The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (5 page)

For Dorean, Hamanu had become a man in his family's eyes. For him, Dorean had become a
woman. The life that had once lain before them, filled with fields of grain, growing children, and a love
that never needed words, was the only life Hamanu had ever wanted. If he'd done right by Dorean, if
he'd protected her, as a man was sworn to do, he never would have seen the walls of Urik.

His body would lie beside hers, turned to dust and dirt a hundred times over.

A shadow wind sundered Hamanu's memory. He released the balustrade and turned around. A
dusty breeze took shape, as tall as he was, yet far broader.

"Windreaver," he said flatly as the shape became substantial and the last commander of the troll
army stood between him and the pool.
As big as half-giants, as clever as elves or dwarves, trolls had been formidable enemies for a
champion-led army, and Windreaver had been—and remained—the most formidable of the trolls. He'd
lived and fought for two ages before he and a fifty-year-old Hamanu faced each other and Windreaver
fought his last battle. A wispy curtain of silver hair hung around his swept-back ears, and the wrinkles
above his bald brow were as pronounced as the brow ridge itself. Age had not dulled Windreaver's
obsidian eyes. They were as bright, black, and sharp on the palace roof as they had been on the
windswept cliff high above a wracken sea.

Hamanu hissed, an effective, contemptuous gesture in his unnatural shape. When hate was
measured, he and Windreaver were peers. If Enver was one aspect of Hamanu's conscience,
Windreaver was the other.

The troll would have preferred to die with the rest of his kind; Hamanu had not offered a choice.
Windreaver's body had become dust and dirt, as Hamanu's had not, but Windreaver lived, succored by
the same starving magic that sustained Hamanu. He was an immortal reminder of genocide to the
conquered and to the conqueror who had committed it.

"Look, there, on the horizon," Windreaver pointed to the southwest, toward distant Nibenay,
exporter and abandoner of poorly stained agafari staves. "What do you see?"

"What did you see?" Hamanu retorted. "A bundle of sticks laid beside an old well?"

Windreaver served Hamanu. The troll had had no choice in that, either. The King of Urik could
abide guilt and hate, but never useless things, be they living, dead, or in between. Windreaver was
Hamanu's most trusted spy; the spy he sent to shadow his peers, his fellow champions.

"Do I need a fire to comfort me in my old age?" the troll retorted.

"Not when you can bring me bad news."

The troll chuckled, showing blunt teeth in a jaw that could crush stone. "The worst, O Mighty
Master. There's an army forming on the plains beyond Nibenay. Old Gallard does not lead it—not yet.
But I've skirled through the commanders' tents, and I've seen the maps drawn in blood on the tanned
hides of Urikite templars. Nibenay's coming, Manu; mark me well, I know what I have seen. What
Gallard sends to Giustenal doesn't matter. Gallard, Bane of Gnomes, means to become Gallard, Bane of
Urik."

Hamanu bared his dripping fangs in contempt and disbelief.

Gallard might be marching—toward Tyr perhaps, or more distant Draj. Draj had been Lord
Ursos's home until two years ago, and amid the lord's debauched memories were images of its bloody
anarchy. Gallard wouldn't waste his army against Urik's walls, not while Draj's throne sat empty. It was
impolite to march across another champion's purview, but not unprecedented.

"You're wrong this time, Windreaver. You've overreached yourself."

Disappointed, Windreaver sucked air and tried again. "He brings his children, his thousand times
a thousand children. He will set them in your place, and you will do his bidding, and I will hover about
you, a swarm of stinging gnats to blind your eyes as you weep. Where are your children, Lion-King of
Urik?"

A thousand years had sharpened the troll's tongue to an acid edge. His final question lanced an
old, old wound. Hamanu hissed again, and the dust that was Windreaver swirled apart. "Urik is my child,
with fifty thousand hearts, each braver than yours. Go back to Nibenay. Sting Gallard's eyes, if you dare.
Listen to his words when there's no one else about to hear them, then tell me of his plans."

Dust rose on its own wind and was gone. Hamanu inspected the armor and garments the slaves
had laid out for him. His taloned hand trembled as it made another misty gray slit in the afternoon's torrid
air. Anger, he told himself as he shoved armor and garments together into the trackless netherworld.
Rage at Windreaver, because the troll had done what he always did, and at himself, because this time the
barbs had struck home.

