The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King

by Lynn Abbey

  Despite two thousand years of rule, Kalak had never understood that a city's might wasn't measured by the size of its armies or the magnificence of its palaces, but in the labor of its farmers. In a good year, Tyr could feed herself; in a bad one, she bought grain from Urik or Nibenay.

  Kalak had been a man of limited vision and imagination. In Urik, there were free folk and freed folk as well as slaves; guild artisans and free artisans; nobles who lived on estates outside the city walls and nobles who lived like merchants near the market squares. In Urik, a man or woman of any station could find outlets for enterprise and ambition. In Tyr, folk were either free, rich, and noble, or enslaved, poor, and very common. For two thousand years, ambition had. been a criminal offense.

  The rebels of Tyr, whose recklessness had turned the heartland on its ear could, perhaps, be forgiven for thinking that slavery was the cause of all their problems. It was easier to identify abused slaves and set them free than it was to resurrect a dynamic society from stagnation. At least, the council-ruled city hadn't succumbed to rampant anarchy as Raam or Draj had done since the demise of their champion kings and queens.

  Sadira and her companions had shown themselves capable of learning. Perhaps Windreaver was right and Tyr was the heartland's future.

  Hamanu left the hardpan track. He approached a gate guarded by two women and a passel of children, who could not have kept him out even if he'd been no more than the peddler he appeared to be. Indeed, the Lion-King's problem wasn't getting onto the estate, but escaping the curious women who wanted to examine his nonexistent wares. Realizing that curiosity might be worse at the estate-house, Hamanu scooped up a handful of dried grass and pebbles as he walked away from the gate.

  "For your mistress's delight," he explained as he displayed the dross to the door-steward.

  With only a tiny suggestion bending through in his mind—not enough to rouse anyone's suspicions—the steward saw a handful of whatever the steward imagined would -please Sadira this deceptively unremarkable morning.

  The steward chuckled and rubbed his hands together. "Follow me, good man. I'm sure she'll want some for both Rikus and Rkard."

  Hamanu wondered what the man had seen, but kept his wondering to himself as the steward led him through a series of corridors and courtyards to a small, elegant chamber where—by the bittersweet flavor of the air—Sadira of Tyr was in the midst of a melancholy daydream.

  No need for you to remain. Hamanu put the thought in the steward's mind. I'll introduce myself to your mistress.

  When the steward was out of sight in the next corridor, Hamanu erased his entire presence from the mortal's memory. Then he crossed the threshold into Sadira's chamber.

  "Dear lady—?" He interrupted her as gently, as unmagically as he could, though aside from his simple peddler's illusion, he'd done nothing to disguise himself, and Sadira should recognize him instantly.

  She did. "Hamanu!"

  "No cause for alarm, dear lady," he said quickly, holding his hands palms-up, though, like her, he didn't need conventional gestures, conventional sources to quicken his sorcery. "I've come to talk—"

  Before Hamanu could say anything more to reassure her, the sorceress quickened a spell. It erupted faster than thought, and whatever its intended purpose, its sole effect was to destroy completely the little pebble Hamanu cached between the black bones of his left forearm.

  A smoking gap formed in Hamanu's peddler illusion. Hot, viscous blood dripped onto the floor, corroding the delicate mosaic. The physical pain was intense, but it paled beside the heart-stopping shock as greasy smoke began to flow from the wound. Hamanu clapped his right hand over the gap. The smoke seeped around his fingers. Windreaver took shape in the smoke.

  "We come to the end of the trolls at last."

  "No." A soft, impotent denial. "Let go of the past, Hamanu. It's time."

  "Leave it be, Hamanu," Windreaver cautioned, and laid a faintly warm, faintly tangible hand over the Lion-King's wounded arm. "I know your ways. You think this is no accident. You think this is my vengeance. It's not. Thirteen ages is too long to think of vengeance, Hamanu. We've fought the past long enough. Think of the future." The troll's smoky fingers began to collapse. "I'll wait for you, Manu of Deche. I'll prepare a place beside me, where the stone is young..."

  Four greasy streaks of soot on Hamanu's arm and a larger splotch on the floor were all the remained of the last and greatest commander of the once-great race known as trolls.

  Sadira rose from her stool. Her foot came down beside the stain.

