The Rise And Fall Of A Dragonking Part 5

He cut off the serpent's head. Its coils fell heavily to the floor around his feet, where they released noxious vapors as they dissolved.

The poison posed no threat to Hamanu, but Javed and Pavek fell to their knees. The Lion of Urik was in no mood for sacrifice, especially of his own men. Reversing his grip on the hilt of his knife, which was forged from the same black gla.s.s as the now-shrunken shard, Hamanu drew a line along his forearm.

His hot blood sizzled when it struck the ooze on the floor. Dark, oily smoke rose as it consumed the dregs of vanquished sorcery. The stench grew worse, but it was no longer deadly. When the ooze was gone, Hamanu inhaled the odor into himself. He looked down on his mortal companions, who were still on their knees and far beyond fear.

"Did you bring the message?"

Javed nodded, then produced a stiff, stained sheet of human parchment. "I knew you'd want it, Great One."

Hamanu seized the parchment with a movement too quick for mortal eyes to follow. The ink was gone, as Javed warned, but there were other ways to read a champion's message. He closed his eyes, and the Shadow-King's blurred features appeared in his mind.

You have seen our danger. This was sent to me. You can imagine who, imagine how. We've gone too long without a dragon. If we can't make one, he will. Mark me well, Hamanu: he'll find a way to shape that t.u.r.d, t.i.thian, into a dragon, if we don't stop him. Long before he died, Borys confided in me that Rajaat had intended to shape you into the Dragon of Tyr until he-Borys, that is-decided otherwise. It's not too late. The three of us can shape you before Rajaat tries again with t.i.thian. I've evolved a spell that will preserve your sanity. It won't be the way it was with Borys; we can't permit that, none of us can. Think about it, Hamanu. Think seriously about it.

The Shadow-King's image vanished in the heat of Hamanu's curse. The shard of Rajaat's sorcery was an unexpected, unpleasant proof of Gallard's claim. If Rajaat was making sorcery in the material world, then the Hollow was weakening; they'd gone too long without a dragon maintaining it. But if Gallard had found a spell that tempered the madness of dragon creation, Gallard wouldn't be offering it to him.

Reluctantly, Hamanu reconsidered Windreaver's recounting of the Gnome-Bane's strategy. There were three ways to transform a champion into a dragon: his peers pells to accelerate his metamorphosis, he could quicken so many sorcerous spells that he'd transform himself, or-following Kalak of Tyr's despicable example-he could gorge himself on the death of his entire city. Most likely, Gallard hoped to implement all three.

"Summon the first levy of my armies," Hamanu told Javed softly, calmly. If he'd allowed any fraction of his own pa.s.sion into his words, the sounds would have slain both mortals. "Let it be known that everyone who relies on Urik for protection will will rally to Urik's defense-or suffer dire consequences." rally to Urik's defense-or suffer dire consequences."

"Who do we fight, Great One?" Javed asked, his voice cracked and weak from poison.

"Do as I command, Javed," Hamanu scolded his most-trusted officer. "Summon my levy."

Wisely, the elf nodded and bowed as he rose to his feet. "As you will, Great One. As you command."

He retreated to the bronze door, which Hamanu opened with a thought. Pavek followed.

"Not you. Not yet."

Pavek dropped again to his knees. "Your will, Great One."

"I need you here, in the palace, Pavek, but I need your druid friends as well. Send a message to Quraite. Send a message to Telhami, if you will. Tell her it's time, time, Pavek; the end of time." Pavek; the end of time."

"If Urik's danger is Quraite's danger, Great One, then I'm sure she already knows. She says there's only one guardian spirit for all of Athas, and she is part of it now," Pavek said, still on his knees with his head tightly bowed.

There were many tastes and textures swirling in the young man's thoughts, but loathing was not among them. Leaning forward, Hamanu hooked a talon under Pavek's chin, nudging gently until he could see the troubled face his templar strove to conceal. Then, with another talon, he traced the scar across Pavek's face.

"And if it's my my danger, and only mine, what then, Pavek?" danger, and only mine, what then, Pavek?"

