The Rise And Fall Of A Dragonking Part 13

My heart beat in rhythm with the world below me, and I rejoiced as immortality quickened in my veins. I saw Athas as I wished it could be: a bountiful paradise of flowering fields, green forests, white-capped mountains, and blue lakes and rivers, all bound together beneath a shifting lace of clouds.

Never! Rajaat shattered my vision. Rajaat shattered my vision. Athas does not belong to us! We are the unclean, the defilers. Our children are raised from dung. Our blood is filth. It is not for us to envision the future. You must cleanse the world so it may be returned to the pure ones. Athas does not belong to us! We are the unclean, the defilers. Our children are raised from dung. Our blood is filth. It is not for us to envision the future. You must cleanse the world so it may be returned to the pure ones. The blue world he had shown me earlier-the Athas of endless ocean and floating cities-supplanted my own vision. I looked closer and saw that the cities were populated with halflings, which astonished me because then, as now, halflings were not a city-dwelling race. The blue world he had shown me earlier-the Athas of endless ocean and floating cities-supplanted my own vision. I looked closer and saw that the cities were populated with halflings, which astonished me because then, as now, halflings were not a city-dwelling race. Humanity's debt folk on Humanity's debt folk on your your shoulders. It must be paid, Manu of Deche. It must be paid in full. shoulders. It must be paid, Manu of Deche. It must be paid in full.

Bands of sorcery tightened around me, commanding me to accept my destiny, to obey the War-Bringer, to revere Rajaat, my creator. I surrendered.

Great One, your will is my will.

The bands loosened, and Rajaat had made his final champion. I cannot speak for the mistakes and flaws Rajaat claimed existed in my peers, but I knew my own even before the Dark Lens settled back into the rainbow ring atop the Crystal Steeple. I took the first sorcerer's gifts because I had no other choice, but I clung to the shards of my my vision, a farmer's vision of a many-colored Athas. vision, a farmer's vision of a many-colored Athas.

And it was well that the seeds of my rebellion were already planted when the Dark Lens spat me out. There could be no secrets as I lay on the quicksilver gla.s.s, my translucent skin stretched taut over a star-flecked midnight skeleton.

"Arise."

Lightning fingers caressed me as I gathered myself into a crouch, then slowly stood. I stared at my black-boned hands. I wondered how I could see anything, but I dared not touch my face.

"Are you in pain anywhere? Do you feel the lack of any vital part of yourself?" Rajaat asked from the periphery.

"No, nothing hurts. Nothing's lacking," I answered slowly, realizing that he'd known my answers before he'd asked the questions. "I'm-" I sought words to describe the indescribable. "I'm hollow... empty. I'm hungry." hungry."

I met Rajaat's mismatched eyes and saw that he was gleeful. Then I remembered the feast. When my mind's eye touched the memory of Yoram's scorched carca.s.s, my hunger swelled. Looking down, I saw a pulsing hollow beneath my ribs.

"What have you done to me?" I cried out recklessly, though Rajaat would have heard my thoughts had I tried to stifle my words and, in truth, I doubt that I would have tried.

"I have made you a champion. I have instilled in you the power to cleanse Athas of all all its impurities. You no longer depend on the fruits of the land or the flesh of life for your nourishment. I have given you a gift beyond measure. Sunlight will sustain you, but you will grow sleek only in pursuit of your destiny. As you cleanse Athas, death will be your ambrosia. Begin with the trolls. Begin with your predecessor. Go down, Hamanu, Scorcher of Trolls, and claim your feast." its impurities. You no longer depend on the fruits of the land or the flesh of life for your nourishment. I have given you a gift beyond measure. Sunlight will sustain you, but you will grow sleek only in pursuit of your destiny. As you cleanse Athas, death will be your ambrosia. Begin with the trolls. Begin with your predecessor. Go down, Hamanu, Scorcher of Trolls, and claim your feast."

Nausea of the mind overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees and hid my face behind my hands, as a man might do. But I was no longer a man, no longer a mortal man with a mortal man's love of life and fear of death. Grieving for my lost self, I made tears flow from the holes where my eyes should have been. The tears were sorcery. I realized that immortality wasn't the only gift Rajaat had given me. My whims were spells. I marveled at my powers, then I felt my hunger.

I knew in an instant that it was death I craved, not bread.

"Hate me, if it pleases you," Rajaat said without losing his smile. My thoughts were transparent to him. "I don't expect thanks... or willing obedience."

