The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King

by Lynn Abbey

  "Someone cheated," Inenek protested.

  "And someone didn't," Dregoth observed mildly. "I'll stay below with Hamanu. We'll deal with our traitors once we've dealt with Rajaat."

  Borys gave orders as if he'd been ordained their leader, but the Butcher of Dwarves tread carefully around Dregoth. The Ravager of Giants was unique, even among the champions: when Rajaat found him, Dregoth was already immortal and already at war with the giant race. In his natural form, he was, by far, the largest, most powerful champion, the closest to the death-dealing creature the world called Dragon.

  With Dregoth volunteering to change his bead's color, none of the others felt the need to change theirs.

  "We'll know if they try to deceive us," Dregoth said, pointing at the wards over Rajaat's body.

  Hamanu, seeing no reason to admit he had no idea what Dregoth was talking about, grunted noncommittally.

  "And it would be a poor time for you to think about deception," Dregoth added.

  "I have no reason to."

  Dregoth seemed not to have heard. "There's no place where you could hide, Hamanu, should you try to escape."

  "I have no reason to," Hamanu repeated. "I'm the one who didn't cheat."

  The third champion found Hamanu's remark amusing and chuckled softly until, in the tower, Gallard cast his spell beneath the Dark Lens.

  In the years since he'd watched the last trolls march off a cliff, Hamanu had spent more time governing unruly humans than he'd spent learning about the netherworld. He knew the Gray was more shadow than substance and the Black was pure shadow and the absence of substance. He wasn't confident about any of it. Still, he thought he understood Gallard's proposal, and he expected that Rajaat's warded body would vanish from the moonlit world and wind up in a hollow place, beneath another place that had no substance. He was more than mildly startled, then, when Gallard's mighty spell seemed to do nothing more than seal Athas's first sorcerer in an egg-shaped rock.

  "I'd sooner have carved out a hole in a Kreegill peak and shoved him down to the bottom," he muttered.

  "Interesting," was all Dregoth had to say.

  It seemed to Hamanu that a huge, mottled rock was not quite what Gallard expected to find when he led his audience into the dawn light. For a fleeting moment, the Gnome-Bane's eyes showed white all around their dark irises, and his mouth was slack-jawed, but only for a moment. By the time the questions and accusations started, Gallard was either honestly confident of his spell or a better illusionist than Hamanu ever hoped to be.

  "Something had to be done with his substance!" he declared, letting his irritation show. "I couldn't put substance beneath the Black. That would be a complete contradiction, an intolerable paradox. There's no guessing what would have happened. So, I left his substance here, a cyst in a world of substance. His essence, I assure you all, is in the Hollow."

  Borys put his fist on the rock. "If I broke this open—"

  "—You can't," the Gnome-Bane insisted.

  "But if I did, I'd find the War-Bringer's substance, and if I poked my head inside this Hollow of yours—"

  "—You wouldn't." "But if I did, you say I'd find his essence?"

  "In what manner?" Borys hammered the rock with his fist.

  Hamanu didn't see what happened, like a mortal fool, he'd winced. He wasn't the only one: Dregoth's eyes were still closed when Hamanu opened his again. Bathed in the ruddy light of the rising sun, Gallard's egg-shaped rock was... a rock. It wasn't hollow; Rajaat's bones didn't rattle inside. There were no cracks where the Butcher's fist struck, no luminous leaks of sorcery.

  "It's finished. Done," the Gnome-Bane said. "He's bound beneath the Black for all eternity."

  "And we can get back to what we were doing," Albeorn urged.

  That was Uyness's cue to lunge for Wyan's throat, shrieking, "Vengeance! Vengeance for Pennarin! Death!"

  Vengeance was easier threatened than accomplished. Without Rajaat's sorcery, no one of them knew how to kill another champion—yet. Will-sapping spells such as the one Borys cast on Sacha were harder on the spell-caster than they were on their targets. And, anyway, Uyness wasn't interested in a painless punishment. She wanted the Pixie-Blight's death in the worst possible way; Hamanu saw that clearly on her face when she looked at Wyan of Bodach. He saw deadly determination on a number of other faces, including Sielba's.

  Distrust would become murder before long. They'd all have to keep warding spells at their backs. But Albeorn Elf-Slayer wasn't the only champion eager to leave the white tower. Borys and Dregoth had wars to fight and finish.

