The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (17 page)

"When did you harvest the yora plants, Windreaver? While the sun ascends, while it's high, or
while it descends? The Troll-Scorcher's army mustered at High Sun, so I suppose I was in that pit for
less than a year, though it seemed like a lifetime. A human lifetime—but trolls live longer than humans,
don't they, Windreaver? A troll's lifetime would seem longer, standing the whole time."

Hamanu clutched the bent stylus in his fist, squeezing tighter, waiting for the old troll, his enemy,
to flinch. But it was Pavek who averted his eyes.

"Shall I tell you how I got out of the pit?" Hamanu asked, fastening his cruelty on one who would
react, lest his own memories overwhelm him. "First they threw down burning sticks and embers that set
the filth afire. Then they lowered a rope. Burn to death or climb. I chose to climb; I chose wrong.
Spear-carrying veterans circled the pit, according me a respect I did not deserve. I could stand, but I'd
forgotten how to walk. The sun blinded me; tears streamed from my eyes. I fell on my knees, seeking my
own shadow, the darkness I'd left behind.

"A man called my name, Manu of Deche; I opened my eyes and beheld the Troll-Scorcher,
Myron of Yoram. He was a big man, a huge, shapeless sack of a man wrapped in a tent of
flame-colored silk. Two men stood beside him, to aid him when he walked. Another two carried a stout
and slope-seated bench that they shoved behind him after every step because he had no strength in his
legs and could not sit to rest.

"I mocked him," Hamanu said, remembering the exact words that had earned him another
ruthless beating. His mortal eloquence hadn't been limited to long words and flowery phrases. Between
his farmyard childhood and his years among the veterans, he'd become a champion of coarse language
long before he'd been a champion of anything else. But time was unkind to vulgarity. His profanity had
lost its sting; his choicest oaths were quaint now, or forgotten entirely. He was left with paraphrase: "I
dubbed him a sexless man, a stinking mound of dung."

"You'd figured out where you were and what was about to happen. You'd decided to get
yourself killed, no doubt," Windreaver suggested.

"I recognized the place, yes: the plains, the mustered army, the trolls staked out on either side of
me. Seeing him, though... seeing what he was, the Troll-Scorcher who'd let Deche and a hundred other
human villages die, I wasn't thinking of death, only of my hatred. You cannot imagine my hatred when I
looked at him."

"Oh, I can, O Mighty Master, each time I look at you."

Once again Hamanu locked eyes with the ghost. Windreaver's hate was his most tangible aspect,
yet it paled beside the memory of Myron of Yoram.

"He was a failure, a coward who could not face his enemies. He was a glutton for pain and
suffering—when he had nothing at risk—"

Windreaver's silver-edged shadow bent low across the table. "When were you ever at risk,
Hamanu?" the troll demanded, his voice a cold, bitter whisper. "When did you ever fight a fair battle to an
honorable end?"

"I fought to end the war," Hamanu snarled back, though there was no need to defend himself to a
defeated adversary and a thoroughly cowed mortal man. "Peace was my honor—"

And the risk? What had he risked after he faced Myron of Yoram?

"I told the truth. I exposed the Troll-Scorcher to the veterans of his army. I accused him of
human deaths, countless deaths, pointless deaths. For Dorean and Deche and all the others whose voices
were stilled, I raised mine for judgment. I named him Betrayer and Deceiver. I cried out for
vengeance—and he struck me with the eyes of fire.

"My blood grew hot in my veins. It simmered. It boiled in my heart. I opened my mouth to
scream; my tongue—"

There were no more words in the workroom, just as there had been no more words that hot
High Sun afternoon on the plains. Writhing under the assault of the Troll-Scorcher's fiery sorcery,
Hamanu's mouth had filled with a tongue of flame, not flesh. The last sounds he heard were his own ears
crackling, like fat in the fire. Myron of Yoram's corpulence grew vast before his heat-swollen eyes burst.
Mortal Hamanu died in a black inferno of heat, silence, and torment that neither words nor memory
encompassed.

The ropes that bound him to the mekillot stake had burnt through. He'd fallen slowly toward the
ground, toward death, but Hamanu hadn't died. Myron of Yoram had seized the filaments of his
existence and hauled him away from eternity's threshold to agonies redoubled.

"I would not die," the Lion-King whispered. "Death ceased to have meaning. Life ceased. Pain
ceased."

Hamanu blinked and shuddered free of the memory, as free as he ever was. Windreaver and
Pavek were staring at him, at his hand. He looked down. Thick, greasy smoke seeped from the depth of
his clenched fist. The stench of charred flesh belonged to the present as well as the past, to reality and
illusion. With unfamiliar effort, Hamanu found the muscles of his fingers and straightened them.