  "Stay back!" Hamanu warned.

  The power of death was inside him, and the will to use it She lived because Windreaver wished her to live. Hamanu would honor the last troll's wish—if he could. And if he couldn't let her live, then he'd live with the consequences, as he'd lived with all his other consequences.

  Sadira sensed her danger and retreated. "What—" she began, then corrected herself. "Who was that? Another dragon?"

  It was an almost-honest question. The half-elf had no notion of trolls or the Troll-Scorcher. Her experience bound Hamanu with dragons instead. He collected his wits and tried to speak, but it was too soon.

  Sadira mistook his silence. "Did you think that you could come in here and work your foul sorcery on me?" she asked with all the arrogance that Rajaat's sorcery could breed in a sorcerer's mind. "I know how to destroy dragons. Kalak, Rajaat, Borys, you—you're all alike. You destroy my world. Athas won't be safe until every dragon's dead."

  Hamanu's tangled emotions snapped free. The rage that killed with a thought vanished like a cool breeze at midday. Grief and mourning were set aside for the moment when he'd be alone—very alone. He forgot, in large part, why he'd come, and that Rajaat's promised doom hung over his city. What remained was the capriciousness, the cruelty that fully deserved the hatred the half-elf directed at him.

  She was a fool, and he intended to enjoy proving it to her.

  "You know very little, Sadira of Tyr, if you don't know the difference between Kalak and Borys, Borys and Rajaat, Rajaat and me."

  "There is no difference. You're all the same. All evil. All life-sucking defilers," she insisted. "I know you get your magic from the Dark Lens. I know you'd enslave all Athas if no one stood against you. I know all the lies, you told me that day in Ur Draxa when Rkard bested Rajaat. You were children rebelling against your father, but the only reason you rebelled was envy. You wanted his power for yourselves. What more do I need to know?"

  "You need to know that every dragon is different and that Rajaat created dragons when he created sorcery and that was long before he created champions to wage his Cleansing Wars. You need to know that if a sorcerer lives long enough to master the secrets of the Unseen netherworld, then that immortal sorcerer will change into a dragon—but not a dragon like Borys. Borys wasn't a sorcerer when he became a dragon; he was a champion. Rajaat shaped his champions out of human clay in his white tower. He bathed them in a black-water pool and stood them in a Crystal Steeple beneath the Dark Lens. The dragon is a part of a champion's nature—a large part, an inevitable part—but not the only part, or the most powerful part."

  "Anything else?" Sadira asked, feigning disinterest.

  She feigned disinterest because she owed her sooty armor and shadow magic to an immersion in that black-water pool and to spells cast in the Crystal Steeple. Her inner thoughts betrayed a deep concern about the powers she used so freely. The Dark Lens hadn't been in its proper place when the shadowfolk transformed her. Rajaat hadn't been there, either, but the shadowfolk were Rajaat's minions, and they'd acted on his orders. Sadira had reason to be worried,

  Hamanu savored her worry. "Borys was a champion. I was Rajaat's last champion of the Cleansing Wars. Kalak wasn't a champion—" Hamanu began.

  "Sacha Arala and Wyan were Kalak's champions—fools and traitors, too. They gave Tyr's templars their spells. They could have done the same for anyone—especially after Tithian found the Dark Lens."

 
"Tithian," Sadira sighed. In Tyr, the conversation always came back to Tithian.

  "Tithian wanted it all: Rajaat's spells, the pool, the tower, the Dark Lens. He didn't think about dragons. He thought he wanted to be a sorcerer-king, but what he truly wanted to be was a champion."

  "Would he—" the sorceress succumbed to her own curiosity. "Would Rajaat have made Tithian into something like you or Borys? The way Rajaat was hunting and killing sorcerer-kings, I wouldn't think he'd ever make another champion."

  The trap was set, the prey was sniffing at the bait, all that remained was a little tug on the trip-cord. "Rajaat already had his next creation: something better than an immortal champion who'd slip from his control. His minions had already shaped her in his tower—with his permission, of course. They couldn't have worked magic there otherwise. She can't draw on the Dark Lens, can't channel its power to her friends, because it wasn't there when she was made. And, being mortal when she was made, she won't survive long enough to become a dragon. But she'll serve his purposes; she already has—"

  Sadira boiled off her stool. The shadow-stuff that cloaked her skin when the bloody sun was above the horizon came alive with the sorcery she intended to hurl at him. But Rajaat's last champion—his last true champion-sprang his trap. Pursing his lips, Hamanu inhaled through his mouth. A thin stream of shadow-stuff whirled from her to him, and, to Sadira's wide-eyed horror, she couldn't stop it.

