Rise & Fall of A Dragon King, page 27
"Rkard," Hamanu said, flushing the name of Borys's ancient enemy out of his memory. "Rkard, go away. There's nothing for you to do here."
The youth blinked and lowered his fist. Confusion wrinkled his handsome face. It seemed, for a moment, that he'd simply do as he'd been told. But that moment passed, and he laid his hand rudely on Hamanu's shoulder.
"Stand aside. I don't know who you are, or why you've come, but I'll take care of Sadira, and if I find that you've harmed her...." The youth's eyes reddened as he evoked the bloody sun's power.
Hamanu lowered the sorceress gently to the floor. She, Rikus, and the rest of the Tyrian hotheads had raised the young man staring intently at him. He had a fair idea what was going to happen once Rkard recognized him.
"Rkard, don't do it."
The warning came too late. Three separate streams of fire, one orange, one gold, and the third the same color as the sun, grew out of the young mul's sun-scarred hands. As Rkard cried out—sun magic exacted a fearsome price on its initiates—the fire-streams braided together and bridged the gap between them.
Hamanu cried out as well. The sun's power was real. His flesh burned within his illusion, but it could burn for a long time before he'd be seriously injured. Hamanu could have brushed the sun-spell aside but, almost certainly, it would have gone to ground in Sadira's defenseless flesh.
He tried to reason with the mul and got no further than his name, "Rkard—"
Rkard howled again as he evoked greater power from his element. The braided flames became brighter, hotter. Hamanu's illusion wavered in the heat; he ceased to resemble a human man. He retreated toward the open window. The mul followed, a smile—a foolish, ignorant smile— twisting his lips.
"Let it go, Rkard, before someone gets hurt."
The mul couldn't talk while he cast his sun-spell. He let his hands speak for him, clenching his fists until the tricolored flame was a white-hot spear impaling a tawny-skinned human man against a wall.
Hamanu closed his eyes. A thousand years evaporated in the heat. In his mind, he was a man again, with his back to a mekillot rib as Myron Troll-Scorcher assailed him with the eyes of fire, only now he could fight back. The sun behind him and the shadow at his feet were both his to command. All he had to do was open his eyes and his tormentor would be ash.
Hamanu did open his eyes but, rather than quicken any of the myriad destructive sorceries lurking in his memory, he thrust his hand into Rkard's incendiary sun-spell, then closed his fingers around it. The white fire consumed his illusion. To keep his fist where it needed to remain, Hamanu folded his spindly, metamorph's legs beneath him. He hunched his shoulders and crooked his neck. All the while, the bloody sun's might was held captive in the Lion-King's fist.
Hamanu squeezed tighter. He transcended pain and found triumph where he least expected it.
The spells of sorcery, the formulas of the magic that Rajaat had discovered, mastered, and bequeathed to Athas before he decided to cleanse it, had to be quickened before they could be cast.
Something had to be sacrificed before sorcery kept its promise. The dilemma facing any sorcerer, from the most self-righteous member of the Veiled Alliance to Rajaat's last champion, was—at its simplest—what to destroy?
Preservers strove to limit the sacrifice by extracting a few motes of life's essence from many sources, destroying none of them; defilers didn't care. Those who could used obsidian to quicken their spells with the essences of animals as well as plants. Champions could hoard the life essence of the dead.
A few—Hamanu, Sadira, and Rajaat's shadow-minions—quickened spells by transforming sunlight, the ultimate essence of all life, into shadow.
The Dark Lens intensified a spell after it was cast, but no sorcerer—including Hamanu and Sadira—could use the Dark Lens as Rkard had used it against Rajaat: focusing the bloody sun's light first inside the Lens, then letting it out again, letting it consume the War-Bringer's shadow. And not even Rkard could duplicate that uncanny feat: Sadira had buried the Lens and Rajaat had almost certainly found a better hiding place for his own life essence than his shadow.
But when he seized the white-hot stream and contained Rkard's sun-spell within his fist, Hamanu found that the young mul was a living lens who concentrated the sun's quickening energy before a spell was cast. With Rkard beside him, Hamanu could seal Rajaat's bones and the Dark Lens in a cyst the size of a mountain. He could counter anything his fellow champions threw at Urik, be it spells or armies of the living or the undead. And, for the first time in a thousand years, Hamanu thought it might be possible to thwart a champion's metamorphosis.
