The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (21 page)

Hamanu had to find out what the War-Bringer had accomplished in that time.

The first part of Hamanu's plan was simple, in concept, if not execution: a careful approach to the
throbbing Black, along a line oblique enough to give him a glimpse of the Hollow while, at the same time,
leaving him with enough speed and energy to escape its lethal attraction. The spell he'd cast moments ago
in his workroom gave him a good chance for success. If he'd truly been Pavek, in the flesh or spirit, he
might have evoked the Lion-King's name. But Hamanu didn't believe in his own power over fate and
fortune:

A shadow sprouted around Hamanu, a Pavek-shaped shadow reaching through the Gray toward
the Black where all shadows were born or died. Flecks of brilliant white, paradoxical and inexplicable,
appeared in the Black, migrating, as Hamanu's shadow lengthened, to the point where the shadow and
the Black would meet. Hamanu struggled not to follow his shadow.

The normal silence of the Gray became deafening. Flares of dark ether appeared without warning
and wound a tightening spiral around Hamanu's attenuated shadow. Another moment—as Hamanu's
mind measured time in the netherworld—and he'd have pressed his luck too hard. He'd have to break
away, if he could, without his precious glimpse of the Hollow.

There was no air in the Gray. A netherworld traveler didn't breathe, yet Hamanu held his breath,
and his shadow shrank. He risked everything to get a little lower, a little closer, and got his heart's desire:
a glimpse of a Hollow without substance or shadow, light or dark. The Hollow was nothing at
all—except the War-Bringer's essence.

Because Hamanu's own spells, his own substance and essence, had helped to forge the Hollow
thirteen ages ago, he knew it was not empty. He knew as well—and with no small horror—that it was
riddled with cracks through which shadow, if not substance, could seep.

Without thought for the consequences, Hamanu cursed his complacency. Five years ago, he'd
trusted Sadira because it was convenient, because they'd declared a truce on the shores of Ur Draxa's
lava lake, because he'd trusted that her hatred of him and the champions would be enough to insure her
vigilance.

He'd been a fool then, and was twice a fool now: his thoughtless curse had broken his
concentration.

His shadow expanded violently, touching both the Black and the dark, spiraling flares. Arms and
legs extended like a cartwheel's spokes, he tumbled wildly, gathering shadow with every turn. In panic,
he clawed for the amulet case and the beads it contained. Shadow engulfed his hand.

He had a moment to contemplate his folly. Then a vaguely human-shaped figure manifested itself
between him and the Black.

Rajaat, Hamanu thought and, anticipating a fate truly worse than death, got a firm hold on his
courage and dignity. Though the figure grew larger, its silhouette did not devolve into Rajaat's asymmetric
deformities, and its aura was neither menacing nor vengeful. It simply broke the flow between the Black
and Hamanu's shadow.

Once again, Hamanu prepared himself for death.

Not yet, the still-distant figure roared above the deafening silence.

Its outstretched right arm crossed its body and extended a finger toward a point beyond its left
foot. Hamanu looked in the indicated direction and began tumbling again. This time, however, an
attractive presence other than the Black, held him in its grip. Like any dying man, mortal or immortal,
Hamanu grasped any opportunity, however unproven, to escape certain oblivion.

With bold and practiced strokes, Hamanu swam with this new current. Glancing over his
shoulder as he passed beneath his savior's foot, he glimpsed the Lion-King of Urik bestriding the Black.
Hamanu had no time to ponder the extraordinary sight. He was moving fast through the Gray, and a
sense of boundary had already sprung up in his mind.

Hamanu ripped out of the netherworld while he was some distance above the ground. The choice
was deliberate: he didn't know where he was, and while a fall wouldn't hurt him, an emergence that left
him half in and half out of any solid object would be fatal, even for an immortal champion. Tucking his
head and shoulder as he hit the ground, Hamanu rolled several times before he got his feet under him.

A true adept of mind-bending or magic could always establish his place in the world. Though the
hot daytime air around him was saturated with water and, therefore, more opaque than the netherworld,
Hamanu felt the push and pull of Athas beneath his feet, and knew for certain that he was within the ruins
of Borys's city, Ur Draxa.

A thick mat of squishy plants had cushioned his fall, a mat that covered every surface, including
the walls, where the walls were still standing. Stagnant water seeped through the illusory soles of
Hamanu's illusory sandals. He gave himself sturdier footwear and wrestled with garments that were
already damp and clinging to his skin.