A pool of molten bronze shone brightly in the palm of Hamanu's hand. He felt nothing—nothing
new, nothing different, but the long-suffering human core of him shuddered, and the liquid metal dribbled
onto the table. While the more benign aromas of burning wood and tempered metal cleansed the
workroom air, Hamanu stared at the new crater in his already black and ruined flesh.

There were other sounds around him, other movements. He ignored them until Pavek—mortal
Pavek, who did not understand—stood before him with a length of cloth torn from the treasures of
ancient Yaramuke in one hand and the critic-lizard's honey pot in the other.

Windreaver stirred, casting his shadow between them. "You waste your time, manikin. The
Troll-Scorcher neither feels nor heals."

Pavek said nothing, and his thoughts were tightly shuttered in his druid-templar way. He poured
the honey over Hamanu's wound—an old soldier's remedy, Javed would approve, Telhami, too—then
wrapped the cloth around it, hiding it from sight. Hamanu closed his eyes and reveled in a newfound pain.

Hamanu banished his companions from the workroom. He'd lived too long outside the bounds of
compassion to be comfortable within its embrace. Not that Windreaver had suddenly mellowed; the
shadowy troll departed in a gust of bitter laughter. Hamanu didn't know where his ancient enemy had
gone—to Ur Draxa, perhaps, where he should have been all along, spying on Rajaat.

In truth, Hamanu didn't care where Windreaver was. It was Pavek who weighed heavily in his
thoughts, and Pavek who ignored his command. The stubborn, insignificant mortal stopped one stride
short of the doorway.

"Your hand—" he said, defiance and fear entwined in his voice. Then he held out the honey jar.

"I am the almighty, immortal Lion-King of Urik, or weren't you paying attention?" Hamanu
snarled. "My flesh doesn't heal, but it won't putrefy. I require neither your service nor your concern."

Pavek stayed where he was, not talking, not thinking—at least not thinking thoughts that could be
skimmed from his mind. Twisting human lips into a scowl, Hamanu shaped and shifted his illusionary
body. He intended to snatch the jar from the templar's hand faster than Pavek's mortal eyes could
perceive. But Hamanu had a real injury: his reflexes, both illusory and real, were impaired. His fingers slid
past the jar. The improvised bandage snagged the rough-glazed pottery and tugged the raw edges of his
wound as well.

The Lion-King flinched, the jar shattered on the floor, and Pavek blinked—simply blinked.

Hamanu cradled his hand—the real hand within the illusion—trying to remember the last time he'd
misjudged the balance between reality and his own illusions. Before the templar was born, before his
grandparents had been born.

"You cannot take my measure, Pavek. A mortal cannot imagine me or judge me." There was
more edge to his words than he'd intended, but that was just as well, if it would get the templar moving.

Pavek folded his arms across his chest. "You were mortal when you measured Myron of Yoram
and Rajaat. You didn't hesitate to judge them," he said, omitting the Lion-King's titles and honors, as if he
and Hamanu were equals.

But he wasn't surprised when the templar disobeyed; he would have been disappointed
otherwise. Pavek didn't share Hamanu's hot temper, but the mortal man had a quiet stubbornness that
served the same purpose. An ill-omened purpose for any mortal when a champion's mood was more
bleak than it had been in an age.

"Go, Pavek, before my patience is exhausted. I do not choose to be lessoned tonight, not by you,
Windreaver, or anyone."

"You didn't finish your tale."

"Men have died—and died unpleasantly—" The rest of Hamanu's threat went unspoken. He
wouldn't kill tonight, and he'd never kill a man who dared to tell him the truth. "Not tonight, Pavek. Some
other time. Go home, Pavek. Eat a late supper with your friends. Sleep well. I'll summon you when I
need you."

A thought formed on the surface of Pavek's mind, so clear and simple that Hamanu questioned
every assumption he'd ever made about the man's innocence or simplicity. Surely my king needs sleep
and food, Pavek thought. Surely he needs friends about him tonight.

I do not sleep, Pavek, Hamanu replied, shoving the words directly into the templar's mind,
which was enough, at last, to send him staggering across the threshold.

"Friends," the king muttered to himself when he was finally alone. "A troll who loathes me, justly,
and a templar who defies me. Friends. Nonsense. A pox on friends."

But the thought of friendship was no easier to banish than Pavek had been. No one had known
Hamanu longer, or knew him better, than the last troll general. Urik's history was their history, laced with
venom and bile, but shared all the same. What was Windreaver, if not a friend, as well as an enemy?

