The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (25 page)

"I have no reason to."

Dregoth seemed not to have heard. "There's no place where you could hide, Hamanu, should you
try to escape."

"I have no reason to," Hamanu repeated. "I'm the one who didn't cheat."

The third champion found Hamanu's remark amusing and chuckled softly until, in the tower,
Gallard cast his spell beneath the Dark Lens.

In the years since he'd watched the last trolls march off a cliff, Hamanu had spent more time
governing unruly humans than he'd spent learning about the netherworld. He knew the Gray was more
shadow than substance and the Black was pure shadow and the absence of substance. He wasn't
confident about any of it. Still, he thought he understood Gallard's proposal, and he expected that
Rajaat's warded body would vanish from the moonlit world and wind up in a hollow place, beneath
another place that had no substance. He was more than mildly startled, then, when Gallard's mighty spell
seemed to do nothing more than seal Athas's first sorcerer in an egg-shaped rock.

"I'd sooner have carved out a hole in a Kreegill peak and shoved him down to the bottom," he
muttered.

"Interesting," was all Dregoth had to say.

It seemed to Hamanu that a huge, mottled rock was not quite what Gallard expected to find
when he led his audience into the dawn light. For a fleeting moment, the Gnome-Bane's eyes showed
white all around their dark irises, and his mouth was slack-jawed, but only for a moment. By the time the
questions and accusations started, Gallard was either honestly confident of his spell or a better illusionist
than Hamanu ever hoped to be.

"Something had to be done with his substance!" he declared, letting his irritation show. "I couldn't
put substance beneath the Black. That would be a complete contradiction, an intolerable paradox.
There's no guessing what would have happened. So, I left his substance here, a cyst in a world of
substance. His essence, I assure you all, is in the Hollow."

Borys put his fist on the rock. "If I broke this open—"

"—You can't," the Gnome-Bane insisted.

"But if I did, I'd find the War-Bringer's substance, and if I poked my head inside this Hollow of
yours—"

"—You wouldn't."
"But if I did, you say I'd find his essence?"

"In what manner?" Borys hammered the rock with his fist.

Hamanu didn't see what happened, like a mortal fool, he'd winced. He wasn't the only one:
Dregoth's eyes were still closed when Hamanu opened his again. Bathed in the ruddy light of the rising
sun, Gallard's egg-shaped rock was... a rock. It wasn't hollow; Rajaat's bones didn't rattle inside. There
were no cracks where the Butcher's fist struck, no luminous leaks of sorcery.

"It's finished. Done," the Gnome-Bane said. "He's bound beneath the Black for all eternity."

"And we can get back to what we were doing," Albeorn urged.

That was Uyness's cue to lunge for Wyan's throat, shrieking, "Vengeance! Vengeance for
Pennarin! Death!"

Vengeance was easier threatened than accomplished. Without Rajaat's sorcery, no one of them
knew how to kill another champion—yet. Will-sapping spells such as the one Borys cast on Sacha were
harder on the spell-caster than they were on their targets. And, anyway, Uyness wasn't interested in a
painless punishment. She wanted the Pixie-Blight's death in the worst possible way; Hamanu saw that
clearly on her face when she looked at Wyan of Bodach. He saw deadly determination on a number of
other faces, including Sielba's.

Distrust would become murder before long. They'd all have to keep warding spells at their backs.
But Albeorn Elf-Slayer wasn't the only champion eager to leave the white tower. Borys and Dregoth had
wars to fight and finish.

Rajaat's demise wouldn't end the Cleansing Wars against the elves, the dwarves, or the giants any
more than Myron of Yoram's death had spared the trolls. They'd saved humanity, that was all. The
children of their own ancestors need never fear a champion-led army. And aside from Borys, who gave a
barely perceptible nod when the Lion of Urik stared straight at him, none of the champions suspected
how grave humanity's danger had been.

Wyan and Sacha got reprieves. If they were wise, they'd hie themselves as far from the human
heartland as the sun and moons allowed. As the champions parted company without fare-thee-wells or
other false promises, Hamanu wondered if he, too, wouldn't be wiser himself to leave Urik. There was a
lot of world beyond the heartland. He'd seen a bit of it chasing trolls. Surely a man—an immortal
champion starving for the savor of human death in his heart-could find better neighbors.

Hamanu never had the chance to look. The champions turned on each other before the white
tower's netherworld glow had vanished behind them. Wild sorcery raised whirl-winds in the Gray.
Hamanu didn't know if the assault spells were aimed at him or were echoes of other quarrels. The way
the netherworld was spinning, it didn't matter. He took his chances with unfamiliar, but real, terrain,
tumbling from the morning sky onto an empty plain. He took his bearing from the sun and started
walking.

