Prisoners thrashed and fought—with beasts and with one another. The water was clouded with blood, guts, and scales.
Javan calculated quickly. He’d earned sixty points. That wasn’t nearly enough. He needed the lake crawler and the worm, if they were still alive.
Something bumped his boot, and he bent swiftly to stab whatever creature it was, only to nearly drive his sword through the man who’d told him he couldn’t swim. The man’s eyes bulged with panic, and bubbles escaped his lips as he frantically grabbed for the snake that was wrapped around his throat like a scarf, its fangs sunk into the first two fingers of the man’s right hand.
A small crowd of flesh-eating fish followed close behind, tearing at the man’s arms with their tiny teeth.
Javan struck, slicing his sword through the snake and severing its head. Then he snatched the front of the man’s tunic and hauled him to his feet. Tossing the snake’s lifeless body toward the judge on his left, Javan grabbed the man’s hand and dug the tip of his sword into the puncture wounds, cutting them wide open.
A shadow scuttled across the floor, and Javan dragged the man backward with him as the lake crawler drifted by, the gaping maw in its center nothing but a shadow slightly darker than the rest of its body.
Javan shuddered. This was madness, but there was only one way out of the horror that surrounded him. Only one way out of Maqbara and back to the destiny that was his.
He needed to kill the crawler and find the worm or he was going to lose his chance to gain an audience with his father. But the man he’d saved was shaking now, his teeth chattering as blood flowed from the holes in his arms and the cuts on his fingers.
Javan turned and waded toward the closest wall, dragging the man with him. “How long did the snake have its fangs in you?”
When the man didn’t answer, Javan swung around and snapped, “How long?”
“I don’t know.” The man’s voice shook. “Not long. I was holding its head, but then it got away from me and bit just before I bumped into you.”
Javan reached the wall and pushed the man against it just as the worm skimmed past them, someone’s legs dangling from its mouth. Horror crawled up the back of Javan’s throat.
“Sa’ Loham preserve us,” the man cried as he stared in horror.
Javan yanked the man’s injured hand toward him and looked at the veins on his arm. They looked normal, but he had no idea if venom left streaks of red moving toward the heart or not. And neither one of them had time for a lengthy discussion about the man’s options.
“We have to cut off anything that might have venom in it,” Javan said.
The man pulled his hand toward his chest.
“Lose your fingers or lose your life. Which is it?” Javan asked, his patience fraying. Even now the worm could be dead. The lake crawler too. And Javan couldn’t catch the tournament leaders if he was busy killing the last of the fish. “Choose!”
“Fingers,” the man said.
Javan pinned the man’s hand to the wall and removed his first two fingers with one quick slash of his sword. Blood gushed, and the man screamed.
Whipping his tunic over his head, Javan wrapped it tightly around the man’s hand. “Raise your arm above your head and stay close to the wall. It’s the best I can do for you now.”
Javan whirled back toward the competition in time to see Hashim and four other competitors charging straight for him.
SEVENTEEN
“GET HIM!” HASHIM shouted.
Javan dove to the side, but Hashim and his allies were on top of him in a flash. Pain sang up his injured arm as they wrestled his limbs until they had him pinned between them, each holding an arm or a leg. Javan held tight to his weapon and lifted his bare back out of the water as they crossed the arena floor with him.
Prayers tumbled through his mind, fragmented and desperate. Was this the end? He’d survived the Draconi, the assassins, a death sentence, and a stay inside Maqbara only to be killed by criminals in a tournament that went against everything his father and his kingdom stood for?
It was impossible to breathe the fear out and let courage in. Panic was an iron fist squeezing his chest. Frantically he scrambled for leverage, reason, anything that could stop what was about to happen.
Hashim and his friends might hate Javan, but they wanted the same thing he did. They wanted to win. To gain an audience with the king and ask for a boon. Killing Javan would hurt their goal. He had to make them see it.
“You can’t afford a five-hundred-point loss,” he said, his voice sharp with desperation. “You could lose your place as the tournament leader. You could lose your chance to talk to the king.”
A shudder worked its way down his spine as someone else screamed and the crowd applauded.
How did his father condone this bloodbath? How did the audience? Surely sending people to their deaths for sport violated everything the sacred texts taught. It hardly mattered that the people in question were criminals. If their crimes had deserved death, they’d have been sentenced to the muqsila instead of Maqbara.
“I told you I would make you regret interfering. I can afford a point deduction. There are still three rounds left,” Hashim said, but his eyes darted toward the warden as he spoke.
“Here!” A female competitor with broad shoulders and the outline of a galloping stallion inked into her neck called.
Javan bucked and twisted as he caught sight of the faint shadow spreading out along the floor beneath him.
They were going to drop him on the lake crawler.
The iron fist of panic squeezed, and his throat constricted.
The crowd roared. Someone cried out. But Javan could barely hear past the deafening beat of his heart.
He couldn’t die like this. He was the prince. His destiny had been foretold by Yl’ Haliq. He wasn’t supposed to be in this bloodbath trying to survive monsters that should never have been brought to Akram in the first place.
His lungs burned for air as he struggled to breathe past the noose of fear closing around his neck.
He’d have an instant to react once they dropped him. An instant to twist, as he fell through the water, then to drive his sword into the thing that lurked beneath him.
And he had no idea where to aim for the kill shot.
“Now!” Hashim yelled.
The people holding Javan let go.
His back hit the water and he began to sink.
A flash of white shimmered out of the corner of his eye, and he twisted toward it as he fell.
The worm’s jaw was already distended—a cave of teeth and tongue.
Javan kicked out, his foot finding someone’s chest, but hands were reaching into the water, shoving him down. Panic burned through him. There was no way out of this. Either he dove beneath the worm and landed in the gaping maw of the lake crawler, or he would be swallowed by the monstrous thing surging toward him.
Spinning, he raised his weapon and collided with the worm.