Before any of that, Hamanu had to break free of Rkard's sun-spell, no simple task as the youth had opened himself fully to the sun's might and was unwilling—or, perhaps, unable—to halt the power flowing through him. Red-eyed and blazing, Rkard was slowly immolating himself.
Hamanu appealed to the mul with thought and words,
"The sun is stronger than both of us, Rkard. Together, we can forge spells that mill imprison Rajaat forever, but only if you relent now. Persist, and the sun will destroy you long before it destroys me. Save yourself, Rkard—"
"Never! Betrayer! Deceiver! You die first, or we die together and forever."
Hamanu remembered himself on the dusty plain, a young man consumed by hate and purpose.
He opened his fist. The sun-spell engulfed his arm; the obscene bliss of the eyes of fire threatened to overwhelm him. He remade his fist; the threat receded but didn't disappear.
Sunlight, Hamanu thought. Blocking the sun and casting his own shadow over Rkard might break the spell. He straightened his legs, bursting the room's walls and ceiling.
Somewhere outside the white fire, a woman screamed.
Still catching the sun-spell in his fist, Hamanu edged sideways. Rkard collapsed when the fringe of the champion's shadow touched him. The white fire darkened to pale yellow; tiny flames danced on the youth's arms. While Hamanu hesitated, Rkard wrenched free of shadow. The sun-spell whitened. The youth would not relent—no more than Manu would have relented a thousand years ago.
Hamanu's short-lived dreams crumbled: the chance of finding another young mul already hardened to the bloody sun's merciless might—of finding one in time—was incalculably remote. He prepared to take the larger step that would center his black shadow over Rkard and his spell.
The woman screamed again, this time the mul's name, "Rkard!"
A red-haired streak shot through Hamanu's shadow. It wrapped itself around the enthralled youth and heaved him sideways. The spell broke free, a diminutive sun hovering an arm's length above the mosaic. In a heartbeat, it had begun to strengthen. In another, Hamanu had thrown himself on top of it.
The ground shuddered. For an instant, Hamanu was freed from his black-boned body. Then the instant was gone, and he was himself again, reforming the flawless illusion of a tawny-skinned man.
Sadira cradled the mul's head and shoulders in her lap. He was exhausted, unable to speak or move, but otherwise unmarked, unhurt. Hamanu's spirits soared.
"It could be done! We could do it. We could go to Ur Draxa and repair your ward-spells. We could save Urik. Together nothing could stand against—"
The sorceress's eyes narrowed. She wrapped her arms protectively over Rkard. "Stand with you?" Her expression said the rest: I'll kill him myself before I let that happen.
Hamanu tried to explain what had happened when Rkard's sun-spell struck him. Sadira listened; he perceived the spirals of her thoughts as she considered everything he said, but none of her conclusions included helping a champion save his city.
"I took the sun-spell inside, into my heart and spirit. Your shadow-sorcery doesn't go that deep,"
he warned. "You'd be consumed."
"So you say, but I don't believe you. Dragons lie, and you're a dragon. You'd deceive us and betray us. While even one of your kind exists, Athas can never be free."
"Free," Hamanu muttered. He had a thousand arguments against such foolishness, and none of them would sway her. Better to let her learn the hard way, though she wouldn't survive the lesson, and there was no guarantee Rkard would cooperate afterward. "For Athas, then, and your precious freedom—go carefully to Ur Draxa, look at what's happened to the lake where you sealed Rajaat's bones beside the Dark Lens. Look, then come to Urik at dawn, three days from now. I'll be waiting for you."
Chapter Fourteen
Enver stood in the map room doorway. "Omniscience, a messenger approaches."
"I know," Hamanu assured his steward.
The sharpest mortal ear could not pick out the sounds of sandals rapidly slapping the tiles of the palace corridors as the messenger neared the end of her journey. Her journey continued because Hamanu didn't rely on his immortal ears. He'd known about the message since it passed through Javed's hands in Javed's encampment south of the market village ring.
"Good news or bad, Omniscience?"