Once again, Pavek's mind cleared, like still water on a windless day. Short of slaying the man, there was no way for Hamanu to extract an answer to his question from Pavek's thoughts. Murder was easy; lowering his hand, letting Pavek rise unsteadily to his feet and leave the chamber alive-that was the hardest thing Hamanu had done in a generation.

Windreaver! Hamanu cast the name into the netherworld along with Gallard's parchment. Hamanu cast the name into the netherworld along with Gallard's parchment. Windreaver! Now! Windreaver! Now!

He sat down on the marble bench, which, like the stone bench in his cloister, was strong enough to support his true weight and proportions. Water flowed again over the boulder and down the walls. The Lion-King buried his grotesque face in his malformed hands and tried not to think, or plan, or dread until the air quickened, and the troll appeared.

"I hear, and I obey," Windreaver said. "I am the doomed servant of a doomed fool."

Hamanu didn't rise to the bait. "Did you search the Nibenese camp?"

"Of course. Four hundred ugly women surrounded by four thousand uglier men."

"Nothing more?" Hamanu betrayed nothing of his suspicions, his anger.

"Nothing, O Mighty One. Enlighten me, O Mighty One: What do you think I should have found?"

"This!" Hamanu brandished the remnant of the obsidian shard. It had shrunk to a fraction of its former size, and the gla.s.s was pitted with soot. The troll leapt back, as if he still had life and substance.

"It was not there," Windreaver insisted, no longer insolent. "I would have known-"

"Nonsense!" Hamanu hurled the shard at his minion; it vanished at the top of its arc, swallowed by the Gray. "You've grown deaf and blind, Windreaver-worse, you've grown careless."

"Never... not where he's he's concerned. I'd know the War-Bringer's scent anywhere." concerned. I'd know the War-Bringer's scent anywhere."

Hamanu said nothing, merely waited for the troll to hear own his folly and self-deception. Windreaver's hatred for the War-Bringer was greater than his hatred for the Troll-Scorcher but he hadn't sensed the shard before Hamanu revealed it. He'd dreamed of watching the champions destroy each other, and his dreams had, indeed, left him careless.

"Is Rajaat free?" the troll asked. "The Dark Lens-it's where the Tyrian sorceress put it five years ago, isn't it? No one's stolen it, have they? The templars-? The medallions-?"

"Still work," Hamanu a.s.sured him. Without the Dark Lens, the champions could not channel magic to their templars. "That shard didn't come from the Dark Lens."

"Then where did it come from? How did Rajaat-?"

"I don't know, Windreaver-but you'll tell me, when you come back from Ur Draxa."

He expected an argument: Borys's demolished stronghold was a long way away and dangerous, even for a disembodied spirit. But Windreaver was gone before Hamanu finished speaking.

CHAPTER FIVE.

A pair of silvery rings surrounded the golden face of Guthay, Athas's larger moon, as it neared its zenith in Urik's midnight sky. It was the fourth night in a row that Guthay had worn her crowns, and though Hamanu was alone in his cloister, he knew he wasn't the only man staring at the sky. One more beringed night, and farmers throughout his domain would go down to the parched gullies that ran around and through their fields. They'd inspect each irrigation gate. They'd dig out the silt and make repairs as necessary. Later, they'd meet with their neighbors and draw a numbered pebble out of a sacred urn to determine the order in which the fields received their water.

The lottery was necessary because no one-not even the immortal Lion-King-could predict how long the gullies would seethe with dark, fertile water from the distant mountains. Hamanu couldn't even say for certain that the gullies would would fill. A score of times during the last thirteen ages, the flood hadn't come. fill. A score of times during the last thirteen ages, the flood hadn't come.

All Hamanu knew was what he'd learned from his mother and father long, long ago. When Guthay wore her gossamer crowns for five nights running, it was time to prepare the fields for himali, and the hardy grains, mise and gorm that had sustained the heartland since the rains stopped falling with any regularity. And once the dry fields were planted with seeds more precious than gold or steel, it was time to pray. The gullies would fill within twenty days, or they did not fill at all.

