Chronicles of Athas

Book Five
The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King
Lynn Abbey
Chapter One
Nameless stars sparkled in the sky above the ancient city of Urik, casting a pale light on its
black velvet fields, silver silk waterways, and the firelight jewels of its encircling market villages.
On the towering walls of the mile-square city, a score of bas-relief sculptures stood guard in shadow
grays and black, each an image of Sorcerer-King Hamanu, the Lion of Urik. With a sword in one
hand and a scepter in the other, he kept watch over his domain.
A score of bright, sulphurous eyes looked out from the walls of Urik, bright motes of
singular, unmistakable color in the chill, midnight air. Their light could be seen a day's journey
beyond the irrigated fields. The eyes were beacons for honest travelers who journeyed during the
cooler nighttime hours and warnings to covetous adventurers: The Lion of Urik never sleeps, never
closes his eyes. King Hamanu's city could not be taken by surprise or pried from his pitiless grasp.
Within the city's walls, where the gemstone eyes did not shine, men and women wearing
tunics of a similar sulphur color kept their king's laws, their king's peace, which should have been a
simple enough task. Urik did not have many laws and they rarely, if ever, changed. King Hamanu's
curfew had not changed since it was decreed a thousand years ago: Between the appearance of the
tenth star after sundown and the start of the next day, no citizenman or woman, child or slave
was allowed to set foot on the king's streets. By starlight, there should have been nothing for the
king's templars to watch except each other.
But since the dawn of timelong before the Lion-King bestrode Urik's wallsthe laws
kings made applied only to the law-abiding folk of their domains. Wise kings made laws that wise
folk willingly obeyed. Wiser kings learned that no net of laws could govern everyone beneath them,
nor should they strive to do so. King Hamanu let the pots of Urik simmer nightly, and in a thousand
years, they had boiled over no more than a handful of times.
*****
"Halt!" the yellow-robed templar commanded as he separated himself from a clot of
similarly clad men and women. Here, within spitting distance of Urik's Elven Market, King
Hamanu's minions coagulated for their own safety, traveling in threes and fours, rarely in pairs,
never aloneespecially at night.
The pair of mul slaves bearing a pole-slung sedan chair came to an easy-gaited halt that did
not jostle their passenger. Four slave torchbearers arranged themselves in a diamond pattern around
them. The muls set the chair gently on the cobblestones. They slipped the hardwood poles out of the
carriage braces, then stood at attention, each resting a pole against his massively muscled left-side
shoulder.
"Who breaks the king's curfew?" the templar demanded. The severity of his tone was belied
by the continuing conversation of his peers beside him.
The lead torchbearer, a half-elf of singularly unpleasant appearance, looked down on the
human templar with fourth-rank hemstitching in his left sleeve. "O Mighty One, we bear my lord
Ursos," she answered confidently.
She had had no accent, save for the common accent of Urik, until she spoke her master's

name with the distinctive drawl of far-off Draj. It beggared imagination that a Drajan lord would
travel the curfewed streets of Urikespecially these anarchic times since the Dragon's demise and
the simultaneous disappearance of King Hamanu's Drajan counterpart, Tectuktitlay.
The templar scowled. Whoever rode in the sedan chair, his nameor her namewasn't
likely Ursos.
"By whose leave does Lord Ursos break curfew?" he continued.
The half-elf shifted her torch to her left hand. She was unarmed, as were her five
companions: slaves were, by Hamanu's law, unarmed. By law, all citizens, including lords who
traveled in sedan chairs, were unarmed. Weapons were the templars' prerogative. The fourth-rank
templar carried a staff not quite half as long as the muls' hardwood poles, and the half-elf's torch
bore an uncanny resemblance to a gladiator's club, down to the leather wrapping on its haft and the
egg-shaped killing stone lashed to its base.
He repeated himself, "By whose leave does your lord break curfew?" loudly and somewhat
anxiously.
His wall-leaning peers at last abandoned their conversation. The slave's right arm
disappeared in folds of her funnel-shaped sleeve. There was a moment of thick tension in the
moonlight until it reappeared with a small leather pouch, which the templar passed to one of his
companions for examination.
"By your leave, O Mighty One."
"It's all here," the inspecting templar announced, extracting two metallic pieces from the
pouch before passing it to the templar beside him.
"The lion watch over you, then, and your lord," the first templar said as he retreated.
"And over you, O Mighty One," the slave replied, as much a curse as a blessing.
*****
The sedan chair and its escort stopped short of the Elven Market. Without hesitation, the
party turned and disappeared into an alley whose existence couldn't have been discerned with the
light of a score of pitch-soaked torches, much less the four they carried. Some distance into the
cramped darkness, they stopped again. The half-elf rapped once on a hollow, drumlike door, and a
rectangle of ruddy lantern light suddenly surrounded them. The muls carried the sedan chair across
the threshold. The escort extinguished their torches and closed the door behind them.
Inside the vestibule, a person emerged from the chair. With his face obscured by an
unadorned mask and his body swaddled in a drab cloak, it was easier to say what race Lord Ursos
wasn'tnot dwarf or mul, not halfling, nor full-grown elfthan what race he might be.
The ragged, menial slave who'd opened the door had run away when he saw the escorted
sedan chair. He returned with another slave, of higher status, who was clad in pale, translucent linen
that left no doubt about her sex. With a soft voice, she showed the escort where to leave the sedan
chair, and then directed them down a corridor, to a door that provided discreet entrance to a
boisterous tavern. When the escort was gone, the vestibule was once again silenta silence so
sudden and absolute one might suspect magic in the air. Without breaking that silence, the slave led
the masked Lord Ursos down a narrow stairway to a curtained doorway. She bowed low before the
curtain and swept her arm gracefully toward it, but made no move to pass between the rippling
lengths of silk.
Lord Ursos strode past her, removing the drab cloak with one hand and the mask with the
other as he swept through the silk into the upper gallery of an underground amphitheater. He was a
lean, sinewy human, with the sunken features of a man who'd indulged his every passion, yet
survived. With the casual contempt of an aristocrat, the lord held out his drab outer garments for a
slave at the top of the amphitheater stairs. The slave hesitated, his arms half-extended.
"My lord," he whispered anxiously. "Who are?" The slave caught himself; slaves did not
ask such questions. "Do you?" And caught himself again, in evident despair. No one, not even an
elegant lord, entered this place without an invitation.

Lord Ursos understood. Smiling indulgently, he gestured with a dancer's swift grace. When
he was finished, he held a delicate, star-shaped ceramic token between the tips of his thumb and
forefinger.
"Ah" The slave returned a smile as the token dropped into his hand. He relaxed audibly,
visibly. "Your place is prepared, my lord. If my lord will simply follow me?"
A place was indeed prepared, a place in the front row, along the rail, overlooking a circular
pit floored with dark sand that sparkled in the light of wall-mounted torches. Another slave, who'd
followed them down the amphitheater's steep, stair-cut ramp, offered the lord a shallow bowl filled
with a thick, glistening fluid. The lord refused with another dancerlike gesture, and the bowl-bearer
hurried away.
"My lord," the first slave began, his eyes lowered and his hands trembling. "Is there?
Would you prefer... a pipe, perhaps, or another beverage, a different beverage?"
"Nothing."
The lord's voice was deeper than the slave had expected; he retreated, stumbling, and barely
regained his balance.
A certain type of man might come to this place for its entertainments, having paid
handsomely in gold for the privilege. All the other men in the amphitheaterthere were a score of
guests, with several races represented, but no women among themclutched bowls between their
hands and metal sipping straws likewise gripped between their teeth. Their faces were slack, their
eyes wide and fixed. A man who disdained the sipping bowl or the dream-pipe was a rare guest, a
disturbing guest.
The second slave could not meet this guest's eyes again.
"Leave me," the lord commanded, and, gratefully, the slave escaped, his sandals slapping
with unseemly vigor on the stairs.
The lord settled on the upholstered bench to which his token entitled him and waited
patiently as another handful of guests arrived and were escorted to their appropriate places. Then,
while the latecomers sucked and sipped, a door opened in the wall of the pit. Slaves entered first,
wrestling a rack of bells and cymbals through the sand. Before the melodic discord faded, a quartet
of musicians entered, swaddled completely in black and apparent only as velvet darkness on the
sparkling sand.
Anticipation gripped the guests. Someone dropped his bowl. The clash of pottery shards
echoed through the amphitheater, bringing hisses of disapproval from other guests, though not from
the patient, empty-handed lord seated along the rail.
Another door opened, larger than the first, spreading a rectangle of ruddy light across the pit.
The polished brass bells and cymbals cast fiery reflections among the guests, who ignored them.
Nothing could draw their attention from the three low-wheeled carts being trundled onto the sand.
An upright post of mekillot bone rose from each cart, a crossbar was lashed to each post, and a
living mortaltwo women and a manwas lashed to each crossbar, arms spread wide, as if in
flight.
One of the women moaned as the wheels of her cart churned into the sand. Her strength
failed. She sagged against the bonds holding her to the post and bar. The titillating scent of abject
terror rose from the pit; patient Lord Ursos was patient no longer. He pushed back his sleeves and
set his elbows upon the rail.
When the carts were set, the slaves departed, and the musicians struck a single tone: flute,
lyre, bells, and cymbals together. It was a perfectly pitched counterpoint to the woman's moan. The
fine hairs on the lord's bare arms rose in expectation as the night's master strode silently across the
sand.
There were no words of introduction or explanation. None were needed. Everyone in the
amphitheaterfrom the slaves in the top row of the gallery to those in the pit, especially those
unfortunates bound against bone in the pitknew what would happen next.
The night's master drew a little, curved knife from the depths of his robe. Its blade was steel,
more precious than gold, and it gleamed in the torchlight when he brandished it for the guests. Then

he angled it carefully, and its reflection illuminated a small portion of the bound man's flank. The
prisoner gasped as the first cuts were made, one on either side of a floating rib, and howled as the
master slowly peeled back his flesh. The lyrist took the first improvisation in the time-honored
manner, weaving the middle tones together, leaving the highs for the chimes and the lows for the
flute.
Brandishing his knife a second time, the master made a second, smaller, gash across the
bloody stream. He dipped his free hand in a pouch below his waist and smeared a white, crystalline
powder into the new wound. The bound man gasped and strained against the crossbar. Tinkling
cymbals framed his thin, close-mouthed wail, and the flutist blew a haunting note to unite them.
The bare-armed lord sat back from the rail. His sleeves fell, disregarded, back to his wrists
as his eyes closed and his hands folded into fists. His breath came rapidly as the melody took shape
in music and mortal suffering. The tones were too potent for some of the guests around him; they
added their own whimpering harmonies to the night master's music. Symphony and empathy
together sent a shiver along the lord's spine. But the shiver died before it reached his throat, and he
alone, except for the master, remained silent.
The melody continued to evolve, not attaining its final form until the three captives were
bleeding, weeping, and wailing: an eight-tone trope, four ascending, then the lowest, followed by a
three-tone cascade through the middle range.
The dark passion of the night master's music quieted the lord's restless thoughts and gave
him a moment of peace, but, born from mortal flesh as it was, the melody ended all too soon. One
by one the captive voices failed. Where there had been music, only meat remained. The master
departed, and then the musicians, the guests, and the slaves, also, until the lord was alone.
Utterly alone.
His lips parted, and music, at last, rose from his throat: an eight-tone trope, four ascending,
then the lowest, followed by a three-tone cascade through the middle range.
*****
Much later, when all but Urik's rowdiest taverns had fallen into a stupor and templars
drowsed against their spears, the midnight peace of one humble dwellinga tiny room tucked
beneath roof-ribs, broiling by day and frigid by nightwas broken by an infant's angry squalling.
The mother, sleeping on a rag-and-rope bed beside her man, awoke at once, but kept her eyes
squeezed shut, as if sheer denial or force of will could quiet her unhappy daughter.
It was a futile hope. Tooth fever, that's what the infant's malady was called by the widowed
crones, who sat all day beside the neighborhood wellhead. The baby would cry until her teeth came
in and the swelling in her gums subsided. Both mother and daughter were lucky to have gotten any
sleep at all.
"Do something," the man grumbled, rolling away from her, taking her blanket with him to
pile over his ears.
He was a good man: never drank, never raised his voice or fist, but went out at dawn each
morning and sweated all day in the kiln-blast of his uncle's pottery. He was afraid of his daughter,
astonished that something so pale and delicate would, if Fortune's wheel were as round and true as
his uncle's, someday call him Father. He wanted to do well by his offspring, but now, when all she
needed was warm hands and a swaying shoulder, he was reduced to surly helplessness. So, the
woman swung her legs over the side and swept her tangled hair out of her eyes.
There was light in the room. She silently cursed herself for leaving the lamp lit. An open
flame was a danger to themher man and her daughter and every other mortal in the neighborhood.
It was also a waste of oil, a waste of money, which was scant these days, with her unable to work.
In the instant before her vision cleared, the mother saw disaster in her mind's eye: her man, groggy
because he hadn't slept and clumsy for the same reason, blundering against the kiln, screaming, and
dooming them all to poverty, to death.

With that image fresh in her thoughts, she was too distracted to cry out when she saw
another womana strangersitting on the stool beside her daughter's cradle. She reached blindly
for the lamp, which was not lit. The light came from the stranger; it surrounded her and the infant.
"Lame..."
That word, her man's name, came weakly from the mother's tongue. It failed to rouse Lame,
but drew the attention of the dark-haired stranger whose eyes, when she turned, were huge in her
face and gray as the infant's.
"Rest you, now," the stranger said in a sweet and gentle twilight voice. "Rest you... Cissa.
Come the sun and your daughter's pain will be gone."
"Yes," Cissa agreed slowly. A part of her was caught in panic: a stranger in her home, a
stranger holding her daughter. A stranger whom Cissa would have remembered if she'd ever seen
her before, a stranger who sat bathed in light that had no source. "Lame" she called more strongly
than before. "Larne."
"Rest you, both," the stranger insisted. "The child is safe with me."
"Safe," Cissa repeated. The stranger's smile wrapped its arms around her and vanquished her
panic. "Safe. Yes, safe."
"None in Urik is safer," the stranger agreed, and Cissa, at last, believed.
She returned to the rumpled bed where her man's warm shadow beckoned.
The radiant, gray-eyed stranger gave her attention back to the infant. She was not one for
gurgly noises or nonsense syllables or mimicking a kank's jointed antennae with her fingers. She
charmed the pained and weary child with a wordless lullaby.
The infant's fists unclenched. Her little furrowed face relaxed when the stranger stroked her
down-covered scalp. The child reached for a thick lock of the stranger's midnight hair. They shared
a trilling note of laughter, and then the stranger sang againan eight-tone trope, four ascending,
then the lowest, then a three-tone cascade through the middle rangetheme and variations until the
tooth had risen and the infant slept easy in a stranger's arms.
*****
He began his journey when the air was cool and the day no more than a bright promise
above the eastern rooftops. With his bowl tucked inside his tattered, skimpy tunic and his crutch
wedged beneath his shoulder, he made his way from the alley where he slept, safe and warm
beneath a year's accumulation of rubbish, to the northwest corner of Joiner's Square. The baker's
shop on that corner had a stoop that was shaded all day and wider than its doorwide enough for a
crippled beggar to sit, plying the trade he'd never chosen to master. He inconvenienced no one,
especially Nouri, the baker, who sometimes let him scrounge crumbs off the floor at the end of the
day.
It was a long journey from his alley to the baker's shop, and a treacherous one. The least
mistake planting his crutch among the cobblestones would throw him off his unsteady feet. He was
careful, wriggling the crutch a bit each time he set it down before entrusting it with his weight and
balance.
When he was sure of it, he'd grip the shaft in both hands and thenholding his breath,
always holding his breath for that risky momenthop his good leg forward. Then he'd drag his
crippled leg, his aching, useless leg, afterward.
His shoulder hurt worse than the leg by the time he could see the baker's stoop ahead of him.
The beggar-king to whom he paid his dues said he should forego the crutch, said he'd live longer
and earn more if he dragged himself along with his arms. And it might come to that. Some days the
sun was noon-high before the numbness in his arm subsided from his morning journey. He had
pride, though. He'd stand and walk as best he could until he had no choice, and then, maybe, he'd
simply choose to die.
But not today.
"Hey, cripple-boy! Slow down, cripple-boy."

A handful of gravel came with the greeting. He shook it off and planted his crutch in the
next likely spot. He couldn't slow down, not without stopping entirely; didn't dare twist around to
count his tormentors. Bullies, he knew from long experience, seldom went alone.
"Hey, cripple-boy! I'm talkin' to you, cripple-boy!"
"Cripple-boywhat's the difference between you an' a snake?"
There were three of them, he had that knowledge before a meaty hand clamped across the
back of his neck and shook him hard.
"Snakes don't die till sundown, cripple-boy, but you're gonna die now."
He hit the cobblestones with his crutch in his hands, for all the good it would do him. He
didn't recognize them, certainly hadn't ever done them any harm. That wouldn't matter. They were
predators; he was prey. It was as simple as that, and as quick. There was an alley behind him, and
though a whole man would undoubtedly say that its shadows and debris would work to a predator's
advantage, not his, he dragged himself toward it, still clinging to his crutch.
The trio behind were whole men and able to see advantage in the alley. The nearest wrested
the crutch away while the other two seized the beggar by the hair and belt and threw him bodily into
the alley's deep shadows.
*****
Nouri couldn't have said what drew him out of his shop's oven-filled courtyard and put him
at the counter at just that moment. Perhaps he'd had a reason and forgotten it. Dawn was the end of
his day. His customers were workmen, laborers who bought their bread first thing in the morning,
ate what they needed, and took the crusts home to feed their families when their work was done.
Perhaps, though, it was the Lion's whim: an urge of fortune best blamed on Urik's mighty king.
Either way, or something else entirely, Nouri was behind the counter, staring out the open door,
when the adolescent thugs seized the beggar.
His beggar.
Father had always said a beggar was good for businessa polite and clean beggar with an
obvious but not hideous deformity. The crippled boy was all that, and more: His wits weren't
afflicted. He kept an eye on the street, an open ear for passing conversation, for thieves and thugs
and, on occasion, profit.
If the boy had ever asked, Nouri would have given him a nighttime place beneath the
counter. But the boy was proud, in his way; he wouldn't take charity, not above his place on the
stoop or a few broken crusts of bread.
Nouri was always a bit relieved when he heard the boy thump and settle on the stoop. Urik
was a dangerous place for anyone who didn't have a door to lock himself behind. In his heart, Nouri
had known that the morning would come when the beggar wouldn't appear. But he hadn't imagined
the boy would come to his end not fifty paces from his shop's stoop.
The tools of Nouri's trade hung on the wall behind him. Not least among them was the
wedge-shaped mallet he used to beat down the risen dough between kneadings; it could be used for
beating down other things... murderous young thugs who thought a crippled boy was fair game.
Nouri's wife, Maya, and his three journeymen were in courtyard unloading the oven. Maya
would have stopped him if she'd seen him with the mallet in his hand, heading out the door. And the
journeymen would have been some assurance of his own safety: he was bigger than any of the
youths, but not all of them together. If he'd taken the time to think at all, he might well have thought
better of justice. Urik had enough beggars, and his stoop was an attractive place for their trade; he'd
have another soon enough. Nouri wasn't a templar or a thug; he'd never struck a man in anger, not
even his apprentices, who deserved a beating now and again.
But Nouri didn't stop to think. He crossed the street and charged down the alley at a flat-out
run. With a backhand swing of the mallet, he caught the laggard of the trio from behind. The youth
went down with a shout that alerted his companions, the biggest of whom was also the closest.

Paste-faced with fear, the thug tried to defend himself with the crippled boy's crutch, but the weight
of Nouri's mallet swept the lighter shaft aside.
The baker delivered a blow that shattered teeth and released a spray of blood and saliva from
the thug's mouth. Nouri was defenseless and vulnerable in the wake of the violence he'd done, but
the third thug didn't linger to press his advantage. The last youth hied himself out of the alley
without a backward glance for his bloodied and fallen companions.
"Get out," Nouri suggested in a voice he scarcely recognized as his own. "Get out now, and
don't show your faces around here again."
It was good advice, and Bloodymouth retained the wit to take it. He hauled his stunned
companion to his feet, and with arms linked around each other for support, they beat a clumsy
retreat to the street.
With his free hand, Nouri retrieved the undamaged crutch. Aside from his own pounding
pulse and ragged breathing, there were no other sounds in the alley, no other movements. Nothing at
all to say he wasn't alone.
"Boy?" he called into the shadows. "Janni?" He thought that was the boy's name; you or bay
were usually sufficient to get his attention when he sat on the stoop. "Don't be afraid, boy. Are you
hurt, boy?"
Then, fearing the worstthat he'd been too lateNouri set down both mallet and crutch. He
waded into the shadows and began flinging rubbish aside before familiar sounds snared his
attention: tap, thump, and drag; tap, thump, and drag again. The cold hand of fear clutched the
baker's heart as he turned toward the light and the street.
Janni, the crippled boy, reached the stoop while Nouri watched. He lowered himself to the
flat stone, same as he did each morning, and secured his crutch behind him before arranging his
twisted leg on the cobblestones where passersby and Nouri's customers could see both it and the
wrapped-straw begging bowl.
"Whim of the Lion," Nouri whispered. His hands had risen of their own will to cover his
heart. He forced them down to his sides, though his fear had not abated, and the foreboding had
only just begun.
"What have I done?" he asked himself.
The kneading mallet lay where he'd left it, bloodstained the same as Nouri's shirt. But the
crutch... was gone. The only crutch Nouri could see was the one propped against his shop's wall.
"Whim of the Lion," he repeated and turned back to the shadows as his gut heaved.
*****
Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of the World, King of the Mountains and the Plains, and a
score of other titles claimed during his thousand-year rule of the city, could soften be found on the
highest roof of his sprawling palace. The royal apartments were on the roof. The doors and
chambers could have accommodated a half-giant, though the furnishings were scaled for a human
man, and austere as well, despite their gilding and bright enamel.
The king sat at a black marble table outside the lattice-walled apartments and stared absently
toward the east, where the sun had risen an hour earlier. Hamanu hummed a tune as he sat, an eighttone trope. A hint of midnight's coolness clung to the shadow behind him. A robe of lustrous silk
hung loosely about his powerful torso. Its dull crimson color perfectly complemented his tawny
gold skin and the black mane that swept back from a smooth, intelligent forehead to fall in thick,
shiny elflocks against his shoulders.
There was no softness anywhere about him. His eyes held the deep yellow color of ripe
agafari blossoms; his lips were firm and dark above a beardless chin. The faint crinkles around his
eyes might have marked him as a man of good humor, who enjoyed a frequent, hearty laughbut
they could as easily be the brands of a cruel nature.
A sword of steel so fine it shone like silver in the sun rested blade-up in an ebony rack
behind the king. Two darkly seething obsidian spheres sat on cushioned pedestals, one at the

sword's tip, the other beside its hilt. Suits of polished armor in various sizes and styles stood ready
on the backs of straw men. The armor showed signs of wear, but not a trace of the gritty, yellow
dust that was the bane of Urik's housekeepers, as if the king's mere presence were enough to control
the vagaries of wind and weatherwhich it was.
Hamanu blinked and stirred, shedding distraction as he rose from his chair. A balustrade of
rampant lions defined the roof's edge. He leaned his hand on a carved stone mane and squinted hard
at his domain until he'd seen what he needed to see, heard what he wanted to hear. His face relaxed.
His thoughts drifted to more familiar places: the mind of his personal steward these last hundred
years.
Enver, it's time.
The dwarf's answer came in obedience, not words, as he abandoned his breakfast and
hurried toward the roof, shouting orders left and right as he ran.
Hamanu smiled and patted the stone lion lightly on its head. He'd had a satisfying night, last
night. This morning he was disposed to indulgence and good humor.
He was seated behind the marble table again when Enver made his appearance, leading a
small herd of slaves bearing breakfast trays and baskets filled with petitions and bribes.
"Omniscience, the bloody sun of Athas shines brightly on you and all your domain this
morning!" Enver announced with reverence and a well-practiced bow from the waist.
"Does it, now?" Hamanu replied with arch inflection. "Whatever has happened, dear
Enver?" Indulgence did not precludeand good humor well-nigh demandeda taste of mortal fear
before breakfast.
"Nothing, Omniscience," the dwarf replied, flustered with piquant terror.
The slaves behind Enver clumped into a cowering mass that endangered the safe arrival of
Hamanu's breakfast. He didn't need to eat. There was very little that Hamanu needed to do. But he
wanted his breakfast, and he wanted it on the table, not the floor or splattered across the day's
petitions.
"Good, Enver." Hamanu's smile had teeth: blunt, human teeth, though, like everything else
about him, that could change in a eye blink. "Exactly as it should be. Exactly as I expect."
Enver bobbled a less-enthusiastic smile and the slaves shuttled trays and baskets to the table
before scurrying to the far corner of the roof and the out-of-sight safety of the stairway. Hamanu
caught their relieved sighs in his preternatural hearing. He could hear anything in Urik, if he chose
to listen; his vision was almost as keen. More than that, he could kill with a thought and draw
sustenance from a mortal's dying breath.
And sometimes he didfor no reason greater than whim or boredom or aching appetite. But
today, a loaf of fresh-baked bread was the only sustenance that interested him. With manners to
equal the most pampered noblewoman's, the king broke the loaf apart, then dipped a small,
steaming chunk in amber honey before raising it to his lips.
Fear was intoxicating, but fear could not compare to the changeable taste and texture of a
yeast-risen mixture of flour and water when it was still hot from the oven..
"Enver," Hamanu said between morsels, "there's a bakery at the northeast corner of Joiner's
Square"
"It shall be closed at once, Omniscience, and the baker sent to the mines," Enver eagerly
assured him, adding another bow and an arm-wave flourish for good measure.
The dwarf was more than Hamanu's steward; he was a templar, an executor, the highest rank
within the civil bureau. Enver's left sleeve was so laced with precious metal and silk that it fell a
handspan beyond his fingertips as he remained folded in the depth of his bow. It was a ridiculous
pose and a futile attempt on Enver's part to hide his disapproval behind an obsequious mask. The
fear was back as well, a fetid vapor in the warming air.
Hamanu ignored the temptation, trying instead to remember if he'd been either more
capricious or predictable of late. He strove to remember each day precisely as it happened, but after
thirteen ages it was difficult to separate memory from dreams. A man like Enver, or the druid-

templar Pavek, or any one of his score of current favorites, had simpler memories and a more
reliable conscience.
Today, however, Enver had exercised his conscience needlessly.
"I have something else in mind, dear Enver. The baker there" He paused, casting his
thoughts adrift in Urik until they found the mind he wanted"Nouri Nouri'son, he saved my life
this morning."
Enver straightened his spine and his sleeve. "Omniscience, may I inquire how this
occurred?"
"Oh, the usual way." Hamanu sopped up honey with another morsel of bread, chewed it
slowly, savoring both it and the dwarf's bursting curiosity. "The streets were dirty. I'd retreated into
an alley to cleanse them, but this baker, Nouri Nouri'son, took it upon himself to rescue me with a
kneading mallet."
"Remarkable, Omniscience."
"True. All-too-sadly true. He was so intent on saving me that he let the criminals get away."
"Get away, Omniscience? Not for long, surely."
"No, no, dear Enver. They live, two of them, anyway. They seemedhow do you so
charmingly put it?they seemed to have learned a lesson, and I could hardly overrule the baker's
justice, could I?"
Enver shook his head. "But you're watching them, Omniscience?"
"Dear Enver, of course I'm watching them. Even now I'm watching them. But, we were
talking about the baker, weren't we? Yes. I have a task for you. I want two sacks of the finest flour
not warehouse flour, but my flour, white himali from the palacetaken to that baker's shop on
Joiner's Square, and a purse of silver, tooelse he'll fire the ovens with inix dung! Tell him he is to
bake a score of loaves, the best loaves he's ever baked, and to deliver them to the palace before
sundown."
The dwarf's grin was as broad and round as Guthay on New Year's Eve. The executor was
quick with numbers and devious despite his rigorous conscience. Nouri Nouri'son could buy a year's
worth of charcoal with a purseful of silver, and unless the man were a complete failure at his trade,
he could make a hundred loaves with two sacks of palace flour.
"I shall be seen, Omniscience," Enver said, more eagerly than before. "The merchant lords,
the high templars, the nobles, too, and all their cooks, I shall be seen by them all, Omniscience. By
sundown the entire city will know you're eating bread baked by Nouri Nouri'son. They'll stand in
line outside his doors."
"Mind you, dear Enver, it's a small shop on a small square. I think, perhaps, half the city
would be sufficient. A quarter might be wiser."
"Word will spread, Omniscience."
Hamanu nodded. No one would have noticed three bodies in an alley. No one had noticed
the solitary corpse he'd left in a doorway somewhat south of the square. But a generous gesture, that
would change lives in ways not even he could predict.
"Is that all, Omniscience?"
The king nodded, then called his steward back. If he was going to make a generous gesture
to the man who saved his life, he might as well make a similar gesture to the one whose life he'd
borrowed. "There'll be a beggar on the stoop. A human youth with a crippled leg. Put something
useful in his bowl."
"Oh, yes, Omniscience! Will that be all, Omniscience?"
"One last thing, before you return to the palace, hie yourself to the fountain in Lion's Square
and throw a coin over the edge."
Enver's grin faded as his eyes widened. "Omniscience, what should I wish for?"
"Whythat Nouri Nouri'son's bread is as good as his kneading mallet, what else?"

Chapter Two

Hamanu's morning audiences began when Enver left the roof. They ended when the king
had broken the seal on the last scroll in the baskets on his marble table and had summoned, by a
mind-bending prick of conscience, the last petitioner in the unwindowed and, therefore, stifling,
waiting chamber below.
Sometimes petitioners abandoned their quest for a private audience before they felt the
unforgettable terror of their king's presence in their thoughts. Sometimes Hamanu didn't secondguess a petitioner's misgiving. Other times he pursued the tender-hearted spirit throughout Urik and
beyond; he had that power. After thirteen ages of practice, Hamanu could give his whims wills of
their own and set them free to wander his city as he himself did almost every night, borrowing
shape and memorystealing themand making another life his own for a moment, a year, or a
lifetime.
Hamanu had a handful of willful whims and stolen shapes loose in the city just then, and
touched them lightly as the day's last petitioner climbed the stairs. A thief who'd shown creative
promise in his craft had seized a womana child, really, half his ageand forced her to the ground
in the kitchen yard of her own modest home.
The king seared the thief's mind and flesh with a single thought. The last image that passed
through the thief's senses was the woman screaming as her rapist's hot blood burst over her. Then
the thief was thoroughly dead, and the last petitioner was walking across the palace roof.
The civil bureau templars who prepared the petitions for fees, bribes, and other favors
had written the plea of a merchant named Eden. Hamanu had mistaken Eden for a man's name, and
mistaken the mind he'd touched moments ago for a man's mind, too. Everyone made mistakes.
Enver notwithstanding, Hamanu was not omniscient. He didn't know everything and couldn't know
everything about a living mind. The dead were another matter, of course. A dead mind yielded all its
secrets, after which it was useless. Hamanu didn't kill for secrets.
Deceit was another matter.
He watched the merchantEdenlift the hem of her gown and step over the blasted
remains of the day's most unfortunate petitioner. Most unfortunate, so far.
Her mind was filled with disgust, not fear. For the corpse, Hamanu hoped. As himselfas
Hamanu, King of Urikhe dealt with few women, save templars and whores. His reputation was
burdened with an ancient layer of tarnish. Respectable families hid their wives and daughters from
him, as if that had ever protected anyone.
This Eden, with her white linen gown, pulled-back hair, and unpainted face, was the epitome
of respectability. Far more respectable than the young noblemanthe late, young nobleman
whose bowels were beginning to stink in the brutal sunlight.
Hamanu didn't truly mind that Renady Soleuse had inherited his estate through the proven
expedient of slaughtering his father and his brothers and the rest of his inconvenient kin; link's king
didn't meddle in family affairs. And Hamanu wasn't outraged that the accusations of water-theft
Renady leveled against his neighbors were whole-cloth lies; audacity was, in truth, a reliable
pathway to royal favor. But the young man had lied when Hamanu had asked questions about the
financial health of the Soleuse estate, and worse, the fool had counted on a defiler charlatan's lizardskin charm to protect him while he lied.
Hamanu killed for deceit.
The hereditary honor of Soleuse had been extinguished with thought and fire, both
somewhat sorcerous in origin and wielded with a soldier's precision. Now, Hamanu and Urik were
short a noble family to manage the farms and folk the Soleuse had been lord to. Most likely he'd
offer the honor to Enver. After more than an age overseeing a king's private life, Hamanu judged
that the affairs of a noble estate should be child's play for the likes of Enver. But, perhaps he'd offer
the spoils of Soleuse to this Eden, this plain half-elf woman with a man's name.
He'd hate to have to kill her. Two petitioners in one morning: that was both careless and
wasteful.
"Why are you here?" Hamanu asked. His templars had written that she offered trade. No
surprise there: she was a merchant; trade was her life's work. But, what sort of trade? "Recount."

She hesitated, moistening her lips with a pasty tongue and wrinkling her linen gown between
anxious fingers. "O Mighty King of Urik, King of Athas, King of the Mountains" Her face turned
as pale as her gown: she'd lost the rhythm of his titles and her mindHamanu knew for certain
had gone blank.
"And so on," he said helpfully. "You have my attention."
"I am charged with a message from my husband, Chorlas, colleague of the House of
Werlithaen."
"I know the name Werlithaen," Hamanu admitted. As the name implied, the Werlithaen were
elves. Three generations back, they'd been elves who'd exchanged their kank herds for the tumult of
Urik's almost-legal Elven Market. About an age ago, a few of the tribe had abandoned the Market
for the civilized ways of the merchant houses. A step down, no doubt, in the eyes of the Werlithaen
kindred, and sufficient to account for Eden's plain, diluted features.
The petition had mentioned trade, not a message, but knowledge was sometimes more
valuable than water or gold and a sound basis for trade. Eden hadn't yet deceived him.
"What manner of message?" the king continued, curious as to the sort of bargain this woman
would offer.
Eden made what appeared to be another nervous gesture, fondling the large, pale-green
ceramic beads of her bracelet. There was a click that earned Hamanu's undivided attention, and
when her hands separated, a coil of parchment bounced in her trembling fingers.
It could just as easily have been a poison dart or a magician's charm, neither of which could
have harmed him. Hamanu was, above all else, not the tawny-skinned human man he appeared to
be. But his guards should have found it. There'd be an accounting before sunset.
"My husband bade me give you this."
The coil dropped from her fingers onto the black marble table. Hamanu retrieved it and read
the words Chorlas had written, telling about three hundred wooden staves caravaned east, out of
Nibenay, to a deserted oasis and left, unattended, by moonlight. The staves appeared to be plain
brown wood, according to Chorlas, who was in a position to know, having been the owner of that
east-bound caravan. But the staves left stains on the palms of the caravaneers who handled them
and, afterward, the formerly brown wood had acquired a distinctly bronze-metallic sheen.
Agafari wood, no doubt, Nibenay's most precious resource and a reliable weapon against the
serrated obsidian edges of Urik's standard-issue swords. Urik and Nibenay weren't at war, not
openly, though there hadn't been true peace between the Lion and the Shadow-King since they'd
laid claim to their respective domains long ago. And there'd been no trade between the cities these
last three years, for which lapse there were as many reasons as there were grudges between Hamanu
and his brother monarch, not least of which was the misfortuned ambition of a Urikite templar
named Elabon Escrissar.
Indeed, at the moment, no legal trade passed between Urik and any other city in the old
human-dominated heartland. No visitors, either. Folk stayed within Hamanu's purview, if that's
where they were when he'd issued his decree, or they stayed outside it, under penalty of death.
There was trade, of course; no city was entirely self-sufficient, though, with well-stocked
warehouses, Hamanu's Urik could withstand a siege of many years. The laws merely complicated
and compounded the risks all merchants knowingly took when they carried goods among the rival
city-states, and gave Hamanu the pretextas if he needed oneto interfere.
"Was your husband in Nibenay when he wrote this?" Hamanu asked mildly, maliciously. If
she lied, he'd know it instantly. If she told the truth, she'd be an accomplice in illegal trade, the
punishment for whichat a minimum was the loss of an eye.
"He was, O Mighty King. He sent this at great risk and bade me bring it here at once. And I
did" she raised her head and, despite crashing waves of cold-blooded terror, met Hamanu's
smoldering stare with her own. "Five days ago, O Mighty King."
So, she dared to be indignant with him. On a bad day, that was a death sentence; today, it
intrigued him. Hamanu ran a fingertip over Chorlas's words, reading the man who'd written them.
"There was another message," he concluded.

"Only that I was to come directly to you, O Mighty King, as I have already said."
"Your husband has placed you in great danger, dear lady, or do you claim not to know that it
is against my laws to have discourse or trade with the Nibenese?"
"O Mighty King, my husband is Urikite born and raised."
Hamanu nodded. His edict isolating Urik from the anarchy spreading across Athas in the
wake of the Dragon's demise had sundered families, especially the great, far-flung merchant
dynasties, and his was not the only such edict: Tyr and Gulg and Nibenay itself had raised similar
prohibitions;
Giustenal had never been without them. But trade and risk were inseparable, as the woman
standing before him surely knew.
"That changes nothing, dear lady. I have forbidden all commerce. You have imperiled your
life at your husband's bidding. Your life, dear lady, not his. And for what? What trade could justify
the risk?" Hamanu could imagine several, but Eden might surprise him, and notwithstanding the
content of the message she'd brought him, which was itself enough to merit reward, Hamanu
cherished surprises.
Anxiety froze Eden's tongue in her mouth; Hamanu despaired of any surprise, then she
spoke:
"O Mighty King, my husband and I, we judge it likely that the king of Nibenay is arming
Urik's enemies."
"And?" Hamanu demanded. Her reasoning, though concurred with his own, wasn't the
surprise he'd hoped for.
"My husband is old, O Mighty King. He took me into his house when my mother died, as a
favor to her father, who'd been a friend in their youths. Chorlas raised me as his granddaughter, and
then, when I was old enough, he made me his wife." Her voice broke, not with bitterness, but with
that rarest of all mortal passions: lifelong love. "My husband's heart is weak, O Mighty King, and
his senses are not so sharp as they once were. Nibenay is not his home, O Mighty King. He doesn't
wish to die there without having seen the sun set against the yellow walls or the Lion's fountain one
last time."
"So he sends you to tell me that Nibenay arms my enemies? That the House of Werlithaen
supplies the caravan? And for this mote of good news he expects me to leave Urik's gates ajar so he
might return?"
"Yes, O Mighty King. My husband knows the precise location of the deserted oasis; it was
not charted on any of his mapsuntil now."
"The master merchant of Werlithaen thinks that because he did not know the location of an
oasis, then / would not know it either."
"Yes, O Mighty King," Eden repeated. Chorlas of Werlithaen had raised her well. She was
afraid of him; that was only wise, but fear was not her master. She continued, "It lies outside Urik's
purview; outside Nibenay's, as well. It is an oasis of death under Giustenal."
Wish for a surprise and get an unpleasant one. Once again Hamanu ran his fingertip over the
writing. Five days, she'd said, since she had presented herself to his templars. Ten days, perhaps,
since the words beneath his sensitive fingertip had been written. And how many days had passed
between Chorlas's leaving the agafari staves for Giustenal's howling army and Chorlas's writing a
message to his dear wife? Three, at best, if an old man had overcome elven prejudice, got himself a
swift riding kank, then rode the bug into the ground.
Hamanu had his own spies, and those who rode kanks were ever in need of new bugs. He
would hear about the staves, the oasis, and Giustenal's ambitions, but he hadn't heard it yet. He
touched her mind, a gentle feather's touch that aroused neither her defenses nor her fears. She hadn't
eaten in three days, not for poverty, but because her husband had returned to Urik. Chorlas was
hiding in the slave quarters of their comfortable home. Between beats of Eden's heart, Hamanu
found her Urik home and Chorlas within it. The elf was old and honest, for an elven merchant. His
heart was weak, and he did truly wish to die within the massive yellow walls.

"What is your trade, Eden of House Werlithaen? Do you wish to die in Urik, like your
husband?"
"O Mighty King, I do not care where I die," she said evenly. "But while I live, I wish to see
my city's enemies ground beneath the heel of my king."
Hamanu laughedwhat else could any man do, face-to-face with a bloodthirsty woman? He
took amber resin from a small box and held it in his hand until it was pliable. "I shall count it
treason, then, if my templars do not report seeing you and your emeritus husband beside the Lion
Fountain before sunset." He marked the resin with his sea ring, then hardened it again with icy
breath.
Her face was pleasing and far from plain when she smiled.
*****
The ever-efficient Enver had completed his tasks in Joiner's Square and returned to the
palace before Eden departed, still smiling. Perhaps he passed her on his way to the roof with the
usual herd of slaves in his wake, armed, this time, with buckets and bristle brushes. Hamanu didn't
ask, didn't pry, anymore than Enver asked about the Soleuse corpse.
Enver was, however, adamantly uninterested in becoming the Soleuse lord.
"Omniscience," the dwarf said from a bow so deep his forehead touched his knees. "Have I
or my heirs displeased you so much?"
"Of course not, dear Enver." It was not a question that merited an answer, except that there
was no way Enver could have seen his king's grimace. "But after what? almost three ages
between you and your father, is it not? Perhaps you're ready for a change."
"Your welfare is my family's life, Omniscience. More than life, it is our eternal honor."
"I can remove any lingering focus"
Enver straightened suddenly, with such a look of outrage on his face that Hamanu was
obliged to sit back a hair's breadth in his chair.
"I'd sooner die."
"Later, then, dear Enver. In the meantime, who was in charge downstairs this morning? That
fool" Hamanu flicked a forefinger at the wet spot where Renady had died and the slaves were
now scrubbing furiously"stood before me wearing a charm, dear Enver, a charlatan's lizard-skin
charm which no one had confiscated. And later, a woman stood where you're standing and removed
a message from a bead as large as your thumb! A useful message, to be sure Nibenay's sent
agafari staves to Giustenalbut someone downstairs was more than careless, and I want that
someone sent to the obsidian pits."
Enver knew which investigator had been in charge of the waiting room: the face floated
instantly to the surface of the dwarf's mind, along with numerous details of the templar's currently
troubled lifehis mother had died, his father was ailing, his wife was pregnant, and his piles were
painfully swollennone of which mattered to Hamanu.
"To the pits, dear Enver," he said coldly.
And Enver, who surely knew he had no private thoughts when he stood before his king,
nodded quickly. "To the pits, immediately, Omniscience." Not as a slave, as Hamanu had intended,
but as an overseer, with his sleeve threads intact. The image was crystal clear in Enver's mind.
Hamanu didn't quibble. Left to his own devices, his rule over Urik would be rigid and far too
harsh for mortal survival. Left to his own devices, he'd rule over a realm of the undead, as Dregoth
did beneath Giustenal. Instead, Hamanu culled his templars, generation after generation, plucking
out the debauched, the perverse, and the cruel like the late Elabon Escrissar, who'd contributed to
the latest Nibenese picklefor his personal amusement. The others, the foursquare, almost-upright
folk, he selected to translate his unforgiving harshness into bearable justice.
Enver, being one of the latter, was indeed too valuable to exile off to the Soleuse farmlands.
Hamanu tolerated Enver's benign deceit as he'd tolerated Escrissar's malignancy. Both were

essential parts of his thousand-year reign in the yellow-walled city. He'd have to find someone else
for Soleuse.
In the meantime, the slaves had finished their labor. All that remained of Renady Soleuse
was a fading wet spot beneath the brutal sun.
Morning was nearly afternoon when Hamanu prepared to go downstairs and deal with his
city's larger and more public affairs. Burnished armor and robes of state had been laid out for his
approval, which he gave, as he almost invariably did, with no more than a cursory glance at his
wardrobe.
A patterned silk canopy had been erected over the pool where he would bathe alone,
completely without attendants. It was time, once again, for loyal Enver to depart.
"I await your next summons, Omniscience," the dwarf assured him as he herded the slaves
down the stairs.
Hamanu waited until all his senses, natural and preternatural, were quiet and he knew he was
alone. A shimmering sphere shrouded his right hand as he stood up from his table: a shimmering
sphere from which a black talon as long as an elf's forefinger emerged. With it, Hamanu scored the
air in front of him, as if it were a carcass hung for gutting and butchering.
Mist seeped from the otherwise invisible wound, then, thrusting both hands into the mist,
Hamanu widened the gap. Miniature gray clouds billowed momentarily around his forearms. When
the sun had boiled them away, Hamanu held a carefully folded robe that was, by color and cloth, a
perfect match for the robe he wore, likewise the linen and sandals piled atop the silk, He dropped
the sandals at once and kicked one under the table. He dropped the silk after he'd shaken out the
folds, and let the linen fall on top of it.
When Hamanu was satisfied that he'd created the impression of a heedless king shedding
garments without regard for their worth, the dazzling sphere reappeared around his right hand. It
grew quickly, encompassing first his arm and shoulder, finally all-of him, including his head. The
man-shaped shimmer swelled until it was half again as tall as Hamanu, the human man, had been.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared and spread, the dazzle was gone, and a creature like no other in
the city, nor anywhere beneath the bloody sun, stood in his place.
Stark naked, Hamanu looked down upon what he had become. He fought nausea, or the
memory of nausea, since even so minor a mortality as nausea had been denied to him for ages.
Rajaat, the War-Bringer, the first sorcerer, had seen to that. But Rajaat had not made Hamanu what
he was. Rajaat had had a vision, Hamanu had had another, and for the last thirteen ages, Hamanu's
vision had prevailed.
His skin was pure black, a dull, fathomless shade of ash and soot, stretched taut over a
scaffold of bones too long, too thick, too misshapen to be counted among any of the Rebirth races.
There were hollows between his ribs and between the paired bones of his arms and legs. The
undead runners of the barrens carried more flesh than Urik's gaunt Lion-King. Seeing Hamanu, no
mortal would believe that anything so spindly could be alive, much less move with effortless grace
to the bathing pool, as he did.
He paused at the edge. The still water of the bathing pool was an imperfect minor. It showed
him yellow eyes and ivory fangs, but it couldn't resolve the darkness that had replaced his face.
With taloned fingertips, Hamanu explored the sharp angles of his cheeks, the hairless ridge of his
brows and the crest that erupted from his narrowing skull. His ears remained in their customary
place and customary fluted form. His nose had collapsed, whattwo ages ago? or was it three? or
even four? And his lips... Hamanu imagined they'd become hard cartilage, like inix lips; he was
grateful that he'd never seen them.
Hamanu's feet had lengthened over the ages. He walked more comfortably on his toes than
on his heels. His knees had drawn up, and though he could still straighten his legs when it suited
him, they were most often flexed. Stepping down into the water, his movements resembled a bird's,
not a man's.
He dived to the bottom of the pool and rose again to the surface. Habits that thirteen ages of
transformation could not erase brought his hands up to slick nonexistent hair away from his eyes.

For a heartbeatHamanu's hollow chest contained a heart; he hoped it remained human, though he
couldn't know for certainhe sank limply through the water. Then the skeletal arms pumped once,
demonstrating no lack of strength, and lifted his entire body out of the water.
The gaunt, black king had the power to hover motionless in the air or to fly faster than any
raptor. Hamanu chose, instead, to return to the pool's embrace with a spectacular, unappreciated
splash. He rolled onto his back and tumbled through the clear, warm water like a cart's wheel until
he'd raised waves high enough to leave puddles on the roof. He was oblivious to everything except
his own amusement until a bolt of pain lanced from his forefinger to his spine.
Roaring a curse at the four corners of the world, Hamanu made a fist and studied the pale
red and gray sliver protruding through the soot-black flesh. It was bone, of course, human bone,
another tiny fragment of his ancient humanity lost, now, forever. He pinched it between two talons
and jerked it free.
A mortal man would have died from the shock. A mortal man did die. Deep within Hamanu's
psyche, a mortal man died a hundred times for every year of his immortal life. He would continue to
die, bit by bit, until there was nothing left and Rajaat's metamorphic spell would have completed its
dirty work. The metamorphosis should have been complete ages ago, but Hamanu, when he'd
understood what Rajaat had intended, had set his will against the War-Bringer. The immortal king of
Urik could neither stop nor reverse his inexorable transformation; he slowed its progress through
deprivation and starvation.
When his loathsome shape was concealed in a tangible human glamour, Hamanu ate with
gusto and drew no nourishment from his food. In his own form, Hamanu lived with agony and
hunger, both of which he'd hardened himself against. He could not die and had long since reached
the limits of unnatural withering. Hamanu endured and swore that by force of will alone he'd deny
Rajaat's spell until the end of time.
A bead of viscous blood the color and temperature of molten lava distended Hamanu's
knuckle. He stared at it with disgust, then thrust his fist beneath the water. Stinking steam broke the
surface as a sinuous black coil streamed away from the open wound. Hamanu sighed, closed his
eyes, and with a sun-warmed thought, congealed his blood into a rock-hard scab.
Another lost battle in a war that had known no victories: magic in any form fueled the
metamorphosis. Hamanu rarely cast spells in their traditional form and was miserly with his
templars, yet his very thoughts were magic and all his glamours. Each act of defiance brought him
closer to ultimate defeat. Even soand though no one glimpsing him in his bathing pool would
suspect itHamanu was far closer to the human he'd been at birth than to what Rajaat intended him
to become. Within his still-human heart, Hamanu believed that in the battle between time and
transformation, he would be triumphant.
Dispersing the uncongealed blood with a swirl of his hands, Hamanu left the bath with his
confidence restored. He stood with hands resting on the lion balustrade, letting the sun dry his back,
while he surveyed the city.
At this hour, with the red sun just past its zenith, Urik rested quieter than it did at midnight.
Nothing moved save for a clutch of immature kes'trekels making lazy spirals above the walls of the
Elven Market. Slaves, freemen, nobles, and templars; men and women; elves, humans, dwarves,
and all the folk who fell between had gone in search of shadows and shelter from the fierce heat.
There was no one bold or foolish enough to gaze at the sun-hammered palace roof where a lone
silhouette loomed against the dusty sky.
Hamanu touched the minds of his minions throughout the city, as a man might run his
tongue along the backs of his teeth, counting them after a brawl. Half of the citizens were asleep
and dreaming. One was with a woman; another with a man. The rest were lying still, hoarding their
thoughts and energy. He did not disturb them.
His own thoughts drifted back to the woman, Eden, and her message. He asked himself if it
was likely that the Shadow-King Nibenay, once called Gallard, Bane of Gnomes, would send staves
of his precious agafari wood to their undead peer in blasted Giustenal. The answer, without
hesitation, was yesfor a price.