Ahead, Hamanu heard the rumble of thunder, the ear-popping crack of lightning. He was puzzled
for a moment; then he understood: five years after Tithian had been trapped inside the Dark Lens, his
rage continued unabated. The would-be Tyrant of Tyr was responsible for the violent Tyr-storms
throughout the heartland. Here in Ur Draxa, he was responsible for the unrelenting, stifling fog. He'd
forged an environment like nothing Hamanu had encountered elsewhere on Athas.

Taking a step in the direction where his inner senses told him he'd find the lava lake, Hamanu's
foot sank to midcalf depth before striking a buried cobblestone path. The squishy mat belched, and twin
scents of rot and decay filled his nose. Initially, Hamanu the Lion-King was repelled by the stench. After
a moment's reflection, Manu the Fanner recognized that the streets of Ur Draxa were more fertile I than
Urik's best fields.

He slogged the next little distance plotting the ways and means to bring the riches home.

Hamanu wasn't the only one stumbling through to Ur Draxa's treasure. His inhumanly sharp ears
picked up other feet sinking in the bog. He didn't fear discovery; the fog hid him better than any spell. A
talkative pair slogged past, so close and diffident, he could have stolen their belt-pouches. By their
accents, they were Ur Draxans struggling to adapt to a diet of slugs, snails, and dankweed.

How the mighty had fallen! While Borys ruled the city that he'd founded nine hundred years ago,
the Ur Draxans were the fiercest warriors beneath the bloody sun. Now they were bog farmers, and
Hamanu dismissed them as no threat to the veterans he'd send to harvest Tithian's sludge.

On the other hand, Manu had been raised by farmers who went to war against nature each time
they planted their seeds in the unforgiving ground. He knew that farmers weren't meek in defense of their
land. The battles would be different here, but folk who fought them would be as tenacious as any farmer,
anywhere.

As tenacious as he himself had been, returning to the Kreegills after the trolls were gone.

He'd discharged his veterans, giving each of them a year's wages and a lecture on the virtues of
going home. He told them to rebuild what the war had destroyed and to forget what they'd seen, what
they'd done in his service. His mistake—if it was a mistake and not another sleight of destiny's
hand—was telling them about the home he wanted to rebuild for himself in the Kreegills.

A man could spend a lifetime bringing the valley back to what he remembered—an immortal
lifetime. Hamanu tried, though he was hindered from the start by the best efforts of his companions, who
didn't know the first thing about growing grain, or living in the same place, day-in, day-out, season after
changeless season.

The ones who couldn't take the boredom packed up and left. Hamanu had thought he was well
rid of them. He went back to teaching the land-wisdom he'd learned from his father and grandfather to
the veterans who remained. But the veterans who returned to the lowlands—and those who'd never
left—couldn't live without war. Rumors reached the Kreegills of brigands who terrorized the plains,
flaunting the medallions he'd given them. The rumors claimed that lowland farmers and townsfolk believed
Hamanu Troll-Scorcher had become Hamanu Human-Scorcher, ready to enforce the demands of any
petty warlord.

Even now, a thousand years later, Hamanu's sweaty shoulders stiffened at the memory. The first
time he'd heard what his discharged veterans were doing in his name, he'd been stunned speechless. The
second time, he'd vowed, would be the last. He'd always been ready to take full responsibility for his war
against the trolls, for the orders he'd given that his veterans had carried out. But he wouldn't—then or
ever—bear the blame for another man's crime.

In a cold fury, Hamanu had left the Kreegills for the second time. With his loyal veterans behind
him, he tracked down those who betrayed both him and humanity. He killed the boldest—and found he
had as much a taste for human suffering as he'd once had a taste for trolls. He could have killed every
medalLion-bearing brigand and every low-life scum who'd fallen in with them. But killing his own kind—
those who'd been his kind when he was a mortal man—sickened Hamanu even as it sated him.

His metamorphosis advanced. He grew too massive for any kank to carry and, therefore, walked
everywhere in the half-man, half-lion guise he'd adopted before his final battle with Windreaver. His
followers didn't mind; for years, they hadn't believed he was a man like them. They thought they served a
living god.