The folk of Urik prayed to their immortal, living G.o.d and entreated him with offerings. Already a steady trickle of farmers-n.o.bles, free-peasants, and slaves alike-made their way to the palace gate to offer him a handful of grain. Sometimes the grain was knotted in a tattered rag, other times boxed in a carved-bone casket or sealed in an enameled amphora. Regardless of the package, Hamanu's templars emptied the grain into a huge, inix-hide sack. When the water came, Hamanu would sling the sack over his shoulder and, in the guise of the glorious Lion-King, he'd sow four fields, one to the east of the city walls, the others in the north, the west, and the south.

Tradition, which Hamanu didn't encourage, held that the gift-grain toward the bottom of me sack-the grain that the Lion-King had received first and sowed last-was lucky grain, which presaged great bounty for the farmer who'd donated it. The mortal mind being what it was, Urikite farmers didn't wait for Guthay's fifth ringed night before they brought their gift-grain to the palace. They took the moon on faith and brought their grain early, despite knowing that if the rings did not last for the full five nights, the sack would be emptied, and any grain it had held would be burned.

None of this surprised Hamanu. He'd been one of them once. He knew that all farmers were men of faith and gamblers in their hearts. They gambled every time they poked a seed in the ground. They regarded the gift-grain as a faithful way of evening their odds.

It was an act of faith, as well, for Hamanu, the farmer's son, when he strode barefooted through the fields, scattering the gift-grain. But a man who let himself be worshiped as a G.o.d could have faith only in himself. He could never be seen with his head bowed in doubt or prayer. This year, with the Shadow-King's armies dancing along Urik's borders and a pitted remnant of the first sorcerer's magic still fresh in memory, Hamanu's doubts were especially strong. He'd pray if he knew the name of a G.o.d who'd listen.

The longer he delayed summoning the second and third army levies, the greater the chance that Urik's enemies would attack. If he summoned his citizen soldiers too soon, the fields wouldn't get sown, the grain couldn't grow, and, win or lose on the battlefield, there'd be no High Sun harvest. And if the waters didn't come at all...

Altogether, there were too many unanswerable questions even for a mind of immortal subtlety. For the first time since Hamanu had begun writing his history, delving into his past was preferable to the present or future. He swirled an oil drop across the ink stone's surface. When the ink was ready, Hamanu picked up the stylus and wrote without hesitation.

For five years, I fought beside Jikkana in the army of Myron Troll-Scorcher. There was nothing about her that reminded me of Dorean or Deche, which is probably why I stayed so long. She was a hard and homely creature who cursed and swore and drank too much whenever she had the opportunity. I never knew if in me she saw the son she'd never had or simply another farm boy with fire in his gut, who would finish the brawls she started.

Jikkana taught me human script and how to fight with a knife or a club, with my teeth, fists or my feet-or whatever else was available. She had a temperament like broken gla.s.s, and sooner or later, she fought with everyone, me included. In all the years she marched with the Troll-Scorcher's army, though, she came no closer to fighting trolls than that day I'd met her in Deche.

As the sun descended through the Year of Priest's Fury, two decades' dissipation in the Troll-Scorcher's army caught up with Jikkana. Her lanky muscles melted like fat in the fire. Leathery flesh hung in folds from her arms and chin. She coughed all night and spat out b.l.o.o.d.y bits of lung when morning came. I carried both kits as we marched and foraged for herbs that might restore her, but it made no difference. One afternoon, she collapsed by the side of the road.

I offered to carry her along with her kit.

"Don't be a fool, Manu," she answered me, adding a curse and a cough at the end. "I've gone as far as I can go, farther than I'd've gone without you. No farther, boy. Let's get it over with."

Jikkana handed me her knife. I made the cut she wanted. I'd wrung bird necks when I helped Mother prepare supper, and I'd held the ropes while Father slaughtered culls from our herd. I was no stranger to death, but as men measure such things, Jikkana's death marked the first time I'd killed. killed. Life's light faded quickly from her eyes; she didn't suffer. I held her corpse until it had cooled and stiffened. Then I carried her to that night's camp. Jikkana had been the first teacher in my life after Deche, and I paid for what we drank as we sang her spirit off through the night. When the sky began to brighten, I dug her a grave and piled stones atop it to keep the vermin from digging her up for supper. Life's light faded quickly from her eyes; she didn't suffer. I held her corpse until it had cooled and stiffened. Then I carried her to that night's camp. Jikkana had been the first teacher in my life after Deche, and I paid for what we drank as we sang her spirit off through the night. When the sky began to brighten, I dug her a grave and piled stones atop it to keep the vermin from digging her up for supper.