There was no love lost between any of Rajaat's champions, including Dregoth of Giustenal
and Gallard. They didn't trust each other enough for unrequited generosity. They didn't trust each
other at all. It had taken a dragon, Borys of Ebe in the full culmination of Rajaat's metamorphosis,
to hold the champions to the one cause that demanded their cooperation: maintaining the wards on
their creator's netherworld prison, a thing they called the Hollow beneath a place they called the
Black.
Hamanu recalled the day, over five years earlier, when Borys had been vanquished, along
with several other champions. For one afternoon, for the first time in a thousand years, Rajaat had
been free. The fact that Rajaat was no longer free and had been returned to his Hollow owed
nothing to the cooperation of the three champions who'd survived Borys's death and Rajaat's
resurrection. They distrusted each other so much that they'd stood aside and let a mortal womana
half-elf named Sadira of Tyrset the prison wards.
It had been different long ago, in the Year of Enemy's Fury in the 177th King's Age. After
Borys first set the wards on Rajaat's Hollow, there'd been nearly a score of immortal sorcerers ruling
their proud heartland cities. With the passage of thirteen ages, they'd winnowed themselves down to
seven. Then a decade ago, Kalak, the Tyrant of Tyr, had been brought down by his own ambition
and a handful of mortal rebels, including one of his own high templars and Sadira, the same Sadira
who'd vanquished Borys and reset the wards around Rajaat's Hollow.
In the Lion-King's judgment, Kalak was a fool, a careless fool who'd deserved the crime
committed against him. Kalak was no champion. Hamanu had, perhaps, trusted the Tyrant of Tyr
more than he trusted his peers, but he'd respected him less. He cursed Kalak's name each time it
resurrected itself in his memory. Kalak's demise had left an unfillable hole in Tyr, the oldestif not
the largest, wealthiest, or most powerfulcity in the heartland. And now, thanks in no small part to
the subsequent behavior of the rebels who'd killed their immortal sorcerer-king, the thrones of
Balic, Raam, and Draj were vacant, too.
It was easier to list who among Rajaat's champions was left: himself, Gallard in Nibenay,
Inenek in Gulg, and undead Dregoth in Giustenalnone of them a dragon.
So long as Rajaat was securely imprisoned in the Hollow beneath the Black, Hamanu didn't
object to the missing dragon.
Once Borys had completed Rajaat's metamorphosis and walked the heartland as a dragon,
Borys had ruled everyone. Even the immortal sorcerers in their proud city-states had jumped to a
dragon's whim. There had been wars, of coursecities devastated and abandonedbut the balance
of power never truly changed. What Borys demanded, Borys got, because he kept Rajaat confined
in the Hollow.
Now Borys was gone, a handful of thriving city-states had empty thrones, and the only thing
keeping immortal greed in check was the knowledge that every surviving champion carried in his or
her bones: use too much magic, draw too much spell-quickening power from the Dark Lens or any
other source, and become the next dragon.
The prospect might have tempted some of themthough never Hamanuif they hadn't all
watched helplessly as a maddened, mindless Borys ravaged the heartland immediately after they'd
cast the spells to complete his metamorphosis. For his first hundred years, wherever Borys went, he
sucked the life out of everything. When he was done, the heartland was the parched, blasted barren
place it remained to this day.
Dregoth had already succumbed to temptation and drawn the wrath of his immortal peers.
Borys had rounded them up for a second time, and they'd found a fitting eternal punishment for
immortal hubris: they'd ruined his city and stripped all living flesh from the proud Ravager of
Giants. He remained the champion he'd been on the day of his death, but he'd never be anything
more. Dregoth was what folk called undead, kaiskarga in the halfling tongue, the oldest of the many
languages Hamanu knew.
In shame, and under the threat of worse punishment, Dregoth had dwelt for ages beneath his
ruined city. Mortal chroniclers forgot Dregoth, but his peers remembered especially Uyness of

Waverly, whom living mortals had called Abalach-Re, Queen of Raam, and whom Dregoth
remembered as his betrayer.
Now Uyness was dead with Borys, and Dregoth wanted Raam's empty throne. Hamanu
reasoned that Nibenay might well support Giustenal's ambitions in that direction with agafari
staves, because, whether or not he conquered every empty-throned city, Dregoth could never
become another dragon as Borys had been. Like as not, Gallard would support Dregoth no matter
which city the undead champion had designs upon. Like as not, Gallardwho fancied himself the
most subtle of Rajaat's champions-hoped there'd come a day when he and Dregoth were the only
champions left. If the price of attaining dragonkind was the annihilation of every mortal life in a
city or three, how much easier to pay when none of the cities in peril were one's own?
Gallard had that much conscience, at least. Kalak hadn't hesitated at the thought of
consuming Tyr. That's what got him killed by his own subject citizens and templars, but Kalak of
Tyr had been a fool and freebooter from the start, long before the champions were created.
And Hamanu of Urikwhat had he been before he was an immortal champion?
Hamanu's thoughts sluiced sideways. In his mind's eye, he was suddenly far away from his
precious city. He stood in another place, another time: a field of golden-ripe himali grain
surrounded by hardworking kith and kin. Warm summer breezes lifted his hair and dried the sweat
on his back. There was a hay rake in his youthful hands. A youngstera brother too small to cut
grain or rakesat nearby with reed pipes against his lips, diverting the harvesters as they labored.
The brother's tune was lost to time along with his name. But the dark-haired, gray-eyed maiden who
stood behind the boy in memory, swaying in the music's rhythm, her name would never be forgotten
while the Lion-King lived: Dorean.
For Dorean, Hamanu had become a man in his family's eyes. For him, Dorean had become a
woman. The life that had once lain before them, filled with fields of grain, growing children, and a
love that never needed words, was the only life Hamanu had ever wanted. If he'd done right by
Dorean, if he'd protected her, as a man was sworn to do, he never would have seen the walls of
Urik.
His body would lie beside hers, turned to dust and dirt a hundred times over.
A shadow wind sundered Hamanu's memory. He released the balustrade and turned around.
A dusty breeze took shape, as tall as he was, yet far broader.
"Windreaver," he said flatly as the shape became substantial and the last commander of the
troll army stood between him and the pool.
As big as half-giants, as clever as elves or dwarves, trolls had been formidable enemies for a
champion-led army, and Windreaver had beenand remainedthe most formidable of the trolls.
He'd lived and fought for two ages before he and a fifty-year-old Hamanu faced each other and
Windreaver fought his last battle. A wispy curtain of silver hair hung around his swept-back ears,
and the wrinkles above his bald brow were as pronounced as the brow ridge itself. Age had not
dulled Windreaver's obsidian eyes. They were as bright, black, and sharp on the palace roof as they
had been on the windswept cliff high above a wracken sea.
"Lose your wits?" Windreaver asked. If hate ever needed a voice, the troll stood ready to
provide it. "Baking your brain till it's charred like the rest of you?"
Hamanu hissed, an effective, contemptuous gesture in his unnatural shape. When hate was
measured, he and Windreaver were peers. If Enver was one aspect of Hamanu's conscience,
Windreaver was the other.
The troll would have preferred to die with the rest of his kind; Hamanu had not offered a
choice. Windreaver's body had become dust and dirt, as Hamanu's had not, but Windreaver lived,
succored by the same starving magic that sustained Hamanu. He was an immortal reminder of
genocide to the conquered and to the conqueror who had committed it.
"Look, there, on the horizon," Windreaver pointed to the southwest, toward distant Nibenay,
exporter and abandoner of poorly stained agafari staves. "What do you see?"
"What did you see?" Hamanu retorted. "A bundle of sticks laid beside an old well?"

Windreaver served Hamanu. The troll had had no choice in that, either. The King of Urik
could abide guilt and hate, but never useless things, be they living, dead, or in between. Windreaver
was Hamanu's most trusted spy; the spy he sent to shadow his peers, his fellow champions.
"Do I need a fire to comfort me in my old age?" the troll retorted.
"Not when you can bring me bad news."
The troll chuckled, showing blunt teeth in a jaw that could crush stone. "The worst, O
Mighty Master. There's an army forming on the plains beyond Nibenay. Old Gallard does not lead it
not yet. But I've skirled through the commanders' tents, and I've seen the maps drawn in blood on
the tanned hides of Urikite templars. Nibenay's coming, Manu; mark me well, I know what I have
seen. What Gallard sends to Giustenal doesn't matter. Gallard, Bane of Gnomes, means to become
Gallard, Bane of Urik."
Hamanu bared his dripping fangs in contempt and disbelief.
Gallard might be marchingtoward Tyr perhaps, or more distant Draj. Draj had been Lord
Ursos's home until two years ago, and amid the lord's debauched memories were images of its
bloody anarchy. Gallard wouldn't waste his army against Urik's walls, not while Draj's throne sat
empty. It was impolite to march across another champion's purview, but not unprecedented.
"You're wrong this time, Windreaver. You've overreached yourself."
Disappointed, Windreaver sucked air and tried again. "He brings his children, his thousand
times a thousand children. He will set them in your place, and you will do his bidding, and I will
hover about you, a swarm of stinging gnats to blind your eyes as you weep. Where are your
children, Lion-King of Urik?"
A thousand years had sharpened the troll's tongue to an acid edge. His final question lanced
an old, old wound. Hamanu hissed again, and the dust that was Windreaver swirled apart. "Urik is
my child, with fifty thousand hearts, each braver than yours. Go back to Nibenay. Sting Gallard's
eyes, if you dare. Listen to his words when there's no one else about to hear them, then tell me of
his plans."
Dust rose on its own wind and was gone. Hamanu inspected the armor and garments the
slaves had laid out for him. His taloned hand trembled as it made another misty gray slit in the
afternoon's torrid air. Anger, he told himself as he shoved armor and garments together into the
trackless netherworld. Rage at Windreaver, because the troll had done what he always did, and at
himself, because this time the barbs had struck home.
Urik was his child, his only child. He'd face them all Gallard, Dregoth, anyone who dared
threaten Urik. He'd risk the fate Rajaat laid before him, but for Urik's sake, he'd win. The Lion-King
had never lost a battle, except for the very first.
A dazzlement surrounded his hand again and spread from there across his seared, withered
form. When it was done, he was a tawny-skinned, black-haired man again, taller than he'd been at
breakfast and brawnier, garbed in illusions of the panoply he'd hidden in the netherworld. His
manicured hands no longer trembled; that was illusion, too.
There was a way, if they all came at him, all at once and in all their strength and he had to
choose between himself and his city.... At least, Hamanu thought there was a way to preserve Urik.
But the risks were incalculable, and he'd require the cooperation of a man who was, in his simple
way, as extraordinary as any champion, a man who kept his own conscience and who served a
primal force that couldn't be coerced.
The time, perhaps, had come to secure that man's sympathy. Without it, there could be a
dragon more terrible than Borys roaming the heartland.
"I'll tell the whole story, in writing," Hamanu said to the rampant lions lining his balustrade.
"When he has read it through, then he can judge for himself, and if he judges favorably, the Urik
guardian will respect his plea when he calls."

Chapter Three

Long after nightfall, when the slaves were locked in their quarters and the nightwatch
templars drowsed in the corridors, Hamanu of Urik retreated from the rooftops and public chambers
of his palace to its deepest heart, far from mortal eyes. Hamanu's midnight sanctum was a hidden
cloister that resembled a peasant village; including a well and mud-walled cottages. Mountain vistas
from a greener time were painted on the walls. A variety of common tools were available for
working the vegetable plots, but the vines had turned to sticks and straw. The fruit trees bore neither
fruit nor leaves.
The cloister's solitary door was always bolted, from the inside. When Hamanu visited his
sanctum, he entered magically, stepping out of the same Unseen netherworld where he hid his
clothes. Once inside, he sometimes opened the door, admitting Enver or another trusted person for a
meal or conversation. But most times, when Hamanu came to his sanctum, he came to sit alone on a
crude stone bench, bathed in starlight and memory.
This night, ten nights after Hamanu had heard Eden's and Windreaver's messages, ten nights,
too, after he'd sent Enver kank-back across the northeast salt flats, the Lion of Urik shifted his bulk
on his familiar stone bench. He'd brought a battered table to the cloister. It stood before him,
crowned with a sheaf of pearly, luminousvirginvellum, upon which no marks had been made.
An ink stone, oil, and a curved brass stylus lay beside the vellum, waiting for the king to complete
the task he'd set for himself.
Or rather, to begin.
Hamanu had thought it would be easytelling his story in script, letting silent letters do the
work of mind-bending or sorcery. He'd thought he'd have it written by the time Enver returned with
Pavek, his self-exiled high templar, the earnest, novice druid upon whom Hamanu pinned such
hope. He'd been wrong, as he hadn't been wrong in a king's age or more. The words were there in
his mind, more numerous than the stars above him, but they writhed like snakes in a pit. He'd reach
for one and find another, a different word that roused a dusty memory that he couldn't release until
he'd examined it thoroughly.
He'd thought these chance recollections were amusing at first. Then, he deceived himself
into believing such wayward thoughts would help him weave his story together. Those optimistic
moments were over. He'd shed his delusions several nights ago: Writing was more difficult than
sorcery. Hamanu had conquered every sorcery beneath the blood-red sun; the vellum remained
blank. He was well along the path to desperation.
Six days ago, Enver had used his medallion to recount his safe arrival in thefrom Enver's
urban perspective depressingly primitive druid village of Quraite. A few hours ago, at sundown,
the dwarf had used his medallion again to recountvery wearilythat he and Pavek and half of
Enver's original war-bureau escort were nearing Urik's gates.
What happened to the other half of the escort? Hamanu had thought of revengehis
messengers traveled under his personal protection, his personal vengeancebut mostly he'd hoped
for distraction, for anything that would rescue him from midnight and the ink stone.
Left behind, Omniscience: This Pavek is a loon, Omniscience. "Come home," I said to him,
Omniscience, as you told me to, and the next thing I knew, he was mounted and giving orders like a
commandant. He does not stop to eat or rest, Omniscience; he doesn't sleep. Four of your prize
kanks are dead, Omniscience; ridden to exhaustion. If the ones we're riding now don't collapse
beneath us, we'll be at Khelo by dawn. Whim of the Lion, we'll be in Urik by midday, Omniscience,
else this Pavek will have killed us all.
I'll alert your sons, dear Enver, Hamanu had promised, looking east toward Khelo and the
reflection of the setting sun. Your weariness will be rewarded.
Well rewarded. Since there was no excuse for vengeance, Hamanu had spent the early
evening arranging proper welcomes for both the dwarf and the druid. Enver's sons had been warned
of their father's impending return. A feast with cool wine and the sweet fruit the old templar loved
was already in the throes of preparation. House Pavek, formerly House Escrissar, the residence that
Hamanu had assigned for Pavek's city use, had been unlocked for the first time in two years.
Freemen and women had been hired; Pavek would not be served by slaves. Larders had been

restocked, windows had been unboarded, and the rooms were airing out by the time the moons had
risen.
Everything would be readyexcept Hamanu's history.
There were no distractions in the cloister, no excuses left unused. There was nothing but this
last night before Pavek's arrival and the sheaf of virgin vellum. With an unappreciated sigh,
Hamanu smeared oil on the ink stone and swirled the stylus in a black pool.
He'd thought it would be easy, but he'd never told the whole story, the true story, to anyone
including himself and, with the stars sliding toward dawn, he still didn't know where to start.
"Recount," he urged himself. "Begin at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end, but, at the
very least, begin!"
*****
You know me as Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of the World, King of the Mountains and
the Plains, the Great King, the Mighty King, King of the World. I am the bulwark of war and of
peace wherever I hang my shield.
My generosity is legend... and capricious. My justice is renowned... for its cruelty. My name
is an instrument of vengeance whispered in shadows. My eyes are the conscience of my city.
In Urik, I am called god, and god I am, but I did not choose to be anyone's god, least of all
my own.
I was not born immortal, invincible, or eternal.
I was born a human infant more than a thousand years ago, in the waning years of the 176th
King's Age. As the sun ascended in the Year of Dragon's Contemplation, my mother took to the
straw and bore me, the fifth of my father's sons. She named me Manu, and before my black hair
dried, she had wrapped me in linen and carried me to the Gelds, where my kin harvested himali. My
father tucked a golden ear between my swaddled hands. He lifted me and the ripened grain toward
the sun.
He gave thanks for the gifts of life, for healthy children and bountiful harvests. Without the
gifts of life, a man would be forever poor; with them, he needed nothing more.
The women who had attended my mother and followed her to the fields passed around hot
himali cakes sweetened with honey and young wine. All my kinfrom my father's father's mother
to a cousin born ten days before meand the other families of Deche, our village, joined the
celebration of a life beginning. Before sundown, all the women had embraced me, that I might
know I was cherished. Each man had lofted me gently above his head and caught me again, that I
might know the safety of strong hands around me.
I remember this because my mother often told me the story while I was still young and
because such were the customs of a Deche family whenever a child was born. Yet, I also remember
the day of my birth because now I am Hamanu and my memory is not what it was when I was a
mortal man. I remember everything that has happened to me. After a thousand years, most of what I
remember is a repetition of something else; I cannot always say with certainty when a thing
happened, only that it did, many, many times.
Perfect memory is another portion of the curse Rajaat placed on the champions he created: I
am jaded by my memories. Every day, I seek a new experience, one that does not echo endlessly
through my past. I delve deeper and deeper into the mire of mortal passion, hoping for a moment I
have not lived before, but I was born once, and once only. The memory of that day still shines as
bright as the sun, as bright as my mother and father's faces.
Deche was a pleasant, prosperous place to be a child. It was pleasant because every family
was well housed and well fed; my grandfather's family was the best housed and best fed of all. It
was prosperous because the Cleansing Wars had raged since the 174th King's Age, and armies
always need what villages provide: fighters and food.
Deche owed its existence to the wars. My ancestors had followed Myron Troll-Scorcher's
first sweep through the northeastern heartland when the Rebirth races humankind's younger

cousins: elves, dwarves, trolls, gnomes, pixies, and all the others except halflingswere cast out.
My ancestors were farmers, though, not fighters. Once the army turned the trolls into refugees, my
ancestors settled in a Kreegill Mountain valley, east of Yaramuke.
But Deche had never been a troll village. The trolls were mountain dwellers, stone-men
miners and quarriers. Throughout their history, they traded with the other races for their food and
necessities. That was their mistake, their doom.
Dependence made them vulnerable. Myron of Yoram the first Troll-Scorchercould have
sealed the trolls in the Kreegills and their other strongholds. He could have starved them out in a
score of years. He would have needed sorcery, of course, if he'd besieged them, and sorcery would
have laid waste to the Kreegills. The valleys would have become ash and dust. Deche wouldn't have
been founded. I wouldn't have been born....
So much would have been different if Myron Troll-Scorcher had been different. Not better,
certainly not for Urik, which would never have risen to glory without me. Simply different. But
Myron of Yoram was what he was: a vast, sweeping fool who drove the trolls out of the Kreegills
with a vast, sweeping advance. He turned the stone-men into the stone-hearted fighters that his
army could never again defeat.
Later, when I was the Troll-Scorcher, it was different. Much different. But that was later.
When I was born, the pixies were gone, the ogres and the centaurs, too. The center of the
heartlandwhat was left of the once-green heartland after the Pixie-Blight, the Ogre-Naught, and
the Centaur-Crusher had purged those races from itbelonged to humankind. The remaining wars
were fought along the perimeter. Myron of Yoram fought trolls in the far northeast, where the
barrens reach beyond sunrise to the middle of last night.
Once the trolls abandoned the Kreegills, it was destiny that human farmers would clear the
valleys. All the rest was destiny, too.
After my birth, my destiny was tied to the Troll-Scorcher in ways that no one in Deche had
the wisdom or magic to foresee. We weren't ignorant of our place in the Cleansing Wars. Twice a
year, our grain-loaded wagons rumbled down to the plains where the Troll-Scorcher's bailiffs
bought and sold. Men went down with the wagons; women, too. They gave their names to the
bailiffs and got a weapon in return.
Sometimesnot oftenveterans returned to Deche. My middle brother didn't, but an uncle
had, years before I was born. He'd lost one leg above the knee, the other below, to a single swipe
from a troll-held axe. In time, all of his children made their way to the bailiffs. One of those cousins
returned when I was ten. He had all his limbs, but his eyes were haunted, and his wits had been
seared. He cried out in his dreams, and his wife would not sleep beside him.
I asked him what had happened, what had he seen?
"Fire," he said. "Fire as bright as the sun. Trolls screaming as their skin burned. Flames
exploding from their eyes."
My cousin's words frightened me. I saw what he had seen, as if it were my own memory... as
it is my own memory, now. When the Troll-Scorcher slew, he slew by fire that consumed from
within. That was Rajaat's sorcery: all his champions can kill anything with a thought. Each
champion had and retains a unique killing way that brings terror as well as death. But I was ten and
ignorant of my destiny. With frightened tears on my cheeks, I ran from my cousin to my father.
"Don't make me go. Don't send me to the trolls! I don't want to see the fire-eyes!"
Father held me in his arms until I was myself again. He told me there was never any
shortage of folk who wanted to join the Troll-Scorcher's army. If I didn't want to fight, I could stay
in Deche all my life, if I wanted to, as he, my father, had done. As I clung to him, believing his
words with all my heart and taking comfort from them, Dorean joined us. Silently, she took my
hand between hers and brought it to her cheek.
She kissed my trembling fingertips.
It was likely that Dorean was a few years older than I; no one knew for certain. She'd been
born far to the east of the Kreegills, where the war between the trolls and the Troll-Scorcher was an
everyday reality. Maybe she'd been born in a village. More likely she'd been born in one of the

wagons that followed the army wherever it went. Then her luck ran out. Myron of Yoram, whose
idea of a picket line was a man holding the thong of a sack of rancid broy, left his flank unguarded.
Troll marauders nipped his ribs, and Dorean was an orphan.
The bailiffs brought her out of danger; they did that out of their own conscienceloading
their empty wagons with orphans and the wounded and bringing them back where trolls hadn't been
seen in generations. Later, when the army was mine, I would remember what the bailiffs had done
and reward them. But that day when I was ten and I looked beyond my father's arms, my eyes
beheld Dorean's beauty for the first time, and the untimely vision of living torches was banished
from my mind's eye.
"I will stay with you, Manu."
Surely Dorean had spoken to me before, but I had never truly heard her voice and, though I
was young, I knew that I had found the missing piece of my heart.
"I will take Dorean as my wife," I told my father, my tears and fears already forgotten. "I
will build her a house beneath the cool trees, and she will give me children. You must tell
Grandfather. He cannot handfast her with anyone else."
My father laughed. He was a big man with a barrel chest. His laugh carried from one side of
Deche to the other. Dorean blushed. She ran away with her hands held against her ears, but she
wasn't displeased
And Father spoke with Grandfather.
I had six years to fall in love with Dorean, and her with me. Six years to build a tree-shaded
house. Six years, too, to perfect my wedding dance. I confess I spent more time up in the troll ruins
perfecting my dance to the tunes my youngest brother piped than I did making mud bricks for the
walls of Dorean's house.
In the way of children, I'd forgotten my cousin's memories of trolls with flaming eyes. I
suppose I'd even forgotten the tears that first drew Dorean to my side. But something of my mad
cousin's vision must have lingered in the neglected depths of my memory. I never followed the
himali wagons down to the plains, yet the trolls fascinated me, and I spent many days exploring
their ruined homes high in the Kreegills.
The script of my own race remained meaningless to me, but I deciphered the inscriptions I
found on the troll monuments. I learned their names and the names of the gods they chiseled into
the stone they'd quarried. I saw how they'd panicked when they saw the Troll-Scorcher's army in the
valleys below them, abandoning their homes, leaving everything behind.
Stone bowls sat on stone tables, waiting for soup that would never be served.
Their benches were made from stone, their beds, too; I was awed by what I imagined as their
strength, their hardness. In time, I identified the tattered remnants of their blankets and mattresses in
the dust-catcher corners, but my awe was, by then, entrenched.
Rock-headed mauls lay where they'd fallen beside half-cut stone. Their erdland-bone hafts
had withstood the winds and weather of two king's ages. I could guess the damage such things
could do to a human skull. But the mauls weren't weapons; I never found any weapons more deadly
than a single-edged knife in the stone ruins.
In truth, the trolls were a placid race until Rajaat raised his champions and the champions
raised their armies. Myron of Yoram taught the trolls to fear, to fight, and, finally, to hate the very
thought of humankind. Yet, it is also true that Deche and the trolls could have prospered together in
the Kreegill, if Rajaat had not interfered. Men did not quarry, and trolls did not farm. By the time I
was born, though, there was no mercy left in either race. It was too late for peace, too late for
anything but annihilation. Rajaat and the Troll-Scorcher had seen to that.
It was too late for Dorean. My beautiful bride remembered her life before Deche and could
not bear the mention of trolls. To her, the gray-skinned trolls were evil incarnate. As the sun rose
each day, she slipped outside the village and made a burnt-honey victory offering for the TrollScorcher. Her hatred was understandable: she'd seen trolls and their carnage. I'd seen only their
ruins. My thoughts about trolls were whirling mysteries, even to me.
In Deche, boys became men on their sixteenth birthday. I could have taken Dorean into my

almost-finished house, but the elders asked us to wait until the next himali crop was in the ground.
Dorean and I were already lovers; the delay was no hardship to us. We would be wedded before our
child was born.
The day of my birth looms bright in my memory, but the day that looms largest was the
Height of Sun in my seventeenth yearthe Year of Enemy's Vengeance, the day Dorean and I were
to be wed. I remember the bloody sun as it rose over the Kreegill ridge, the spicy aromas of the food
the women began to serve, the sounds of laughter, congratulations, and my cousin's pipes as I began
the dance I had practiced for years. With music and motion, I told the world that I would cherish
Dorean, protect her, and keep her safe from all harm.
I was still dancing when drumbeats began to echo off the mountains above us. For a handful
of heartbeats, the throbbing was part of my dance. Then my crippled uncle screamed, "Wardrums!"
and another veteran shouted, "Trolls!" as he bolted from the feast.
We had no time to flee or hide, scarcely enough time for panic. Trolls surged into Deche
from every quarter, their battle-axes swinging freely. As I remember now, with greater knowledge
and the hindsight of thirteen ages, I know there could not have been more than twenty trolls, not
counting the drummers hiding outside the village. But that morning, my eyes beheld hundreds of
gray-skinned beasts wearing polished armor and bearing bloody weapons.
Fear made me bold, reckless. I had no weapons and wouldn't have known what to do with a
sword, axe, or spear, if one had suddenly blossomed in my hands. In the midst of screaming
confusion, I charged the nearest troll with my naked fists and never saw the blow that laid me flat.
I've been spared the true history of that day, with all its horror and agony: not even Rajaat's
champions can hope or dreadthe memory of what happened while they lay unconscious. I
choose to believe that the village was dead before the butchery began, that all my kith and kin died
swiftly, and that Dorean died first of all. My mind knows that I deceive my heart, because my mind
learned what the trolls did when they defeated humanity: Their women drew our men's guts through
slits in their bellies or broke apart their ribs and seized their still-beating hearts. What their men did
to our women, no matter their age or beauty, would be best forgotten
If I could forget.
Vengeance was mine, in the fullness of time; my conscience does not trouble me, but I am
grateful that I cannot remember Deche's desecration. Destiny had dealt me a glancing blow to the
side of my head, then destiny covered me in the refuse of what would have been my wedding feast
and my home. The trolls didn't spare me, they simply didn't find me.
The sun had set when I next opened my eyes. My head was on fire, but that wasn't what
made me blink. A half-congealed drop of blood struck my cheek as I lay there wondering how I'd
survived, wishing I hadn't. The eviscerated corpse of someone I had known, but no longer
recognized, hung directly above me. I was showered with gore and offal.
When I'd conquered my despair, I could hear flames crackling nearbythe source of the
light that had revealed the corpse. I heard the deep-throated laughter of drunkenness.
Trolls, I thought. They'd massacred Deche and stayed to celebrate their deeds in its ruins. I
had no notion how many trolls remained, nor any hope that my second attack against them would be
more successful than my first. I didn't much care either way. My fingers explored the ground beside
me and clutched a rock somewhat larger than my fist. Armed with it and numb courage, I gained my
feet and lunged for the nearest head.
She seemed twice my size in the firelight. Drunk or not, she heard me coming and swatted
me down. I was laid out on the damp ground, staring at the sky with a sore head, a busted lip, and
tears leaking out my eyes. A score of strangers laughed. When I tried to stand, someone planted a
foot on my chest.
He'd've been wiser to kick me senseless: I still had my rock and put it to good use.
The man went down, and I got up, trying to connect what I saw with what I remembered. I
remembered trolls, but the drunken sods were human. They'd been guzzling Deche wine, keeping
warm around a fire built from chairs, tables, and doors. Carnage was everywhere: hacked apart
bodies, bodies with their faces torn off. Bugs were already crawling, and the stench

The sods didn't notice, or didn't care, but I'd never smelt violent death before. I gaped like an
erdlu hatchling and coughed up acid from my gut.
"You from around here, boy?"
I turned toward the voice
And saw what the trolls had done to her, to my Dorean. Dead or alive, they'd torn away her
wedding gown and bound her to the post beside the village well. Her face was gone, her breasts,
too; she was clothed in blood and viscera. I recognized her by her long, black hair, the yellow
flowers in it, and the unborn child whose cord they'd tied around her neck.
A scream was born in my heart and died there. I couldn't move, not even to turn away or fall.
"What's your name, boy?" another sod demanded.
My mind was empty; I didn't know.
"Can't talk. Doesn't know his name. Must be the village loon."
"Hungry, loon?"
Another voice, maybe a new one, maybe not. I heard the words as if they came from a great
distance. A warm, moist clod struck my arm and landed in the dirt at my feet. My mind said stewpot meat, but my heart said something else. More clods came my way, more laughter, too. I began
to shiver uncontrollably.
"Clamp your maws!" a woman interrupted sharply.
Hard hands grasped my shoulders and spun me around. I lost my balance and leaned against
the womanthe best of a sorry lot of humanityI'd attacked with the rock. She was shorter than I,
but numb and hopeless, I needed her strength.
"Dolts! Can't you guess? This was his village, his folk"
"Why ain't he strung-out dead, like the rest of them?"
"He's the loon"
"He ran off. Turned his yellow tail and ran."
I stiffened with rage, but the woman held me tight. Her eyes told me to be quiet.
"He got conked, that's what," she said, defending me.
Her hand brushed my hair. It was a gentle touch, but it awakened the pain both in my skull
and in my heart. I flinched away with a gasp.
"Clipped him hard. He's lucky he's not dead or blind."
Luckythe very last word I would have chosen, but it broke the spell that had bound my
voice.
"My name is Manu," I told them. "This place was called Deche. It was my home until the
trolls came this morning. Who are you? Why are you here? Why do you eat with the dead?"
"You hear that?" one of the sods said with a drunken hoot. " 'Why do you eat with the
dead'fancy talk for a moon-touched farm boy."
I knew who they were by then. There was, truly, only one possibility: These were the
soldiers of the Troll-Scorcher's army. They'd pursued their enemymy enemyback to the
Kreegills.
"Where are the trolls? Have you avenged our deaths?"
There were more hoots and wails of laughter until an otherwise silent yellow-haired man got
to his feet. The mockery died, but looking into this veteran's cold, hard eyes, I was not reassured.
"You ain't dead yet, farm boy, 'less you're tryin' to get yourself killed w' fancy words."
He had the air of leadership about him, just as my grandfather had had. The woman beside
me had gone soft with fear. His stare lashed me like a whip. I was expected to fear him, too. And I
did. I'd measured myself against the Troll-Scorcher's soldiers and knew myself to be less than the
least of them in every way save one: I was cleverer. I could see them for what they were. They
scorned me, so I stood tall. They mocked my speech, so I chose my words with extra care.
"I'll speak plainly: We farmers are told the-Troll-Scorcher's army swears an oath to uphold
our race and pursue each and every troll to an unhallowed grave. I see how you uphold the folk of
Deche; now show me the trolls in their unhallowed graves."

The yellow-haired man cocked his fist, but my clothes were stained with the blood of my
kith and kin. While I met his stare with one of my own, he didn't dare strike me.
"Where are the trolls?" I demanded. "Have they returned to the plains? Have they ravished
Corlane as they ravished Deche?" Corlane was another Kreegill village, somewhat higher in the
valley. "Have they vanished into the mountains above us? I know their old places. I can take you to
them."
Behind my eyes I saw the folk of Corlane not as I had known them, but as my own people
were: mutilated, faceless, and bleeding. I felt nothing for them; I felt nothing at all, except the need
for vengeance.
"You can slaughter them as they slaughtered Deche."
"Slaughter!" the yellow-haired man snorted. "Us? Us slaughtering trolls? Risking our lives
for the likes of them... or you?"
There was a secret in his eyes. I saw that, and a challenge. He'd answer my questions if I had
the guts, the gall, to ask them, but he didn't think I'd survive the knowing. Perhaps, I wouldn't have
if he hadn't tempered me, then and there, in his contempt.
"Why are you here?" I demanded, returning to my earlier questions. "Why do you feast with
the dead as witnesses?
Why don't you hunt and slaughter the trolls who hunted and slaughtered us?"
The yellow-haired man smiled. His teeth were stained, and one was sharpened to a fang
point. "That's for the Troll-Scorcher, boy. He's the one, the only one, who slays trolls. We hunt 'em,
boy, an' hunt 'em an' hunt 'em, but that's all we do. He comes an' scorches 'em. We touch one gray
wart an' we'd be the ones getting cindered-up from the inside out. I seen it happen, boy. This"he
cocked his callused thumb at poor Dorean"this ain't nothing, boy, compared to scorching. Trolls
could take you an' yours a thousand times, an' it don't matter to me, so long as there's trolls for
scorchin' when he comes."
I stood mute, strung between disgust and rage. The woman beside me squeezed my arm.
"It's the truth, boy," she said.
Swallowing my disgust, I let my rage speak, soft, slow, and cold. "Where is Myron of
Yoram?" I asked. "When does the Troll-Scorcher come?" I thought I knew the answer, but I needed
to hear it.
Another smile from the yellow-haired man. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. We been
following these trolls since the start of High Sun." The grin soured. "He knows where we are, boy.
He'll come when it suits him, not before. Till then, we follow the trolls an' we follow 'em close, so
no man knows we're here."
"I'm a man," I said, "I know."
He drew a bone knife from his belt. "Trolls leave meat behind, not men."
I should have died. Everything I loved and cherished had already died. Their shades called
me through the darkness. I belonged with Deche, with my family, with my beloved. But my rage
was stronger and my thirst for vengeance against trolls, men, and Myron of Yoram couldn't be
slaked by death. A voice I scarcely recognized as my own stirred in my throat.
"Take me with you," I said. "Let me follow the trolls with you until the Troll-Scorcher
comes."
"A good-for-nothing farmer's boy? What can you do, boybesides dig furrows in the dirt?"
"I'll keep him," the woman, still beside me, said before I could speak.
"Jikkana! Jikkana! You break my heart," another man cried out in mock grief. "He's a boy.
He won't last ten nights in your bed!"
She spun around. "My second-best knife says he lasts longer than you did!"
Her knife was never at risk.
*****

A lavender glow had appeared above the painted mountains on the eastern wall of Hamanu's
cloister. The quiet of night gave way to the barked commands of the day-watch officers taking their
posts along the city's walls. Another Urik morning had begun. Setting his stylus aside, Urik's king
massaged his cramped fingers. Bold, black characters marched precisely across several sheets of
pearly vellum. Several more lay scrunched and scattered through the neglected garden. Two sheets
remained untouched.
"I'll need more vellum," Hamanu mused, "and more time."

Chapter Four
The heat of day had come again to Urik. Here and there, insect swarms raised raucous
chorus. All other creatures, if they had the wit and freedom, sought shelter from the sun's brutal
strength. Throughout Hamanu's domain, the din of commerce faded, and labor's pace slowed to a
snore. Mindless mirage sprites danced across the burning pavement of the city's deserted market
squares, while merchants of every variety dozed in the oppressive shade of their stalls.
Beyond the city walls, in the green fields and villages, workers set aside tools and napped
beside their beasts. Farther away, in the gaping complex of mountain pits that was the Urikite
obsidian mines, overseers drank cool, fruited tea beneath leather awnings and the wretched mass of
slaves received a few hours' rest and unrestricted access to the water barrels.
No great mercy there, the king reminded himself as he, like the distant slaves, sipped water
from a wooden ladle in the shadows of the peasant cloister, deep within his palace. While he'd lived,
Borys, the Dragon of Tyr, had levied a thousand lives each year from each champion to maintain the
spells around Rajaat's prison. The obsidian mines required even more livestoo many more lives
to keep Urik secure.
Letting slaves rest each afternoon insured that they'd live to hack at the black veins for a few
more days. The life span of a mine slave was rarely more than two seventy-five-day quinths of the
three-hundred-seventy-five-day Athasian year. An obsidian sword didn't last much longer, chipping
and flaking into uselessness. Maintaining the balance between able-bodied slaves and the baskets of
sharp-edged ore Urik's defense required was one task Hamanu refused to delegate to his templars. It
was his age-old decree that gave the wretches their daily rest and the threat of his intervention that
kept the templar overseers obediently under their awning.
It certainly wasn't mercy.
Mercy was standing here, concealing his presence from Pavek, who'd fallen asleep in the
shade of one of the dead fruit-trees. Waking the scar-faced man would have been as easy as
breathing out, but Hamanu resisted the temptation that was, truly, no temptation at all. He could
experience a mortal's abject terror anytime; the sweet-dreaming sleep of an exhausted man was
precious and tare.
As soon as he'd returned to the city yesterday afternoon, Enver had sent a messenger to the
palace, begging a full day's recovery before he resumed his duties. Faithful Pavek, however, had
visited his Urik house only long enough to bathe and change his travel-stained clothes. He appeared
at the palace gates as the sun was setting and passed a good part of the moonlit night reading the
vellum sheets still spread across the worktable.
Pavek was a clever man; he'd had no difficulty reading Hamanu's narrative or understanding
its implications, but, mostly, Pavek was an upright man who radiated his emotions as fire shed heat.
This morning, he'd radiated an intense unwillingness to talk about what he'd read. Hamanu had
honored that reluctance in his own way, by putting the novice druid to work in his lifeless garden.
Naked tree stumps and neatly tied bales of twigs and straw testified to Pavek's diligent labor
at least until exhaustion had claimed him. He sprawled across the fresh-cleared dirt, legs crooked
and one arm tucked under his cheek, as careless as a child. Images, not unlike the heat mirages
above the market squares, shimmered above Pavek's gently moving ribs, though unlike a true
mirage, which any mortal could observe, only Hamanu could see the wispy substance of the
templar's dreams.

They were a simple man's dreams: the shapes of Pavek's loved ones as they lived within
him. There was a woman at his dream's shimmering center; Hamanu's human lips curved into an
appreciative smile. She was blond and beautiful and, having met her one momentous night in
Quraite, the Lion of Urik knew his ugly templar didn't embellish her features. Hamanu didn't know
her name; there weren't enough mortal names to label all the faces in thirteen ages of memory. He
recalled her by the texture of her spirit and through the uncompromising honesty of Pavek's dream.
The blond druid had fallen afoul of Hamanu's one-time favorite, Elabon Escrissar, during the
zarneeka crisis that had first brought Pavek to Hamanu's attention. Scars of abuse, disgrace, and
torment entwined beneath her loveliness. She'd healed somewhat in the years since Hamanu had last
seen her, but she'd heal more if she'd accept the love, as well as the friendship, his high templar
offered her. She might, in time; women often grew wise in the ways of mortal hearts, and she'd been
raised by the archdruid, Telhami, who was among the wisest of women.
Or, she might not. Bitter scars might offer more consistency and security than any man's
love.
Regarding mortal frailty and apologies, Hamanu had seen almost everything in his life; very
little surprised anymoreor intrigued him. Enver's father, who'd lived two hundred fifty-six years,
had begun to see the world with immortal detachment shortly before he died. Pavek, though, was a
young man, and the woman he loved was younger still. Men and women lived longer and in greater
variety than flowers, but Hamanu had seen how fast they witheredespecially when he embraced
them.
He gestured subtly with an index finger. Pavek sighed, and the woman's dream images
collapsed into one another, then reformed. There was a boy above Pavek's shoulder, a sturdy blackhaired boy who smiled too easily to have been raised in a templar orphanage, as Pavek had been. In
the quirky way of memory, Hamanu remembered learning the boy's name, Zvain, in another part of
this palace a little more than two years ago. He recalled the name because it was uncommon in Urik
and because the taste of the boy's shame and misery had been as honey on his immortal tongue.
Zvain was another mortal who'd been scarred by Escrissar and by Telhami, too. He was an
orphan through no fault of his own and a survivor because when he'd needed a hand, the hand he'd
seized was Pavek's.
It was almost enough to make one of Rajaat's champions believe in justice and higher
powers.
But for every Zvain who triumphed over his destiny, there were ten copper-hued Ruaris
hovering behind him. The youthful half-elf of Pavek's dream was handsome, proud... brittle, and
oh-so-appetizing to a jaded king who craved the passions of his subjects. Just as well that Pavek had
left his unforgettably vulnerable friend behind in Quraite. Even in another man's dream, Ruari's
dark needs cried out, and copper eyes flashed green as the distant spirit responded to a champion's
hunger-Then vanished with a yawn as Pavek levered himself up on his elbows.
"Great One!" the bleary-eyed templar muttered. Confusion reigned in his thoughts. He didn't
know if he should stand and bow or remain where he was with his face pressed against the dirt.
"I disturbed your dreams," Hamanu admitted.
Pavek's eyes widened; he made his decision. His head dropped like a stone, and he
prostrated himself in the dirt.
"Great One, I don't remember"
Which was a lie; honest men told lies to protect the truth.
Pavek didn't want to remember his dream, but Ruari's face floated on the surface of his
thoughts and would not sink could not sinkuntil Hamanu released it, whereupon the burly
human shivered despite the oppressive heat.
"When I asked you to set my garden in order," Hamanu began mildly, "I expected you to
demonstrate your mastery of druid spellcraft. I didn't expect you to work yourself to exhaustion
digging in the dirt with hand tools."
Hamanu told a lie of his own to balance Pavek's. He knew there was no magic save his own
in Urik's palace and that his magic had doomed this cloister. He'd hoped, of course, that Pavek

might waken his guardian to infuse this barren soil with new vigor, but, in truth, Hamanu would
have been disappointed if Pavek had obeyed him with any force more potent than sweat or brawn.
"If you wanted an overnight forest, Great One, you should have summoned someone else."
As always, Pavek's stubborn honesty won out over the combined might of his fear and good sense.
"Another druid?" Hamanu asked; teasing mortalstormenting themwas low treatment of
those with no means to oppose him, but it did stave off his more dire cravings. "Your friends,
perhaps? Ruari? That blond woman who means so much to youas you mean so little to her? Tell
me her name, Pavek; I've forgotten."
"Akashia, Great One," Pavek admitted softly; a templar could not disobey his king's direct
command. The man's shoulders shook as he pushed himself to his knees. "She'd sooner die than
serve you, Great One, but even if you compelled her to come, she could do no more than what I've
done. Nothing will grow here. The soil has been scorched."
And what, a champion might ask, had brought that particular word to Pavek's mind? "Do I
compel you, Pavek?" Hamanu asked instead, less benignly than before.
"I don't know, Great One. To hear your voice, Great OneTo feel you in my mind" His
chin sagged again.
"Do you feel compelled? Did you feel compelled when Enver brought you a plain ink
message written on plainer vellum?"
"You know where Quraite is, Great One. They have no protection from your wrath, should
you choose to punish them. How could I refuse?"
Pavek spoke to the dirt. His eyes were closed. He expected to die in a thousand horrible
ways, but nothing would keep him from telling the truth as he understood it. And yet, irony of
ironies, of all those living under Athas's bloody sun, Pavek was among the very few who had
nothing to fear from the Lion-King. He didn't need to fear for his precious Quraite; Telhami had
secured the enclave's perpetual security long before Pavek's grandparents were born.
"I grant you the right to refuse to serve me, Pavek. Even now, I grant you that. Walk through
that door. Leave, and know in your heart that I will never follow you. The decision is yours,"
Hamanu said, and within his illusion of human flesh and saffron-dyed linen, what remained of his
own mortal heart beat faster.
Hamanu inhaled his Unseen influence: his power to bend a man's thoughts according to his
own desire. The world grew quiet and dulled as his senses shrank to mortal dimensions. He truly
didn't know what Pavek would choose to do. When Telhami left, he'd had the fortitude to keep his
word; others hadn't been so lucky. Hamanu didn't know what he would do after Pavek made his
choice. The stakes were high, but even after thirteen ages of dominion over his city, the thought that
one puny mortal might deny him was acid goad between his ribs.
Pavek grasped a shovel's handle and used it to rise. "I've been a templar too long," he said as
he thrust the shovel into the ground. Leaving it upright in the dirt, Pavek touched a golden chain
barely visible beneath his shirt's neck. "Tell me to come, and I'll come. Tell me to leave, and I'll go.
Ask me to choose, and I'll stay where I am because I am what I am."
Hamanu exhaled and resumed command of the world around him. Through the golden
medallion hung on the golden chain Pavek wound between his fingers, Hamanu felt his templar's
heart, the vibrations of his thoughts. Honesty had again prevailed.
Peering into himself, Hamanu found a morass of questions he couldn't hope to answer. Had
he expected anything else? Would he have allowed Pavek his freedom if there'd been any risk that
the habits of a lifetime were less strong than a champion's power to compel? He was the last of
Rajaat's champions, and his powers had become habits, as deeply ingrained as any templar's. Ages
ago, the landscape of his own tortured psyche had fascinated him, but after a thousand years,
introspection had lost its allure. He, too, was what he was.
His eyes met Pavek's. Despite the fear, distrust, and habit that permeated the templar's being,
he didn't flinch. Perhaps that was all a champion could hope for: a man who could return his stare.
A stare would have to be sufficient for the moment. Pavek wasn't the only templar with a
hold over Hamanu's attention. Someone else had wrapped a hand around a medallion. With

lightning quickness, Hamaau identified the medallion's steel and gemstones and the confident hand
that held it.
Commandant Javed.
A spark of recognition flowed through the netherworld to the war-bureau templar. When it
bridged the gap to Javed's medallion, the two were joined in Hamanu's thoughts. He'd sent
Windreaver off in search of the Shadow-Kingthe disembodied troll would learn things no mortal
couldbut he'd sent his own champion to spy on the Shadow-King's army. He wasn't surprised that
the commandant was returning to Urik first.
Recount! he demanded, because it was easier to listen than to rummage blindly through
chaotic thoughts. Where is this host that the Shadow-King marches across our purview?
Gone to shadows, like their king, Great One, as soon as they saw our dust on the horizon,
Javed recounted. The women and their mercenaries fled rather than face us.
Hamanu scowled. For ages, he and Gallard, Bane of Gnomes, had skirmished on the barren
borders of their domains, tempering their troops and probing for a decisive advantage. Never before
had the Nibenese fled the field. He raked the surface of the elf's mind, gathering up images of an
abandoned camp: cooling hearths, empty trenches, empty kank pens.
But not one thing of value, Hamanu mused for his commandant's benefit. Not one
overturned cook pot or bale of forage. They'd planned that withdrawal from the beginning.
So it would seem, Great OneJaved agreed, but not before Hamanu plunged deeper into his
memories. I'm coming, Great One! The elf's thoughts exploded in the gray ether of the netherworld.
Urik's templars did not generally study the Unseen Path. Its secrets were rooted in powers
that Hamanu couldn't control as he controlled the elemental magic he released through the
medallions. He made exceptions for commandants and other high-ranking templars, whose thoughts
might be subject to scrutiny from Urik's enemies. As a mind-bender, Javed could not prevail against
his king, but he could sound an alarm, which Hamanu wisely heeded.
I'm coming, Great One, the commandant repeated, expanding his consciousness to include
the thundering kank that he, an elf of the wilderness, rode out of deference to his kingbecause the
bug could carry him faster than his own venerable legs.
The green haze of Urik's irrigated farmland hugged the forward horizon in Javed's sight.
Great One, grant me swift passage through Modekan, to the gates of Urik, and beyond.
Templarseven exalted commandants, like Javed, or gold-wearers, like Pavekcould use
their medallions to communicate directly with their king, but never with each other. If the
commandant wanted to avoid a confrontation with the civil-bureau templars who stood watch over
the wheel-spoke roads into Urik, much less if he wanted to ride a racing kank clear to the gates of
Hamanu's palace itself, the Lion of Urik would have to make the arrangements.
There were laws that not even Javed was above, and foremost among them was Hamanu's
injunction against beasts of burden on his city's immaculate streets. It was a wise law that did more
than improve the sight and scent of Urik; it kept down the vermin and disease as well. But a man
did not reign for thirteen ages without learning when to set his most cherished laws aside.
Granted, Hamanu said. He broke their Unseen connection.
Hamanu summoned the distinctive rooftops of the Modekan barracks from his memory and
made them real. Peering out of the netherworld, he watched a score of drowsy, yellow-robed
templars clutch their medallions in shock. As one, they turned bloodless faces toward the sky where,
by the Lion's whim, a pair of slitted, sulphurous eyes had opened above them.
"The Champion of Urik approaches."
Hamanu projected his voice from the palace to the village, where every templar heard it, and
the rest of Modekan, too. Cheers went up, and the village gong began a frantic clanging. If he
weren't absolutely confident of Javed's loyalty, Hamanu would have been greatly displeased by the
elf's popularity. He had to shout his commands.
"The Champion is not to be challenged or impeded. Clear the road to Urik for his swift
passage."

Discipline was lax in the village barracks: half the templars dropped to their knees; the rest
thumped their breasts in salute. But Hamanu's will would be carried outhe caressed each and
every templar's spirit with the razor edge of his wrath before he closed his eyes. The king made a
similar appearance above Urik's southern gate before he blinked and brought his focus back to the
cloister.
Pavek still stared at him. Though medallion conversation was inviolate, Pavek had heard the
spoken commands and drawn his own conclusions.
"Commandant Javed, Great One?" he asked. "Is Urik in danger, Great One?" The other
questions in Pavek's mindIs that why you summoned me? Do you expect me to try to summon
the guardian?went unspoken, though not, of course, unheard.
"You may judge for yourself, Pavek," Hamanu suggested, both generous and demanding. He
let the human glamour fade from his eyes and, at last, the templar looked away.
There was enough time for the palace slaves to bathe Pavek with scented soaps and clothe
him in finery from the king's own wardrobe. The silks skimmed Pavek's shoulders and fell a
fashionable length against his arms and legs. By measurement alone, Pavek cut a commanding
figure, but he had no majesty. He followed Hamanu into an audience chamber looking exactly like
what he was: a common man in borrowed clothes.
The sorcerer-kings, of which Hamanu was one, had built palaces with monumental throne
halls meant to belittle the mortals who entered them. Hamanu's hall had a jewel-encrusted throne
that made his back ache no matter how he disguised his body. Even so, circumstance occasionally
demanded that he receive supplicants in his fullest panoply, and ache. He wondered, sometimes,
how the others endured itif they knew some sleight of sorcery he'd overlooked or if they simply
suffered less because they did not starve themselves and carried more flesh on their immortal bones.
Most likely, the others enjoyed their spectacles, as Hamanu did not. He'd had little enough in
common with his peers in the beginning, and nothing had since brought them closer together. He'd
seen less of them than he saw of the slaves who clipped his illusory toenails. In truth, Hamanu was
a peer unto himself alone. His closest companions were his own thoughts, and the places where he
actually dwelt reflected that isolation.
Hamanu preferred to conduct Urik's state affairs in an austere chamber where a pair of
freestanding, ever-luminous torches, a marble bench, and a black boulder set in fine, gray sand were
the only furnishings. Water rippled magically over the boulder and, as Hamanu entered the chamber,
it began to flow down three of the four rough-hewn walls. The liquid murmur soothed Hamanu's
nerves and awed the novice druid, who stifled his curiosity about the spells that made it flow. But
the waterfalls had a simple purpose: conversations in this chamber couldn't be overheard by any
means, physical or arcane.
"Sit," Hamanu told Pavek as he, himself, began to pace around the glistening boulder with
martial precision. "Javed has passed beneath the gates. He'll be here soon."
Pavek obeyed. He focused his mind on the water flowing over the boulder, and his thoughts
grew quiet. Then Pavek's thoughts vanished into the sand. Hamanu ceased his pacing. He could see
the man with his eyes, hear his breathing, and the steady beat of his heart, but the Unseen presence
by which the Lion-King observed his templars and any living creature that captured his attention
was suddenly and completely missing.
Not even Telhami had mastered that feat.
The guardian, Hamanu told himself, the druidic essence of Urik that shunned an unnatural
creature forged of Rajaat's sorcery, but heeded the call of a very ordinary man. The Lion of Urik
cast an imperceptible sphere around his druid-templar and let it expand, hoping to detect some
perturbation in the netherworld that would illuminate the guardian's disposition.
He found nothing and was contemplating the implications of magic that could nullify a
man's thoughts and elude a champion's scrutiny when trumpets announced Commandant Javed's
approach. Hamanu touched the minds of the guards in the corridor, and the high bronze doors
swung open to admit the elf who'd held the title, Champion of Urik, for forty years.
The elf was tall for his kind. He stood head and shoulders above Pavek, above Hamanu,

himself, in his human glamour. His skin and hair were as black as the boulder in the middle of the
chamberor they would have been if he hadn't ridden hard and come directly to his king. Road
dust streaked the commandant from head to foot; he almost looked his age. Pavek, who was, by
rank, Javed's superior, offered his seat on the marble bench.
Javed bent his leg to Hamanu, then turned to Pavek. "I've sat too long already, my lord. It
does an old elf good to stand on his own feet awhile."
Which was true, as far as it went. Hamanu could feel the aches of Javed's old bones and
travel-battered wounds. He could have ignored them, as he ignored his own aches, but accorded the
commandant an empathic honor Javed would never suspect.
"May I hold this for you?" Pavekever the third-rank regulatorasked, reaching for the
leather-wrapped parcel Javed carried under one arm.
But the parcel was the reason Javed had raced across the barrens and risked his king's wrath
with a mind-bender's shield. The commandant had a paternal affection for the scar-faced Pavek; but
he wouldn't entrust this parcel to anyone but his king.
"What did you find, Javed? Scrolls? Maps?" Hamanu asked, fighting to contain his curiosity,
which could kill any man who stood too long between him and satisfaction.
Javed had seen that happen. He hastily laid the parcel on the bench and sliced the thongs that
bound it, lest the knots resist and get him killed. Beneath the leather were layers of silkseveral of
the drab-dyed, densely woven shirts Javed insisted were a mortal's best defense against a poisoned
arrow or blade.
Hamanu clenched his fists as the commandant gingerly peeled back sleeve after sleeve. He
knew already there was nothing so ordinary as a sorcerer's scroll or cartographer's map at the heart
of Javed's parcel. Though neither mortal had noticed, the chamber had become quiet as the minor
magic that circulated the water was subsumed by the malevolence emerging from the silk. The Lion
of Urik steadied himself until his commandant had stepped back.
The last layer of silk, which Javed refused to touch, appeared as if it had been exposed to the
harsh Athasian sun for a full seventy-seven year age. Its dyes had faded to the color of moldering
bones. The cloth itself was rotting at the creases.
"Great One, two good men died wrapping it up so I could carry it," Javed explained. "If it's
your will, I'll lay down my own life, but if you've still got a use for an old, tired elf, Great One, I
think you'd best unwrap the rest yourself."
"Where?" Hamanu asked in a breathless whisper, no more eager to touch the silk or what it
contained than either Javed or Pavek. "How? Was there anything with it?"
Javed shook his head. "A piece of parchment, Great One. A message, I imagine. But the
thing had bleached and aged it like this silk. We didn't so much find it as one of our men stumbled
across it and died...." The elf paused and met Hamanu's eyes, waiting for a reaction Hamanu wasn't
ready to reveal. He coughed nervously and continued, "I can't say for certain that the Nibenese left
anything behind deliberately"
"You may be certain it was deliberate," Hamanu assured him with a weary sigh.
He waved the mortals aside and shed the glamour surrounding his right hand. Neither man
reacted to the skeletal fingers, with their menacing black talonsor, rather, each man strove to
swallow his shock as Hamanu carefully slit the remaining silk.
A black glass shard as long as an elf's arm came into view. Obsidian, but as different from
the obsidian in Urik's mines as mortals were from Rajaat's champions.
"Dregoth?" Hamanu mused aloud. Was this what Gal-lard had received in payment for his
agafari staves? Before he could wonder further, a red ember grew on the shard's tip. "Stand back,"
he advised his mortal companions. "Stand very still."
A smoky pall rose from the shard, obscuring the ember from any eyes less keen than
Hamanu's, which saw in it a familiar, blue-green eye. A foul odor, partly brimstone, partly the mold
and decay of death, permeated the window-less chamber. Shedding his human glamour completely,
Hamanu bared dripping fangs. The pall congealed in a heartbeat and, like a serpent, coiled up
Hamanu's arm. It grew with lightning speed until it wound from his ankles to his neck.