Urik was his child, his only child. He'd face them all— Gallard, Dregoth, anyone who dared
threaten Urik. He'd risk the fate Rajaat laid before him, but for Urik's sake, he'd win. The Lion-King had
never lost a battle, except for the very first.

There was a way, if they all came at him, all at once and in all their strength and he had to choose
between himself and his city.... At least, Hamanu thought there was a way to preserve Urik. But the risks
were incalculable, and he'd require the cooperation of a man who was, in his simple way, as
extraordinary as any champion, a man who kept his own conscience and who served a primal force that
couldn't be coerced.

The time, perhaps, had come to secure that man's sympathy. Without it, there could be a dragon
more terrible than Borys roaming the heartland.

"I'll tell the whole story, in writing," Hamanu said to the rampant lions lining his balustrade. "When
he has read it through, then he can judge for himself, and if he judges favorably, the Urik guardian will
respect his plea when he calls."

Long after nightfall, when the slaves were locked in their quarters and the nightwatch templars
drowsed in the corridors, Hamanu of Urik retreated from the rooftops and public chambers of his palace
to its deepest heart, far from mortal eyes. Hamanu's midnight sanctum was a hidden cloister that
resembled a peasant village; including a well and mud-walled cottages. Mountain vistas from a greener
time were painted on the walls. A variety of common tools were available for working the vegetable
plots, but the vines had turned to sticks and straw. The fruit trees bore neither fruit nor leaves.

The cloister's solitary door was always bolted, from the inside. When Hamanu visited his
sanctum, he entered magically, stepping out of the same Unseen netherworld where he hid his clothes.
Once inside, he sometimes opened the door, admitting Enver or another trusted person for a meal or
conversation. But most times, when Hamanu came to his sanctum, he came to sit alone on a crude stone
bench, bathed in starlight and memory.

This night, ten nights after Hamanu had heard Eden's and Windreaver's messages, ten nights, too,
after he'd sent Enver kank-back across the northeast salt flats, the Lion of Urik shifted his bulk on his
familiar stone bench. He'd brought a battered table to the cloister. It stood before him, crowned with a
sheaf of pearly, luminous—virgin—vellum, upon which no marks had been made. An ink stone, oil, and a
curved brass stylus lay beside the vellum, waiting for the king to complete the task he'd set for himself.

Or rather, to begin.

Hamanu had thought it would be easy—telling his story in script, letting silent letters do the work
of mind-bending or sorcery. He'd thought he'd have it written by the time Enver returned with Pavek, his
self-exiled high templar, the earnest, novice druid upon whom Hamanu pinned such hope. He'd been
wrong, as he hadn't been wrong in a king's age or more. The words were there in his mind, more
numerous than the stars above him, but they writhed like snakes in a pit. He'd reach for one and find
another, a different word that roused a dusty memory that he couldn't release until he'd examined it
thoroughly.

He'd thought these chance recollections were amusing at first. Then, he deceived himself into
believing such wayward thoughts would help him weave his story together. Those optimistic moments
were over. He'd shed his delusions several nights ago: Writing was more difficult than sorcery. Hamanu
had conquered every sorcery beneath the blood-red sun; the vellum remained blank. He was well along
the path to desperation.

Six days ago, Enver had used his medallion to recount his safe arrival in the—from Enver's urban
perspective— depressingly primitive druid village of Quraite. A few hours ago, at sundown, the dwarf
had used his medallion again to recount—very wearily—that he and Pavek and half of Enver's original
war-bureau escort were nearing Urik's gates.

Left behind, Omniscience: This Pavek is a loon, Omniscience. "Come home," I said to him,
Omniscience, as you told me to, and the next thing I knew, he was mounted and giving orders like
a commandant. He does not stop to eat or rest, Omniscience; he doesn't sleep. Four of your prize
kanks are dead, Omniscience; ridden to exhaustion. If the ones we're riding now don't collapse
beneath us, we'll be at Khelo by dawn. Whim of the Lion, we'll be in Urik by midday, Omniscience,
else this Pavek will have killed us all.

I'll alert your sons, dear Enver, Hamanu had promised, looking east toward Khelo and the
reflection of the setting sun. Your weariness will be rewarded.