The long shadows of dawn bound me to her grave.

I expected to weep, but my tears never flowed. There were none inside me. I had wept in terror when Deche had been destroyed, but I hadn't wept for Dorean. I couldn't weep for anyone else.

I scratched Jikkana's name onto a shoulder bone, forming the letters the way she'd taught me, then I shoved the narrow end among the rocks. I'd scratched a few words as well on the underside, using the trollish script I'd learned in the ruins above Deche, which none of my companions could read. Stretching the truth a bit, I wrote that Jikkana was an honorable woman and that she'd never laid hands on a troll, which was true enough and might give the trolls a moment's pause before they desecrated her grave.

There were trolls nearby. There were always trolls nearby in those years. After a generation of retreat, Windreaver had brought his army back into human-held land. Deche was among the first of the human villages that fell to Windreaver's wrath those five years while I marched beside Jikkana. We never caught up the trolls that killed Dorean and my family, though we'd followed them for almost a year and saw more examples of their handiwork than I had the heart to count.

But there were trolls nearby, and we'd learn to track them. We made reports to the Troll-Scorcher or his officers when they rode their rounds.

We never fought trolls. Never. Neither Jikkana nor Bult, the yellow-haired man who led our band, nor any of the veterans had a notion how how to fight our gray-skinned enemies. That's how far the Troll-Scorcher's army had sunk in the two ages since its founding. to fight our gray-skinned enemies. That's how far the Troll-Scorcher's army had sunk in the two ages since its founding.

Bult had told the truth that day in Deche. The Troll-Scorcher's army was divided into bands that tracked trolls as they despoiled the heartland. We tracked them, and we told the officers where they were. When it pleased him, if it pleased him, Myron of Yoram would come to kill them.

Five years of tracking trolls. Five years of burying eviscerated corpses and burning ruined houses to forestall disease, and I never once saw Myron of Yoram, except at the High Sun muster on the plains, when we drew our pay and provisions for the year.

Oh, he was an imposing figure-our champion, Myron of Yoram, dressed in riding silks, watching us parade across the choking dust from the back of his half-tamed erdland. He had magic, magic, no doubt of that. no doubt of that.

Every year he'd haul a few trolls to the muster. He'd truss them up and scorch them good, right in front of us. Flames would leap out of troll eyes and ears, out of their mouths when they screamed. Our champion would do the same with any poor human sod who'd earned his wrath-usually by killing a troll without permission.

We were impressed by what Myron of Yoram did to the trolls, but it was what he could do-would do-to us that had kept the army in line for generation after human generation.

Things were beginning to change around the time that Jikkana died. Windreaver had measured his enemy well and divided the trolls into bands that took ruthless advantage of the orders Myron of Yoram had given us. Some human bands were deserting and more were fighting back, which meant that the loyal bands-and Bult was nothing if not loyal to his pay-hunted humans more often than they hunted trolls.

Everyone had to be careful. Everyone had to post guards at night and sleep with a weapon or two beneath the blankets. Bult's band was no exception, and I pulled my share of nights on the picket before Jikkana died. Afterward, I took the picket by choice, one night in four-as often as a man could stay awake all night and still keep the pace. I wanted to be alone. Jikkana's death had raised the specter of Deche and Dorean in my dreams. I didn't want to close my eyes or sleep. Hunting trolls-following their bands and hoping the Troll-Scorcher would do us the honor of killing them-wasn't enough. I wanted my own vengeance.

I wanted to kill trolls with my own weapons, my own hands.

I didn't have long to wait.

It was Nadir-Night of Priest's Fury, another year half-gone to memory, and the troll-hunters of Bult's band celebrated the holiday as they celebrated everything: they drank until they couldn't stand, then lay on their bellies and drank some more, until they'd all pa.s.sed out around the fire. I thought about leaving. Bult and the rest were the dregs of humanity, and they were the only folk who knew my name. In those days, with trolls and deserters both prowling, a solitary man's life wasn't worth much. I took a picket brand from the fire, wrapped the smoldering tip in oilcloth, and, with my blanket and club tucked under my arm, climbed a nearby hill to keep watch.