"Damn Nibenay!" Javed shouted as he drew his sword, risking his life twice-over as he
disobeyed his king's command and prepared to do battle with sorcery.
"Fool!" Hamanu replied, which froze the commandant where he stood, though it was neither
the Shadow-King nor Javed who occupied the forefront of his thoughts. "I am no longer the man
fate made of me," he warned the sooty serpent constricting his ribs and neck.
Working his hand through the serpent's sorcerous coils, Hamanu found the head and
wrenched it into the light where he could see it. And it could see him.
"I am not the man you thought I was."
With a flicking gesture, Hamanu impaled the serpent's head on his thumb's talon, then he let
the heat of his rage escape from his heart. The serpent writhed. Ignoring the talon piercing its skull,
it opened its mouth and hissed. Glowing, molten blood flowed from its fangs, covering Hamanu's
wrist. Hamanu hissed back and, reaching into the Gray, summoned a knife from the void.
He cut off the serpent's head. Its coils fell heavily to the floor around his feet, where they
released noxious vapors as they dissolved.
The poison posed no threat to Hamanu, but Javed and Pavek fell to their knees. The Lion of
Urik was in no mood for sacrifice, especially of his own men. Reversing his grip on the hilt of his
knife, which was forged from the same black glass as the now-shrunken shard, Hamanu drew a line
along his forearm.
His hot blood sizzled when it struck the ooze on the floor. Dark, oily smoke rose as it
consumed the dregs of vanquished sorcery. The stench grew worse, but it was no longer deadly.
When the ooze was gone, Hamanu inhaled the odor into himself. He looked down on his mortal
companions, who were still on their knees and far beyond fear.
"Did you bring the message?"
Javed nodded, then produced a stiff, stained sheet of human parchment. "I knew you'd want
it, Great One."
Hamanu seized the parchment with a movement too quick for mortal eyes to follow. The ink
was gone, as Javed warned, but there were other ways to read a champion's message. He closed his
eyes, and the Shadow-King's blurred features appeared in his mind.
You have seen our danger. This was sent to me. You can imagine who, imagine how. We've
gone too long without a dragon. If we can't make one, he will. Mark me well, Hamanu: he'll find a
way to shape that turd, Tithian, into a dragon, if we don't stop him. Long before he died, Borys
confided in me that Rajaat had intended to shape you into the Dragon of Tyr until heBorys, that is
decided otherwise. It's not too late. The three of us can shape you before Rajaat tries again with
Tithian. I've evolved a spell that will preserve your sanity. It won't be the way it was with Borys; we
can't permit that, none of us can. Think about it, Hamanu. Think seriously about it.
The Shadow-King's image vanished in the heat of Hamanu's curse. The shard of Rajaat's
sorcery was an unexpected, unpleasant proof of Gallard's claim. If Rajaat was making sorcery in the
material world, then the Hollow was weakening; they'd gone too long without a dragon maintaining
it. But if Gallard had found a spell that tempered the madness of dragon creation, Gallard wouldn't
be offering it to him.
Reluctantly, Hamanu reconsidered Windreaver's recounting of the Gnome-Bane's strategy.
There were three ways to transform a champion into a dragon: his peers pells to accelerate his
metamorphosis, he could quicken so many sorcerous spells that he'd transform himself, or
following Kalak of Tyr's despicable examplehe could gorge himself on the death of his entire
city. Most likely, Gallard hoped to implement all three.
"Summon the first levy of my armies," Hamanu told Javed softly, calmly. If he'd allowed
any fraction of his own passion into his words, the sounds would have slain both mortals. "Let it be
known that everyone who relies on Urik for protection will rally to Urik's defenseor suffer dire
consequences."
"Who do we fight, Great One?" Javed asked, his voice cracked and weak from poison.
"Do as I command, Javed," Hamanu scolded his most-trusted officer. "Summon my levy."

Wisely, the elf nodded and bowed as he rose to his feet. "As you will, Great One. As you
command."
He retreated to the bronze door, which Hamanu opened with a thought. Pavek followed.
"Not you. Not yet."
Pavek dropped again to his knees. "Your will, Great One."
"I need you here, in the palace, Pavek, but I need your druid friends as well. Send a message
to Quraite. Send a message to Telhami, if you will. Tell her it's time, Pavek; the end of time."
"If Urik's danger is Quraite's danger, Great One, then I'm sure she already knows. She says
there's only one guardian spirit for all of Athas, and she is part of it now," Pavek said, still on his
knees with his head tightly bowed.
There were many tastes and textures swirling in the young man's thoughts, but loathing was
not among them. Leaning forward, Hamanu hooked a talon under Pavek's chin, nudging gently until
he could see the troubled face his templar strove to conceal. Then, with another talon, he traced the
scar across Pavek's face.
"And if it's my danger, and only mine, what then, Pavek?"
Once again, Pavek's mind cleared, like still water on a windless day. Short of slaying the
man, there was no way for Hamanu to extract an answer to his question from Pavek's thoughts.
Murder was easy; lowering his hand, letting Pavek rise unsteadily to his feet and leave the chamber
alivethat was the hardest thing Hamanu had done in a generation.
Windreaver! Hamanu cast the name into the netherworld along with Gallard's parchment.
Windreaver! Now!
He sat down on the marble bench, which, like the stone bench in his cloister, was strong
enough to support his true weight and proportions. Water flowed again over the boulder and down
the walls. The Lion-King buried his grotesque face in his malformed hands and tried not to think, or
plan, or dread until the air quickened, and the troll appeared.
"I hear, and I obey," Windreaver said. "I am the doomed servant of a doomed fool."
Hamanu didn't rise to the bait. "Did you search the Nibenese camp?"
"Of course. Four hundred ugly women surrounded by four thousand uglier men."
"Nothing more?" Hamanu betrayed nothing of his suspicions, his anger.
"Nothing, O Mighty One. Enlighten me, O Mighty One: What do you think I should have
found?"
"This!" Hamanu brandished the remnant of the obsidian shard. It had shrunk to a fraction of
its former size, and the glass was pitted with soot. The troll leapt back, as if he still had life and
substance.
"It was not there," Windreaver insisted, no longer insolent. "I would have known"
"Nonsense!" Hamanu hurled the shard at his minion; it vanished at the top of its arc,
swallowed by the Gray. "You've grown deaf and blind, Windreaverworse, you've grown
careless."
"Never... not where he's concerned. I'd know the War-Bringer's scent anywhere."
Hamanu said nothing, merely waited for the troll to hear own his folly and self-deception.
Windreaver's hatred for the War-Bringer was greater than his hatred for the Troll-Scorcher but he
hadn't sensed the shard before Hamanu revealed it. He'd dreamed of watching the champions
destroy each other, and his dreams had, indeed, left him careless.
"Is Rajaat free?" the troll asked. "The Dark Lensit's where the Tyrian sorceress put it five
years ago, isn't it? No one's stolen it, have they? The templars? The medallions?"
"Still work," Hamanu assured him. Without the Dark Lens, the champions could not channel
magic to their templars. "That shard didn't come from the Dark Lens."
"Then where did it come from? How did Rajaat?"
"I don't know, Windreaverbut you'll tell me, when you come back from Ur Draxa."
He expected an argument: Borys's demolished stronghold was a long way away and
dangerous, even for a disembodied spirit. But Windreaver was gone before Hamanu finished
speaking.

Chapter Five
A pair of silvery rings surrounded the golden face of Guthay, Athas's larger moon, as it
neared its zenith in Urik's midnight sky. It was the fourth night in a row that Guthay had worn her
crowns, and though Hamanu was alone in his cloister, he knew he wasn't the only man staring at the
sky. One more beringed night, and farmers throughout his domain would go down to the parched
gullies that ran around and through their fields. They'd inspect each irrigation gate. They'd dig out
the silt and make repairs as necessary. Later, they'd meet with their neighbors and draw a numbered
pebble out of a sacred urn to determine the order in which the fields received their water.
The lottery was necessary because no onenot even the immortal Lion-Kingcould
predict how long the gullies would seethe with dark, fertile water from the distant mountains.
Hamanu couldn't even say for certain that the gullies would fill. A score of times during the last
thirteen ages, the flood hadn't come.
All Hamanu knew was what he'd learned from his mother and father long, long ago. When
Guthay wore her gossamer crowns for five nights running, it was time to prepare the fields for
himali, and the hardy grains, mise and gorm that had sustained the heartland since the rains stopped
falling with any regularity. And once the dry fields were planted with seeds more precious than gold
or steel, it was time to pray. The gullies would fill within twenty days, or they did not fill at all.
The folk of Urik prayed to their immortal, living god and entreated him with offerings.
Already a steady trickle of farmersnobles, free-peasants, and slaves alikemade their way to the
palace gate to offer him a handful of grain. Sometimes the grain was knotted in a tattered rag, other
times boxed in a carved-bone casket or sealed in an enameled amphora. Regardless of the package,
Hamanu's templars emptied the grain into a huge, inix-hide sack. When the water came, Hamanu
would sling the sack over his shoulder and, in the guise of the glorious Lion-King, he'd sow four
fields, one to the east of the city walls, the others in the north, the west, and the south.
Tradition, which Hamanu didn't encourage, held that the gift-grain toward the bottom of me
sackthe grain that the Lion-King had received first and sowed lastwas lucky grain, which
presaged great bounty for the farmer who'd donated it. The mortal mind being what it was, Urikite
farmers didn't wait for Guthay's fifth ringed night before they brought their gift-grain to the palace.
They took the moon on faith and brought their grain early, despite knowing that if the rings did not
last for the full five nights, the sack would be emptied, and any grain it had held would be burned.
None of this surprised Hamanu. He'd been one of them once. He knew that all farmers were
men of faith and gamblers in their hearts. They gambled every time they poked a seed in the
ground. They regarded the gift-grain as a faithful way of evening their odds.
It was an act of faith, as well, for Hamanu, the farmer's son, when he strode barefooted
through the fields, scattering the gift-grain. But a man who let himself be worshiped as a god could
have faith only in himself. He could never be seen with his head bowed in doubt or prayer. This
year, with the Shadow-King's armies dancing along Urik's borders and a pitted remnant of the first
sorcerer's magic still fresh in memory, Hamanu's doubts were especially strong. He'd pray if he
knew the name of a god who'd listen.
The longer he delayed summoning the second and third army levies, the greater the chance
that Urik's enemies would attack. If he summoned his citizen soldiers too soon, the fields wouldn't
get sown, the grain couldn't grow, and, win or lose on the battlefield, there'd be no High Sun
harvest. And if the waters didn't come at all...
Altogether, there were too many unanswerable questions even for a mind of immortal
subtlety. For the first time since Hamanu had begun writing his history, delving into his past was
preferable to the present or future. He swirled an oil drop across the ink stone's surface. When the
ink was ready, Hamanu picked up the stylus and wrote without hesitation.
*****

For five years, I fought beside Jikkana in the army of Myron Troll-Scorcher. There was
nothing about her that reminded me of Dorean or Deche, which is probably why I stayed so long.
She was a hard and homely creature who cursed and swore and drank too much whenever she had
the opportunity. I never knew if in me she saw the son she'd never had or simply another farm boy
with fire in his gut, who would finish the brawls she started.
Jikkana taught me human script and how to fight with a knife or a club, with my teeth, fists
or my feetor whatever else was available. She had a temperament like broken glass, and sooner or
later, she fought with everyone, me included. In all the years she marched with the Troll-Scorcher's
army, though, she came no closer to fighting trolls than that day I'd met her in Deche.
As the sun descended through the Year of Priest's Fury, two decades' dissipation in the TrollScorcher's army caught up with Jikkana. Her lanky muscles melted like fat in the fire. Leathery
flesh hung in folds from her arms and chin. She coughed all night and spat out bloody bits of lung
when morning came. I carried both kits as we marched and foraged for herbs that might restore her,
but it made no difference. One afternoon, she collapsed by the side of the road.
I offered to carry her along with her kit.
"Don't be a fool, Manu," she answered me, adding a curse and a cough at the end. "I've gone
as far as I can go, farther than I'd've gone without you. No farther, boy. Let's get it over with."
Jikkana handed me her knife. I made the cut she wanted. I'd wrung bird necks when I helped
Mother prepare supper, and I'd held the ropes while Father slaughtered culls from our herd. I was no
stranger to death, but as men measure such things, Jikkana's death marked the first time I'd killed.
Life's light faded quickly from her eyes; she didn't suffer. I held her corpse until it had cooled and
stiffened. Then I carried her to that night's camp. Jikkana had been the first teacher in my life after
Deche, and I paid for what we drank as we sang her spirit off through the night. When the sky
began to brighten, I dug her a grave and piled stones atop it to keep the vermin from digging her up
for supper.
The long shadows of dawn bound me to her grave.
I expected to weep, but my tears never flowed. There were none inside me. I had wept in
terror when Deche had been destroyed, but I hadn't wept for Dorean. I couldn't weep for anyone
else.
I scratched Jikkana's name onto a shoulder bone, forming the letters the way she'd taught
me, then I shoved the narrow end among the rocks. I'd scratched a few words as well on the
underside, using the trollish script I'd learned in the ruins above Deche, which none of my
companions could read. Stretching the truth a bit, I wrote that Jikkana was an honorable woman and
that she'd never laid hands on a troll, which was true enough and might give the trolls a moment's
pause before they desecrated her grave.
There were trolls nearby. There were always trolls nearby in those years. After a generation
of retreat, Windreaver had brought his army back into human-held land. Deche was among the first
of the human villages that fell to Windreaver's wrath those five years while I marched beside
Jikkana. We never caught up the trolls that killed Dorean and my family, though we'd followed
them for almost a year and saw more examples of their handiwork than I had the heart to count.
But there were trolls nearby, and we'd learn to track them. We made reports to the TrollScorcher or his officers when they rode their rounds.
We never fought trolls. Never. Neither Jikkana nor Bult, the yellow-haired man who led our
band, nor any of the veterans had a notion how to fight our gray-skinned enemies. That's how far the
Troll-Scorcher's army had sunk in the two ages since its founding.
Bult had told the truth that day in Deche. The Troll-Scorcher's army was divided into bands
that tracked trolls as they despoiled the heartland. We tracked them, and we told the officers where
they were. When it pleased him, if it pleased him, Myron of Yoram would come to kill them.
Five years of tracking trolls. Five years of burying eviscerated corpses and burning ruined
houses to forestall disease, and I never once saw Myron of Yoram, except at the High Sun muster on
the plains, when we drew our pay and provisions for the year.
Oh, he was an imposing figureour champion, Myron of Yoram, dressed in riding silks,

watching us parade across the choking dust from the back of his half-tamed erdland. He had magic,
no doubt of that.
Every year he'd haul a few trolls to the muster. He'd truss them up and scorch them good,
right in front of us. Flames would leap out of troll eyes and ears, out of their mouths when they
screamed. Our champion would do the same with any poor human sod who'd earned his wrath
usually by killing a troll without permission.
We were impressed by what Myron of Yoram did to the trolls, but it was what he could do
would doto us that had kept the army in line for generation after human generation.
Things were beginning to change around the time that Jikkana died. Windreaver had
measured his enemy well and divided the trolls into bands that took ruthless advantage of the orders
Myron of Yoram had given us. Some human bands were deserting and more were fighting back,
which meant that the loyal bandsand Bult was nothing if not loyal to his payhunted humans
more often than they hunted trolls.
Everyone had to be careful. Everyone had to post guards at night and sleep with a weapon or
two beneath the blankets. Bult's band was no exception, and I pulled my share of nights on the
picket before Jikkana died. Afterward, I took the picket by choice, one night in fouras often as a
man could stay awake all night and still keep the pace. I wanted to be alone. Jikkana's death had
raised the specter of Deche and Dorean in my dreams. I didn't want to close my eyes or sleep.
Hunting trollsfollowing their bands and hoping the Troll-Scorcher would do us the honor of
killing them wasn't enough. I wanted my own vengeance.
I wanted to kill trolls with my own weapons, my own hands.
I didn't have long to wait.
It was Nadir-Night of Priest's Fury, another year half-gone to memory, and the troll-hunters
of Bult's band celebrated the holiday as they celebrated everything: they drank until they couldn't
stand, then lay on their bellies and drank some more, until they'd all passed out around the fire. I
thought about leaving. Bult and the rest were the dregs of humanity, and they were the only folk
who knew my name. In those days, with trolls and deserters both prowling, a solitary man's life
wasn't worth much. I took a picket brand from the fire, wrapped the smoldering tip in oilcloth, and,
with my blanket and club tucked under my arm, climbed a nearby hill to keep watch.
The trolls knew our human holidays and our human habits; we'd all lived together peacefully
until the wars started. If I'd been a troll, I'd've taken advantage of Nadir-Night, so I was expecting
trouble and was ready for it when I heard straw crunching beneath big, heavy feet. Our picket drill
was simple, and I knew it well: at the first sound I was supposed to tear the cloth off my brand, then
wave it in the air. The flames would alert our band and blind the trolls, whose night vision was
better than ours, but vulnerable to sudden flashes of bright light. Once I'd waved my picket brand,
though, my orders were to run like wind-whipped fire. The whole band would be running, too
More orders from Myron of Yoram.
I obeyed the first part of my orders, slashing the air to blind whatever was coming up my
hill, but Bult and the others weren't going to run anywhere this Nadir-Night. And neither was I.
Switching the torch to my off-weapon hand, I picked up a flint-headed club with a short, sharpened
hook on one side of the flint and a chiseled knob on the other. I shouted, "Here I am!" and made the
guttural sounds I'd been told were insults in the troll language.
The heavy-footed tread got louder, and a big chunk of sky grew darker as the troll hove into
view. Like me, he was armed with a stone club, though its haft was thicker than my wrist, and the
stone lashed to its tip was as large as my head. He shouted something I didn't understand while he
brandished that club over me. I shouted something I can't remember. Then his arm drew back for a
killing strike.
Except for the Troll-Scorcher himself, there were no humans left who remembered the
victories that drove the trolls out of the heartland and cleared the Kreegills. All the tales I'd heard at
Jikkana's side were legends passed down through three or four generations. We didn't know
anything about trolls, except that they were big, and they were fast, and their bare gray skin was
tougher than our best armor Without magic, I'd heard that the only way humans could take down a

troll was to swarm over it like jozhals and beat it to death with a thousand puny blows.
I'd get one chance, one swing. To make the most of it, I tossed the torch aside and put both
hands on the shaft of my club. Against another human, the flint knob would have been the best
choice: a human could stun a man of his own race with the knob, men take him apart with the hook.
But against a thick-skinned troll, it was all or nothing. I spun the shaft as I lunged at my enemy and
swung with the hook leading.
My arm bones jammed my shoulders when the flint struck flesh. I nearly lost my grip.
Nearly. Somehow I kept my hands where they belonged as hook went in up to the leather thong that
lashed the stone to the shaft. The troll made a sound like a baby crying. His club grazed my arm as
he toppled. He was dead before he struck the ground.
Staggering, because my heart suddenly refused to beat and my lungs forgot to breathe, I
dropped to one knee and savored my victory by starlight. But the thoughts that rang in my mind
were: What was his name? Did he leave anyone behind who would remember his name? The army
Windreaver had loosed in the heartland wasn't made of outcasts, orphans and rootless veterans, like
us. The trolls were totally committed to their cause. The bands we trailed were families with fathers
and grandfathers, mothers and children.
I'd never know my troll's name or what had brought him, alone, to my hill, his death.
Perhaps he'd gotten lost in the night. Perhaps he'd been chasing his own dreams of vengeful glory.
But it was a safe bet that he wasn't the only troll in walking distance, and that some other troll was
going to come looking for him.
Even if there weren't any other trolls nearby to put the tang of danger in my victory and cut
short my celebration, the torch I'd tossed aside had set the straw-grass ablaze.
Fire was an enemy I'd known as long as I'd lived. Grabbing my blanket, I swung and
stomped those flames until they were gone and every ember was dark. Then, on my hands and
knees, I raked the hot ash with my fingers until it was as cool as the corpse behind me. Dawn was
coming when I rested and drained the last drops from my water-skin.
As the first red streaks of daylight thrust over the eastern horizon, I gazed at my night's
work: the fire I had extinguished, the troll I'd killed. He was young, probably no older than I
which made him very young for a troll. The warty calluses that armored adults of his race had
scarcely spread up his arms. His face was smooth, with soft brown eyes, wide-open and staring at
me. His open mouth asked why?
I had no answer. We were far from Deche; there was no cause for me to think I'd claimed
vengeance against a troll who'd wronged me personally. Like as not, the troll I'd killedthe troll
who would have killed me, I made no mistake therehad his own wounded memories and fought
humans for the same reasons I fought trolls.
Neither of us was right, but I was alive. Nothing else mattered. I'd survived the massacre at
Deche, and I'd survived a face-to-face combat with a troll. Destiny had plans for me. I believed that
as strongly as the sun rose, but I had no hint of what lay before me.
Trolls were sun-worshipers. Every house I'd explored above Deche had an east-facing door
with a rayed disk and an inscription chiseled into the stone lintel above it. I'd determined that before
the Troll-Scorcher had come to the Kreegills, trolls had set the skulls of their ancestors atop their
homes where the sun would strike them first and fill their hollow eyes with light.
My troll had fallen wrong-way round. Dawn struck his feet while his eyes were still in
shadow. It was no desecrationnot compared to what the trolls had done in Deche and elsewhere
merely an accident as he fell and died. But I had to prove myself better than the trolls, to justify
what I'd done. I wrapped my belt around his ankles and hauled him around so the rays fell on his
still-open eyes. In ashes on his chest, I wrote the troll blessings I'd seen on their hearthstones.
Then, when the sun was well risen, I took my knife and hacked off his head.
Bult and the others had begun to rouse from their stupor by the time I returned to our camp
with my trophy, banging bloodily into my knee. Looking back, I now recognize another gesture
from destiny's hand, guiding me into a situation I ought not to have survived. I was youngthat
accounts for most foolishness among men of all races; I suppose it accounts for mine that morning.

Throwing the troll's head at Bult's feet, I shouted, "I saved your worthless lives last night,"
and, in the inexplicable reasoning of youth, I expected him to thank me. More than that, I expected
him to recognize that I was the better man and admit as much before the whole band.
Foolishness. Unmitigated foolishness... and destiny.
Bult had a sword, the only sword in our band. It had a composite blade: bits of broken
obsidian wedged into a stave of waterlogged wood that had then been baked hard in a kiln and
strengthened with a copper spine. It was useless against a troll, but Bult figured to make short work
of me when he drew it out of a bulky scabbard.
"Knew you was trouble from the start," he said, kicking my trophy aside as he advanced on
me. "Should've killed you then and thereyou with your fancy farm-boy words and your ideas."
I retreated a pace and tested my grip, finger by finger, against the rawhide braid wrapped
around my club. With a dead troll fresh in my memory, I was cautious, but not overawed by my
adversary or his weapon. My club needed a bit more room than Bult's sword; I shook out my
shoulder and retreated, cocking my arm for my first swing. Bult smiled and nodded.
I thought our brawl was about to begin, but I hadn't been paying attention to my back. Hands
I hadn't suspected seized my wrist and elbow. They wrenched my weapon from my hand, clouted
me on the flank, and thrust me forward to my doom.
I landed hard on my hands and knees, well in range of Bult's leather-shod foot. He kicked
me solidly under the chin, and I went head over heels in the dust, to the great amusement of my
fellows, who had more enthusiasm for the murder of one of their own than they'd shown for a true
enemy's death.
"You think you're smarter than me, Manu," Bult told me as he raised his foot to kick me
again. I scrabbled backward into an unfriendly wall of legs and feet that ended my retreat. "That's
been your mistake all along. You think 'cause your mamma and papa taught you to talk pretty,
you're cut from a better piece of cloth. Well, your mamma and papa aren't nothing but troll-meat,
Manu, just like you're gonna be when they find you."
Bult meant to hamstring me and leave me for the trolls that was clear from the gleam in
his eyes and the angle his wrist made with the sword's blade when he raised his arm. He could have
had his will with me; I was weak with fear and sick with defeat. Sour blood filled my mouth. There
was no strength left in me to move my legs out of harm's way, if he'd taken his cut right then. But
Bult lugged his stroke and gut-kicked me instead.
Today I am the Lion of Urik, invulnerable and invincible. In the form Rajaat has given me,
the finest steel cannot harm me. With an exercise of whim, I can hide my shape beneath an illusion
of any creature I imagine. But when I was a mortal man, there was nothing about me that warranted
Bult's respect. I took after my mother's folk: light-boned and slender. From my earliest days I'd
learned the tricks of balance and leverage because I never had my father's and brothers' strength. I
could carry Jikkana because I knew where to lift; I could fell a troll because I knew where to
balance, where to pivot, how to coil my entire body and release its power in a serpent's strike.
Knowledge was my weapon, I told myself as I lay there in the dust, blood and bile streaming
from my face. I was smarter than Bult; I was better, but first I had to breathe and protect myself
from the kicks that came from all directions. Ignoring pain and blurred vision, relying on instinct
knowledgealone, I caught a foot as it struck my ribs. I twisted it one way as I rolled the other.
Finally there was a groan that didn't come from my throat, and a few heartbeats for me to rise up on
my hands and knees.
I choked when I tried to breathe and spat out a tooth or two. My hair dragged in the muck
my blood had made of the dust, but my lungs were working again, and my thoughts were clearer. I
heard Bult sidestepping, taking aim at my flank. Raising my head, I caught his eye.
"Coward," I named him in a hoarse, broken whisper. "Can't fight trolls without the TrollScorcher's say-so. Can't fight a puny man unless he's already battered and bloody."
I nailed Bult, midstride. He backed off, and his mouth worked silently a moment before he
said: "Get up, farm boy. Get up on your feet, if you dare, or crawl away as you are."

We'd heard that trolls could track by scent, that their noses were as good as their night eyes.
The way I was bleeding on the ground and clutching my side, Bult guessed I'd be troll-meat
whether he hamstrung me or not. And probably he was right: I was a deadman, but I was done
running from trolls and wasn't going to start crawling from my own kind. I got to my feet and
stayed there. A few of my fellows sucked their teeth with surprise or admiration. I didn't know
which. I didn't care. My blood settled.
"Cowards," I repeated, including my fellows in the curse. Bult took a step toward me. I spat
out another tooth that left a bloody mark on his cheek, and he stayed where he was. "Little children,
a little bit afraid of trolls, a lot more afraid of the Troll-Scorcher. Eyes of fire!" I recalled my cousin,
five years dead and forgotten in the ruins of Deche. "I've seen the Troll-Scorcher's magic, his eyes
of fire, just like you. I've seen them at the musternowhere else. I've seen Myron of Yoram burn
the heart out of a trussed-up man when we're all camped for muster, but I've never seen his awful
magic out here."
I believed what I said, and I hated Myron of Yoram more than I hated Bult or any troll that
ever lived. It gave me the strength to take a step in Bult's direction.
"Call him, Bult. Call the Troll-Scorcher. Tell him what I've done. Tell him to come and burn
me with the eyes of fire. I'll die for him, Bult, that's what we're here for, isn't it? Call him!"
Once a month, as Guthay's golden face cleared the eastern horizon, we'd all gather around
the fire, hand in hand, to shout the Troll-Scorcher's name to the night. When we'd shouted our
throats raw, Bult would drop to his knees, his veins bulged and throbbing across his brow, and he'd
tell the Troll-Scorcher how many trolls we'd seen since the last time, what they'd done, and what
we'd done, which never changed: they ravaged, and we ran.
"Aye, Bult," someone behind me said. "Call the Troll-Scorcher. Let him decide."
"Manu's right. Maybe the Troll-Scorcher listens to us; maybe he don't. We see his mightybright officers, an' they tell us he's wagin' war somewhere else, but never near us." Another voice in
the crowd.
"Never near no one," a woman added, sweet honey to my ringing ears. "Never met no one at
the muster who didn't say the same thing: they seen trolls all year, an' never once seen the
Scorcher."
I could feel the power of persuasion around me. "Call him, Bult," I taunted, then reached out
for my fellows' hands and shouted our champion's name.
We all shouted as if Guthay were rising. Bult hit the dust with his eyes squeezed shut.
Nothing happenedbut, nothing ever happened when a poor, mortal human called Myron of
Yoram.
When the time came and the dark magic was mine, I gave all my templars medallions
lumps of fired clay for most of them, but hardened with my breath, so they'd never doubt that I
could hear them, see them. No less than Jikkana, Bult was my teacher; he taught me that in the
field, fear, morale, and discipline are different words for the same thing.
And I learned from my younger self, too. If Myron of Yoram had been half a man to begin
with, he'd have heard Bult that day. He'd have stirred himself across the netherworldI know he
had the power, what he lacked was will and witand he'd have struck me down with the eyes of
fire.
It was not a mistake I've ever made. When my templars call me, my will is theirs; and when
they rebel or rise against me, I reduce them to grease and ash, as if they'd never been born.
Not Myron of Yoram. I killed Jikkana, my solitary troll, and ten thousand others since, but
Myron of Yoram killed Bult.
"It's outrage," I said softly while Bult still struggled to catch our champion's attention. "We
stand by, human men and women, while trolls ravage our own folk. If we don't run, we howl at the
moon, like beasts, hoping, year after futile year, that someone will hear us, that someone cares
enough to come and kill our enemies for us. What sort of man do we serve? What sort of man is
Myron of Yoram, Myron Troll-Scorcher? It's been ages since he led his army to victory in the

Kreegills. Now he hoards trolls like a miser hoarding metal. He doesn't want victoryhe wants his
eyes of fire to burn slow from now until eternity!"
They heard me; my fellows heard me. They let go of one another's hands, shook their heads,
and whispered among themselves. I couldn't hear their words, butO Whim of the Lionif only
I'd listened to myself! I held every piece of the puzzle in the palm of my hand, but it slipped away.
Instead of rallying them allhumans, trolls, and every other race alikeagainst Rajaat's
champions, I took the club they returned to me and smashed it into the side of Bult's yellow-haired
head.

Chapter Six
"It's been ages since Guthay wore two crowns for seven days, and then, a single crown for
another three nights. Ten nights together, Omniscience! Not since the Year of Ral's Vengeance in the
177th King's Age," Enver said, reading from a freshly written scroll. "The high bureau scholars
have taken half a quinth to research the archives, but they've at last confirmed what you,
Omniscience, no doubt, remembered."
Hamanu nodded, not because he agreed, but because when Enver's recitation slowed, it was
time for Enver's king to nod his head... and recall what the dwarf had said. Hamanu did pay
attention to what his executor told him, and certain words or intonations would prick him to instant
awareness. For the rest, though, Hamanu remembered faster than Enver recited. He listened with an
empty ear, gathering words the way a drip bucket gathered water, until it was time to nod, and
remember.
Having nodded and remembered, Hamanu's thoughts went wandering again as Enver read
what the scholars had dug out of the Urik archives. He had not recalled the exact date when Guthay
had put on her last ten-night performancethe systematic reckoning of years and ages meant little
to him anymorebut he certainly remembered the event, two years after Borys, Butcher of
Dwarves, had become Borys, Dragon of Tyr. That year, whole swaths of the heartland had turned
gray with sorcerous ash, but, yes, Guthay had promised water in abundance and kept her promise.
As she'd kept it this year.
Fifty-eight days agotwenty days after Guthay had shed her last crownthe gullies north
of Urik had begun to fill. Ten days later, every cultivated field had received twice its allotment of
silt-rich water. At the head of a planting army larger than the first military levy, which Commandant
Javed drilled on the southern high ground, the Lion-King had marched into the pondlike fields and
with back-breaking, dawn-to-dusk labor, planted a year's worth of hope.
The precious water flowed for another ten days. Gullies overflowed their banks. Walls of
sun-baked brick dissolved into mounds of slick, yellow mud. Dumbstruck farmers stepped across
their crumbling thresholds into ankle-deep streams of frigid, mountain water. With their newly
planted fields endangered by an almost inconceivable threattoo much waterthe farmers had
turned to the priests of earth and water who, in turn, eighteen days ago, had led an anxious
procession through the city walls, to the very gates of Hamanu's palace.
Hamanu had been waiting for themhe could see farther from his palace rooftop than any
priest in his temple. He'd known the water was still rising, and after a dramatic hesitation, he'd
called a second levy of Urik's able-bodied men, another one from every remaining five. Then, as he
rarely did, the Lion-King explained his intentions: The second levy wouldn't march south to drill
with the first. It would march north, beyond the established fields, and, digging with picks and
shovels, pointed sticks and muddy hands, make new channels to spread Guthay's bounty across the
barrens. The newly planted fields would be spared.
The crowd erupted with a spontaneous cheer for their Lion-Kingan infrequent event,
though not as infrequent as the floods that inspired it. By the next sunrise, a thousand men stood at
the north gate. They'd come peacefully, the registrators saidanother infrequent eventand fully
half of them were volunteers, which was unprecedented. Fear and worship could sustain a living
god, but nothing compared to the pride Hamanu had felt with them and for them as they marched

north to save the fields from drowning.

The second levy dug for twelve days. A moat of dark mud grew beyond Urik's fields, saving
the crops, but water still churned out of the distant mountains. Beneath Urik, the vast cavern lake
that slaked the city's thirst had become a roaring maelstrom. It had already flooded its stony shores
and rose steadily against walls that had not been wet since the Lion of Urik was a mortal man.
Hamanu released the second levy to Javed's mercy and called up a third. One in five of men
and women, both, and every age, would be levied. Five days ago, four thousand Urikites assembled
in the palace forecourt. While the throng watched, the mighty Lion-King had taken a hammer to the
doors of one of Urik's ten sealed granaries, then he'd sent the third levy into the second levy's mud,
sacks of seed slung over their shoulders.
The third levy continued its labor in the flooded field; Hamanu could see hundreds of dark
dots moving slowly across the mud. Pavek was out there, planting seeds with his toes while kneedeep in muck. His gold medallion was thrown carelessly over one shoulder. Twenty Quraiters
worked alongside him. The hidden village had sent more than its share of farmersof druids, too,
though they strove to conceal their subtle renewals of the land.
It was a gamble as old as agriculture: if the granary seed they planted sprouted and throve
until it ripened, they'd harvest four sacks for every one they'd risked, a respectable yield for land
that hadn't been cultivated in ages. There'd be grain to sell to less-fortunate neighbors, conquering
them with trade rather than warfare. There might even be enough to justify laying the foundation for
an eleventh granary. If the grain throve
And if the bonus crop failed, if war came to Urik, or some other disaster intervened, there
were still nine sealed granaries, each with enough grain to feed Urik for a year. Hamanu didn't make
blind gambles with his city's well-being.
"Omniscience, the orators have composed a new encomium." Enver was still reading from
his notes. "They name you Hamanu Water-Wealth, Maker of Oceans. They wish to include the
encomium in tomorrow's harangue. I have the whole text here, Omniscience; I'll read it, if you wish.
It's quite gooda bit too florid for my tastebut I'm sure the people will find it stirring."
"Maker of Oceans," the Lion-King repeated, bringing his attention back to the palace roof.
Ocean was a word his scholars had found in the archives, nothing more. The Lion of Urik
doubted there was anything alive that had seen an oceanexcept Rajaat, of course, if Rajaat were
alive in his Hollow prison. Hamanu had glimpsed the memory of an ocean once in Rajaat's crystal
visions: blue water rippling from horizon to horizon, foaming waves that crashed one after the other
on sand that never dried. The steamy moat girdling Urik wasn't an ocean, wasn't even the promise
of an ocean. All it promisedall a living god dared hope that it promised was a green field and
an unexpected harvest.
What did an ocean want before it would be born? What did it need? More than ten nights of
silver rings around a golden moon. More than one year of muddy water as wide as the eye could
see. Borys had taken more than an age to finish the destruction the Cleansing Wars had begun. It
had only been a handful of years since a dragon stalked the heartland. How many years before
Urik's cavern could hold no more and water began to pool above ground?
Maybe then Hamanu would start to believe in oceans.
"The temples of Andarkin and Ulydeman"
Temples was a word guaranteed to seize Hamanu's attention. He didn't completely forbid the
worship of divinities other than himselfthe Lion of Urik was neither a god nor a foolbut he
didn't encourage them. As long as priests of the elemental temples stayed in their time-honored
place, the Lion of Urik tolerated their presence in his city. Their place didn't include Enver's daily
list.
Patience had never been Hamanu's virtue, but he felt exceptionally generous this morning
exceptionally curious, tooand let the dwarf continue without interruption.
"would proclaim the existence of a demiurge they name Burbote"
"Mud, dear Enver," Hamanu corrected with a sigh. "The word is mud. Rummaging through
their grimoires looking for words that were old when I was a boy won't change matters. They want

to sanctify mud."
Enver's hairless brows pulled together at a disapproving angle. He clutched his scroll
between fists that grew white with tension.
After the Dragon's demise, when change had become inevitable, Hamanu had told his
venerable executor the truth: Urik's Lion-King had been born an ordinary human man in a Kreegill
valley thirteen ages earlier. He was immortal, but he wasn't a god. The dwarf hadn't taken the
revelation well. Enver, the son, grandson, and great-grandson of yellow-robed templars, preferred to
believe the lies about divinityand omnisciencehe'd learned in his own youth.
"If you say it is so, Omniscience, then it must be so," he said stiffly, his chosen response
when his god disappointed him. "The priests of earth and water wish to erect a temple to mark the
flood's greatest extent, but surely they will dedicate it to whomever you wish, even mud."
"Do they claim to have marked the flood's greatest extent, dear Enver? Have the flood
waters begun to recede?"
"Omniscience, I do not know."
Hamanu could not resist baiting his loyal servant. "Neither do I, dear Enver."
"I am at a loss, Omniscience." The dwarf was so stiff it seemed he'd crack and crumble in
the slightest breeze.
"What shall I tell them, Omniscience? That they must rename their demiurge? Or should I
tell them nothing at all until the floods recede?"
"Nothing, I think, would be the wiser coursefor all I know, dear Enver, Burbote might
consume all the land between here and the Smoking Crown. He might swell up and drown us all...
Burbote is a he, yes? A muddy demiurge that is female, as wellthe combination is more than I can
bear to contemplate."
"Very well, Omniscience. As you will, Omniscience. I shall instruct the priests of Andarkin
and Ulydeman to interrogate their oracles. They've not got the demiurge's name right, and they must
be certain of its maleness... or femaleness... before their proclamation can be read or their temple
built. Will that suffice, Omniscience?"
Enver was a paragon of mortal diligence and rectitude, and almost completely devoid of
humor. But a god who acknowledged his own fallibility had to tolerate the failings of his associates
or dwell in utter isolation.
"It must, dear Enver. It must."
Hamanu's attention began to wander before Enver was three syllables into the next entry on
his tightly clutched scroll. Between floods and preparations for war, he'd neglected his minions for
the better part of a seventy-five-day quinth. The minions survived, of coursemost of them. When
he wasn't living their lives, they lived their own, much as they'd done before he'd woven his
curiosity into their being. Casting an Unseen net, Hamanu touched them, one by one. A beggar had
died. A nobleman had eaten unwisely and suffered the consequences in a dark, befouled corner of
his luxurious home. Lord Ursos entertained an unwilling guest. Cissa's daughter had another tooth
coming in. Nouri Nouri'son had adopted his beggar and put him to work behind the counter of his
busy bakery.
Ewer's recitation progressed from religion to refugees, a subject that did not engage
Hamanu's curiosity or require his attention. Though it pleased the Lion-King to think that the
suffering citizens of Raam, Draj, and even far-off Balic would choose Urik as their sanctuary, his
templars dealt with such strangers. Urik's borders were, of course, legally sealed, but Hamanu
trusted his yellow-robes to determine when, where, and against whom his laws should apply.
He went back to his minions, until another trip-word scratched his hollow ear: arrows. The
Khelo fletchers were squabbling with the Codesh butchers over the price of feathers for the
thousands of arrows the army required.
"Tell the butchers they'll sell their damned feathers at the established rate, or their heirs will
donate them in perpet"
O Mighty Hamanu! Lion-King, Lord, and Master, hear me!

A distant voice echoed in Hamanu's mind. The totality of his awareness raced backward,
along a silver thread of consciousness through the Unseen netherworld, to the source.
Armor! I crave invincible armor and earthquake!
The Gray was charged with acid needles, and Hamanu's vision, when he opened his sulphur
eyes above the desperate templar, was streaked with lurid colors. There was powerful magic
someone else's powerful magicin the vicinity.
O Mighty Hamanu! Hammer of the World! Grant me invincible armor and earthquake!
Squinting through the magic, Hamanu made out chaos and bloodshed: a full cohort of his
own templars outnumbered by ragtag brigands. Or, not brigands. Another moment's study discerned
a well-armed, well-drilled force disguised for brigandage. In the midst of the Urikites' impending
defeat, a militant, a human man with tears of panic streaming down his face, raised his bronze
medallion and entreated the Lion-King for the third time:
O Mighty Lion, grant me invincible armor and earthquake, lest I die!
A wise invocationin its way. An earthquake, if Hamanu empowered the spell to create
one, would swallow everything on the battlefield, friend and foe alike, except for the invincibly
armored militant. Though sacrifice was necessary in battle, the Lion-King of Urik was not in the
habit of rewarding militants who'd save themselves and doom the lesser ranks and mercenaries they
led. He'd have considered granting the earthquake while withholding the invincible armorand
savored the militant's deathif the netherworld turbulence wouldn't have negated any spell he
granted.
There were only a handful of mind-benders capable of disturbing the netherworld enough to
disrupt the bond between a champion and his templars. The champions themselves were foremost in
that small group. Hamanu knew the hallmarks of their spellcasting intimately.
Inenek, Hamanu loosed an enemy's name to the Unseen wind. It was her spoor he scented in
the netherworld and her disguised Gulgan templars winnowing his own. Ogre-Naught.
The turbulence ebbed, replaced by a sultry voice, full of seduction and, though Inenek tried
to hide it, hate. You tricked me once, Manu, but never again. Rajaat chose you for your strength, not
your brilliance. You're not as clever as you think you are. Surrender to me, and Urik will survive.
A wind-driven fist shrieked through the Gray with the power to smash a mountain into
gravel.
Your promises are as empty as your threats, Inenek, Hamanu replied, dispelling her assault
with a roar of laughter.
Inenek had always been vulnerable to mockery. The netherworld shone with futile lightning;
she'd never learned to control her temper, either. Hamanu dispelled the bolts as he'd dispelled the
shrieking fist. Inenekthe Oba of Gulg, she called herself nowwas arguably the least among the
champions. How she'd annihilated the ogres was a mystery Hamanu had never taken the time to
solve. He suspected she'd disguised herself as an ogress and slain every male after taking him into
her bed.
The Ogre-Naught couldn't harm him, but his besieged templars were doomed if he didn't
intervene. With his eyes still glowing, Hamanu turned to Enver, who'd sensed nothing amiss until
that moment.
"I go," he told the dwarf. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Enver's widening eyes before he
slit the rooftop air with a talon and stepped into the Gray.
Hamanu departed Urik as a black-haired man. He emerged on the battlefield as the blackmaned Lion of Urik, taller than a half-giant, stronger and far more deadly. A gold sword gleamed in
his right hand. It sliced through the warrior weapons raised against him, and through the warriors as
well. Hamanu wielded his sorcery-laced sword with the skill gained in a very long lifetime of
practice, inflicting precise slaughter among his enemies.
He didn't bother to guard his back or slow his attacks with parries; the Lion of Urik was only
another glamour, hiding his true form. A calm and sharp-eyed observerhad there been any on the
fieldwould have noticed the discontinuity as metal weapons passed through the Lion's ephemeral
form before shattering against otherwise invisible dragon flesh. Wooden and bone-crafted weapons

met a different fate. They burst into short-lived flames when they breached his infernal aura.
With their king wreaking havoc among their enemies, the Urikite templars rallied. They
surged forward in a score of close-fought skirmishes. Hamanu welcomed their renewed courage;
he'd reward them with their lives. And as for the militant who led them...
His leonine ears flicked as the golden sword brought death to another five fighters. He
listened for two particular sounds: the militant's pulse, and the clang of his metal sword.
One lapse of leadership might be forgivenif the militant's panic hadn't been stronger than
Inenek's Unseen interference, Hamanu wouldn't have known that his templars needed him. A second
lapse would be unforgivable, unsurvivable. Hamanu strained his hearing. He found half of what he
listened for: a mortal heart pounding hard beneath a bronze medallion.
Bakheer! Hamanu seized the militant's disarrayed thoughts and rattled them. Fight, Bakheer.
Hamanu didn't enjoy killing his own templars. At the very least, it was a waste of mortal life.
At the worst, because of the medalLion-forged bond he shared with them, their deaths brought his
darkest appetites to the fore. Fight the enemy, Bakheer. Fight to the death... or face me.
A sane man would have listened, would have understood and thrown himself at Inenek's
minions, but Bakheer was no longer sane. What Inenek had begun, Hamanu inadvertently finished.
Bakheer's mind shattered. His heart beat one final time, and his spirit flared in the instant before
Rajaat's last champion savored it.
The tiny morsel of mortality tantalized Hamanu's much-denied appetites. For a moment,
there were neither Urikites nor enemies on the field before him, only aching need, and the motes of
life that would sate it.
The Lion of Urik roared words too loud and angry for mortal ears to interpret: "Damn you!"
Hamanu turned away from temptation, away from the battlefield. Abandoning his templars,
he cast himself into the netherworld... where a whirlwind awaited him.
Inenek had guessed his choicehis predictable weaknessand caught him in a mindbender's trap. Stripped of all his glamour, reduced to a spindly shadow of his unnatural form,
Hamanu, was sucked away from his templars. He wasn't surprised when a black maw appeared
suddenly, far below his feet, growing larger with each howling spiral.
Inenek was sending him toward the Black, toward the Hollow beneath it, and into Rajaat's
grasp. Hamanu could imagine what rewards Rajaat had promised her.
But, truly, the Oba of Gulg couldn't harm the Lion of Urik. Her powers, though awesome,
were no match for his, when he chose to use them. Radiance blossomed from Hamanu's long,
skeletal fingers, wrapping him in a cocoon of light. Inenek's whirlwind lost its hold over him, and
he began to rise, slowly at first, then faster, until the whirlwind dissipated in his wake.
Time flowed erratically in the Gray. Days, even years, of sunlit time could vanish during a
netherworld sneeze, or time could twist the other way, and a champion could reappear on the
battlefieldas Hamanu dida heartbeat after he'd left.
Hamanu took advantage of his enemies' astonishment and confusion. Two of them died from
a single, decapitating sword stroke. Another two tried to run; he took them from behind.
Drubbed in the netherworld, unable to deliver Hamanu to Rajaat, and besieged on the
battlefield, Inenek withdrew her support from her templars who, feeling the tide of battle shift away
from them, tried to escape a now-inevitable defeat. A few, on the battlefield's fringes, might have
succeeded; they were hardly the lucky ones. Inenek wouldn't take them back for fear Hamanu had
tampered with them, and ordinary folk made certain that the life of a renegade templar was neither
pleasant nor long.
The Gulg templars who fell into Hamanu's hands knew what their fate would be: a quick
death, if they were lucky, a drawn-out one if they weren't. They didn't know who the sorcerer-kings
truly were or why they despised one another. They only knew that a templar's life was over once he
stood before another sorcerer-king. Two or three of Inenek's templars fell on their knees, renouncing
their city; they offered oaths to Urik's mightier king. But there was no hope in their hearts or useful
knowledge in their headsand he would never spare a templar who denied his city.