I swallowed hard, never mind that I had no gullet except in my imagination; a champion's imagination is more potent than material truth. The imaginary act, however, stirred my appet.i.te to new heights.

"Will you or not, you'll fulfill your destiny." Rajaat's foul teeth showed within his grin. "Be my loyal champion, and you'll rule the world, once it's clean. But, deny your hunger, Hamanu, and you'll go mad. Go mad and know that you will not be sated until you have consumed every living thing beneath the b.l.o.o.d.y sun. Your choice matters little to me. You will will serve, and Athas will be cleansed of its impurities. You will consume the foul and the deformed." serve, and Athas will be cleansed of its impurities. You will consume the foul and the deformed."

Again I surrendered. Mind against mind, will against will, I was no match for my creator. A battle with him would have left me a maddened beast, ravaging life wherever I found it. He'd told me the truth about myself. My hunger grew less resistible with each beat of my heart.

Rajaat stepped sideways, revealing an open door, and the downward spiral beyond it. Measuring what remained of my sanity, I judged I could get to the ground, where Myron of Yoram awaited me, before I succ.u.mbed to madness.

"Your choice," Rajaat reminded me as I strode past him.

My choice, indeed, and I descended slowly, testing the limits of madness at each step. While I stood in the Steeple of Crystals, what I knew of sorcery could have been written in bold script on a single vellum sheet. By the time my right heel struck the ground, I was a master. I'd learned the deadly dance of life and magic: My hunger sucked life from plant and animal alike. My hunger killed. I could-and would-learn to use my hunger to fuel mighty sorcery, but it would kill whether I learned or not.

Since the ma.s.sacre at Deche, I'd become indifferent to killing. My conscience didn't trouble me when I fixed my eyes on the cart where Myron of Yoram lay. I could kill trolls, all the trolls, because there was no other way. I could kill the Troll-Scorcher because I was there to replace him. I could kill anything-I might kill everything, if I wasn't careful.

Become careful, Hamanu. Become very careful. Become whatever you want. It won't matter. Your destiny is to use the gifts that I have given you.

Warning and promise together. I knew it at the time, though I thought the War-Bringer meant only that I was to cleanse the world of trolls. I thought-all the champions thought-that Rajaat meant to return Athas to us and to humanity when our wars were finished. We were wrong; I was wrong. It took me many years to understand that Rajaat hated humanity above all, because humanity embodied chaos and transformation. Humanity had engendered the Rebirth races. Rajaat's champions would cleanse Athas of what he considered unnatural creatures-including humanity itself-before returning it to the one race he considered natural and pure: the halflings.

I have never fully understood why the War-Bringer needed champions. His power was so much greater than ours. He could have cleansed Athas of every race in a single afternoon. For thirteen ages, I've examined this question. I have no good answer. The answer must lie with the halflings themselves. Halflings destroyed their blue world, which Rajaat wished to recreate, and when it was gone-before they retreated into their tribal, forest lives-halflings created humanity. But which halflings?

Surely there was some dissent, some rebellion driven underground. Perhaps rebel halflings created Rajaat; perhaps he found them on his own. Whichever, Rajaat had halfling allies before he created the first champion, and he and his allies nurtured one another's hatred of the green world Athas had become. Hatred made them all mad; madness made them devious, and because Rajaat was both mad and devious, he created champions to do the b.l.o.o.d.y work of cleansing Athas of the races he hated, while his own hands remained unsullied.

It isn't a good explanation, but there can be no good good explanation for why Rajaat did what he did. explanation for why Rajaat did what he did.

For myself, when I stood outside the white tower, I, too, was mad-with hunger. When I laid my black-boned hands on Myron of Yoram's quivering chest, I knew I would regret it, but when the Troll-Scorcher's substance began to flow into me, I forgot everything else. It's not a good explanation; it's simply the truth.

Yoram's smoldering eyes reappeared when I touched him, sun bright and malevolent in the lavender twilight. Mauled though he was, he was still a mighty sorcerer, and he recognized me as the renegade farmer's son.

Mann. My name came to me on a netherworld wind of hot, sharp cinders. My name came to me on a netherworld wind of hot, sharp cinders. Kill me if you dare. I'll curse you with my dying breath. Kill me if you dare. I'll curse you with my dying breath.