And what was a friend, if not a mortal man who overcame his own-good sense to bandage a
dragon's hand?

Hamanu's hand, down to its patterned whorls and calluses, was illusion, but the wound was
real—he had the power to pierce his own defenses, even absentmindedly. There had been other wounds
over the ages, which he'd hidden within illusion. Tonight, sorcery and illusion had failed, or, more truly,
Hamanu himself had failed. The sight of molten metal in his palm had filled him with horror and
self-loathing, and given Pavek an opportunity no mortal should have had.

Ordinary cloth would have burned or rotted when it touched a champion's changeable flesh.
There was only one piece of suitably enchanted cloth in the workroom: the celadon gown of Sieiba
Sprite-Claw, champion and queen of Yaramuke. She had worn it when she died in the Lion-King's arms,
with his obsidian knife piercing her heart.

Had Windreaver guessed Pavek's intentions while Hamanu was preoccupied? Had the troll
whispered a suggestion in Pavek's mortal ears—

Or, had some instinct guided the templar's search? Some druid instinct? Some druid guardian
whose presence a champion's magic couldn't detect?

Hamanu had thought himself clever when he conceived his campaign to win Pavek's support as a
means to win the druid guardian's protection for his city. His bandaged hand could be taken as a sign that
he was succeeding—but, at what cost?

A wound?

That was nothing. Windreaver spoke the truth: Rajaat's champions didn't heal, but the raw crater
would be consumed by Hamanu's inexorable metamorphosis. In the meantime, he'd had a thousand
year's practice ignoring worse agony.

A wound, then, was no cost, but what about the nagging emptiness around his slow-beating
heart, hinting that he'd lived too long?

He had Urik, and for a thousand years, Urik had been enough. Mortals came and went; Urik
endured. The city was immortal; the city had become Hamanu's life. The passions of his minions had
supplanted any natural yearning for love or friendship. Then he conceived the notion of writing his history,
and after that—after ages of attention and nurturing—his precious minions wandered the city like lost
children while he confessed his private history on sheets of vellum.
Hamanu berated himself for their neglect and sought his favorites through the netherworld.

The Lion-King turned away. Lord Ursos's bents were familiar, stale, and without fascination. The
bath faded from his imagination. He looked around the workroom for another stylus.

I don't know how long I remained strung between life and death, locked in a mind-bender's battle
with Myron of Yoram. That's what it was, a netherworld war: the Troll-Scorcher's imagery against mine,
his years of experience against the purity of my rage, my hatred. I was, if not dead, at least not truly
unconscious when the battle ended. Our battle had lasted long enough and was loud enough to disturb
the War-Bringer's peace, and that was what truly mattered.

Rajaat burned through the Gray to find me, though I could not appreciate my rescue or his
undoubtedly spectacular appearance on the plains. I was aware of nothing except the pain, the darkness,
the silence and—very dimly—that my enemy no longer rose to the challenges I continued, in my mad,
mindless way, to hurl at him.

Then there was a ray of light in my black abyss, a wedge of sound, a voice I recognized as
power incarnate, telling me to desist.

Your pleas are heard, your wishes granted.

Rajaat. No need for him to state his name, then or ever. When the first sorcerer was present in
my mind, the world was Rajaat and Rajaat was the world, endless and eternal.

Look for yourself—

He gave me a kes'trekel's vision and hearing. Peering down from a soaring height, I saw mekillots
pulling a four-wheeled cart along a barrens road. There was a cage on the cart, and Myron of Yoram
was in the cage. The Troll-Scorcher had himself been scorched. He lay on his back, a bloated,
blackened carcass. His charred skin hung in tattered strips that swayed in rhythm with the creaking cart.
A cloud of buzzing insects feasted on his suppurating wounds.

I'd judged Yoram a corpse; I was wrong. With Rajaat's aid, I heard pathetic whimpers in the
depths of his flame-ravaged throat. I saw delicate silver chains nearly lost in the rotting folds at his wrists
and ankles: links of sorcery potent enough to render a champion helpless.

I was pleased, but not satisfied. It was not enough that the Troll-Scorcher suffered for his
betrayal of the human cause. The war against the trolls had to be fought and won—

In time, Manu. In due time. Wait. Rest—

A soft shadow surrounded me, not the bleak darkness of my recent torment, but oblivion all the
same. I wasn't interested in oblivion or resting or waiting. Childish and petulant, I tried to escape the
shadow.

My uncanny vision shifted: There was a second cart. Like the first, it ferried a human husk across
the barrens. The second body was little more than a black-boned skeleton held together with rags. Its
knees were drawn up. Its arms were crossed and fused together. They hid what remained of its face.