He offered them the same opportunity he offered his templar prisonersdeath by their own
hands instead of his. Without exception, they took the easier, safer course: running onto the swords
and spears the Urikites held before them.
"O Mighty One, your will is done," a young adjutant informed Hamanu when the deeds
were finished. The elf's bright yellow robe and metallic right sleeve were torn and stained. The
thoughts on his mind's surface were painfully clear. His name was Kalfaen, and this had been his
first campaign. He hadn't risen through the war-bureau ranks, but had been given an adjutant's
enameled medallion on the strength of his family's connections. "The Oba's templars are all dead,
exceptexcept for the wounded"
Kalfaen's voice trailed. His thought-shapes shifted. He imagined himself on a less fortunate
day, wounded, in dire pain, and waiting for some other living god to unravel his memories.
Hamanu ignored the young man's distress. He tolerated nepotism in the templar ranks
because it gave the likes of Kalfaen no real advantage. "Wait here," he commanded, and insured
obedience with a frigid thought that held the youthful elf where he stood. "When I am finished with
the wounded, you shall recount what happened here, from the beginning."
Elves were chancy mortals. A good many of them crumpled and died the first time Hamanu
touched their minds. The best of them matured into loyal, independent templars such as Javed. If
he'd made the effort, Hamanu could have learned to separate the weak from the strong before he put
them to the test, but it was easiercertainly quickerto nail Kalfaen to the ground and see if he
survived.
None of the Oba's wounded templars would survive. Those who remained welcomed the
release provided by yellow-robed surgeon-sergeants, usually with a quick slash through the jugular.
The two knife-wielding sergeants bowed low when Hamanu's shadow fell between them. Without a
spoken word, they scuttled off to join their comrades beside the Urikite wounded. They left their
king to tread silently among the bloody Gulgans, carefully severing the spiritual fibers that bound
essence to substance. Hamanu had subsumed one man's spirit already, and he neither wanted nor
needed to add another name to his army of grievance against Rajaat.
He was careful as well because these templars had belonged to Inenek and she could have
easily tampered with them. He himself had done so, from time to time, with the men and women
he'd sent into war.
With Nibenay between them, Urik and Gulgthe Don-King and the Obahad rarely
warred with each other. While Borys lived, Rajaat's champions made war with their closest
neighbors and uneasy alliances with the rest of their peers. Gulg and Nibenay had never been
anything but enemies, until now
Hamanu plunged his awareness deep into the ground and located himself. A chill shook his
heart. This battle had taken place far from any road, farther still from any village or oasis, deep
within the barren borderlands that Urik and Nibenay had contested for thirteen ages.
Hamanu didn't doubt that Gallard knew where Inenek had sent her templars, but he doubted
that his old nemesis knew she'd been trading secrets with Rajaat. In other times, communion with
the War-Bringer was the only crime that the champions would unanimously condemn and punish.
Times had changed. Everything had changedexcept Hamanu, the Lion of Urik. As
Hamanu thought of dragons and champions, the last of the Gulg templars heaved a shuddering sigh
and passed from life into eternal sleep.
The Lion-King strode toward the Urik infirmary tended by his surgeon-sergeants. He
granted unlimited spells to the war-bureau healers in the aftermath of battle, for all the good it did
the injured. Working with second-hand magic, the surgeon-sergeants were barely competent in their
craft. Templars moaned and wailed when their wounds were tended. They healed with troublesome
scars such as Pavek bore across his otherwise handsome face.
Hamanu used the endless potential of the Unseen world when he chose to heal. As a restorer
of life and health, he was more than competent, but not even his flexible consciousness could attend
the needs of so many. He chose not to choose a lucky few among them. He chose, in truth, to keep
his compassion well-hidden from the templars who served him, and he defended his choice with the

thought that it was better that mortals not rely on his mercy.
Pale and streaked with clammy sweat, Kalfaen waited precisely where Hamanu had left him.
"Recount," the Lion commanded, tugging the Unseen strings laced through the elven youth's
mind.
Hamanu's sorcery kept Kalfaen upright. His own will shaped the words and thoughts that the
king skimmed off the surface of his mind.
The disaster had begun innocently the previous night, when a clutch of refugees approached
the templar camp. They were better fed than the usual wanderersricher, anyway, with enough
metal in their purses to buy a night's protection beside a templar fire.
"There were children with them," Kalfaen explained.
Despite their strong tribal attachments to kith and kin, elves weren't sentimental about their
offspring. They'd abandon anything, anyone if the need arose. On the other side of the coin, a tribe
with children in tow appeared both prosperous and fearless. Kalfaen's thoughts were tinged with
shame. He'd succumbed to metal-coin bribes, women's charm, and the prejudices of his own race.
Hamanu returned that shame as a thousand sharp needles lancing Kalfaen's inmost self. The
youth gasped involuntarily.
"I die," he whispered.
Trust and prejudice together were just another two-sided coin. When the Lion of Urik trusted
his mortal templars, he got their prejudices in the bargain. Kalfaen wasn't the only Urikite who'd
bought the Gulgan deception. Hamanu's spell kept the youth alive as surely as it kept him standing.
"Recount," he demanded. "What next? What of the others? Recount!"
The rest was as simple as it was predictable: something had been slipped into the wine.
Immune to their own poisons, the false refugees had slipped away during the night, leaving the
templars to death at dawn. But the militant had drunk less than Kalfaen and the rest. He saw telltale
dust on the eastern horizon and sounded an alarm, then kicked each of them soundly in the flanks
until they roused. By the time Kalfaen was on his feet, the sound of hobnail sandals slapping the
barren soil was all around them.
There was nothing more to say or learn. Hamanu released Kalfaen. The elf collapsed in
stagesto his knees, his elbows, his face. Belatedly, he clapped his long-fingered hands over his
ears and scalp, as if scraps of mortal flesh could have protected him from Hamanu's inquiry. He
reeked of vomit and worse, but he'd live. He'd been tempered in the Lion's fire and, having failed to
die, was doomed to survive.
Hamanu's thoughts were already moving away from the elf. Scanning the remains of the
camp, he looked for the missing pieces in the puzzle Inenek had left for him. Her plans had gone
awry: he'd arrived early, trying to save his templars, triggering her traps out of sequence. But she
had meant for him to comewhy else tamper with the mind of his militant or set a whirlwind to
wait for him in the Gray?
The militant, then, was the key. Inenek had meant for the templar to use his medallion to
summon him to this barren place, though not during the fighting. The poisoned wine and the
netherworld disruption were both designed to keep him away while his templars were slain.... While
all save one of his templars were slain....
Did the Oba think Urik's templars were fools? No war-bureau templar would admit to being
the sole survivor of monumental stupidity. He certainly wouldn't summon his immortal king to
witness the debacle. A militant would have needed a better reason.
"Stand down!" Hamanu's voice roared beyond the battlefield.
The surgeon-sergeants continued their work, but the templars who'd been gleaning armor,
weapons, and other valuables from the corpses of friend and foe alike stood at attention with their
arms at their sides. Hamanu's head throbbedhad been throbbing since he stepped from the
netherworld. It was a minor ache compared to the agonies he customarily ignored, and no surprise,
considering the unnatural power that had been expended in this unlikely place.
Massaging an illusory forehead with a human-seeming hand, Hamanu dissected his aches.
Sorcery and mind-bending, his and Inenek's, had caused much of the harm, and beneath that, the

War-Bringer's spoor. The smell of Rajaat was not just in the netherworld, where Hamanu had
glimpsed the Black as he battled Inenek's whirlwind, but here, amid the battle refuse.
Hamanu bestrode his lifeless militant, who'd fallen exactly where he'd stood when he raised
his medallion. The man's mind was cold; when a champion subsumed a mortal spirit, there was
nothing left behind for necromantic interrogation.
With a roar, the Lion of Urik cursed himself, Inenek, Rajaat, and the useless militant. He
kicked the corpse aside and knew before it struck ground again that he'd found his missing piece.
Already wrapped in silk and leather, this second shard was smaller than the one Javed had
found in the Nibenese camp. Its dark power pulsed in rhythm with Hamanu's throbbing veinsor
the other way around. It wanted destruction, but he dared do nothing with it while the surgeonsergeants drained him for their healing power.
Impatiently, Hamanu cast a net into the netherworld.
Windreaver!
Nearly a quinth had passed since Hamanu had sent the troll to Ur Draxanot a lot of time,
considering how treacherous the citadel might have become if Rajaat were working sorcery from
his prison.
Windreaver!
Hamanu hadn't been concerned by the troll's absence. In the past, Windreaver had been gone
a year, even a decade, ferreting out secrets. Disembodied, neither dead nor alive, the wayfaring troll
had little effect on the world around him and was equally immune to any manner of assault. And if
Windreaver had been destroyedHamanu rubbed his forearm; beneath the leonine illusion he felt a
stony lumpthe troll's passing would have been noticed.
Windreaver!
A third call echoed throughout the Gray and died unanswered. Hamanu pondered the
imponderable: Windreaver falling into a trap. Windreaver imprisoned. Windreaver seizing an
opportunity for vengeance. Hamanu would have staked his immortal life that Windreaver wouldn't
betray him to Rajaat or another champion, but he'd been wrong more often than not lately.
To me, Windreavernow!
Nothing. Not a whisper or a promise anywhere in the netherworld. By sundown, the
surgeon-sergeants had finished their work among the wounded. Hamanu picked up the wrapped
shard and broke it over his thigh. He inhaled the malignant vapors, and then seared Rajaat's spells
with his own. With nothing left to hinder him, Hamanu shouted Windreaver's name to the beginning
of time, the end of space. He harvested countless interrupted thoughts, none of which emanated
from a troll.
*****
After thirteen ages, an enemy was as good as a friend. As the two moons rose together,
Hamanu returned to Urik not merely alone but lonely. He called Enver, Javed, and Pavek away from
their separate suppers. They sat, stiff and still, on the palace roof while he paced beside the
balustrade, disguised as a man and fooling no one. He could perceive their thoughts, their
conviction that something must be terribly wrong, but he couldn't make them speak, not to each
other, not to him, not the way Windreaver would have spoken.
"Such a doleful gathering, O Mighty Master. Is someone you care about dead or dying?"
Like a shadow sketched in darkness with silver ink, Windreaver spun himself out of the night. "I
heard you, O Mighty Master, and thought it might be important."
Hamanu hid his relief. "What have you learned in Ur Draxa? Have you found the source of
the shards?"
Thick silver lips parted, revealing thicker silver teeth. "Shards, O Mighty Master? Have you
found others?"

Hamanu had beaten Windreaver's trolls decisively, but he'd never outsmarted the old
general, who could still make him feel like the young man he'd once been. "Inenek. Today.
Destroyed now, like the first."
"If there were two, O Mighty Master, there are certainly more," Windreaver said in a tone
that might easily be mistaken for concern.
"What of Ur Draxa? What have you learned?"
"That men are fools where women are concerned, O Mighty Master."
"Spare me your homilies. Recount!"
Hamanu squeezed his own forearm, and Windreaver's silvery outline stilled.
"The Usurper's storm still rages, O Mighty Master. Cold rain falls on molten rock. Steam
and ice exist side by side above the black lake where the War-Bringer's bones were imprisoned."
Hamanu's heart skipped. "Were?"
"Absolute brilliance that was, O Mighty Master, imprisoning your enemy's bones in a lava
lake, then hurling the Dark Lens in afterward. Absolute pure brilliance. What, after all, is lava but
unborn obsidian? Who's to say now where the Lens ends and the prison begins, eh, O Mighty
Master? When does a prison become a palace? A palace become a prison?"
Beneath Hamanu's hand, one of the balustrade lions cracked and crumbled into dust.
"It's hard to say, for the smoke and steam and fog, but it seemed to me, O Mighty Master,
that the lake's no longer flat. It rises up, I think, in the middle, rather like a baby's gums when the
teeth are about to eruptOh, I'm sorry, Mighty Master: You have no children. You wouldn't know
about erupting teeth"
"Will it hold?" Hamanu demanded. "Will the wards and spells that woman cast hold Rajaat
in the Hollow?"
"By the sun's light, O Mighty Master, they were strained, but strong."

Chapter Seven
Hamanu sent them awayall of them: Windreaver, Pavek, Enver, the myriad slaves and
templars whose labor fueled the palace routine. The Lion-King retired to distill the reagents and
compose the invocation of the stealthy spell he'd need to get close enough to see his creator's prison
with his own eyes andmore importantlyget away again.
"Oil, O Mighty Master?" Windreaver whispered from the darkest depths of the room where
Hamanu worked into the night.
The storerooms beneath the palace were flooded. Their contents had been hurriedly hauled
to the upper rooms for safekeeping, leaving Hamanu's normally austere and organized workroom in
chaos. The treasures of a very long lifetime were heaped into precarious pyramids. Windreaver's
shadowy form would be lost amid countless other shadows, and Hamanu didn't break his
concentration to look for his old enemy.
"Do you truly believe oil from the egg-sack of a red-eyed roc will protect you from your
master?"
"... nine hundred eighty... nine hundred eighty-one..." Hamanu replied through clenched
teeth.
Shimmering droplets, black as the midnight sky and lustrous as pearls, dripped from the
polished porphyry cruet he held over an obsidian cauldron. Four ages ago, he'd harvested this oil
from a red-eyed roc. It had vast potential as a magical reagentpotential he had scarcely begun to
explorebut he did not expect it to protect him from the first sorcerer.
Nothing but his own wits and all the luck in the world could protect the last champion from
Rajaat.
"You're a fool, O Mighty Master. Surrender and be done with it. Become the dragon. Any
dragon would be better than Rajaat unchained. You certainly can't fight Rajaat and your peers."
"... nine hundred eighty-eight... nine hundred eighty-nine..."

Unable to provoke an explosion from either Hamanu or the concoction in front of him,
Windreaver turned his attention to the clutter. Save for his acid voice and the swirling wake of his
anger, the troll had no effect on the living world. That was his protectionhe could slip undetected
through all but the most rigorous wardings, including the ones Hamanu had set on this room. It was
also his frustration.
Whirling through the room, Windreaver shook the clutter and raised a score of cluttering
dust devils from its shadows. Hamanu stilled the air with an absentminded thought and counted the
nine hundred ninety-second drop of oil. The devils collapsed.
There was another table in the workroom, uncluttered save for writing implements and two
sheaves of vellum: one blank, the other already written upon, It drew Windreaver's curiosity as a
lodestone attracted iron. The air above the table sighed. The corners of the written-upon vellum
rustled.
Hamanu imagined a thumb in the center of the sheaf. "... nine hundred ninety-four... nine
hundred ninety-five ..."
Driven by a very local wind, the brass stylus rolled to the table's edge and clattered loudly to
the floor. The vellum remained where it belonged.
"Memoirs, O Mighty Master?" The rustling stopped. "An apology?"
Windreaver's accusations were icy knives against Hamanu's back. The Lion of Urik wore the
guise of a human man in his workroom where no illusion was necessary. Human motion, human
gestures, were still the movements his mind knew best. He shrugged remembered shoulders beneath
an illusory silk shirt and continued his count.
"What fascination does this street-scum orphan hold for you, O Mighty Master? You've
wound him tight in a golden chain, and yet you plead for his understanding."
"... one thousand... one thousand one."
Hamanu set the cruet down and, taking up an inix-rib ladle, gave the cauldron a stir. Bubbles
burst on the brew's surface. The two-score flames of the overhead candelabra extinguished
themselves with a single hiss and the scent of long-dead flowers. A coal brazier glowed beneath the
cauldron, but when Hamanu stirred it a second time, the pale illumination came from the cauldron
itself.
"I noticed him, this Just-Plain Pavek of yours, Pavek the high templar, Pavek the druid. His
scars go deep, O Mighty Master. He's scared to the core, of you, of every little thing."
"Pavek is a wise man."
"He's young."
"He's mortal."
"He's young, O Mighty Master. He has no understanding."
"You're old. Did age make you wise?"
"Wiser than you, Manu. You never became a man."
Manu. The troll had read the uppermost sheet of parchment where the name was written, but
he'd known about Manu for ages. Windreaver knew the Lion's history, but Hamanu knew very little
about the troll. What was there to know about a ghost?
Shifting the ladle to his off-weapon hand, Hamanu reached into an ordinary-seeming leather
pouch sitting lopsidedly on the table. He scooped out a handful of fine, dirt-colored powder and
scattered it in an interlocking pattern across the cauldron's seething surface. Flames leapt up along
the powder's trail.
Hamanu's glossy black hair danced in the heat. He spoke a word; the flames froze in time.
His hair settled against his neck; illusion maintained without thought. Moments later, screams and
lamentations erupted far beyond the workroom. The flames flickered, died, and Hamanu stirred the
cauldron again.
"You're evil, Manu."
"So say you."
"Aye, I say it. Do you hear me?"
"I hear. You'd do nothing different."

"I'm no sorcerer," the troll swore indignantly.

"A coincidence of opportunity. Rajaat made you before he made me."
"Be damned! We did not start the Cleansing War!"
"Nor did I. I finished it. Would you have finished it differently? Could you have stopped
your army before every human man, woman, and child was dead? Could you have stopped
yourself?"
The air fell silent.
Iridescence bloomed on the swirling brew. It spread rapidly, then rose: a noxious, rainbow
bubble as tall as a man. The bubble burst, spattering Hamanu with foul-smelling mist. The silk of
his illusory shirt shriveled, revealing the black dragon-flesh of his true shape. A deep-pitched
chuckle rumbled from the workroom's corners before the illusion was restored.
Hamanu released the ladle. The inix bone clattered full-circle around the obsidian rim, then
it, the penultimate reagent, was consumed. Blue light, noxious and alive, formed a hemisphere
above the cauldron, not touching it. With human fingers splayed along his human chin, concealing a
very human scowl, Hamanu studied the flickering blue patterns.
Everything appeared in order. The turgid brew, the shimmering light, the lingering odor were
all as his research and calculations had predicted. But predictions could be wrong, disastrously
wrong, when spells went awry.
Rajaat, creator of sorcery as well as champions, had written the grammar of spellcraft in his
own youth, long before the Cleansing Wars began. Since then, additions to the grimoires had been
few, and mostly inscribed in blood: a warning to those who followed that the experiment had failed.
Hamanu's stealthy spell was perilously unproven. Its name existed only in his imagination. He
would, in all likelihood, survive any miscasting, but survival wouldn't be enough.
Still scowling, Hamanu walked away from the table. He stopped at a heap of clutter no
different from the others and made high-pitched clicking noises with his tongue. Before Windreaver
could say anything, a lizard's head poked up. Kneeling, Hamanu held out his hand.
The lizard, a critic, was ancient for its kind. Its brilliant, many-colored scales had faded to
subtle, precious shades. Its movements were slow and deliberate, but without hesitation as it
accepted Hamanu's finger and climbed across his wrist to his forearm. Its feet disappeared as it
balanced on real flesh within the illusion.
"You astonish me," Windreaver muttered from a corner.
Hamanu let the comment slide, though he, too, was astonished, hearing something akin to
admiration in his enemy's voice. He was evil; he accepted that. A thousand times a thousand
judgments had been rendered against the Lion of Urik. He'd done many horrible things because they
were necessary. He'd done many more because he was bored and craved amusement. But his evil
was as illusory as his humanity.
The Lion-King couldn't say what the lizard saw through its eyes. Its mind was too small, too
different for him to occupy. Scholars had said, and proven, that critics wouldn't dwell in an illomened house. They'd choose death over deception if the household doors were locked against their
departure. From scholarly proofs, it was a small step to the assumption that critics wouldn't abide
evil's presence, and a smaller step to the corollary that critics and the Lion of Urik should be
incompatible.
Yet the palace never lacked the reclusive creatures. Shallow bowls of amber honey sat in
every chamber for their useeven here, amid the noxious reagents, or on the roof beneath
Hamanu's unused bed.
With the critic on his arm, Hamanu returned to the worktable, dipped his finger in just such a
delicately painted bowl, and offered a sticky feast to his companion. Its dark tongue flicked once,
probing the gift, and a second time, after which the honey was gone. A wide yawn revealed its
toothless gums, and then it settled its wrinkled chin flat on the Lion-King's forearm, basking in the
warmth of his unnatural flesh.

With a crooked and careful finger, Hamanu stroked the critic's triangular skull and its long
flanks. Bending over, he whispered a single word: "Rajaat," and willingly opened his mind to the
lizard as so many had unwillingly opened their minds to him.
The critic raised its head, flicked its tongueas if thoughts were honey in the air. Slowly it
straightened its legs, turned around, and made its way back to Hamanu's hand, which was poised
above the blue light, above the simmering cauldron.
A shadow fell across Hamanu's arm. "This is not necessary, Manu."
"Evil cares nothing for necessity," Hamanu snapped. "Evil serves itself, because good will
not." He surprised himself with his own bitterness. He'd thought he no longer cared what others
thought, but that, too, was illusion. "Leave me, Windreaver."
"I'll return to Ur Draxa, O Mighty Master. There is nothing you can learn there that I cannot
and without the risk."
"Go where you will, Windreaver, but go."
The critic leapt into the cauldron. For an instant the workroom was plunged in total
darkness. When there was light again, it came only from the brazier. The brew's surface was satin
smooth; both the troll and the critic were gone.
With doubts and emptiness he did not usually feel, Hamanu lifted the cauldron. He set it
down again in an iron-strapped chest inscribed all over with words from a language that had been
forgotten before Rajaat was born. Then Hamanu locked the chest with green-glowing magic and,
feeling every one of his thousand years, sat down before the ink stone and parchment.
The reagents must age for two nights and a day before they could be decanted, before the
stealthy spell could be invoked.
There was much he could write in that time.
*****
I removed Bult's sword from his lifeless hand. It was the first time I'd held a forged weapon.
A thrill like the caress of Dorean's hair against my skin raced along my nerves. The sword would
forever be my weapon. Casting my gorestained club aside, I ran my hand along the steel spine. It
aroused me, not as Dorean had aroused my mortal passions, but I knew the sword's secrets as I had
known hers.
The dumbstruck veterans of our company retreated when I swept the blade in a slow, wide
arc.
"Now we fight trolls," I told them as Bult's corpse cooled. "No more running. If running
from your enemy suits your taste, start running, because anyone who won't fight trolls fights me
instead."
I dropped down into the swordsman's crouch I'd seen but never tried. I tucked my vitals
behind the hilt and found a perfect balance when my shoulders were directly above my feet. It was
so comfortable, so natural. Without thinking, I smiled arid bared my teeth.
Three of the men turned tail, running toward the nearest road and the village we'd passed a
few days earlier, but the rest stood firm. They accepted me as their leaderme, a Kreegill farmer's
son with a wordy tongue, a light-boned dancer, who'd killed a troll and a veteran on the same day.
"Ha-Manu," one man called me: Worthy Manu, Bright Manu, Manu with a sword in his
hand and the will to use it.
The sun and the wind and the homage of hard, human eyes made me a warlord that day. My
life had come to a tight corner. Looking back, I saw Manu's painful path from Deche: the burning
houses, the desecrated corpses of kin... of Dorean. Ahead, the future beckoned him to shape it, to
forge it, as his sword had been shaped by heat and hammer.
I couldn't go back to Deche; time's tyranny cannot be overthrown, but I was not compelled
to become Hamanu. A man can deny his destiny and remain trapped in the tight corner between past
and future until both are unattainable. The choice was mine.
"Break camp," I told them, my first conscious command. "I killed a troll last night. Where

there's one troll, there're bound to be more. It's nigh time trolls learned that this is human land."
There were no cheers, just the dusty backs of men and women as they obeyed. Did they
obey because I'd killed Bult and they feared me? Did they listen because I offered an opportunity
they were ready to seize? Or was it habit, as habit had kept me behind Bult for five years? Probably
a bit of each in every mind, and other reasons I didn't guess then, or ever.
In time, I'd learn a thousand ways to insure obedience, but in the end, it's a rare man who
wants to go first into the unknown. I was a rare man.
We had three kanks. Two of the bugs carried our baggage: uncut cloth and hides, the big
cook pots, food and water beyond the two day's supply every veteran carried in his personal kitall
the bulk a score of rootless humans needed in the barrens. The third kank had carried Bult and
Bult's personal possessions and our hoard of coins. I appropriated the poison-spitting bug and rode
in unfamiliar style while our trackers searched for troll trails.
I counted the coins in our coin coffer firstwhat man wouldn't? We could have eaten better,
if there'd been better food available at any price in any of the villages where we traded. I found
Bult's hidden coin cache and counted those coins, too. Bult had been a wealthy man, for all the good
it had done him. Wealth didn't interest me, not half as much as the torn scraps of vellum Bult had
kept in a case made from tanned and supple troll hide.
While the others slept, I examined the scraps and gave thanks to Jikkana, who'd taught me
human script. There were maps on some of the scraps: maps of the Kreegills, maps of the whole
human heartland. Roads were lines; villages were names beside dots of greater or lesser size. Deche
was marked on the Kreegill map, with a big red slash drawn through it. Deche and other villages,
more than I cared to count.
Bult had made other marks on his precious maps: blue curls for sweet streams that flowed
year around, three black lines with a triangle below them to mark where we'd buried our dead.
Those black lines surprised me: I hadn't thought he'd noticed. The last five years of my life were
written on those vellum scraps.
Another scrap held the names of the veterans in his band. I laughed when I read the words
he'd written about me: "Bigmouthed farm boy. Talks too much. Thinks too much. Dangerous.
Squash him when Jikkana lets him go." A man who has to write such things down in order to
remember them is a fool, but I read his entries carefully, committing them, too, to my memory
before I burnt the vellum. After all, he'd been right about me; he just hadn't moved fast enough.
There were intact sheets of vellum in the case. Each bore the seal of a higher officer. The
words were unfamiliar to me, even when I sounded them out. A code, I decided, but aren't all
languages codes, symbols for words, words for things, motions, and ideas? I'd cracked the troll code
before I knew that humanity had a code of its own. I had no doubt that I could crack any code Bult
had devised.
Of course, Bult hadn't devised the code. It was Myron of Yoram's code: the orders heor
someone he trustedhad sent to bands like ours. On each folded sheet, the officers whose paths
crossed ours had written their thoughts about us. As we rarely saw the same officer twice running,
the sheets were a sort of conversation among our superiors.
Pouring over them, I easily pictured Bult doing the same. The image inspired me. I cracked
the Troll-Scorcher's code three nights later. It was a simple code: one symbol displacing another
without variation from one officer to the next. The Troll-Scorcher's officers weren't much cleverer
than Bult had been, but their secrets had been safe from our yellow-haired leader. He would never
have carried those closely written sheets around for all those years if he'd known how Yoram's
officers belittled him.
But there were more than insults coded on those sheets. Word by word, I pieced together the
Troll-Scorcher's strategy. He herded the trolls as if they were no more, no less, than kanks. He
culled his bugs and kept them moving, lest they overgraze the pasturage: human farms, human
villages, human lives.
We Bult's band and the other bands that mustered each year on the plainsweren't
fighting a war; we were shepherds, destined to tend Myron of Yoram's flocks forever.

I read my translations to my veterans the next night. Honest rage choked my throat as I
described the Troll-Scorcher's intentions; I couldn't finish. A one-eyed man-one of Bult's confidants
and, I'd assumed, no friend of minetook up after me. He was a halting reader; my ears ached
listening to him, but he held the band's attention, which gave me the chance to study my men and
women unobserved.
They were mostly the children of veterans. They'd been raised in the sprawling camp in the
plains where the whole army mustered once a year until they were old enough to join a band. Their
lives had been completely shaped by Myron of Yoram's war against the trolls. When One-Eye
finished, they sat mute, staring at the flames with unreadable expressions. For a moment I was
flummoxed. Then I realized that their sense of betrayal went deeper than mine. Their very reason
for livingthe reasons that had sustained their parents and grandparentswas a fraud perpetrated
by the very man they called their lord and master: Myron Troll-Scorcher.
It was no longer enough that I lead them from one village to the next, looking for trolls who
hadas they did from time to timevanished overnight from the heartland. If I wanted my
veterans to follow me further, I'd have to replace the Troll-Scorcher in their minds.
I'd come to another corner in my life, hard after the last one. I could have sat with them,
staring at the flames until the wood was ash and the sun rose. With neither leader nor purpose, we
would have drifted apart or fallen prey to trolls, other men, or barrens-beasts, which were, even
then, both numerous and deadly. But destiny had already named me Hamanu; I couldn't let the
moment pass.
"Perdition," I said softly as I rose to my feet. There was no need to shout. The camp was
grave quiet, and I had their attention. "Perdition for Myron of Yoram and the trolls. We'll tell the
truth in every village and slay any rounds-officer who sniffs up our trail. We'll take this war back to
the trolls. We'll finish it, and then we'll come back to finish the Troll-Scorcher!"
This time there were cheers. Men took my hand; women kissed my cheek. Guide us,
Hamanu, they said. We put our lives in your hands. You see light where we see shadows. Guide us.
Give us victory. Give us pride, Hamanu.
I heard their pleas, accepted their challenge. I led them toward the light.
After studying Bull's maps, I found a pattern to our wanderings. More, I studied the vast,
empty areas where we never wandered and where, I hoped, trolls might go when they vanished
from their usual haunts.
There were twenty-three of us left in what had been Bull's band, what had become
Hamanu's. We were nowhere near enough warriors to confront trolls in lands that they knew better
than we did. So we wandered before heading into the unknown, visiting map-marked villages. By
firelight and the blazing midday sun, I told our tale to anyone who'd stand still long enough. Our
message was simple: humanity suffers because the army sworn to protect it pursues the
unfathomable goals of the Troll-Scorcher instead.
"Turn away from the Troll-Scorcher and the trolls. Take your destinies into your own
hands," I said at the end of every telling. "Choose to pay the price of victory now, or resign yourself
to defeat forever."
Instinct told me how to hold another human's attention with pitch, rhythm, and gesture, but
only practice could teach me the words that would bind a man's heart to my ideas. I learned quickly,
but not always quickly enough. At times, my words went wrong, and we left a village with dirt and
dung clattering against our heels. But even then, there'd be a few more of us leaving than there'd
been when we arrived.
From twenty, we grew to forty; from forty to sixty.
Our reputationmy reputationspread. Renegade bands whose disillusionment with the
Troll-Scorcher's army was older than ours met us on the open plains. Alliances were proposed. My
band should fall in step, they advised, and I, being younger in both years and experience, should
accept another leader's authority. Duels were fought: I was young, and I was still learning, but I was
already Hamanu, and it was my destinynot theirsto forge victory.
Bull's metal sword carved the guts of four renegade leaders who couldn't perceive, that truth.

After each duel, I invited their veterans to join me. A few did, but loyalty runs deep in the human
spirit, and mostly, duels left me with a cloud of enemies who wouldn't join my growing band and
couldn't return to the Troll-Scorcher's army. Cut off at the neck, without leaders, and at the knees,
with nowhere to go, they were of little consequence.
I had no greater concern for the Troll-Scorcher's loyal bands, which dogged us from village
to village. They threatened the villagers who aided us, then melted away, and got in the way of trolls
when I tried to pursue them. My trackers guessed that there were, perhaps, three loyalist bands
shadowing our movements and intimidating the villages we depended upon for food and water, now
that our number I had grown too large for easy forage. Thirty men and women, they said, forty at
most, and not an officer among them.
I believed my trackers.
I was stunned speechless one cool morning when the dawn patrol reported dust on the
eastern horizon: something coming our way. Something large, with many, many feet.
We'd made a hilltop camp the previous evening. The camp Bult would have made on the
ground he would have chosen: the Troll-Scorcher's loyal veterans didn't care if the trolls saw fire
against the nighttime sky. They'd choose defense over concealment every time. But the morning's
dust cloud didn't rise from the feet of trolls.
"How many?" I demanded of the trackers who'd failed me.
Shielding their eyes from the risen sun, they grimaced and squinted with eyes no sharper
than my own.
"A lot," one leather-clad woman declared, adding, after a moment's pause. "A lot, if they're
trolls. More, if they're human."
Her companions agreed.
"Are they human?" I asked, already knowing the answer. There were humans in the vicinity,
but we hadn't seen troll sign since the day Bult died.
By then the whole camp was awake. The ones who weren't staring at the sun were staring at
me. No tracker would meet my eyes.
"How many?" I cocked my wrist at my shoulder, ready to backhand the woman if she failed
to answer.
"A hundred," she whispered; the count spread through the camp like fire. "Maybe more,
maybe less. More'n us, for certain."
Veterans had at least a hundred curses for an incompetent leader, and I heard them all as the
cloud broadened before us. They were getting closerspreading out to encircle us. There were a
whole lot more than a hundred. Sure as sunrise, there was an officer among them, and where there
was a loyal officer, there was the Troll-Scorcher's magic, or so the older veterans promised. I'd
never seen magic used beforeexcept at the muster, when Myron of Yoram fried a few trolls, or the
piddling displays Bult made when we'd held hands and shouted the Troll-Scorcher's name at the
moon. We couldn't stand against the one and needn't fear the other.
"What now, Hamanu?" someone finally asked. "What do we do now?"
"It's all up," another man answered for me. "There's too many to outrun. We're meat for
sure."
I backhanded him and drew the sword that was at my side, night and day. "We never run; we
attack! If Myron of Yoram has sent his army against us instead of trolls, then let his army pay the
price."
"Attack how, Hamanu? Attack where?" One-Eye chided me softly.
I'd kept Bult's one-time friend close since he'd taken up my cause. He was twice my age and
knew things I couldn't imagine. When he'd been a boy, he'd listened to veterans who'd made the
victorious sweep through the Kreegills. I gave One-Eye leave to speak his mind and listened
carefully to what he said.
"If we run now," One-Eye continued. "If we scatter in all directions before the noose is
closed, leaving everything behind, a few will get away clean. If we stand, we're trapped, Hamanu.
Say, they don't have enough punch to charge the hill, they can set the grass afire. There's a time for

running, Hamanu."
"We attack," I insisted, fighting my own temper.
My sword hand twitched, eager to slay any man or woman who cast a shadow across my
ambitions. The veterans around me saw my inner conflict. Four timesfive counting BultI'd
proven that I could kill anyone who stood in my way. One-Eye presented a greater challenge. His
wisdom alone could defeat me, and gutting him would be a hollow victory.
The dust cloud was growing, spreading north and south. We heard drums, keeping the
veterans in step and relaying orders from one end of the curving line to the other. My heart beat to
their tempo. Fear grew beneath my ribs and in the breasts of all my veterans. There was panic
brewing on my hilltop. When I looked at the dusty horizon, my mind was blank, my thoughts were
bound in defeat. I wanted to attack, but I had no answer to One-Eye's questions: how? and where?
"You can't hold them," One-Eye warned. "They're going to run. Give the order, Hamanu.
Run with them, ahead of them. It's our only chance."
Hearing him, not me, a few men lit out for the west, and a great many more were poised to
follow. My sword sang in the warming air and came up short, a hair's breadth from One-Eye's neck.
I had my veterans' attention, and a heartbeat to make use of it.
"We'll run, One-Eye," I conceded. Then my destiny burst free. Visions and possibilities
flooded my mind. "Aye, we'll runwe'll run and we'll attack! All of us, together. We'll wait until
their line is thin around us, then, just when they think they've got us, we'll shape ourselves,
shoulder-to-shoulder, into a mighty spear and thrust through them. Let them be the ones who run...
from us!"
In my mind I saw myself at the spear's tip, my sword Bashing a bloody red as my veterans
held fast around me and my enemies fell at my feet. But, what I saw in my mind wasn't enough: I
watched One-Eye closely for his reaction.
His lips tightened, and his lumpy nose wrinkled. "Might do." His chin rose and fell. "Worth
a try. Better to die fighting in front than get cut down from behind."
My fist struck the air above my headthe one and only time that I, Hamanu, saluted another
man's wisdom. The orders to stand fast, then charge as a tight-formed group, radiated around the
hilltop. Not everyone greeted them with enthusiasm or obedience, but I ran down the first veteran
who bolted, hamstringing him before I slashed his throat. After that, they realized it was better to be
behind me than to have me behind them.
I held my veterans on the hilltop until the encroaching circle was complete. Grim bravado
replaced any lingering thoughts of panic or fear once the circle began to shrink: either we would
win through and roll up our enemies' line, or we'd all be dead. At least we hoped we'd be dead.
That's what gave my veterans their courage as we started down the hill. Any battlefield death was
preferable to the eyes of fire.
How can I describe the exhilaration of that moment? Sixty shrieking humans raced behind
me, and the faces of men and women before us turned as pale as the silver Ral when he was alone in
the nighttime sky. I'd never led a charge before, never imagined the awesome energy of humanity
intent on death.
Every aspect of battle was new to me, and dazzling. We ran so fast; I remember the wind
against my face. Yet I also remember realizing that if I continued to hold my sword level in front of
me, I'd skewer my first enemy and be helpless before the second, with a man's full weight wedged
against the hilt.
There was time to change my grip, to raise my weapon arm high across my off-weapon
shoulder, and deliver a sweeping sword stroke as we met their line. A man went down, his head
severed. Beside me, One-Eye swung a stone-headed mallet at a woman. I'll never forget the sound
of her ribs shattering, or the sight of blood spurting an arm's full length from her open mouth.
A glorious rout had begun. Destiny had pointed our spear at the handful of humanity who
could have opposed us: the life-sucking mages who marched with Yoram's army. Their spells were
their own, independent of the Troll-Scorcher. But spellcasting requires calm and concentration,
neither of which existed for long on that battlefield.

The enemy had expected an easy victory over ragtag renegades. They expected magic to do
the hard work of slaying me and my veterans. They weren't prepared for hand-to-hand bloody
combat. We took the fighting to them, and they crumpled before usfleeing, surrendering, dying.
At last, we stood before fine-dressed officers with metal weapons, mekillot shields, and boiledleather armor.
The battle paused while they took my measure and I took theirs. My veterans were ready,
and they were prepared to die defending themselves.
But they preferred not to
"Peace, Manu!" Their spokesman hailed me by my name. "For love of human men and
women, stand down!"
"Never!" I snarled back, thinking they'd asked me to surrender, knowing I had the strength
around me to slay them all.
To a man, they retreated.
"You've made your point, Manu," the spokesman shouted from behind his shield. "There's
no honor in killing a man when there're trolls for the taking not two day's march from here."
I raised my sword. "You lie," I said, not bothering to be more specific.
The officers halted and stood firm. There were five of them. An honor guard stood with
them, armed with metal swords and armored in leather, though they lacked the mekillot shields. I
judged the guard the tougher fight. We'd already lost at least ten veterans from our sixty, and the
pause was giving the enemy the opportunity to regroup.
I took my swingand reeled into my left-side man as a better swordsman beat my untutored
attack aside.
"Don't be a fool, Manu," another officer said. I recognized her from earlier times and
wondered which of the coded parchments had been written by her hand. "We know where the trolls
are. We'll lead you to their lairs. Remember Deche, Manu. Which do you want more, us or trolls?"
One-Eye and six other voices counseled me against the officer's offer, but she knew me,
knew my dilemma. Trolls were the enemy because, after ages of warfare, there could be no peace
between us. Myron of Yoram was the enemy because he wouldn't let his army win the war. But
humanity was not the enemy. I'd kill humans without remorse if they stood between me and my
enemies, but, otherwise, I had no cause against my own folk.
"Lay down your swords," I said to' those before me, and they did. "Call off your veterans!"
Another of the officersa short, round-faced fellow that no other man would consider a
threat in a fight but was the highest ranked of allshouted, "Recall!" From the midst of the honor
guard, a drum began to beat. I waved the armed guard aside and beheld a boy, fair-haired, freckled,
and shaking with terror as he struck the recall rhythm with his leather-headed sticks.
His signal was taken up by two other drummers, each with a slight variation. The roundfaced officer said there should have been five drummers answering the recall, one for each officer.
The drummers were boys, not veterans, not armed. They'd been no threat to us when we attacked
and rolled up their line, but the round-faced officer swore they wouldn't have run, that they were as
brave as any veteran, ten times braver than I. By the look in his eye, I understood that at least one of
the boys was kin to him, one of the boys who hadn't sounded his drum. He judged me the boy's
murderer, just as I'd once held Bult responsible for Dorean.
By my command, we searched the field, looking for the missing drummers. We found the
three missing boys before sundown, their cold fingers still wrapped around their drumsticks.
Battle is glorious because you're fighting the enemy, you're fighting for your own life and
the lives of the veterans beside you. There's no glory, though, once the battle has ended. Agony
sounds the same, whatever language the wounded spoke when they were whole, and a corpse is a
tragic-looking thing whether it's a half-grown boy or a fullgrown, warty troll.
There were more than a hundred corpses around that hilltop. I'd walked away from Deche,
and the death it harbored, hardly by my own choice. When the time came, I'd buried Jikkana, and
Bult, and I'd seen to it that all the others went honorably into their graves. But a hundred human
corpses...

"What do we do with them?" I asked One-Eye over a cold supper of stale bread and stiff,
smoked meat. "We'll need ten days to dig their graves. We'll be parched and starving"
One-Eye found something fascinating in his bread and pretended not to hear me. The
woman officer answered instead:
"We leave them for the kes'trekels and all the other scavengers. They're meat, Manu. Might
as well let some creature have the good of 'em. We head west at dawn tomorrowif you want to
catch those trolls."
And we did, but not at dawn. The round-faced officer kept us waiting while he buried his
boy deep in the ground, where no scavenger would disturb him.
They held me in thrall, those five officers did, with their hard eyes and easy assurance. I
knew I was cleverer than Bult and all his ilk, but, though I'd taken their swords away, I felt foolish
around them. My veterans saw the difference, sensed my discomfort. By the time we'd marched two
days into the west, those who'd joined me before the hilltop battle and those we'd acquired in that
battle's aftermath heeded my commands, but only after they'd stolen a glance at my round-faced
captive.
"Show me the trolls!" I demanded, seizing his arm and giving him a rude shake.
He staggered, almost losing his balance, almost rubbing the bruise I'd surely given him. But
he kept his balance and kept the pain from showing on his face. "They're here," he insisted, waving
his other arm across the dry prairie.
The land was as flat as the back of my hand and featureless, except farther to the southwest,
where a scattering of cone-shaped mountains erupted from the grass. They were nothing like the
rocky Kreegills, but trolls were a mountain folk, and I believed the officer when he said we'd find
trolls to the southwest.
"The mountains move!" I complained later that day. I'd reckoned the odd-shaped peaks were
closer, that we'd be among them by sundown.
There was throttled laughter behind me. As veterans were measured, I scarcely passed
muster. I'd seen the Kreegills, and the heartland, but the sinking landthat's what the officers called
the prairiewas new to me. It appeared flat, but appearances deceived, and sinking was as good a
description as any for the land we crossed.
The dry grass was pocked with sinkholes large enough to swallow an inix. The holes weren't
treacherousnot at a slow pace, with men walking ahead, prodding the ground with spear butts to
find the hidden ones, the ones crusted over with a thin layer of dirt that wouldn't hold a warrior's
weight. But sinkholes weren't the only difficulty the grass concealed. The prairie was riddled with
dry stream beds, some a half-stride deep, a half-stride wide. Others cut deeper than a man was tall
deeper than a trolltwice as wide. They were banked with wind-carved dirt that dissolved to
clumps and dust under a man's weight.
When we came to such a chasm, there was naught to do but walk the bank until it narrowed
or until we came to an already trampled place where crossing was possible. Muddy water
lingered in a few of the chasms. There were footprints in the mud: six-legged bugs, four-footed
beasts with cloven hooves, two-footed birds with talons on every toe, and once in a while, the
distinctive curve of a leather-shod foot, easily twice the size of mine.
A band of trolls could hide in those muddy chasms. If a troll knew the stream's course
which crossed which, which went wherehis band could travel faster than ours, and unobserved.
As the sun grew redder and shadows lengthened, our round-faced officer advised making
camp in one of the chasms. There weren't many who wanted to sleep in an open-ended grave.
Myself, a boyhood in the Kreegills and five years with Bult had conditioned my notions of safety: I
wanted those odd-shaped mountains beneath my feet. I wanted to see my enemy while he was still a
long way off.
And I was Hamanu. I got what I wanted.
Marching by torchlight and moonlight, pushing the veterans until they were ready to drop, I
made camp at the base of one of the strange mountains. In form, the mountains were like worm
mounds or anthillsif either worms or ants had once grown large enough to build mountains with

their castings. Their grass-covered slopes were slippery steep, without rocks anywhere to give a
handhold or foothold.
By daylight, we'd find a way to the top; that night, though, we made a cold camp at the
bottom. The sinking lands were familiar in one way, at least: scorching hot beneath the sun, bonechilling cold beneath the moon. Veterans and officers wrapped themselves into their cloaks and
huddled close together.
I took the first watch with five sturdy men who swore they'd stay awake.
I faced south; the trolls came from the north. The first thing I heard was a human scream cut
short. I know we'd fallen into a trap, but to this day I wonder if that trap had been set by the trolls or
the Troll-Scorcher's officers. Whichever, it wasn't a battleonly the trolls had weapons; humans
died tangled in their cloaks, still drowsy or sound asleep.
I had my sword, but before I could take a swing, a human hand closed around the nape of
my neck. My strength drained down my legs, though I remained standing. Fear such as I'd never
known before shocked all thoughts of fight or flight from my head. A mind-bender's assaultI
know it nowbut it was pure magic then, for all I, Manu of Deche, the farmer's son, understood of
the Unseen Way.
I thought I'd gone blind and deaf as well, but it was only the Gray, the cold netherworld
sucking sound from my ears as I passed through in the grip of another hand, another mind. For one
moment I stood on moonlit ground, far from the odd-shaped mountain. Then a raspy, ominous voice
said:
"Put him below."
Something hard and heavy hit me from behind. When I awoke, I was in a brick-lined pit
with worms and vermin for my company. Light and food and waterjust enough of each to keep
me alivefell from a tiny, unreachable hole in the ceiling.
I never knew how the last battle of my human life ended, but I can guess.

Chapter Eight
Hamanu's chin, human-shaped in the morning light that filtered through the latticed walls of
his workroom, sagged toward his breastbone. The instant flesh brushed silk, though both were
illusory, the king's neck straightened, and he sat bolt upright in his chair.
Grit-filled eyes blinked away astonishment. He who slept once in a decade had caught
himself napping. There was tumult in the part of Hamanu's mind where he heard his templars'
medalLion-pleasnot the routine pleas of surgeon-sergeants, orators or others whose duties gave
them unlimited access to the Dark Lens power he passed along to his minions. To Hamanu's
moderate surprise, he'd responded to such routine pleas while he slept. After thirteen ages, he was
still learning about the powers Rajaat had bestowed on him. Another time, the discovery would
have held Hamanu's attention all day, more, but riot this day. His mind echoed with urgency, death
and fear, and other dire savors.
The Lion-King loosed filaments of consciousness through the Gray, one for every inquiry.
Like a god he would not claim to be, his mind could be in many places at oncewandering Urik
with his varied minions while being scattered across the barrens in search of endangered templars.
The essence of Hamanu, the core of his selfwhich was much more than a skein of
conscious filaments, more even than his physical bodyremained in the workroom where he
looked down upon a haphazard array of vellum sheets, all covered with his own bold script. Blots as
large as his thumbnail stained both the vellum and the exposed table-top, a testament to the haste
with which he'd written. There were also inky gouges where he'd wielded the brass stylus like a
sword. The ink was dry, though, as was the ink stone.
"O Mighty King, my lord above all"
A new request. Hamanu replied with another filament, this time wound around a question:
What is happening?
This wasn't the first time the Lion-King had been inundated with requests for Dark Lens

magic. The desiccated heartland that Rajaat's champions ruled was a brutal, dangerous place where
disaster and emergencies were commonplace. But always before, he'd been awake, alert, when the
pleas arrived. His ignorance of the crisishis templars' desperationhad never lasted more than a
few heartbeats. He'd been awake, now, for many heartbeats, but so far, none of his filaments had
looped back to him. He had only his own senses on which to rely.
And dulled senses they were. Hamanu's illusion wavered as he stood. Between eye blinks,
the arms he braced against the table were a tattered patchwork of dragon flesh and human
semblance. He yawned, not for drama, but from long-dormant instinct,
"Too much thinking about the past," he muttered, as if literary exertions could account for
the unprecedented disorder in his immortal world. Then, rubbing real grit from the corners of his
illusory eyes, Hamanu made his way around the table.
The iron-bound chest where his stealth spell ripened appeared unchanged. Passing his hand
above the green-glowing lock, he kenned the spell's vibrationscomplex, but according to
expectationwithin.
"O Mighty King, my lord above all. Come out of your workroom. Unlock the door. Lion's
Whim, my kingI beg you, O Mighty King: Answer me!"
Still cross-grained and pillow-walking from his interrupted nap, Hamanu turned toward the
sound, toward an ordinary door. Neither the voice nor the door struck a chord of recognition.
"Are you within, O Mighty King? It is I, Enver, O Mighty King."
Enver. Of course it was Enver; the fog in Hamanu's mind lifted. He could see his steward
with his mind's eye. The loyal dwarf stood just outside the door he'd sealed from the inside with
lethal wards. Anxious wrinkles creased Enver's brow. His fingers were white-knuckled and
trembling as he squeezed his medallion.
Hamanu judged it ill omened that this morning, of all mornings, Enver was addressing him
as a mighty king rather than an omniscient god. He broke the warding with a wave of his hand, slid
back the bolt, and opened the door.
"Here I am, dear Enver. Here I've been all along. I was merely sleeping," Hamanu lapsed
into his habitual bone-dry, ironic inflection, as if he wereand had always been the heavysleeping human he appeared to be.
The dwarf was not taken in. His eyes widened, and anxiety rippled above his brows, across
his bald head. A frantic dialogue of inquiry and doubt roiled Enver's thoughts, but his spoken words
were calm.
"You're needed in the throne chamber, O Mighty Omniscience." With evident effort,
Enver resurrected the habits of a lifetime. "Will you want breakfast, Omniscience? A bath and a
swim?"
A few of the filaments Hamanu had released when he awakened were, at last, winding back
to him, winding back in a single ominous thread. Templars had died at Todek village, died so fast
and thoroughly that their last thoughts revealed nothing, and the living minds that had summoned
him were uselessly overwrought.
Elven templars were already running the road from Todek to Urik. Their thoughts were all
pulse and breath. Coherent explanations would have to wait until they arrived at the palace.
Other filaments had traveled to a score of templars at a refugee outpost on Urik's
southeastern border. There, the filaments had been frayed and tangled by the same sort of
interference the Oba of Gulg had wielded in the southwest yesterday. In the hope that something
would get through, Hamanu widened the Dark Lens link between himself and his templars. He
granted them whatever spells they'd requested. But it wasn't spells those desperate minds wanted.
They wanted him: Hamanu, the Lion-King, their god and mighty leader, and they wanted him
beside them.
There were limits to a champion's powers: Hamanu couldn't do everything. Though his
thoughts could travel through the netherworld to many places, many minds, and all at once, his
body was bound to a single place. To satisfy his beleaguered templars, he would have had to
transport his entire self from the palace, as he'd done when the Oba challenged him. But Enver

wasn't the only numb-fingered templar in the palace. A veritable knot of pleas and conscious
filaments surrounded his throne chamber where, at first guess, every living gold medallion high
templar, along with the upper ranks of the civil and war bureaus, was clamoring for his attention.
The Lion-King wasn't immune to difficult choices.
"Fresh clothes?"
Extraordinary daysof which this was surely one required extraordinary displays and
extraordinary departures from routine. Hamanu raised one dark eyebrow. "Dear Enver," he
reprimanded softly and, while he had the dwarf's attention, remade his illusions, adding
substantially to his height and transforming his drab, wrinkled garments into state robes of
unadorned ebony silk, as befitted a somber occasion. "Clothes, I think, will be the least of our
problems today."
Hamanu strode past his steward's slack-jawed bewilderment, slashed an opening into the
Gray netherworld, and, one stride later, emerged onto the marble-tiled dais of his unbeloved, jewelencrusted throne. He needed no magic, no mind-bending sleight to get his templars' attention. The
sight of him was enough to halt every conversation. Hamanu swept his consciousness across their
marveling minds, collecting eighty different savors of apprehension and doubt.
The six civil-bureau janitors, whose duty was to stand beside the empty throne and keep the
great lantern shining above it, were the first templars to recover their poise. In practiced unison,
they pounded spear butts loudly on the floor and slapped their leather-armored breasts. Then the
orator who shared throne-chamber duty with them cleared her throat.
"Hail, O Mighty King, O Mighty Hamanu! Water-Wealth, Maker of Oceans. King of the"
Mighty Hamanu shot her a look that took her voice away.
The chamber fell silent, except for the creaking of the slave-worked treadmills and the
network of ropes and pulleys that ran from the treadmills to huge red-and-gold fans. At this late
hour of the morning, the heat of day beat down on the roof, and nothing except sorcery could cool
the chamber and the crowd together.
Exotic and expensive perfumes competed pungently with each other and with the everpresent aroma of mortal sweat. The more delicate and sensitive individuals wore pomander masks
or held scented cloth against their noses.
For his part, Hamanu drank down every scent, every taste born in air or thought. His
champion's eyes took in each familiar face without blinking. There was Javed, clad in his usual
black and leaning nonchalantly against a pillar. Javed leaned because the wounds in his leg ached
today Hamanu felt the pain. But Javed was a champion, too, Hero of Urik, and, like the LionKing, had appearances to maintain. Pavek stood near the door, not because he'd arrived late, but
because no matter how carefully and properly his house-servants dressed him, he'd always be a
misfit in this congregation. He'd migrated, by choice, to the rear, where he hoped his high templar
peers wouldn't notice him.
Hamanu had other favorites: Xerake with her ebony cane; the Plucrataes heir, eleventh of his
lineage to bear a scholar's medallion and more nearsighted than any of his ancestors; and a score of
others. His favorites were accustomed to his presence. Their minds opened at the slightest pressure.
They were ready, if not quite willing, to speak their concerns aloud. The rest, knowing that the
Lion's favorites were also lightning rods for his wrath, were more than willing to wait.
He let them all wait longer. On the distant southeastern border, a sergeant's despair had burst
through the netherworld interference.
Hear me, O Mighty Hamanu!
The Lion-King cast a minor pall over his throne chamber. An eerie quiet spread through the
crowd. Conversation, movement, andmost important for a champion who was needed elsewhere,
but couldn't be seen with his vacant-eyed attention focused in that elsewherememory ceased
around him.
I hear youHamanu examined the trembling mote of consciousness and found a name
Andelimi. I see you, Andelimi. Take heart.

