Borrowed Levels

Chapter 24: Torvald the Unbroken

The semifinal was not a fair fight.

Torvald Brandt, called the Unbroken, was the Treasurer's greatest champion. He was nearly seven feet tall, built like a siege tower, and he had never lost a match in eleven years. His armor was black iron. His weapon was a double-headed axe the size of a door. Every thread of silver in the arena seemed to wind toward him, thick as ropes, glowing like a stormcloud.

Ren watched him demolish a man in the quarterfinal in nine seconds.

"Four of those threads are Ilyra's," he told Dara in the tunnel. "The rest come from other holders I can't see. Other Lenders. Maybe in other cities."

"How many does he have?"

"Too many."

He lifted his eyes. Hesk was seated in the first row of the stands, no longer chained, sitting between Granna Oss and Pip. She gave him a thumbs up, solemnly, as if they were children at a school fair.

He walked onto the sand.

Torvald lowered his axe and studied him. His voice, when he spoke, was thin and polite and unexpectedly gentle.

"You are the one who cut the collar."

"I am."

"Impressive." A pause. "I do not wish to kill you."

"Then yield."

"I cannot. The Treasurer holds my family." Torvald's face did not change. "I am sorry."

The bell rang.

The first blow shattered the sand where Ren had stood. The second clipped his shoulder and spun him like a top. He rolled, came up, parried a third with a shock that numbed both arms. Each stroke came faster than the last, and each carried a silver pulse.

He could not win this way. Torvald's strength was not his own.

Ilyra, he called.

I'm here.

Her voice came faint through the link, from a long way off. Ren closed his eyes for half a heartbeat.

I need to cut his threads. All of them. Can you reach them?

I can reach mine. A pause. Ren. There's a crystal in the Treasurer's box. A lens. All the threads feed into it. If it breaks, they all break.

He opened his eyes. Across the arena, in the shadow of the balcony, a pale blue crystal the size of a man's head glowed behind the Treasurer's chair. Torvald's axe came down. Ren threw himself aside, and in the same motion hurled his sword.

It flew straight and true, over the sand, over the first tier, through the open air, and struck the crystal with a ringing crash.

The lens shattered.

Every silver thread in the arena snapped at once.

Torvald stumbled as though a rope around his waist had been cut. His axe sagged. His shoulders slumped. He looked down at his own huge hands, bewildered, and then at Ren.

"I feel so tired," he said.

The Ledger flared.

[ ALL FORCED LINKS SEVERED. ] [ LENDER: VANCE, ILYRA. STATUS: FREE. ]

Ren picked up a fallen sword from the sand and leveled it. "Yield."

Torvald Brandt, the Unbroken, dropped his axe and knelt.

"I yield," he said, and began, quietly, to cry.