The Rise And Fall Of A Dragonking Part 17

Dregoth appeared on Hamanu's left. He was die Ravager of Giants, and his weapon was a plain stone maul. If there was one champion, one weapon, with the best chance to smash the War-Bringer's skull, it was Dregoth and that maul. Borys and Hamanu had agreed to aim low and leave Rajaat's misshaped head for Dregoth.

The Butcher of Dwarves swung first: a solid cut across Rajaat's ribs, ending deep in his gut. Blood and viscera sluiced over the dark crimson blade. The War-Bringer bellowed; fire roared out of his gaping mouth. Hamanu ducked his head beneath the flames and stalked forward, thrusting his sword into Rajaat's flank. The golden sword slid between the first sorcerer's ribs, then stopped, as if it had struck unyielding stone. Hamanu sank his black-taloned feet into the mire and pushed; the sword began to move again.

Fire seared Hamanu's scalp and the length of his back.

Somehow he kept his hands on the hilt and kept the sword creeping deeper.

Hamanu. Look at me, Hamanu.

There was compulsion in the words the War-Bringer placed in Hamanu's mind, compulsion that made the Lion of Urik raise his head to meet his creator's mismatched eyes.

Take them, Hamanu. Take them all! You have the power.

It was the same power Rajaat had offered in Urik. Hamanu refused it a second time.

"Never!" he swore.

He found a last reserve of strength within himself and, with a roar of his own, surged behind his sword. Rajaat fell back, toward Dregoth, who swung his maul just once. A sound like the moons colliding pummeled the white tower. Rajaat heaved away from Dregoth's completed stroke. The mire quaked, the champions fought for balance, but the War-Bringer was down. Potent sorcery, no longer under the control of Rajaat's unfathomable intellect, sizzled wildly and died.

"Is he dead?" one of the women asked.

"No," Borys, Hamanu, and Dregoth said together before Dregoth hoisted his maul for another blow.

The Ravager of Giants smashed Rajaat's protuberant brow, but the answer didn't change.

"He can't die," someone said. "Not while we're alive."

No one argued.

"So, what now?" That from Albeorn, whose metamorphosis had given him an erdlulike aspect. "If we can't kill him, what do we do?"

"Lock him up someplace. Some place dark and deep," Inenek suggested.

Gallard Gnome-Bane snorted. "Fool. Shadow's the source of the War-Bringer's power,"

"When it gets dark enough, there aren't any shadows. I can think of a few places that never feel the light of day or any other light," Dregoth said with a malicious laugh.

"Put him there," Gallard countered, "and he'll use the Dark Lens to fry us all."

Borys cleaned his simmering sword and sheathed it in a scabbard that vanished against his leg. "All right, Gallard, where do you suggest?" He swept his arm wide in an exaggerated bow, but kept his head up and his eyes fixed on the Gnome-Bane's face.

"At the center of the Gray netherworld lies the Black, and beneath the Black-"

"The Gray isn't flat," flat," Albeorn interrupted. "If there's black at its center, then there's more Gray beneath it!" Albeorn interrupted. "If there's black at its center, then there's more Gray beneath it!"

"Shut up, twerp!"

Gallard shot sorcery at his critic. The air around the Elf-Slayer shimmered with ward spells, then it shimmered around everyone else, as well. For several long moments, no one said anything. At last, Sielba lowered her guard.

"And beneath the black?" she urged Gallard to finish.

"Beneath the Black, we can make a hollow where neither light nor shadow exist, nor can exist."

Borys had a question: "What about the Dark Lens?"

Gallard shrugged. "When the Dark Lens intensifies nothing, it remains nothing."

"Better we cut him apart and each take a piece with us," Wyan of Bodach interjected.

Hamanu stared at the Pixie-Blight. Stripped of illusion-as they all were-Bodach was a small-statured creature. He'd destroyed the smaller, defenseless race of shy, tree-worshipers not by slaying them but by turning their G.o.d-trees to sorcerous ash. While Hamanu wondered why such I a coward would suggest carving their still-living creator into b.l.o.o.d.y chunks of meat, the other champions bantered about how Rajaat should be divvied up and which part should go to whom.

The lewd conversation ended abruptly when a blue spark flickered amid the gore that had been Rajaat's face.

"He's healing himself." Borys confirmed what they'd all felt.

There was a round of curses as they each cast a warding spell over their creator.

