The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (2 page)

There was light in the room. She silently cursed herself for leaving the lamp lit. An open flame was
a danger to them—her man and her daughter and every other mortal in the neighborhood. It was also a
waste of oil, a waste of money, which was scant these days, with her unable to work. In the instant
before her vision cleared, the mother saw disaster in her mind's eye: her man, groggy because he hadn't
slept and clumsy for the same reason, blundering against the kiln, screaming, and dooming them all to
poverty, to death.

With that image fresh in her thoughts, she was too distracted to cry out when she saw another
woman—a stranger—sitting on the stool beside her daughter's cradle. She reached blindly for the lamp,
which was not lit. The light came from the stranger; it surrounded her and the infant.

"Lame..."

That word, her man's name, came weakly from the mother's tongue. It failed to rouse Lame, but
drew the attention of the dark-haired stranger whose eyes, when she turned, were huge in her face and
gray as the infant's.

"Yes," Cissa agreed slowly. A part of her was caught in panic: a stranger in her home, a stranger
holding her daughter. A stranger whom Cissa would have remembered if she'd ever seen her before, a
stranger who sat bathed in light that had no source. "Lame—" she called more strongly than before.
"Larne."

"Rest you, both," the stranger insisted. "The child is safe with me."

"Safe," Cissa repeated. The stranger's smile wrapped its arms around her and vanquished her
panic. "Safe. Yes, safe."

"None in Urik is safer," the stranger agreed, and Cissa, at last, believed.

She returned to the rumpled bed where her man's warm shadow beckoned.

The radiant, gray-eyed stranger gave her attention back to the infant. She was not one for gurgly
noises or nonsense syllables or mimicking a kank's jointed antennae with her fingers. She charmed the
pained and weary child with a wordless lullaby.

The infant's fists unclenched. Her little furrowed face relaxed when the stranger stroked her
down-covered scalp. The child reached for a thick lock of the stranger's midnight hair. They shared a
trilling note of laughter, and then the stranger sang again—an eight-tone trope, four ascending, then the
lowest, then a three-tone cascade through the middle range—theme and variations until the tooth had
risen and the infant slept easy in a stranger's arms.

He began his journey when the air was cool and the day no more than a bright promise above the
eastern rooftops. With his bowl tucked inside his tattered, skimpy tunic and his crutch wedged beneath
his shoulder, he made his way from the alley where he slept, safe and warm beneath a year's
accumulation of rubbish, to the northwest corner of Joiner's Square. The baker's shop on that corner had
a stoop that was shaded all day and wider than its door—wide enough for a crippled beggar to sit, plying
the trade he'd never chosen to master. He inconvenienced no one, especially Nouri, the baker, who
sometimes let him scrounge crumbs off the floor at the end of the day.

It was a long journey from his alley to the baker's shop, and a treacherous one. The least mistake
planting his crutch among the cobblestones would throw him off his unsteady feet. He was careful,
wriggling the crutch a bit each time he set it down before entrusting it with his weight and balance.

When he was sure of it, he'd grip the shaft in both hands and then—holding his breath, always
holding his breath for that risky moment—hop his good leg forward. Then he'd drag his crippled leg, his
aching, useless leg, afterward.

His shoulder hurt worse than the leg by the time he could see the baker's stoop ahead of him. The
beggar-king to whom he paid his dues said he should forego the crutch, said he'd live longer and earn
more if he dragged himself along with his arms. And it might come to that. Some days the sun was
noon-high before the numbness in his arm subsided from his morning journey. He had pride, though. He'd
stand and walk as best he could until he had no choice, and then, maybe, he'd simply choose to die.

But not today.

"Hey, cripple-boy! Slow down, cripple-boy."

A handful of gravel came with the greeting. He shook it off and planted his crutch in the next
likely spot. He couldn't slow down, not without stopping entirely; didn't dare twist around to count his
tormentors. Bullies, he knew from long experience, seldom went alone.

"Hey, cripple-boy! I'm talkin' to you, cripple-boy!"

"Cripple-boy—what's the difference between you an' a snake?"

There were three of them, he had that knowledge before a meaty hand clamped across the back
of his neck and shook him hard.