He strained against the thin silver chain that bound him, wrist, ankle, and neck, to the cart. Remembering my helpless day on the plains, bound to a mekillot stake while the eyes of fire blazed within me, I snapped the chains. A great death sigh went up from the plants and wildlife surrounding Rajaat's pristine tower as the erstwhile Troll-Scorcher reaped power for his spell. But he tried too hard and took too long. I pressed my lips against his and sucked him hollow in a single inhaled breath.

Manu, he said again, my human name, and the entirety of his curse. he said again, my human name, and the entirety of his curse.

Mounds of reeking meat collapsed inward, becoming ash and dust that vanished quickly in the evening breeze. I stood straight, sated and clearheaded. Layers of Yoram's substance padded my bones. My ribs had expanded as the old Troll-Scorcher died; they contracted as I exhaled. I felt a warm stream of breath against the back of my tawny-skinned hand. A part of me felt human again.

Look at him!

A champion's vagrant thought pierced me to the heart. They'd arrayed themselves in a ring around me and the now-empty cart. Their auras shone brighter than Ral or Guthay above the eastern horizon. None among them seemed well-disposed toward me; none among them was was well-disposed toward me. well-disposed toward me.

One of them, an overdressed fellow with the quick, furtive eyes of a jozhal thief-drew a knife that was both dead black and glittering, as my skeleton had been. I spread my feet and prepared for battle as Myron of Yoram had prepared. Beyond the champions' circle, life sighed and surrendered its essence as sorcery quickened.

"Don't be a fool!"

Borys of Ebe identified himself with his warning; I recognized his name from my mortal days in the Troll-Scorcher's army and recalled his voice from earlier in the afternoon. I turned toward his voice as an invisible wall came down between me and the rest. The Dwarf-Butcher held out his hand, not in friendship, but to demonstrate that he controlled the wall. He was a powerfully built man, like the race he slaughtered, and tall. His hair was pale and confined in long braids; his eyes glowed with a blue fire.

"We cannot harm one another-not here," Borys explained, leaving no room for doubt in my mind that he would harm me where he could, when he could. "Clothe yourself, man, and we'll be done with this. I won't drink blood with a naked peon."

"Naked peon-?" I began, letting my rage flare.

The wall glowed crimson, stifling my inept spell. Snickering echoed at my back: with Yoram's substance clinging to my bones I was not a handsome man. Shamed and bested, I imagined a drab, homespun cloak-and yelped with surprise when the heavy cloth manifested around me.

But I learn quickly. Unfurling the coa.r.s.e cloak from my shoulders, I heaved it into the night air and transformed it into shimmering cloth-of-gold. I transformed myself, as well, becoming Hamanu Troll-Scorcher before the radiant cloak touched me again. I was as tall as Borys of Ebe, but lithe and graceful as Manu had been, crowned with Dorean's long black hair, and meeting Borys's stare through her calm, gray eyes.

"Will you drink blood with me now?" I challenged without knowing precisely what I implied.

But before Borys could answer, the invisible wall around me flared crimson again as it absorbed another champion's wrath. Not mine, or Borys's, though he was quickly engulfed in the tumult as spells rebounded around the circle. Untouched in the center, I saw that my peers despised me no more than they despised one another, and that I had "nothing to fear from them.

Fear was something we all reserved for Rajaat, our creator, whose hand fell harshly upon us, scattering the rampant spells, smashing Borys's wall, and quenching each aura, each illusion. We were all naked before him, and though none of us was as grotesque as the War-Bringer himself, our ensorcelled flesh was no improvement on the natural human form.

Fill them! Share them! Drink them!

Rajaat's commands were more than words; they were demanding images that seared my consciousness. Two of the women and one of the men fell to their knees. A fourth champion vomited bile that etched a crater in the ground. I, at least, held my feet and saw the crystal goblets rise from the cart where they'd first appeared. I caught mine before it struck me; several others weren't so quick or lucky.

The overdressed jozhal's knife would have been useful. I hadn't begun to master the art of putting an edge on an illusion and I was, of course, too proudly stubborn to ask questions. The flame-haired woman bit her tongue until her blood flowed freely, but that reminded me too much of the moments when Rajaat was healing me. I watched Borys slit a vein in his forearm with an extension of his thumbnail and managed a similar gesture.

When our goblets were filled and steaming, Rajaat bid us exchange them. I sought the Dwarf-Butcher, but he eluded me, and I sipped the jozhal's thick blood instead. Sacha Arala, Curse of Kobolds: his name and more filled my conscious mind, as my name must have entered his. Arala's cleansing war against the mischievous kobolds had ended shortly after the Troll-Scorcher's war against the trolls had begun. He pa.s.sed his empty days in Rajaat's shadow.