Four long but uneventful days later, the Lion of Urik walked through the gates of his palace. He
was astonished to find Gallard waiting for him by the well in one of the inner courtyards.

"Peace. Truce. Whatever," Gallard said quickly, shedding his servant's illusion and holding his
hands palms-up, to indicate that he had no spells quickening on his fingertips. "We thought we'd lost
you."

While Hamanu cooled himself and slaked his thirst, the Gnome-Bane told him what had
happened in the Gray: who'd attacked whom and with what success. Gallard would have told him more,
but Hamanu cut his litany short.

"Your feuds mean nothing to me. Why should I care?"

The Gnome-Bane had a quick, disturbing answer: "Because between them, Sacha Arala and
Wyan have cracked the cyst."

Hamanu finished pouring a bucket of water over his head then heaved the clay-coated straw
bucket across the courtyard. It hit the wall with a satisfying thud and collapsed in a shapeless, useless
mass on the ground.

"Is he free?"
Gallard writhed. "Not yet. We need you, Hamanu. We need everyone."

"It's too late for that. We've got to hurry."

Hamanu's peers still hadn't found a way to kill each other, but they were getting closer. Sacha
Arala and Wyan were unrecognizable, indistinguishable, as they sagged against what appeared to be
ordinary ropes binding them to columns on either side of the white tower's gate. Uyness kept watch over
them with Dregoth's stone-headed maul braced across her arms. They'd have been wiser to run—if
they'd gotten the chance.

Of far greater concern to Hamanu than the fates of two lesser champions was Gallard's
egg-shaped cyst around which the remaining seven champions had gathered. Thick layers of shimmering
green warding couldn't hide the damage. While Hamanu watched, finger-length worms of intensely bright
sorcery oozed from dark cracks. They wriggled like slugs until the warding destroyed them. With the
Dark Lens nearby, the champions could renew the warding continuously. With no more than a thought
and a twitch of his thumb, Hamanu added his own spell to the mix. But warding wouldn't hold forever,
not against humanity's first sorcerer.

"What about the Hollow beneath the Black?" Hamanu asked.

Borys glowered at Gallard, who shook his head. "Too dangerous to get close enough to look.
But it holds... it must! If the Hollow were cracked, nothing could hold here."

"So, do we wait until he breaks free, or what?"

"Another rock," Albeorn advised. "A bigger rock, around this one."

Hamanu arched a highly skeptical eyebrow.

"You've got a better idea?" Borys demanded, cocking his fist for emphasis.

The Lion of Urik was no master of sorcery, at least not then, and having nothing better to offer,
he could only go along, providing the strength, both physical and sorcerous, that his elders requested.
Working together, the cooperating champions did construct a second cyst around the original one. It
seemed that the new prison would hold, but there were dark lines on the mottled surface by sundown
and flashes of dark blue light by moonrise.

"He exploits the weaknesses between us," Sielba said wearily.

Hamanu had come to the same conclusion, but the red-haired champion spoke first.

"We need to make our own Rajaat before we can make Rajaat's prison," Borys suggested softly.

Hamanu thought the Borys who stood before them, tall, thick-necked, and armored like a troll,
was the Butcher of Dwarves in his true, metamorph's shape, but that was illusion, too. As golden light
cascaded around him, Borys reformed himself. His head became a fang-filled wedge. His eyes glowed
with the sun's bloody color. His limbs lengthened and changed proportion. Though he remained upright
on two legs, it was clear as his torso grew more massive that he'd be more comfortable and more
powerful if he balanced his burgeoning weight on his arms as well.

"I offer myself." Borys shaped his words with sorcery and left them hanging above the insufficient
prison. "Help me finish the metamorphosis, and I will keep Rajaat in the Hollow."

Dregoth roared, but he wasn't nearly the dragon Borys already was. His outrage was moot and
impotent.

"Think of the risks," Hamanu said, thinking of himself and the metamorphosis that lay before him.
He was unaware that he'd spoken aloud.

I have, Borys said in Hamanu's mind alone. My risks are not so great as yours would be. I
will finish the dwarves—the elves and the giants, too—but humanity has nothing to fear. Athas
will be our world, a world of humans and champions where Rajaat has no power, no influence.

"I believed him," Hamanu said to Windreaver when they had talked and recounted their way
through events they both recalled.
Windreaver had been at the white tower the night when Hamanu and the others champions had
fledged a dragon, with the Dark Lens's help.