Well rewarded. Since there was no excuse for vengeance, Hamanu had spent the early evening
arranging proper welcomes for both the dwarf and the druid. Enver's sons had been warned of their
father's impending return. A feast with cool wine and the sweet fruit the old templar loved was already in
the throes of preparation. House Pavek, formerly House Escrissar, the residence that Hamanu had
assigned for Pavek's city use, had been unlocked for the first time in two years. Freemen and women had
been hired; Pavek would not be served by slaves. Larders had been restocked, windows had been
unboarded, and the rooms were airing out by the time the moons had risen.

Everything would be ready—except Hamanu's history.

There were no distractions in the cloister, no excuses left unused. There was nothing but this last
night before Pavek's arrival and the sheaf of virgin vellum. With an unappreciated sigh, Hamanu smeared
oil on the ink stone and swirled the stylus in a black pool.

He'd thought it would be easy, but he'd never told the whole story, the true story, to
anyone—including himself— and, with the stars sliding toward dawn, he still didn't know where to start.

"Recount," he urged himself. "Begin at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end, but, at the very
least, begin!"

You know me as Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of the World, King of the Mountains and the
Plains, the Great King, the Mighty King, King of the World. I am the bulwark of war and of peace
wherever I hang my shield.

My generosity is legend... and capricious. My justice is renowned... for its cruelty. My name is an
instrument of vengeance whispered in shadows. My eyes are the conscience of my city.

In Urik, I am called god, and god I am, but I did not choose to be anyone's god, least of all my
own.

I was not born immortal, invincible, or eternal.

I was born a human infant more than a thousand years ago, in the waning years of the 176th
King's Age. As the sun ascended in the Year of Dragon's Contemplation, my mother took to the straw
and bore me, the fifth of my father's sons. She named me Manu, and before my black hair dried, she had
wrapped me in linen and carried me to the Gelds, where my kin harvested himali. My father tucked a
golden ear between my swaddled hands. He lifted me and the ripened grain toward the sun.

He gave thanks for the gifts of life, for healthy children and bountiful harvests. Without the gifts of
life, a man would be forever poor; with them, he needed nothing more.

The women who had attended my mother and followed her to the fields passed around hot himali
cakes sweetened with honey and young wine. All my kin—from my father's father's mother to a cousin
born ten days before me—and the other families of Deche, our village, joined the celebration of a life
beginning. Before sundown, all the women had embraced me, that I might know I was cherished. Each
man had lofted me gently above his head and caught me again, that I might know the safety of strong
hands around me.
I remember this because my mother often told me the story while I was still young and because
such were the customs of a Deche family whenever a child was born. Yet, I also remember the day of
my birth because now I am Hamanu and my memory is not what it was when I was a mortal man. I
remember everything that has happened to me. After a thousand years, most of what I remember is a
repetition of something else; I cannot always say with certainty when a thing happened, only that it did,
many, many times.

Deche was a pleasant, prosperous place to be a child. It was pleasant because every family was
well housed and well fed; my grandfather's family was the best housed and best fed of all. It was
prosperous because the Cleansing Wars had raged since the 174th King's Age, and armies always need
what villages provide: fighters and food.

Deche owed its existence to the wars. My ancestors had followed Myron Troll-Scorcher's first
sweep through the northeastern heartland when the Rebirth races— humankind's younger cousins: elves,
dwarves, trolls, gnomes, pixies, and all the others except halflings—were cast out. My ancestors were
farmers, though, not fighters. Once the army turned the trolls into refugees, my ancestors settled in a
Kreegill Mountain valley, east of Yaramuke.

But Deche had never been a troll village. The trolls were mountain dwellers, stone-men—miners
and quarriers. Throughout their history, they traded with the other races for their food and necessities.
That was their mistake, their doom.

Dependence made them vulnerable. Myron of Yoram— the first Troll-Scorcher—could have
sealed the trolls in the Kreegills and their other strongholds. He could have starved them out in a score of
years. He would have needed sorcery, of course, if he'd besieged them, and sorcery would have laid
waste to the Kreegills. The valleys would have become ash and dust. Deche wouldn't have been
founded. I wouldn't have been born....

So much would have been different if Myron Troll-Scorcher had been different. Not better,
certainly not for Urik, which would never have risen to glory without me. Simply different. But Myron of
Yoram was what he was: a vast, sweeping fool who drove the trolls out of the Kreegills with a vast,
sweeping advance. He turned the stone-men into the stone-hearted fighters that his army could never
again defeat.

Later, when I was the Troll-Scorcher, it was different. Much different. But that was later.