Of my face...

The husk was alive; the husk was me.

All the pain I'd felt was nothing compared to my imagination when I saw what had become of
Manu, the lithe dancer of Deche. I no longer fought Rajaat's shadow. I surrendered myself to its numbing
softness.

Don't despair, Rajaat told me with a grandfather's kindly voice. Pain belongs to your past.
Soon you will be reborn and you will never know pain or suffering again.

From the first, I doubted that promise: a life without pain or suffering wouldn't be a human life.
But my living corpse was strong in my mind, so I banished my doubts and drifted until I heard his voice
again.
It is time.

"It is time for you to be reborn."

The pressure was Rajaat's sorcery-laden hands restoring my body around me. His thumbs traced
the curves of my eye sockets. Bone grew like bread rising in a baker's oven, but Rajaat's miracle was not
without discomfort. Bone was not meant to grow and harden so quickly. For one unbearable moment,
the pain was so intense that I would have begged him to stop, if I'd had a mouth or tongue.

Rajaat knew my thoughts. "Patience, child. The worst is behind you. The best is barely begun."

I hadn't been anyone's child for years. I did not care to be reminded of what I'd lost, and I wasn't
willing to cede my hard-won manhood, even to a god. A low, rumbling chuckle echoed through my mind.
My thoughts scattered as chaff on the wind.

Today, perhaps, I could keep a secret from my creator— certainly that is why I have a spell
simmering beside me— but not that day under the relentless sun. I took refuge in the manners my parents
had taught me and thanked him properly. Chuckles became a kirre's contented purr.

Pressure shifted. Rajaat began restoring my cheekbones and jaw.

My reborn ears made me aware that Rajaat and I were not alone.

"Look at him," a deep-voiced man said. "A farmer. A dung-skull, no better than a slave. I tell
you, there's no need. The Scorcher's finished, but so are the gnomes. There's no need for the
War-Bringer to replace him. My army stands ready. They could finish the trolls in a single campaign."

In the Troll-Scorcher's army, we'd heard of the other armies cleansing the human heartland, and
of the leader of them all. Even before I knew his true name—before I knew what Rajaat was or what I
was to become—I knew that Gal-lard, Bane of Gnomes, was not half the military genius he believed
himself to be. Gnomes had been sly and wily, as he was, himself. Gallard's stealthy strategies were
effective in the dwindling forests where they dwelt, but Windreaver would have carved the Gnome-Bane
and his army into kes'trekel bait.

The Gnome-Bane wasn't my only audience.

"A peasant," a woman agreed. "He might be useful, when the War-Bringer's done with him." Her
name, I later learned, was Sielba. I would learn more about her notion of usefulness as the years went on,
but at that moment, I had no interest in them or her.

"He can hear you," a third voice, another man, cautioned. He was no less contemptuous of me
than the other two had been, but Borys of Ebe always saw much farther into a maze of consequences.
"He will be one of us when the War-Bringer's done with him."

After that, they spoke silently, if they spoke at all. My mind filled with eager curiosity; I didn't yet
know what being one of us meant. I thought only of leading an army— my army—against the trolls. I
envisioned slaughter and victory. Once again, Rajaat's amusement swept over me, dulling my
consciousness as he shaped smooth muscles across the newly hardened bones of my face.

When my eyelids were finished, I opened them, curious to see my savior.

I was stunned senseless. In my life, I'd seen only humans and trolls. Myron of Yoram was a fat,
bloated sack of a man, but he was—I believed he was—a human man. Beyond humans, there were only
trolls. Rajaat War-Bringer wasn't a troll. Trolls were handsome, well-formed mortals, compared to my
savior.

In all ways Rajaat lacked the simple left and right symmetry a man expects to see in another man,
be he human, troll or some other sentient race. The first sorcerer's head was huge and grotesque. Wisps
of colorless hair sprouted between the bulbous swellings that covered his skull like lava seeps. His eyes
were mismatched in color, size, and position. His nose was a shapeless growth above a coarse-lipped
mouth that was lined with snaggleteeth. Rajaat wheezed when he inhaled, and when he exhaled, his
breath stank of death and disease.

If he were resurrecting me in his own image...

Rajaat laughed and promised me he wasn't. His gnarled, magical fingers tilted my head so I could
see the men and women he'd called to witness his making—and unmaking— of a champion.

They are flawed, my savior assured me, turning my head again so my eyes beheld nothing but
him. Each of them bears a mistake to which you are the correction. You are my last champion,
Manu of Deche, Hamanu Troll-Scorcher. You will cleanse the land of impurities. Athas will
become blue again.