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return with the stone, my red monks will hunt you
down and kill you. Not only will they will hunt and kill your
beloved Rose, but after that we will kill every miserable soul in
the Pit, even the children. I will spare no one. The stone is
important to me. I will not accept failure.”
    The high priest watched me and seemed to be
greatly entertained.
    I set my jaw. The red monks were ruthless
assassins. There was no hiding from them. They would sniff you out
like attack dogs and kill you in the blink of an eye.
    His eyes narrowed.
    “And if you try to save your village by
warning them, I will know, and I will destroy them. And it will be your fault. So think on that before you do anything
foolish.”
    I wanted to spit in the high priest’s face.
It was always about them. Everyone else was dispensable.
    “The race will start in Soul City, and the
champions will head west to Goth, in the Heart of Arcania, inside
the Hollowmere. Should you agree to race, then your task will be to
recover the stone and bring it back to me .”
    I had heard of Goth. It was another
continent, west of Anglia. It was the realm of the dead.
    “If I win this race and retrieve your stone,
do I get a full pardon?”
    I knew this was a long shot, but it was
worth asking. I would keep my promise to Rose.
    “Yes.”
    I knew he was lying. There was no way he’d
let anyone with magic survive. They’d hunt me down and kill me. But
I had no other choice.
    For a long moment, nobody moved or said
anything. I hated these self-proclaimed Gods, but when I saw the
shock and outrage on Brother Edgar’s face, I felt new courage.
    I looked the high priest in the eye and
smiled.
    “I’ll do it.”

CHAPTER 9

     
     
     
    T WO WEEKS HAD PASSED since I’d met
with the high priest in all his horrible glory. I had been thrown
into the temple’s prison until the day of the race.
    At first I wasn’t sure what I’d expected,
maybe a room in one of the priests’ temple houses? It became quite
clear that although I was their champion, I was to be treated like
a condemned prisoner. I was a prisoner. Any which way I
looked at it, it all came back to the same thing—I was a pawn in
the high priest’s game.
    But players have the potential to alter the
overall outcome. Players can always break the rules of the game.
And for the past two weeks, all I could do was make plans on how to
break them. I would turn the tables on the high priest. I
would.
    I was fed cold stew of unknown meat once a
day, just enough to keep me from starving, and a bucket of water
for drinking and washing. I didn’t use much. I didn’t know how long
I’d be stuck in here. The almighty high priest could easily change
his mind.
    I closed my eyes and rested my head against
the cold stone of my cell. Darkness had been my closest friend for
the past days. My bed was a pile of filthy blankets on the stone
floor. My only company was these four walls and the guard that slid
my meal through the slot in the door once a day. The stale air
stank of urine, blood, and despair.
    Every waking hour in this sewer infested
cell, I thought of Rose. She had kept me safe all this time, only
to have her efforts wasted by my stupidity. Perhaps she had known
about my healing abilities. I wished that she had trusted me enough
to tell me if she had. Maybe if I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone to
such lengths to steal from the very people from whom I should have
been hiding. Had my mother and Rose feared that I’d be forced into
a game? A race?
    The truth was I was terrified to possess
these healing magic powers. How could I have not known all these
years? I had never been sick, but had I ever broken a bone or cut
myself? I racked my brain but I could not remember any broken
bones, or anything that would have revealed my secret early on. So
many questions died with my mother. Only Rose knew. I was sure of
it. And I would ask her as soon as I’d finished with this race.
    I shoved Rose out of my mind and replaced
her