In my mind he said he'd befriend me and teach me the champion's way.

I didn't need sorcery to know a lie when I heard it.

My second goblet came from the hand of the flame-haired woman, but the name I drank was Pennarin and the battles he fought in the south against a long-limbed, big-eyed race. He'd been a human king, or so he claimed, before Rajaat invited him to stand beneath the Dark Lens. His opinion of farmers and farmer's sons doesn't bear repeating.

The blood of another forgotten king, Gallard Gnome-Bane, was in the third goblet. After that, I grew confused as one after another of Rajaat's champions battered me with lies and illusions.

I remember Borys, though, whose blood filled my eighth goblet. The dwarves had slain the first champion Rajaat dedicated against them. He, like I, was a recreation. His goblet held a nameless past along with his own. The first Butcher had claimed kingship and royal ancestry, but Borys had been a commoner before Rajaat plucked him off the blasted battlefield.

Once he'd stood where I stood, in the center of the champions' scorn. Until I proved myself, he'd give me nothing and set obstacles in my path if he could, but if I triumphed over the trolls he offered something better in the future.

My own goblet came back to me at the last. It remained half-full; my new peers had been less than gluttonous. I gulped the thick, cooling ichor down. The visions I got from my own blood were the eviscerated memories of Deche. I threw the crystal down hard enough to shatter it.

"The last champion speaks," green-eyed Gallard said and raised his goblet high before throwing it down.

The others, even Dregoth who'd a.s.sailed me when I'd challenged Borys, copied my gesture. For an instant, there was harmony among us, a shared distrust and disregard for our creator, who watched us with his mismatched eyes from the white tower's gate.

Then Albeorn said, "Are we done here? I have a war to win."

The War-Bringer nodded, and our moment of unity evaporated. The Elf-Slayer was gone, vanished into the night, followed by the other champions, until only Borys, Sacha Arala, and I remained.

"I'll go with you," Arala suggested. "You'll need someone to show you the way."

"Don't listen to him," Borys advised. "Don't trust anyone who's stood beneath the Dark Lens. He doesn't-" Borys shook a finger in Arala's direction, and the Pixie-Blight retreated. "I don't. That's all the advice I got; all that I needed. What you can't learn from Yoram's memories, you can learn as you go."

He drew a down-thrust line through the air in front of him, as he'd drawn a line on his forearm earlier. Instead of blood dripping into a goblet, silvery mist leaked into the moonlight. Borys's hands disappeared as he thrust them slowly into the mist, which grew thicker, until it surrounded him and he was gone.

Rajaat' and Arala both watched me as I imitated the Butcher's movements. I shudder to think what would have become of me-of Athas-had cold tendrils of the netherworld not wound themselves immediately around my wrists.

"You'll serve." Those were the War-Bringer's parting words as I stepped into the Gray.

Only a fool goes through his life without ever catching the scent of fear around his shoulders. As I am not a fool, I have many times been afraid and never more intensely than that moment when the netherworld closed behind me.

The Unseen realm measures no east or west, up or down, past or future. If a mortal lost his course, he might drift his life away before he found it again; an immortal man, of course, would drift longer.

I drifted only long enough to ransack Yoram's memories for his knowledge of the Gray and the striped silk tent at the center of his army. When those brown and ocher stripes were bright as life itself, I fixed them in my mind's eye and strode out of the Gray.

At the very last I remembered my nakedness and made myself into the warrior Myron of Yoram had never been.

Slaves slept in the corners of my tent while my officers gamed for gold and jewels at my map table.

"Enough!" I shouted, loud enough to wake my slaves and the recently dead, alike.

I pounded my fist on the table, thinking to scatter the dice, but splintering the rare, carved wood instead. The scent of fear was thick around me; I discovered fear was not as nourishing as death, but it would stave off starvation and madness.

"Go to your veterans," I told the human lumps cowering at my feet. "Prepare to break camp. When the b.l.o.o.d.y sun rises again, this army-my army-is going to fight trolls and fight trolls until there are no more." army-is going to fight trolls and fight trolls until there are no more."

There was mutiny, not that night, but not long after. Yoram's officers were lazy folk, used to living in luxury. Most adapted readily to my methods. Those who didn't perished, one way or another. My first few years as champion were spent putting down mutinies rather than fighting trolls. I had a lot to learn about both fighting and leading, and Yoram's memories were of no use to me on either score.