The trolls knew our human holidays and our human habits; we'd all lived together peacefully until the wars started. If I'd been a troll, I'd've taken advantage of Nadir-Night, so I was expecting trouble and was ready for it when I heard straw crunching beneath big, heavy feet. Our picket drill was simple, and I knew it well: at the first sound I was supposed to tear the cloth off my brand, then wave it in the air. The flames would alert our band and blind the trolls, whose night vision was better than ours, but vulnerable to sudden flashes of bright light. Once I'd waved my picket brand, though, my orders were to run like wind-whipped fire. The whole band would be running, too-More orders from Myron of Yoram.

I obeyed the first part of my orders, slashing the air to blind whatever was coming up my hill, but Bult and the others weren't going to run anywhere this Nadir-Night. And neither was I. Switching the torch to my off-weapon hand, I picked up a flint-headed club with a short, sharpened hook on one side of the flint and a chiseled k.n.o.b on the other. I shouted, "Here I am!" and made the guttural sounds I'd been told were insults in the troll language.

The heavy-footed tread got louder, and a big chunk of sky grew darker as the troll hove into view. Like me, he was armed with a stone club, though its haft was thicker than my wrist, and the stone lashed to its tip was as large as my head. He shouted something I didn't understand while he brandished that club over me. I shouted something I can't remember. Then his arm drew back for a killing strike.

Except for the Troll-Scorcher himself, there were no humans left who remembered the victories that drove the trolls out of the heartland and cleared the Kreegills. All the tales I'd heard at Jikkana's side were legends pa.s.sed down through three or four generations. We didn't know anything about trolls, except that they were big, and they were fast, and their bare gray skin was tougher than our best armor Without magic, I'd heard that the only way humans could take down a troll was to swarm over it like jozhals and beat it to death with a thousand puny blows.

I'd get one chance, one swing. To make the most of it, I tossed the torch aside and put both hands on the shaft of my club. Against another human, the flint k.n.o.b would have been the best choice: a human could stun a man of his own race with the k.n.o.b, men take him apart with the hook. But against a thick-skinned troll, it was all or nothing. I spun the shaft as I lunged at my enemy and swung with the hook leading.

My arm bones jammed my shoulders when the flint struck flesh. I nearly lost my grip. Nearly. Somehow I kept my hands where they belonged as hook went in up to the leather thong that lashed the stone to the shaft. The troll made a sound like a baby crying. His club grazed my arm as he toppled. He was dead before he struck the ground.

Staggering, because my heart suddenly refused to beat and my lungs forgot to breathe, I dropped to one knee and savored my victory by starlight. But the thoughts that rang in my mind were: What was his name? Did he leave anyone behind who would remember his name? What was his name? Did he leave anyone behind who would remember his name? The army Windreaver had loosed in the heartland wasn't made of outcasts, orphans and rootless veterans, like us. The trolls were totally committed to their cause. The bands we trailed were families with fathers and grandfathers, mothers and children. The army Windreaver had loosed in the heartland wasn't made of outcasts, orphans and rootless veterans, like us. The trolls were totally committed to their cause. The bands we trailed were families with fathers and grandfathers, mothers and children.

I'd never know my troll's name or what had brought him, alone, to my hill, his death. Perhaps he'd gotten lost in the night. Perhaps he'd been chasing his own dreams of vengeful glory. But it was a safe bet that he wasn't the only troll in walking distance, and that some other troll was going to come looking for him.

Even if there weren't any other trolls nearby to put the tang of danger in my victory and cut short my celebration, the torch I'd tossed aside had set the straw-gra.s.s ablaze.

Fire was an enemy I'd known as long as I'd lived. Grabbing my blanket, I swung and stomped those flames until they were gone and every ember was dark. Then, on my hands and knees, I raked the hot ash with my fingers until it was as cool as the corpse behind me. Dawn was coming when I rested and drained the last drops from my water-skin.

