The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (20 page)

Trolls had neither resource. They couldn't raise their food or purchase it honestly. Every mouthful
they ate was stolen from a human field or loft. Every mouth they lost was nigh irreplaceable. They were
never a fecund race, and once their women became fighters and raiders, there was very little time for
bearing children or raising them.

Chronicles and royal myths are rife with kings who won their petty wars on the battlefields—and
perhaps they did. But Rajaat's Cleansing Wars were never the stuff from which great legends are woven.
We weren't fighting for land or treasure or vague notions of honor and glory. We fought to exterminate
thirteen other races whose only crime was existence. So long as one man and one woman of a Rebirth
race remained—so long as the promise of children could be fulfilled—a champion could not claim
victory. So long as genocide was the destiny I pursued, pitched battles between armed veterans would
resolve nothing.

I waged war on the trolls who didn't fight, on the elders who maintained their race's traditions,
and on the young who were their hope and future. My campaign was relentless; my victory inevitable.
Sheer and single-minded annihilation has an insurmountable advantage over survival, much less creation.

You will forgive me, though, if I do not dwell on those years. It is enough to record here that the
trolls are gone from Athas, forgotten, and Hamanu bears the blame.

The end of my war—the end of the trolls—came in the thirty-first year of the 177th Ring's Age,
the appropriately named Year of Silt's Vengeance. We'd driven the last of the trolls—some five hundred
men, women, and what few of their children as remained—far to the northeast, beyond the vague
boundaries of the heartland, and into a land that was as strange to us as it was to them.

The trolls hoped, perhaps, that I would abandon pursuit if they retreated far enough, long enough.
But even if they'd trudged to the end of the world, I would have plagued their heels as they plunged over
the edge. And, indeed, that was very nearly what happened.

Whether through miscalculation or some half-conscious desire to meet doom at his chosen time,
not mine, Windreaver backed his people onto a rocky peninsula jutting into the brack-water and
wrack-water we now call the Sea of Silt. There, under an ominous and gritty sky, the trolls stretched
their tanned human hides over drum heads for the last time.

"Will we fight?" my adjutant asked when he found me on the mainland heights overlooking
Windreaver's camp.

By my count, I had three veterans to pit against each and every troll, which any fool will tell you
isn't enough when the cover is sparse and there's a narrows to be won and held at the battle's start.
Simpler, wiser by far to sit in my mainland camp until disease and starvation winnowed their ranks.
Simplest and wisest of all to wait until those invisible allies won the battle outright. But those drums took a
steady toll on my army's morale, and neither disease nor starvation would respect the line between our
opposing camps for long. I couldn't guess how long my slight advantage in numbers would hold, or when
I might find myself in a disadvantageous retreat.

"We'll fight," I decided. "Spread the word: All or nothing, at dawn."

The land offered little choice in tactics. Wave after wave of my veterans sallied up the peninsula's
neck while I stood on the heights, protecting them from the troll shamans and their rock-hurling magic.
When the neck was secure, I left the heights and entered the battle myself.
Not long before, I'd seen the animal that was to become my emblem forever after: the tawny lion
with his thick black mane, ivory fangs, and lethal claws. I cloaked myself in a glamour that was half
human, half lion. My sword was precious steel, as long as my leg and honed to a deadly edge. I gave it a
golden sheen to match my lion's hide. My own men fell to their knees when they saw me; the troll drums
lost their rhythm.

I sought Windreaver myself—his axe against my sword. It was no contest. By the time I found
him, he was bleeding from a score of wounds. His white hair was red and matted with blood from a skull
wound that would have killed a human twice over. One eye had swollen shut. One arm hung useless at
his side; the other trembled when he raised his axe to salute me. I thrust my glowing sword into the dirt.

"Finish it," he demanded. "There'll be no surrender. Not to you. Not to any puny human."

I balked on brink of total victory. I'd come to the end of my destiny: Windreaver and his few
battered companions were the last. When they were gone, there'd be no more. My champion's hunger
gnawed in my empty gut; all day, I'd turned away from every troll death. The thought of Windreaver's
spirit writhing through my grasp as it sought eternity left me burning with anticipated bliss.

And for that reason, I couldn't do it.

"Live out your lives," I offered. "Men and women apart from each other, until your race comes to
a natural end."

Had I stood where the old troll stood, I'd have spit in my own eye, and that was exactly what he
did. Still, I wouldn't kill him; I wouldn't kill the last troll, nor would any of my veterans. I made them kill
themselves, marching off the seaward cliff. Windreaver stood silently beside me. He was no sorcerer, but
he was the first person I'd met who could hide his thoughts beneath an empty, surface calm.

