The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King

by Lynn Abbey

  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.

  It wasn't threats from Tyr or Giustenal, Nibenay, Gulg, or Raam, however, that drove Hamanu to build Urik's walls or ensconce himself in a mud-brick palace. People simply kept coining to his city on the hill. Humans, of course, though Hamanu didn't ask questions of the immigrants, so long as they didn't look too much like elves or dwarves—the only uncleansed races left. His dusty, sleepy town grew into a sprawling, complicated city that, of itself, attracted more folk, mostly honest folk, but a few would-be warlords, brigands, and tyrants among them. Hamanu let them all in, and weeded the worst out after they'd begun to sprout. When his city became too big for him to do everything, he turned to the men and women who already wore his medallions around their necks. After that, it was only a few short steps to the templarate, with its three bureaus and distinctive yellow robes. After the templarate, the walls and the palace grew almost by themselves.

  When Borys recovered his sanity, he founded Ur Draxa to house Rajaat's prison and to keep the rest of Athas— especially his fellow champions—at bay. Borys's plans had worked for thirteen ages—an eternity, perhaps, in the minds of mortal men— but not nearly long enough from Hamanu's perspective.

  He put his head down and slogged the rest of the way through the deserted outer city in thoughtless silence. The sludge thinned. When Hamanu reached the spell-blasted walls that had separated Borys's palace from the city, he was on the verge of Tithian's ceaseless storm. As Windreaver had promised, icy winds alternated with gouts of sulphurous steam. The ground was slick and treacherous, and nothing grew.

  Hunkering down in such shelter as he could find, Hamanu removed the pearls from the amulet case. He held them above his head, letting the heat of his hand melt them into a translucent jelly that flowed down his arm and over his body. Not quite invisible, but no longer a perfect imitation of his loyal high templar, Hamanu had, he hoped, made himself as inconspicuous and unremarkable as the critic lizard that had sacrificed its life for this moment.

  He found and followed the path that would take him to the heart of Ur Draxa and the lava lake. The warm mist grew redder with each step Hamanu took. It was tempting to blame the changes on the War-Bringer, but the cause was far simpler: daytime was drawing to an end.

  Hamanu cursed. He muttered over his poor luck. He'd lost more time in the Gray than he'd imagined. Night would be as dark and thick as pitch. If he wanted to see the lava lake with his own eyes, he'd have to crawl to its shore on his hands and knees. He'd be so close to Rajaat's bones that he doubted anything would hide him. Going on under such circumstances was the sort of folly that got mortals killed. Immortal Hamanu kept going, step by step.

  He'd taken about a hundred cautious strides, deafened by Tithian's thunder but cheated of the illumination of the blue lightning that almost certainly accompanied it, when he hunkered down again to measure his progress. This close to the Dark Lens, it was difficult to sense anything other than its throbbing power. Hamanu was so intent on finding the world's push and pull beneath the Dark Lens that he didn't immediately notice that its presence was growing stronger even while he remained still.

  As Hamanu understood Rajaat's magic, the Dark Lens was an artifact of shadow rather than of pure or primal darkness. It was—or should have been—less potent after sunset when shadows grew scarce. Unless—

  A revelation came to Hamanu, a revelation so simple and yet so fraught with implications that he rocked back on his heel: Sadira's power came from shadow. By day, she was the champions' e
qual, but by night, Sadira was a mortal sorceress, a novice in her chosen art, as Pavek was in druidry. Her own spells were dross, cobwebs that couldn't hold a fly, much less the immortal inventor of sorcery.

  Pavek could raise Urik's guardian spirit, but only when that spirit wished to rise. Could Sadira's spells bind Rajaat when Rajaat didn't wish to be bound?

  Hamanu didn't doubt that the Tyrian sorceress had meant to seal Rajaat in an eternal tomb. The living god of Urik wasn't that foolish. Five years ago, when they must have stood near this very spot, he'd probed Sadira's mind thoroughly—by night.

  The living god of Urik changed his opinion of himself.

  By night, Sadira wasn't infused with the sorcery that she'd received from the shadowfolk in the Pristine Tower— Rajaat's white tower, where he'd made his champions. By night, she sincerely believed that she'd put both his bones and the Dark Lens in a place from which they could never be retrieved, never misused. By day, she probably believed the same thing, but by day Sadira wielded Rajaat's shadow-sorcery, and what she believed was influenced by what Rajaat wanted.

