Page 88 of Court of Talons

Gent moves closer to the bone creature, and I dimly hear the responding roar of the crowd. They want blood. And, I realize with no little amount of horror,Iwant blood. The blood of Hantor in exchange for the blood he’d spilled of Caleb’s—blood, bone, and sinew.

What am I becoming?

Gent roars, and his mighty paw swings in a wide arc, apparently poised to miss high again as last time. Instead, he widens his thick claws and jams them inward at the lastmoment, making the bone creature hiss and gather his legs beneath him, ready to jump to the side.

But Gent is too fast this time. Nazar’s words ring in my head, and Gent fights down the sword as Nazar has instructed, pressing in further, further, until he’s practically on top of the bone creature when it surges up. It springs higher into the sky than I would have thought possible, but Gent is right there with it and catches the trailing edge of its hind foot as it leaps away, turning it hard. The creature screams, and across from me, Hantor stumbles, his left ankle giving way.

The crowd stamps and howls, bloodlust raging in their cries. Gent moves forward to hold down the head of the opponent Divh like a pillow, keeping the bone creature on its back, its head and neck exposed. Its foot shakes violently, the creature in clear torment. Gent holds it still as I watch, his great head coming up as if he wishes to meet my gaze across the beaten creature.

Another curl of horror snakes through me…Hantor’s Divh is down—down! I can’t cause it more pain. I lift my hands slightly, and Gent shifts as well, easing his pressure on the beast. It can’t move; there’s no need to drive it to greater levels of agony. There’s no gain in it.

Even the redness has now cleared from the edges of my vision, and I realize the battle for what it is. Hantor is beaten, but there’s no honor in destroying the bone creature or damaging it beyond aid. Just as there is no honor in hurting the creature more, simply to hurt its warrior.

I shift my gaze to Hantor, seeing him tremble with the effort of trying to get his Divh to leap up and fight again. He’s frenzied for all his apparent stillness. He’s panicked too, and his eyes and mouth are rimmed with white. What must he have done to gain power, I suddenly wonder? What must he have been driven to, inferior by his very nature, yet thrust into the greatest position a boy could want?

What would it be like to be unable to rise to the demands the world made of you? Would it drive you to kill—to maim to ensure the safety of your position? I hold Hantor’s gaze with mine, but let no pity mar my expression. He doesn’t deserve it, and he wouldn’t welcome it.

Neither does Rihad, whose glare fairly sets my face aflame.

Gent holds the bone creature still for another breath—then it’s over.

The horns sound in one long, clear blast. Gent has won this contest.

As I watch, my beautiful Divh pulls his shoulders back, tensing as he moves to stand away from the bone creature, to allow it to rise. He even lifts a great paw as if to steady the other Divh then shifts it gently away as the bone creature gets its feet beneath him. A curious buzzing starts in the crowd around us, but I hold my position, watching the bone creature test its injured leg.

At that moment, a movement in the corner of my eye catches my attention, and I step back as Hantor suddenly surges forward on his platform, his hands splayed wide no matter that the match has already been called. I turn my hands back, and Gent steps half in front of the bone creature, looming over it as it crouches down despite Hantor’s flapping arms. The injured Divh can’t do otherwise—Gent now has its good back paw trapped beneath his own clawed foot, and the broken paw can’t gain any purchase. The horns blast again, longer this time, and Gent wheels toward the platforms. Taking his paw off the bone creature, he swings his head up and down and lifts both his arms high into the air, then screams in outraged fury at…

Well, at Hantor.

My Divh’s roar is filled with anger and disdain and a cold wash of pain that I am sure Hantor can’t understand, won’t ever understand. He understands being rebuked, however, and heseems to be able to reason out why. His Divh is in clear agony, shuddering beneath Gent, and Gent even more clearly wants the Divh sent back to its own plane.

Hantor raises his arm, now obviously dizzy with his own injuries. The bone creature finally disappears.

Gent stops roaring and resettles his own feet, now that he no longer needs to trap Hantor’s Divh. He drops one of his mighty arms.

The other one he lifts toward me. As he had before when we’d fought on this tournament field. Fought and lost, even as now we’d fought and won.

I lift mine as well, the two of us moving as if to touch fingertips across the wide-open tournament grounds. We hold that pose for a moment where there is no breath, no true sight even, and I stagger beneath the onslaught of thoughts that Gent pours into me. Rage and loss, pain and fright. On some level, he’d felt more than just the power of my suggestion or command during the battle.

He’dfeltall the emotions I’d experienced—indignation and horror, panic and fury—in the wake of Rihad’s message about the true nature of the warrior I was fighting. He’d felt it, and he sought to ease that pain, to make right what had been wronged, and finally to accept—as I was forced to accept—that some things could never be right again.

A breath later, my beautiful Divh disappears.

Silence blankets the tournament field for a heartbeat, then another.

Then pandemonium breaks out.

The roar of the crowd is so loud, it shakes the tower on which I stand. I barely hear the trumpet blast—can’t hear Rihad saying something high above me—but I throw up my other arm in a mimicry of what I saw from Kheris in his first battle at the tournament. I am the victor of this contest, the first of manythat will be fought this day. Sound rushes over me, and I steady myself against the torrential wind that blows through the now-empty tournament field as if it had held its breath during the whole of our combat.

I’ve won this battle.

A guard pushes out onto the platform, and I turn to him, confused at his slow progress. And then I see something else.

Petals.

A pile of blue and white petals roils around my feet like a storm and blows off the platform into the field beyond. As I turn, horrified at the sight, I see that more petals are being thrown into the sky—or have been blown there, soaring over the assembled crowd. There’s more cheering and then the hands of the guard are on me, half pulling me to the door.

“Are you injured?” one of them demands.