The Rise And Fall Of A Dragonking Part 9

Another of the officers-a short, round-faced fellow that no other man would consider a threat in a fight but was the highest ranked of all-shouted, "Recall!" From the midst of the honor guard, a drum began to beat. I waved the armed guard aside and beheld a boy, fair-haired, freckled, and shaking with terror as he struck the recall rhythm with his leather-headed sticks.

His signal was taken up by two other drummers, each with a slight variation. The round-faced officer said there should have been five drummers answering the recall, one for each officer. The drummers were boys, not veterans, not armed. They'd been no threat to us when we attacked and rolled up their line, but the round-faced officer swore they wouldn't have run, that they were as brave as any veteran, ten times braver than I. By the look in his eye, I understood that at least one of the boys was kin to him, one of the boys who hadn't sounded his drum. He judged me the boy's murderer, just as I'd once held Bult responsible for Dorean.

By my command, we searched the field, looking for the missing drummers. We found the three missing boys before sundown, their cold fingers still wrapped around their drumsticks.

Battle is glorious because you're fighting the enemy, you're fighting for your own life and the lives of the veterans beside you. There's no glory, though, once the battle has ended. Agony sounds the same, whatever language the wounded spoke when they were whole, and a corpse is a tragic-looking thing whether it's a half-grown boy or a fullgrown, warty troll.

There were more than a hundred corpses around that hilltop. I'd walked away from Deche, and the death it harbored, hardly by my own choice. When the time came, I'd buried Jikkana, and Bult, and I'd seen to it that all the others went honorably into their graves. But a hundred human corpses...

"What do we do do with them?" I asked One-Eye over a cold supper of stale bread and stiff, smoked meat. "We'll need ten days to dig their graves. We'll be parched and starving-" with them?" I asked One-Eye over a cold supper of stale bread and stiff, smoked meat. "We'll need ten days to dig their graves. We'll be parched and starving-"

One-Eye found something fascinating in his bread and pretended not to hear me. The woman officer answered instead: "We leave them for the kes'trekels and all the other scavengers. They're meat, meat, Manu. Might as well let some creature have the good of 'em. We head west at dawn tomorrow-if you want to catch those trolls." Manu. Might as well let some creature have the good of 'em. We head west at dawn tomorrow-if you want to catch those trolls."

And we did, but not at dawn. The round-faced officer kept us waiting while he buried his boy deep in the ground, where no scavenger would disturb him.

They held me in thrall, those five officers did, with their hard eyes and easy a.s.surance. I knew I was cleverer than Bult and all his ilk, but, though I'd taken their swords away, I felt foolish around them. My veterans saw the difference, sensed my discomfort. By the time we'd marched two days into the west, those who'd joined me before the hilltop battle and those we'd acquired in that battle's aftermath heeded my commands, but only after they'd stolen a glance at my round-faced captive.

"Show me the trolls!" I demanded, seizing his arm and giving him a rude shake.

He staggered, almost losing his balance, almost rubbing the bruise I'd surely given him. But he kept his balance and kept the pain from showing on his face. "They're here," he insisted, waving his other arm across the dry prairie.

The land was as flat as the back of my hand and featureless, except farther to the southwest, where a scattering of cone-shaped mountains erupted from the gra.s.s. They were nothing like the rocky Kreegills, but trolls were a mountain folk, and I believed the officer when he said we'd find trolls to the southwest.

"The mountains move!" I complained later that day. I'd reckoned the odd-shaped peaks were closer, that we'd be among them by sundown.

There was throttled laughter behind me. As veterans were measured, I scarcely pa.s.sed muster. I'd seen the Kreegills, and the heartland, but the sinking land-that's what the officers called the prairie-was new to me. It appeared flat, but appearances deceived, and sinking was as good a description as any for the land we crossed.