Singly and in pairs, clinging to one another for support-but never moaning, never wailing—the
trolls hurled themselves over the edge. Trolls couldn't, by nature, swim, even if they'd tried. Those who
didn't die on the rocks drowned quickly in the wracken surf. With my eyes closed, I counted their
deaths, forty-seven in all. Forty-eight, when Windreaver left me.

He meant to be the last and knew—I suppose—that I would not let him go as easily as the
others. I would not let him go at all. I was ready when, on the verge of leaping, he thrust his knife into the
big veins of his neck. I caught his escaping spirit, imprisoned it in a smooth gray pebble, and I say this
now, thirteen ages after: I was not wrong to bring death to an entire race. The wrong was Rajaat's and
Rajaat's madness. But I was not right, and the onus of genocide, rightfully, falls on me, on Hamanu.

... Omniscience...

There was the smell of himali flour, of fresh-bated bread, moist and hot from the oven, filled with
sunshine and contentment. Childhood. Family—Mother and Father, brothers and sisters, grandparents,
aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. Community—Deche and Dorean. Love and the future bound
as one, together, forever.

... Omniscience...

Coarse-grain bread, cut with sand, kneaded by war-hardened hands and baked flat on
hearthstones. Hollow stomachs and hollower victories under a heavy sky. A sky that had neither stars
nor moons to break the darkness. Firelit faces in the darkness, waiting for the future.

... Omniscience...

Bread with a golden-tan crust floating in twilight. A mind floating in a windowless room, a room
cluttered with chests and bundles. A room crowded with faces. Faces with open eyes, open mouths, and
closed minds. Strangers' faces: some men, some not; some human, some not. All of them waiting; none of
them familiar.

"Hamanu."

A jolt of darkness as eyes blinked. His eyes. Him. Hamanu.

One voice that cut through the swirling memories. One face above the crowd. A face unlike the
others, drawn in silver on the room's shadows. A face that was, at last, familiar.

"Windreaver."

The sound of his own voice was the final key that released Hamanu's self from a stagnant mire of
memory. A surge of self-knowledge began to restore order to his consciousness. He blinked his eyes
away from the waiting faces, to gather his wits in a semblance of privacy, glanced down and saw an
arm—his arm—little more than bone cased in dull, dark flesh.

The thought came to him: When did that happen? Before the answer had unrolled itself in his
consciousness, another question had taken its place: After ages upon ages, have I finally succumbed to
Rajaat's madness?

The mere fact that he had to ask the question made any answer suspect.

Hamanu shuddered and closed his eyes.

"Step back from the brink, Hamanu," Windreaver's echoing whisper advised.

What brink? Wasn't he sitting in a crowded room?

Then the windswept peninsula where the last trolls had died sprang up behind Hamanu's eyes,
more real than this room and anyone in it, anyone except Windreaver.

"Eat, Omniscience. You haven't eaten—haven't moved— for three days and nights together."

Hamanu recognized a round, hairless, and very worried face. With chilly dread, he marveled that
he hadn't recognized the dwarf's voice when he first heard it, or picked Enver's face immediately from the
crowd. The dread turned icy when he considered that, indeed, he hadn't moved for three days and
nights. His joints were rigid, as hard as the black bones that formed them.

He willed his fingers, knuckle by knuckle, to ungrasp the metal stylus. It clattered loudly on the
table and rolled beneath an untidy array of parchment sheets, which were slashed and splattered with his
frenetic script. He read the last words he'd written: the onus of genocide, rightfully, falls on me, on
Hamanu.

So much remembering—reliving—of the past was not a healthy thing.

"This is Nouri Nouri'son's bread: your favorite, since he began baking it for you. If not his bread,
then what, Omniscience? You must be starving."

Yes, he was starving, but not for fresh-baked bread, not for anything Enver could imagine.
Windreaver knew, and Windreaver had gone. Pavek might have guessed, but Pavek's scarred face
wasn't in the crowd. Hamanu reached for the loaf Enver offered. He tore off a large chunk with his teeth,
as if it were a panacea for his doubts. He reached for his druid-templar's mind and found him in a city
square.

Pavek had summoned the quarter's residents. He was drilling them by morning light: sweep and
parry; thrust and block; push away forward, push away and retreat. He'd armed them with bone and
wood tools, barrel staves, and mud-caked laths ripped from household roofs, but he drilled them as if
they, and their paltry weapons, would make a difference.