"It won't be enough," Gallard warned. "Wards won't keep out the sun once it rises. His own bones will make the shadows. We put him beneath the Black tonight, or we'll join Pennarin tomorrow."

Pennarin. Where was Pennarin? The Black, Gallard said. And how did Gallard come to know so much about the center of the Gray or what lay beneath it? Who'd taught the Bane of Gnomes? Why had he needed to learn? Who had he planned to imprison in a nowhere place where neither light nor shadow, time nor substance existed? Rajaat? Or had Gallard planned to imprison them all there eventually?

So many questions, but no reason to ask any of them. The champions couldn't kill their creator and couldn't let him heal himself whole. That left Gallard's Hollow beneath the Black. As little as he relished the notion of trusting Gallard's notion, Hamanu had nothing to offer in its place-nor did anyone else.

"Is there time?" he asked, breaking the silence that threatened to last until dawn.

Gallard grinned, revealing steel-sharp fangs behind his slack and blubbery lips. "Only one way to find out, isn't there?"

Indeed, there was only one way: follow the Gnome-Bane's instructions, stretch their powers to exhaustion scouring the heartland for reagents before dawn's light, and deliver the noxious reagents to the top of Rajaat's white tower where Gallard-and only Gallard-sat in the Crystal Steeple, waiting, enshrined beneath the Dark Lens.

After depositing a vial of fuming realgar at the Gnome-Bane's feet, Hamanu plodded down the spiral stairs. Resuming his human illusion-because it was more comfortable than his gaunt natural form-he leaned back against a crumbled wall. Champions needed sleep no more than they needed food, but even an immortal mind needed a quiet moment to reflect, this day and night.

Big Guthay had set. Little Ral was alone in a sky of a thousand stars. None shone brighter than the warding spells layered over Rajaat's body, like so many green silk veils. Hamanu lost himself in the spells' constantly changing patterns. His thoughts wandered so far that his mind seemed empty, almost peaceful. Looking straight ahead, he saw nothing until-with a jolt of returning consciousness-he saw that a black shadow had cut the warding spells in two.

He's healed. He's breaking the wards, Hamanu thought, a lump of cold terror clogging his throat.

But the shadow wasn't Rajaat's. A man crouched over Rajaat's body, casting the shadow Hamanu saw. A man who was so intent on peeling back the warding spells that he didn't hear the light tread of another champion's feet behind him, or sense another shadow mingling with his until it was too late.

"Arala!" Hamanu shouted as he seized a scrawny neck and jerked the traitor from his mischief.

Objects that might have been the War-Bringer's teeth or finger bones showered from Sacha's hands-except, the culprit wasn't Sacha Arala. In the brief moment Hamanu had before the illusion became a writhing metamorph, he recognized Wyan Bodach's face: Wyan Bodach, who'd suggested chopping Rajaat into pieces earlier.

All arms and legs in his natural form, the Pixie-Blight sprouted claws that raked through illusion to Hamanu's true flesh. The Lion roared, but held on until another champion came to investigate the furor. Unable to sort innocent from guilty, the newcomer slapped spells around them both. Hamanu's limbs grew heavy as a Kreegill peak, and Wyan was even heavier, but he kept hold. Another spell-two, three, more than he could count-wrapped around them. The arm that had been as heavy as a mountain was stone-stiff when the spellcasting was finished and Dregoth reached in to pry Bodach free.

"He dispelled the wards!" the Pixie-Blight declared the instant Hamanu's fingers were no longer squeezed tight around his neck. "He defiled the War-Bringer, defiled his body."

"And do you deny it?" Dregoth asked Hamanu.

The heavy paralysis was withdrawn. Hamanu flexed his muscles and said: "I do. Wyan said he wanted a piece of Rajaat's body earlier. It's his own deceit he describes, not mine. I thought it was Sacha Arala at first. I cried out his name by mistake."

Vapors seeped from Dregoth's nose as he looked from Hamanu to Wyan and back again.

"And where is Sacha?" Albeorn asked from far on Hamanu's right side.

He and the others had gathered quickly. Some had emerged from the netherworld, the rest strode out of the nighttime shadows. Sacha Arala wasn't among them, nor was Borys, nor, of course, was Gallard. Hamanu realized they were all looking at him, distrusting him more than Wyan because he was still the outsider. He had several long moments to wonder exactly what Borys had told them while Sielba had entertained him in Yaramuke, before Sielba's husky voice broke the silence.