A living god, Hamanu thought as he went down to his knees in the reeking sludge, would pay
better attention to where he put his feet!

The Lion's reputation spread far beyond the Kreegill Mountains. Human refugees from deep in
the heartland, where other champions had fought other cleansing wars, came to him with complaints of
brigands and warlords who'd never fought a troll or worn his ceramic medallion. At first, he refused to
help, but there were more refugees than the Kreegill plains could support. So, he walked westward,
chasing rumors and warlords across the Yaramuke barrens until he came to a pair of sleepy towns
named Urik and Codesh, where rival warlords fought for control of the trade-road between Tyr and
Giustenal.

A delegation from Urik met Hamanu while he and his followers were still a good day's journey
from the paired towns. There were nobles and farmers among the Urikites, freemen and -women from
every walk of life—even a few individuals whose odd-featured appearance bespoke a mixture of human
and elven blood, the first half-breeds Hamanu had ever seen.

Prejudice older than his champion's curse reared up within Hamanu. He thought he knew what
he'd do before a single word was spoken; raze Urik for its impurity and let that town's fate bring Codesh
into line. But he went through the motions of listening—a god, he thought, should appear, at least, to
listen. His arm—the arm where he'd secreted the pebble that held Windreaver's silent spirit— ached the
entire time he listened to the Urikite's carefully reasoned plea not only for his help in ridding their town of
the warlord, but a proposal that he make Urik his home forever.

"Tyr and Giustenal are cities," Hamanu had countered, ignoring the rest. They tempted him, these
proud, pragmatic people who thought nothing of the differences between the work men did—indeed
between the very races of men—and everything of their common safety. "What can Urik offer me, that I
should become its god?"

They told him how Urik occupied the high ground. It dominated the surrounding land and was
easily defended because it had access to an inexhaustible water supply that could sustain a population
many times the town's then-current size.

Resting a moment beside a moss-covered statue of a dragon, Hamanu recalled the earnest
Urikite faces. What they hadn't told him that day was that their rival, Codesh, tapped the same vast
underground lake and that Codesh kept a stranglehold on the only route wide enough for a two-wheeled
cart between their natural citadel and the Giustenal-Tyr trade road. Hamanu had gleaned those tidbits
from their stray thoughts.

In the few short years since he'd stopped waging war on the trolls, Rajaat's last champion had
become expert at gleaning thoughts from other humans' consciences. He'd been quite surprised, and very
pleased, to discover that elven blood didn't hinder his gleaning ability at all.

Still, he'd accepted the Urikite proposal, at least as far as cleaning out their warlord's nest before
he dealt with Codesh. That was easier promised than accomplished. The warlords knew the Lion's
reputation, and made common cause against him from Codesh, sending a united plea to the court of the
Tyrian Tyrant, Kalak.

Kalak was no champion, not then, not ever. He'd never stood in the Crystal Steeple atop
Rajaat's white tower. He was a powerful, unscrupulous sorcerer who ravaged the land, sucking life for
his spells, leaving it sterile for a generation afterward. For the first time since he'd become a champion,
Hamanu found himself in an even fight.

After that, there was no going back to the Kreegills. By the time Kalak's dust headed back to
Tyr, it no longer mattered whether the Urikites had invited him to rule their town. What the Lion fought
for, the Lion kept. Knowing that he could glean their least thoughts, Hamanu had offered medallions to
those who'd serve him—veterans, brigands, and Urikites, alike. There'd be no betrayals in his Urik;
there'd be peace—his peace—and prosperity.

Hamanu had found his home. He crowned himself king. The sterile, ashen fields that Kalak had
defiled were scraped and cleared. Fresh, fertile soil was carted in from the distant Kreegills. The farmer's
son never farmed the land again." Ruling Urik satisfied his farmer's urges.

There was no room for sentiment in a farmer's heart, or in a king's. Urik was like a field; it
needed clearing, fertilizing, plowing—and a time to lie fallow, a balance of laws and taxes and judicious
neglect—to be truly productive. The Urikites were like flocks. They needed to be fed, sheltered, and
above all else, culled, lest undesirable traits become entrenched. He circulated his minions among them,
watching his fields with his own eyes, culling his flock with his own hands. Like both fields and flocks,
Urik and its citizens had to be protected against predators who appeared in the heartland as more of
Rajaat's champions emerged victorious from the Cleansing Wars.