His words reassured the templar, but they weren't the truth. Hamanu glimpsed the southeast
border through a woman's eyes. Her vision was not as sharp as his own would be, but it was sharp
enough: black scum dulled an expanse of sand and salt that should been painfully bright.
An army of the undead, he said in Andelimi's mind, because it reassured her to hear the truth
of her own fears.
We cannot control them, O Mighty King.
Controlling the undeadof all the mysteries Rajaat's Dark Lens perpetrated, that one
remained opaque. Like the other champions, through sorcery Hamanu held vast power over death in
all its forms. He could inflict death in countless ways and negate it as well, but always at great cost
to his ever-metamorphosing self. Not so his templars, whose borrowed magic had its origin in the
Dark Lens and was fundamentally different from the sorcery Rajaat had bestowed on his
champions.
The magic his templar syphoned from the Dark Lens neither hastened the dragon
metamorphosis nor degraded ordinary life into ash. And, since the undead didn't hunger, didn't
thirst, didn't suffer, the champions often relied on their living templars' ability to raise the casualties
of earlier battles whenever it seemed that marching a mass of bodies at an enemy would insure
victory.
Which wasn't often.
Once a templar had the undead raised and moving, he or she faced the chance that someone
else would usurp control of them. Not an equal chance, of course. Some living minds were simply
better at controlling undead, and all other aspects being equal, a more experienced templarnot to
mention a more experienced priest, druid, sorcerer, or champion could usurp the undead from a
novice.
Hamanu personally tested his templars for undead aptitude and made certain the ones who
had it got the training they needed. The war bureau wouldn't have allowed Andelimi and the twenty
other templars in her maniple out the gates without an apt and trained necromant templar among
themespecially in the southeast, where Urik's land abutted Giustenal.
Hamanu stirred Andelimi's thoughts. Where is your necromant?
Rihaen tried, O Mighty King, she assured him. Hodit, too.
Her eyes pulled down to the hard-packed dirt to the left of her feet; Hamanu seized control
of her body and turned her toward the right. Andelimi was a war-bureau sergeant, a veteran of two
decade's worth of campaign. She knew better than to fight her king, but instinct ran deeper than
intellect. She'd rather die than look to her right. Hamanu kept her eyes open long enough to see
what he needed.
Rihaen tried...
Andelimi's thoughts were bleak. She'd barely begun to mourn. The dead elf had been her
lover, the father of her children, the taste of sweet water on her tongue.
Rihaen had tried to turn the undead army, but the same champion who'd sundered the link
between Urik's templars and Urik's king had roused these particular corpses. Instead of usurping
Giustenal's minions, Rihaen had been usurped by them. His heart had stopped, and he'd become
undead himself, under another mind's control. Hodit, who was also apt and trained, hadfoolishly
tried to turn Rihaen and suffered the same fate.
The remaining templars of the maniple, including Andelimi, had overcome their own
undead. It could be done without recourse to magic, and every templar carried the herbs, the oils, or
the weapons to do it. But what the raiser of Giustenal's undead army had done to Rihaen and Hodit
could not be undone. For them, the curse of undeath was irrevocable. Their bodies had fallen apart.
Nothing recognizable was left of Andelimi's beloved except a necromant's silver medallion and
several strands of his long, brown hair, all floating on a pool of putrid gore.
For the honor of his own ancient memories of Deche and Dorean, Hamanu would have left
Andelimi alone with her grief. But it had been her anguish that cut through Dregoth's interference,
and for the sake of Urik, he could show her no mercy.
Andelimi!

She crumpled to the ground; he thrust her to her feet.

Where are the others of your maniple? Who survives?
Hamanu would not make her look at Rihaen again, but he needed to see. He forced her eyes
open, then blinked away her tears. He found the fifteen surviving templars in a line behind
Andelimi. Their varied medallions hung exposed against their breasts. Defeat was written on their
faces because he had not heard their pleas in time. They knew what was happeningthat he'd taken
possession of Andelimiand that it had happened too late.
"We stand, O Mighty Lion! We fight, O Great Hamanu!" the maniple's adjutant shouted to
the king he knew was watching him through a woman's eyes. He saluted with a bruising thump on
his breast. "Your templars will not fail you!"
The adjutant's thoughts were white and spongy. His hand trembled when he lowered it.
Urik's templars didn't have a prayer of winning against the undead legion sprawled before them, and
the adjutant knew it. He and Andelimi wished with all their hearts that deathclean, eternal death
would be theirs this afternoon.
They'd get their wish only if Hamanu slew them where they stood and drained their essence,
furthering his own metamorphosis.
Hamanu pondered the bitter irony: only living champions were afflicted by the dragon
metamorphosis. Dregoth was as undead as the army he'd raised, utterly unable to become a dragon,
will he or nill he. There was no limit on Dregoth's sorcery except the scarcity of life in his
underground city.
The very-much-alive Lion of Urik tested the netherworld with a thought, confirming his
suspicions. Giustenal's champion had raised the undead army creeping toward Urik. Hamanu could
turn them, mind by empty mind, but he'd have to fight for each one, and victory's price was
unthinkably high.
"You will retreat," he told the maniple with Andelimi's voice.
They weren't reassured. Undead marched slowly but relentlessly; they never tired, never
rested. Only elves could outrun themunless there were elves among the undead.
"Better to stand and fight." A slow-moving dwarf muttered loudly.
He stood with his fists defiant on his hips. Whatever death Hamanu chose for himhis
undercurrent thoughts were clearit would be preferable to dwarven undeath with its additional
banshee curse of an unfulfilled life-focus. In that, the dwarf was mistaken. The Lion-King could
craft fates far worse than undeathas Windreaver would attest but Hamanu let the challenge
pass. Urik's fate hung in the balance, and Urik was more important than teaching a fool-hearted
dwarf an eternal lesson.
"Set all your water before me."
While the adjutant oversaw the assembling of a small pile of waterskins, Hamanu thrust
deeper into Andelimi's consciousness, impressing into her memory the shapes and syllables of the
Dark Lens spell he wanted her to cast. If grief had not already numbed her mind, the mind-bending
shock would have driven her mad. As it was, Hamanu's presence was only another interlude in an
already endless nightmare.
When the waterskin pile was complete and the arcane knowledge imparted, Hamanu made
Andelimi speak again: "After the spell is cast, you will each take up your waterskins again and
begin walking toward the north and west. With every step, a drop of water will fall from your
fingertip to the ground. When the undead walk where you have walked, the lifeless blood in their
lifeless veins will burst into flames."
" There is not enough water here to see us back to our outpost!" the dwarf interrupted, still
hoping for a clean death. "The undead will engulf us"
"There is a small oasis north of here"
The maniple knew it well, though it was not marked on any official map. They collected
regular bribes from the runaway slaves it sheltered. It was a minor corruption of the sort Hamanu
had tolerated for thirteen ages.
"Its spring has water enough to hold the undead at baysimply fill your waterskins from

the spring, and then walk around the oasis. And after the undead army has marched past..."
Hamanu narrowed Andelimi's eyes and made her smile. A lion's fangs appeared where her teeth
should have been. "After the undead army has passed, burn the oasis and bring the vagrants back
to Urik for the punishment they deserve."
They'd obey, these templars he was trying to save. No power under the bloody sun would
protect them otherwise. Hamanu, their king, deserved his cruel, capricious reputation. They'd march
to Urik because it had been known for thirteen ages that there was no way for a yellow-robe templar
to hide from the Lion of Urik. They could bury their medallions, break them, or burn diem, and it
wouldn't save them. Once his mind had touched theirs, he could find them, and so, they would
obey-Never imagining that if Dregoth's army reached Urik, there might not be a Lion left to find
them.
Killer-ward.
Hamanu put the word in Andelimi's mind. She repeated it, triggering the mnemonics he'd
forced into her memory. The links between templar and champion, champion and the Dark Lens,
were pulled, and magic was evoked. Sparks danced over the waterskins, growing, spreading, until
the drab leather was hidden by a luminous white blanket.
After that, it was time for Hamanu to return to Urik, time to tell his exalted templars of the
dangers heand they faced from yet another direction. He'd done all he could here.
Hamanu blinked and looked out again through his own eyes. His pall persisted in the throne
chamber. Two of the templars nearest the dais had not been standing straight on their feet when the
pall caught them, and as effects of time could not be easily thwarted, they'd both tumbled forward.
One of them would have a bloody nose when awareness returned, the other, a bloody chin. Deeper
in the silent crowd others had fallen. Onea woman, Gart Fulda would never stand up again.
She hadn't been particularly old or infirm, but death was always a risk when Hamanu's immortal
mind touched a mortal one.
The elven pair from Todek had arrived while Hamanu's attention was on the Giustenal
border. They'd been running when they entered the throne chamber, and momentum had carried
them several long strides toward the dais before the pall enveloped them. They, too, would tumble
when Hamanu lifted his spell. The leading elf would have to take his chances. His companion
carried an ominously familiar leather-wrapped bundle under his left arm.
A day that had not begun well and had gone poorly thereafter showed signs of becoming
much, much worse.
Before he dispelled the pall, Hamanu carefully took the 'bundle from the immobile runner. It
thrummed faintly as he carried it back to the throne. Cursing Rajaat yet another time, Hamanu
considered destroying it while the pall was still in place. There'd be questionsin the minds of the
elven runners, if nowhere elseand questions sired rumors. More questions, if he slew the elves,
too. He reconsidered. If the templars in this chamber saw the shard's power before he destroyed it,
he wouldn't have to worry about their loyalty when times got difficult, as times were almost certain
to do.
After a sigh, Hamanu inhaled the pall into his lungs. The elven runners tumbled. Others
gasped or yelped as words trapped in their throats broke free. None of the commotion held
Hamanu's attention when a trace of blue lightning, such as heralded a Tyr-storm, leapt from the
shard's leather-wrapped tip. The flash grounded itself in the crowd. Hamanu followed it to a strange
templar's mind.
"Raam," Hamanu muttered, savoring the stranger as his most agile-minded templars became
alert again. "Who in Raam would stand against me? With Dregoth marching, it would be better to
make common cause."
Javed, whose mortal mind was among the most agile and alert Hamanu had ever
encountered, had heard the thrumming shard. He watched the blue lightning leap from the LionKing's arm. As Champion of Urik, Javed was privileged to bear his sword in the throne room. He
drew the blade as another templar cried out.

Hands pressed against her steaming cheek, she reeled in agony, knocking over several lessalert templars. In her wake, Hamanu got his first eyes-only view of the Raamin stranger.
The Raamin was a striking example of humanity in its prime, taller than average, well fed,
well muscled, with sun-streaked hair. That hair had begun to move as if a strong wind blew upward
from the. object he clutched against his ribs.
"Drop it!" Hamanu shouted, a sound that loosened dust and plaster flakes from the ceiling,
but had no effect on the Raamin's bright blue, pall-glazed eyes.
Hamanu put the shard he held behind his back. Lightning danced on his chest, his shoulders,
his neck. It penetrated the Lion-King's human illusion without destroying it or harming himyet.
"Drop it, now!" he shouted, louder than the first time. He didn't dare any kind of magic or
mind-bending, not with Rajaat's malice whirling around the chamber.
The stupefied Raamin didn't so much as blink. From his appearance, he'd been one of
Abalach-Re's templars; the Raamin queen had never been particularly concerned with cleverness
when she picked her templars. Fortunately, Urik's king had other prejudices. Urik's elite templars
were bold enough to take matters into their own hands. A handful of men and women wrestled the
crackling bundle from the stiff-armed stranger and deposited it before their king's throne, where,
within a heartbeat, its wrapping had disintegrated.
Rather than the black-glass shard Hamanu had expected, a sky-blue serpent slithered
lightning-bright and -fast across the marble dais. It struck his ankle, easily piercing the human
illusion. Unbounded rage and hatred boiled against Hamanu's immortal skin. Sorcerous fangs struck
deep, but there was only bone, obsidian black and obsidian hard, beneath his gaunt flesh.
With the Todek shard in his left hand, secure at his back, Hamanu reached his right hand
down. He seized the serpent behind its scintillating eyes. The sorcerous creature was more
sophisticated than the one he'd squelched in Nibenay's abandoned camp, but its venom had no effect
on him.
"You surprise me, War-Bringer," he said as he held the construct up for his templars to see.
He began to squeeze, and the sky-blue head darkened. "Thirteen ages beneath the Black has
dimmed your wits, while mine have grown sharper in the sun."
The serpent's head was midnight dark when its skull burst. Venom hissed and sputtered on
the dais, leaving pits the size of a dwarf's thumbnail in the marble. It fizzled on the illusory golden
skin of Hamanu's right arm, where it harmed no living thing.
Hamanu held the serpent's fading, dwindling body aloft so his templars could cheer his
triumph. Their celebration would necessarily be brief. The other shard had ceased its thrumming,
which Hamanu didn't consider reassuring. The templars hadn't completed their second salute when
the chamber darkened. Sunset couldn't be the cause; he hadn't palled the throne chamber long
enough for the day to be coming to its natural end. Ash plumes from the Smoking Crown volcano
could have caused the darkness; but the eruptions that produced the plumes were invariably
preceded by ground tremors.
A Tyr-storm was the most likely cause, those fast-moving tempests born from the would-be
dragon Tithian's failed ambitions and fueled by Rajaat's rage. Tyr-storms were destructive, deadly,
maddening, and, in the end, altogether preferable to the darkness that descended on the throne
chamber once the eternal flame in the Lion's head lantern suspended above the throne flickered,
then vanished.
Hamanu would not tolerate such an affront. He whispered the sorcerer's word for sparks. A
sharp pain lanced his flank.
All sorcery required life essences before it kindled. While defilers and preservers quibbled
and pointed fingers at one another, Hamanu quickened his spells with life essence from an
inexhaustible, uncomplaining source: himself. He willingly sacrificed his own immortal flesh. Pain
meant nothing if it thwarted Rajaat's grand design. Whatever essence he surrendered would be
replaced, of course. But a man could draw water in a leaky bucket if he moved fast enough, and
although the dragon metamorphosis was, ultimately, unstoppable, Hamanu prolonged his own
agony at every opportunity.

His thoughts carried the quickened sparks to the lantern wick, and the Lion's eye gleamed
gold again. An instant later, brighter light flashed through breezeway lattices-lightning as blue as
the shard-born serpent had been, as blue as Rajaat's left eye. A distant crash of thunder accompanied
the lightning. Then the throne chamber was dark againexcept for the golden-eyed Lion. With his
templars silent around him and the wails of Urik's frightened folk penetrating the palace walls,
Hamanu waited for the next event, whatever it might be.
He didn't have to wait long.
"Hamanu of Urik."
Through the darkness of his throne chamber, Hamanu recognized the predatory voice of
Abalach-Re, once known as Uyness of Waverly, the late ruler of Raam. Over the ages, the LionKing's eyes had changed, along with the rest of him. Urik's Lion-King could see as dwarves, elves,
and the other Rebirth races sawnot merely the reflection of external light, but the warm light that
radiated from the bodies of the living. More than that, he could see magic in its ethereal form: the
golden glow of the medallions his templars wore, the deep cobalt aurascarcely visible, even to
himthat surrounded the blond Raamin templar.
Uyness's voice came from the aura, but not from any spell the queen of Raam had cast in life
or death. Hamanu thought immediately of Rajaat, but the first sorcerer hadn't cast the spell that put
words in the air around the dumbfounded Raamin; nor had any other champion. Yet it was a subtle,
powerful spell, as subtle and powerful as the stealth spell Hamanu aged in his workroom. The
realization that he could not put a name to the sorcerer who cast it sent a shiver down his blackboned spine.
"Mark me well, Hamanu of Urik: the War-Bringer grows restless. He's waited thirteen ages
to have his revenge. He remembers you bestyou, the youngest, his favorite. The wounds you gave
him will not heal, except beneath a balm of your heart's blackest blood. He seeks you first. He'll
come for you, little Manu of Deche. He already knows the way."
On any other day, Hamanu might have been amused by the haphazard blend of truth, myth,
and outright error the spell-spun voice spoke. He would have roared with laughter, gone looking for
the unknown sorcerer, andjust possiblyspared the poor, ignorant wretch's life for amusement's
sake.
Any other day, but not today. Not with Rajaat's blue lightning pummeling his city. Though
the spell-caster didn't know what Uyness of Waverly would have known from her own memory of
the day, thirteen ages ago, when the champions betrayed their creator and created a prison for him
beneath the Black, there were undeniable truths in the thick air of the throne chamber. Rajaat was
restless, Rajaat wanted revenge, and Rajaat would start with Urik.
Taking the chance that there was a conscious mind still attached to the spell, Hamanu said
mildly, "Tell me something I don't already know. Tell me where you are and why you come to Urik
now, when the War-Bringer's attention is sure to catch you... again. Wasn't one death enough?"
The cobalt aura flickered, as it might if motes of the Raamin champion's true essence had
been used in its creation. "The Shadow-King found me," she said when her aura was restored.
The statement wasn't quite an answer to Hamanu's questions. It might have been an evasion.
It certainly couldn't lave been the truth. Gallard of Nibenay was many things, none of them foolish
enough to search the Black near Rajaat's Hollow prison for the lingering remains of any champion,
least of all, Uyness of Waverly. More than the rest of them, the Raamin queen relied on myth and
theological bombast to sustain her rule. There were two reasons Nibenay hadn't swallowed Raam
long ago: One was Urik, sitting between the cities; the other was Dregoth, who hated Uyness with
undead passion.
"And the Shadow-King sent you to me?" Hamanu asked, hiding his disbelief behind a stillsoft voice and keeping his true questions to himself.
The Tyr-storm, which had lapsed into faint rumblings after its initial surge, showed its power
before the spellcast voice answered. Thunderbolts rained down on Hamanu's yellow-walled city
his keen ears recorded a score of strikes before echoes made an accurate count impossible. An acrid
stench filled the chamber and brought tears to the eyes of his assembled templars. The storm's blue

light shimmered in the pungent air, then coalesced into a swirling, luminous pillar that swiftly
became Uyness of Waverly in her most beautiful disguise, her most seductive posture.
"Rajaat grows strong on our weakness, Hamanu. Without a dragon among us, no spell will
hold him. We need a dragon, Hamanu. We need a dragon to keep Rajaat in the Hollow. We need a
dragon to create more of our own kind, to restore order to our world. We choose you to be the
dragon. Rajaat will come to Urik for revenge. He will destroy you. Then he will destroy everything.
The champions come to honor you, Hamanu of Urik. We offer you lives by the thousand. You will
become the dragon, and Athas will be saved."

Chapter Nine
Another barrage of blue lightning and deafening thunder pummeled Urik from above. The
lightning-limned figure of the Raamin queen vanished with the afterglow and didn't reform. In the
tumult, the sound of one man collapsing slowly on the marble tiles was heard only by Hamanu, who
bent a thought around the blond templar's heart to keep it beating.
This Tyr-storm seemed fiercer than the last such storm to pound Urik's walls. Indeed, it
seemed fiercer than any since the firstperhaps because like that storm, this one had arrived
unexpectedly. Five years ago, Urik's most exalted templars had succumbed, at least temporarily, to
the madness Tyr-storms inspired. Now the survivors stood impassively in the flickering blue light.
If they were not confident that the storm would spend itself quicklyand Hamanu discerned their
doubts through the lightning and the thunderthey were at least determined not to let their
neighbors see their weakness.
Hamanu tolerated any mortal trait in his templars, except weakness. The men and women in
his throne chamber were hard, often to the point of cruelty; competent, to the point of arrogance;
and strong willed, even in his presence. They'd hesitate to ask the questions the Raamin queen's
voice had raised in their minds, but inevitably, one of them would overcome that hesitation.
To forestall the death that would follow such insubordination, Hamanu reached into the
blond templar's mind.
Who sent you? What do you know about the message and the object you bore?
Spasms rocked the Raamin templar as he lay unnoticed on the marble floor. He'd need a
miracle to survive interrogation by a champion other than his mistress, and despite whatever
promises the Raamin queen might have made while she lived, champions couldn't conjure miracles.
Don't fight me, Hamanu advised. Answer my questions. Recount.
The templar complied, giving Hamanu vision after vision of a Raam fallen in anarchy
deeper than any he'd imagined. Five years after the woman Raamins called Abalach-Re, the grand
vizier of a nameless, nonexistent god, had disappeared, Raamin merchants, nobles, templars, and
the worst sort of elven tribes had carved her city into warring fiefdoms.
Her templars, as ignorant as ever of the true source of their power, had tried to reestablish
their magical link with the god that Uyness had claimed to serve. Small wonder, then, that these
days the despised, dispirited Raamin templars struggled to hold their own quarter and the gutted
palace. Small wonder, too, that when some of them began seeing a familiar face in their dreams,
hearing a voice they'd despaired of hearing again, they'd done whatever it had told them to do. They
went down to the dust-scoured wharves where the silt schooners tied up. There they found the shard
among the rocks that were sometimes visible along the shore
Learning that, Hamanu immediately thought of Giustenal on the Silt Sea shore and its ruler,
Dregoth, whose designs on Raam were almost as old as Rajaat's, and whose undead army marched
on Urik's southeastern frontier, ravaging his templars. Hamanu thought, as well, that there was
nothing more to dredge out of the templar's weakening mind. Miracles were beyond Hamanu's
purview, but eternal rest was not; he severed life's silver thread. No one, not Dregoth, not Rajaat,
not Uyness, if she were more than a memory or a pawn, not Hamanu himself, should he change his
mind, possessed the power to raise the blond templar from death to undeath or unravel his memory.

Without moving from the dais, Hamanu turned his attention to the elven runner who'd
brought the second shard.
Recount, he commanded.
The elf's heart skipped a beat or two, but he was young and healthy, and he came to no
permanent harm.
A pair of messengers, O Mighty King, came to the Todek registrator claiming to be templars
from Balk
Another city, far to the south of Urik, but also on the Sea of Silt.
Our registrator, she disbelieved. They were afoot, rat-faced and worse for traveling, with
nothing in their scrips but a handful of ceramic chips so worn there was no telling what oven baked
them or where. But they knew the things templars know, O Mighty King, and there was one among
us who'd been to Balic and knew they had the city pegged aright: merchants and nobles in charge,
just as in Tyr. Templars all dead or in hiding. So, the registrator listened
We all listened close, O Mighty King, when the pair said King Andropinis wasn't dead, but
that he needed help before he could give them power again. He'd said they'd find help in Urik if
they delivered a message.
Hamanu interrupted, And the message was the leather-wrapped parcel?
No, O Mighty King. The parcel was to be a gift, a truth token from King Andropinis himself
or so they said. The registrator, she ordered them to unwrap it. They wouldn't, until we threatened
them. I laughed, O Mighty King, when they cast lots and the loser made his death-promises. But he
died a bad death, and the thing was still all wrapped in silk
Sighing, Hamanu withdrew from the elf's mind while his templar was still recounting the
fate of the Balkans. Would a lightning-limned image of Albeorn Elf-Slayer rise in the storm-lit
chamber if he unwrapped this second shard? Would it spew a mix of truth and error, promises and
threats? Were there, at this very moment, messengers from the championless city of Draj headed for
Urik's walls with a deadly shard bundled under their arms?
Hamanu let the bundle under his left arm slide back onto the hard seat of the throne behind
him. He was ready to deal with his elite templars, ready for the storm to be over, but not quite ready
to raise a figurative fist against the powers that spawned it.
Tyr-storms weren't long-lived. Their violence worked against them. Hamanu listened outside
his palace and heard the wind swirl itself into knots and die. Lightning paled quickly; thunder faded.
Cold black rain pelted the city as the air cooled to a midnight chill. The pounding of countless drops
was as loud as thunder. Every wall, every roof, every market square and street would have to be
scrubbed clean. The Lion-King's monumental bas-reliefs that paraded around the outer walls would
have to be repaintedan enormous expenditure of labor and wealth that couldn't be avoided, not
even when every army in the heartland seemed to be marching toward Urik.
Hamanu cast his netherworld net beyond the city. The corners of his mouth pulled upward
with relief: the Tyr-storm's fury was so tightly centered above the palace that the fields outside the
walls had suffered no worse than a steady rain. The workers were safe in whatever shelters they'd
found for themselves, and the seeds they'd planted were safe, as well.
If war came to Urik, nothing would spare the crops, but in the ruins of his mortal human
heart, Hamanu remained a farmer. Tomorrow was tomorrow's problem; today, the crops had
survived; tonight he could sleep content... if he slept at all.
His elite templars wouldn't sleep before midnight. As the storm grumbled to a close,
Hamanu crafted orders for his men and women. He'd meet immediately with his war-bureau
commandants and a few others in the map room, but most of his elite templars would find
themselves with civic duties in the storm's aftermath. Keeping order was the templars'
responsibility. There'd been casualtieshe could feel the Urikite dead and dyingand property
damage: collapsed buildings; fires, despite the black rain; and a smattering of mad folk, some
pathetically helpless, and others more dangerous than any arena beast.
Hamanu's yellow-robed templars would see to it all. They'd dispatch the dead to the
knackers; the injured to whatever healers they could afford; and they'd keep the city safe from

looting, riot, and madmen. They'd organize the work gangs to put out the fires and dig out
survivors. They'd get their own hands dirty, if he told them to.
And he would.
"I retire to consider what I've learned," Hamanu announced before any templar had
overcome his or her reluctance to ask questions. "You will each do what your office commands in
the aftermath of a Tyr-storm." The individual orders he'd crafted flowed simultaneously from his
mind to theirs. "Are there any questions?"
He looked around the chamber, meeting and breaking the stare of anyone who considered a
time-wasting inquiry. The templars began departing. As soon as there was a clear path to the corpse,
the slaves left the treadmills. They took up the blond Raamin's body and bore it respectfully from
the chamber.
Hamanu picked out one particular dark-haired head among those moving toward the door.
Flicking a finger through the netherness, he tapped the man sharply on the shoulder. Pavek's face
slumped forward even as his spine straightenedan impressive physical performance in its
helpless, hapless mortal waybut otherwise no one suspected that he'd been singled out for private
conversation with his king.
Pavek was learning the tricks of his new trade.
"I gave you no orders," Hamanu said once they were alone. He narrowed his eyes and got a
good taste of common-born fear before Pavek managed to swallow it.
Slowly, Pavek raised his head. Dark mortal eyes, wide with dread, found the strength to defy
the Lion-King. "O Mighty King, I was following the commands of my office. There are Quraite
farmers planting seed north of the walls"
"Eight of whom are more competent druids than you'll ever be! If all of Urik were so well
protected, the fiercest Tyr-storm would be tamed to a breeze long before it got here."
Pavek gulped. Guilty thoughts swirled in his mind. He'd known about six of the druids, but
not eight. He was afraid for himself, more afraid for them. It was the latter fear that stiffened his
spine. "O Mighty King, you said it was time for Quraite to pay the price of your protection. It was
their choice. More would have come"
"But you thought six was enough. I tell you, Pavek, they sneaked an extra two in without
your knowledge."
The man broke at last. His posture went limp; he stared at his feet and muttered, "It was their
choice, O Mighty King. They know their magic is forbidden, but they came anyway. You made
them understand that Quraite is as much a part of Urik as the Lion's fountain."
Even in defeatespecially in defeatPavek spoke the words that formed in his heart. Once,
never more than twice, in a human generation, Hamanu found a man who'd tell the truth, no matter
the risk.
"I need you here, Just-Plain Pavek."
"O Mighty King, I'm yours to command."
"Good." Hamanu smiled, baring pointed golden teeth, but the illusion went for naught
because Pavek continued to stare at his toes. He reached around for the wrapped bundle he'd left on
the throne seat. It was heavier now and definitely inert. "You will take this to my workroomLook
at me, Pavek! Look at me when I'm giving you an order!"
This time the fangs weren't an illusion. No one could predict the precipitous shifts in the
Lion-King's mood, not even Hamanu himself. His heart beat wrong, and with no greater warning,
indulgence became a dangerous level of indignation. Sometimes Hamanu killed with no more than
a heartbeat, but not today. Pavek was stalwart; he bore his fears with dignity and lifted his head.
Hamanu's indignation faded as suddenly and inexplicably as it had arrived.
"I meant no disrespect, O Mighty King."
Hamanu seldom explained himself or apologized for anything. He hid his cursed fangs
within blunt-edged human illusions and considered that sufficient. He shoved the bundle into
Pavek's reluctant arms. "You will take this to my workroom; I judge it harmless enough now, but it
warrants further examination. You'll find a table covered with vellum. Put it on the table and wait

for me to return. While you're waiting, you'll see an iron-bound chest against the far wall. Keep a
careful eye on it, Pavek, but otherwise, leave it alone."
"I will not touch anything, O Mighty King. I wouldn't consider it."
"Keep an eye on the chest. Don't fret over the rest. It's loot, mostly, from Yaramuke and
other forgotten places. With all the flooding, the palace is as damp as the rest of Urik. There's water
below and history piled everywhere that's still dry."
Another man hearing of Yaramuke's fabled treasure might be tempted with greedy thoughts.
Not Pavek. His thoughts were utterly guileless when he said, "I will wait, O Mighty King, and
watch the iron-bound chest, as you ordered."
"You might read the vellum," Hamanu suggested, tamping the seeds of curiosity firmly into
Pavek's consciousness.
"If you so command, O Mighty King."
Hamanu silently bemoaned the frustrations of tempting an honest man. "You might be
waiting a while, Pavek. You might grow bored. You might read the vellum, if you do grow bored."
"I will remember that, O Mighty King."
Like as not, Pavek would never succumb, and Hamanu would have to order the man to read
what he'd written, as he had before. "Go," he said wearily. "Wait, grow bored, and remember
whatever you wish."
"Your will, O Mighty King." Pavek bowed awkwardly he'd never have the grace of a
properly obsequious courtierand retreated toward the door.
Hamanu had slit the air before him in preparation to entering the Gray when the mortal man
stopped suddenly and turned around. Misty tendrils of the netherworld wafted between them. Pavek
affected not to notice, but the man was a druidhowever rudimentary his training, he had the raw
talent to see the mist and know what it was.
"Yes, Pavek?"
The scarred templar blinked and shuddered. He'd almost forgotten why he'd stopped. Then
the thought reformed in his mind. "O Mighty King, the iron-bound chest that I'm supposed to
watch. What am I watching for? What should I do if... if something happens to it?"
"Nothing, Pavek, nothing at all. If anything happens, you'll simply die."
Hamanu didn't wait for Pavek's reaction. He thrust one arm, then one leg, into the
netherworld and strode from the throne chamber to the map room where his war staff had
assembled. The Lion-King didn't stand on ceremony with these men and women.
"We fight for Urik's very life," he told them as he sealed the netherworld rift. "Armies from
Nibenay and Gulg pin our flanks while Dregoth sends undead hordes our way from Giustenal.
Raam sends messengers, Balic, too, and it's safe to wager they'll be marching before long. It's only a
matter of time before we hear from what's left of Draj."
There was a collective intake of breath, a muttered curse or two, and a question: "What of
Tyr?"
That Hamanu couldn't answer. The free folk of Tyr, having slain their king, a dragon, and
returned the War-Bringer to his prison, had become a realm unto themselves, obsessed with laws
and councils and taking little interest in the heartland beyond their borders.
Most of those assembled in the map room had known about the Nibenese and Gulgan forces
lying low, just out of Urik's reach, and marked with colored silk ribbons on the miniature heartland
Hamanu had carved into the walls of this room. The Giustenalt armya series of bold, charcoal
lines Hamanu quickly added in the southeastwas an unpleasant surprise.
They didn't ask their king what he'd done to incur the wrath of his peers. For the most part,
that question didn't occur to them: But other questions did: practical questions about another levy
and overextended lines of supply, a shortage of weapons in the city's armory, and the havoc that
floods were wreaking on Urik's normally reliable roads. Hamanu listened more than he answered.
He'd been Urik's supreme commander for thirteen ages, but, together, the mortal minds he'd
assembled had more experience. Individually they offered insights and perspectives he might have
overlooked.

The Lion-King's armies were unbeaten because the Lion-King was not too proud to take his
advisers' advice.
Evaporating puddles from the Tyr-storm made for a sultry, sticky afternoon. Men, women,
and Hamanu himself shed their ceremonial garmentsor the illusion of them and, clad in plain
linen, thrashed out a battle plan. Night had fallen when Hamanu gave his approval to the best
notions that mortal and immortal minds could devise, never hinting that it wouldn't be enough if he
were right about the enemy they faced.
Enemy or enemies.
Try as he might in odd moments in the map room, or afterward, alone on his storm-tossed
rooftop, Hamanu could not wrestle the day's events into a single pattern. Rajaat's champions had
weaknesses deriving from their own human natures and the spells that created them. They'd
contrived to keep their weaknesses secret, but after ages of spies and spells, Hamanu could scarcely
believe that he'd been any more successful keeping his secrets from his peers than they had been
keeping theirs from him. He'd had Windreaver, of course, but he didn't know that he was the only
champion whose victory was one ghost shy of complete. And Gallard had talked to Borys, who'd
known why the Lion of Urik would never become the Dragon of Urik.
Unless Rajaat were still behind it all. If Rajaat had cast the spells that brought Uyness's
voice to the Lion-King's throne...? But, no, Hamanu hadn't recognized the personality behind the
spell, and whatever enmity the surviving champion peers had toward one another, it wouldn't dull
their wits where the War-Bringer might be involved.
Or had Rajaat found a way to conceal his sorcerous essence?
Hamanu found no answers on the rooftop above his moonlit city. The sounds of rescue and
repair, of mortal life determined to continue, no matter the price, rasped his nerves. He slashed the
air and returned to his workroom, where the city's noise was masked by walls and Pavek was
enthralled by the unfinished story written on the vellum sheets.
The Lion-King's sandals and jewelry were illusion. They made no sound as he approached
the lamplit worktable.
"Were you bored?"
Pavek shot out of his seat before Hamanu finished his question. The chair toppled behind
him and the table in front of him. Loose vellum, the ink stone, the stylus and not to forgetthe
leather-wrapped shard went flying. The air snapped as Hamanu, moving faster than sight or sound,
caught the leather a handspan above the floor. For a moment, they both stared at the innocentseeming parcel, then at each other; then Pavek, who'd barely caught his balance after his leap,
dropped hard on his knees.
"I am an oaf, O Mighty King," Pavek insisted breathlessly, though his agitated thoughts
implied that the Lion of Urik might have given a poor man a bit of warning.
"And I might have warned you, mightn't I?"
Wisely, Pavek said nothing. Hamanu righted the table, returned the shard to its top, and
collected a handful of vellum sheets.
"You were reading. What do you think?"
A veritable storm of thoughts stewed in Pavek's mind, but they were all half-formed and
elusive. As impatient as any fountain-side poet reciting for his supper, Hamanu had to wait for the
man's spoken words.
"I thinkI think, O Mighty King, that it is not finished."
"That's all? No greater understanding of me, of the choices I made and make? It is not the
version you were taught in the orphanage," Hamanu said with certainty. That versionthe LionKing's official historywas a god's tale, full of miracles, revelations, and infallibility, nothing like
the human frailties the vellum revealed.
It was embarrassing to beg a mortal's opinion. It was degrading. Worse, it stirred the dark
fire of Hamanu's anger. "Speak, Pavek! Look at me! Ask a question, any question at all. Don't just
kneel there like a poleaxed inix. I've told you secrets I've kept for ages. Don't you want to know
why?"

"O Mighty King, forgive me, but I couldn't hope to understand. I have so many questions, I
wouldn't know where to begin"
"Ask, Pavek. Look at me and ask a question, ask as if your life depended on it, for it does!"
The head came up, wide-eyed and very mortal, very fragile. The question flowed exactly as
it formed in Pavek's mind
"Were you Rajaat's favorite? Is that what you became after?"
Two questions: twice as many as he'd commanded and an excuseif Hamanu needed one
to slay the trembling man where he knelt. But, strangely, the rage was gone. Hamanu walked around
the table, righted the chair, and eased his illusory self onto its seat.
"The answer that comes to me, Pavek, is no. I was never Rajaat's favorite. I hated him before
I knew what he was, before he made me what I became, and he knew I hated him. I wouldn't have
tolerated his favor, and for all these years I have believed that I didn't have it. Tonight, though, it's
not me who asks the question, but you, a mortal, whom some might call my favorite. Hatred doesn't
protect you from my favor, dear Pavek, and so I realize I have become what I hated when I was a
man.
"Today is a sad day, Pavek. Today I've realized that my hatred amused Rajaat, amuses him
still, as yours amuses me. I was the last of his creationsbut not because we imprisoned him. No,
he'd had two hundred years to ponder his mistakes before he created me. I was the last because I
was everything he meant a champion to be. I loathed him, but, yes, Pavek, I was Rajaat's favorite. I
carried in my bones his hopes for a cleansed and purified Athas; I still Hamanu recalled the mortal
man he'd been and felt the weight of his immortal age as he'd never felt it before. Looking across
his worktable, he saw the gray dust and empty memories of an unnatural life. He didn't see Pavek at
all, until the man said
"I don't loathe you or hate you, O Mighty King."
"Then you are either an innocent or a fool," Hamanu said wearily, indulging himself in a
moment of self-pity and eager to stifle a favorite, whose voice, at this moment, sounded too much
like his own.
"Telhami says not, O Mighty King."
Perhaps Rajaat was right. Rajaat had already lived two thousand years or more when he
began creating his champions. Perhaps a man needed several ages to learn the ropes of immortality
to learn to pick his favorites from the ranks of those who hated him.
When Telhami lived in Urik, Hamanu had forgotten Dorean and every other woman. Her
eyes, her hands, her laughter had made him human again. For how long? A year?
Twenty years? Thirty? He'd lived an enchantment. Every day had been bright and sparkling,
yet different; every night was the stuff from which men's dreams were spun. Then, one morning she
was dressed in traveler's clothes.
She'd had a vision during the night of a place beyond the Ringing Mountains, a place where
the air was cool and moist, where the ground was a thick, soft green carpet, and trees grew halfway
to the sun. Cold springs bubbled year around in the place she'd envisioned, and at the center of
everything was a waterfall shrouded in mist and rainbows. Her life in Urik was over; she had to find
her waterfall.
Druids cannot stay, she'd saidas if that explained everything.
And he, of course, could not go. Urik had already suffered from his neglect. A generation of
templars had succeeded to power thinking that their king was a besotted fool. The ordinary folk on
whose shoulders he and the templars stood did truly curse the Lion-King's name.
Hamanu could have forced Telhami to stay, but he couldn't command her affection. He could
have slain her as she stood before him with her staff and veiled hat. The deaths of mortalseven
mortals he lovedwas a familiar pain. Being left behind was not.
Will you return? he'd asked, as countless other men and women had asked their departing
lovers, but never Hamanu, never the Lion-King, not before or since.
Telhami had returned, in her way. She'd settled her druids close enough to Urik that he knew
roughly where she was, but on the far side of lifeless salt, where his magic couldn't reach her. Until

one night, when this Pavek, this stolid, stubborn lump of humanity who stirred forgotten memories,
gave his king passage across the waste. Hamanu had saved Telhami's village from one of his own.
He would have saved her, too, but she chose to die, instead.
He never knew if she'd found her damned waterfall. Because he'd loved her, he hoped she
had. Because she'd left him, he hoped otherwise. Pavek might know, but thirteen ages had taught a
farmer's son not to ask questions unless he truly wanted the answers.
"Go home," he told Pavek. "I'll watch the chest overnight. Come back tomorrow or the day
after."
The templar rose to one knee, then froze as a breeze spiraled down from the ceiling, a silveredged breeze that roiled the vellum and became Windreaver.
A fittingly unpleasant end to an unpleasant day.
"I thought you'd gone to Ur Draxa."
"I have a question, O Mighty Master."
"I might have known."
A breeze and a shadow, that was all the influence the troll had in the material world, but he
could observe anything Rajaat in his Ur Draxan prison or a scarred templar reading sheet after
sheet of script-covered vellum.
"Your little friend might find the answer interesting, O Mighty Master if you're inclined to
answer."
Hamanu could pluck thoughts from a living mind or unravel the memories of the naturally
dead; he could do nothing with his old enemy, Windreaver, except say"Ask for yourself. Don't
involve Pavek in your schemes."
"O Mighty Master, it's his question as well as mine. I heard it off his own tongue as he
turned the last sheet over."
Poor Pavekhe'd said something that Windreaver had overheard, and now he was using
every trick he'd learned as a templar, every bit of druidry Telhami had taught him, to keep his
wayward thoughts from betraying him. It was a futile fight, or it would have been, if Hamanu
weren't wise to Windreaver's bitter ways.
"Ask for yourself!"
His voice blew Windreaver's silver shadow into the room's four corners. It was no more than
a moment's inconvenience for the troll, whose image reappeared as quickly as it had vanished.
"As you command, O Mighty Master. Why did Rajaat choose a thick-skulled, short-witted,
blundering dolt, such as you were, to replace Myron of Yoram?"
He almost smiled, almost laughed aloud. "Windreaver, I never asked, and he never told. He
must have had good reasonsnot from your view, of course. You would have beaten Myron,
eventually, but once I was Troll-Scorcher, my victory was inevitable."
A blunt-fingered shadow hand scratched a silvery forward-jutting jaw. "Perhaps. Perhaps
not. Someone taught you strategies and tactics Yoram never imagined, and you never guessed while
you were..." Windreaver's voice, his deep, sonorous troll's voice, trailed off to a whisper.
"Alive?" Hamanu finished for him. "You cannot accept that the son of a Kreegill farmer
conquered the trolls. You'd prefer to believe that Rajaat conjured some long-dead genius to inhabit
my body."
"The thought had crossed my mind. I was there in the sinking lands, Manu of Deche. I saw
you: a stringy human. You looked young, acted younger, standing behind your bright steel sword
with your jaw slung so low that a mekillot could crawl down your gullet. You were unworthy of the
weapon you held. I watched as your own men came to kill you for die shame and defeat you'd
brought them. Then I blinked, and you were gone. The next time I saw you"
Insubstantial silver tears seeped from the shadow's eyes, and it came to Hamanu that
Windreaver had recognized him that day on the cliff. It came to him as well that Windreaver could
answer one of his undying questions.
"Were we betrayed?"
Windreaver inhaled his tears. "Betrayed?"

"Did Myron of Yoram sell my veterans to your trolls? Did you know where to find us?"
"We retreated to the sinking lands whenever the yora plants there had grown high enough to
harvest. The Troll-Scorcher never followed us; you learned why"
"I followed you."
"Yes, O Mighty Master, you followed us everywhere, but Myron of Yoram did not. I think
he did not expect you to return, but he didn't betray you, not to us. I didn't guess the great game
Yoram played until I looked over Pavek's shoulder and read your recounting."
They stared at each other, through each otherimmortal ghost and immortal champion. The
air was thick with unspoken ironies and might-have-beens.
Pavek, the mortal who didn't understand, couldn't possibly understand, cleared his throat. "O
Mighty Kingwhat happened after the battle? How did you escape from the prison-hole?"
Hamanu shook his head. He hadn't escaped, not truly, not ever.
"Yes," Windreaver added, breaking the spell. "Rajaat must have prepared quite a welcome
for you."
"Not Rajaat," Hamanu whispered.
No sorcery or mind-bender's sleights could alter those memories. He could feel the walls as
if they were an arm's length away, just as they'd been when he realized he'd been stowed in a grain
pit. The remembered bricks were cool and smooth against his fingertips. Give a man a thousand
years, and he wouldn't scratch his way through that kiln-baked glaze or pry a brick out of its
unmortared wall. Give him another thousand, and he wouldn't budge the sandstone cap at the top of
his prison, no matter how many times he pressed his limbs against the bricks and shinnied up the
walls, no matter how many times he came crashing down to the layer of filth at the bottom.
"Not Rajaat?" Windreaver and Pavek asked together.
Hamanu spied the brass stylus on the workroom floor. He picked it up and spun it between
his fingers before closing his hand around the metal shaft. "The Troll-Scorcher, Myron of Yoram,
plucked me out of the sinking lands. He had me thrown in a grain pit on the plains where his army
mustered"
"A grain pit," Windreaver mused. "How appropriate for the pesky son of a farmer."
The Lion-King said nothing, merely bared his gleaming fangs in the lamplight and bent the
stylus over a talon as black as obsidian, as hard as steel.
"At night" Hamanu's lips didn't move; his voice echoed from the corners and the ceiling.
"At night I could hear screams and moans through the walls around me. I wasn't alone, Windreaver.
The Troll-Scorcher had pitted me in the midst of my enemies: the trolls. Big-boned trolls who could
stand, maybe sit cross-leggedif they were young enough, agile enoughbut never stretch their
legs in front of them, never lie down to sleep. Not once, in all the days and nights of their captivity,
which was, of course, as long as mine... or longer. And mine was...
"When did you harvest the yora plants, Windreaver? While the sun ascends, while it's high,
or while it descends? The Troll-Scorcher's army mustered at High Sun, so I suppose I was in that pit
for less than a year, though it seemed like a lifetime. A human lifetimebut trolls live longer than
humans, don't they, Windreaver? A troll's lifetime would seem longer, standing the whole time."
Hamanu clutched the bent stylus in his fist, squeezing tighter, waiting for the old troll, his
enemy, to flinch. But it was Pavek who averted his eyes.
"Shall I tell you how I got out of the pit?" Hamanu asked, fastening his cruelty on one who
would react, lest his own memories overwhelm him. "First they threw down burning sticks and
embers that set the filth afire. Then they lowered a rope. Burn to death or climb. I chose to climb; I
chose wrong. Spear-carrying veterans circled the pit, according me a respect I did not deserve. I
could stand, but I'd forgotten how to walk. The sun blinded me; tears streamed from my eyes. I fell
on my knees, seeking my own shadow, the darkness I'd left behind.
"Their spears jabbed my flanks. I lashed out, seizing one behind its flint and wrestling it
away from the veteran who held it. They fell on me thenmy own kind, human men and women
like myselfbeating me senseless. When I had my wits again, I was bound hand and foot, with my
back against a standing mekillot rib and the sun in my face.

"A man called my name, Manu of Deche; I opened my eyes and beheld the Troll-Scorcher,
Myron of Yoram. He was a big man, a huge, shapeless sack of a man wrapped in a tent of flamecolored silk. Two men stood beside him, to aid him when he walked. Another two carried a stout
and slope-seated bench that they shoved behind him after every step because he had no strength in
his legs and could not sit to rest.
"I mocked him," Hamanu said, remembering the exact words that had earned him another
ruthless beating. His mortal eloquence hadn't been limited to long words and flowery phrases.
Between his farmyard childhood and his years among the veterans, he'd become a champion of
coarse language long before he'd been a champion of anything else. But time was unkind to
vulgarity. His profanity had lost its sting; his choicest oaths were quaint now, or forgotten entirely.
He was left with paraphrase: "I dubbed him a sexless man, a stinking mound of dung."
"You'd figured out where you were and what was about to happen. You'd decided to get
yourself killed, no doubt," Windreaver suggested.
"I recognized the place, yes: the plains, the mustered army, the trolls staked out on either
side of me. Seeing him, though... seeing what he was, the Troll-Scorcher who'd let Deche and a
hundred other human villages die, I wasn't thinking of death, only of my hatred. You cannot
imagine my hatred when I looked at him."
"Oh, I can, O Mighty Master, each time I look at you."
Once again Hamanu locked eyes with the ghost. Windreaver's hate was his most tangible
aspect, yet it paled beside the memory of Myron of Yoram.
"He was a failure, a coward who could not face his enemies. He was a glutton for pain and
sufferingwhen he had nothing at risk"
Windreaver's silver-edged shadow bent low across the table. "When were you ever at risk,
Hamanu?" the troll demanded, his voice a cold, bitter whisper. "When did you ever fight a fair
battle to an honorable end?"
"I fought to end the war," Hamanu snarled back, though there was no need to defend himself
to a defeated adversary and a thoroughly cowed mortal man. "Peace was my honor"
And the risk? What had he risked after he faced Myron of Yoram?
"I told the truth. I exposed the Troll-Scorcher to the veterans of his army. I accused him of
human deaths, countless deaths, pointless deaths. For Dorean and Deche and all the others whose
voices were stilled, I raised mine for judgment. I named him Betrayer and Deceiver. I cried out for
vengeanceand he struck me with the eyes of fire.
"My blood grew hot in my veins. It simmered. It boiled in my heart. I opened my mouth to
scream; my tongue"
There were no more words in the workroom, just as there had been no more words that hot
High Sun afternoon on the plains. Writhing under the assault of the Troll-Scorcher's fiery sorcery,
Hamanu's mouth had filled with a tongue of flame, not flesh. The last sounds he heard were his own
ears crackling, like fat in the fire. Myron of Yoram's corpulence grew vast before his heat-swollen
eyes burst. Mortal Hamanu died in a black inferno of heat, silence, and torment that neither words
nor memory encompassed.
The ropes that bound him to the mekillot stake had burnt through. He'd fallen slowly toward
the ground, toward death, but Hamanu hadn't died. Myron of Yoram had seized the filaments of his
existence and hauled him away from eternity's threshold to agonies redoubled.
Hamanu had had no tongue, no lips, cheeks, or jaw. He couldn't scream and, anyway, no
human sound could measure his pain as the Troll-Scorcher denied him death's release time after
unspeakable time. He became mad, insane, but not quite mindless. A single thought had remained: a
curse that had grown louder, stronger and more complex the longer Hamanu's essence dwelt within
the eyes of fire.
"I would not die," the Lion-King whispered. "Death ceased to have meaning. Life ceased.
Pain ceased."
Hamanu blinked and shuddered free of the memory, as free as he ever was. Windreaver and
Pavek were staring at him, at his hand. He looked down. Thick, greasy smoke seeped from the

depth of his clenched fist. The stench of charred flesh belonged to the present as well as the past, to
reality and illusion. With unfamiliar effort, Hamanu found the muscles of his fingers and
straightened them.
A pool of molten bronze shone brightly in the palm of Hamanu's hand. He felt nothing
nothing new, nothing different, but the long-suffering human core of him shuddered, and the liquid
metal dribbled onto the table. While the more benign aromas of burning wood and tempered metal
cleansed the workroom air, Hamanu stared at the new crater in his already black and ruined flesh.
There were other sounds around him, other movements. He ignored them until Pavek
mortal Pavek, who did not understandstood before him with a length of cloth torn from the
treasures of ancient Yaramuke in one hand and the critic-lizard's honey pot in the other.
Windreaver stirred, casting his shadow between them. "You waste your time, manikin. The
Troll-Scorcher neither feels nor heals."
Pavek said nothing, and his thoughts were tightly shuttered in his druid-templar way. He
poured the honey over Hamanu's woundan old soldier's remedy, Javed would approve, Telhami,
toothen wrapped the cloth around it, hiding it from sight. Hamanu closed his eyes and reveled in
a newfound pain.

Chapter Ten
Hamanu banished his companions from the workroom. He'd lived too long outside the
bounds of compassion to be comfortable within its embrace. Not that Windreaver had suddenly
mellowed; the shadowy troll departed in a gust of bitter laughter. Hamanu didn't know where his
ancient enemy had goneto Ur Draxa, perhaps, where he should have been all along, spying on
Rajaat.
In truth, Hamanu didn't care where Windreaver was. It was Pavek who weighed heavily in
his thoughts, and Pavek who ignored his command. The stubborn, insignificant mortal stopped one
stride short of the doorway.
"Your hand" he said, defiance and fear entwined in his voice. Then he held out the honey
jar.
"I am the almighty, immortal Lion-King of Urik, or weren't you paying attention?" Hamanu
snarled. "My flesh doesn't heal, but it won't putrefy. I require neither your service nor your
concern."
Pavek stayed where he was, not talking, not thinkingat least not thinking thoughts that
could be skimmed from his mind. Twisting human lips into a scowl, Hamanu shaped and shifted his
illusionary body. He intended to snatch the jar from the templar's hand faster than Pavek's mortal
eyes could perceive. But Hamanu had a real injury: his reflexes, both illusory and real, were
impaired. His fingers slid past the jar. The improvised bandage snagged the rough-glazed pottery
and tugged the raw edges of his wound as well.
The Lion-King flinched, the jar shattered on the floor, and Pavek blinkedsimply blinked.
Hamanu cradled his handthe real hand within the illusiontrying to remember the last
time he'd misjudged the balance between reality and his own illusions. Before the templar was born,
before his grandparents had been born.
"You cannot take my measure, Pavek. A mortal cannot imagine me or judge me." There was
more edge to his words than he'd intended, but that was just as well, if it would get the templar
moving.
Pavek folded his arms across his chest. "You were mortal when you measured Myron of
Yoram and Rajaat. You didn't hesitate to judge them," he said, omitting the Lion-King's titles and
honors, as if he and Hamanu were equals.
"Go now," Hamanu commanded.
But he wasn't surprised when the templar disobeyed; he would have been disappointed
otherwise. Pavek didn't share Hamanu's hot temper, but the mortal man had a quiet stubbornness

that served the same purpose. An ill-omened purpose for any mortal when a champion's mood was
more bleak than it had been in an age.
"Go, Pavek, before my patience is exhausted. I do not choose to be lessoned tonight, not by
you, Windreaver, or anyone."
"You didn't finish your tale."
"Men have diedand died unpleasantly" The rest of Hamanu's threat went unspoken. He
wouldn't kill tonight, and he'd never kill a man who dared to tell him the truth. "Not tonight, Pavek.
Some other time. Go home, Pavek. Eat a late supper with your friends. Sleep well. I'll summon you
when I need you."
A thought formed on the surface of Pavek's mind, so clear and simple that Hamanu
questioned every assumption he'd ever made about the man's innocence or simplicity. Surely my
king needs sleep and food, Pavek thought. Surely he needs friends about him tonight.
I do not sleep, Pavek, Hamanu replied, shoving the words directly into the templar's mind,
which was enough, at last, to send him staggering across the threshold.
"Friends," the king muttered to himself when he was finally alone. "A troll who loathes me,
justly, and a templar who defies me. Friends. Nonsense. A pox on friends."
But the thought of friendship was no easier to banish than Pavek had been. No one had
known Hamanu longer, or knew him better, than the last troll general. Urik's history was their
history, laced with venom and bile, but shared all the same. What was Windreaver, if not a friend, as
well as an enemy?
And what was a friend, if not a mortal man who overcame his own-good sense to bandage a
dragon's hand?
Hamanu's hand, down to its patterned whorls and calluses, was illusion, but the wound was
realhe had the power to pierce his own defenses, even absentmindedly. There had been other
wounds over the ages, which he'd hidden within illusion. Tonight, sorcery and illusion had failed,
or, more truly, Hamanu himself had failed. The sight of molten metal in his palm had filled him
with horror and self-loathing, and given Pavek an opportunity no mortal should have had.
Ordinary cloth would have burned or rotted when it touched a champion's changeable flesh.
There was only one piece of suitably enchanted cloth in the workroom: the celadon gown of Sieiba
Sprite-Claw, champion and queen of Yaramuke. She had worn it when she died in the Lion-King's
arms, with his obsidian knife piercing her heart.
Had Windreaver guessed Pavek's intentions while Hamanu was preoccupied? Had the troll
whispered a suggestion in Pavek's mortal ears
Or, had some instinct guided the templar's search? Some druid instinct? Some druid
guardian whose presence a champion's magic couldn't detect?
Hamanu had thought himself clever when he conceived his campaign to win Pavek's support
as a means to win the druid guardian's protection for his city. His bandaged hand could be taken as a
sign that he was succeedingbut, at what cost?
A wound?
That was nothing. Windreaver spoke the truth: Rajaat's champions didn't heal, but the raw
crater would be consumed by Hamanu's inexorable metamorphosis. In the meantime, he'd had a
thousand year's practice ignoring worse agony.
A wound, then, was no cost, but what about the nagging emptiness around his slow-beating
heart, hinting that he'd lived too long?
He had Urik, and for a thousand years, Urik had been enough. Mortals came and went; Urik
endured. The city was immortal; the city had become Hamanu's life. The passions of his minions
had supplanted any natural yearning for love or friendship. Then he conceived the notion of writing
his history, and after thatafter ages of attention and nurturinghis precious minions wandered the
city like lost children while he confessed his private history on sheets of vellum.
Hamanu berated himself for their neglect and sought his favorites through the netherworld.
Lord Ursos reclined in his scented bath while adolescents satisfied his whims, his needs.
Elegant fingers cupped a beardless chin and drew it close.

