wendell still stood where they’d left him, smiling up at her.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Back at the inn Callie took the bath she’d been anticipating for days and found it singularly disappointing. Since the inn had no bathrooms, she used a wooden tub set up in the room Rowena and Garth were sharing. The water, left over from Rowena’s use,
was tepid and scummy, the soap reeked of lye, and the small scrap of toweling was rough and already well dampened. Because there was no conditioner for her hair, she had to untangle the snarls with her fingers before she could use the wooden comb she’d borrowed from one of the tavern girls. By the time she finished, Callie was seriously considering Rowena’s suggestion to cut it off. But she’d spent six years growing it, and Garth insisted they would be home in a month—she’d been here five weeks already; surely she could stand another four.

  Back in the common room, smoke already hung in the rafters, and the evening’s revelry was well under way. Men lined the wooden bar, jostling one another as they hoisted mugs of beer or tossed off shots of hard liquor. Some were eating, while others gambled at craps and poker and pool, underdressed women hanging over their shoulders. Callie spied the shaggy head and huge body of a fellow Outlander named Lokai among the men at the bar. Thor’s bald dome gleamed beside him. For days the pair had talked of nothing but whiskey and girls— they were the last two she wanted to join right now. She didn’t recognize anyone else, though, and for a moment she was back in Tucson, standing on the brick veranda of her sister’s foothills home, surrounded by glittering, laughing yuppies who moved around her as if she didn’t exist. No one glittered here, and these rough men and women were a far cry from her sister’s high-class friends, but the same sense of being conspicuously alone writhed in her belly. Maybe she should go back upstairs. Or out to the stables.

  “Callie!” Garth’s voice pierced the low rumble of conversation. “Over here.”

  It was like being thrown a life preserver.

  He was holding court at one of the plank tables at the back, with John, Whit, LaTeisha, and three strangers attending him.

  “Where’s Rowena?” Callie asked, squeezing into the space John made between himself and LaTeisha.

  Garth shrugged and planted his right elbow on the table in front of the brawny man sitting across from him. “Ready?”

  The black-haired stranger planted his own elbow and clasped Garth’s hand. E-cubes piled the planking beside them.

  “Did they have another fight?” Callie asked as the two began to push against each other.

  LaTeisha glanced around at her. “Row and Garth? Yeah.”

  At the table’s end the two men grunted, strained, and sweated while the others cheered them on. His arm muscles bulging and quivering, Garth seemed about to lose when suddenly he shoved his opponent’s hand to the planking and ended the match. John banged the table and hooted as Garth pocketed the cubes with a grin. Scowling, the loser declined a rematch and went to console himself at the bar.

  The aproned innkeeper arrived, a brooding man with a silver diamond tattooed into his forehead and a gold ring in his nose. Wordlessly, he laid out bowls of stew and dense black bread. He returned with mugs of ale and scowled when Callie asked for water instead.

  The stew was lukewarm, greasy, and unpleasantly spiced, the meat gristly, the potatoes hard, and the bread so dense she could hardly chew it.

  “Who do they get to cook this stuff?” LaTeisha complained. “The mules?”

  “Keep your voice down, Teish,” John warned. “Remember Logan-town?”

  “Look at this.” She gestured at the pile of gristle she’d accumulated beside her tankard. “Half of it’s not even edible.” She picked up the bread, broke off a piece, and frowned as she pulled the two portions apart with exaggerated slowness to reveal the hair connecting them. “It is the mules!” She threw the pieces into the stew bowl and stood. “I’ve got some jerky in my pack. Besides, all this smoke’s giving me a headache.”

  Callie managed to force down half her portion before the stew’s cool greasiness overwhelmed her. As she pushed the bowl aside, a shout of laughter erupted from the crowd at the bar where Lokai and Thor were apparently engaged in a drinking contest.

  “They’re doing it again,” Whit rumbled in his deep voice. He had twisted around on the bench to see what was happening.

  Garth shoved the last of his bread into his mouth. “They’ll pay in the morning,” he mumbled around it.

  “And so will we. In lost time.”

  Garth glanced at him awry. “Do you want to try and stop ’em?”

  With a sigh, Whit turned back, pulling at the strap of his eye patch.

  “Let’s just hope they don’t tear the place up like last time,” John muttered.

  “They do and they’re staying behind to work off the damages.” Garth pulled a draught from his tankard. “I already told ’em that.” He wiped his mouth, then set the vessel aside and laced his fingers on the planking. “So, Callie girl, you gonna sign on at the temple?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He waved a hand. “They’re all cowards up there. Suckers who’ll be here for life.”