Hamanu smiled fleetingly. "Good. Nibenay sent it with our messenger, alive and intact. I believe he has accepted my terms. We'll know for certain in a moment, won't we?"
Enver nodded. "For certain, Omniscience. Our messenger alive, that's certainly good news."
The dwarf's tightly ordered mind accepted that the Shadow-King was also a living god, and that gods, all other aspects being equal, weren't omniscient with regard to one another. His eyes were wide with awe and dread when the dusty half-elf slapped to a halt beside him. She clutched Gallard's black scroll-case tightly in both hands, as if it were a living thing that might try to escape or attack her.
Nibenay's nine-rayed star glowed faintly on the case's wax seal, which protruded between her thumbs.
Knowing what she carried, although not the message it contained, she'd pushed herself to her limit and beyond, as had every other relay-runner who'd touched it
"O Mighty One—" she gasped, beginning to cramp from her exertions.
Enver steadied her. He put his own powerful short-fingered hand around hers, lest the scroll case slip through her trembling fingers and shatter on the floor.
"Give it to me," Hamanu suggested, reaching across the sand-table where he'd recreated Urik and its battle lines.
The half-elf doubled over the instant Enver took the case. The trembling was contagious; the dwarf's fingers shook as he handed it to Hamanu.
"See to her needs, dear Enver," the Lion-King said, dismissing them and their mortal curiosity with a nod of his head.
Ah, the predictable frailties of his mortal servants... the pair stopped as soon as they were out of sight and wrung their hands together in desperate, silent prayers: Good news. Good news. Whim of the Lion, let the news be good.
Hamanu slid his thumb under the scroll-case seal. The hardened wax popped free, and a tiny red gem rolled onto the sand pile that stood for the village of Farl. Never one to believe in omens, Hamanu fished it out of the sand and squeezed it.
Alone. When the sun is an hour above the eastern horizon, he heard the Shadow-King's hollow, whispery voice between his own thoughts. The armies will begin their engagement. I will cast the first spell, then Dregoth, then Inenek. Do what must be done, and the walk of Urik will be standing at sundown. This I solemnly swear.
The Lion-King let the bright gem fall back on the sand. By itself, the gem was worth many times its weight in gold. What was the worth of a champion's solemn oath? At least Gallard was no longer spouting nonsense about spells to forestall the creation madness that had overtaken Borys. Beyond that, Gallard's oath was worth what Hamanu's oath would have been in similar circumstances: very, very little, no more than a single grain of sand.
Hamanu studied the sand-table in front of him. Gentle mounds and grooves imitated the more detailed map of Urik's environs carved onto the map room's northern wall. Strips of silk littered the sand: yellow, of course, for the city's forces, green for Gulg, red for Nibenay, black for the largely undead army of Giustenal. The red, green, and black strips were where Rajaat promised they'd be. If there was a battle tomorrow, it would be on a scale not seen since the Cleansing Wars. If ±ere wasn't a battle, there'd be mortal sacrifice to equal the day Borys laid waste to Bodach.
Was there a third alternative?
Yellow silk fingers surrounded the sandpile that stood for the market village of Todek, southwest of the city. They faced nothing, except a tied-up bundle of blue ribbons. Blue, for the armies of Tyr. Blue, for the army—enemy or ally—that hadn't arrived.
Hamanu's eyelids fell shut. He clutched his left forearm where, beneath illusion, an empty place remained unfilled.
"Windreaver," the Lion whispered. "Windreaver. Are they coming, Windreaver?"
Not an army. An army wouldn't make a difference. But two people—even one person, one young mul with the sun's bloody mark on his forehead—that could make all the difference in the world.
Windreaver couldn't answer. There'd be no answer.
As soon as he'd returned to Urik after his disastrous meeting with Sadira at the Asticles estate outside of Tyr, Hamanu had sent a peace offering to the sorceress: a champion's apology, rarer than iron, rarer than a gentle rain in this dragon-blasted world. He'd sent golden-crust himali bread from his own ovens, because bread had been peace and life and all good things in the Kreegills, and a hastily scribed copy of the history he'd written for Pavek, in the hope that she would understand why he was what he was, and why losing Windreaver was a loss beyond measure.