The Lion-King turned away. Lord Ursos's bents were familiar, stale, and without fascination.
The bath faded from his imagination. He looked around the workroom for another stylus.
*****
I don't know how long I remained strung between life and death, locked in a mind-bender's
battle with Myron of Yoram. That's what it was, a netherworld war: the Troll-Scorcher's imagery
against mine, his years of experience against the purity of my rage, my hatred. I was, if not dead, at
least not truly unconscious when the battle ended. Our battle had lasted long enough and was loud
enough to disturb the War-Bringer's peace, and that was what truly mattered.
Rajaat burned through the Gray to find me, though I could not appreciate my rescue or his
undoubtedly spectacular appearance on the plains. I was aware of nothing except the pain, the
darkness, the silence andvery dimlythat my enemy no longer rose to the challenges I
continued, in my mad, mindless way, to hurl at him.
Then there was a ray of light in my black abyss, a wedge of sound, a voice I recognized as
power incarnate, telling me to desist.
Your pleas are heard, your wishes granted.
Rajaat. No need for him to state his name, then or ever. When the first sorcerer was present
in my mind, the world was Rajaat and Rajaat was the world, endless and eternal.
Look for yourself
He gave me a kes'trekel's vision and hearing. Peering down from a soaring height, I saw
mekillots pulling a four-wheeled cart along a barrens road. There was a cage on the cart, and Myron
of Yoram was in the cage. The Troll-Scorcher had himself been scorched. He lay on his back, a
bloated, blackened carcass. His charred skin hung in tattered strips that swayed in rhythm with the
creaking cart. A cloud of buzzing insects feasted on his suppurating wounds.
I'd judged Yoram a corpse; I was wrong. With Rajaat's aid, I heard pathetic whimpers in the
depths of his flame-ravaged throat. I saw delicate silver chains nearly lost in the rotting folds at his
wrists and ankles: links of sorcery potent enough to render a champion helpless.
I was pleased, but not satisfied. It was not enough that the Troll-Scorcher suffered for his
betrayal of the human cause. The war against the trolls had to be fought and won
In time, Manu. In due time. Wait. Rest
A soft shadow surrounded me, not the bleak darkness of my recent torment, but oblivion all
the same. I wasn't interested in oblivion or resting or waiting. Childish and petulant, I tried to
escape the shadow.
My uncanny vision shifted: There was a second cart. Like the first, it ferried a human husk
across the barrens. The second body was little more than a black-boned skeleton held together with
rags. Its knees were drawn up. Its arms were crossed and fused together. They hid what remained of
its face.
Of my face...
The husk was alive; the husk was me.
All the pain I'd felt was nothing compared to my imagination when I saw what had become
of Manu, the lithe dancer of Deche. I no longer fought Rajaat's shadow. I surrendered myself to its
numbing softness.
Don't despair, Rajaat told me with a grandfather's kindly voice. Pain belongs to your past.
Soon you will be reborn and you will never know pain or suffering again.
From the first, I doubted that promise: a life without pain or suffering wouldn't be a human
life. But my living corpse was strong in my mind, so I banished my doubts and drifted until I heard
his voice again.
It is time.
The soft shadow faded. My mind returned slowly to my body. At first, there was only
pressure. Then I distinguished movement within the pressure. At last, there was a sense of
unfolding, of stretching, of sound. I had ears again.

"It is time for you to be reborn."

The pressure was Rajaat's sorcery-laden hands restoring my body around me. His thumbs
traced the curves of my eye sockets. Bone grew like bread rising in a baker's oven, but Rajaat's
miracle was not without discomfort. Bone was not meant to grow and harden so quickly. For one
unbearable moment, the pain was so intense that I would have begged him to stop, if I'd had a
mouth or tongue.
Rajaat knew my thoughts. "Patience, child. The worst is behind you. The best is barely
begun."
I hadn't been anyone's child for years. I did not care to be reminded of what I'd lost, and I
wasn't willing to cede my hard-won manhood, even to a god. A low, rumbling chuckle echoed
through my mind. My thoughts scattered as chaff on the wind.
Today, perhaps, I could keep a secret from my creator certainly that is why I have a spell
simmering beside me but not that day under the relentless sun. I took refuge in the manners my
parents had taught me and thanked him properly. Chuckles became a kirre's contented purr.
Pressure shifted. Rajaat began restoring my cheekbones and jaw.
My reborn ears made me aware that Rajaat and I were not alone.
"Look at him," a deep-voiced man said. "A farmer. A dung-skull, no better than a slave. I tell
you, there's no need. The Scorcher's finished, but so are the gnomes. There's no need for the WarBringer to replace him. My army stands ready. They could finish the trolls in a single campaign."
In the Troll-Scorcher's army, we'd heard of the other armies cleansing the human heartland,
and of the leader of them all. Even before I knew his true namebefore I knew what Rajaat was or
what I was to becomeI knew that Gal-lard, Bane of Gnomes, was not half the military genius he
believed himself to be. Gnomes had been sly and wily, as he was, himself. Gallard's stealthy
strategies were effective in the dwindling forests where they dwelt, but Windreaver would have
carved the Gnome-Bane and his army into kes'trekel bait.
The Gnome-Bane wasn't my only audience.
"A peasant," a woman agreed. "He might be useful, when the War-Bringer's done with him."
Her name, I later learned, was Sielba. I would learn more about her notion of usefulness as the years
went on, but at that moment, I had no interest in them or her.
"He can hear you," a third voice, another man, cautioned. He was no less contemptuous of
me than the other two had been, but Borys of Ebe always saw much farther into a maze of
consequences. "He will be one of us when the War-Bringer's done with him."
After that, they spoke silently, if they spoke at all. My mind filled with eager curiosity; I
didn't yet know what being one of us meant. I thought only of leading an army my armyagainst
the trolls. I envisioned slaughter and victory. Once again, Rajaat's amusement swept over me,
dulling my consciousness as he shaped smooth muscles across the newly hardened bones of my
face.
When my eyelids were finished, I opened them, curious to see my savior.
I was stunned senseless. In my life, I'd seen only humans and trolls. Myron of Yoram was a
fat, bloated sack of a man, but he wasI believed he wasa human man. Beyond humans, there
were only trolls. Rajaat War-Bringer wasn't a troll. Trolls were handsome, well-formed mortals,
compared to my savior.
In all ways Rajaat lacked the simple left and right symmetry a man expects to see in another
man, be he human, troll or some other sentient race. The first sorcerer's head was huge and
grotesque. Wisps of colorless hair sprouted between the bulbous swellings that covered his skull
like lava seeps. His eyes were mismatched in color, size, and position. His nose was a shapeless
growth above a coarse-lipped mouth that was lined with snaggleteeth. Rajaat wheezed when he
inhaled, and when he exhaled, his breath stank of death and disease.
If he were resurrecting me in his own image...
Rajaat laughed and promised me he wasn't. His gnarled, magical fingers tilted my head so I
could see the men and women he'd called to witness his makingand unmaking of a champion.
Ahthey were a magnificent gathering, epitomes of human perfection, and every one of

them cloaked in illusion, though I did not guess that then. An aura of unspeakable power hung about
them. That was real enough, and almost as tangible as their collective disdain.
They are flawed, my savior assured me, turning my head again so my eyes beheld nothing
but him. Each of them bears a mistake to which you are the correction. You are my last champion,
Manu of Deche, Hamanu Troll-Scorcher. You will cleanse the land of impurities. Athas will become
blue again.
In my ignorance, I imagined my familiar world transformed to a world of blue mountains
and sand, blue barrens, and blue himali fields. Rajaat changed my mind, showing me blue water
beneath a blue sky. I overlooked the oceans; so much water meant nothing to me.
Where was the land? I wondered. Rajaat showed me islands and drifting cities shaped like
schooners running before the wind. Where were the people of this blue world? I wondered. The
cities teemed with life. Human life, I assumed, and Rajaat did not correct me. Then.
His hands moved from my head to my neck, from my neck to my shoulders and onward,
down my body. Bone, sinew, nerve, and every other part of me quickened beneath his fingers. Bit
by bit, I became a man again. The pain was exquisiteI ground my regrown tongue until it was a
bloody rag between my teeth, lest my soon-to-be peers heard me scream or moan.
Daylight faded. Cool, gray shadows reached across the cart before Rajaat was satisfied with
my regeneration. He bid me move each limb, then rise slowly. I sat, stood, and took a tentative step,
watching my feet, ankles, knees, and hips as if I had never seen them before. I was myself again, a
sound-bodied man, as I had not been when Myron of Yoram's bullies dragged me from the pit. The
scars of war and farming were gone, hut my mother would have known me by the crooked big toe
on my left foot.
My audience was clad in silk and jewels or sparkling armor such as Athas has never seen,
before or since. I, of course, was birth-naked and subject to intense scrutiny. Visions of grunting
beasts and sweating slaves were thrust into my consciousness. Flame-haired Sielba ran her
possessive passions over my body. She took me by surprise; I flushed with shame, not because I
was a hot-blooded man, easily aroused, but because she meant me to be ashamed.
Only Borys of Ebe would have nothing to do with me. His contempt was complete. Dwarves
interested him; my shame and suffering didn't.
"Can you walk?" Rajaat asked.
The War-Bringer stood on a beaten dirt path. Behind him stood a slender spire so amber
bright that it seemed aflame, though the color was only the setting sun's reflection on pristine white
stone. Myron of Yoram's cart rested beside the path. His flayed, tattered skin moved as he breathed,
and his mewling echoed in my ears.
My legs would bear me, but I couldn't walk toward my savior without walking past that cart.
I hesitated, summoning my courage. Gallard, Sielba, and the others mocked me; my shame was
immense, but it wouldn't move my feet. Rajaat made a slight, two-fingered gesture, after which my
strength or courage were of no importance: his will brought me to his side.
"Prepare a feast," the first sorcerer said, speaking to those magnificent men and women as if
they were slaves.
He pointed at the cart where he'd restored me and where a mass of tall, crystal goblets
instantly stood. I saw outrage flicker, then die, on their faces as, one after another, they started
toward the cart. And all the while, Rajaat's steady control over me never wavered. It would be a
king's age before I could seize the minds of so many mortals and direct them to separate actions. I
cannot, even today, seize a champion's thoughts, nor can any of my peers, but Rajaat could hold us
all... easily.
Rajaat was cautious with me. He turned me sunwise; toward the brilliant tower, away from
the cart where Myron of Yoram lay. But there wasn't enough caution to spare me the understanding
of what food, what drink, would be served at the impending feast. I braced myself against my
savior's influence. My new body trembled like a smoke-eater's.
Walk! Rajaat roared in my mind. Your destiny awaits.

Destiny. Deche and Dorean. Jikkana and Bult. Myron Troll-Scorcher and Hamanu... My
destiny was my justice and my will. I faced the second cart, raised my arm, and lightly touched the
mound of ruined flesh. It howled, a shrill, acid warble like no sound I'd heard before. A pair of
smoldering red eyes appeared on its otherwise featureless face and, with them, a mind-bender's wall
of malevolence.
What are you? I asked, shattering the wall, though my true question was: what will I
become?
Rajaat intervened before I had an answer to either question. A cold, gray mist enveloped me.
Walk! he commanded a second time, and with his will wrapped around mine, I entered the Gray.
I emerged in a small chamber where light flashed brightly and without warning. The floor
beneath my bare feet was quicksilver glass, as cold as a tomb at midnight. A stride ahead, the
quicksilver angled into a pool of still, dark water. The ceiling above me was a rainbow of colored
crystals, six stones mounted in a ring around a seventh crystal that was darkness incarnate.
While I watched in mute wonder and awe, jagged streams of colored light pulsed from the
crystals in the rainbow ring. Each pulse was stronger than the preceding one and brought the
separate streams closer to a conjunction at the center of the dark crystal.
Watch, Rajaat told me, though I needed no encouragement.
A pinpoint of pure, colorless light sprang into being the instant the jagged streams touched.
It swallowed the rainbow colors and began to swell, growing brighter as it did, until the dark crystal
was filled with more light than my still-mortal eyes could bear. I closed my eyes, turned my head,
and felt a faint concussion through my private darkness. When I opened my eyes again, the room
was dark, as it had been when I entered it, and the jagged rainbow streams were no longer than my
finger.
"The Dark Lens in the Steeple of Crystals," Rajaat whispered in my ear. "Do not ask what it
is, how it was made, or where it comes from. In all the planes of existence, there is nothing that
compares to it. Stand in the pool beneath it and become my greatest creation, my final champion."
My family did not raise a fool for a son. I didn't need questions to know that the gift Rajaat
offered was nothing any sane man should accept. Yet I knew as well that I would not survive
refusing it. I'd chosen death once before when I'd faced Myron Troll-Scorcherand Rajaat had
restored me. My life had become too precious to squander a second time. Stubbornness failed, and
my legs took me forward, across the quicksilver and into the opaque water as the rainbow streams
pulsed toward each other again.
"You will not regret this," Rajaat assured me.
"I already"
The colored lights merged into a lance of pristine light that pierced my skull with fire. I
screamed mortal agony and slowly began to rise. The Dark Lens burst open. Inside, it was exactly
as high as a man, exactly as broad as his outstretched arms. When my heart was at its center, it
sealed into a perfect sphere again. Rajaat's sorcery took many-colored shape around me. It became a
pillar of light, lifting me and the Lens into the sunset sky.
What can I recount of my final mortal moments? My flesh became fire, my bones red-hot
steel on the smith's anvil. Even my memories were reduced to flame and ash. Then, when there was
nothing left but light itself, the Lens focused inward. Drawing substance from the dying sun, the
risen moons, and the countless stars above our cloudless sky, Rajaat created his final champion.
My heart beat in rhythm with the world below me, and I rejoiced as immortality quickened
in my veins. I saw Athas as I wished it could be: a bountiful paradise of flowering fields, green
forests, white-capped mountains, and blue lakes and rivers, all bound together beneath a shifting
lace of clouds.
Never! Rajaat shattered my vision. Athas does not belong to us! We are the unclean, the
defilers. Our children are raised from dung. Our blood is filth. It is not for us to envision the future.
You must cleanse the world so it may be returned to the pure ones. The blue world he had shown me
earlierthe Athas of endless ocean and floating citiessupplanted my own vision. I looked closer
and saw that the cities were populated with halflings, which astonished me because then, as now,

halflings were not a city-dwelling race. Humanity's debt folk on your shoulders. It must be paid,
Manu of Deche. It must be paid in full.
Bands of sorcery tightened around me, commanding me to accept my destiny, to obey the
War-Bringer, to revere Rajaat, my creator. I surrendered.
Great One, your will is my will.
The bands loosened, and Rajaat had made his final champion. I cannot speak for the
mistakes and flaws Rajaat claimed existed in my peers, but I knew my own even before the Dark
Lens settled back into the rainbow ring atop the Crystal Steeple. I took the first sorcerer's gifts
because I had no other choice, but I clung to the shards of my vision, a farmer's vision of a manycolored Athas.
And it was well that the seeds of my rebellion were already planted when the Dark Lens spat
me out. There could be no secrets as I lay on the quicksilver glass, my translucent skin stretched
taut over a star-flecked midnight skeleton.
"Arise."
Lightning fingers caressed me as I gathered myself into a crouch, then slowly stood. I stared
at my black-boned hands. I wondered how I could see anything, but I dared not touch my face.
"Are you in pain anywhere? Do you feel the lack of any vital part of yourself?" Rajaat asked
from the periphery.
"No, nothing hurts. Nothing's lacking," I answered slowly, realizing that he'd known my
answers before he'd asked the questions. "I'm" I sought words to describe the indescribable. "I'm
hollow... empty. I'm hungry."
I met Rajaat's mismatched eyes and saw that he was gleeful. Then I remembered the feast.
When my mind's eye touched the memory of Yoram's scorched carcass, my hunger swelled.
Looking down, I saw a pulsing hollow beneath my ribs.
"What have you done to me?" I cried out recklessly, though Rajaat would have heard my
thoughts had I tried to stifle my words and, in truth, I doubt that I would have tried.
"I have made you a champion. I have instilled in you the power to cleanse Athas of all its
impurities. You no longer depend on the fruits of the land or the flesh of life for your nourishment. I
have given you a gift beyond measure. Sunlight will sustain you, but you will grow sleek only in
pursuit of your destiny. As you cleanse Athas, death will be your ambrosia. Begin with the trolls.
Begin with your predecessor. Go down, Hamanu, Scorcher of Trolls, and claim your feast."
Nausea of the mind overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees and hid my face behind my
hands, as a man might do. But I was no longer a man, no longer a mortal man with a mortal man's
love of life and fear of death. Grieving for my lost self, I made tears flow from the holes where my
eyes should have been. The tears were sorcery. I realized that immortality wasn't the only gift Rajaat
had given me. My whims were spells. I marveled at my powers, then I felt my hunger.
I knew in an instant that it was death I craved, not bread.
"Hate me, if it pleases you," Rajaat said without losing his smile. My thoughts were
transparent to him. "I don't expect thanks... or willing obedience."
I swallowed hard, never mind that I had no gullet except in my imagination; a champion's
imagination is more potent than material truth. The imaginary act, however, stirred my appetite to
new heights.
"Will you or not, you'll fulfill your destiny." Rajaat's foul teeth showed within his grin. "Be
my loyal champion, and you'll rule the world, once it's clean. But, deny your hunger, Hamanu, and
you'll go mad. Go mad and know that you will not be sated until you have consumed every living
thing beneath the bloody sun. Your choice matters little to me. You will serve, and Athas will be
cleansed of its impurities. You will consume the foul and the deformed."
Again I surrendered. Mind against mind, will against will, I was no match for my creator. A
battle with him would have left me a maddened beast, ravaging life wherever I found it. He'd told
me the truth about myself. My hunger grew less resistible with each beat of my heart.

Rajaat stepped sideways, revealing an open door, and the downward spiral beyond it.
Measuring what remained of my sanity, I judged I could get to the ground, where Myron of Yoram
awaited me, before I succumbed to madness.
"Your choice," Rajaat reminded me as I strode past him.
My choice, indeed, and I descended slowly, testing the limits of madness at each step. While
I stood in the Steeple of Crystals, what I knew of sorcery could have been written in bold script on a
single vellum sheet. By the time my right heel struck the ground, I was a master. I'd learned the
deadly dance of life and magic: My hunger sucked life from plant and animal alike. My hunger
killed. I couldand wouldlearn to use my hunger to fuel mighty sorcery, but it would kill
whether I learned or not.
Since the massacre at Deche, I'd become indifferent to killing. My conscience didn't trouble
me when I fixed my eyes on the cart where Myron of Yoram lay. I could kill trolls, all the trolls,
because there was no other way. I could kill the Troll-Scorcher because I was there to replace him. I
could kill anythingI might kill everything, if I wasn't careful.
Become careful, Hamanu. Become very careful. Become whatever you want. It won't matter.
Your destiny is to use the gifts that I have given you.
Warning and promise together. I knew it at the time, though I thought the War-Bringer meant
only that I was to cleanse the world of trolls. I thoughtall the champions thoughtthat Rajaat
meant to return Athas to us and to humanity when our wars were finished. We were wrong; I was
wrong. It took me many years to understand that Rajaat hated humanity above all, because
humanity embodied chaos and transformation. Humanity had engendered the Rebirth races. Rajaat's
champions would cleanse Athas of what he considered unnatural creaturesincluding humanity
itselfbefore returning it to the one race he considered natural and pure: the halflings.
I have never fully understood why the War-Bringer needed champions. His power was so
much greater than ours. He could have cleansed Athas of every race in a single afternoon. For
thirteen ages, I've examined this question. I have no good answer. The answer must lie with the
halflings themselves. Halflings destroyed their blue world, which Rajaat wished to recreate, and
when it was gonebefore they retreated into their tribal, forest liveshalflings created humanity.
But which halflings?
Surely there was some dissent, some rebellion driven underground. Perhaps rebel halflings
created Rajaat; perhaps he found them on his own. Whichever, Rajaat had halfling allies before he
created the first champion, and he and his allies nurtured one another's hatred of the green world
Athas had become. Hatred made them all mad; madness made them devious, and because Rajaat
was both mad and devious, he created champions to do the bloody work of cleansing Athas of the
races he hated, while his own hands remained unsullied.
It isn't a good explanation, but there can be no good explanation for why Rajaat did what he
did.
For myself, when I stood outside the white tower, I, too, was madwith hunger. When I laid
my black-boned hands on Myron of Yoram's quivering chest, I knew I would regret it, but when the
Troll-Scorcher's substance began to flow into me, I forgot everything else. It's not a good
explanation; it's simply the truth.
Yoram's smoldering eyes reappeared when I touched him, sun bright and malevolent in the
lavender twilight. Mauled though he was, he was still a mighty sorcerer, and he recognized me as
the renegade farmer's son.
Mann. My name came to me on a netherworld wind of hot, sharp cinders. Kill me if you
dare. I'll curse you with my dying breath.
He strained against the thin silver chain that bound him, wrist, ankle, and neck, to the cart.
Remembering my helpless day on the plains, bound to a mekillot stake while the eyes of fire blazed
within me, I snapped the chains. A great death sigh went up from the plants and wildlife
surrounding Rajaat's pristine tower as the erstwhile Troll-Scorcher reaped power for his spell. But
he tried too hard and took too long. I pressed my lips against his and sucked him hollow in a single
inhaled breath.

Manu, he said again, my human name, and the entirety of his curse.
Mounds of reeking meat collapsed inward, becoming ash and dust that vanished quickly in
the evening breeze. I stood straight, sated and clearheaded. Layers of Yoram's substance padded my
bones. My ribs had expanded as the old Troll-Scorcher died; they contracted as I exhaled. I felt a
warm stream of breath against the back of my tawny-skinned hand. A part of me felt human again.
Look at him!
A champion's vagrant thought pierced me to the heart. They'd arrayed themselves in a ring
around me and the now-empty cart. Their auras shone brighter than Ral or Guthay above the eastern
horizon. None among them seemed well-disposed toward me; none among them was well-disposed
toward me.
One of them, an overdressed fellow with the quick, furtive eyes of a jozhal thiefdrew a
knife that was both dead black and glittering, as my skeleton had been. I spread my feet and
prepared for battle as Myron of Yoram had prepared. Beyond the champions' circle, life sighed and
surrendered its essence as sorcery quickened.
"Don't be a fool!"
Borys of Ebe identified himself with his warning; I recognized his name from my mortal
days in the Troll-Scorcher's army and recalled his voice from earlier in the afternoon. I turned
toward his voice as an invisible wall came down between me and the rest. The Dwarf-Butcher held
out his hand, not in friendship, but to demonstrate that he controlled the wall. He was a powerfully
built man, like the race he slaughtered, and tall. His hair was pale and confined in long braids; his
eyes glowed with a blue fire.
"We cannot harm one anothernot here," Borys explained, leaving no room for doubt in my
mind that he would harm me where he could, when he could. "Clothe yourself, man, and we'll be
done with this. I won't drink blood with a naked peon."
"Naked peon?" I began, letting my rage flare.
The wall glowed crimson, stifling my inept spell. Snickering echoed at my back: with
Yoram's substance clinging to my bones I was not a handsome man. Shamed and bested, I imagined
a drab, homespun cloakand yelped with surprise when the heavy cloth manifested around me.
But I learn quickly. Unfurling the coarse cloak from my shoulders, I heaved it into the night
air and transformed it into shimmering cloth-of-gold. I transformed myself, as well, becoming
Hamanu Troll-Scorcher before the radiant cloak touched me again. I was as tall as Borys of Ebe, but
lithe and graceful as Manu had been, crowned with Dorean's long black hair, and meeting Borys's
stare through her calm, gray eyes.
"Will you drink blood with me now?" I challenged without knowing precisely what I
implied.
But before Borys could answer, the invisible wall around me flared crimson again as it
absorbed another champion's wrath. Not mine, or Borys's, though he was quickly engulfed in the
tumult as spells rebounded around the circle. Untouched in the center, I saw that my peers despised
me no more than they despised one another, and that I had "nothing to fear from them.
Fear was something we all reserved for Rajaat, our creator, whose hand fell harshly upon us,
scattering the rampant spells, smashing Borys's wall, and quenching each aura, each illusion. We
were all naked before him, and though none of us was as grotesque as the War-Bringer himself, our
ensorcelled flesh was no improvement on the natural human form.
Fill them! Share them! Drink them!
Rajaat's commands were more than words; they were demanding images that seared my
consciousness. Two of the women and one of the men fell to their knees. A fourth champion
vomited bile that etched a crater in the ground. I, at least, held my feet and saw the crystal goblets
rise from the cart where they'd first appeared. I caught mine before it struck me; several others
weren't so quick or lucky.
The overdressed jozhal's knife would have been useful. I hadn't begun to master the art of
putting an edge on an illusion and I was, of course, too proudly stubborn to ask questions. The
flame-haired woman bit her tongue until her blood flowed freely, but that reminded me too much of

the moments when Rajaat was healing me. I watched Borys slit a vein in his forearm with an
extension of his thumbnail and managed a similar gesture.
When our goblets were filled and steaming, Rajaat bid us exchange them. I sought the
Dwarf-Butcher, but he eluded me, and I sipped the jozhal's thick blood instead. Sacha Arala, Curse
of Kobolds: his name and more filled my conscious mind, as my name must have entered his.
Arala's cleansing war against the mischievous kobolds had ended shortly after the Troll-Scorcher's
war against the trolls had begun. He passed his empty days in Rajaat's shadow.
In my mind he said he'd befriend me and teach me the champion's way.
I didn't need sorcery to know a lie when I heard it.
My second goblet came from the hand of the flame-haired woman, but the name I drank was
Pennarin and the battles he fought in the south against a long-limbed, big-eyed race. He'd been a
human king, or so he claimed, before Rajaat invited him to stand beneath the Dark Lens. His
opinion of farmers and farmer's sons doesn't bear repeating.
The blood of another forgotten king, Gallard Gnome-Bane, was in the third goblet. After
that, I grew confused as one after another of Rajaat's champions battered me with lies and illusions.
I remember Borys, though, whose blood filled my eighth goblet. The dwarves had slain the
first champion Rajaat dedicated against them. He, like I, was a recreation. His goblet held a
nameless past along with his own. The first Butcher had claimed kingship and royal ancestry, but
Borys had been a commoner before Rajaat plucked him off the blasted battlefield.
Once he'd stood where I stood, in the center of the champions' scorn. Until I proved myself,
he'd give me nothing and set obstacles in my path if he could, but if I triumphed over the trolls he
offered something better in the future.
My own goblet came back to me at the last. It remained half-full; my new peers had been
less than gluttonous. I gulped the thick, cooling ichor down. The visions I got from my own blood
were the eviscerated memories of Deche. I threw the crystal down hard enough to shatter it.
"The last champion speaks," green-eyed Gallard said and raised his goblet high before
throwing it down.
The others, even Dregoth who'd assailed me when I'd challenged Borys, copied my gesture.
For an instant, there was harmony among us, a shared distrust and disregard for our creator, who
watched us with his mismatched eyes from the white tower's gate.
Then Albeorn said, "Are we done here? I have a war to win."
The War-Bringer nodded, and our moment of unity evaporated. The Elf-Slayer was gone,
vanished into the night, followed by the other champions, until only Borys,
Sacha Arala, and I remained.
"I'll go with you," Arala suggested. "You'll need someone to show you the way."
"Don't listen to him," Borys advised. "Don't trust anyone who's stood beneath the Dark Lens.
He doesn't" Borys shook a finger in Arala's direction, and the Pixie-Blight retreated. "I don't.
That's all the advice I got; all that I needed. What you can't learn from Yoram's memories, you can
learn as you go."
He drew a down-thrust line through the air in front of him, as he'd drawn a line on his
forearm earlier. Instead of blood dripping into a goblet, silvery mist leaked into the moonlight.
Borys's hands disappeared as he thrust them slowly into the mist, which grew thicker, until it
surrounded him and he was gone.
Rajaat' and Arala both watched me as I imitated the Butcher's movements. I shudder to think
what would have become of meof Athashad cold tendrils of the netherworld not wound
themselves immediately around my wrists.
"You'll serve." Those were the War-Bringer's parting words as I stepped into the Gray.
Only a fool goes through his life without ever catching the scent of fear around his
shoulders. As I am not a fool, I have many times been afraid and never more intensely than that
moment when the netherworld closed behind me.

The Unseen realm measures no east or west, up or down, past or future. If a mortal lost his
course, he might drift his life away before he found it again; an immortal man, of course, would
drift longer.
I drifted only long enough to ransack Yoram's memories for his knowledge of the Gray and
the striped silk tent at the center of his army. When those brown and ocher stripes were bright as life
itself, I fixed them in my mind's eye and strode out of the Gray.
At the very last I remembered my nakedness and made myself into the warrior Myron of
Yoram had never been.
Slaves slept in the corners of my tent while my officers gamed for gold and jewels at my
map table.
"Enough!" I shouted, loud enough to wake my slaves and the recently dead, alike.
I pounded my fist on the table, thinking to scatter the dice, but splintering the rare, carved
wood instead. The scent of fear was thick around me; I discovered fear was not as nourishing as
death, but it would stave off starvation and madness.
"Go to your veterans," I told the human lumps cowering at my feet. "Prepare to break camp.
When the bloody sun rises again, this armymy armyis going to fight trolls and fight trolls until
there are no more."
There was mutiny, not that night, but not long after. Yoram's officers were lazy folk, used to
living in luxury. Most adapted readily to my methods. Those who didn't perished, one way or
another. My first few years as champion were spent putting down mutinies rather than fighting
trolls. I had a lot to learn about both fighting and leading, and Yoram's memories were of no use to
me on either score.
More than once, I thought of Borys of Ebe, but the simple truth was that Rajaat kept us
champions isolated from each other. I could have sent scouts in search of the Dwarf-Butcher... and
lost good scouts for my efforts. I could have searched for him myself, but I hadn't traveled widely,
and while the Gray can take you anywhere you desire, it's unwise to let the Gray take you anywhere
you haven't been before.
And Borys had already given me all the advice I needed: what I couldn't extract from
Yoram's memories, I learned for myself.
Five years after I left Rajaat's tower, my army was a small fraction of the size it had been
when I claimed it. We traveled kank-back wherever our enemy led us. In those days, my
metamorphosis was less advanced, and I rode bugs from dawn till dusk. Every man and woman
under my yellow banner was a tried veteran skilled in fighting, scavenging, and survival. And every
one of them wore a yellow medallion bearing my likeness around his neck. While I led the TrollScorcher's army, no veteran's pleas or prayers went unheard.
Rajaat had made me an immortal champion, with a hunger that only the deaths of trolls
could truly sate. Rajaat's Dark Lens had given me an inexplicable ability to channel magic to any
man or woman who wore my medallion. Not the life-sucking sorcery such as I had already
mastered, but a clean magic, such as elemental priests and druids practiced. Yoram had known of
the Dark Lens's power, but he'd never used it, lest a troll escape his appetite.
To my disgust, I came to understand my predecessor's reasoning. Rajaat told his greatest lie
when he said pain belonged to my past. Without a steady diet of deathtroll death, in particular
my skin collapsed against my bones. I suffered terrible agonies of emptiness, and my black
immortal bones ground, one against the other. Let it be said, though, that I had suffered far worse
when Myron of Yoram held me in the eyes of fire.
Until I slew a troll with the eyes of fire, I didn't understand the true nature of Rajaat's
sorcery. The second time filled me with a self-loathing so profound that I tried, and failed utterly, to
kill myself. There was no third time. I schooled myself to live without the obscene bliss the eyes of
fire provided. Fear and ordinary death were enough to keep the madness at bay, and once I learned
that immortality was not an illusion I could cast aside according to my will, pain itself became
meaningless.
I gave my veterans all the spells and magic they desired, thinking I was thwarting Rajaat's

plans for both me and Athas. In the seventh year of my campaign against Windreaver's trolls, I
learned that I was wrong. Rajaat had anticipated my duplicity. Mote by mote, my body was
transformed each time the Dark Lens's power passed through me on its way to my veterans.
One evening, after a routine invocation to purify our drinking water, spasms stiffened my
right hand and arm. I retreated from my army, claiming that I needed solitude to plan our next
attacks. The truth was simpler: for seven years I hadn't shed my glamour or looked upon my blackboned self, and I wished to be alone when I did. What I saw by Guthay's golden light horrified me. I
was taller and heavier than I'd been. My rib cage had narrowed, and my breast-bone thickened into
a ridge such as flightless erdlus have beneath their wings. Bony spurs had sprouted above my
ankles, and a shiny black claw was rising out of a new knuckle on the least finger of my right hand.
As I stared at what had become of my handwhat would become of itI heard the WarBringer's deranged laughter through the Gray. After that, my army fought as human men and
women, using our wits and weapons whenever we could, resorting to sorcery and Dark Lens magic
only when nothing else would bring us a victory.
For another ten years, I harried Windreaver's trolls with lightning raids. No bolt hole was
safe from our skirmishers. If I led one nighttime foray through their lines, I led a thousand.
Sometimes we killed a troll or two, mostly the old-fashioned way with a crushed skull or a pierced
heart. More often we burned their baggage carts and watched them starve. Always, we kept them
moving.
For ten long years, my army never camped two nights running in the same place.
Windreaver kept his trolls divided. We couldn't pursue them all, all the time, but we tried, and time,
inexorable time, was on our side. Human villages still sent their food tithes to the annual muster.
There was never a shortage of volunteers to counter attrition in the ranks.
Trolls had neither resource. They couldn't raise their food or purchase it honestly. Every
mouthful they ate was stolen from a human field or loft. Every mouth they lost was nigh
irreplaceable. They were never a fecund race, and once their women became fighters and raiders,
there was very little time for bearing children or raising them.
Chronicles and royal myths are rife with kings who won their petty wars on the battlefields
and perhaps they did. But Rajaat's Cleansing Wars were never the stuff from which great legends
are woven. We weren't fighting for land or treasure or vague notions of honor and glory. We fought
to exterminate thirteen other races whose only crime was existence. So long as one man and one
woman of a Rebirth race remainedso long as the promise of children could be fulfilleda
champion could not claim victory. So long as genocide was the destiny I pursued, pitched battles
between armed veterans would resolve nothing.
I waged war on the trolls who didn't fight, on the elders who maintained their race's
traditions, and on the young who were their hope and future. My campaign was relentless; my
victory inevitable. Sheer and single-minded annihilation has an insurmountable advantage over
survival, much less creation.
You will forgive me, though, if I do not dwell on those years. It is enough to record here that
the trolls are gone from Athas, forgotten, and Hamanu bears the blame.
The end of my warthe end of the trollscame in the thirty-first year of the 177th Ring's
Age, the appropriately named Year of Silt's Vengeance. We'd driven the last of the trollssome five
hundred men, women, and what few of their children as remainedfar to the northeast, beyond the
vague boundaries of the heartland, and into a land that was as strange to us as it was to them.
The trolls hoped, perhaps, that I would abandon pursuit if they retreated far enough, long
enough. But even if they'd trudged to the end of the world, I would have plagued their heels as they
plunged over the edge. And, indeed, that was very nearly what happened.
Whether through miscalculation or some half-conscious desire to meet doom at his chosen
time, not mine, Windreaver backed his people onto a rocky peninsula jutting into the brack-water
and wrack-water we now call the Sea of Silt. There, under an ominous and gritty sky, the trolls
stretched their tanned human hides over drum heads for the last time.

"Will we fight?" my adjutant asked when he found me on the mainland heights overlooking
Windreaver's camp.
By my count, I had three veterans to pit against each and every troll, which any fool will tell
you isn't enough when the cover is sparse and there's a narrows to be won and held at the battle's
start. Simpler, wiser by far to sit in my mainland camp until disease and starvation winnowed their
ranks. Simplest and wisest of all to wait until those invisible allies won the battle outright. But those
drums took a steady toll on my army's morale, and neither disease nor starvation would respect the
line between our opposing camps for long. I couldn't guess how long my slight advantage in
numbers would hold, or when I might find myself in a disadvantageous retreat.
"We'll fight," I decided. "Spread the word: All or nothing, at dawn."
The land offered little choice in tactics. Wave after wave of my veterans sallied up the
peninsula's neck while I stood on the heights, protecting them from the troll shamans and their rockhurling magic. When the neck was secure, I left the heights and entered the battle myself.
Not long before, I'd seen the animal that was to become my emblem forever after: the tawny
lion with his thick black mane, ivory fangs, and lethal claws. I cloaked myself in a glamour that was
half human, half lion. My sword was precious steel, as long as my leg and honed to a deadly edge. I
gave it a golden sheen to match my lion's hide. My own men fell to their knees when they saw me;
the troll drums lost their rhythm.
Wherever I walked, the ground turned red with death. Even so, it was a long battle, a hard
battle, and our victory was not assured until late afternoon when I led a score of veterans over the
rampart that sheltered the shamans and the drummers. Without them, the trolls panicked and lost
heart. It was a simple matter to corner them, cut them down, or drive them to the precipice at the
peninsula's tip.
I sought Windreaver myselfhis axe against my sword. It was no contest. By the time I
found him, he was bleeding from a score of wounds. His white hair was red and matted with blood
from a skull wound that would have killed a human twice over. One eye had swollen shut. One arm
hung useless at his side; the other trembled when he raised his axe to salute me. I thrust my glowing
sword into the dirt.
"Finish it," he demanded. "There'll be no surrender. Not to you. Not to any puny human."
I balked on brink of total victory. I'd come to the end of my destiny: Windreaver and his few
battered companions were the last. When they were gone, there'd be no more. My champion's
hunger gnawed in my empty gut; all day, I'd turned away from every troll death. The thought of
Windreaver's spirit writhing through my grasp as it sought eternity left me burning with anticipated
bliss.
And for that reason, I couldn't do it.
"Live out your lives," I offered. "Men and women apart from each other, until your race
comes to a natural end."
Had I stood where the old troll stood, I'd have spit in my own eye, and that was exactly what
he did. Still, I wouldn't kill him; I wouldn't kill the last troll, nor would any of my veterans. I made
them kill themselves, marching off the seaward cliff. Windreaver stood silently beside me. He was
no sorcerer, but he was the first person I'd met who could hide his thoughts beneath an empty,
surface calm.
Singly and in pairs, clinging to one another for support-but never moaning, never wailing
the trolls hurled themselves over the edge. Trolls couldn't, by nature, swim, even if they'd tried.
Those who didn't die on the rocks drowned quickly in the wracken surf. With my eyes closed, I
counted their deaths, forty-seven in all. Forty-eight, when Windreaver left me.
He meant to be the last and knewI supposethat I would not let him go as easily as the
others. I would not let him go at all. I was ready when, on the verge of leaping, he thrust his knife
into the big veins of his neck. I caught his escaping spirit, imprisoned it in a smooth gray pebble,
and I say this now, thirteen ages after: I was not wrong to bring death to an entire race. The wrong
was Rajaat's and Rajaat's madness. But I was not right, and the onus of genocide, rightfully, falls on
me, on Hamanu.

Chapter Eleven
... Omniscience...
There was the smell of himali flour, of fresh-bated bread, moist and hot from the oven, filled
with sunshine and contentment. Childhood. FamilyMother and Father, brothers and sisters,
grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. CommunityDeche and Dorean. Love
and the future bound as one, together, forever.
... Omniscience...
Coarse-grain bread, cut with sand, kneaded by war-hardened hands and baked flat on
hearthstones. Hollow stomachs and hollower victories under a heavy sky. A sky that had neither
stars nor moons to break the darkness. Firelit faces in the darkness, waiting for the future.
... Omniscience...
Bread with a golden-tan crust floating in twilight. A mind floating in a windowless room, a
room cluttered with chests and bundles. A room crowded with faces. Faces with open eyes, open
mouths, and closed minds. Strangers' faces: some men, some not; some human, some not. All of
them waiting; none of them familiar.
Worry hovered in the air. Questions. Words that had no meaning. Voices that were
unconnected to the open mouths.
"Hamanu."
A jolt of darkness as eyes blinked. His eyes. Him. Hamanu.
One voice that cut through the swirling memories. One face above the crowd. A face unlike
the others, drawn in silver on the room's shadows. A face that was, at last, familiar.
"Windreaver."
The sound of his own voice was the final key that released Hamanu's self from a stagnant
mire of memory. A surge of self-knowledge began to restore order to his consciousness. He blinked
his eyes away from the waiting faces, to gather his wits in a semblance of privacy, glanced down
and saw an armhis armlittle more than bone cased in dull, dark flesh.
The thought came to him: When did that happen? Before the answer had unrolled itself in
his consciousness, another question had taken its place: After ages upon ages, have I finally
succumbed to Rajaat's madness?
The mere fact that he had to ask the question made any answer suspect.
Hamanu shuddered and closed his eyes.
"Step back from the brink, Hamanu," Windreaver's echoing whisper advised.
What brink? Wasn't he sitting in a crowded room?
Then the windswept peninsula where the last trolls had died sprang up behind Hamanu's
eyes, more real than this room and anyone in it, anyone except Windreaver.
"Eat, Omniscience. You haven't eatenhaven't moved for three days and nights together."
Hamanu recognized a round, hairless, and very worried face. With chilly dread, he marveled
that he hadn't recognized the dwarf's voice when he first heard it, or picked Enver's face
immediately from the crowd. The dread turned icy when he considered that, indeed, he hadn't
moved for three days and nights. His joints were rigid, as hard as the black bones that formed them.
He willed his fingers, knuckle by knuckle, to ungrasp the metal stylus. It clattered loudly on
the table and rolled beneath an untidy array of parchment sheets, which were slashed and splattered
with his frenetic script. He read the last words he'd written: the onus of genocide, rightfully, falls on
me, on Hamanu.
So much rememberingrelivingof the past was not a healthy thing.
"This is Nouri Nouri'son's bread: your favorite, since he began baking it for you. If not his
bread, then what, Omniscience? You must be starving."
Yes, he was starving, but not for fresh-baked bread, not for anything Enver could imagine.
Windreaver knew, and Windreaver had gone. Pavek might have guessed, but Pavek's scarred face
wasn't in the crowd. Hamanu reached for the loaf Enver offered. He tore off a large chunk with his

teeth, as if it were a panacea for his doubts. He reached for his druid-templar's mind and found him
in a city square.
Pavek had summoned the quarter's residents. He was drilling them by morning light: sweep
and parry; thrust and block; push away forward, push away and retreat. He'd armed them with bone
and wood tools, barrel staves, and mud-caked laths ripped from household roofs, but he drilled them
as if they, and their paltry weapons, would make a difference.
"If fortune's wheel turns square and the walls are breached," Pavek shouted, in rhythm with
the drill. "Then everyone becomes a warrior for Urik. Make the enemy bleed for every step. Make
them climb mountains of their dead. We'll fight for Urik, for our city, our homes, our families, and
ourselves."
The same words, no doubt, that Pavek had used to inspire Telhami's Quraite farmers. Like
those farmers, the Urikites listened. They worked up a sweat, and not because a score of civilbureau templars stood on the verge, blocking the streets. The templars weren't watching the citizens;
they were drilling, too. Citizen and templar together did what Pavek told them because Pavek was
an honest man, a man who told the truth, a man who'd give his life for his city. A man who knew
Hamanu sensed the awareness in Pavek's mindthat his king hadn't moved for three days.
Pavek wasn't the only high templar out among the ordinary citizens. Similar scenes played
out in other city squares and in the ringing market villages, where the line between templar and
citizen was less distinct and the wicker walls were meant to keep kanks, erdlus, and inixes in their
pens, not keep a determined enemy out.
Aware of the bread melting sweetly in his mouth, Hamanu took another moment to find the
thoughts of Javed and the other commandants. The men and women of the war-bureau elite were far
beyond the walls and the green fields. They, too, were drilling, drilling the veterans and the levies
who'd defend Urik with obsidian and steel. The commandants were no less dedicated to Urik's
cause than Pavek, and no more optimistic, though Javed was more sensitive to his king's mindbending touch.
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
elvesa tactic the war-bureau employed when its officers didn't wish to be in constant contact with
their monarchhad 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 othersthe 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 insteadas much to
exercise stiff muscles as anything else.
The past was a trap, Hamanu had proven that to himself twice since he'd started writing his
history for Pavek. He couldn't change the past; he'd never before permitted it to affect his future
Urik's futureand he wouldn't start now. If now weren't already too late. The stealth spell with
which he hoped to harvest the answers to so many of his questions should have been ready two
nights ago.
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 placescompletely 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 presencesuch as Hamanu was, no
matter how thorough his disguisecould attract lesser presences: lost spirits, misplaced artifacts,
and novice druidsor 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 closewell, 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 yearsmore 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 recoveredBorys 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 deathat least long enough for the champions to
have considered the matterexcept 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.
Then, one momentous day five years ago, Sadira, Tithian, and the rest of their ragtag band of
Tyrian rebels brought the Lens to Ur Draxa. Four champions were vanquished that day, including
Borys. The stone cyst was destroyed. Rajaat got free.
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 yearsfive uninterrupted, unobserved yearsRajaat 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 momentas
Hamanu's mind measured time in the netherworldand 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 allexcept 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 welland 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.
When his limbs were free, Hamanu righted himself with no more effort than he expended in
his rooftop bathing pool. He wasn't out of danger. The Black continued to exert its attraction on
him, and he continued to fall toward the ultimate shadowand the waiting figuredespite his
every effort to escape.
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 beltpouches. 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 mistakeif it was a mistake and not another sleight of destiny's
handwas telling them about the home he wanted to rebuild for himself in the Kreegills.
For Hamanu, the war had had a clear beginning and a clean end. He was scarcely fifty years
old when the war ended. He'd fought for over thirty years but, considering his immortality, he'd
remained a young man, clinging to a young man's dreams. He'd forgotten that for his veterans, war
was the life they'd known for generations. They didn't have homes to rebuild. Some of them
followed him into the Kreegills where the fields were overgrown and time had scrubbed the empty,
desecrated villages.
A man could spend a lifetime bringing the valley back to what he rememberedan
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, dayin, 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 lowlandsand
those who'd never leftcouldn'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'tthen or everbear 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 mansickened

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 lifeeven 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 listeninga god, he thought, should
appear, at least, to listen. His armthe 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.
"An immortal sorcerer rules in Tyr," the Urikite leader had explained. "Another rules in
Giustenal. Urik lies between them. First the warlords bled us dry, O Mighty Lion; now they bleed
the trade caravans that travel between Tyr and Giustenal. Already, the gods of those cities threaten
us for crimes we cannot prevent. We beg you to deal harshly with the warlords and to stay with us,
to protect us against the greed and anger of our neighbors. If we must live under a god's yoke, then
we wish a god of our own choosing, not the god of Giustenal or Tyr."
"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 menand 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 twowheeled 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 himveterans, brigands, and Urikites, alike. There'd be no
betrayals in his Urik; there'd be peacehis peaceand 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, plowingand a time to lie fallow, a balance of laws and taxes and
judicious neglectto 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 dwarvesthe 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.
Those were Urik's golden years, when rain still fell reliably, gently, each year as the sun
descended to its nadir, and again neared its zenith. Those were the years before Rajaat called in his
debt, before the champions rebelled against their creator, and before Borys became a dragon whose
madness devastated the once-green heartland.
When Borys recovered his sanity, he founded Ur Draxa to house Rajaat's prison and to keep
the rest of Athas especially his fellow championsat bay. Borys's plans had worked for thirteen
agesan 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 wasor should have beenless 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'
equal, 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 thoroughlyby 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.
To be sure, they'd all taken the first sorcerer by surprise that day when Borys died. They'd
had him down and running. But when Hamanu and the other champions let Sadira throw the Dark
Lens into the lava lake with Rajaat's bones, and then let her set the wards to seal them in, they'd all
been dancing to the War-Bringer's tune. They'd put him in the perfect place to lick his wounds: the
shadow of the Dark Lens.
Whim of the Lionhis 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, Manuthey'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.
Three days, Manu, three days and they'll draw their noose around Urik so tight that a dragon
will be born. You will serve, Manu. You will fulfill your destiny."
"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, Hamanuserve 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.

Hamanuand Urikhad 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 clouds. 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.
Hamanu's first thoughts outside the Gray had nothing to do with the War-Bringer. His hands,
still black-taloned and bony, lingered over the perfect, unmortared seams of a gray-stone doorway.
The trolls were gone, but their homes stood ready to welcome them, as if they might return
tomorrow.
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 lifetimeas 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 backand farmers built
terraces to keep the soil in place until long-lived plants put down their rootsthe 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.
Ages had passed since Hamanu wished that he could weep for his lost past or wished that he
was dead within it. There were no gods to grant a champion's wishes. He'd never weep again, and
he'd lived too long to throw his life away.
In his natural shape, Hamanu was taller than any troll. He looked directly at the carved
inscriptions he'd once studied from the ground, and lost himself recovering their meaning from his
memory.
"Can you read it?"
A voiceWindreaver's voiceasked from behind his back. Hamanu let out a breath he'd
held since Ur Draxa. He hadn't wanted to be alone. The troll's voice was the right voice for this
place, this moment.
" 'Come, blessed sun,' " he answered, tracing the word-symbols as he translated them. "
'Warm my walls and my roof. Send your light of life through my windows and my doors.' " He
paused with his finger above the last group of carvings. "This one, 'awaken,' and the next pair,
'stone' plus 'life'they're on every stone in every wall. Wake up my stones? Wake up my people? I
was never certain."
" 'Arise, reborn.' We believed the spirits of our ancestors dwelt in stone. We never mined, not
like the dwarves. Mining was desecration. We waited for the stone to rise. The closer it came to the
sunwe believedthe closer our ancestors were to the moment of rebirth."
"And do you still believe?" Hamanu asked. He didn't expect an answer, and didn't get one.
"Who taught you to read our script?" Windreaver demanded, as if the knowledge were a
sacred trust, not to be shared with outsiders, with humans especially.
"I taught myself. I was here at sunrise, whenever I could get away from my chores,
imagining what it had been like. I looked at the inscriptions and asked myself: what would I have
written here, if I were a troll, living in this place, watching the sun rise over my house. After a
while, I believed I knew."
Silence lengthened. Hamanu thought Windreaver had departed.
He considered issuing a command that the troll couldn't disobey, demanding recognition for
his accomplishment. He'd learned the script without assistance and, save for the two symbols that
dealt with a faith he couldn't imagine, he'd learned it correctly. But that would be a tawdry triumph
in a place that deserved better. With a final caress for the carved stone, Hamanu turned and saw that
he wasn't alone.
Windreaver said something in a language Hamanu had heard only a handful of times and
never understood. The troll had no substance, either in the material world or the Gray; there was no
aspect of him from which a mind-bender could glean his meaning.
"I taught myself to read your script. I couldn't teach myself to speak it. If you wish to insult
me, do it in a living language."
"I said you read well."
The Lion-King knew his captive companion better than that. "When mekillots fly," he
challenged.
"No, you're right. I said something else, but you read well. That's the truth. Nothing else
matters, does itin a living language?"
"Thank you," Hamanu replied. He didn't want an argument, not today. But it seemed he was
going to have one: Windreaver's face had soured into an expression he hadn't seen before. "Is it so
terrible? A boy comes up herea human boy. He imagines he's a troll and deciphers your
language."
"What I said was: I could wish I had met that remarkable human boy."

