"It's natural," I said. "Only the insane aren't scared before the fight. They can't imagine dying."
"Do you feel fear, Kate?"
"Always."
"Why do you do it, then?"
I sighed. "Fear is pain. It hurts. I sink into it and use it like a sharpening stone gliding against a sword. It makes me better, more aware. But I can't be scared for too long, or it will wear me out."
"How do you make it stop?"
"I kill."
The blue eyes regarded me with a strange look, half-terror, half-surprise. "That's it? No noble purpose?"
"There isn't always a noble purpose. There is usually a reason. The need to save someone or something. Your friend, your lover, an innocent who doesn't deserve to be hurt. Sometimes it's a purely selfish reason. One might fight for their body, their good name, or their sanity.
Sometimes it's just a job. But deciding to fight and doing it are two different things."
"How can you live like that? It seems unbearable."
I shrugged. "Like you, I harbor no illusions. I was conceived, born, raised, and trained with one purpose in mind: to become the best killer I could be. It's what I do." So eventually I can kill Roland, the most powerful man on Earth.
"It's time," Jim's voice said from beyond the door.
A long, deep sigh issued from Saiman. He rose. His head nearly brushed the ceiling. Eight and a half feet tall. Wow.
"Do you prefer the Aesir?"
The word hit me like a bolt of lightning. Pieces fell into place in my head: Saiman, golden and high on magic, dancing on the roof and celebrating "the time of the gods," his fluid changes of shape, his self-interest, his ego, and him now, an enormous monster, a giant of a man. I gaped at him. He wasn't supposed to exist.
"My other shape, Kate. Do you like it?"
"Yes," I said, managing to make my voice even. "So are you all god or did one of your divine relatives get fresh with a human?"
For the first time Saiman smiled, displaying white teeth that would've been at home in the mouth of a polar bear. "A quarter. It's enough. The rest is frost and human."
He scooped the canvas bundle off the floor. The fabric fluttered down, revealing a four-foot-long club studded with metal spikes thicker than my fingers. Saiman bent and stepped through the doorway. I heard a startled growl from Jim.
Saiman kept going, out of the room, into the hallway, each step like two of mine. Jim's teeth were bared in a snarl.
"Come on." I swiped Slayer and chased Saiman into the hallway. The Red Guards hugged the walls as he passed by.
Jim caught up with me. "What the fuck is he?"
"Vikings," I managed, breaking into an outright run.
"What about Vikings?"
"Vikings called their gods Aesir."
"That tells me nothing."
The Gold Gate loomed before us, and through its lit rectangle I saw the Pit and the sea of spectators. Saiman paused in the gloom, his club resting on his shoulder.
"He said he is a quarter Aesir, which probably means his grandmother was a Viking god. But there is only one Norse deity who can change shape the way he does and he wasn't Aesir. He was Loki, the trickster, a giant who became a god. Saiman is the grandson of two Norse deities, Jim."
Saiman swung the club off his shoulder with the ease of a child with a toy baseball bat and stepped through the gate into the light. The crowd fell silent. The silence stretched as the audience tried to come to terms with an eight-and-a-half-foot-tall humanoid. Saiman didn't wait for them. His club in hand, he strode to the Pit.
Chapter 17
THE REAPER WAITED AT THE FAR END OF THE sand. Inhumanly tall and packed with thick muscle, he had the build of a champion weight lifter, his body so overdeveloped it resembled an action figure. If I went up against him, I'd have to strike at a joint - if he clenched up, the sword might not penetrate all that muscle.
The Reaper wore black boots, and nothing else. Swirls of henna designs covered every inch of his pale body. He carried two heavy bearded axes, sharpened to razor gleam, each three feet tall. They were meant to be used two-handed.
Saiman entered the ring, his long legs moving slowly. He towered over the Reaper by a foot or so, which made the axe fighter just over seven and a half feet. Despite the height difference, they probably weighed the same. You could see Saiman's ribs, and the