"Snakes don't die till sundown, cripple-boy, but you're gonna die now."
He hit the cobblestones with his crutch in his hands, for all the good it would do him. He didn't
recognize them, certainly hadn't ever done them any harm. That wouldn't matter. They were predators;
he was prey. It was as simple as that, and as quick. There was an alley behind him, and though a whole
man would undoubtedly say that its shadows and debris would work to a predator's advantage, not his,
he dragged himself toward it, still clinging to his crutch.

Nouri couldn't have said what drew him out of his shop's oven-filled courtyard and put him at the
counter at just that moment. Perhaps he'd had a reason and forgotten it. Dawn was the end of his day.
His customers were workmen, laborers who bought their bread first thing in the morning, ate what they
needed, and took the crusts home to feed their families when their work was done. Perhaps, though, it
was the Lion's whim: an urge of fortune best blamed on Urik's mighty king. Either way, or something else
entirely, Nouri was behind the counter, staring out the open door, when the adolescent thugs seized the
beggar.

His beggar.

Father had always said a beggar was good for business—a polite and clean beggar with an
obvious but not hideous deformity. The crippled boy was all that, and more: His wits weren't afflicted. He
kept an eye on the street, an open ear for passing conversation, for thieves and thugs and, on occasion,
profit.

If the boy had ever asked, Nouri would have given him a nighttime place beneath the counter.
But the boy was proud, in his way; he wouldn't take charity, not above his place on the stoop or a few
broken crusts of bread.

Nouri was always a bit relieved when he heard the boy thump and settle on the stoop. Urik was
a dangerous place for anyone who didn't have a door to lock himself behind. In his heart, Nouri had
known that the morning would come when the beggar wouldn't appear. But he hadn't imagined the boy
would come to his end not fifty paces from his shop's stoop.

The tools of Nouri's trade hung on the wall behind him. Not least among them was the
wedge-shaped mallet he used to beat down the risen dough between kneadings; it could be used for
beating down other things... murderous young thugs who thought a crippled boy was fair game.

Nouri's wife, Maya, and his three journeymen were in courtyard unloading the oven. Maya would
have stopped him if she'd seen him with the mallet in his hand, heading out the door. And the journeymen
would have been some assurance of his own safety: he was bigger than any of the youths, but not all of
them together. If he'd taken the time to think at all, he might well have thought better of justice. Urik had
enough beggars, and his stoop was an attractive place for their trade; he'd have another soon enough.
Nouri wasn't a templar or a thug; he'd never struck a man in anger, not even his apprentices, who
deserved a beating now and again.

But Nouri didn't stop to think. He crossed the street and charged down the alley at a flat-out run.
With a backhand swing of the mallet, he caught the laggard of the trio from behind. The youth went down
with a shout that alerted his companions, the biggest of whom was also the closest. Paste-faced with fear,
the thug tried to defend himself with the crippled boy's crutch, but the weight of Nouri's mallet swept the
lighter shaft aside.

The baker delivered a blow that shattered teeth and released a spray of blood and saliva from the
thug's mouth. Nouri was defenseless and vulnerable in the wake of the violence he'd done, but the third
thug didn't linger to press his advantage. The last youth hied himself out of the alley without a backward
glance for his bloodied and fallen companions.

"Get out," Nouri suggested in a voice he scarcely recognized as his own. "Get out now, and don't
show your faces around here again."
It was good advice, and Bloodymouth retained the wit to take it. He hauled his stunned
companion to his feet, and with arms linked around each other for support, they beat a clumsy retreat to
the street.

"Boy?" he called into the shadows. "Janni?" He thought that was the boy's name; you or bay
were usually sufficient to get his attention when he sat on the stoop. "Don't be afraid, boy. Are you hurt,
boy?"

Then, fearing the worst—that he'd been too late—Nouri set down both mallet and crutch. He
waded into the shadows and began flinging rubbish aside before familiar sounds snared his attention: tap,
thump, and drag; tap, thump, and drag again. The cold hand of fear clutched the baker's heart as he
turned toward the light and the street.