  Whim of the Lion—his own complacency could be taken as proof of Rajaat's lingering influence over him!

  With that thought burning in his mind, there was little need, now, to risk a closer approach. Hamanu wanted to know more about Sadira: what she'd seen and felt five years ago and what she'd been doing ever since, but he wouldn't get the answers to those questions in Ur Draxa. As he began his retreat, Hamanu realized that Sadira's shadow-cast warding spells had ebbed enough to allow the War-Bringer's essence out of the leaking Hollow and into his bones beside the Dark Lens.

  The Lion-King made himself small within his illusions as Rajaat drew the blue lightning down through the fog. Hamanu was closer to the lava lake than he'd imagined, close enough to observe, in that blue lightning flash, patches of molten rock on the lake's dark surface, close enough to watch in horror as shards of translucent obsidian erupted from the lava, and disappeared into the fog.

  Slowly and carefully, Hamanu took another retreating step. A moist, brimstone wind whispered his name.

  "Hamanu. Lion of Urik."

  Not Rajaat's voice, but Tithian's. Tithian the usurper, Tithian the insignificant, Tithian the high-templar worm who'd betrayed everyone around him and wound up, like a sole-squashed turd, on the bottom of everything.

  "Rajaat says Hamanu of Urik's the key to a new Athas. He says when you become a dragon, the world will be transformed. Borys of Ebe, he says, was but a candle. You will be the sun. I say, if that were true, you wouldn't be skulking about disguised as a lizard."

  Thirteen ages, and a man learned when to rise to a challenge and when to let it pass unacknowledged. It was discomforting to know that Rajaat and the worm were sharing confidences, but discomfort was nothing new for the last champion.

  "I say," Tithian's windy voice continued, "I say Rajaat's the one who wants to transform Athas, and it will take a true dragon to stop him. I know the way, Hamanu; get me out of here. I'll play Borys's part. I'll become the Dragon of Tyr. That's enough for me."

  Hamanu swallowed a snort of disgusted laughter. There was some truth to the notion that the quality of the mortal man determined the power of the immortal dragon, and by that measure, the worm would be a lesser dragon. But that was not what Tithian believed. The craven fool believed he'd have unlimited power; worse, he believed he could trick the Lion of Urik into helping him acquire it.

  The only thing Tithian could truly do was draw Rajaat's attention, now, just when Hamanu was nearly out of danger. Mindful of the obscuring fog and the slick, treacherous footing, Hamanu picked up his pace. He needed to be outside the palace's blasted walls before he dared a netherworld passage. The walls were still ahead when Tithian let out a howl that ended abruptly. Hamanu cast aside both illusion and caution. He ran for the perimeter as another voice, larger and more menacing, filled the wind.

  "Hamanu," Rajaat purred. "Come to me, little Manu."

  The dank wind reversed itself. It blew in Hamanu's face, pushing him toward the lava lake. He lowered his head, digging into the soggy moss with black-taloned dragon feet.

  "You're starving, Manu. You've starved yourself; you're a shadow of what you should be. So much the better, Manu.

  Once you begin to fill your empty spirit with life, you won't be able to stop until every mote of foul humanity is part of you. I've waited long enough, Manu. My other champions rise against you, Manu—they've never liked you, they were easy to persuade. They want a dragon—" Rajaat's voice turned indulgent: a predator toying with its prey. "You never told them, Manu; they think you're just like them.

  "Never!" Hamanu shouted back as the air turned hot enough to dispel the fog and jagged, lava-filled crevasses yawned open all around him.

  Desperately, he slashed an opening into the Gray. He was ankle-deep in molten rock before he dived into a different sort of mist and darkness, clinging to the hope that Rajaat needed to trap him in the material world to force dragon metamorphosis upon him.

  He'd had the same hope in Urik thirteen ages ago.

  The Gray closed about him, safe and familiar, Hamanu remembered that fateful day. He'd received and ignored two invitations to return to the white tower. Rajaat came in person with the third.

  "The world is almost cleansed," Rajaat had said in a now-abandoned chamber of Hamanu's palace. "Only the elves, the giants, and the dwarves remain, and their fates will be written soon enough. Borys has the last dwarves trapped at Kemelok. Albeorn and Dregoth are winning, too. It's time for my final champion to begin the final cleansing. The Rebirth races defiled the land with their impurities because humanity itself is a desecration of this world. Forget trolls and the eyes of fire, Hamanu—serve me now as the Dragon of Athas!"