More than once, I thought of Borys of Ebe, but the simple truth was that Rajaat kept us champions isolated from each other. I could have sent scouts in search of the Dwarf-Butcher... and lost good scouts for my efforts. I could have searched for him myself, but I hadn't traveled widely, and while the Gray can take you anywhere you desire, it's unwise to let the Gray take you anywhere you haven't been before.

And Borys had already given me all the advice I needed: what I couldn't extract from Yoram's memories, I learned for myself.

Five years after I left Rajaat's tower, my army was a small fraction of the size it had been when I claimed it. We traveled kank-back wherever our enemy led us. In those days, my metamorphosis was less advanced, and I rode bugs from dawn till dusk. Every man and woman under my yellow banner was a tried veteran skilled in fighting, scavenging, and survival. And every one of them wore a yellow medallion bearing my likeness around his neck. While I led the Troll-Scorcher's army, no veteran's pleas or prayers went unheard.

Rajaat had made me an immortal champion, with a hunger that only the deaths of trolls could truly sate. Rajaat's Dark Lens had given me an inexplicable ability to channel magic to any man or woman who wore my medallion. Not the life-sucking sorcery such as I had already mastered, but a clean magic, such as elemental priests and druids practiced. Yoram had known of the Dark Lens's power, but he'd never used it, lest a troll escape his appet.i.te.

To my disgust, I came to understand my predecessor's reasoning. Rajaat told his greatest lie when he said pain belonged to my past. Without a steady diet of death-troll death, in particular-my skin collapsed against my bones. I suffered terrible agonies of emptiness, and my black immortal bones ground, one against the other. Let it be said, though, that I had suffered far worse when Myron of Yoram held me in the eyes of fire.

Until I slew a troll with the eyes of fire, I didn't understand the true nature of Rajaat's sorcery. The second time filled me with a self-loathing so profound that I tried, and failed utterly, to kill myself. There was no third time. I schooled myself to live without the obscene bliss the eyes of fire provided. Fear and ordinary death were enough to keep the madness at bay, and once I learned that immortality was not an illusion I could cast aside according to my will, pain itself became meaningless.

I gave my veterans all the spells and magic they desired, thinking I was thwarting Rajaat's plans for both me and Athas. In the seventh year of my campaign against Windreaver's trolls, I learned that I was wrong. Rajaat had antic.i.p.ated my duplicity. Mote by mote, my body was transformed each time the Dark Lens's power pa.s.sed through me on its way to my veterans.

One evening, after a routine invocation to purify our drinking water, spasms stiffened my right hand and arm. I retreated from my army, claiming that I needed solitude to plan our next attacks. The truth was simpler: for seven years I hadn't shed my glamour or looked upon my black-boned self, and I wished to be alone when I did. What I saw by Guthay's golden light horrified me. I was taller and heavier than I'd been. My rib cage had narrowed, and my breast-bone thickened into a ridge such as flightless erdlus have beneath their wings. Bony spurs had sprouted above my ankles, and a shiny black claw was rising out of a new knuckle on the least finger of my right hand.

As I stared at what had become of my hand-what would become of it-I heard the War-Bringer's deranged laughter through the Gray. After that, my army fought as human men and women, using our wits and weapons whenever we could, resorting to sorcery and Dark Lens magic only when nothing else would bring us a victory.

For another ten years, I harried Windreaver's trolls with lightning raids. No bolt hole was safe from our skirmishers. If I led one nighttime foray through their lines, I led a thousand. Sometimes we killed a troll or two, mostly the old-fashioned way with a crushed skull or a pierced heart. More often we burned their baggage carts and watched them starve. Always, we kept them moving.

For ten long years, my army never camped two nights running in the same place. Windreaver kept his trolls divided. We couldn't pursue them all, all the time, but we tried, and time, inexorable time, was on our side. Human villages still sent their food t.i.thes to the annual muster. There was never a shortage of volunteers to counter attrition in the ranks.

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 spa.r.s.e 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.

Wherever I walked, the ground turned red with death. Even so, it was a long battle, a hard battle, and our victory was not a.s.sured until late afternoon when I led a score of veterans over the rampart that sheltered the shamans and the drummers. Without them, the trolls panicked and lost heart. It was a simple matter to corner them, cut them down, or drive them to the precipice at the peninsula's tip.

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.