Janni, the crippled boy, reached the stoop while Nouri watched. He lowered himself to the flat
stone, same as he did each morning, and secured his crutch behind him before arranging his twisted leg
on the cobblestones where passersby and Nouri's customers could see both it and the wrapped-straw
begging bowl.

"Whim of the Lion," Nouri whispered. His hands had risen of their own will to cover his heart. He
forced them down to his sides, though his fear had not abated, and the foreboding had only just begun.

"What have I done?" he asked himself.

The kneading mallet lay where he'd left it, bloodstained the same as Nouri's shirt. But the crutch...
was gone. The only crutch Nouri could see was the one propped against his shop's wall.

"Whim of the Lion," he repeated and turned back to the shadows as his gut heaved.

Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of the World, King of the Mountains and the Plains, and a score
of other titles claimed during his thousand-year rule of the city, could soften be found on the highest roof
of his sprawling palace. The royal apartments were on the roof. The doors and chambers could have
accommodated a half-giant, though the furnishings were scaled for a human man, and austere as well,
despite their gilding and bright enamel.

The king sat at a black marble table outside the lattice-walled apartments and stared absently
toward the east, where the sun had risen an hour earlier. Hamanu hummed a tune as he sat, an eight-tone
trope. A hint of midnight's coolness clung to the shadow behind him. A robe of lustrous silk hung loosely
about his powerful torso. Its dull crimson color perfectly complemented his tawny gold skin and the black
mane that swept back from a smooth, intelligent forehead to fall in thick, shiny elflocks against his
shoulders.

There was no softness anywhere about him. His eyes held the deep yellow color of ripe agafari
blossoms; his lips were firm and dark above a beardless chin. The faint crinkles around his eyes might
have marked him as a man of good humor, who enjoyed a frequent, hearty laugh—but they could as
easily be the brands of a cruel nature.

A sword of steel so fine it shone like silver in the sun rested blade-up in an ebony rack behind the
king. Two darkly seething obsidian spheres sat on cushioned pedestals, one at the sword's tip, the other
beside its hilt. Suits of polished armor in various sizes and styles stood ready on the backs of straw men.
The armor showed signs of wear, but not a trace of the gritty, yellow dust that was the bane of Urik's
housekeepers, as if the king's mere presence were enough to control the vagaries of wind and
weather—which it was.

Hamanu blinked and stirred, shedding distraction as he rose from his chair. A balustrade of
rampant lions defined the roof's edge. He leaned his hand on a carved stone mane and squinted hard at
his domain until he'd seen what he needed to see, heard what he wanted to hear. His face relaxed. His
thoughts drifted to more familiar places: the mind of his personal steward these last hundred years.
Enver, it's time.

Hamanu smiled and patted the stone lion lightly on its head. He'd had a satisfying night, last night.
This morning he was disposed to indulgence and good humor.

He was seated behind the marble table again when Enver made his appearance, leading a small
herd of slaves bearing breakfast trays and baskets filled with petitions and bribes.

"Omniscience, the bloody sun of Athas shines brightly on you and all your domain this morning!"
Enver announced with reverence and a well-practiced bow from the waist.

"Does it, now?" Hamanu replied with arch inflection. "Whatever has happened, dear Enver?"
Indulgence did not preclude—and good humor well-nigh demanded—a taste of mortal fear before
breakfast.

"Nothing, Omniscience," the dwarf replied, flustered with piquant terror.

The slaves behind Enver clumped into a cowering mass that endangered the safe arrival of
Hamanu's breakfast. He didn't need to eat. There was very little that Hamanu needed to do. But he
wanted his breakfast, and he wanted it on the table, not the floor or splattered across the day's petitions.

"Good, Enver." Hamanu's smile had teeth: blunt, human teeth, though, like everything else about
him, that could change in a eye blink. "Exactly as it should be. Exactly as I expect."

Enver bobbled a less-enthusiastic smile and the slaves shuttled trays and baskets to the table
before scurrying to the far corner of the roof and the out-of-sight safety of the stairway. Hamanu caught
their relieved sighs in his preternatural hearing. He could hear anything in Urik, if he chose to listen; his
vision was almost as keen. More than that, he could kill with a thought and draw sustenance from a
mortal's dying breath.