In the ancient landscape of his memory, Hamanu recalled Dark Lens sorcery shrouding Borys in
a cloud of scintillating mist. The cloud grew and grew until it engulfed the white tower and threatened to
engulf the champions as well. Wyan and Sacha had screamed together, then fallen silent. Two small, dark
globes had flown out of the mist and vanished in the night. The globes were the traitors' severed heads,
still imbued with immortal life, because Borys hadn't had been able to kill them outright when he
consumed their bodies. Uyness had cheered, then she, too, had screamed.

Borys couldn't stop with the traitors: he needed every one of them. They'd all underestimated
how far Rajaat's metamorphosis would go, how much life the spell would consume before the dragon
quickened. In agony and immortal fear, the champions had torn away from the Dark Lens, saving
themselves, but leaving a half-born dragon behind.

For a hundred years Borys had ravaged the heartland, finishing the sorcerous transformation he'd
begun beside Rajaat's tower.

"He was not Rajaat." Hamanu stated, which was half of the truth. "He wasn't what I would have
been."

"You can't be sure," Windreaver chided.

"I've looked inside myself. I've seen the Dragon of Urik, old friend. I'm sure. There were no
choices, no mistakes."

Sunset in the Kreegills: a fireball impaled on a jagged black peak, the western horizon ablaze with
sorcery's lurid colors, and, finally, stars, one by one, crisper and brighter than they were above the dusty
plains.

Hamanu held out his hand and gathered a pool of starlight in his palm. He played with the light as
a child—or a dancer—might play, weaving luminous silver strands through moving fingers. In his mind, he
heard a reed-pipe melody that lulled all his other thoughts, other concerns and memories. Alone and at
peace, he forgot who he was, until he heard Windreaver's voice.

"The world stretches far beyond the heartland. There are lush forests beyond the Ringing
Mountains and who-knows-what on the far shores of the Silt Sea. Wonders lie just over that horizon,"
the ghostly troll said, as if they were two old merchants in search of new markets.

"Leave Urik to its fate? Without me?"

"You chose Urik as your destiny. But you're Hamanu; you are your own destiny. You've always
been. You can choose somewhere, something else."

Hamanu thought of the leonine giant he'd seen guarding the Black and the Hollow beneath it.
"Hamanu is Urik." He let the starlight dribble off the back of his hand. "If I went somewhere else, I'd
leave too much behind. I'd leave myself behind."

"What of yourself, Hamanu? Borys is dead. The War-Bringer's prison cannot hold him. If you
can believe what he said—if—there's nothing you can do to save Urik. If he's lying—as he usually
does—then what do the champions of humanity do next? Whose fear is stronger than his greed? Which
one of you will become the next great dragon and burn the heartland for an age? There is no other way."

"There must be. There will be!" Hamanu's shout echoed off the mountain walls. A cloud of pale
steam hovered in the air where his voice had been. "I will find a way for Urik to survive in a world
without dragons and without Rajaat."

Windreaver merged with the fading mist. "You won't find it here. The Kreegills have been dead
for a thousand years. They have no answers for you, Hamanu. Forget the past. Forget this place. Forget
Deche and the Kreegills, your woman and me. Think of the future. Think of another woman, Sadira of
Tyr. Rajaat had a hand in making her, true, and he's used her, made a fool of her and you. But she's no
champion. Her metamorphosis begins each day at dawn and unravels at sundown. She's not immortal.
She's not bound to the Dark Lens. She's not like you, Hamanu, not at all, but her spells hold; by day,
they hold. Find a way to make them hold at night, and maybe you'll have an Athas without either dragons
or the War-Bringer."

Sadira of Tyr was a beautiful woman, though the Lion-King was ages past the time when
aesthetics influenced his judgment, and he'd shed Rajaat's prejudices against humanity's cousins long
before that. Elves, dwarves, even trolls and races Rajaat had never imagined, they were all human under
their skin. There were no misfits, no outcasts, no malformed spirits made manifest in flesh; there was only
humanity, individual humans in their infinite variety. He was human, and he would not despise himself.
That was Rajaat's flaw—one of many. Rajaat despised himself, and from that self-hatred he conceived
the Cleansing Wars and champions.

Rajaat's madness had nothing to do with Hamanu's opinion of Sadira. "She's a dangerous fool."
Or her council-ruled city. "They're all fools."

"So were you, once. She'll never learn otherwise with fools for teachers, will she? You've got
three days, Hamanu. That's a lot, if you use it properly."

Windreaver was gone before Hamanu concocted a suitable reply. He could have called the troll
back. Windreaver came and went on the Lion-King's sufferance; his freedom was as illusory as
Hamanu's tawny, black-haired humanity. When his master wanted him, his slave came from whatever
place he was, however far away.

