The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King

by Lynn Abbey

  O Mighty King, Javed greeted Hamanu with silent, enthusiastic relief. How may I serve you?

  You serve me well enough, Hamanu replied. I have been... distracted. As humbling an admission as any he'd made in a thousand years. Has there been change?

  Javed spun out his observations, with the assurance that Urik's situation had neither improved nor worsened since they'd last seen each other. The same rival armies still lurked beneath Urik's horizons. There might have been a few skirmishes; it was difficult to be certain: with Hamanu distracted, messages traveled no faster than an elf could run. Relay teams of messenger elves—a tactic the war-bureau employed when its officers didn't wish to be in constant contact with their monarch—had already been established.

  Wise, Hamanu conceded. You have matters well under control.

  Javed made his own concession: So far, our enemies have not resorted to templar magic. They sit in their camps, awaiting some signal. The palls that Nibenay and Gulg have cast over the land hinder them as much as they hinder us. Away from the city, the war bureau doesn't know how far-reaching our danger has become. They ask no questions, and we give them no answers.

  In his workroom, Hamanu swallowed hard and broke the Unseen connection with Javed. He looked at Enver and the others—the men and women of his templarate and the handful of sorcerers who lived on sufferance, casting the war-spells the Dark Lens could not empower and battering down the wards on his workroom door. The wards on his immortal mind were secure from mortal mind-bending and sorcery. But mortals based their opinions on cruder measurements: three days staring into the past. Three days without moving a muscle. The fear in the workroom wasn't fear of a champion's might but fear for his sanity.

  Hamanu couldn't begin to explain and didn't bother to try.

  "I didn't not summon you, dear Enver, nor anyone else. I'd cast my mind adrift. I hadn't found what I was seeking; certainly, I had not asked for assistance."

  The dwarf executor bowed low. "I thought—"

  Hamanu cut him off. "I know what you thought, dear Enver." And he did; it shamed him to quarrel with mortal compassion, however misdirected. "I will summon you when I need you, I do not expect or need to see you a moment earlier."

  "Yes, Omniscience."

  The others, templars and pasty-faced sorcerers alike, were skulking across the threshold, leaving Enver to face the Lion-King's wrath. Hamanu permitted their escape, waiting until he and the dwarf were alone before saying:

  "Thank you, dear Enver."

  Enver raised his head. "Thank you, Omniscience? I've served you since I was a boy. I thought I was accustomed to your ways; I was wrong. Forgive me, Omniscience. I shan't make the mistake again."

  "No," Hamanu agreed as the dwarf straightened and retreated toward the door. The time for mistakes and triumphs was growing short. "Enver—"

  The dwarf halted in his tracks.

  "—Thank you for the bread. It was delicious."

  A faint smile creased Enver's face, then he was gone. The workroom door was gone, as well. Not even dust remained. Hamanu could have cast a spell to set an illusion in its place, and yet another to ward the illusion thoroughly. He tidied the parchment sheets instead—as much to exercise stiff muscles as anything else.

  Invoking fortune's round and fickle wheel, Hamanu rose unsteadily to his feet. He needed three stiff-legged steps to reach the iron-bound chest. The chest was intact; that was a good sign. Still, Hamanu held his breath while he unspelled the locks and lifted the lid. The many-colored sand around the crucible had bleached bone-white; that, too, was a good sign. He didn't let go of his breath until he'd lifted the crucible out of the sand. Its surface was marred with tiny pits, and the seam between its base and lid had fused. Hamanu rapped it soundly with a forefinger. Metal flakes fell onto the sand. The lid lifted cleanly.

  More than a score of lustrous beads, some tiny, some as large as Hamanu's thumbnail, filled the crucible's bottom. He poured them carefully into his palm. He dribbled half of the beads, by volume, into an amulet case, then swallowed the rest, gagging out the words of invocation and reaching out to brace himself against the wall as the beads melted in his throat.