"If fortune's wheel turns square and the walls are breached," Pavek shouted, in rhythm with the
drill. "Then everyone becomes a warrior for Urik. Make the enemy bleed for every step. Make them
climb mountains of their dead. We'll fight for Urik, for our city, our homes, our families, and ourselves."

The same words, no doubt, that Pavek had used to inspire Telhami's Quraite farmers. Like those
farmers, the Urikites listened. They worked up a sweat, and not because a score of civil-bureau templars
stood on the verge, blocking the streets. The templars weren't watching the citizens; they were drilling,
too. Citizen and templar together did what Pavek told them because Pavek was an honest man, a man
who told the truth, a man who'd give his life for his city. A man who knew—Hamanu sensed the
awareness in Pavek's mind—that his king hadn't moved for three days.
Pavek wasn't the only high templar out among the ordinary citizens. Similar scenes played out in
other city squares and in the ringing market villages, where the line between templar and citizen was less
distinct and the wicker walls were meant to keep kanks, erdlus, and inixes in their pens, not keep a
determined enemy out.

O Mighty King, Javed greeted Hamanu with silent, enthusiastic relief. How may I serve you?

You serve me well enough, Hamanu replied. I have been... distracted. As humbling an
admission as any he'd made in a thousand years. Has there been change?

Javed spun out his observations, with the assurance that Urik's situation had neither improved nor
worsened since they'd last seen each other. The same rival armies still lurked beneath Urik's horizons.
There might have been a few skirmishes; it was difficult to be certain: with Hamanu distracted, messages
traveled no faster than an elf could run. Relay teams of messenger elves—a tactic the war-bureau
employed when its officers didn't wish to be in constant contact with their monarch—had already been
established.

Wise, Hamanu conceded. You have matters well under control.

Javed made his own concession: So far, our enemies have not resorted to templar magic.
They sit in their camps, awaiting some signal. The palls that Nibenay and Gulg have cast over the
land hinder them as much as they hinder us. Away from the city, the war bureau doesn't know
how far-reaching our danger has become. They ask no questions, and we give them no answers.

In his workroom, Hamanu swallowed hard and broke the Unseen connection with Javed. He
looked at Enver and the others—the men and women of his templarate and the handful of sorcerers who
lived on sufferance, casting the war-spells the Dark Lens could not empower and battering down the
wards on his workroom door. The wards on his immortal mind were secure from mortal mind-bending
and sorcery. But mortals based their opinions on cruder measurements: three days staring into the past.
Three days without moving a muscle. The fear in the workroom wasn't fear of a champion's might but
fear for his sanity.

Hamanu couldn't begin to explain and didn't bother to try.

"I didn't not summon you, dear Enver, nor anyone else. I'd cast my mind adrift. I hadn't found
what I was seeking; certainly, I had not asked for assistance."

The dwarf executor bowed low. "I thought—"

Hamanu cut him off. "I know what you thought, dear Enver." And he did; it shamed him to
quarrel with mortal compassion, however misdirected. "I will summon you when I need you, I do not
expect or need to see you a moment earlier."

"Yes, Omniscience."

The others, templars and pasty-faced sorcerers alike, were skulking across the threshold, leaving
Enver to face the Lion-King's wrath. Hamanu permitted their escape, waiting until he and the dwarf were
alone before saying:

"Thank you, dear Enver."

Enver raised his head. "Thank you, Omniscience? I've served you since I was a boy. I thought I
was accustomed to your ways; I was wrong. Forgive me, Omniscience. I shan't make the mistake again."

"No," Hamanu agreed as the dwarf straightened and retreated toward the door. The time for
mistakes and triumphs was growing short. "Enver—"

The dwarf halted in his tracks.

"—Thank you for the bread. It was delicious."

A faint smile creased Enver's face, then he was gone. The workroom door was gone, as well.
Not even dust remained. Hamanu could have cast a spell to set an illusion in its place, and yet another to
ward the illusion thoroughly. He tidied the parchment sheets instead—as much to exercise stiff muscles as
anything else.

Invoking fortune's round and fickle wheel, Hamanu rose unsteadily to his feet. He needed three
stiff-legged steps to reach the iron-bound chest. The chest was intact; that was a good sign. Still, Hamanu
held his breath while he unspelled the locks and lifted the lid. The many-colored sand around the crucible
had bleached bone-white; that, too, was a good sign. He didn't let go of his breath until he'd lifted the
crucible out of the sand. Its surface was marred with tiny pits, and the seam between its base and lid had
fused. Hamanu rapped it soundly with a forefinger. Metal flakes fell onto the sand. The lid lifted cleanly.