The dry gra.s.s was pocked with sinkholes large enough to swallow an inix. The holes weren't treacherous-not at a slow pace, with men walking ahead, prodding the ground with spear b.u.t.ts to find the hidden ones, the ones crusted over with a thin layer of dirt that wouldn't hold a warrior's weight. But sinkholes weren't the only difficulty the gra.s.s concealed. The prairie was riddled with dry stream beds, some a half-stride deep, a half-stride wide. Others cut deeper than a man was tall-deeper than a troll-twice as wide. They were banked with wind-carved dirt that dissolved to clumps and dust under a man's weight.

When we came to such a chasm, there was naught to do but walk the bank until it narrowed-or until we came to an already trampled place where crossing was possible. Muddy water lingered in a few of the chasms. There were footprints in the mud: six-legged bugs, four-footed beasts with cloven hooves, two-footed birds with talons on every toe, and once in a while, the distinctive curve of a leather-shod foot, easily twice the size of mine.

A band of trolls could hide in those muddy chasms. If a troll knew the stream's course-which crossed which, which went where-his band could travel faster than ours, and un.o.bserved.

As the sun grew redder and shadows lengthened, our round-faced officer advised making camp in one of the chasms. There weren't many who wanted to sleep in an open-ended grave. Myself, a boyhood in the Kreegills and five years with Bult had conditioned my notions of safety: I wanted wanted those odd-shaped mountains beneath my feet. I wanted to see my enemy while he was still a long way off. those odd-shaped mountains beneath my feet. I wanted to see my enemy while he was still a long way off.

And I was Hamanu. I got what I wanted.

Marching by torchlight and moonlight, pushing the veterans until they were ready to drop, I made camp at the base of one of the strange mountains. In form, the mountains were like worm mounds or anthills-if either worms or ants had once grown large enough to build mountains with their castings. Their gra.s.s-covered slopes were slippery steep, without rocks anywhere to give a handhold or foothold.

By daylight, we'd find a way to the top; that night, though, we made a cold camp at the bottom. The sinking lands were familiar in one way, at least: scorching hot beneath the sun, bone-chilling cold beneath the moon. Veterans and officers wrapped themselves into their cloaks and huddled close together.

I took the first watch with five st.u.r.dy men who swore they'd stay awake.

I faced south; the trolls came from the north. The first thing I heard was a human scream cut short. I know we'd fallen into a trap, but to this day I wonder if that trap had been set by the trolls or the Troll-Scorcher's officers. Whichever, it wasn't a battle-only the trolls had weapons; humans died tangled in their cloaks, still drowsy or sound asleep.

I had my sword, but before I could take a swing, a human hand closed around the nape of my neck. My strength drained down my legs, though I remained standing. Fear such as I'd never known before shocked all thoughts of fight or flight from my head. A mind-bender's a.s.sault-I know it now-but it was pure magic then, for all I, Manu of Deche, the farmer's son, understood of the Unseen Way.

I thought I'd gone blind and deaf as well, but it was only the Gray, the cold netherworld sucking sound from my ears as I pa.s.sed through in the grip of another hand, another mind. For one moment I stood on moonlit ground, far from the odd-shaped mountain. Then a raspy, ominous voice said: "Put him below."

Something hard and heavy hit me from behind. When I awoke, I was in a brick-lined pit with worms and vermin for my company. Light and food and water-just enough of each to keep me alive-fell from a tiny, unreachable hole in the ceiling.

I never knew how the last battle of my human life ended, but I can guess.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Hamanu's chin, human-shaped in the morning light that filtered through the latticed walls of his workroom, sagged toward his breastbone. The instant flesh brushed silk, though both were illusory, the king's neck straightened, and he sat bolt upright in his chair.

Grit-filled eyes blinked away astonishment. He who slept once in a decade had caught himself napping. There was tumult in the part of Hamanu's mind where he heard his templars' medallion-pleas-not the routine pleas of surgeon-sergeants, orators or others whose duties gave them unlimited access to the Dark Lens power he pa.s.sed along to his minions. To Hamanu's moderate surprise, he'd responded to such routine pleas while he slept. After thirteen ages, he was still learning about the powers Rajaat had bestowed on him. Another time, the discovery would have held Hamanu's attention all day, more, but riot this day. His mind echoed with urgency, death and fear, and other dire savors.