  Rajaat's demise wouldn't end the Cleansing Wars against the elves, the dwarves, or the giants any more than Myron of Yoram's death had spared the trolls. They'd saved humanity, that was all. The children of their own ancestors need never fear a champion-led army. And aside from Borys, who gave a barely perceptible nod when the Lion of Urik stared straight at him, none of the champions suspected how grave humanity's danger had been.

  Wyan and Sacha got reprieves. If they were wise, they'd hie themselves as far from the human heartland as the sun and moons allowed. As the champions parted company without fare-thee-wells or other false promises, Hamanu wondered if he, too, wouldn't be wiser himself to leave Urik. There was a lot of world beyond the heartland. He'd seen a bit of it chasing trolls. Surely a man—an immortal champion starving for the savor of human death in his heart-could find better neighbors.

  Hamanu never had the chance to look. The champions turned on each other before the white tower's netherworld glow had vanished behind them. Wild sorcery raised whirl-winds in the Gray. Hamanu didn't know if the assault spells were aimed at him or were echoes of other quarrels. The way the netherworld was spinning, it didn't matter. He took his chances with unfamiliar, but real, terrain, tumbling from the morning sky onto an empty plain. He took his bearing from the sun and started walking.

  Four long but uneventful days later, the Lion of Urik walked through the gates of his palace. He was astonished to find Gallard waiting for him by the well in one of the inner courtyards.

  "Peace. Truce. Whatever," Gallard said quickly, shedding his servant's illusion and holding his hands palms-up, to indicate that he had no spells quickening on his fingertips. "We thought we'd lost you."

  While Hamanu cooled himself and slaked his thirst, the Gnome-Bane told him what had happened in the Gray: who'd attacked whom and with what success. Gallard would have told him more, but Hamanu cut his litany short.

  "Your feuds mean nothing to me. Why should I care?"

  The Gnome-Bane had a quick, disturbing answer: "Because between them, Sacha Arala and Wyan have cracked the cyst."

  Hamanu finished pouring a bucket of water over his head then heaved the clay-coated straw bucket across the courtyard. It hit the wall with a satisfying thud and collapsed in a shapeless, useless mass on the ground.

  "Is he free?" Gallard writhed. "Not yet. We need you, Hamanu. We need everyone."

  "It's too late for that. We've got to hurry."

  Hamanu's peers still hadn't found a way to kill each other, but they were getting closer. Sacha Arala and Wyan were unrecognizable, indistinguishable, as they sagged against what appeared to be ordinary ropes binding them to columns on either side of the white tower's gate. Uyness kept watch over them with Dregoth's stone-headed maul braced across her arms. They'd have been wiser to run—if they'd gotten the chance.

  Of far greater concern to Hamanu than the fates of two lesser champions was Gallard's egg-shaped cyst around which the remaining seven champions had gathered. Thick layers of shimmering green warding couldn't hide the damage. While Hamanu watched, finger-length worms of intensely bright sorcery oozed from dark cracks. They wriggled like slugs until the warding destroyed them. With the Dark Lens nearby, the champions could renew the warding continuously. With no more than a thought and a twitch of his thumb, Hamanu added his own spell to the mix. But warding wouldn't hold forever, not against humanity's first sorcerer.

  "What abou
t the Hollow beneath the Black?" Hamanu asked.

  Borys glowered at Gallard, who shook his head. "Too dangerous to get close enough to look. But it holds... it must! If the Hollow were cracked, nothing could hold here."

  "So, do we wait until he breaks free, or what?"

  "Another rock," Albeorn advised. "A bigger rock, around this one."

  Hamanu arched a highly skeptical eyebrow.

  "You've got a better idea?" Borys demanded, cocking his fist for emphasis.

  The Lion of Urik was no master of sorcery, at least not then, and having nothing better to offer, he could only go along, providing the strength, both physical and sorcerous, that his elders requested. Working together, the cooperating champions did construct a second cyst around the original one. It seemed that the new prison would hold, but there were dark lines on the mottled surface by sundown and flashes of dark blue light by moonrise.

  "He exploits the weaknesses between us," Sielba said wearily.

  Hamanu had come to the same conclusion, but the red-haired champion spoke first.

  "We need to make our own Rajaat before we can make Rajaat's prison," Borys suggested softly.