Hamanu thought Windreaver traveled through the netherworld, but the troll was never apparent
there. Like the mist from Hamanu's voice, Windreaver might still hover, invisible and undetectable, in the
ancient troll ruins. He might have remained there after Hamanu slit the Gray and strode from the mountain
valley down to the plains northwest of Urik.

The Lion of Urik knew the way to Tyr, the oldest city in the heartland. Kalak, Tyr's now-dead
king, had been an immortal before the Cleansing Wars began. Unlike Dregoth, Kalak had spurned
Rajaat's offers and never become a champion, though in the chaos after Borys's transformation, he'd
found what remained of Sacha Arala and Wyan.

The Tyrant of Tyr had suborned the mindless heads, replacing their champions' memories with
demeaning fictions. He convinced them that he, not they, was the source of the Dark Lens magic Tyr's
templars wielded at home and in Kalak's endless wars with his champion neighbors.

If he'd tried, Hamanu might have pitied the Pixie-Blight and Curse of Kobolds, but he'd never
tried. The traitors had served Urik's interest because Tyr's purview controlled the heartland's sole reliable
ironworks, as Urik controlled the vast obsidian deposits near the Smoking Crown volcano. With the
traitors' Dark Lens magic, Tyr controlled its treasures just well enough to keep the mines and smelters
from falling into a true champion's hands.

Hamanu wouldn't have tolerated that, and the other champions wouldn't have tolerated a Urik
that controlled both obsidian and iron. They'd have united against him, as they did now, but in greater
number, and with Borys leading them. For thirteen ages, the Lion-King had supported the Tyrian Tyrant
more often than he'd warred with him, until the doddering fool thought he could become a dragon to rival
Borys.

Fifteen years ago, that had been the single act of monumental foolishness that brought Hamanu to
this morning on the Iron Road. In the guise of a shabby, down-on-his-luck merchant, the king of Urik
walked slowly through the morning chill asking other merchants—

"Which way to the old Asticles estate?" which was where, according to his spies, the sorceress
maintained a household of former rebels and former slaves.

They pointed him toward a hardpan track that wound through estates, farms, and irrigated fields.
Guthay had worn her rings above the entire heartland, not just Urik. Tyr's fields were lush and green,
though not as tall as Urik's. The unwieldy Council of Advisors hadn't summoned levies to protect their
established fields or take advantage of Guthay's bounty. The Tyrian farmers had simply waited until their
fields were nearly dry before they planted. Tyr would reap a good harvest, but nothing like the one Urik's
farmers hoped to bring in... if there was a Urik, four days from now.

Despite two thousand years of rule, Kalak had never understood that a city's might wasn't
measured by the size of its armies or the magnificence of its palaces, but in the labor of its farmers. In a
good year, Tyr could feed herself; in a bad one, she bought grain from Urik or Nibenay.

Kalak had been a man of limited vision and imagination. In Urik, there were free folk and freed
folk as well as slaves; guild artisans and free artisans; nobles who lived on estates outside the city walls
and nobles who lived like merchants near the market squares. In Urik, a man or woman of any station
could find outlets for enterprise and ambition. In Tyr, folk were either free, rich, and noble, or enslaved,
poor, and very common. For two thousand years, ambition had. been a criminal offense.

The rebels of Tyr, whose recklessness had turned the heartland on its ear could, perhaps, be
forgiven for thinking that slavery was the cause of all their problems. It was easier to identify abused
slaves and set them free than it was to resurrect a dynamic society from stagnation. At least, the
council-ruled city hadn't succumbed to rampant anarchy as Raam or Draj had done since the demise of
their champion kings and queens.

Sadira and her companions had shown themselves capable of learning. Perhaps Windreaver was
right and Tyr was the heartland's future.

Hamanu left the hardpan track. He approached a gate guarded by two women and a passel of
children, who could not have kept him out even if he'd been no more than the peddler he appeared to be.
Indeed, the Lion-King's problem wasn't getting onto the estate, but escaping the curious women who
wanted to examine his nonexistent wares. Realizing that curiosity might be worse at the estate-house,
Hamanu scooped up a handful of dried grass and pebbles as he walked away from the gate.

"For your mistress's delight," he explained as he displayed the dross to the door-steward.

With only a tiny suggestion bending through in his mind—not enough to rouse anyone's
suspicions—the steward saw a handful of whatever the steward imagined would -please Sadira this
deceptively unremarkable morning.

The steward chuckled and rubbed his hands together. "Follow me, good man. I'm sure she'll
want some for both Rikus and Rkard."