Hamanu studied the ground to the right of his feet. He remembered the boy's shape, his
voice, and his questions as he stood among these stones. Memory was illusion; there was no going
back. "I could wish that, too. But we had no choice, no chance. Rajaat took that away before I was
born. Maybe before you were born. Our paths were destined to cross on the battlefield, at the top of
a dark-sky cliff, far from anywhere either of us knew. One misstep, by either of us, and we'd never
have met at all."
" 'One misstep'?"
"And the Cleansing Wars would have ended worse than they did. You could have held
Myron of Yoram to a stalemate, but Rajaat would have found another lump of human clay to mold
into his final champion. The dwarves, elves, and giants wouldn't've survived... and neither would
the trolls..." he paused a second time and raised his head before adding the long-unspoken words
"My friend."
Windreaver's silver-etched silhouette didn't shift in the sunlight. "I believe you," he said
softly, without saying what he believed. "Our race was doomed."
Looking at the troll's slumped, translucent shoulders, the Lion-King remembered
compassion. "You believe your dead dwell in stone, awaiting rebirth. When the wind's done
scouring these stones, there'll be trolls again, someday. You'll teach them their language." He
thought of the pebble imbedded in his forearm. "You might be reborn, yourself."
Terrible silver eyes met Hamanu's. "If the spirits of our dead survived in stone, the WarBringer would have declared war on stone. He would have made a champion to suck life from
stone."
The War-Bringer had. If there'd been life sleeping in these ruins, Rajaat's final champion
could have destroyed it. "I wouldn't... won't. It will not happen. Not in three days. Not ever."
"You learn," Windreaver concluded. "Of all your kind, you alone learned from your
mistakes."
"I learned from you. But. by then, there were no choices so there couldn't be mistakes. When
Rajaat came to me in Urik and I ran from him. it was your taunts"
"I didn't taunt you, not that day."
"You were waiting for me when I came out of the Gray near Kemelok. You'd gotten there
first; you knew exactly where I'd go. You said that if I ranif I kept running Rajaat would make
another champion to replace me. How many years had it been since that day on the cliff? You hadn't
said a word in all that timeI didn't think you could. As a man, I was still youngwhat did I
know? Fighting and forming. You were ages older. Of course I listened to you. 'Think of what the
War-Bringer's learned from you!' I've never forgotten it; I remember it as if it were yesterday. I
realized that it wasn't enough to disobey Rajaat; I had to stop him. I must remain his final
champion. There can none after me."
"I'd sworn I wouldn't speak to you. Then you broke away from the War-Bringer. I saw it,
heard it, but I didn't believe it. You refused what he offered. Then you ran to Borys, and I was afraid
for you, my enemy, my warden, so I broke my oath," said the troll's spirit, as though in recitation.
"You made me think before I talked to him."
"For all the good it did, Manu. For all the good it did, long ago..."
*****
Borys hadn't welcomed another champion's sudden appearance behind his Kemelok siege
line. The Butcher of Dwarves hurled a series of Unseen assaults at his illusion-shrouded visitor.
Hamanu deflected everything that came his way, all without raising a counterattack. After a short
lull, a solitary human strode out of the besieger's camp. It wasn't a good time for meeting another
champion. Borys made that clear from the start.
As Borys explained, ten days earlier, he'd fought a pitched, but not quite decisive, battle
against the dwarven army here at Kemelok. He'd given their king, Rkard, a fatal woundat least it
should have been fatal. Borys wasn't certain. That was half his anger. The sword Borys had carried

into the battle was enchanted. Rajaat had given it to him the day he'd become the thirteenth
champion. The sword imparted a lethal essence to any dwarf it cut open, as it had opened Rkard,
but the cursed dwarf had gotten lucky.
Rkard's axe had taken a chunk out of Borys's shoulder, a blow that would have quartered a
mortal man. Battle-stunned and unable to hold his weapon, Borys had fallen. His officers had
carried him back to their linesleaving the sword behind in the hairy dwarf's chest. Borys admitted
that he had slain three of his best men before he got his rage controlled, His own life was never in
danger, but the damned sword was irreplaceable.
Hamanu listened to the Butcher of Dwarves's tirade and wisely didn't mention that his
victory over the trolls hadn't depended on any enchanted weaponry. He waited until the other
champion had calmed down enough to ask the obvious questions.
"What do you want? Who sent you? Why are you here?" asked Borys.
"Rajaat came to me in Urik."
"This is my war, Troll-Scorcher, and I'm ending it now. No one's coming in to share my kill.
If Rajaat's whispering in your ear, that's your problem, not mine."
"Wrong," Hamanu countered. He opened his mind to share his recent encounter with their
mutual creator, but Borys was warded against such invasion. "He means for me to finish your war
"
"Never," Borys snarled and quickened another spell. "I warned you."
"And start another cleansing war, this time against humanity itself."
A needle-thin ray of orange light shot from the palm of the Butcher of Dwarves to Hamanu's
gut, where it raised a finger-wisp of oily smoke before Hamanu deflected it with a gesture of his
own. Once pointed at the ground, the orange ray seared a line a hundred paces long across the
already ash-streaked dirt.
"He showed me how it would be done," the Lion-King said, "and gave me a foretaste of
human death."
"We can all kill, Hamanu," Borys said wearily, as if explaining life's realities to a dull-witted
child. "Kill all Urik, if that pleases you, but stay away from my damned dwarves, and know this:
make war with humanity, and you're making war with me."
"I'll win."
"When mekillots fly, Hamanu. You're the last, and the least. You may have vanquished the
trolls, but they were almost finished when Yoram lost his fire. You don't have the wit or power to
battle any one of us. Go back to Urik. Be careful, thoughI hear you're taking in half-bloods. Give
a dwarf shelter, and I'll make war with you."
"Forget dwarves," Hamanu advised. "Think about what happens next. What did he promise
you?"
"A new human kingdom in a new human world, a pure world, without dwarves and the rest
of the Rebirth scum. I'll rule from Ebeor here at Kemelokuntil I can wrest Tyr from old Kalak.
After that, who knows? We needn't be enemies, Hamanu. There's enough to go around, for now."
"You seemed wiser. I thought you knew better than to believe him."
"If Rajaat could cleanse the world, none of us would exist. He's the War-Bringer, not the war
commander; the first sorcerer, but not a sorcerer-king. He needs us more than we need him."
"Have you looked at yourself, Borys?" Hamanu shed his illusion. He stood twice as high as
a human man. His jaws had grown to support an array of fanglike teeth, and his nose was flattened
by a bony ridge that obscured a portion of his vision. The same ridge, continued above his
dwindling brows and across his scalp. Similar metamorphosis had deformed every other part of
him.
Locked in what he hoped would be humanity's final battle with the Rebirth dwarves, Borys
wasn't eager to be seen conferring with a man who was clearly not-quite-human. After throwing a
scrap of cloth on the ground, to shape his spell, Borys tried to reconfine Hamanu in his customary
black-haired and tawny illusion.
"Begone!" the Butcher of Ebe growled softly with his own true voice.

Hamanu shook off the spell. With a hundred human deaths fresh on the back of his dragon's
tongue and Windreaver's taunts still ringing in his ears, he pleaded for an open mind. "Let me show
you"
"I've seen enough."
Abandoning the calm tactics that went against his nature and hadn't accomplished anything,
Hamanu gestured widely with both arms. Borys responded with another spell, but before he could
cast it, Hamanu cast a spell of his own. The air between Urik's gaunt king and the blond human
flashed with lightning brilliance as Hamanu found die veterans from whose life essence Borys was
quickening his spell. He annihilated them, in the way he'd learned from Rajaat; Borys felt the echo
of their deaths. When the light faded, the Butcher of Dwarves held one hand against his breast, and
in his army's camp, clanging gongs signaled an emergency.
With his hand still pressed above his heart, Borys looked from Hamanu to his frantic camp.
"I felt them die. I couldn't stop it. If I'd tried, you'd have drained me, too." He lowered his arm and
turned back to Hamanu. "Just what are you?"
"Rajaat's last champion: Troll-Scorcher. Annihilator of all humanity. I'll win," Hamanu
repeated his earlier assertion. "If I start the war. And if I won't, he'll make another who will."
"The Dark Lens? Is that how you do it? Are you bound to it in a different way than the rest
of us?"
"I didn't ask; he didn't enlighten me. Maybe it's the Lens. Sometimes I think it's the sun. It
was there from the beginning, I suppose, but I didn't know how to use it until today."
Hamanu opened his mind a third time, and Borys accepted the images of Rajaat's visit to
Urik: a hundred humans annihilated in a single breath. Nothing remained of them, not a single
greasy, ash-crusted splotch on the palace floors.
Borys lowered his hand. He cursed as any veteran might curse: heartfelt and impotent.
Hamanu interrupted. "He says humanity must be cleansed because we're deformed. He
wants to return a cleansed Athas to the halflings. He says it belongs to them, not us."
"He's mad."
"Aye, he'll probably cleanse the halflings, too. The only question worth asking is, can we
stop him? I can resist him, disobey him, but I can't stop him, not alone. If we all attack at once..."
"You'd survive," Borys responded quickly, the old distrust burning bright in his eyes. "You
could lay back until you were the last"
"And he'd slay me, then he'd find someone else to annihilate the humans. Maybe a score of
someones. He promised you a kingdom, Borys. What price will you pay for it?"
Borys neither spoke nor moved.
"Make up your mind, champion. He's probably out looking for another farmer's son right
now. Maybe he'll pluck someone out of your army this time. Maybe he's already dragged the poor
sod up the stairs in his damned white tower."
"No. You saw how it was. He needs us"
"Needed."
Another curse as Borys looked at Kemelok's battered towers. "Five days. If I'm gone longer
than that, the siege will fail, and the runts will scatter."
Borys allowed a breathtakingly short time in which to bring down the War-Bringer.
"You must be very persuasive," Hamanu said. "With whom do you plan to start?"
"Sielba," Borys replied without hesitation.
Hamanu was inwardly astonished. He'd have left the red-haired Sprite-Scourge and seducer
of champions for last. But he'd come this far to get Borys's help and kept his opinions to himself
while the Butcher of Dwarves made arrangement with his high-ranking officers to continue the
siege while he was gone.
Since the day the champions had drunk each other's blood in the negligible shade of Rajaat's
white tower, Sielba had repeatedly invited Hamanu to visit her retreat. The invitations had grown
more frequent and enticing in the years since he'd vanquished the trolls and taken his place among

the champions who'd achieved their final victories. The notices had become especially regular since
he'd settled in Urik and begun to transform the dusty, roadside town into a rival city.
They were neighbors, Sielba would write on ordinary vellum scrolls that her minions
delivered to the Urik gates, or she would whisper in a mysterious, musk-scented hush that haunted
the midnight corners of Urik's humble palace. They should know each other better. They should
explore an alliance; as partners, Sielba promised, they and their cities would be invincible.
Hamanu had ignored every overture. He hadn't forgotten the loathsome combination of lust
and contempt with which she'd scrutinized him that one time, the only time they'd stood face to
face. He wanted nothing to do with her or her invitations.
However his farmer's son's jaw dropped when Borys led him from the Gray into an alabaster
courtyard, and he began to reconsider his reticence. Musical fountains, flowers, lyric birds, an
abundance of brightly colored silk... he'd never dreamt of such things. Sielba had cleansed Athas of
sprites, then retired to the ancient city of Yaramuke, where she idled away the days and years, ruling
a docile citizenry from an imperial palace. Hamanu shook his head and reshaped his appearance to
equal the luxury surrounding himat least he hoped he equaled it.
Sielba greeted Borys warmly and familiarly; Hamanu readily perceived that their
acquaintance was both old and intimate. She greeted him like a kes'trekel alighting on a corpse.
"Will you feast with me?" she asked, with her lips against his ear and her hands weaving
through his hair.
Lips, ears, hands, haireven the tense muscles at the back of Hamanu's neckwere all
illusions, but beneath their illusions Rajaat's champions remained men and women. Hamanu, at
least, knew that he remained a man. He remembered every loving moment in Dorean's arms;
Jikkana's, too; and the infrequent others of his mortal years. After Rajaat made him a champion,
he'd discovered the hard way that there were lethal limits to illusion. Sielba's sturdy immortality
tempted him with dangerous possibilities.
He pushed her away, with more force than he'd intended. "We've come to talk about Rajaat
"
"You still have the manners of a dirt-eater, Hamanu," Borys interrupted. "Try to behave."
With words and a few subtle gestures, the two more experienced champions pierced
Hamanu's defenses. They shrouded him with an awkwardness that wasn't illusion. He was young
compared to them, and ignorant. He knew how to fight, but not how to sit amid the wealth of
cushions surrounding Sielba's banquet table, or which of the unfamiliar delicacies were eaten with
fingers, and which required a knife.
As for the urgent matter that had brought Hamanu first to Kemelok and then to Yaramuke,
Borys disposed of it between the berries and the cream.
"The War-Bringer's not going to stop with the Rebirth races," he said bluntly, but casually.
"He's going to create another champion to cleanse Athas of humanity."
Sielba set down her goblet of iridescent wine. Her illusion retained its beauty when she
frowned, but her inner nature the heart and conscience of a victorious championrevealed itself
as well. "And us? What about his promises? Are we to rule a world filled with beasts and
halflings?"
"Apparently," Borys replied, with studied nonchalance balancing a mottled berry on the tip
of his knife. He exploded it with a thought. "Or he'll create a champion to cleanse us, too."
"He has to be stopped."
"Agreed. Are you with us?" the Butcher of Ebe asked as he turned from Sielba to Hamanu,
who was, at that inopportune moment, blotting berry stains from his sleeve.
Lips as red as the stain parted in a condescending smile. "Do you have a plan?" she asked
Borys, not Hamanu.
"Of course, but it will require all of us, together."
Sielba's dark eyes narrowed. "And you need to know where everyone is?"
"I can hardly ask the War-Bringer, can I?"
"Or little Sacha."

"I'll get him last, and bring him here by force, if I have to."
"After I've told you what you need to know?"
"I have hopes, my dear enchantress." Borys laid his hand atop Sielba's.
She withdrew hers from below. "And you have promises, promises as hollow as Rajaat's."
Her smile belied her words.
So much, then, Hamanu observed, for Borys's persuasionor any acknowledgment that
without him they'd be ignorant of the War-Bringer's plans. The elder champions disappeared,
leaving Hamanu with the silks, the slaves, and the remains of their feast. When they returned, Sielba
settled herself on the cushions close beside him, while Borys stood beside the door.
"Stay here, Hamanu," the elder champion said.
An order, not a suggestion, and Hamanu didn't take orders; he wouldn't be treated like a
child or slave. If Borys hadn't learned that at Kemelok, he'd learn it now.
The air in Sielba's banquet hall stilled. Water drops hung suspended in the fountains, and the
human slaves fell to the floor. Borys's doing; Hamanu had done nothing to harm them.
As he started to stand, Sielba threw herself at Hamanu's feet. She tangled him in the
cushions. The huge and well-built palace shuddered when they collapsed together.
"Stay with me, Lion of Urik," she urged as they wrestled with small but potent sorcery.
Long ago, Myron of Yoram's officers had humiliated him with their superior sword-skills.
Hamanu then spent years practicing with every weapon known to man to insure that such a thing
would never happen again. He thought that because he was strong and skilled, he could win any
fight. He should have taken a few days, at least, to learn the cunning strategies with which women
traditionally fought and won. Sielba used his lion's strength against him. She drained his spells as
fast as he conceived them and then twisted his arm behind his back so thoroughly that the black
bones beneath his illusion threatened to snap. When he was aware of his predicament, she
whispered in his ear again, in her huskily seductive voice:
"It's better this way. Trust me."
Hamanu was no more inclined to do that than he was to trust Rajaat.
"I'll return with the others, then we'll deal with the War-Bringer," Borys said from the
doorway. "In the meantime, maybe you'll learn something useful."
Sielba let her guard down once Borys was gone. The Lion of Urik, taking quick advantage
of the tricks she'd just taught him, freed himself, and achieved a similar twisting grip on her arm.
"And now, what are you going to do, Lion of Urik?" she asked. Her voice came from behind
his shoulder though her face was smothered in the pillows. "You're a quick and rever farmer's lad,
but that's hardly enough."
Later Hamanu would blame the wine, Sielba's shifty and shimmering red-blue iridescent
wine. The wine wasn't to blame; no amount of wine could affect him, no more than the spiced
delicacies could fatten his gaunt body. He was young as immortals reckoned age, but a score of
years had passed since he'd touched a woman's cheek without leaving a bruise or kissed her lips
without bloodying them.
In time, Hamanu mastered illusion's most subtle aspects and could seduce whomever he
wished or secret himself in a mortal mind to explore the world with another's senses. In time, he and
Yaramuke's queen would descend into the quarrel that ended with her death and the destruction of
her city. Until then, Sielba offered, if not love, fascination, and he offered the same to her.
The Lion of Urik was a different man when Borys returned two days later. The ten other
champions emerged, one after another, from the Butcher's netherworld wake. Hamanu kept his
temper and said nothing when he saw how thoroughly the Butcher of Ebe had established himself as
the champions' champion, the one who would free them from their creator.
Partly, Hamanu stayed calm because he saw how they'd restrained Sacha Arala, the WarBringer's sycophant. There were no perceptible chains binding the Curse of Kobolds, but his eyes
were glazed, and he said nothing at all, unless Borys or Dregoth suggested it first. Although
Hamanu didn't think they could control Urik's king as they controlled Arala, he saw no need to risk

a confrontation. That was the greatest change Sielba had wrought in him: the Lion of Urik didn't
need to prove something to others once he'd proved it to himself.
Hamanu had already measured himself against Borys, and the Dwarf Butcher was no WarBringer. If Borys wished to be the touchstone of their rebellion, he'd let Borys have his wish.
There'd be opportunity for another rebellion, if necessity demanded one. Rajaat's champions had
treachery bred in their bones. Hamanu was no exception.
As afternoon in Yaramuke became evening and their strategy took its final shape, Hamanu
quietly accepted a subordinate's role. The champions' strategy was as simple as it was risky.
Emerging from the Gray, all at the same time and close to Rajaat's tower, they'd each cast a
different, destructive spell. No one of the spells would be sufficient to overpower the first sorcerer,
but together, they might distract and confound him long enough for Borys, or Dregoth, or Pennarin,
or even Hamanuthe four champions who prided themselves on their sheer, brute strengthto
dispatch their creator with a physical weapon. Failing that but only if the quartet seemed truly
doomedthe others would attempt to destroy Rajaat's Dark Lens.
Better, they'd decided, to live without the magic they passed to their minions than to face
Rajaat's wrath with the Lens still in existence.
Their simple strategy collapsed as soon as they were in the Gray. Savage winds erupted from
every corner of the netherworld. The winds buffeted the mighty sorcerers, sending them caroming
into each other and away from each other, as well.
Too many champions, too many unnatural creatures for even this unnatural place, Hamanu
thought as he struggled to retain his orientation in the chaos.
Borys had a less charitable notion: Arala! Get a ward on Sacha Aralahe's behind it.
Prudence launched a bolt of blue-green sorcery off Hamanu's right hand, and off other
hands, as well. They blinded each other in their eagerness to stop Sacha Arala's treachery. The Curse
of Kobolds screamed for mercy that was not forthcoming until Dregoth announced that he had the
traitor in his grasp. The winds ebbed. The champions regrouped and continued toward Rajaat's
tower, which shone in the Gray as a sliver of pure white light.
In silence, the champions surrounded the netherworld beacon, then returned to the material
world where, hiding in the moonlight shadows, Rajaat War-Bringer waited for them.
A fiery maw engulfed Pennarin before he'd invoked his spell. The maw closed, and Rajaat's
first champion was gone.
Hamanu took a breath and cast his spell: a simple transmutation of dry, rock-hard dirt into
mire as hot and viscous as molten lava. The ground beneath Rajaat's feet began to glow. Through
the tumult of spells and counterspells, the Lion of Urik heard the War-Bringer cry his name.
"Hamanu... Hamanu, you're next!"
A writhing, dark counterspell came Hamanu's way. Gelid and corrosive, it would have
consumed his immortal flesh eventually, but it was as slow as it was icy. Hamanu dodged and sent
Rajaat's wrath oozing harmlessly into the Gray. Then he drew his golden sword. With his hands on
its hilt, Hamanu advanced toward his creator across ground his own spell had made treacherous.
The champions' strategy had been sound. Though they'd never had the surprise advantage
Borys planned for, and they'd lost Pennarin at the start, the War-Bringer was thoroughly beset.
Borys was wading through Hamanu's steaming mire toward Rajaat ahead of Hamanu. The Butcher
of Dwarves had drawn his sword, a dark-metal weapon that seethed with crimson fire against the
midnight stars. It wasn't the sword Rajaat had given him; he swore the crimson blade would be a
telling weapon against the War-Bringer. Hamanu hadn't argued. He wasn't going to tell another
champion what weapon to bring to their rebellion.
Dregoth appeared on Hamanu's left. He was die Ravager of Giants, and his weapon was a
plain stone maul. If there was one champion, one weapon, with the best chance to smash the WarBringer's skull, it was Dregoth and that maul. Borys and Hamanu had agreed to aim low and leave
Rajaat's misshaped head for Dregoth.
The Butcher of Dwarves swung first: a solid cut across Rajaat's ribs, ending deep in his gut.
Blood and viscera sluiced over the dark crimson blade. The War-Bringer bellowed; fire roared out

of his gaping mouth. Hamanu ducked his head beneath the flames and stalked forward, thrusting his
sword into Rajaat's flank. The golden sword slid between the first sorcerer's ribs, then stopped, as if
it had struck unyielding stone. Hamanu sank his black-taloned feet into the mire and pushed; the
sword began to move again.
Fire seared Hamanu's scalp and the length of his back.
Somehow he kept his hands on the hilt and kept the sword creeping deeper.
Hamanu. Look at me, Hamanu.
There was compulsion in the words the War-Bringer placed in Hamanu's mind, compulsion
that made the Lion of Urik raise his head to meet his creator's mismatched eyes.
Take them, Hamanu. Take them all! You have the power.
It was the same power Rajaat had offered in Urik. Hamanu refused it a second time.
"Never!" he swore.
He found a last reserve of strength within himself and, with a roar of his own, surged behind
his sword. Rajaat fell back, toward Dregoth, who swung his maul just once. A sound like the moons
colliding pummeled the white tower. Rajaat heaved away from Dregoth's completed stroke. The
mire quaked, the champions fought for balance, but the War-Bringer was down. Potent sorcery, no
longer under the control of Rajaat's unfathomable intellect, sizzled wildly and died.
"Is he dead?" one of the women asked.
"No," Borys, Hamanu, and Dregoth said together before Dregoth hoisted his maul for
another blow.
The Ravager of Giants smashed Rajaat's protuberant brow, but the answer didn't change.
"He can't die," someone said. "Not while we're alive."
No one argued.
"So, what now?" That from Albeorn, whose metamorphosis had given him an erdlulike
aspect. "If we can't kill him, what do we do?"
"Lock him up someplace. Some place dark and deep," Inenek suggested.
Gallard Gnome-Bane snorted. "Fool. Shadow's the source of the War-Bringer's power,"
"When it gets dark enough, there aren't any shadows. I can think of a few places that never
feel the light of day or any other light," Dregoth said with a malicious laugh.
"Put him there," Gallard countered, "and he'll use the Dark Lens to fry us all."
Borys cleaned his simmering sword and sheathed it in a scabbard that vanished against his
leg. "All right, Gallard, where do you suggest?" He swept his arm wide in an exaggerated bow, but
kept his head up and his eyes fixed on the Gnome-Bane's face.
"At the center of the Gray netherworld lies the Black, and beneath the Black"
"The Gray isn't flat," Albeorn interrupted. "If there's black at its center, then there's more
Gray beneath it!"
"Shut up, twerp!"
Gallard shot sorcery at his critic. The air around the Elf-Slayer shimmered with ward spells,
then it shimmered around everyone else, as well. For several long moments, no one said anything.
At last, Sielba lowered her guard.
"And beneath the black?" she urged Gallard to finish.
"Beneath the Black, we can make a hollow where neither light nor shadow exist, nor can
exist."
Borys had a question: "What about the Dark Lens?"
Gallard shrugged. "When the Dark Lens intensifies nothing, it remains nothing."
"Better we cut him apart and each take a piece with us," Wyan of Bodach interjected.
Hamanu stared at the Pixie-Blight. Stripped of illusion as they all wereBodach was a
small-statured creature. He'd destroyed the smaller, defenseless race of shy, tree-worshipers not by
slaying them but by turning their god-trees to sorcerous ash. While Hamanu wondered why such I a
coward would suggest carving their still-living creator into bloody chunks of meat, the other
champions bantered about how Rajaat should be divvied up and which part should go to whom.

The lewd conversation ended abruptly when a blue spark flickered amid the gore that had
been Rajaat's face.
"He's healing himself." Borys confirmed what they'd all felt.
There was a round of curses as they each cast a warding spell over their creator.
"It won't be enough," Gallard warned. "Wards won't keep out the sun once it rises. His own
bones will make the shadows. We put him beneath the Black tonight, or we'll join Pennarin
tomorrow."
Pennarin. Where was Pennarin? The Black, Gallard said. And how did Gallard come to
know so much about the center of the Gray or what lay beneath it? Who'd taught the Bane of
Gnomes? Why had he needed to learn? Who had he planned to imprison in a nowhere place where
neither light nor shadow, time nor substance existed? Rajaat? Or had Gallard planned to imprison
them all there eventually?
So many questions, but no reason to ask any of them. The champions couldn't kill their
creator and couldn't let him heal himself whole. That left Gallard's Hollow beneath the Black. As
little as he relished the notion of trusting Gallard's notion, Hamanu had nothing to offer in its place
nor did anyone else.
"Is there time?" he asked, breaking the silence that threatened to last until dawn.
Gallard grinned, revealing steel-sharp fangs behind his slack and blubbery lips. "Only one
way to find out, isn't there?"
Indeed, there was only one way: follow the Gnome-Bane's instructions, stretch their powers
to exhaustion scouring the heartland for reagents before dawn's light, and deliver the noxious
reagents to the top of Rajaat's white tower where Gallardand only Gallardsat in the Crystal
Steeple, waiting, enshrined beneath the Dark Lens.
After depositing a vial of fuming realgar at the Gnome-Bane's feet, Hamanu plodded down
the spiral stairs. Resuming his human illusionbecause it was more comfortable than his gaunt
natural formhe leaned back against a crumbled wall. Champions needed sleep no more than they
needed food, but even an immortal mind needed a quiet moment to reflect, this day and night.
Big Guthay had set. Little Ral was alone in a sky of a thousand stars. None shone brighter
than the warding spells layered over Rajaat's body, like so many green silk veils. Hamanu lost
himself in the spells' constantly changing patterns. His thoughts wandered so far that his mind
seemed empty, almost peaceful. Looking straight ahead, he saw nothing untilwith a jolt of
returning consciousnesshe saw that a black shadow had cut the warding spells in two.
He's healed. He's breaking the wards, Hamanu thought, a lump of cold terror clogging his
throat.
But the shadow wasn't Rajaat's. A man crouched over Rajaat's body, casting the shadow
Hamanu saw. A man who was so intent on peeling back the warding spells that he didn't hear the
light tread of another champion's feet behind him, or sense another shadow mingling with his until
it was too late.
"Arala!" Hamanu shouted as he seized a scrawny neck and jerked the traitor from his
mischief.
Objects that might have been the War-Bringer's teeth or finger bones showered from Sacha's
handsexcept, the culprit wasn't Sacha Arala. In the brief moment Hamanu had before the illusion
became a writhing metamorph, he recognized Wyan Bodach's face: Wyan Bodach, who'd suggested
chopping Rajaat into pieces earlier.
All arms and legs in his natural form, the Pixie-Blight sprouted claws that raked through
illusion to Hamanu's true flesh. The Lion roared, but held on until another champion came to
investigate the furor. Unable to sort innocent from guilty, the newcomer slapped spells around them
both. Hamanu's limbs grew heavy as a Kreegill peak, and Wyan was even heavier, but he kept hold.
Another spelltwo, three, more than he could countwrapped around them. The arm that had
been as heavy as a mountain was stone-stiff when the spellcasting was finished and Dregoth
reached in to pry Bodach free.

"He dispelled the wards!" the Pixie-Blight declared the instant Hamanu's fingers were no
longer squeezed tight around his neck. "He defiled the War-Bringer, defiled his body."
"And do you deny it?" Dregoth asked Hamanu.
The heavy paralysis was withdrawn. Hamanu flexed his muscles and said: "I do. Wyan said
he wanted a piece of Rajaat's body earlier. It's his own deceit he describes, not mine. I thought it
was Sacha Arala at first. I cried out his name by mistake."
Vapors seeped from Dregoth's nose as he looked from Hamanu to Wyan and back again.
"And where is Sacha?" Albeorn asked from far on Hamanu's right side.
He and the others had gathered quickly. Some had emerged from the netherworld, the rest
strode out of the nighttime shadows. Sacha Arala wasn't among them, nor was Borys, nor, of course,
was Gallard. Hamanu realized they were all looking at him, distrusting him more than Wyan
because he was still the outsider. He had several long moments to wonder exactly what Borys had
told them while Sielba had entertained him in Yaramuke, before Sielba's husky voice broke the
silence.
"Sacha's with Borys, where else? He's got no part in thiswhatever this is. And neither has
Hamanu. If the Lion of Urik says Wyan was cutting off bits of Rajaat, then I believe him, and I
suggest we find out why before Borys gets back here."
Sielba was right about Hamanu, though he knew he'd pay dearly for her defense. She might
have been right about Sacha, too. Rajaat's sycophant might have had nothing to do with Wyan's
macabre gleaning. But Wyan swore otherwise.
"It was all Sacha's plan," the Pixie-Blight insisted. "He said Rajaat has no one vital part; he
can regenerate himself entirely if any living part of him is placed in the pool beneath the Dark Lens.
He knew you'd keep close wards on him, so he came to me"
"And you went to Rajaat. You made the Gray-storm when we left Yaramuke. You used it
to hide yourself while you raced here and back again. That's why he was waiting for us, why
Pennarin was consumed," Uyness, who'd cleansed Athas of orcs, concluded.
It could be a true explanation. One of them had warned Rajaatunless Rajaat's sorcery were
so much more subtle than theirs that he'd spied on them in Yaramuke without their knowledge.
Unless Uyness herself was their traitor: whenever one champion explained the behavior of another,
she, or he, became suspect in other eyes. Hamanu had gotten a dose of that himself a few moments
back. But if there'd ever been an enduring partnership among the champions, it was between Uyness
and Pennarin, and they all preferred to think that there was some limit to their creator's power.
Suspicion fixed on Wyan, who threw the real onus on Sacha Arala, who wasn't there to
defend himself. By Hamanu's reckoning, events didn't require Arala's treachery: Wyan could have
learned all he needed from the War-Bringer after he'd raced through the Gray to warn him. But
Hamanu kept his thoughts about traitors to himself, saying nothing when Borys returned with two
flawless obsidian spheres and the enthralled Curse of Kobolds.
Borys had another suspect: "Gallard!" he shouted loud enough to shake the white tower
where the Gnome-Bane prepared the imprisonment spell. "Gallard! Here! Now!"
Gallard grumbled and Gallard resisted. The air between the steeple chamber at the top of the
tower and Borys on the ground beside Rajaat rained sparks as they argued silently, mind against
mind. Then the air stilled and Gallard came outside. He swore he didn't know what Wyan was
talking about.
"But, if the coward's telling the truth, then that's all the more reason to get Rajaat locked
beneath the Black."
Borys disagreed. "Not in the tower or the pool. Not near the Dark Lens. Not if it's going to
regenerate him."
The Gnome-Bane said there was no such danger with the spell he intended to cast. Though
he'd use the Dark Lens to intensify his sorcery, Rajaat's body would stay where it was, well away
from the white tower's mysterious black-water pool.
"Stay here and watch," Gallard offered with rare generosity, "or come up to the steeple while
I cast the spell."

Borys and Dregoth agreed that half of them should be with Gallard in the tower, the other
half posted on the ground. Inenek produced six black beads, for those who'd stay with Rajaat, and
five white ones, for those who'd climb to the steeple. They drew beads in the order of their creation,
Arala and Wyan included, and hid them in their hands until Hamanu drew his. The Lion's bead was
black; all the others had bleached theirs.
"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 a manner of speaking, yes."

"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 championyet. 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 farethee-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
manan 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."

"Shall I get the realgar?" Hamanu headed toward the locked storeroom where he kept his
reagents.
"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 runif they'd gotten the chance.
Of far greater concern to Hamanu than the fates of two lesser champions was Gallard's eggshaped 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 about 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 dwarvesthe elves and the giants, toobut 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.
"Champions always lied," Windreaver countered flatly. "Then and now."
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 childor a dancermight 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 saidifthere's nothing you can do to save Urik. If he's lyingas he
usually doesthen 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's a fool." He saw her clearly in his mind's eye: tall, as half-elves were tall, doubly
exotic with sun sorcery shadowing her skin.
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 flawone 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 heartland. Kalak, Tyr's nowdead 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.

Tyr's smaller harvests weren't entirely the fault of Tyr's council. The Tyrians were shackled
to a dubious history.
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 mindnot enough to rouse anyone's
suspicionsthe 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 whereby the
bittersweet flavor of the airSadira 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 heartstopping 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."
Another denial, equally impotent. The hole in his arm was empty. Windreaver was real, and
Windreaver was gone. Hamanu's anguished rage began to suck the life out of everything around
him.
"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 wishif 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, youyou'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 alonevery
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 dragonbut 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 naturea 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.
"Tell that to his templars"
"Sacha Arala and Wyan were Kalak's championsfools and traitors, too. They gave Tyr's
templars their spells. They could have done the same for anyoneespecially 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 towerwith 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
championhis 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 tawnyskinned 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 trollthe silver shadow of a trollagain."
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 shadowfolk? Rajaat was looking for a way to steal from the sun when he made Umbra,
Khidar, and the other shadow-giants?"
"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 ladywhat 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 ladyas you saidput 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 Rajaator
Tithian, if you'd ratherquickening 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"
Without warning, Hamanu sundered Sadira's mind. Rajaat's last champion ransacked every
memory she clung to, every wish she'd made since childhood, all in search of their creator's shadow
in her thoughts. He was as fast as he was brutal; the assault was finished before she screamed.
Hamanu took her voice away.
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.
"I had to know," he explained. "I had to know what you're capable of."
Hamanu already knew what he was capable ofnot 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 andin the LionKing's eyesdestroyed 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.
Hamanu was an expert at the deceptive mind-bending art of suggestion and false memory.
He didn't make many mistakes; he removed them if he had. But his memory of Dorean resonated
through Sadira's mind faster than he could remove it. The image, fixed and frozen, had become an
inextricable part of the half-elf's experience. As a memory, it was no longer false.
"Who was she?"
There'd be no apologies or explanations, no pleas for understanding or compassion; such
notions had no place in Hamanu's life. "Call her Dorean. She was... would have been my wife." He
wrenched himself away from the memory they shared. It was difficult, but he was the Lion-King.
"And I have been a fool. Rajaat must not escape," he said as if Dorean weren't still bleeding in his
mind. "Last time we needed a dragon. This time"

"A dragon? Is that why you're here? You want me to help you replace Borys. You're no
different than Tithian"
"I'm very different than Tithian or Borys, dear lady. I want to preserve and protect my city
and yours. I wantI needto find a way to keep Rajaat in his prison that doesn't require meor
anyone elsereplacing the Dragon of Tyr. I needed to be certain that we agreed"
"We agree about nothing!" Sadira shouted, then she winced again. Another false memory.
Hamanu didn't skim the image from her mind. Whether she beheld Windreaver or another
horror from his own past, he saw that he'd blundered badly when he'd hammered his memories into
hers. He shouldn't have done it, and wouldn't have, if he hadn't strangled his rage after she cast her
spell. His rage would have killed her, if Windreaver hadn't wished otherwise.
And there wouldn't have been either rage or wish, if he and Windreaver hadn't outlasted their
enmity. He'd be in Urik now, conferring with his templars, trying to save his city.
"I have made a mistake. I took a friend's" He stopped short: friends, that was the greatest
mistake of all. Rajaat's champions weren't friends, not toward themselves or anyone, and they didn't
attract the friendship of others. "Your spells are failing, dear lady. Rajaat's essence is loose in the
world. He says that Nibenay and Gulg and Giustenal dance to his tune. He says they'll destroy the
world we know in three days' time. He lies, dear lady. The War-Bringer lies. I'll repair your spells,
or replace them. I'll set them right, as they must be set right. You needn't fear"
"Need not fear what?" she demanded. "You'll set my spells right? You can't make anything
right"
"Woman!" Hamanu shouted. "Curb your tongue, if you value your life!"
Sadira wasn't interested in his warnings. "I've seen how you set everything right for
Dorean!"
Hamanu didn't need mind-bending to sense the invective brewing on the back of her tongue.
Sadira had a champion's knack for cruelty. He'd given her the measure of his weakness, and she
would grind salt in the wound until it killed herand who knew how many others? Hamanu heard
gongs clanging everywhere and pounding footfalls racing closer. Between screams and shouts, half
the estate knew the sorceress was locked in a dangerous argument.
The human glamour faded from Hamanu's hand. Black talons absorbed the sunlight as he
raised them between himself and Sadira's face. A threatening gesture, for certainbut threat and
gesture only: he intended to slash an opening into the netherworld and leave this place before he
had even more to regret.
Sadira responded with a head-down lunge at his midsection. Regardless of illusion, the
Lion-King carried the weight and strength of his true, metamorphic self. Sadira's attack
accomplished nothingexcept to increase his anger and confusion. He backhanded her, mildly by a
champion's standards, but hard enough to fling her across the room. She hit the doorjamb headfirst,
loosening plaster from the walls and ceiling. Her head lolled forward.
Stunned, Hamanu told himself, as he strained his ears, listening for the sound of her heart.
Her heart skipped, and her breathing was shallow. A single stride, and he was on one knee beside
her. Illusion was restored as he pressed human fingertips against her neck. He found her pulse and
steadied it.
"Get away from her!"
With his concentration narrowed, Hamanu hadn't sensed anyone in the doorway until he
heard a young man's voice, which he ignored. He hadn't come to the Asticles estate to kill anyone;
he wasn't leaving until Sadira was on her feet and cursing him again.
"I said: Get away from her!"
Hamanu felt the air move as a fist was cocked. The blow struck his temple, doing no more
damage than Sadira's whole body lunge had done. He raised his head and saw a human-dwarf mul
in the doorway.
"I know you," he muttered.
The Lion-King wasn't good when it came to putting children together with their proper
identities, and the mul, cocking his fist for another try, was still several years short of maturity.

Children were changeable, both in their bodies and their thoughts, but there were only two muls
Hamanu associated with Sadira. One was Rikus, who was old enough to know better when he'd led
a cohort of Tyrian gladiators in a foolish assault against Urik over ten years ago. The other had been
a half-grown boy when he wielded the sun spell that had separated Rajaat's essence from the
substance of his shadow.
"Rkard," Hamanu said, flushing the name of Borys's ancient enemy out of his memory.
"Rkard, go away. There's nothing for you to do here."
The youth blinked and lowered his fist. Confusion wrinkled his handsome face. It seemed,
for a moment, that he'd simply do as he'd been told. But that moment passed, and he laid his hand
rudely on Hamanu's shoulder.
"Stand aside. I don't know who you are, or why you've come, but I'll take care of Sadira, and
if I find that you've harmed her...." The youth's eyes reddened as he evoked the bloody sun's power.
Hamanu lowered the sorceress gently to the floor. She, Rikus, and the rest of the Tyrian
hotheads had raised the young man staring intently at him. He had a fair idea what was going to
happen once Rkard recognized him.
"Rkard, don't do it."
The warning came too late. Three separate streams of fire, one orange, one gold, and the
third the same color as the sun, grew out of the young mul's sun-scarred hands. As Rkard cried out
sun magic exacted a fearsome price on its initiatesthe fire-streams braided together and bridged
the gap between them.
Hamanu cried out as well. The sun's power was real. His flesh burned within his illusion, but
it could burn for a long time before he'd be seriously injured. Hamanu could have brushed the sunspell aside but, almost certainly, it would have gone to ground in Sadira's defenseless flesh.
He tried to reason with the mul and got no further than his name, "Rkard"
Rkard howled again as he evoked greater power from his element. The braided flames
became brighter, hotter. Hamanu's illusion wavered in the heat; he ceased to resemble a human man.
He retreated toward the open window. The mul followed, a smilea foolish, ignorant smile
twisting his lips.
"Let it go, Rkard, before someone gets hurt."
The mul couldn't talk while he cast his sun-spell. He let his hands speak for him, clenching
his fists until the tricolored flame was a white-hot spear impaling a tawny-skinned human man
against a wall.
Hamanu closed his eyes. A thousand years evaporated in the heat. In his mind, he was a man
again, with his back to a mekillot rib as Myron Troll-Scorcher assailed him with the eyes of fire,
only now he could fight back. The sun behind him and the shadow at his feet were both his to
command. All he had to do was open his eyes and his tormentor would be ash.
Hamanu did open his eyes but, rather than quicken any of the myriad destructive sorceries
lurking in his memory, he thrust his hand into Rkard's incendiary sun-spell, then closed his fingers
around it. The white fire consumed his illusion. To keep his fist where it needed to remain, Hamanu
folded his spindly, metamorph's legs beneath him. He hunched his shoulders and crooked his neck.
All the while, the bloody sun's might was held captive in the Lion-King's fist.
Hamanu squeezed tighter. He transcended pain and found triumph where he least expected
it.
The spells of sorcery, the formulas of the magic that Rajaat had discovered, mastered, and
bequeathed to Athas before he decided to cleanse it, had to be quickened before they could be cast.
Something had to be sacrificed before sorcery kept its promise. The dilemma facing any sorcerer,
from the most self-righteous member of the Veiled Alliance to Rajaat's last champion, wasat its
simplestwhat to destroy?
Preservers strove to limit the sacrifice by extracting a few motes of life's essence from many
sources, destroying none of them; defilers didn't care. Those who could used obsidian to quicken
their spells with the essences of animals as well as plants. Champions could hoard the life essence
of the dead. A fewHamanu, Sadira, and Rajaat's shadow-minionsquickened spells by

transforming sunlight, the ultimate essence of all life, into shadow.

The Dark Lens intensified a spell after it was cast, but no sorcererincluding Hamanu and
Sadiracould use the Dark Lens as Rkard had used it against Rajaat: focusing the bloody sun's
light first inside the Lens, then letting it out again, letting it consume the War-Bringer's shadow. And
not even Rkard could duplicate that uncanny feat: Sadira had buried the Lens and Rajaat had almost
certainly found a better hiding place for his own life essence than his shadow.
But when he seized the white-hot stream and contained Rkard's sun-spell within his fist,
Hamanu found that the young mul was a living lens who concentrated the sun's quickening energy
before a spell was cast. With Rkard beside him, Hamanu could seal Rajaat's bones and the Dark
Lens in a cyst the size of a mountain. He could counter anything his fellow champions threw at
Urik, be it spells or armies of the living or the undead. And, for the first time in a thousand years,
Hamanu thought it might be possible to thwart a champion's metamorphosis.
Before any of that, Hamanu had to break free of Rkard's sun-spell, no simple task as the
youth had opened himself fully to the sun's might and was unwillingor, perhaps, unableto halt
the power flowing through him. Red-eyed and blazing, Rkard was slowly immolating himself.
Hamanu appealed to the mul with thought and words,
"The sun is stronger than both of us, Rkard. Together, we can forge spells that mill imprison
Rajaat forever, but only if you relent now. Persist, and the sun will destroy you long before it
destroys me. Save yourself, Rkard"
"Never! Betrayer! Deceiver! You die first, or we die together and forever."
Hamanu remembered himself on the dusty plain, a young man consumed by hate and
purpose. He opened his fist. The sun-spell engulfed his arm; the obscene bliss of the eyes of fire
threatened to overwhelm him. He remade his fist; the threat receded but didn't disappear.
Sunlight, Hamanu thought. Blocking the sun and casting his own shadow over Rkard might
break the spell. He straightened his legs, bursting the room's walls and ceiling.
Somewhere outside the white fire, a woman screamed.
Still catching the sun-spell in his fist, Hamanu edged sideways. Rkard collapsed when the
fringe of the champion's shadow touched him. The white fire darkened to pale yellow; tiny flames
danced on the youth's arms. While Hamanu hesitated, Rkard wrenched free of shadow. The sunspell whitened. The youth would not relentno more than Manu would have relented a thousand
years ago.
Hamanu's short-lived dreams crumbled: the chance of finding another young mul already
hardened to the bloody sun's merciless mightof finding one in timewas incalculably remote. He
prepared to take the larger step that would center his black shadow over Rkard and his spell.
The woman screamed again, this time the mul's name, "Rkard!"
A red-haired streak shot through Hamanu's shadow. It wrapped itself around the enthralled
youth and heaved him sideways. The spell broke free, a diminutive sun hovering an arm's length
above the mosaic. In a heartbeat, it had begun to strengthen. In another, Hamanu had thrown
himself on top of it. The ground shuddered. For an instant, Hamanu was freed from his black-boned
body. Then the instant was gone, and he was himself again, reforming the flawless illusion of a
tawny-skinned man.
Sadira cradled the mul's head and shoulders in her lap. He was exhausted, unable to speak or
move, but otherwise unmarked, unhurt. Hamanu's spirits soared.
"It could be done! We could do it. We could go to Ur Draxa and repair your ward-spells. We
could save Urik. Together nothing could stand against"
The sorceress's eyes narrowed. She wrapped her arms protectively over Rkard. "Stand with
you?" Her expression said the rest: I'll kill him myself before I let that happen.
Hamanu tried to explain what had happened when Rkard's sun-spell struck him. Sadira
listened; he perceived the spirals of her thoughts as she considered everything he said, but none of
her conclusions included helping a champion save his city.
"I took the sun-spell inside, into my heart and spirit. Your shadow-sorcery doesn't go that
deep," he warned. "You'd be consumed."

"So you say, but I don't believe you. Dragons lie, and you're a dragon. You'd deceive us and
betray us. While even one of your kind exists, Athas can never be free."
"Free," Hamanu muttered. He had a thousand arguments against such foolishness, and none
of them would sway her. Better to let her learn the hard way, though she wouldn't survive the
lesson, and there was no guarantee Rkard would cooperate afterward. "For Athas, then, and your
precious freedomgo carefully to Ur Draxa, look at what's happened to the lake where you sealed
Rajaat's bones beside the Dark Lens. Look, then come to Urik at dawn, three days from now. I'll be
waiting for you."

Chapter Fourteen
Enver stood in the map room doorway. "Omniscience, a messenger approaches."
"I know," Hamanu assured his steward.
The sharpest mortal ear could not pick out the sounds of sandals rapidly slapping the tiles of
the palace corridors as the messenger neared the end of her journey. Her journey continued because
Hamanu didn't rely on his immortal ears. He'd known about the message since it passed through
Javed's hands in Javed's encampment south of the market village ring.
"Good news or bad, Omniscience?"
Hamanu smiled fleetingly. "Good. Nibenay sent it with our messenger, alive and intact. I
believe he has accepted my terms. We'll know for certain in a moment, won't we?"
Enver nodded. "For certain, Omniscience. Our messenger alive, that's certainly good news."
The dwarf's tightly ordered mind accepted that the Shadow-King was also a living god, and
that gods, all other aspects being equal, weren't omniscient with regard to one another. His eyes
were wide with awe and dread when the dusty half-elf slapped to a halt beside him. She clutched
Gallard's black scroll-case tightly in both hands, as if it were a living thing that might try to escape
or attack her. Nibenay's nine-rayed star glowed faintly on the case's wax seal, which protruded
between her thumbs.
Knowing what she carried, although not the message it contained, she'd pushed herself to
her limit and beyond, as had every other relay-runner who'd touched it
"O Mighty One" she gasped, beginning to cramp from her exertions.
Enver steadied her. He put his own powerful short-fingered hand around hers, lest the scroll
case slip through her trembling fingers and shatter on the floor.
"Give it to me," Hamanu suggested, reaching across the sand-table where he'd recreated
Urik and its battle lines.
The half-elf doubled over the instant Enver took the case. The trembling was contagious; the
dwarf's fingers shook as he handed it to Hamanu.
"See to her needs, dear Enver," the Lion-King said, dismissing them and their mortal
curiosity with a nod of his head.
Ah, the predictable frailties of his mortal servants... the pair stopped as soon as they were
out of sight and wrung their hands together in desperate, silent prayers: Good news. Good news.
Whim of the Lion, let the news be good.
Hamanu slid his thumb under the scroll-case seal. The hardened wax popped free, and a tiny
red gem rolled onto the sand pile that stood for the village of Farl. Never one to believe in omens,
Hamanu fished it out of the sand and squeezed it.
Alone. When the sun is an hour above the eastern horizon, he heard the Shadow-King's
hollow, whispery voice between his own thoughts. The armies will begin their engagement. I will
cast the first spell, then Dregoth, then Inenek. Do what must be done, and the walk of Urik will be
standing at sundown. This I solemnly swear.
The Lion-King let the bright gem fall back on the sand. By itself, the gem was worth many
times its weight in gold. What was the worth of a champion's solemn oath? At least Gallard was no
longer spouting nonsense about spells to forestall the creation madness that had overtaken Borys.
Beyond that, Gallard's oath was worth what Hamanu's oath would have been in similar

circumstances: very, very little, no more than a single grain of sand.

Hamanu studied the sand-table in front of him. Gentle mounds and grooves imitated the
more detailed map of Urik's environs carved onto the map room's northern wall. Strips of silk
littered the sand: yellow, of course, for the city's forces, green for Gulg, red for Nibenay, black for
the largely undead army of Giustenal. The red, green, and black strips were where Rajaat promised
they'd be. If there was a battle tomorrow, it would be on a scale not seen since the Cleansing Wars.
If ere wasn't a battle, there'd be mortal sacrifice to equal the day Borys laid waste to Bodach.
Was there a third alternative?
Yellow silk fingers surrounded the sandpile that stood for the market village of Todek,
southwest of the city. They faced nothing, except a tied-up bundle of blue ribbons. Blue, for the
armies of Tyr. Blue, for the armyenemy or allythat hadn't arrived.
Hamanu's eyelids fell shut. He clutched his left forearm where, beneath illusion, an empty
place remained unfilled.
"Windreaver," the Lion whispered. "Windreaver. Are they coming, Windreaver?"
Not an army. An army wouldn't make a difference. But two peopleeven one person, one
young mul with the sun's bloody mark on his foreheadthat could make all the difference in the
world.
Windreaver couldn't answer. There'd be no answer.
As soon as he'd returned to Urik after his disastrous meeting with Sadira at the Asticles
estate outside of Tyr, Hamanu had sent a peace offering to the sorceress: a champion's apology, rarer
than iron, rarer than a gentle rain in this dragon-blasted world. He'd sent golden-crust himali bread
from his own ovens, because bread had been peace and life and all good things in the Kreegills, and
a hastily scribed copy of the history he'd written for Pavek, in the hope that she would understand
why he was what he was, and why losing Windreaver was a loss beyond measure.
He should have sent Pavek. Pavek had a true genius for charming his enemies. As a runaway
templar, he'd charmed the druids of Quraite. As both a runaway and a would-be druid, he'd charmed
the Lion-King himself. If anyone could have undone the hash that Hamanu had made of his Tyrian
visit, Pavek would have been the one.
But for Hamanu, sending Pavek out of Urik would have been sending away his lasthis
onlyhope. So he'd appealed to the Veiled Alliance of sorcerers in Urik, stunning them, of course,
with his knowledge of their leadership, their bolt holes, and all that his knowledge implied. For
Urik, he'd told the old rag-seller who was Urik's mistress of unlawful sorcery. And, reluctantly, she'd
sent an adept through the Gray with his gifts.
The adept had arrived. The gifts had been conveyed to the Asticles estate. Beyond that,
without Windreaver to be his eyes and ears in tight-warded places, Hamanu knew nothing, which
was, itself, an answer. The sorceress wasn't coming. Whether Rajaat plucked Sadira's strings in
subtle melodies, or she was simply a mortal woman as stubborn and single-minded as he'd been at
her age, was a dilemma the Lion-King would never resolve.
These last two days, he'd picked apart the memory of their abortive conversations as often as
he'd examined the deployments on the sand-table. He'd blamed Sadira mostly he'd blamed Sadira
for her failure to listen, but he'd blamed Rkard, too, and Rajaat, and Windreaver, for planting the
weed's seed in his mind in the first place. At one time or another, Hamanu had blamed everyone for
his blundering failure to win Sadira's help.
Recalling his own words, he'd blamed himself: his blindness, his prejudice, his
overwhelming need to answer hurt with hurt. In the end, with the blue silk ribbons still tied in a
compact bundle and Gallard's red gem in the sand beside Khelo, blame was unimportant.
"Mistakes," he told the absent Windreaver, "were made. I had choices, and I made the wrong
ones. Now, I pay the price of my own foolishness. What do you think, wherever you are, old friend,
old enemy? Will Pavek come to Urik's rescue with his druid guardian? Will the guardian vanquish
the dragon I become? Will that be enough? Is there a guardian who can stand against the first
sorcerer?"

