Set Fire to the Gods Read online

  Map

  Dedication

  Is it cheesy to dedicate this to Kristen? I’m gonna do it: I dedicate my half of this book to my goddess coauthor, Kristen Simmons, the fuel to my flame.

  —S.R.

  And my half goes to Sara, who fights like a true gladiator for Madoc and Ash and inspires me more with every page.

  —K.S.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  The Creation of the World

  One: Madoc

  Two: Ash

  Three: Madoc

  Four: Ash

  Five: Madoc

  Six: Ash

  Seven: Madoc

  Eight: Ash

  Nine: Madoc

  Ten: Ash

  Eleven: Madoc

  Twelve: Ash

  Thirteen: Madoc

  Fourteen: Ash

  Fifteen: Madoc

  Sixteen: Ash

  Seventeen: Madoc

  Eighteen: Ash

  Nineteen: Madoc

  Twenty: Ash

  Twenty-One: Madoc

  Twenty-Two: Ash

  Twenty-Three: Madoc

  Twenty-Four: Ash

  Twenty-Five: Madoc

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Books by Sara Raasch

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The Creation of the World

  Before time, there was energeia, and that energy was a goddess.

  But she was lonely in the ether, so she harnessed and shaped her energy until she formed the world. Jagged mountains sprang into the sky; flames sparked in the dusty air; water frothed; animals prowled through towering plants. But the goddess was still lonely, so she pushed her soul into the rocks and the fire, into the air and the water, into the animals and plants. From this came her six children, keepers of each energeia, and she was their Mother Goddess.

  These six godly offspring populated the earth with mortals. But when her offspring began to love the mortals more than they loved her, the Mother Goddess grew jealous, and she sought to destroy them all. Blood soaked the earth; war all but decimated the population. To protect the mortals they had each made, her children united their energeias, and that power led to the Mother Goddess’s destruction. They vowed from that moment on to settle their disagreements with honor, glory, and minimal loss of life.

  To this day, all wars are resolved in the arena by gladiators.

  One

  Madoc

  SWEAT DRIPPED INTO Madoc’s eyes, soaking the frayed neck of his grime-streaked tunic and burning an open wound on his jaw. Blinking back the sting, he swiped an impatient hand across his forehead and lowered his stance. The thick, corded muscles of his thighs flexed as he rocked forward, preparing for his opponent’s next strike. Though his arms trembled with fatigue, his hands lifted, loose and ready.

  The night air reeked of wet earth, dead fish, and blood—the perfume of South Gate, the seediest fishing port in Crixion, Deimos’s capital city. Madoc had broken a sandal early in the fight, and the toes of his right foot dug into the cool soil of the old boatyard, the location of tonight’s match.

  Above the rush in his ears, Madoc could hear the taunts of the crowd that had gathered, hungry for his opponent’s victory. Fentus had been training to be a gladiator in Xiphos, on the eastern seaboard of Deimos, when he’d been kicked out of his sponsor’s facility. Word was he lacked the discipline to control his Earth Divine gifts and had killed his sparring partner in practice. On the streets they called that murder, but for one of the Father God’s blessed fighters, it had been ruled an unfortunate accident.

  Fentus had knocked down three challengers already tonight. Elias had said the odds were now ten to one in Fentus’s favor, and anyone who dared go up against him was a fool. But if that fool could win, he’d carry home a purse so heavy he’d be a king.

  Which was precisely why Madoc had taken the fight.

  A large part of him regretted that now. The match had gone on too long—Fentus’s strikes had been unrelenting. He had battered Madoc with waves of dirt that now coated his olive skin and dark hair. He’d knocked Madoc down with hunks of rope and sharp, rusty fish hooks, debris he’d picked up from the swirling earth. Over and over Madoc had fallen, only to rise again to take another blast of gravel from his attacker’s spindly fingers.

  If Madoc could get close enough, he could beat him. But to do that he had to stay upright.

  “Take the fall, pigstock!” A male voice rose above the others, eliciting an eruption of laughter.