More than a score of lustrous beads, some tiny, some as large as Hamanu's thumbnail, filled the
crucible's bottom. He poured them carefully into his palm. He dribbled half of the beads, by volume, into
an amulet case, then swallowed the rest, gagging out the words of invocation and reaching out to brace
himself against the wall as the beads melted in his throat.

The discomfort was minimal compared to the disorientation the spell caused as it ate through his
illusions from the inside. For a few moments, Hamanu's skin was uniformly luminous. Then the workroom
was awash in sharp, shifting light beams. The light danced across his skin, leaving patches of sooty
darkness in its wake. Hamanu snatched the amulet case from the bleached sand, where he'd dropped it
when the spell began its work. He slashed the air in front of him. Mist danced with the spell-light as he
strode quickly into the Gray, lest he be trapped in a room too small to contain his metamorphic self.

Another illusion seized Hamanu once he was fully, exclusively, in the Gray. It was an illusion that
was all the more remarkable because it made the Lion-King of Urik appear-in this most magical of
places—completely ordinary. He marveled at the symmetry of his human hands, the tangles in his coarse,
black hair, the puckered scar that ran from the underside of his right eye, across the bridge of his nose,
and ended with a painful lump on the dark seam of his upper lip.

What would Pavek think, if Pavek's netherworld self were to wander past and see its double
hovering nearby?

Not that such an encounter was likely. Magicians and mind-benders of many stripes could, and
did, meet in the Gray, but rarely by accident. A strong presence—such as Hamanu was, no matter how
thorough his disguise—could attract lesser presences: lost spirits, misplaced artifacts, and novice
druids—or repel them, which was the Lion-King's intent as he navigated through the ether. Not a
profound repulsion that would, itself, rouse the interest of any other strong presence, but a subtle,
ignore-me-I'm-not-here rebuff that would permit him to approach his chosen destinations without
anyone, specifically Rajaat, noticing him.

If Rajaat did, by mischance, sense scarred Pavek drifting close—well, the first sorcerer would
attempt something unpleasant, but not as vengefully unpleasant as he'd attempt if he thought that one of
his rebellious champions were nearby. The champion in question, therefore, might have a heartbeat or
two in which to make his escape.

There were two places Hamanu intended to visit before his stealth spell lost its potency. Both of
them were supremely dangerous for a champion. Both of them were, in a way, Rajaat's prisons.

When the champions rebelled a thousand years ago, they'd achieved their lasting victory by
separating Rajaat's tangible substance from his living essence. They'd imprisoned their creator's essence
in the Hollow beneath the Black, a pulsing heart of shadow and darkness at the netherworld's core.
They'd imprisoned Rajaat's immortal body in a stone cyst that Borys had enshrined in the center of his
circular city, Ur Draxa. For a thousand years—more accurately, nine hundred years, because Borys had
been mad for the first hundred years and didn't build Ur Draxa and its shrine until after he'd
recovered—Borys maintained the spells that kept Rajaat's essence in the Hollow and kept the Hollow
away from Ur Draxa.

So it would have remained after Borys's death—at least long enough for the champions to have
considered the matter—except for the Dark Lens. The Lens had disappeared shortly after Borys became
a dragon. It had been lost by Borys himself, or stolen by his dwarven enemies—Hamanu had heard both
versions of the story. Borys insisted the loss wasn't a problem, so long as the Lens wasn't near Ur Draxa.

What happened next was a matter of opinion. In Tyr, opinion held that Sadira and a young mul
named Rkard had saved the world. In Urik, opinion was, understandably, different.

What mattered, though, was that Rajaat had been stopped. His essence had again been
separated from his substance. Hamanu, Gallard, and Inenek had reimprisoned their creator's essence in
the Hollow beneath the Black. The sorceress, Sadira, had interred Rajaat's substance beneath a lava
lake. That left the Dark Lens. In the end, it had gone into the lava lake with Rajaat's bones. retrospect,
Hamanu marveled that any of them, mortal or immortal, could have been so foolish as to leave the Lens
anywhere near Rajaat's bones. There was a resonance between the Black and the Dark Lens, at least
insofar as Rajaat was responsible for both of them and only he understood their secrets. And, of course,
there was resonance between the first sorcerer's essence and his substance. For five years—five
uninterrupted, unobserved years—Rajaat had been exploring those resonances.