  Before Hamanu had recovered from the twin shocks of Rajaat's appearance and his demands, the first sorcerer had seized his wrists. His illusions had evaporated between heartbeats. He was himself, gaunt, with leathery flesh stretched taut over black bones. Then his body began to swell, and his mind screamed the deaths of five-score mortals, whose only crime was their proximity to him.

  Hamanu—and Urik—had survived that day because Rajaat hadn't conceived that one of his creations could resist not only him but the dragon frenzy as well. In truth, it hadn't been particularly difficult. When he'd felt the obscene ecstasy surging through his flesh, Hamanu had used it all to quicken a single, explosive spell. He'd hurled himself into the Gray and run to Kemelok, where Rajaat had just told him the one champion he dared trust could be found.

  This time there was no Borys, no Kemelok, no place at all to run. There was only Hamanu himself and, still standing guard above the Black, that tawny-skinned giant with a golden sword and a lion's black mane.

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time Hamanu knew that Rajaat hadn't pursue him, he was far from Ur Draxa, far from the Hollow and the Black, far from the mysterious leonine giant, and far from Urik as well. The narrowness of his escape and a sense of impending doom made his precious city the last place in the heartland he wanted to be. As Hamanu drifted aimlessly through the Gray, however, no other material-world destination sprang into his mind.

  He couldn't imagine approaching Gallard or Dregoth as he'd approached Borys of Ebe outside Kemelok all those ages ago, and Inenek was a fool. The heartland was home to guilds of powerful sorcerers, druids, mind-benders, and other magic-wielders. Hamanu knew more about their practices and strongholds than they imagined, and knew, as well, that none of them could light a candle in Rajaat's wind. As the Lion-King of Urik, he'd disdained allies for thirteen ages; as Rajaat's last champion rebelling against his creator, staring at three short days before doom, there was no one who could, or would, help him.

  Hamanu needed to think, to examine his choices, if he had any, and to plot a strategy that, if it would not bring him victory, would at least spare his city. He imagined himself on a serene hilltop, reading the answers to his many questions from patterns in the passing clo
uds. The place was real in Hamanu's mind, but it wasn't real enough to end his netherworld drift. Green hilltops and cloudscapes belonged to Athas's past. Aside from Urik, all the places Hamanu imagined belonged either to the past or to his enemies. His mind's eye finally fixed on a landscape filled with stones the same color as the netherworld: the troll ruins in the Kreegill peaks above Deche. The ruins hadn't changed in the ages since he'd last seen them; he had no difficulty finding them in the netherworld. A few walls had tumbled, and there was no trace at all of the bits of mattress Manu found beneath the massive troll beds, but the rest was exactly as he'd remembered it.

  Not so the human villages. Turning away from the troll houses, Hamanu beheld a barren valley. Wars hadn't devastated the Kreegills. The valley had been intact when Hamanu left it last. No other champion had set foot on its fertile soil until Borys came, in his dragon madness, and sucked all the life away.

  A hundred years after he'd sated himself completely, metamorphosis, Borys recovered his sanity, but the land— the land wasn't so fortunate. The sky had been permanently reddened by a haze of dust and ash. Until the worm, Tithian, began his sulky storms, a mortal human might experience rain once in a lifetime—as muddy pellets, nothing like the life-giving showers of Manu's boyhood.

  Rain or no, wind still blew in the Kreegills. Thirteen ages of constant, parched wind had buried the valleys beneath rippling blankets of loose gray-brown dirt. The soil itself was good, better, perhaps, than the heavy soil Hamanu remembered. If the rains came back—and farmers built terraces to keep the soil in place until long-lived plants put down their roots—the valleys would bloom again. Until then, there'd be only the skeletal branches of the tallest trees reaching out of their graves.

  The loss Hamanu felt as he turned away from the valleys was for Athas, not himself. There was nothing down there to remind him of what he'd lost: Deche, Dorean, his own humanity. His memory held a face he named Dorean, but were his Dorean to reappear, he wasn't certain he'd recognize her. She'd never recognize him. The young man who'd danced for her was gone. His metamorphic body could no longer perform the intricate steps.