  Madoc brushed off the insult, a common reminder that even though the Undivine made up half the world’s population, those without power were no more useful than cows, sheep, or pigs.

  “Give me strength,” he muttered to the Father God, his stare alternating between his attacker’s broad forehead and his hands, which were now resting at his sides.

  A familiar rush filled Madoc’s veins, cool against the oppressive heat of the night.

  Almost, a voice whispered in his mind. Almost.

  Fentus smiled, half his teeth black holes in his mouth, but even from twenty paces away, Madoc could see the sheen of sweat on the other man’s brow and the sag in his shoulders. Still, it was something else, something deeper, that stirred Madoc’s unusual sixth sense. He could feel the fatigue as if it came from his own muscles—a dip in energy, like some might feel the coming rain—a subtle change no one else could perceive.

  The ore was growing heavy in Fentus’s blood.

  Those with geoeia could pull only so much strength from the earth. Too far past the threshold, and the power turned to poison, making the mightiest fighters as slow and clumsy as any Undivine. Most knew their limit and did not push past it. Others, like Fentus, were too proud or stupid to quit.

  This was precisely what Madoc had been waiting for.

  A quick glance to his left revealed a skinny stonemason on the edge of the crowd, his tunic stained with telltale splashes of gray mortar.

  “Pigstock!” the stonemason called again, his grin, familiar to only Madoc, as wide as a sickle moon. He raised his fist, encouraging those closest to join the chant of Fen-tus! Fen-tus! Fen-tus!

  The people called for the bookmaker, the gold coins in their outstretched hands glinting off the tall torches surrounding the boatyard.

  Madoc tapped his left fist on his thigh twice. To the crowd, it would look like a nervous tic. But the stonemason’s dark hair fell over one eye as he dipped his head.

  “Submit, boy,” called Fentus, though at eighteen Madoc couldn’t have been more than five years younger than him. “Or I’ll bury you in a grave so deep not even your mother will know where to start digging.”

  The crowd roared.

  “That’s not very nice,” Madoc answered, tapping his thigh faster.

  Fentus grinned and, with a snarl, swung his thin arm toward the ground. Before he could touch the earth, Madoc dropped to one knee, digging his right hand into the tossed soil.

  The quake began instantly, cutting Fentus’s battle cry short. Madoc gritted his teeth as the ground dipped beneath his palm and rose up like a wave before him. The flying gravel was thin, not nearly as dense as Fentus’s efforts had been. Still, it surprised Madoc’s opponent. When the blast hit Fentus in the chest, it knocked him back three full steps.

  Madoc lunged up, sprinting through the cloud of dust toward the other man. He might not have been trained in Xiphos, or have mastered the skills of arena fighting, but he’d been lifting rocks at the quarry since he was a child, and his back and shoulders could carry a weight twice his own.

  Three more steps and Madoc had close
d the space between them.

  Fentus’s eyes, red from the dust, went wide just before Madoc arched back his elbow and punched him in the jaw.

  Fentus fell like a rock, flat on his back, and did not rise.

  Frenzied excitement squeezed Madoc’s chest. The crowd was quiet—no more calls of pigstock sounding out in the night. They’d finally seen his true intent, his strategy played out: wait until the other man tired, then attack.

  If only they’d known that sensing Fentus’s weakness was all Madoc’s powers entailed.

  Ten-to-one odds. They should be higher now; no one would doubt Fentus’s victory after all the falls Madoc had taken.

  A shout built inside him. Petros’s hired thugs were falling, one by one. The senate’s corrupt master of taxation set up these matches knowing he’d win—the entry and attendance fees, the heavy bets, all of them went into a pot that he kept unless a challenger could take down his fighter. It was just another way Petros sucked the poor dry.

  But Geoxus had smiled on Madoc, and tonight Petros would leave empty-handed.

  “Cheat!” shouted a man to Madoc’s left. The bookmaker. One of Petros’s many employees. “No one beats Fentus! He must be a cheat!”