  "There are," Hamanu explained when she was mortally pale and shaken, "a few things you don't know about yourself."

  He shed what remained of his peddlar's illusion and became his favorite self: the tawny-skinned man with flowing black hair. There was just a hint of sulphur in his eyes. The shadow-stuff he'd stolen flowed in serpentine streams along his limbs.

  Sadira tried to cast an ordinary spell the ordinary way Hamanu wagged a finger, and she was cut off from everything except herself. A dragon could quicken spells from the life essence he, or she, hoarded inside; a mortal sorcerer didn't have the essence to spare. Sadira wrapped her arms beneath her breasts.

  "Why have you come? Why have you come now, today? You could have killed me anytime."

  "Not to kill you, dear lady. I came to talk to you, but you weren't listening and, because of that, no one will ever see a troll—the silver shadow of a troll—again."

  The words of an apology swirled the surface of Sadira's thoughts. She swallowed them without speaking them, which was wise, because the apology wouldn't have been sincere. She didn't care about trolls; she especially didn't care about Hamanu's loss. "Talk to me," she said instead, her thoughts a mixture of fear and defiance.

  "We'll talk about sorcery. It must be quickened. You know that—" Hamanu stirred Sadira's memories. "You learned when you were twelve, when Ktandeo of the Veil came to—" he stirred deeper and found the name—"the Mericles estate, Tithian's estate—"

  Hamanu's eyebrow rose. He hadn't suspected an older connection between the sorceress and the usurper, between a slave and her master.

  Sadira squirmed on her stool. She froze when he smiled. Her mind conjured images of her fears; the fears women naturally and needlessly had in his presence. Foolish fears: the Lion-King hadn't raped a woman since Borys became the Dragon of Tyr.

  "I'm not here for that," he said wearily. "From Ktandeo, you learned to steal the life essence from plants for your sorcery. Then you learned that with obsidian between you and your spell, you could steal the essence from any living thing. The Dark Lens is a sort of obsidian, dear lady, a very special sort: it steals from the sun, the source of all life. I don't know where Rajaat found it, but he didn't make it. He used it to make his champions, but mostly he was looking for a way to steal directly from the sun, as you first learned to steal directly from plants."

  "The War-Bringer had found a way well before that." Hamanu held out his arm. The shadows had ceased writhing and were spreading a sooty pall across his tawny skin. "But his way was independent, contrary. He rebelled, refused his destiny. Because of him, all the champions rebelled and sealed Rajaat beneath the Black. For ages Rajaat had explored the sun and light; in the Hollow, he studied dark and shadow. That's when he made the shadowfolk and the shadowfolk made you. But one thing is always true, whatever Rajaat does, his sorcery exacts a price. Each time you resort to the gifts Rajaat's shadowfolk gave you, whether to quicken your spells or save a life, you slip deeper into Rajaat's destiny."

  Sadira rose. She stood in the hot sunlight streaming through the open window. Her thoughts moved far below the surface of her mind. Hamanu left them alone. If the sorceress was cold, the light would warm her. If she thought her shadow-gifts would be restored, she'd be sorely disappointed. They'd be back tomorrow, and not one sunbeam sooner.

  "I would know," she said, too softly for mortal ears to overhear, but loud enough for the Lion-King. "I would know if I was one of them. It can't be true. Hamanu is the liar, the deceiver."

  Silently, Hamanu came up behind her and laid his hands gently on her shoulders. She shuddered as thoughts of resistance rose, then fell, in her consciousness.

  "Dear lady, I have neither need nor reason to deceive you. The War-Bringer's sorcery lives within you as it lives within me. It makes patterns of light and shadow across our thoughts. We deceive ourselves." For a fleeting moment, the lava lake was foremost in his thoughts. "We've deceived each other—"

  Sadira cut him short. "I'm not like you. I went to the Pristine Tower because the Dragon had to be destroyed and the shadowfolk could give me the power to destroy him."