As the first red streaks of daylight thrust over the eastern horizon, I gazed at my night's work: the fire I had extinguished, the troll I'd killed. He was young, probably no older than I-which made him very young for a troll. The warty calluses that armored adults of his race had scarcely spread up his arms. His face was smooth, with soft brown eyes, wide-open and staring at me. His open mouth asked why? why?

I had no answer. We were far from Deche; there was no cause for me to think I'd claimed vengeance against a troll who'd wronged me personally. Like as not, the troll I'd killed-the troll who would have killed me, I made no mistake there-had his own wounded memories and fought humans for the same reasons I fought trolls.

Neither of us was right, but I was alive. Nothing else mattered. I'd survived the ma.s.sacre at Deche, and I'd survived a face-to-face combat with a troll. Destiny had plans for me. I believed that as strongly as the sun rose, but I had no hint of what lay before me.

Trolls were sun-worshipers. Every house I'd explored above Deche had an east-facing door with a rayed disk and an inscription chiseled into the stone lintel above it. I'd determined that before the Troll-Scorcher had come to the Kreegills, trolls had set the skulls of their ancestors atop their homes where the sun would strike them first and fill their hollow eyes with light.

My troll had fallen wrong-way round. Dawn struck his feet while his eyes were still in shadow. It was no desecration-not compared to what the trolls had done in Deche and elsewhere-merely an accident as he fell and died. But I had to prove myself better than the trolls, to justify what I'd done. I wrapped my belt around his ankles and hauled him around so the rays fell on his still-open eyes. In ashes on his chest, I wrote the troll blessings I'd seen on their hearthstones.

Then, when the sun was well risen, I took my knife and hacked off his head.

Bult and the others had begun to rouse from their stupor by the time I returned to our camp with my trophy, banging bloodily into my knee. Looking back, I now recognize another gesture from destiny's hand, guiding me into a situation I ought not to have survived. I was young-that accounts for most foolishness among men of all races; I suppose it accounts for mine that morning.

Throwing the troll's head at Bult's feet, I shouted, "I saved your worthless lives last night," and, in the inexplicable reasoning of youth, I expected him to thank me. More than that, I expected him to recognize that I was the better man and admit as much before the whole band.

Foolishness. Unmitigated foolishness... and destiny.

Bult had a sword, the only sword in our band. It had a composite blade: bits of broken obsidian wedged into a stave of waterlogged wood that had then been baked hard in a kiln and strengthened with a copper spine. It was useless against a troll, but Bult figured to make short work of me when he drew it out of a bulky scabbard.

"Knew you was trouble from the start," he said, kicking my trophy aside as he advanced on me. "Should've killed you then and there-you with your fancy farm-boy words and your ideas." ideas."

I retreated a pace and tested my grip, finger by finger, against the rawhide braid wrapped around my club. With a dead troll fresh in my memory, I was cautious, but not overawed by my adversary or his weapon. My club needed a bit more room than Bult's sword; I shook out my shoulder and retreated, c.o.c.king my arm for my first swing. Bult smiled and nodded.

I thought our brawl was about to begin, but I hadn't been paying attention to my back. Hands I hadn't suspected seized my wrist and elbow. They wrenched my weapon from my hand, clouted me on the flank, and thrust me forward to my doom.

I landed hard on my hands and knees, well in range of Bult's leather-shod foot. He kicked me solidly under the chin, and I went head over heels in the dust, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of my fellows, who had more enthusiasm for the murder of one of their own than they'd shown for a true enemy's death.

"You think you're smarter than me, Manu," Bult told me as he raised his foot to kick me again. I scrabbled backward into an unfriendly wall of legs and feet that ended my retreat. "That's been your mistake all along. You think 'cause your mamma and papa taught you to talk pretty, you're cut from a better piece of cloth. Well, your mamma and papa aren't nothing but troll-meat, Manu, just like you're gonna be when they find you."

Bult meant to hamstring me and leave me for the trolls-that was clear from the gleam in his eyes and the angle his wrist made with the sword's blade when he raised his arm. He could have had his will with me; I was weak with fear and sick with defeat. Sour blood filled my mouth. There was no strength left in me to move my legs out of harm's way, if he'd if he'd taken his cut right then. But Bult lugged his stroke and gut-kicked me instead. taken his cut right then. But Bult lugged his stroke and gut-kicked me instead.