  Madoc’s eyes narrowed on a blue toga surrounded by centurions in silver and black armor. Centurions policed the city, enforcing the senate’s rules with an iron fist. Of course Petros would have them standing by.

  A few others around the bookmaker took up the call.

  “Great.” Madoc held up his hands in surrender. He tried a smile, which drew even louder cheers from the crowd. He wasn’t the only one who wanted to see Petros’s fighter defeated.

  “Arrest him!” shouted the bookmaker.

  Madoc bit back a curse. It was a shame Cassia, Elias’s sister, couldn’t be here. Her life’s goal was to be a centurion, and she’d make a good one. She’d been telling on him since he was seven.

  As three centurions moved into the ring, drawing rocks from the ground with their geoeia to hover above their ready hands, Madoc gave a weak laugh. He took a step back, then another. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed two more centurions coming up from behind.

  “It was a fair fight,” he tried. “You all saw it.”

  The centurions continued their steady approach, wariness curling their spines. They had Geoxus’s blessing to use lethal force, but Madoc made them nervous. Any fighter who could take down Fentus was to be approached with caution.

  “Leave him alone!” shouted a woman from the edge. A rock slapped against the nearest solder’s breastplate with a ping. “You want to arrest someone, arrest that crook Petros!”

  The soldier spun toward the edge of the crowd, but the woman was nowhere to be seen.

  From the opposite side came another rock, then another. Soon shouts were rising into the night. Some came to Madoc’s defense, others to Fentus’s. Guilt panged through Madoc. Half these people were counting on tonight’s winnings to feed their families or cover their debts. The bookmaker’s shrill call for order was brushed aside as a fight broke out to Madoc’s left.

  That was his cue to run.

  He sprinted into the crowd, gravel flying behind him. More fights broke out, shouts ringing into the night, as Madoc bounced off bodies blocking his way.

  “There he is!”

  “Get him!”

  “Run!” called a man nearby as a flash of silver and black whipped behind them. Soon, people were shoving in all different directions, and the shouts turned to screams as the crowd stampeded back to the safety of the buildings.

  Madoc charged on, keeping his head low and his shoulders slumped to hide the fact that he was taller than most full-grown men. The urge to turn back pulled at every step. He’d weathered half a night’s beating for that purse. He didn’t want to leave without it.

  “Bull!”

  Madoc flinched at the sound of the name he used in fights. He ignored it, pressing on, but a fist grabbed the back of his tunic and dragged him beneath a stairway. Madoc spun, braced to fight, but as soon as they were hidden by shadows the other man immediately released his hold. Madoc assessed him in a single breath.

  He’d seen that scarred jaw and silver-streaked hair somewhere before.

  “Lucius wants to talk to you.”

  Realization struck Madoc like a fist to the gut. This man was a trainer for Lucius Pompino, one of the premier gladiator sponsors in Deimos. Lucius was an esteemed member of the senate—and a grandson of Geoxus himself. Elias and Madoc had watched people like him in the parades before a war. Sponsors would ride in elaborate chariots, wearing the finest clothing, tossing gems—worthless to the Divine, who could pull them from the earth with a flick of the wrist. Even more worthless to the Undivine, who couldn’t even sell the stones for a loaf of bread. There was little value to a rock that even a Divine child could make.

  “Stop gaping like a fish,” Lucius’s trainer said. “You know the man I speak of?”

  Madoc closed his mouth. “Yes. Dominus.” He added the title of respect, though it pained him to do so. The Divine in this city cared little for anyone who didn’t have the Father God’s gifts. Not even Petros bothered to attend the fights he ran in South Gate. The upper class normally didn’t dirty their hands in the Undivine districts.

  The trainer pulled his hood over his head. “Good. Then you know where to go.”

  The villa on Headless Hill, a plateau in Crixion’s wealthy Glykeria District, so named by those who looked up at it. Everyone knew where Lucius lived and trained his fighters. You could see the stone walls and the glimmer of his turquoise-studded insignia all the way from the quarries.