The Lion-King loosed filaments of consciousness through the Gray, one for every inquiry. Like a G.o.d he would not claim to be, his mind could be in many places at once-wandering Urik with his varied minions while being scattered across the barrens in search of endangered templars.

The essence of Hamanu, the core of his self-which was much more than a skein of conscious filaments, more even than his physical body-remained in the workroom where he looked down upon a haphazard array of vellum sheets, all covered with his own bold script. Blots as large as his thumbnail stained both the vellum and the exposed table-top, a testament to the haste with which he'd written. There were also inky gouges where he'd wielded the bra.s.s stylus like a sword. The ink was dry, though, as was the ink stone.

"O Mighty King, my lord above all-" Mighty King, my lord above all-"

A new request. Hamanu replied with another filament, this time wound around a question: What is happening?

This wasn't the first time the Lion-King had been inundated with requests for Dark Lens magic. The desiccated heartland that Rajaat's champions ruled was a brutal, dangerous place where disaster and emergencies were commonplace. But always before, he'd been awake, alert, when the pleas arrived. His ignorance of the crisis-his templars' desperation-had never lasted more than a few heartbeats. He'd been awake, now, for many heartbeats, but so far, none of his filaments had looped back to him. He had only his own senses on which to rely.

And dulled senses they were. Hamanu's illusion wavered as he stood. Between eye blinks, the arms he braced against the table were a tattered patchwork of dragon flesh and human semblance. He yawned, not for drama, but from long-dormant instinct.

"Too much thinking about the past," he muttered, as if literary exertions could account for the unprecedented disorder in his immortal world. Then, rubbing real grit from the corners of his illusory eyes, Hamanu made his way around the table.

The iron-bound chest where his stealth spell ripened appeared unchanged. Pa.s.sing his hand above the green-glowing lock, he kenned the spell's vibrations-complex, but according to expectation-within.

"O Mighty King, my lord above all. Come out of your workroom. Unlock the door. Lion's Whim, my king-I beg you, O Mighty King: Answer me!"

Still cross-grained and pillow-walking from his interrupted nap, Hamanu turned toward the sound, toward an ordinary door. Neither the voice nor the door struck a chord of recognition.

"Are you within, O Mighty King? It is I, Enver, O Mighty King."

Enver. Of course it was Enver; the fog in Hamanu's mind lifted. He could see his steward with his mind's eye. The loyal dwarf stood just outside the door he'd sealed from the inside with lethal wards. Anxious wrinkles creased Enver's brow. His fingers were white-knuckled and trembling as he squeezed his medallion.

Hamanu judged it ill omened that this morning, of all mornings, Enver was addressing him as a mighty king rather than an omniscient G.o.d. He broke the warding with a wave of his hand, slid back the bolt, and opened the door.

"Here I am, dear Enver. Here I've been all along. I was merely sleeping," Hamanu lapsed into his habitual bone-dry, ironic inflection, as if he were-and had always been-the heavy-sleeping human he appeared to be.

The dwarf was not taken in. His eyes widened, and anxiety rippled above his brows, across his bald head. A frantic dialogue of inquiry and doubt roiled Enver's thoughts, but his spoken words were calm.

"You're needed in the throne chamber, O Mighty-Omniscience." With evident effort, Enver resurrected the habits of a lifetime. "Will you want breakfast, Omniscience? A bath and a swim?" With evident effort, Enver resurrected the habits of a lifetime. "Will you want breakfast, Omniscience? A bath and a swim?"

A few of the filaments Hamanu had released when he awakened were, at last, winding back to him, winding back in a single ominous thread. Templars had died at Todek village, died so fast and thoroughly that their last thoughts revealed nothing, and the living minds that had summoned him were uselessly overwrought.

Elven templars were already running the road from Todek to Urik. Their thoughts were all pulse and breath. Coherent explanations would have to wait until they arrived at the palace.