"Sacha's with Borys, where else? He's got no part in this-whatever this this is. And neither has Hamanu. If the Lion of Urik says Wyan was cutting off bits of Rajaat, then I believe him, and I suggest we find out is. And neither has Hamanu. If the Lion of Urik says Wyan was cutting off bits of Rajaat, then I believe him, and I suggest we find out why why before Borys gets back here." before Borys gets back here."

Sielba was right about Hamanu, though he knew he'd pay dearly for her defense. She might have been right about Sacha, too. Rajaat's sycophant might have had nothing to do with Wyan's macabre gleaning. But Wyan swore otherwise.

"It was all Sacha's plan," the Pixie-Blight insisted. "He said Rajaat has no one vital part; he can regenerate himself entirely if any living part of him is placed in the pool beneath the Dark Lens. He knew you'd keep close wards on him, so he came to me-"

"-And you went to Rajaat. You made the Gray-storm when we left Yaramuke. You used it to hide yourself while you raced here and back again. That's why he was waiting for us, why Pennarin was consumed," Uyness, who'd cleansed Athas of orcs, concluded.

It could be a true explanation. One of them had warned Rajaat-unless Rajaat's sorcery were so much more subtle than theirs that he'd spied on them in Yaramuke without their knowledge. Unless Uyness herself was their traitor: whenever one champion explained the behavior of another, she, or he, became suspect in other eyes. Hamanu had gotten a dose of that himself a few moments back. But if there'd ever been an enduring partnership among the champions, it was between Uyness and Pennarin, and they all preferred to think that there was some limit to their creator's power.

Suspicion fixed on Wyan, who threw the real onus on Sacha Arala, who wasn't there to defend himself. By Hamanu's reckoning, events didn't require Arala's treachery: Wyan could have learned all he needed from the War-Bringer after he'd raced through the Gray to warn him. But Hamanu kept his thoughts about traitors to himself, saying nothing when Borys returned with two flawless obsidian spheres and the enthralled Curse of Kobolds.

Borys had another suspect: "Gallard!" he shouted loud enough to shake the white tower where the Gnome-Bane prepared the imprisonment spell. "Gallard! Here! Now!"

Gallard grumbled and Gallard resisted. The air between the steeple chamber at the top of the tower and Borys on the ground beside Rajaat rained sparks as they argued silently, mind against mind. Then the air stilled and Gallard came outside. He swore he didn't know what Wyan was talking about.

"But, if the coward's telling the truth, then that's all the more reason to get Rajaat locked beneath the Black."

Borys disagreed. "Not in the tower or the pool. Not near the Dark Lens. Not if it's going to regenerate him."

The Gnome-Bane said there was no such danger with the spell he intended to cast. Though he'd use the Dark Lens to intensify his sorcery, Rajaat's body would stay where it was, well away from the white tower's mysterious black-water pool.

"Stay here and watch," Gallard offered with rare generosity, "or come up to the steeple while I cast the spell."

Borys and Dregoth agreed that half of them should be with Gallard in the tower, the other half posted on the ground. Inenek produced six black beads, for those who'd stay with Rajaat, and five white ones, for those who'd climb to the steeple. They drew beads in the order of their creation, Arala and Wyan included, and hid them in their hands until Hamanu drew his. The Lion's bead was black; all the others had bleached theirs.

"Someone cheated," Inenek protested.

"And someone didn't," Dregoth observed mildly. "I'll stay below with Hamanu. We'll deal with our traitors once we've dealt with Rajaat."

Borys gave orders as if he'd been ordained their leader, but the Butcher of Dwarves tread carefully around Dregoth. The Ravager of Giants was unique, even among the champions: when Rajaat found him, Dregoth was already immortal and already at war with the giant race. In his natural form, he was, by far, the largest, most powerful champion, the closest to the death-dealing creature the world called Dragon.

With Dregoth volunteering to change his bead's color, none of the others felt the need to change theirs.

"We'll know if they try to deceive us," Dregoth said, pointing at the wards over Rajaat's body.

Hamanu, seeing no reason to admit he had no idea what Dregoth was talking about, grunted noncommittally.

"And it would be a poor time for you to think about deception," Dregoth added.

"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 a.s.sure 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, substance, and if I poked my head inside this and if I poked my head inside this Hollow Hollow of yours-" of yours-"

"-You wouldn't."

"But if I did, you say I'd find his essence?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"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 a.s.sault 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."