  Though Madoc wanted no part of the risks involved in fighting real gladiators, he couldn’t help the smirk pulling at his lips. Lucius’s top trainer had been at this fight. The man thought he was good enough to see the biggest sponsor in the city, to fight on his god’s behalf in official arena matches against their enemies during wars. At Headless Hill, he’d be given all the food he could eat, and go to parties that went late into the night, with wine and games and girls.

  While others like him—pigstock—continued to suffer.

  His grin faded.

  “Thanks for the offer, but Lucius will have to find someone else.” The words were as dry as dust in Madoc’s throat. The trainer’s mouth twisted with impatience, but before he could berate Madoc for declining this rare opportunity, a shrill whistle filled the night.

  Madoc blinked, and the trainer was gone.

  Panic raced through his blood. Outside the stairway, more silver and black glinted from the edge of the crowd—centurions flooding the streets to stop the riot. If Madoc waited around much longer, he was going to find himself locked up in a legion cell.

  His feet hit the stone, one sandal clapping against the street while the other bare, callused foot absorbed every bump and rock.

  From the front of the alley came a shout of surprise, and Madoc lifted his eyes to find a centurion on horseback blocking the path. The crowd before him shifted, turning back the way they’d come. Spinning, Madoc tried to go with them, but soldiers pressed from the other side. The hard, metallic clang of their gladius knives against their shields streaked a warning through him moments before the ground quaked, then lifted to block the nearest escape.

  Fear raced down Madoc’s spine. The centurions were using geoeia to corral the crowd.

  Cutting sideways, Madoc dived beneath the damaged wheel of a broken cart shoved against the side of a stone building to the right. Tucking his broad frame against the splintering wood of the axle, he watched the other runners disperse, escaping or caught by the legion. Soon, Madoc could hear the clap of hooves against the street. A centurion on horseback was coming closer. Even in the low light, it was impossible that Madoc would remain undetected. His right shoulder stuck out from the back of the cart and his legs were too long to tuck beneath him.

  The darkness was his only ally.

  Keep going, he willed the soldier. Kee
p going. He knew of people the legion had taken. They never returned. If he was caught, and the centurions learned he had been one of the fighters, what would they do? He knew, better than most, that prisoners were often shoved into training arenas as fodder for real gladiators.

  Instead of being sponsored by Lucius, he’d be ground to dust by the fighters Lucius chose.

  Keep going. Madoc willed it so hard his vision wavered.

  The soldier passed, his black and silver regalia muted by the starlit sky.

  A hard exhale raked Madoc’s throat. He waited until the horse and rider were out of earshot and the centurions no longer beat a warning against their shields. Until the street went quiet.

  An alley across the road caught his eye, and he slipped out from beneath the cart and sprinted toward it. As he ran, his feet sloshed through puddles of stagnant water and the waste of emptied chamber pots from the apartments above. Keeping to the twisting alleys, he carved a path through South Gate toward the Temple of Geoxus, where he was supposed to meet Elias.

  As in the other four Undivine districts, the houses and shops here weren’t soaring visions of marble, gleaming with gold leafing and wrapped in gems. Simple brown brick apartments lined the streets. Beggars slept on corners. Even this late at night, children dug through rotting garbage for bits of food to calm their twisting bellies.

  They had Petros and his impossible taxes to blame. It didn’t matter that being born with the gods’ power was a chance of fate—that geoeia was often, but not necessarily, inherited from one or both parents. When the Divine held the power, the Undivine paid the price.

  A chill crawling down his spine, Madoc took the final turn out of South Gate and into Market Square, an area where Divine and Undivine mingled. An open-air temple protecting the giant bronze statue of their Father God towered high above the empty street. In a few hours, vendors would fill the square, selling clay gladiator dolls and silver and black banners alongside food and textiles, but for now it was still, lit only by the beaten copper streetlamps.

  Madoc’s remaining sandal caught a raised stone on the street and tore the leather strap. With a curse, he took it off and tucked it into the back of his belt. Now he didn’t even have the coin to replace it.