Other filaments had traveled to a score of templars at a refugee outpost on Urik's southeastern border. There, the filaments had been frayed and tangled by the same sort of interference the Oba of Gulg had wielded in the southwest yesterday. In the hope that something would get through, Hamanu widened the Dark Lens link between himself and his templars. He granted them whatever spells they'd requested. But it wasn't spells those desperate minds wanted. They wanted him: Hamanu, the Lion-King, their G.o.d and mighty leader, and they wanted him beside them.

There were limits to a champion's powers: Hamanu couldn't do do everything. Though his thoughts could travel through the netherworld to many places, many minds, and all at once, his body was bound to a single place. To satisfy his beleaguered templars, he would have had to transport his entire self from the palace, as he'd done when the Oba challenged him. But Enver wasn't the only numb-fingered templar in the palace. A veritable knot of pleas and conscious filaments surrounded his throne chamber where, at first guess, every living gold medallion high templar, along with the upper ranks of the civil and war bureaus, was clamoring for his attention. everything. Though his thoughts could travel through the netherworld to many places, many minds, and all at once, his body was bound to a single place. To satisfy his beleaguered templars, he would have had to transport his entire self from the palace, as he'd done when the Oba challenged him. But Enver wasn't the only numb-fingered templar in the palace. A veritable knot of pleas and conscious filaments surrounded his throne chamber where, at first guess, every living gold medallion high templar, along with the upper ranks of the civil and war bureaus, was clamoring for his attention.

The Lion-King wasn't immune to difficult choices.

"Fresh clothes?"

Extraordinary days-of which this was surely one-required extraordinary displays and extraordinary departures from routine. Hamanu raised one dark eyebrow. "Dear Enver," he reprimanded softly and, while he had the dwarf's attention, remade his illusions, adding substantially to his height and transforming his drab, wrinkled garments into state robes of unadorned ebony silk, as befitted a somber occasion. "Clothes, I think, will be the least of our problems today."

Hamanu strode past his steward's slack-jawed bewilderment, slashed an opening into the Gray netherworld, and, one stride later, emerged onto the marble-tiled dais of his unbeloved, jewel-encrusted throne. He needed no magic, no mind-bending sleight to get his templars' attention. The sight of him was enough to halt every conversation. Hamanu swept his consciousness across their marveling minds, collecting eighty different savors of apprehension and doubt.

The six civil-bureau janitors, whose duty was to stand beside the empty throne and keep the great lantern shining above it, were the first templars to recover their poise. In practiced unison, they pounded spear b.u.t.ts loudly on the floor and slapped their leather-armored b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Then the orator who shared throne-chamber duty with them cleared her throat.

"Hail, O Mighty King, O Mighty Hamanu! Water-Wealth, Maker of Oceans. King of the-"

Mighty Hamanu shot her a look that took her voice away.

The chamber fell silent, except for the creaking of the slave-worked treadmills and the network of ropes and pulleys that ran from the treadmills to huge red-and-gold fans. At this late hour of the morning, the heat of day beat down on the roof, and nothing except sorcery could cool the chamber and the crowd together.

Exotic and expensive perfumes competed pungently with each other and with the ever-present aroma of mortal sweat. The more delicate and sensitive individuals wore pomander masks or held scented cloth against their noses.

For his part, Hamanu drank down every scent, every taste born in air or thought. His champion's eyes took in each familiar face without blinking. There was Javed, clad in his usual black and leaning nonchalantly against a pillar. Javed leaned because the wounds in his leg ached today-Hamanu felt the pain. But Javed was a champion, too, Hero of Urik, and, like the Lion-King, had appearances to maintain. Pavek stood near the door, not because he'd arrived late, but because no matter how carefully and properly his house-servants dressed him, he'd always be a misfit in this congregation. He'd migrated, by choice, to the rear, where he hoped his high templar peers wouldn't notice him.

Hamanu had other favorites: Xerake with her ebony cane; the Plucrataes heir, eleventh of his lineage to bear a scholar's medallion and more nearsighted than any of his ancestors; and a score of others. His favorites were accustomed to his presence. Their minds opened at the slightest pressure. They were ready, if not quite willing, to speak their concerns aloud. The rest, knowing that the Lion's favorites were also lightning rods for his wrath, were more than willing to wait.