  “The guy said they’re transporting a couple people to the Gate tomorrow night,” Callie said. “That they get messages back from those they transport.”

  “And you believed him?”

  She fingered her tankard of water. “He has as much proof as you.”

  “I’ve got a map.”

  “Which may or may not be legitimate.”

  “Whoa-ho, Garth,” John crowed, rocking back on the bench. “This lady don’t care whose toes she steps on.”

  A half smile of approval lit Garth’s face. “I like a woman who speaks her mind,” he drawled.

  Something in his manner sent the blood rushing to Callie’s face.

  He leaned toward her. “You gonna stay tomorrow and watch ’em?”

  Callie dropped her gaze to her tankard, unnerved by his amused expression. Maybe it wasn’t approval—maybe it was mockery.

  He laughed. “No? Then I’d say you didn’t believe the guy.”

  “I don’t know what I believe,” she said. “Maybe none of you is right. Maybe the answer’s somewhere else entirely.”

  After a brief silence, Garth said, “Well, at least you know we weren’t lyin’ about the Gate and the cliff.”

  She continued to focus on her tankard, drawing lines up its battered side in the condensation. Across the table Whit drained his own vessel, then wiped the foam from his beard and mustache. He turned to Garth. “So what do you propose to do about this man in Hardluck? The one the innkeeper told us about.”

  “I don’t like Hardluck,” Garth said. “It’s a vile little town, and they trade in slaves. Most of ’em are half Trog already.”

  “True, but they oughta know better than anyone about a route up the canyon. And Callie’s right. You don’t have much proof that map’s legitimate.”

  Garth launched into a defense of his map and his judgment, and Callie’s thoughts returned to the dilemma that had ripped at her all day—had ripped at her, in fact, since the day she’d met Pierce. Who should she believe? Nobody knew anything. The manual was no real help. And . . . and she was tired and frustrated, and maybe a night’s sleep would clear it up. While the men continued their debate, she stood and slipped away.

  Garth caught her at the door. “You aren’t turning in already, are you?”

  The crowd pushed him so close she had to tilt her head back to see his face. His breath stank of beer.

  “I thought I’d take a walk,” she said.

  “Dangerous place for an evening walk. Want some company?”

  She glanced over his shoulder, feeling trapped.

  He cocked his head. “No, huh?”

  “I need to sort things out.”

  “Maybe I could help.”

  “I doubt it.”

  His grin flashed in the dark nest of his beard. “You oughta come with us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the only way out. Because we need people who can keep their heads when things get hot.” He tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. “Because I like you.”

  His touch, his nearness, the dark intensity of his expression ignited an acute sexual awareness that again brought the blood to Callie’s cheeks. Confused a
nd a little afraid, she backed away. “I . . . that’s nice, Garth. But I need time to think.”

  “Suit yourself.” He sauntered back to his table.

  The stables were blessedly quiet, redolent with the odor of alfalfa and manure and damp leather. Light poured through the big loft door above, washing over the tack and stalls across from it, and deepening by contrast the shadows beneath it. The stall she’d staked out for herself hid in that shadowy underloft, but someone was already in it. Two someones, in fact. Callie backed away, embarrassed, and stopped beside the loft ladder. Dare she try to climb it? Almost any height could trigger her phobia, but this was just a little ladder, with the wall beside it for support. True, it was almost vertical. . . .

  She swallowed on a dry mouth.

  The activity in the stall grew frenzied. Then, from outside, Callie heard a pair of slurred voices—men from the tavern. Had they followed her? Probably not, but she’d rather they not find her here.

  She eyed the loft again. It was the best choice. And it’s high time you conquered this stupid phobia.

  With her gaze fixed upward, Callie climbed one careful rung at a time to the top, where sweet hay piled in silhouette against the brilliance of the open loft door. Here, though, the ladder stuck up past the floor. To get off, she’d have to step around and over it, with nothing to hold on to while she did.

  Outside, the men’s voices approached. Her stomach churned. Her wrists felt weak. Heat flashed across her back and shoulders. Gritting her teeth, she ascended another rung, bending double to keep hold of the ladder.

  The fear burst out of nowhere, sweeping over her in dizzying waves, turning her legs to jelly.

  Just move through it. You’ll be okay. But she couldn’t let go of the ladder. Already the ground was pulling at her, drawing her like a great magnet.

  She was choking. Sweat slicked her palms, and her arms jittered to match her legs.

  If you don’t go now, you won’t go at all. Now, move.

  She lurched forward, planted a foot on the loft’s edge, and let go. For a moment she teetered on the brink. Then the ground spun up at her, and she flailed backward—