  The discomfort was minimal compared to the disorientation the spell caused as it ate through his illusions from the inside. For a few moments, Hamanu's skin was uniformly luminous. Then the workroom was awash in sharp, shifting light beams. The light danced across his skin, leaving patches of sooty darkness in its wake. Hamanu snatched the amulet case from the bleached sand, where he'd dropped it when the spell began its work. He slashed the air in front of him. Mist danced with the spell-light as he strode quickly into the Gray, lest he be trapped in a room too small to contain his metamorphic self.

  Another illusion seized Hamanu once he was fully, exclusively, in the Gray. It was an illusion that was all the more remarkable because it made the Lion-King of Urik appear-in this most magical of places—completely ordinary. He marveled at the symmetry of his human hands, the tangles in his coarse, black hair, the puckered scar that ran from the underside of his right eye, across the bridge of his nose, and ended with a painful lump on the dark seam of his upper lip.

  What would Pavek think, if Pavek's netherworld self were to wander past and see its double hovering nearby?

  Not that such an encounter was likely. Magicians and mind-benders of many stripes could, and did, meet in the Gray, but rarely by accident. A strong presence—such as Hamanu was, no matter how thorough his disguise—could attract lesser presences: lost spirits, misplaced artifacts, and novice druids—or repel them, which was the Lion-King's intent as he navigated through the ether. Not a profound repulsion that would, itself, rouse the interest of any other strong presence, but a subtle, ignore-me-I'm-not-here rebuff that would permit him to approach his chosen destinations without anyone, specifically Rajaat, noticing him.

  If Rajaat did, by mischance, sense scarred Pavek drifting close—well, the first sorcerer would attempt something unpleasant, but not as vengefully unpleasant as he'd attempt if he thought that one of his rebellious champions were nearby. The champion in question, therefore, might have a heartbeat or two in which to make his escape.

  There were two places Hamanu intended to visit before his stealth spell lost its potency. Both of them were supremely dangerous for a champion. Both of them were, in a way, Rajaat's prisons.

  When the champions rebelled a thousand years ago, they'd achieved their lasting victory by separating Rajaat's tangible substance from his living essence. They'd imprisoned their creator's essence in the Hollow beneath the Black, a pulsing heart of shadow and darkness at the netherworld's core. They'd imprisoned Rajaat's immortal body in a stone cyst that Borys had enshrined in the center of his circular city, Ur Draxa. For a thousand years—more accurately, nine hundred years, because Borys had been mad for the first hundred years and didn't build Ur Draxa and its shrine until after he'd recovered—Borys maintained the spells that kept Rajaat's essence in the Hollow and kept the Hollow away from Ur Draxa.

  So it would have remained after Borys's death—at least long enough for the champions to have considered the matter—except for the Dark Lens. The Lens had disappeared shortly after Borys became a dragon. It had been lost by Borys himself, or stolen by his dwarven enemies—Hamanu had heard both versions of the story. Borys insisted the loss wasn't a problem, so long as the Lens wasn't near Ur Draxa.

  What happened next was a matter of opinion. In Tyr, opinion held that Sadira and a young mul named Rkard had saved the world. In Urik, opinion was, understandably, different.

  What mattered, though, was that Rajaat had been stopped. His essence had again been separated from his substance. Hamanu, Gallard, and Inenek had reimprisoned their creator's essence in the Hollow beneath the Black. The sorceress, Sadira, had interred Rajaat's substance beneath a lava lake. That left the Dark Lens. In the end, it had gone into the lava lake with Rajaat's bones. retrospect, Hamanu marveled that any of them, mortal or immortal, could have been so foolish as
to leave the Lens anywhere near Rajaat's bones. There was a resonance between the Black and the Dark Lens, at least insofar as Rajaat was responsible for both of them and only he understood their secrets. And, of course, there was resonance between the first sorcerer's essence and his substance. For five years—five uninterrupted, unobserved years—Rajaat had been exploring those resonances.

  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. Rumo
rs 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!