Hamanu wondered what the man had seen, but kept his wondering to himself as the steward led
him through a series of corridors and courtyards to a small, elegant chamber where—by the bittersweet
flavor of the air—Sadira of Tyr was in the midst of a melancholy daydream.

No need for you to remain. Hamanu put the thought in the steward's mind. I'll introduce myself
to your mistress.

When the steward was out of sight in the next corridor, Hamanu erased his entire presence from
the mortal's memory. Then he crossed the threshold into Sadira's chamber.

"Dear lady—?" He interrupted her as gently, as unmagically as he could, though aside from his
simple peddler's illusion, he'd done nothing to disguise himself, and Sadira should recognize him instantly.

She did. "Hamanu!"

"No cause for alarm, dear lady," he said quickly, holding his hands palms-up, though, like her, he
didn't need conventional gestures, conventional sources to quicken his sorcery. "I've come to talk—"

Before Hamanu could say anything more to reassure her, the sorceress quickened a spell. It
erupted faster than thought, and whatever its intended purpose, its sole effect was to destroy completely
the little pebble Hamanu cached between the black bones of his left forearm.

A smoking gap formed in Hamanu's peddler illusion. Hot, viscous blood dripped onto the floor,
corroding the delicate mosaic. The physical pain was intense, but it paled beside the heart-stopping
shock as greasy smoke began to flow from the wound. Hamanu clapped his right hand over the gap. The
smoke seeped around his fingers. Windreaver took shape in the smoke.

"We come to the end of the trolls at last."

"No." A soft, impotent denial.
"Let go of the past, Hamanu. It's time."

"Leave it be, Hamanu," Windreaver cautioned, and laid a faintly warm, faintly tangible hand over
the Lion-King's wounded arm. "I know your ways. You think this is no accident. You think this is my
vengeance. It's not. Thirteen ages is too long to think of vengeance, Hamanu. We've fought the past long
enough. Think of the future." The troll's smoky fingers began to collapse. "I'll wait for you, Manu of
Deche. I'll prepare a place beside me, where the stone is young..."

Four greasy streaks of soot on Hamanu's arm and a larger splotch on the floor were all the
remained of the last and greatest commander of the once-great race known as trolls.

Sadira rose from her stool. Her foot came down beside the stain.

"Stay back!" Hamanu warned.

The power of death was inside him, and the will to use it She lived because Windreaver wished
her to live. Hamanu would honor the last troll's wish—if he could. And if he couldn't let her live, then he'd
live with the consequences, as he'd lived with all his other consequences.

Sadira sensed her danger and retreated. "What—" she began, then corrected herself. "Who was
that? Another dragon?"

It was an almost-honest question. The half-elf had no notion of trolls or the Troll-Scorcher. Her
experience bound Hamanu with dragons instead. He collected his wits and tried to speak, but it was too
soon.

Sadira mistook his silence. "Did you think that you could come in here and work your foul
sorcery on me?" she asked with all the arrogance that Rajaat's sorcery could breed in a sorcerer's mind.
"I know how to destroy dragons. Kalak, Rajaat, Borys, you—you're all alike. You destroy my world.
Athas won't be safe until every dragon's dead."

Hamanu's tangled emotions snapped free. The rage that killed with a thought vanished like a cool
breeze at midday. Grief and mourning were set aside for the moment when he'd be alone—very alone.
He forgot, in large part, why he'd come, and that Rajaat's promised doom hung over his city. What
remained was the capriciousness, the cruelty that fully deserved the hatred the half-elf directed at him.

She was a fool, and he intended to enjoy proving it to her.

"You know very little, Sadira of Tyr, if you don't know the difference between Kalak and Borys,
Borys and Rajaat, Rajaat and me."

"There is no difference. You're all the same. All evil. All life-sucking defilers," she insisted. "I
know you get your magic from the Dark Lens. I know you'd enslave all Athas if no one stood against
you. I know all the lies, you told me that day in Ur Draxa when Rkard bested Rajaat. You were children
rebelling against your father, but the only reason you rebelled was envy. You wanted his power for
yourselves. What more do I need to know?"

"You need to know that every dragon is different and that Rajaat created dragons when he
created sorcery and that was long before he created champions to wage his Cleansing Wars. You need
to know that if a sorcerer lives long enough to master the secrets of the Unseen netherworld, then that
immortal sorcerer will change into a dragon—but not a dragon like Borys. Borys wasn't a sorcerer when
he became a dragon; he was a champion. Rajaat shaped his champions out of human clay in his white
tower. He bathed them in a black-water pool and stood them in a Crystal Steeple beneath the Dark
Lens. The dragon is a part of a champion's nature—a large part, an inevitable part—but not the only
part, or the most powerful part."