When I was born, the pixies were gone, the ogres and the centaurs, too. The center of the
heartland—what was left of the once-green heartland after the Pixie-Blight, the Ogre-Naught, and the
Centaur-Crusher had purged those races from it—belonged to humankind. The remaining wars were
fought along the perimeter. Myron of Yoram fought trolls in the far northeast, where the barrens reach
beyond sunrise to the middle of last night.

Once the trolls abandoned the Kreegills, it was destiny that human farmers would clear the
valleys. All the rest was destiny, too.

After my birth, my destiny was tied to the Troll-Scorcher in ways that no one in Deche had the
wisdom or magic to foresee. We weren't ignorant of our place in the Cleansing Wars. Twice a year, our
grain-loaded wagons rumbled down to the plains where the Troll-Scorcher's bailiffs bought and sold.
Men went down with the wagons; women, too. They gave their names to the bailiffs and got a weapon in
return.

Sometimes—not often—veterans returned to Deche. My middle brother didn't, but an uncle had,
years before I was born. He'd lost one leg above the knee, the other below, to a single swipe from a
troll-held axe. In time, all of his children made their way to the bailiffs. One of those cousins returned
when I was ten. He had all his limbs, but his eyes were haunted, and his wits had been seared. He cried
out in his dreams, and his wife would not sleep beside him.
I asked him what had happened, what had he seen?

My cousin's words frightened me. I saw what he had seen, as if it were my own memory... as it is
my own memory, now. When the Troll-Scorcher slew, he slew by fire that consumed from within. That
was Rajaat's sorcery: all his champions can kill anything with a thought. Each champion had and retains a
unique killing way that brings terror as well as death. But I was ten and ignorant of my destiny. With
frightened tears on my cheeks, I ran from my cousin to my father.

"Don't make me go. Don't send me to the trolls! I don't want to see the fire-eyes!"

Father held me in his arms until I was myself again. He told me there was never any shortage of
folk who wanted to join the Troll-Scorcher's army. If I didn't want to fight, I could stay in Deche all my
life, if I wanted to, as he, my father, had done. As I clung to him, believing his words with all my heart
and taking comfort from them, Dorean joined us. Silently, she took my hand between hers and brought it
to her cheek.

She kissed my trembling fingertips.

It was likely that Dorean was a few years older than I; no one knew for certain. She'd been born
far to the east of the Kreegills, where the war between the trolls and the Troll-Scorcher was an everyday
reality. Maybe she'd been born in a village. More likely she'd been born in one of the wagons that
followed the army wherever it went. Then her luck ran out. Myron of Yoram, whose idea of a picket line
was a man holding the thong of a sack of rancid broy, left his flank unguarded. Troll marauders nipped
his ribs, and Dorean was an orphan.

The bailiffs brought her out of danger; they did that out of their own conscience—loading their
empty wagons with orphans and the wounded and bringing them back where trolls hadn't been seen in
generations. Later, when the army was mine, I would remember what the bailiffs had done and reward
them. But that day when I was ten and I looked beyond my father's arms, my eyes beheld Dorean's
beauty for the first time, and the untimely vision of living torches was banished from my mind's eye.

"I will stay with you, Manu."

Surely Dorean had spoken to me before, but I had never truly heard her voice and, though I was
young, I knew that I had found the missing piece of my heart.

"I will take Dorean as my wife," I told my father, my tears and fears already forgotten. "I will
build her a house beneath the cool trees, and she will give me children. You must tell Grandfather. He
cannot handfast her with anyone else."

My father laughed. He was a big man with a barrel chest. His laugh carried from one side of
Deche to the other. Dorean blushed. She ran away with her hands held against her ears, but she wasn't
displeased—

And Father spoke with Grandfather.

I had six years to fall in love with Dorean, and her with me. Six years to build a tree-shaded
house. Six years, too, to perfect my wedding dance. I confess I spent more time up in the troll ruins
perfecting my dance to the tunes my youngest brother piped than I did making mud bricks for the walls of
Dorean's house.

In the way of children, I'd forgotten my cousin's memories of trolls with flaming eyes. I suppose
I'd even forgotten the tears that first drew Dorean to my side. But something of my mad cousin's vision
must have lingered in the neglected depths of my memory. I never followed the himali wagons down to
the plains, yet the trolls fascinated me, and I spent many days exploring their ruined homes high in the
Kreegills.