  The lake was gone; the cruel need to make her suffer for Windreaver's loss had returned. "Rajaat's shadowfolk. Rajaat's shadowfolk helped you because Borys was the key to Rajaat's prison. Once you destroyed Borys, Rajaat was free—"

  "Tithian freed Rajaat! Tithian had the Dark Lens."

  "Tithian was aided by the same shadowfolk who took you to the Crystal Steeple."

  "I fought Rajaat. He would have killed me if Rkard hadn't used the sun and the Dark Lens together against him. I cast the spells that put him back beneath the Black. I put his bones and the Dark Lens at the bottom of a lake of molten rock, where no one can retrieve them. How can you dare say that I'm Rajaat's creation, that I serve him!"

  Hamanu amused himself with her hair. Like Manu so many ages ago, Sadira had all the pieces in her hand, but she couldn't see the pattern. Unlike Manu, she had someone older and wiser who would make the pattern for her. And he would show it to her, without mercy.

  "Dear lady—what is obsidian?"

  "Black glass. Shards of sharp black glass mined by slaves in Urik."

  "And before it was black glass?" Hamanu ignored her predictable provocations.

  She didn't know, so he told her—

  "Obsidian is lava, dear lady. Molten rock. When lava cools very fast it becomes obsidian. You, dear lady—as you said—put Rajaat's bones and the Dark Lens in a lava lake. Have you felt the Black, dear lady? It's so very cold, and Rajaat, dear lady, is both beneath the Black and at the bottom of a lava lake. Think of the Dark Lens sealed in an obsidian mountain. Think of Rajaat—or Tithian, if you'd rather—quickening a spell."

  "No," Sadira whispered. She would have collapsed if his hands hadn't been there to support her. "No, my spells bind them."

  "Have you returned to Ur Draxa recently?" Hamanu thrust an image of the fog-bound lake into Sadira's consciousness. "Your spells weaken each night." Her pulse slowed until it and the sullen red crevasses of the image throbbed in unison. "Rajaat is a shadow of what he was, but with the War-Bringer, shadow is essence. Tithian serves him as Sacha Arala once served him, so blinded by his own arrogance that he doesn't know he's a fool. A foolish enemy is sometimes the most dangerous enemy of all—"

  Sadira writhed against the hands supporting her shoulders. Hamanu let her go. She reeled and stumbled her way to the window ledge where she crumpled into a small parcel of misery and fear. Her eyes and mouth were open wide. Her fingers fluttered against her voiceless throat.

&nb
sp; "I had to know," he explained. "I had to know what you're capable of."

  Hamanu already knew what he was capable of—not merely the sundering of a woman's mind, but the planting of a thousand years of memories of Windreaver. Hamanu had seen to it that Windreaver wouldn't be forgotten by the woman whose spell had both freed him and—in the Lion-King's eyes—destroyed him. Whenever Sadira remembered, she'd remember the troll commander. It was rough justice: the Lion-King's sort of justice, and no real justice at all, only guilt and grief.

  Sadira's hair fell over her face as she struggled against Hamanu's spell. Locks of red tangled in her fingers. She gasped, a rattling spasm that left her limp against the wall. Still, it had been a sound. The Lion-King's sorcery was fading.

  "There's nothing to fear. No need to scream. You are Rajaat's creation, but you don't serve him willingly."

  Sadira swept her hair back from her face. Her eyes were baleful, belying Hamanu's words. "I would die first," she whispered. "I'm not Rajaat's creation. I put his bones and the Dark Lens where I thought they'd be sealed away forever. If you knew otherwise, then you're to blame. I did what I thought was right. If I was wrong..." She shook her head and stared at the floor. "Kill me and be done with it."

  "I'm not here for that. I have been to the lava lake and now I've come here for your help. In three—"

  She laughed, a rasping sound that clearly hurt and left her gagging as she pushed herself to her feet. "Help? Me help you? You must—"

  Sadira winced. Her eyes were drawn to the sooty stain that marked Windreaver's passage. She'd encountered a memory that wasn't hers. With a cold sweat blooming on her already pallid face, Sadira once again needed the wall to support her. Hamanu skimmed her thoughts. What he found was Deche, not Windreaver; Dorean as she was after the trolls finished with her.