  Hamanu thought the Borys who stood before them, tall, thick-necked, and armored like a troll, was the Butcher of Dwarves in his true, metamorph's shape, but that was illusion, too. As golden light cascaded around him, Borys reformed himself. His head became a fang-filled wedge. His eyes glowed with the sun's bloody color. His limbs lengthened and changed proportion. Though he remained upright on two legs, it was clear as his torso grew more massive that he'd be more comfortable and more powerful if he balanced his burgeoning weight on his arms as well.

  "I offer myself." Borys shaped his words with sorcery and left them hanging above the insufficient prison. "Help me finish the metamorphosis, and I will keep Rajaat in the Hollow."

  Dregoth roared, but he wasn't nearly the dragon Borys already was. His outrage was moot and impotent.

  "Think of the risks," Hamanu said, thinking of himself and the metamorphosis that lay before him. He was unaware that he'd spoken aloud.

  I have, Borys said in Hamanu's mind alone. My risks are not so great as yours would be. I will finish the dwarves—the elves and the giants, too—but humanity has nothing to fear. Athas will be our world, a world of humans and champions where Rajaat has no power, no influence.

  * * *

  "I believed him," Hamanu said to Windreaver when they had talked and recounted their way through events they both recalled. Windreaver had been at the white tower the night when Hamanu and the others champions had fledged a dragon, with the Dark Lens's help.

  In the ancient landscape of his memory, Hamanu recalled Dark Lens sorcery shrouding Borys in a cloud of scintillating mist. The cloud grew and grew until it engulfed the white tower and threatened to engulf the champions as well. Wyan and Sacha had screamed together, then fallen silent. Two small, dark globes had flown out of the mist and vanished in the night. The globes were the traitors' severed heads, still imbued with immortal life, because Borys hadn't had been able to kill them outright when he consumed their bodies. Uyness had cheered, then she, too, had screamed.

  Borys couldn't stop with the traitors: he needed every one of them. They'd all underestimated how far Rajaat's metamorphosis would go, how much life the spell would consume before the dragon quickened. In agony and immortal fear, the champions had torn away from the Dark Lens, saving themselves, but leaving a half-born dragon behind.

  For a hundred years Borys had ravaged the heartland, finishing the sorcerous transformation he'd begun beside Rajaat's tower.

  "He was not Rajaat." Hamanu stated, which was half of the truth. "He wasn't what I would have been."

  "You can't be sure," Windreaver chided.

  "I've looked inside myself. I've seen the Dragon of Urik, old friend. I'm sure. There were no choices, no mistakes."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sunset in the Kreegills: a fireball impaled on a jagged black peak, the western horizon ablaze with sorcery's lurid colors, and, finally, stars, one by one, crisper and brighter than they were above the dusty plains.

  Hamanu held out his hand and gathered a pool of starlight in his palm. He played with the light as a child—or a dancer—might play, weaving luminous silver strands through moving fingers. In his mind, he heard a reed-pipe melody that lulled all his other thoughts, other concerns and memories. Alone and at peace, he forgot who he was, until he heard Windreaver's voice.

  "The world stretches far beyond the heartland. There are lush forests beyond the Ringing Mountains and who-knows-what on the far shores of the Silt Sea. Wonders lie just over that horizon," the ghostly troll said, as if they were two old merchants in search of new markets.

  "Leave Urik to its fate? Without me?"

  "You chose Urik as your destiny. But you're Hamanu; you are your own destiny. You've always been. You can choose somewhere, something else."

  Hamanu thought of the leonine giant he'd seen guarding the Black and the Hollow beneath it. "Hamanu is Urik." He let the starlight dribble off the back of his hand. "If I went somewhere else, I'd leave too much behind. I'd leave myself behind."

  "What of yourself, Hamanu? Borys is dead. The War-Bringer's prison cannot hold him. If you can believe what he said—if—there's nothing you can do to save Urik. If he's lying—as he usually does—then what do the champions of humanity do next? Whose fear is stronger than his greed? Which one of you will become the next great dragon and burn the heartland for an age? There is no other way."

  "There must be. There will be!" Hamanu's shout echoed off the mountain walls. A cloud of pale steam hovered in the air where his voice had been. "I will find a way for Urik to survive in a world without dragons and without Rajaat."

