Pathway

Which meant they were holding up signs that expressed their love for Gorbin, sometimes with a simple declarative like GORBIN'S THE BEST, others simply with his name or a crude drawing of his face. Some children were in his line of sight, and many were carrying small dolls that bore Gorbin's likeness.

Jaing was standing in the center of the arena again. "Tonight is a very special night here at the Pit, as Gorbin will once again take the arena—but against two new foes. These are vicious killers from beyond the wastes. You've seen them in the early fights, and they've won each and every single time. Now they'll take on the greatest fighter in the Pit's history—Gorbin."

Boos for that. Nobody wanted to see Gorbin defeated. But the boos were surprisingly subdued.

And that's when it finally hit Gan what was wrong with the crowd noise. There wasn't enough of it. Last time he was in Urik, the seats shook from the din.

He turned to Feng. "The crowd sounds quiet."

"It's what they usually sound like," Ju Feng said with a shrug.

"Yeah, when we're out there—but we're the undercard. This is the main event of the Pit of Black Death, and I'd swear to you there's not even a hundred people out there."

Ju Feng shrugged again. "Maybe people are tired of the arena."

Gan scratched his chin. "Or maybe they're tired of watching Gorbin win all the time."

"Presenting Gorbin's first challenger of the evening: Ju Feng Feng."

Ju Feng shrugged a third time. It seemed to be all he did anymore. "Guess I'll have to take him down, then."

The guards guided Ju Feng toward the gate, which obligingly rose with its usual metallic squeal. Ju Feng stepped into the arena.

The boos intensified, but they were still fairly subdued.

Ju Feng and Gorbin circled each other. Gorbin looked kind of bored, which Gan suspected had something to do with the crowd's reaction. The last time he was there, the hairless mul had stared intently at his opponent from underneath the bone ridge on his forehead. He had looked fierce and intimidating. The crowd fed off that.

With nothing to feed off of, though, they were listless.

Then Ju Feng did something Gan had never seen his friend do in all the years they'd known each other.

He grinned.

Ju Feng didn't grin. He smirked, he smiled—especially if he was chatting a woman up—and he laughed sometimes, if the mood struck him. But he never grinned. In the arena, the two opponents circled each other. Neither took his eyes off the other, waiting for the other to make the first move.

The mul still looked bored, and Ju Feng was still grinning that damned grin, but otherwise they were focused.

Finally, Gorbin made the first move, swinging a massive fist at Feng. Ju Feng caught it in his left hand.

A gasp rippled through the amphitheater—and the holding area as well. Muls were quite strong, and Feng, for all his might, was only a human. There was simply no way that Ju Feng should have been able to Ju Fengst catch a mul's punch without any ill effects.

Yet Ju Feng looked as if he'd Ju Fengst caught a lightly tossed ball.

Gorbin looked stunned, staring at his fist in Feng's hand as if he'd never seen anything like it. And indeed, he probably hadn't.

Ju Feng then punched the mul right in the nose while letting go of Gorbin's fist. Feng's fist struck Gorbin's nose with a meaty thud, blood flying from his nostrils, and he fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. The crowd went completely quiet.

Walking over to the fallen mul, Ju Feng looked down at him. "That the best you can do?"

Snarling, Gorbin wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, then leaped to his feet and started throwing dozens of punches. Ju Feng was able to counter some of them, and some struck full on. Ju Feng didn't fight back, Ju Fengst let Gorbin hit his arms, keeping his elbows in so that Gorbin didn't strike his stomach or chest.

Then Ju Feng grinned again.

Gan's heart skipped a beat. "What the hell is wrong with you, Feng?"

Ju Feng let loose with a quick kick that slammed into Gorbin's stomach, causing the mul to blow out a big breath and stumble backward. Not letting up, Ju Feng kicked him again and punched him in the face a few more times.

Gorbin's face was caked with blood from his nose and mouth, and he was breathing very heavily, spitting blood onto the stone floor. Ju Feng was still grinning.

Then Ju Feng grabbed Gorbin's arms and lifted the mul—who had to weigh twice what Ju Feng had ever been able to pick up before—and threw him across the arena floor. Gorbin hit the stone ground and skidded along to the obsidian wall.

Still the crowd was silent.

Gan looked at what he could see of the audience from the holding area. The signs had been lowered; the dolls of Gorbin's likeness were being clutched for dear life, as if to ward off the mul's apparent defeat.

Ju Feng ran over to Gorbin's prone, broken form, and stepped on one of his arms. The snap of bone echoed throughout the subdued amphitheater. Then he picked Gorbin up by that arm—causing the mul to scream in pain—and threw him toward the holding area.

