Arram started to answer, but the Hag lifted Ramasu’s finger, and Arram found he could not say a word. Instead Preet began to talk, whistling, chirping, and muttering until she came to a halt.
The Graveyard Hag began to laugh. Preet said something else, and the goddess shook her captive’s head. “No, I won’t tell—this is far too amusing. Besides, I never let those snobs at home know anything interesting if I can help it. Your secret is safe with me.” She shifted on the seat and looked at Arram. “Mules, do your job, and I’ll make certain you have an extra good feed tonight,” she ordered. Then she cupped Arram’s face with Ramasu’s hand and lifted it so she could look into his eyes again. “You poor boy,” she said, and grinned. It was a broad grin, the kind Ramasu never made. Seeing it on his calm features made Arram queasy. “You have no idea what my cousins hold in store, do you? No one can tell. Here’s a bit of advice from a wicked old lady, for the sake of those beautiful brown eyes of yours. Watch what you say.”
As quickly as she had arrived, she was gone. Ramasu’s hand fell to his lap; the reins dropped to his knee. Arram seized them before they fell to the road. Preet leaped into the air, shrieking, and the master thrashed.
“Arram, what are you doing?” cried Ramasu.
Arram had one rein but not the rest. He was about to fall onto the road with them. The mules halted and looked back, ears switching.
Arram’s ears roared as Ramasu’s familiar Gift wrapped around him and deposited him on the seat. The reins hovered before him, held by the master’s power. Arram took them up.
Ramasu surrendered the one he still held while he cradled his brow in his hand. “My poor head,” he complained. “Do you have a water flask?”
Arram pointed at his belt. Ramasu took the flask and added something from his own belt pouch, then gulped the water down. “Thank you,” he said. He propped his head on his hands. “It will be a little while before the lozenge does its work. I’ll take the reins back then….Which god was it?”
Arram started, jerking the reins. Both mules glanced back with evil intent in their eyes. “Sir—how did you know?”
“I am not insensate, lad. There is a hole in my memory, you are holding the reins—badly, do not jerk on them like that—”
Arram loosened his pull on the leather straps.
“My head pounds, and everything I see shimmers with innate magic,” Ramasu said, rubbing his eyes. “A god did that. It has happened to me before. Which god? Or are you not permitted to tell?”
Arram saw no reason to keep that information back. “The Graveyard Hag, sir.”
Ramasu frowned. “The Graveyard Hag? Now why…?” Arram glanced at the master, who had fallen silent. Then Ramasu said, “Of course. Ozorne. The goddess wanted to speak with you about Ozorne.”
Arram nodded miserably. He wasn’t sure that he should give the goddess’s message to anyone but Ozorne, and it would be difficult to refuse one of his masters.
“Leave me out of it,” Ramasu said. “Unless the god…?”
“No, sir,” Arram said gratefully. “It’s only for Ozorne.”
“Excellent,” the man replied. “Yes, I am very, very grateful she only used me as her conduit. She loves to make those who have her attention dance to her music.”
“That isn’t very reassuring, Master Ramasu,” Arram said weakly.
The man reached over and took the reins. “The truth so seldom is.” Setting the mules forward at a crisper pace, he said, “Sebo and I have been discussing a trip upriver in August and early September. She would like to visit some of the tributary rivers to the Zekoi, and I would like assistance in gathering medicinal herbs and insects I can find nowhere else. Would you be interested?”
Arram sat up eagerly, the touch of the goddess almost—but not quite—forgotten. “I’ve only been a short way upriver with Her Highness,” he confessed.
They talked about the possibility as the wagon bumped over the narrow trail. Then Arram saw a stone wall rising above the tall reeds and, behind it, the even greater marble heights of the arena. He gulped. They had reached their destination.
When Ramasu had first mentioned the trip to the gladiators’ camp, Arram had studied maps of the arena and of the training grounds until he knew them by heart. Their new workplace was part of a large, military-style camp built on the side of the arena. Behind a stone wall patrolled by hard-looking soldiers stood wooden barracks for men and for women, an infirmary, wide sand training grounds, an armory with its own forge, and a stretch of garden for those who cared to tend one.
To the left of the gate, separated from the world, the training ground, and the barracks by another, shorter stone wall, were the beast pens. Arram could hear lions roar and elephants bellow as the cart approached the outer gate. He hated the practice of driving animals to battle as much as he hated the practice of forcing men and women to do so.
The guards’ barracks were behind a wall on the opposite side of the wild animals’ cages. The arena’s horses were also there, since the sounds and smells of the larger, wild beasts frightened them. Ramasu had told Arram once that there were several gates to connect the guards’ area to the gladiators’ so there would not be a bottleneck of guards if trouble arose in the main compound.
Above it all loomed a big gate through the northern wall of the arena itself. The only openings that Arram could see were ventilation for the audience and were one hundred feet up or more. It was yet another reminder to the gladiators that there was no chance to escape. Only the gate to the arena remained to them, two leaves of locked metal a little over the height of the tallest giraffe.
The place was fairly quiet. This gate was one of iron bars. Four soldiers stood guard on the ground there, as well as on the wall over it. The man in charge greeted Ramasu cheerfully and led him inside the guardhouse to sign forms. Arram accepted the reins from the master and looked around, sweating. He could hear the thwacks of wood on wood and men’s shouts from inside. He also glimpsed two women in leather shirts and very short breeches fighting with spears.
“I dunno, Blaedroy, he’s awful scrawny for the ring.” A soldier walked over to lean against Ramasu’s side of the seat. “Might make a decent meal for one of the cheetahs, though. Put her and the cubs in with him, there’s a good bit of fun.”
Arram tried to ignore the man, but Preet was having none of this. She roused from her nap on Arram’s shoulder, fluffing out all of her feathers, and told the soldier what she thought of his idea of “fun.”
“Hag’s dice, what manner of bird is that, anyway?” the other guard shouted over her noise. He was white, blond, and blue-eyed, plainly a descendant of Scanrans. “Tell it to quiet down or we’ll feed it to the lions!”
“Preet, stop,” Arram said, trying to wrap a hand around her. She batted at him with her wings, telling him in Preet that a good peck or two would teach these buffoons manners.