  Windreaver merged with the fading mist. "You won't find it here. The Kreegills have been dead for a thousand years. They have no answers for you, Hamanu. Forget the past. Forget this place. Forget Deche and the Kreegills, your woman and me. Think of the future. Think of another woman, Sadira of Tyr. Rajaat had a hand in making her, true, and he's used her, made a fool of her and you. But she's no champion. Her metamorphosis begins each day at dawn and unravels at sundown. She's not immortal. She's not bound to the Dark Lens. She's not like you, Hamanu, not at all, but her spells hold; by day, they hold. Find a way to make them hold at night, and maybe you'll have an Athas without either dragons or the War-Bringer."

  Sadira of Tyr was a beautiful woman, though the Lion-King was ages past the time when aesthetics influenced his judgment, and he'd shed Rajaat's prejudices against humanity's cousins long before that. Elves, dwarves, even trolls and races Rajaat had never imagined, they were all human under their skin. There were no misfits, no outcasts, no malformed spirits made manifest in flesh; there was only humanity, individual humans in their infinite variety. He was human, and he would not despise himself. That was Rajaat's flaw—one of many. Rajaat despised himself, and from that self-hatred he conceived the Cleansing Wars and champions.

  Rajaat's madness had nothing to do with Hamanu's opinion of Sadira. "She's a dangerous fool." Or her council-ruled city. "They're all fools."

  "So were you, once. She'll never learn otherwise with fools for teachers, will she? You've got three days, Hamanu. That's a lot, if you use it properly."

  Windreaver was gone before Hamanu concocted a suitable reply. He could have called the troll back. Windreaver came and went on the Lion-King's sufferance; his freedom was as illusory as Hamanu's tawny, black-haired humanity. When his master wanted him, his slave came from whatever place he was, however far away.

  Hamanu thought Windreaver traveled through the netherworld, but the troll was never apparent there. Like the mist from Hamanu's voice, Windreaver might still hover, invisible and undetectable, in the ancient troll ruins. He might have remained there after Hamanu slit the Gray and strode from the mountain valley down to the plains northwest of Urik.

  The Lion of Urik knew the way to Tyr, the oldest city in the hea
rtland. Kalak, Tyr's now-dead king, had been an immortal before the Cleansing Wars began. Unlike Dregoth, Kalak had spurned Rajaat's offers and never become a champion, though in the chaos after Borys's transformation, he'd found what remained of Sacha Arala and Wyan.

  The Tyrant of Tyr had suborned the mindless heads, replacing their champions' memories with demeaning fictions. He convinced them that he, not they, was the source of the Dark Lens magic Tyr's templars wielded at home and in Kalak's endless wars with his champion neighbors.

  If he'd tried, Hamanu might have pitied the Pixie-Blight and Curse of Kobolds, but he'd never tried. The traitors had served Urik's interest because Tyr's purview controlled the heartland's sole reliable ironworks, as Urik controlled the vast obsidian deposits near the Smoking Crown volcano. With the traitors' Dark Lens magic, Tyr controlled its treasures just well enough to keep the mines and smelters from falling into a true champion's hands.

  Hamanu wouldn't have tolerated that, and the other champions wouldn't have tolerated a Urik that controlled both obsidian and iron. They'd have united against him, as they did now, but in greater number, and with Borys leading them. For thirteen ages, the Lion-King had supported the Tyrian Tyrant more often than he'd warred with him, until the doddering fool thought he could become a dragon to rival Borys.

  Fifteen years ago, that had been the single act of monumental foolishness that brought Hamanu to this morning on the Iron Road. In the guise of a shabby, down-on-his-luck merchant, the king of Urik walked slowly through the morning chill asking other merchants—

  "Which way to the old Asticles estate?" which was where, according to his spies, the sorceress maintained a household of former rebels and former slaves.

  They pointed him toward a hardpan track that wound through estates, farms, and irrigated fields. Guthay had worn her rings above the entire heartland, not just Urik. Tyr's fields were lush and green, though not as tall as Urik's. The unwieldy Council of Advisors hadn't summoned levies to protect their established fields or take advantage of Guthay's bounty. The Tyrian farmers had simply waited until their fields were nearly dry before they planted. Tyr would reap a good harvest, but nothing like the one Urik's farmers hoped to bring in... if there was a Urik, four days from now.