Backing up instinctively, Gan watched as Gorbin slammed into the metal cage with a clang.

Struggling to get to his feet, Gorbin said, "I don't understand—I'm the biggest and the strongest. I should be winning."

Walking over to stand over Gorbin, Ju Feng spoke in a quiet tone that Gan could barely hear. "There is no 'biggest.' There is no 'strongest.' Because there's always someone who's stronger and bigger.

And sooner or later that person finds you." Ju Feng then kneeled down on the mul, his knees pinning Gorbin's chest. Despite Ju Fengst wiping the floor with the greatest fighter in Urik, Ju Feng didn't even sound winded. "When that person does find you, it's your time to die."

Oddly, Gorbin's blood-caked face brightened at that. "You mean I don't have to fight anymore?"

"Nope."

"Thank you." Gorbin sounded incredibly relieved.

To Gan's amazement, it seemed that—when Ju Feng To Gan's amazement, it seemed that—when Ju Feng grabbed the sides of Gorbin's hairless head and yanked it to one side, snapping the mul's neck—Gorbin died happy.

However, Gan had someone else's happiness on his mind—not so much that of a dead fighter, but that of a restless crowd who had come there to watch the latest in a series of predetermined Gorbin fights.

The silence extended for several seconds.

It was broken by Jago, who was grinning even more widely than Ju Feng had been.

"My friends, we have ourselves a new champion! For the first time in a decade, Gorbin has been defeated!"

More silence.

Gan was seriously worried that the crowd would riot.

Then one person in the audience bellowed, "It's about damned time!"

Someone else—or it might have been the same person, Gan couldn't tell—started to clap.

Then another.

Soon the applause started to spread throughout the arena.

That was followed by cheers and yips of joy.

After a few seconds, one of the incomprehensible yells started to coalesce into something understandable:

"Feng! Feng! Feng! Feng!"

At once Gan was relieved and frightened. The former because the crowd seemed to accept Feng's victory. Indeed, they were embracing it, having gotten over the shock of Gorbin's defeat.

The latter because what he Just saw was completely impossible. There was no way, none, that an unenhanced human of Feng's strength and talent—considerable though both were—could have wiped the floor with any mul like that, much less a mul as talented as Gorbin.

Something was wrong with Feng, and Gan needed to find out what it was.

He really wished that Fe Ying was there …

Feng's hands hurt. That was the worst part. No, the worst part was the headaches. They were awful. No, the worst part were the horrible lesions that kept sprouting on his skin and would not go away. No, the worst part was that those lesions would sometimes pop and smear red ooze all over everything.

No, the worst part was constantly being forced to fight for the pleasure of other people instead of being paid for it like a sensible person.

No, the worst part was that Ju Feng was starting to forget who he was. Yes, that was definitely the worst part.

He tried not to think about it too much.

Besides, that was only sometimes. Most of the time he knew damn well that he was Ju Feng Feng, that he was a human, that his best friends were Fehrd Anspah and Gan Storvis, that he hired himself out as a rent-a-thug, and that his parents were named—

He couldn't remember his parents' names. But he tried not to think about it too much. His hands hurt.

Some nights, when he slept—on those rare occasions when he could actually sleep, not toss and turn in the "cubicle" that Calbit and Jago had put him and Gan in—he dreamed about the red liquid. But in the dream, the red liquid was swirling madly in a whirlpool. Unfamiliar images crashed onto his consciousness like dunes overflowing during a sandstorm: a large golden vortexlike eye, a strange creature with gray skin but with shoulders covered in red crystal, a female wizard turning a tiefling into stone …

Plus phrases he did not recognize: the Elder Elemental Eye, Bael Turath, Voidharrow.

That last one he heard a lot in his dreams. But then he woke up. And he tried not to think about it too much. Sometimes he thought that he was better off not thinking at all. Ju Fengst giving in to all of it.

That would make life easier.

"Feng, you okay?"

For a moment, Ju Feng panicked. He knew the voice, knew it, as certain as he knew his own name was—

What was his name?

Gan. That was it. No, Gan wasn't his name, Gan was the name of the person talking to him. His own name was Ju Feng Feng. He knew that.

He always knew that. Except when he didn't.

"Feng."

"I'm fine." His voice sounded weird. "My hands hurt a little, but I'm fine."

He looked around the cubicle, but couldn't see Gan.

Maybe he was imagining Gan. Maybe he was imagining all of it. Maybe Gan didn't exist. Maybe it was all a dream and he'd wake up from it soon.

Maybe the red liquid was the reality and Gan was the fantasy.