He let them all wait longer. On the distant southeastern border, a sergeant's despair had burst through the netherworld interference.

Hear me, O Mighty Hamanu!

The Lion-King cast a minor pall over his throne chamber. An eerie quiet spread through the crowd. Conversation, movement, and-most important for a champion who was needed elsewhere, but couldn't be seen with his vacant-eyed attention focused in that elsewhere-memory ceased around him.

I hear you-Hamanu examined the trembling mote of consciousness and found a name-Andelimi. I see you, Andelimi. Take heart.

His words rea.s.sured the templar, but they weren't the truth. Hamanu glimpsed the southeast border through a woman's eyes. Her vision was not as sharp as his own would be, but it was sharp enough: black sc.u.m dulled an expanse of sand and salt that should been painfully bright.

An army of the undead, he said in Andelimi's mind, because it rea.s.sured her to hear the truth of her own fears. he said in Andelimi's mind, because it rea.s.sured her to hear the truth of her own fears.

We cannot control them, O Mighty King.

Controlling the undead-of all the mysteries Rajaat's Dark Lens perpetrated, that one remained opaque. Like the other champions, through sorcery Hamanu held vast power over death in all its forms. He could inflict death in countless ways and negate it as well, but always at great cost to his ever-metamorphosing self. Not so his templars, whose borrowed magic had its origin in the Dark Lens and was fundamentally different from the sorcery Rajaat had bestowed on his champions.

The magic his templar syphoned from the Dark Lens neither hastened the dragon metamorphosis nor degraded ordinary life into ash. And, since the undead didn't hunger, didn't thirst, didn't suffer, the champions often relied on their living templars' ability to raise the casualties of earlier battles whenever it seemed that marching a ma.s.s of bodies at an enemy would insure victory.

Which wasn't often.

Once a templar had the undead raised and moving, he or she faced the chance that someone else would usurp control of them. Not an equal chance, of course. Some living minds were simply better at controlling undead, and all other aspects being equal, a more experienced templar-not to mention a more experienced priest, druid, sorcerer, or champion could usurp the undead from a novice.

Hamanu personally tested his templars for undead apt.i.tude and made certain the ones who had it got the training they needed. The war bureau wouldn't have allowed Andelimi and the twenty other templars in her maniple out the gates without an apt and trained necromant templar among them-especially in the southeast, where Urik's land ab.u.t.ted Giustenal.

Hamanu stirred Andelimi's thoughts. Where is your necromant? Where is your necromant?

Rihaen tried, O Mighty King, she a.s.sured him. she a.s.sured him. Hodit, too. Hodit, too.

Her eyes pulled down to the hard-packed dirt to the left of her feet; Hamanu seized control of her body and turned her toward the right. Andelimi was a war-bureau sergeant, a veteran of two decade's worth of campaign. She knew better than to fight her king, but instinct ran deeper than intellect. She'd rather die than look to her right. Hamanu kept her eyes open long enough to see what he needed.

Rihaen tried...

Andelimi's thoughts were bleak. She'd barely begun to mourn. The dead elf had been her lover, the father of her children, the taste of sweet water on her tongue.

Rihaen had tried to turn the undead army, but the same champion who'd sundered the link between Urik's templars and Urik's king had roused these particular corpses. Instead of usurping Giustenal's minions, Rihaen had been usurped by them. His heart had stopped, and he'd become undead himself, under another mind's control. Hodit, who was also apt and trained, had-foolishly-tried to turn Rihaen and suffered the same fate.

The remaining templars of the maniple, including Andelimi, had overcome their own undead. It could be done without recourse to magic, and every templar carried the herbs, the oils, or the weapons to do it. But what the raiser of Giustenal's undead army had done to Rihaen and Hodit could not be undone. For them, the curse of undeath was irrevocable. Their bodies had fallen apart. Nothing recognizable was left of Andelimi's beloved except a necromant's silver medallion and several strands of his long, brown hair, all floating on a pool of putrid gore.