He should have sent Pavek. Pavek had a true genius for charming his enemies. As a runaway templar, he'd charmed the druids of Quraite. As both a runaway and a would-be druid, he'd charmed the Lion-King himself. If anyone could have undone the hash that Hamanu had made of his Tyrian visit, Pavek would have been the one.
But for Hamanu, sending Pavek out of Urik would have been sending away his last—his only—hope. So he'd appealed to the Veiled Alliance of sorcerers in Urik, stunning them, of course, with his knowledge of their leadership, their bolt holes, and all that his knowledge implied. For Urik, he'd told the old rag-seller who was Urik's mistress of unlawful sorcery. And, reluctantly, she'd sent an adept through the Gray with his gifts.
The adept had arrived. The gifts had been conveyed to the Asticles estate. Beyond that, without Windreaver to be his eyes and ears in tight-warded places, Hamanu knew nothing, which was, itself, an answer. The sorceress wasn't coming. Whether Rajaat plucked Sadira's strings in subtle melodies, or she was simply a mortal woman as stubborn and single-minded as he'd been at her age, was a dilemma the Lion-King would never resolve.
These last two days, he'd picked apart the memory of their abortive conversations as often as he'd examined the deployments on the sand-table. He'd blamed Sadira— mostly he'd blamed Sadira—for her failure to listen, but he'd blamed Rkard, too, and Rajaat, and Windreaver, for planting the weed's seed in his mind in the first place. At one time or another, Hamanu had blamed everyone for his blundering failure to win Sadira's help.
Recalling his own words, he'd blamed himself: his blindness, his prejudice, his overwhelming need to answer hurt with hurt. In the end, with the blue silk ribbons still tied in a compact bundle and Gallard's red gem in the sand beside Khelo, blame was unimportant.
"Mistakes," he told the absent Windreaver, "were made. I had choices, and I made the wrong ones. Now, I pay the price of my own foolishness. What do you think, wherever you are, old friend, old enemy? Will Pavek come to Urik's rescue with his druid guardian? Will the guardian vanquish the dragon I become? Will that be enough? Is there a guardian who can stand against the first sorcerer?"
He swept his arm across the table, leveling the mounds, burying the multicolored ribbons beneath the sand.
"From the day he made me his champion, I have prepared for the day when I would face my destiny. I had a thousand times a thousand plans, but I never planned for today."
Hamanu extinguished the map room lanterns with a thought. He left the room and found Enver sitting on the floor outside the door.
"You heard?" Hamanu asked.
The dwarf's upturned face, pale and vacant, answered before his thoughts became coherent.
"Go home, dear Enver." Hamanu helped his steward to his feet. "Stay there tomorrow. You'll know what to do."
Enver shook his head slowly from side to side. "No," he whispered. "No..."
Hamanu laid his hand atop the dwarf's bald head, as he might have done with a child. "It will be better, dear Enver. I will not be able to protect or spare you, and whoever comes after me—"
"Omniscience, there can be no after—"
"Precisely. The potion I gave you will set you free."
The dwarf shook his head, ducking out from beneath Hamanu's hand. His focus, that uniquely dwarven trait that guided a dwarf's life and determined his fate after death, was foremost in the thoughts Hamanu gleaned. It was a face the Lion-King scarcely recognized, though it was him, Hamanu, as Enver knew him.
"Your focus will be fulfilled, dear Enver. It is I who abandon you, not you who abandon me." He put a guiding hand on his steward's shoulder and pointed him away from the map room. "Go home now.
It's time."
Enver took a few flat-footed steps, then turned, painted a new portrait in his mind's eye, and turned away again. The swift painless poison Hamanu had provided for all his household was, in truth, a regular precaution whenever he led his army to war. Rajaat's champions had learned how to kill each other. The dwarf's determination not to use it was an almost-tangible cloak around his shoulders as he walked down the corridor. Hamanu hoped he'd change his mind. The fate of anyone who'd been close to the Lion-King wouldn't be pleasant once the Lion-King was gone.
Hamanu waited until the corridor ahead of him was silent. Then he followed Enver's footsteps.
From the map room, he went to the armory, from the armory slowly through every public room. Except for the slave and servant quarters, which he avoided, the Lion-King's palace was deserted. He'd sent away as many as he could, to Javed's camp or to their own families.