For the honor of his own ancient memories of Deche and Dorean, Hamanu would have left Andelimi alone with her grief. But it had been her anguish that cut through Dregoth's interference, and for the sake of Urik, he could show her no mercy.

Andelimi!

She crumpled to the ground; he thrust her to her feet.

Where are the others of your maniple? Who survives?

Hamanu would not make her look at Rihaen again, but he needed to see. He forced her eyes open, then blinked away her tears. He found the fifteen surviving templars in a line behind Andelimi. Their varied medallions hung exposed against their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Defeat was written on their faces because he had not heard their pleas in time. They knew what was happening-that he'd taken possession of Andelimi-and that it had happened too late.

"We stand, O Mighty Lion! We fight, O Great Hamanu!" the maniple's adjutant shouted to the king he knew was watching him through a woman's eyes. He saluted with a bruising thump on his breast. the maniple's adjutant shouted to the king he knew was watching him through a woman's eyes. He saluted with a bruising thump on his breast. "Your templars will not fail you!" "Your templars will not fail you!"

The adjutant's thoughts were white and spongy. His hand trembled when he lowered it. Urik's templars didn't have a prayer of winning against the undead legion sprawled before them, and the adjutant knew it. He and Andelimi wished with all their hearts that death-clean, eternal death-would be theirs this afternoon.

They'd get their wish only if Hamanu slew them where they stood and drained their essence, furthering his own metamorphosis.

Hamanu pondered the bitter irony: only living living champions were afflicted by the dragon metamorphosis. Dregoth was as undead as the army he'd raised, utterly unable to become a dragon, will he or nill he. There was no limit on Dregoth's sorcery except the scarcity of life in his underground city. champions were afflicted by the dragon metamorphosis. Dregoth was as undead as the army he'd raised, utterly unable to become a dragon, will he or nill he. There was no limit on Dregoth's sorcery except the scarcity of life in his underground city.

The very-much-alive Lion of Urik tested the netherworld with a thought, confirming his suspicions. Giustenal's champion had raised the undead army creeping toward Urik. Hamanu could turn them, mind by empty mind, but he'd have to fight for each one, and victory's price was unthinkably high.

"You will retreat," he told the maniple with Andelimi's voice. he told the maniple with Andelimi's voice.

They weren't rea.s.sured. Undead marched slowly but relentlessly; they never tired, never rested. Only elves could outrun them-unless there were elves among the undead.

"Better to stand and fight." A slow-moving dwarf muttered loudly.

He stood with his fists defiant on his hips. Whatever death Hamanu chose for him-his undercurrent thoughts were clear-it would be preferable to dwarven undeath with its additional banshee curse of an unfulfilled life-focus. In that, the dwarf was mistaken. The Lion-King could craft fates far worse than undeath-as Windreaver would attest-but Hamanu let the challenge pa.s.s. Urik's fate hung in the balance, and Urik was more important than teaching a fool-hearted dwarf an eternal lesson.

"Set all your water before me."

While the adjutant oversaw the a.s.sembling of a small pile of waterskins, Hamanu thrust deeper into Andelimi's consciousness, impressing into her memory the shapes and syllables of the Dark Lens spell he wanted her to cast. If grief had not already numbed her mind, the mind-bending shock would have driven her mad. As it was, Hamanu's presence was only another interlude in an already endless nightmare.

When the waterskin pile was complete and the arcane knowledge imparted, Hamanu made Andelimi speak again: "After the spell is cast, you will each take up your waterskins again and begin walking toward the north and west. With every step, a drop of water will fall from your fingertip to the ground. When the undead walk where you have walked, the lifeless blood in their lifeless veins will burst into flames." "After the spell is cast, you will each take up your waterskins again and begin walking toward the north and west. With every step, a drop of water will fall from your fingertip to the ground. When the undead walk where you have walked, the lifeless blood in their lifeless veins will burst into flames."