He swept his arm across the table, leveling the mounds, burying the multicolored ribbons
beneath the sand.
"From the day he made me his champion, I have prepared for the day when I would face my
destiny. I had a thousand times a thousand plans, but I never planned for today."
Hamanu extinguished the map room lanterns with a thought. He left the room and found
Enver sitting on the floor outside the door.
"You heard?" Hamanu asked.
The dwarf's upturned face, pale and vacant, answered before his thoughts became coherent.
"Go home, dear Enver." Hamanu helped his steward to his feet. "Stay there tomorrow. You'll
know what to do."
Enver shook his head slowly from side to side. "No," he whispered. "No..."
Hamanu laid his hand atop the dwarf's bald head, as he might have done with a child. "It will
be better, dear Enver. I will not be able to protect or spare you, and whoever comes after me"
"Omniscience, there can be no after"
"Precisely. The potion I gave you will set you free."
The dwarf shook his head, ducking out from beneath Hamanu's hand. His focus, that
uniquely dwarven trait that guided a dwarf's life and determined his fate after death, was foremost
in the thoughts Hamanu gleaned. It was a face the Lion-King scarcely recognized, though it was
him, Hamanu, as Enver knew him.
"Your focus will be fulfilled, dear Enver. It is I who abandon you, not you who abandon
me." He put a guiding hand on his steward's shoulder and pointed him away from the map room.
"Go home now. It's time."
Enver took a few flat-footed steps, then turned, painted a new portrait in his mind's eye, and
turned away again. The swift painless poison Hamanu had provided for all his household was, in
truth, a regular precaution whenever he led his army to war. Rajaat's champions had learned how to
kill each other. The dwarf's determination not to use it was an almost-tangible cloak around his
shoulders as he walked down the corridor. Hamanu hoped he'd change his mind. The fate of anyone
who'd been close to the Lion-King wouldn't be pleasant once the Lion-King was gone.
Hamanu waited until the corridor ahead of him was silent. Then he followed Enver's
footsteps. From the map room, he went to the armory, from the armory slowly through every public
room. Except for the slave and servant quarters, which he avoided, the Lion-King's palace was
deserted. He'd sent away as many as he could, to Javed's camp or to their own families.
The sun had set some time ago. Slaves had set torches in the hundreds of wall sconces, as
they'd done every night for ages. Hamanu snuffed the torches out, one by one, with a thought or a
memory as he walked by. He came to the throne room with its monstrosity of a throne; he wasn't
sorry to leave that behind.
Above the throne hung the lion's head lantern, the eternal flame of Urik. Hamanu recalled
the day he'd hung it there and lit it. Immortal wasn't eternal. He'd known there'd come a day, a night,
when it was extinguishedbut not this night. He left it burning and felt its yellow eyes on his back
as he left the throne room and began his circuit of his private places, closing doors, saying goodbye, until he came to his cloister sanctum.
His vellum history was there, a leather scroll-case beside it. He'd written no further than
Windreaver's last battle. A thousand years went unrecounted; wars with all his neighbors, with
rebels, criminals, and blighted fools. Except for the dead, all his wars had been alike. If he had
written them, they'd all read: We fought; I won. Urik prospered. Urik endured.
There was nothing more to write. Hamanu rolled the vellum sheets together, tied them with a
silk cord, and slid them into the case that he slung over his shoulder. Bathed in moonlight, the
Kreegill murals painted on the walls were studies in charcoal and silver; they seemed too real to
consider touching. Pavek's tools stood where he'd left them, in an orderly row against the little
cottage. The novice druid had restored the scorched dirt. He'd planted grain in the ground he'd tilled
and tended. High as a man's forearm, it, too, was silver in the moonlight.
Hamanu plucked a sprig and held it to his nose. He remembered the smell.

When the cloister doors were bolted shut for the last time, from the inside, Hamanu made a
familiar slashing motion through the air. Netherworld mist enveloped him. He emerged beneath the
palace gate-tower, a slightly built, dark-haired human youth with a leather case slung over a narrow
shoulder.
The templar guards didn't notice him, nor did anyone else. Urik's streets were quiet, though
not as doom-laden as the palace. War had been a regular occurrence throughout the Lion-King's
reign. Even siege camps beyond the ring of market villages weren't unknownand weren't a source
of great concern for the ordinary Urikite. After all, as the magic-voiced orators reminded them at the
start of each watch: Urik has never lost a battle when the Lion-King leads her armies.
Outside the Lion-King's inner circle of confidants and advisors, the city's plight was not
widely known. Mortal minds, Hamanu had learned long ago, were ill-suited for lengthy
confrontations with despair. Let them carry their faith to the end, or to the Lion-King's fountain in
the city's center where, by moonlight and torchlight, a small crowd had gathered.
Long, slender eel-fish swam in the fountain's lower pools. They were bright streaks by day,
dark shadows by moonlight, and sharp-toothed at any time. When a Urikite made a wish, second
thoughts were ill-advised, and woe betide any light-fingered criminal who tried to skim the ceramic
bits from the bottom. Those coins belonged to the Lion-King, the living god who cherished them,
though he had no use for them. His eel-fish would eat just about anything, but their favorite snack
was a finger or a toe.
Hamanu stood quietly to one side, watching ordinary men, women, and children whisper a
prayer as they tossed their bits into the water. With his preternatural hearing, Hamanu heard what
only a god should hear. Mostly they prayed for their loved ones' safety: husbands, wives, parents,
and children. Half the city was camped outside the walls tonight, catching a few winks of sleep, if
they could, beside their weapons. The other half of the city fretted about their welfare. Some prayed
for themselves as well, which was neither cowardice or sin in the Lion-King's judgment. Some
prayed for Urik, which was, after all, their home. And one or twoto Hamanu's astonishment
prayed for their king
Let him lead us to victory. Make him invincible before our enemies. Return our king, safe, to
us
As if they knew Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, was not a god at all.
He was lost in listening when he felt a tug on the hem of the plain illusory shirt he wore.
"Want to make a wish?" a little boy asked.
The boy's thoughts were of a brother, a giant of a brother who'd been called up in the second
levy a quinth ago, and of his mother, a shrunken woman on the other side of the fountain. The
woman gave a shy, toothless smile when Hamanu looked at her.
"My brother's outside," the boy said. Neither he nor his mother had the least notion that
explanations were unnecessary. "You got a brother outside? A sister? Somebody?"
He had no brothers, not for a thousand years, but Hamanu had somebodyten thousand
somebodies in yellow and muftioutside the wall. "Yes."
"Bigger'n stronger than you, huh?"
He was Manu tonight, this last night in Urik; it had seemed appropriate. And Manu had been
an unimpressive youth, though not as spindly as the boy imagined, comparing Manu to his
mountain of a brother. If he'd been real, and not illusion, Manu could have slept outside the walls
tonight; the third levy would have taken him.
The boy tugged Hamanu's shirt again. "You scared?" And where the brother had been in the
boy's thoughts, there was fear, hurt and emptiness: all that a child could understand of war.
"Yes, a little." Manu knew better than to lie to children.
"Me, too," the boy admitted and held out a dirty, half-size ceramic bit. "We can wish
together?"
"What shall we wish for?"

The boy pressed a pudgy finger against his lips. Hamanu nodded quickly. He should have
known: wishes were secrets between the wish-maker and the Lion. They tossed their bits in
together: two tiny ripples in the moonlight. Not even a god could have said which was which.
"It's gonna be all right, isn't it?" the boy asked, looking up at him. "The Lion'll take care of
'em, won't he?"
"He'll try," Hamanu said.
He was spared from saying more when the boy's mother called, "Ranci!" and held out her
hand.
"Whim of the Lion," Hamanu said to the boy's shadow as he darted around the fountain.
"He'll try to save them all."
The Lion-King put his fountain behind him and wandered the streets of his city. Pools of
light spilled out of every tavern doorway where folk came together to either find courage or lose
fear at the bottom of a mug. Taverns didn't have anything to soothe a champion's nerves. Nothing he
could eat or drink would make this night shorter. Nothing he could imagine would make it easier.
Pavek's thoughts from a few long nights ago came back to him: Surely my king needs friends
about him tonight. Hamanu hadn't wanted friends that night, and wasn't entirely certain he wanted
them now. But he'd intended from the beginning to give his history to the druid-templar who was
he cocked his head and listened through the crowded melange of thoughts and voicesamong
friends.
Hamanu wandered back toward the palace, toward the templars' quarter with its crisscross
maze of identical red-and-yellow striped facades on identical streets. Throughout the ages, the
rivalries within Urik's templar bureaus had been as intense and deadly as the rivalries among
Rajaat's champions. Nothing Hamanu could have done would have put an end to rivalry, but by
keeping the bulk of his templars in yellow robes and all of them in identical dwellings in just one
quarter of the city, he'd done as much as one man could to lessen the damage rivalries caused.
The templars' quarter was busier than the rest of the city. Although the war bureau
commanded all of Urik's forces-including the lower and middle ranks of the civil bureau once the
city went on a war footingtheir families and households were exempt from the militia levies. A
good many of them, as well, had duties that kept them legitimately inside the walls this night. And,
since these were Hamanu's templars, there were some who should have been elsewhere but had
bribed, intimidated, and extorted themselves out of harm's way.
They hoped.
Within his slight-framed illusion, Hamanu remained Hamanu. His champion's ears listened
through the walls as he walked and yanked the most flagrant of his weedy templars as he passed
their dwellings. He filled their minds with morbid guilt and lethal nightmares; he savored their
anguish as they died. Then he calmed his vengeful heart and put his fist on the door of Pavek's
house.
He had to knock twice before he heard someone moving toward the door. Even then, he
wasn't certain the woman was coming to open it or was chasing a child who'd strayed into the
vestibule. With or without his preternatural senses, Pavek's house was one of the noisiest dwellings
in the templar quarter. Hamanu was about to attract Pavek's attention through his gold medallion
when, at last, he heard footsteps on the interior stairs, and the door swung open.
It was the woman he'd heard before, and she did have a damp and writhing child straddling
her hip. She wasn't a slavePavek didn't keep slavesand she wasn't one of the servants Hamanu
had hired to open the house before Pavek returned to Urik from Quraite. She wasn't a Quraite druid,
either; druidry left its mark on those who practiced it, as did any magical or Unseen art, and she
didn't bear it. Stirring her thoughts gently, Hamanu was surprised to discover she was simply a
woman who'd lost her man to the second levy and, reduced to scrounging for herself and her child,
had made the fateful mistake of offering herself to a certain scar-faced man.
By the look and sound of the dwelling, she was far from the only stray Pavek had brought
home.
"I wish to speak to the high templar, Pavek," Hamanu said.

He was prepared to stir her thoughts to obedience, but that was unnecessary. Strangers, it
seemed, came to this door all the time and, disguised as he was in Manu's homespun garments, the
woman assumed he was another stray like her.
"The lord-templar's in the atrium. I'll take you to him"
Hamanu raised his hand to stop her. There was more life in this place than he wished to have
around him tonight. "I have something for him. If you'll fetch him for me, I'll give it to him and be
gone."
She shrugged and hitched the toddler higher on her hip. "What's your name?"
He hesitated, then said, "Manu. Tell Lord Pavek that Manu is here to see him."
The name was common enough in this, Hamanu's city. She repeated it once and disappeared
up the steps into the living quarters. Hamanu shut the doora slave's job, but there were no slaves
hereand settled down to wait on a tradesman's bench.
In a few moments Pavek appeared at the top of the stairs. He was alone. His right hand was
tucked under his shirt hem and resting lightly on the hilt of a steel-bladed knife.
"It's a little late for caution, Pavek," Hamanu observed without raising his head. "Half the
city could walk through your unguarded door. Half the city already has."
"Manu?" Pavek descended a few steps. "Manu? Do I know you? Step into the light a
moment."
Hamanu obeyed. His illusion was, as always, perfect, and though Pavek could not hide his
novice druidry from one of Rajaat's champions, there was nothing at all magical about the aura the
illusory Manu projected. Indeed, there was nothing about Manu that Pavek should have recognized,
including the scroll case, which was plain leather, sturdy, but scuffed.
A child's spindle top shot out of the doorway behind Pavek, followed immediately by the
child who'd lost it. The top bounced down the stairs, coming to rest at Hamanu's feet. Pavek put a
hand out to stop the child, a scruffy little creature of indeterminate race and gender. He bent down
and whispered something in the child's ear. There was a hug and a high-pitched giggle, then the
child was gone, and Pavek was coming slowly down the stairs.
Some men were born to be fathers, and Pavek was one of them. It was a pity he'd sired no
children. A pity, that is, until Hamanu thought about tomorrow and the great number of fathers who
would be unable to protect their children.
Hamanu picked up the toy and handed it to Pavek as he reached the last step. Their eyes met
in the lantern light. Manu's eyes were brown, plain browneven Dorean, who'd loved every part of
Manu, said his eyes were ordinary, unremarkable. Hamanu's eyes, the eyes Rajaat had given him,
were obsidian pupils swimming in molten sulphur. When Hamanu crafted his illusions, he always
got the eyes correct, yet Pavek stared at his eyes and would not look away.
"Great One," he said at last, tryingand failingto kneel on the entrance steps of his own
home. "Great One."
Pavek lost his balance. Hamanu caught him as he fell forward, and held him until he was
steady on his feet again.
Somewhere a child screamed, as children would, and incited a commiserating chorus.
Hamanu plucked the top out of the air where it had hovered while the Lion-King assisted his
templar. He'd changed his mind about staying here. "Is there room in this house for one more?" he
asked, dropping the toy in Pavek's nerveless hands.
"It is yours, Great One. Everything I have"
"Manu," he said, grabbing Pavek's arm to keep him from kneeling.
Pavek nodded. "Your will, Great OneManu."
They went up the stairs together. The child who'd lost the toy was waiting inside the hall
along with two others, one definitely a dwarf, the other definitely a girl. They were soft-voiced and
polite until Pavek relinquished the top. Then they were off, shrieking like harpies.
"Are you collecting every castoff and stray in Urik?"

"They have nowhere else to go, Gr" Pavek caught himself. "I find one... but there's never
just one. There's a sister, or a friend, or someone." He gestured at the ceiling. "This place, it's so big.
How can I say no?"
"I can't have this, Pavek. You're giving the bureaus a bad name."
Pavek gave Hamanu the same worried look Enver had given him at least once a day. But
PavekWhim of the Lionknew when his humor was being tested.
"Not to worry, Manu. My neighbors think I'm fattening them up for market."
They laughed. It was invigorating to laugh in the face of doom. Manu, head-and-shoulders
shorter than Pavek, reached out and gave the bigger-seeming man a hearty, laughing thump between
the shoulder blades, which rocked him forward onto his toes. For a heartbeat, there was silence, and
a world of doubt in Pavek's thoughts. Then Pavek dropped an arm on Manu's shoulder and laughed
tentativelyagain.
A cold supper had been laid out in the moonlit atrium and a score of men and women
gathered together to enjoy it. Hamanu was mildly surprised to see Javed sitting beside his chalkskinned bride. The king of Urik might reasonably expect the Hero of Urik to lay his old bones on
the hard ground of the army encampment the night before a great battle. But Javed knew exactly
what they faced and how little difference his own presence on the battlefield would make tomorrow,
and Mahtra, his bride, was as comfortable in this dwelling as she was anywhere. She'd practically
lived here when it had belonged to Elabon Escrissar.
For that matter, Hamanu had visited House Escrissar many times and in many guises, but
never as himself, certainly never as Manu.
There was a glimmer of inquiry from Javed's mind when Pavek introduced Manu, a Gold
Street scribe left behind when his employer pulled up stakes and ran for a noble estate outside the
walls. Hamanu had no difficulty raising a mind-bender's facade to defeat the commandant's
curiosity. He had to scramble a bit, though, to keep up with the story that Pavek was cutting quickly
out of whole cloth.
Somewhere in Pavek's fundamentally honest breast beat the heart of a boy who'd grown up
in a templar orphanage, where deception was the mother of survival. If anyone in the atrium had
questioned their host's tale, Hamanu felt certain Pavek's answers would have been both entertaining
and achingly sincere. But no one was at all surprised that their high-templar host had scrounged up
another guest.
As for the other guests, beside Javed and Mahtra, there were the Quraite druids, all eight of
them, including the young half-elf Hamanu had met before. Beyond-the-walls druids weren't the
only guests in Pavek's house; there were Urikites, too, eating at his table, and not merely the strays
he'd swept off the streets: A cheery earth-cleric helped himself to a handful of dried berries while a
smattering of merchants and artisansmost of whom would not have nodded to each other on a
sunlit streettalked softly among themselves. That they spoke naively of an unattainable future
didn't diminish the remarkable nature of the gathering, especially in the red-striped home of a high
bureau templar.
Pavek was a remarkable man, sitting at the foot of his own tablewhen he sat. Somewhere
in the house there had to be servants, but Pavek was the one who poured wine for Manu and anyone
else who needed it. He was the one who brought fresh food from the sideboard and carried away the
empty bowls. A truly remarkable man, Hamanu decided as he sipped his wine and settled among the
cushions. Quite possibly remarkable enough to evoke a miracle.
Hamanu's spirit was as calm and optimistic as it had been since he'd left Tyr, which,
perversely, left him thinking not about where he was or with whom he was, but about Windreaver.
Having put himself in the midst of friends, the immortal champion found himself with nothing to
say, except to an ancient troll he'd never speak to again, no matter what happened tomorrow. He
hadn't helped himself, either, with his choice of illusion.
He'd made himself Manu as Manu had been in Deche. Smooth-chinned and slight, that
Manu appeared years younger than the rest of Pavek's atrium guests. He was a child among adults,
and they patronized him. Hamanu could have aged himself: Manu had been a hardened veteran by

the time Myron of Yoram snatched him away from the trolls in the sinking lands. Lean and scarred,
he could easily have been mistaken for a half-elf, if there'd been half-elves in those days and if he
hadn't been short-statured, even among humans.
But, then, being mistaken for a half-elf wouldn't necessarily make Manu more welcome or
more comfortable in this gathering. The only half-elfin the atrium was Ruari, the youngest of the
Quraite druids, who'd collapsed under the weight of his terror a few years ago when the Lion-King
had asked him his name. Surrounded by congenial folk on the opposite side of the table, Ruari
wasn't talking to any of them, nor they to him. All Ruari's attention went into his wine cup, which
had been filled too many times.
Among the numerous legends that attempted to explain how Athas came to be, there were
many tales of elves and humans. Half the tales maintained that elves were humanity's first cousins,
the oldest of the Rebirth races. The other half, predictably, maintained that elves were the last, the
youngest, the race that yearned in its heart to be human again. All the tales agreed, though, that
elves and humans found each other considerably more attractive than either race found their
inevitable half-breed offspring.
Frequently abandoned by their parents, half-elves were a dark and lonely lot. A casual stroll
through any slave market would uncover a disproportionately large number of half-elves, as would
a roll call of the templar ranks in any city. Hamanu had always found them fascinating, and in this
gathering of Pavek's friends, none was more fascinating than Ruari.
Ruari's aura was all defense, closed in on itself; it posed no challenge for a champion's idle
curiosity. There was nothing about Ruari's life that didn't yield itself to Hamanu's very gentle
Unseen urging. The young man had all the earmarks of a typical templar: a vulnerable heart, an
innate conviction that he'd never be treated fairly, a greater appreciation for vengeance than justice,
and a quick and cruel temper. There were scores just like him wearing yellow in this quarter and
scattered through the encampments outside the city walls. But Ruari had followed a different path.
His mother had been a free elf of the tribes and the open barrens, and when she abandoned her rapebegotten son, she'd dropped him in Telhami's arms instead of an Elven Market flesh-peddlar's.
Telhami had reshaped Ruari's destiny, channeling all his empathy into Athas until she'd
made a druid out of him.
She'd been ancient when she began her shaping work. Hamanu scarcely recognized his
beloved archdruid on the surface of Ruari's memory, but underneath, closer to the half-elf's heart,
Telhami hadn't changed at all. She might not have succeeded with one of her last novices if Pavek
hadn't come along to shake Ruari's world down to its foundations before building it back up again.
Pavek's efforts could go for naught, too, before this night was over. Ruari was so handsome,
so attractive, with his shades of copper hair, skin, and eyes; and Windreaver was an aching hole in
Hamanu's spirit that hadn't begun to heal: Hamanu hid his hand beneath a cushion. He made a
human fist and let an unborn dragon's talons dig into the heel of his palm.
He should have taken Manu outside the walls to Lord Ursos's estate, where catharsis
especially the catharsis of pain and fearwas an every-night ritual.
A sudden movement on Ruari's shoulder startled both the half-elf and the Lion-King. Halfelves had a special rapport with animals, which Ruari's druidry enhanced. The house critic
exhausted, no doubt, by children who thought it was a brightly colored toyhad taken refuge
behind the copper curtain of Ruari's hair. But Manu's presence had roused it from its slumber. Both
youths, Manu and Ruari, looked up from the slowly stretching lizard and met each other's eyes.
Look away quick, Hamanu advised, but druid-trained Ruari resisted Unseen suggestion.
Ruari's eyes narrowed, and he tried to stop the critic from climbing down his arm. Outrage,
jealousy, and envy erupted from the half-elf's spirit, piquing the attention of the other sensitives in
the atrium. Pavek, who alone knew how hot the fire Ruari played with truly burned, was frantic in
his determination to break the attractive spell between them.
Pavek might have succeeded. Critic minds didn't comprehend sorcerous illusion. The critic
saw what it saw and placed its feet accordingly. Once the lizard had ambled across the table and
begun its journey up Manu's arm, Hamanu had to pay more attention to the substance of his illusion

than to the half-elf glowering at him.

Then someonepossibly Javed, Hamanu quite didn't catch the voicesaid something about
the ways in which a veteran might fortify himself before a battle that might well be his last.
"I know what I'd do," Ruari interjected boldly. His narrow-eyed stare was still fastened on
Manu, whom he clearly considered younger and less experienced than himself. "I'd find myself a
woman and take her back to my room."
But Ruari didn't stop there. He went on, describing his wine-fueled fantasiesand they were
fantasies. Hamanu perceived that on the top of Ruari's thoughts: the boy had dallied, nothing more.
Pavek told his young friend to be quiet. By then it was too late.
Too late to visit Lord Ursos.
Too late for Ruari.
Though Pavek tried, putting himself squarely between them when the supper was, at last,
concluded and the guests were departing. Ruari was the last to find his feet. Lopsided and stumbling
from the wine, he aimed himself at an open door and headed off, alone, for his bed.
"He's hotheaded and harmless," Pavek insisted, and beneath his words the thought: If you
must consume someone, Great One, consume me.
That would have defeated Hamanu's hopes and intentions entirely. They were alone now,
except for the critic still balanced on Hamanu's shoulder. The lizard never flinched when Hamanu
remade his illusion, becoming the tawny-skinned, black-haired man Pavek knewor thought he
knewbest.
"You will come to the southern gate at dawn."
They stood face-to-face, Pavek a bit shorter now, but not falling to his knees.
"I know."
Hamanu unslung the scroll case. "For Urik." He placed his unnaturally warm hands over
Pavek's and molded them over the scuffed leather. "When I am gone, you will raise that guardian
spirit of yours."
"I will try, Great One."
"You will not try, Pavek. You will succeed. You will raise Urik's guardian. You will evoke
every power it possesses, and you will destroy me, Pavek. That is my command."
"I don't know."
Rajaat, the Dark Lens, the Gray, the Black, and a dragon, they were all just words to Pavek.
He tried to rank them in his mortal mind, but for him, there was no catastrophe greater than Urik
without its Lion-King.
"You'll know, Pavek. You'll know when you see what I become. Your conscience won't
trouble you."
"But Rajaat" the templar protested. "A dragon will protect Athas from Rajaat, isn't that
true? Isn't that what the dragonwhat Borys the Butcher of Gnomes did for two thousand years?"
Rajaat wasn't Pavek's worry. Rajaat would be Sadira's worry, and Rkard's. Rajaat would be
their punishment for doing nothing when they could have put an end to both Rajaat and dragons.
Hamanu wouldn't talk to Pavek about Rajaat.
"Borys was the Butcher of Dwarves," Hamanu corrected gently, after forcing the WarBringer out of his mind. "Gal-lard was the Gnome-Bane; he took the name of Nibenay after Borys
became the dragon, which was a thousand years ago, not two thousand."
"But" Pavek had been educated in the templar orphanage; he knew the official history of
his city.
"We lie, Pavek. We've all lied; all the champions. When the wars ended, Tyr measured its
years from one High Sun solstice to the next, a full three hundred and seventy-five days, but Draj
and Balic measured theirs by equinoxes. Their years were half as long. AlbeornAndropinis of
Balicdidn't want to be associated with the champion ElfSlayer. So we lied, we took history apart and put it back together again so mortals who
might remember the Cleansing Wars might never think that we had led them." Hamanu squeezed

Pavek's hands tighter around the scroll case, then let go. "This, and this alone, is the truth. Keep it
safe."
Pavek frowned. The gesture tugged his scar and caused a twinge of pain, which Hamanu
shared.
"You should let me fix this."
"More illusions? More taking history apart and putting it back different?" Pavek asked.
"You'd be a handsome man. Women would notice."
"It's not my face that keeps Kashi away," Pavek said honestly.
And Hamanu had to agree. He traced the ugly scar with a fingertip, but left it alone. "Goodbye, Pavek, Just-Plain Pavek. It's time for me to go."
Pavek started to nod, but his chin stayed down against his chest. "I will miss you, Great
One." His voice was thick. "If ever I have a son, I will name him Hamanu."
"Kashi won't stand for that," Hamanu said as he turned away.
He was halfway to the door when Pavek called him back.
"Telhami" the templar began. His face was raised; his eyes were glistening. He had to
begin again. "Telhami will be waiting for you."
Hamanu cocked an eyebrow, not trusting his own voice.
"When... if... you'll become part of the guardian after, Great One. That's what she says. And
she'll be waiting for you."
He hadn't thought about after; it gave him the strength to turn away and walk out the door.

Chapter Fifteen
Ruari had wedged himself into the corner where his narrow cot met the walls of his room,
the better to keep both cot and walls from swaying wildly. His eyelids were the heaviest part of his
body, but he didn't dare let them close. Without the moonlight patterns on the wall to tell him up
from down, he'd be overwhelmed with the sensation of falling backward, endlessly falling
backward until his gut began to heave in the other direction.
The half-elf knew this because it had already happened, not once, but twice. He'd shed his
reeking clothes outside the room and crawled the last distance to his cot on his hands and knees. His
mind wasn't working particularly well, but it seemed fairly certain that he'd never felt quite this
sick, this stupid, this drunk before. Given a choice between death right then or holding the walls up
and his gut down until dawn, Ruari would have chosen death without hesitation.
He could be forgiven, then, for thinking that the woman who appeared so suddenly in the
doorway was a ghost come to claim him for eternity.
"Preserve and protect," he muttered, the conclusion of a druid blessing the first few words of
which he'd forgotten.
Grinding his heels into the mattress, Ruari pushed himself backward, but his legs were weak
and the walls of Pavek's red-and-yellow house were made of brick, not woven reeds, like the walls
of his hut back in Quraite. Terror seized him when she reached the cot and laid a surprisingly warm
for death, anywayhand on his foot.
Terror was nothing Ruari's wine-drenched gut could handle at that moment. He made a
desperate sideways lunge. Death caught him before he hit the floor.
"You shouldn't drink so much," she chided him.
Death smoothed his dank hair behind his earswhich Ruari didn't appreciate. Ears were
supposed to match and his didn't. One of them was more tapering, more elven, than the other. He
tried to hide the defect; she caught his hand before he caught his hair.
"Relax," she suggested, raising his hand. "You'll feel better." She pressed her lips against his
knuckles.
Very warm lips.
Very warm and relaxing lips.

Ruari did feel better than he had a moment ago. His gut was calmer, and when she put herarms around him, the room no longer threatened to spin wildly, either sideways or backward. He
protested when she released him, but it was only to stand a moment while she undid the laces of her
shift. It fell in a dun-colored circle about her ankles, revealing soft curves that glowed in the
moonlight.
Ruari rose to his knees, balancing easily on the knotted rope mattress. No trace of his
drunken unsteadiness remained in his movements when he welcomed her.
"If you're not death," he whispered in her ear, "who are?"
"Shhh-sh," she replied, surrendering to his embrace.
Entwined around each other, they sank as one onto the bed linens.
Later, Ruari thought they were flying high above the city.
*****
Pavek didn't try to sleep, didn't bother going to bed. After the midnight watch bells rang,
when his household was at last asleep, he took a lamp and Hamanu's scroll case back to the atrium.
Sitting where Urik's king had sat in a youth's disguise, Pavek cleared a place on the littered table
and unrolled the vellum sheets.
He set aside the ones that he'd already read and started with the score or so of boldly scripted
sheets that his king said contained the truth. Pausing only to refill the lamp when its light began to
flicker, he read how Manu became a champion, how a champion cleansed Athas of trolls. The air
was cold and the eastern horizon was faintly brighter than the west when Pavek came to the last
words: the onus of genocide, rightfully, falls on me, on Hamanu. His heart was far colder.
Not long ago, on a night when he'd bandaged the Lion-King's hand, Hamanu had told him
that no mortal could imagine or judge him. As he rolled the vellum and stuffed it into the case,
Pavek tried to do both, and failed. He couldn't imagine the forces that had transformed the young
man who'd come to his house into the champion who stood and watched the last trolls march
silently to their deaths. More than that, he couldn't imagine how the manand despite the vellum,
Pavek thought of the Lion of Urik as a man, now, more than everhe knew had remained sane.
And without knowing that, without being absolutely certain that Hamanu was sane, as
mortals measured sanity, Pavek couldn't begin to judge his king, his master, and Whim of the
Lionhis friend. He could confidently judge Rajaat more evil than Hamanu, but that was no sound
footing for judging Hamanu.
Urik, Hamanu's pride, was a brutal city in a brutal world. No one knew its underside better
than the low-rank templar Pavek had been. Life in Quraite, the only other place Pavek had lived,
was certainly more pleasant, but did that make the tiny hamlet on the far side of the salt wastes an
inherently better place? Pavek had no difficulty judging Telhami a good woman, but Telhami could
be as cruel as the Lion-King when she chose to be, and she'd been Hamanu's beloved partner
somewhere in the past. Without hesitation, Telhami would welcome Hamanu to that shadow world
where the guardian's avatars dwelt.
The eastern sky was definitely brighter than the west when Pavek sealed the scroll case and
got to his feet. His gold medallion thumped against his breastbone. He drew it out and studied the
rampant lion engraved on its shiny face. While he wore a medallion, be it gold or cheap ceramic,
Pavek was a templar. A templar obeyed his king and left the judging to the guardian.
Lamp in hand, Pavek went from room to room, awakening the Quraite druids whom he'd
asked to join him on the south gate tower. Twice before, he'd awakened Urik's guardian spirit and
brought it from the depths of Athas to the surface where it had guided him and preserved him.
Hamanu believed the city's guardian could surmount one of Rajaat's dragons. After reading the
vellum sheets, Pavek was less certain than ever. He was a novice in druidry, with only his devotion
to his city andyeshis devotion to the Lion-King to sustain him. He'd try to justify Hamanu's
faith in him, but didn't want to be standing alone on the south gate tower when the Dragon of Urik
came calling.

Five of the six druids were awake when Pavek came looking for them. Ruari's cast-off,
reeking clothes were heaped outside his door. Considering how much the slight half-elf had drunk
the previous evening and how unaccustomed he was to wine's perils, Pavek expected to find his
troublesome young friend curled up on the floor, still too far gone to rouse. Instead, when he opened
the door, his lamp revealed an empty room.
The bed-linen was disheveled. The patterned lattice night-shutters weren't merely open, they
were gone. And there was a woman's shift on the floor beside Ruari's cot.
Clutching the neck of his shirt and the gold chain beneath it, Pavek shouted Ruari's name
and got no response. He levered himself over the high windowsill and peered down into a nightdark alley, two stories below.
Nothing. By then, the other druids had joined him. They searched the house frantically, as
aware of the brightening horizon as they were of the missing half-elf. A search of the alley produced
a pair of shattered night-shutters, nothing more. A search of all the inside rooms brought word that
there was a young woman missing, too.
"She got up in the middle of the night, my lord, put on her shift, and went to the door," a
somewhat younger girl explained to Pavek. "I asked her what was the matter, and she didn't answer.
She didn't seem to hear me at all. It were passing odd, my lord, but I didn't think no harm would
come of it. Whim of the Lion, my lord."
To no one's surprise, the girl identified the linen garment Pavek held in his hand as
belonging to the missing woman.
Whim of the Damned Lion, indeed. Pavek swore a string of templar oaths that widened the
eyes of Quraiters. But the whim of the Lion-King was the best, the only, explanation he could offer
his stunned guests, and even then, Pavek didn't tell them how or why the half-elf might have caught
the mighty king's eye.
"He's young. Impulsive and reckless," one of the other druids said. "He'll be here waiting for
us when we get back."
"And we'll never hear the end of it," another added.
Pavek raked his hair and stared at the sky. In his heart, he reminded himself that he was not
the one to judge Hamanu of Urik and that one life measured against Hamanu's crimes and
accomplishments was not terribly significant. It was merely that the life had belonged to a friend,
and he'd thought another friend might respect it.
A druid needed nothing to work his magic, no sorcerous reagents, no divine paraphernalia,
just his devotion to the unifying life-force of Athas and a belief in the righteousness of his
evocation. Pavek had the former as he hurried his companions through the gray-lit streets, but he'd
left the latter behind: a linen shift draped across a scuffed leather scroll-case.
Urik's situation had changed overnight, and not for the better. From the south gate tower,
Pavek saw the roofs and kitchen-smoke of four market villages, the velvet expanse of Urik's
farmland, and well beyond all that, three dusty, torch-lit smears where the armies of Nibenay, Gulg,
and Giustenal had reestablished themselves during the night. Urik's army had fallen back into a
thick black line between the farmland and the enemy.
"Orders," Javed said when Pavek stepped back from the tower balustrade. "Everybody's
been moving all night. Everybody's tired, and we're jammed up like fish in a barrel. Not enough
room to fight. Not for us or them. There's not going to be a battle."
The ebony-skinned elf stared straight at Pavek, expecting confirmation or denial.
"He told me to be here at dawn," was Pavek's answer, until he addedfoolishly"Ruari's
missing. Gone from his bed. A girl, too."
It was a foolish remark because there wasn't a full-elf anywhere who'd ever truly
sympathized with a half-elf. If the missing girl had been an elf, that might have gotten a rise out of
the Hero of Urik, but for Ruari the best Javed could manage was a sigh and an offhand gesture.
"He destroyed the trolls, every last one of them," the commandant said, as if that accounted
for Ruari's fate. "He knows that whether there's battle today or not, he's not walking away from this
battlefield. Not the way he walked onto it."

The Hero of Urik had performed some unpleasant duties during his forty-year tenure. Every
few years, he'd marched the slave levies into the barrens and kept watch over them until the Dragon
of Tyr showed up.
"We're meat, Pavek," said the Hero of Urik. "Less than meat. Just grease and ash. That's all
that was left when Borys was done with them. But I saw those shards, too." He shook his head. "We
die so the Lion can fight Rajaat. It's fair, I suppose, but I'd rather fight Rajaat myself."
Beyond the steel medallion he wore, Javed didn't have much faith in magic, whether it was
sorcery or druidry. But it was magic that drew them all to the balustrade when a sergeant shouted:
"There he is!"
The gates hadn't opened, and there were no outbuildings beyond the tower where Hamanu
could have hidden while he strapped on the glowing armor that had been his hallmark at the front of
Urik armies for thirteen ages. Yet, he was there, a solitary figure, shining in the light as the bloody
sun poked above the horizon, walking south to face his enemies' might.
Pavek wanted to believe. He wanted to feel his heart soar with admiration and awe for a true
champion. He even wanted the despair of knowing not even a champion could surmount the odds
the Lion-King faced. Instead, he felt nothing, a dull, sour nothing because, in taking Ruari, Hamanu
had proved he was no different than his enemies, and there was no hope for Athas.
Still, he couldn't turn away. He watched, transfixed, as the striding figure grew smaller and
smaller, until he couldn't see it at all.
"What next?" one of the Quraite druids asked. "Is it time to evoke the guardian?"
Pavek shook his head. He sat down with his back against the southern balustrade and buried
his face in his hands. The sun began its daily climb from the eastern horizon. The sky changed
color, and the first hints of the day's heat could be felt in the air. Pavek raised his head and studied
the light. At the rate Hamanu had been walking, he should have been nearing one of the villages. He
lowered his head again.
"Pavek!"
He looked up. The voice was so familiar. He thought it had come from his heart, not his ears
but the others with him had heard it, too, and were looking at the stairs.
"Pavek!"
Pavek was on his feet when Ruari cleared the last stain.
"Pavekyou'll never believe what happened"
The young man stumbled. Javed caught himwhich was a miracle of another sortand
kept him on his feet while a war-bureau sergeant shoved a bowl of water into his hands. Ruari
gulped and gagged and threw himself another step closer to Pavek. He'd run himself to the limit of
his endurance. His hair was dark with sweat and plastered against his neck and shoulders. His
clothes were dark, too; his sweat-stained shirt hung loosely from his heaving shoulders.
Pavek needed another moment to realize the shirt was silk, trimmed with gold, nothing
Ruari could have found in the red-and-yellow house in the templar quarter.
Then he seized Ruari's wrists and gave them a violent shake. "Where were you, Ru? I looked
all over. You weren't in your room."
"You'll never believe" Ruari repeated before his lungs demanded air.
"Try me."
They gave him more water and a stool to sit on.
"I was drunk, Pavek"
"I know."
"I was so drunk I thought she was Death when she came into my room. But she wasn't,
Pavek," Ruari gulped more water.
Pavek waited. He didn't really need to hear anything more. It was enough that Ruari had
survived whatever encounter he'd had with the Lion-King, because, surely, that was Hamanu's shirt
he was wearing. He wanted nothing more than to grab his friend and hold him tight, but Ruari had
gotten his breath and was talking again.
"She was so beautiful, standing there in the moonlight. I thoughtI thought it couldn't get

better, then we were flying, Pavek"

Pavek started to shake his head in disbelief, then curbed himself. Ruari hadn't been in his
room; Ruari had been with Hamanuwhatever else the half-elf had seen or thought or chose to
believeand he could very well have been flying. There had to be some explanation for the shirt.
"Then, I woke up in this huge bedon the palace roof. The palace roof! Do you believe it?"
Pavek nodded.
"Wind and fireI knew you'd be looking for me. I found some clothes and got out of there
as quick as I couldI knew you'd be angry, Pavek. I knew you would. But what does it mean?"
"Whim of the Lion," a druid and sergeant said together.
"What about the girl?" Pavek asked.
Ruari blushed; his already heat-flushed skin turned a shade darker than the bloody sun. "I
sent her back to your housein a shirt, Pavek. I found another shirt for her and sent her back to the
templar quarter."
There was laughter, from the women as well as the men. Ruari's face became dangerously
bright.
"What else was I supposed to do?" he demanded.
"Nothing, Ru," Pavek assured him. "You did the right thing." Then he welcomed his friend
back from the presumed-dead with a bone-snapping embrace. "What's her name?"
"I don't know, Pavek. But she's beautiful, and I think she loves me," Ruari whispered his
answers before they separated. "I think it's forever."
"I'm sure it is." Pavek held Ruari at arm's length; the young man was clearly besotted. But
that was hardly surprising. "I'm sure you'll be very happy together."
He saw them together in his mind's eyeRuari and a beautiful woman and children, also
beautiful; one of whom had yellow eyes. Pavek hadn't ever had a vision before; prophecy wasn't at
all common among druids... or templars. But he believed what he saw, and it lifted his heart. He
hugged Ruari again, then let him go, and walked by himself to the tower's southern balustrade
where, with his vision still strong in his mind, he stared at the empty road until he could see both of
them together.
A hand fell heavily on his shoulder: Javed, his face deep in a hard, unreadable expression.
"Manu?" the elven commandant asked.
"Yes."
Javed's hand left Pavek's shoulder. It made a fist that struck the black breastplate armor over
the commandant's heart: a lifetime of unquestioning obedience followed by an eyes-closed sigh.
"He was stronger than his nature. There's hope."
Pavek nodded. "Hope," he agreed.
But not for long. While both men watched, a second sun began to rise where the southern
road met the horizon. It was as bright as the eastern sun and the same bloody color.
"Whim of the lion," one of the sergeants swore; the rest of them had lost their voices.
The templars lost more a few moments later when every medalLion-wearing man and
woman collapsed. Pavek wrapped his arms around his head, lest his skull burst from the fire within.
He beat his forehead on the rough planks of the watchtower floor. That helped, countering pain with
pain. Someone stood behind him and broke his medallion's golden chain; that helped more.
But by then, it wasn't the physical pain that kept him on his knees with his face to the floor.
It was the certain knowledge that the Lion-King, the Unseen presence in his life since he'd turned
fifteen and received his first crude, ceramic medallion, had released him, had abandoned him, rather
than destroy him.
Slowly, Pavek straightened and sat back on his heels. Javed was in front of him; his lips
were bleeding where he'd bitten them. There were no words for what they felt as they steadied
themselves against the balustrade and stood up. They turned away from each other and looked
south, where the second sun had vanished behindor withina towering pillar of dust and light.
One of the lesser-ranked templars in the gate tower began a cheer. It died unfinished in her
throat. No mortal could celebrate what was happening in the south once the sounds of death and

sorcery reached the Urik walls.

The cloud-pillar grew until it could grow no higheras high and mighty as the towering
plumes that heralded an eruption of the Smoking Crown volcano to the northwest. Then, like those
sooty plumes, the pillar began to flatten and spread out at its top. Lightning arcs connected the outer
edge of the spreading cloud with the ground. The lightning danced wildly; it persisted longer than
the blue bolts of a Tyr-storm.
Pavek knewthey all knew, though none of them was a weather witchthat the bolts
sprang up from the ground, not down from the cloud.
The templars of Nibenay, Gulg, and Giustenal were not as fortunate as their Urikite peers.
Their kings had sacrificed them and the rest of the three enemy armies to the dragon taking shape
within the seething pillar.
Without warning, the cloud disintegrated before their awestruck eyes. A deep, rumbling roar
struck the tower a few heartbeats later. Like a mighty fista dragon's fistit drove each and every
one of them backward. The tower shuddered and swayed; strong men and women fell to their knees
and screamed in abject terror. Behind them, within Urik itself, roofs and walls collapsed, their lesser
tumult subsumed in the ongoing echo of the southern blast. An echo that seemed, to Pavek, to last
forever.
"We're next!" he shouted. He felt his words in his lungs and on his tongue, but his voice
never penetrated his deafened ears.
But one voice did: Behold! The Dragon of Urik!
And another voice, immediately after the first: Now, Pavek.
He crawled to the balustrade. The blast-weakened rail crumbled in his hand when he
clutched it. Pavek stood carefully, looked south. Everything was quiet beneath the light and heat of
a single sun. The cloud was goneas if it had never been. The three dark sprawls where the three
enemy armies had camped were gone, too. The places where they'd been were as pale and dazzling
as bleached bones in the morning light.
But the dark line of Urik's army still circled the still-green fields. They'd survived. They'd all
survived. Their king was, indeed, stronger than the nature Rajaat and the other champions had given
him.
Now, Pavek. Now, or never!
There was a black dot on the southern road, moving toward them. Far smaller than the
monstrous creature Pavek had seen within the cloud, he didn't, at first, comprehend the words
echoing in his thoughts. He didn't comprehend that they had not come from a frantic Quraite druid,
but from the moving dot, the dragon, racing toward Urik's walls.
All the druid magic Pavek had learned from Telhami followed the same pattern. He'd kneel,
place his palms in front of his knees, and cast the image of his spell deep into the ground, evoking
the guardian essence of Athas. If the casting and the image were right, and the guardian was well
disposed toward him, the magic would occur. Very simple, very tidy, and not at all the way Pavek
had roused Urik's specific guardian twice before.
There were no mnemonics or patterns in Pavek's mind when he evoked the city's essence,
just needburning, desperate need.
Surely need had never been greater than the moment when Pavek reached out of himself to
evoketo implore and beg forthe Urik guardian's aid. The other times, the guardian had been
pleased to save a handful of individuals. Surely, the guardian would be pleased now to save the
entire city.
Hamanu had thought so, and as he poured himself into the evocation, Pavek believed in
Hamanu and the guardian equally, together. The guardian was the life essence of the city and
Hamanuthe Hamanu that Pavek had known-had just died for it. No one could do more than the
LionKing had done, yet Pavek tried, pouring himself into the evocation until he was empty, until
they could see the dragon clearly: a scintillating black presence, as tall as the south gate tower and
coming closer, with nothingnothing at allrousing from the depths to stop him.

Wisps of netherworld mist rose from the dragon's lustrous hide. His shape shifted subtly as
he approached the tower. The changes were difficult for a mortal eye to perceive, but the eldest of
the Quraite druids had a notion:
"He's not finished, not fully realized."
Pavek remembered the vellum, remembered the passages about Borys and the hundred years
during which the unfinished dragon had ravaged the heartland before he regained his sanity.
"He's bigger than the Dragon of Tyr," Javed said to no one in particular; he was the only one
among them who could make the comparison. "Different, yet the same."
"The guardian, Pavek." That was Ruari. "Where's the guardian?"
"I couldn't evoke it," he answered, giving voice to defeat and despair. "They can't be in the
same place, Hamanu and the guardian."
A chorus of curses erupted, followed by moans of fear and despair, and a shout as one of the
druids chose to leap from the tower to her death rather than face the Dragon of Urik. The dragon
was a hundred paces awaya hundred of Pavek's paces, about eighty of Javed's, about ten of the
dragon's. They could see it quite clearly now, more clearly than anyone truly wished to see a
dragon.
Pavek, who'd seen Hamanu's true shape, saw the resemblance, though, in truth, the
resemblance wasn't great. The talons were the same, though much larger, and the dragon's eyes were
sulphur yellow. They were lidless eyes, now, covered with iridescent scales that shimmered in the
light. Their pupils were sword-shaped, sword-sized. They did not seem so much to be eyes looking
out as they seemed to be openings into a fathomless, dark space.
The longer Pavek looked at them, the less resemblance there seemed to be, until the dragon
tilted its massive head.
"He sees us," Javed said. "Hamanu knows we're here. Go away, O Mighty One! Urik isn't
your home any longer. Go fight Rajaat!"
The dragon cocked its head to the other side. Pavek was temptedthey were all tempted
to hope that something of Urik's Lion-King remained, resisting the madness that had claimed
Borys's sanity for a hundred years. Hope vanished when the dragon roared and a gout of steaming
grit battered the massive gate directly beneath them.
The dragon strode forward, its arms spread wide enough to seize a mekillot, ghastly liquid
dripping from its bared fangs. Pavek's heart froze beneath his ribs; he couldn't keep his eyes open.
The blasted, battered walls shuddered, and then there was lightbrilliant, golden light that blinded
him though his eyes were closed. There was a second dragon roar, and a third, with mortal screams
between them. The air reeked and steamed.
Pavek thought he was going to die with the others, but death didn't take him, and when he
opened his eyes he saw that everyone around him remained alive, as well. Those who'd screamed
had screamed from terror, not injury.
The dragon had fallen. It lay on its back, stunned, but bearing no apparent wounds. Briefly
so briefly, Pavek thought it was his imaginationthere seemed to be a man sprawled in the sun, a
familiar man with tawny skin and long, black hair, rather than a dragon. But it was definitely a
dragon that sprang to its feet and roared defiantly.
Urik's walls replied with another golden flash, and the dragon retreated.
"The Lion-Kings!" a templar shouted. "The eyes of the Lion-Kings."
The huge crystal eyes of the carved and painted portraits that marched along the city's walls
were the source of the golden light that flashed a third time to drive the dragon farther back.
"The guardian," Pavek corrected as he began to laugh and shout for joy.
His celebration was contagious, but short-lived. The dragon didn't give up, and though the
guardian lights drove it back every time it surged forward, the stalemate could not endure
indefinitely.
And wouldn't have to. Well before midday, there was another cloud pillar spilling over the
southern horizon. They speculated, exchanging the names of their enemies, until the cloud was large
enough, close enough, that they could see the blue lightning seething inside.

"Tyr-storm," was the general consensus, but Javed and Pavek knew better:
"Rajaat," they told each other.
"They'll fight; the Lion-King will win, the Dragon of Urik will win," Javed continued.
"Not here," Pavek countered. "They'll destroy the city."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he'll see it coming and go south to meet it. Far enough south to
save the city."
They made fools of themselves, then, while Rajaat's storm cloud drew closer, jumping up
and down, waving their arms, shouting, trying to get the dragon's attention. It was mad, or mindless;
it didn't understand, never looked over its shoulder to see another enemy coming up behind it.
If itif the Dragon of Urik perceived Rajaat as the enemy. If enough of Hamanu remained
within it, hating his creator. If it hadn't become Rajaat's final champion, destined to cleanse
humanity from everywhere in the heartland.
The guardian was enough against a mad, mindless dragon, but not against Rajaat's conscious
insanity. Pavek slipped down the tower stairs. He opened the postern doorits warding had been
dispelled when Hamanu released the medallionsand began walking toward the dragon.
"Rajaat," he shouted, though the words he held in his mind were the words Hamanu had
written and the images they conjured. "Rajaat is coming to destroy Urik."
The dragon surged forward, arms out, reaching for Pavek. The yellow Lion-King lights
drove it back.
Pavek tried again: "Urik, HamanuRajaat will destroy Urik!"
Another surge, another flash.
"The fields, Hamanu! He'll destroy the fields where the green grain grows!"
This time the dragon stopped. It cocked its head, as it had before, and swiveled its long neck
down to get a better look.
"Rajaat will destroy the fields, Hamanu. Winning's no good, if the grain won't grow."
A brimstone sigh washed over him. The dragon straightened and turned. It pointed its snout
at the approaching storm and along the horizon, swaying from east to west, wherePavek hoped
it saw the fields. At last the dragon roared and began walkingthen runningto the south.
*****
The blue storm raged above the black dragon and the dragon raged back. Neither fought
with conscious intent, but instinct was strong, as was hatredespecially in the dragon, which
moved constantly to the south, then to the southeast, as it fought. When they entered the Sea of Silt,
they raised enough dust to blot out the sun for the three days they needed to reach the island where
another dragon had built a city around a prison.
Rajaat, the War-Bringer, the first sorcererthe creator of the city-building dragon and the
relentless beast who'd brought the blue-lightning storm back to its sourcecast the most powerful
spells Athas had yet witnessed, in a futile attempt to resurrect the conscious mind of the black
dragon, the Dragon of Urik. If he could find Hamanu's thoughts, Rajaat could manipulate them,
even from his twin prisonsin the Hollow beneath the Black and at the bottom of the lava-filled
lake. If Rajaat could find Hamanu within the dragon, he knew he could influence the farmer's son,
deceive him, and regain control over his creation; his powers were, in every way, indisputably
greater.
If the War-Bringer had had more than a toehold in the substantial world, he could have
crushed the black dragon as he'd crushed Borys. But he had only Tithian and Tithian's storms, which
had already proved ineffective. And he lost Tithian, too, shortly after the black dragon entered Ur
Draxa, when Tithian's mortal enemies from Tyr planted themselves on the rim of the lava lake and
drove their erstwhile king back into the Dark Lens.
That cleared a path, which the dragon followed into the molten rock. It roared; it howled as
even its tough hide was seared away by the heat. For an instant, there was thought within the agony.

Rajaat's hope soared; he spun dense sorcery from the Hollow, promising to heal his wayward
champion's wounds and grant his wishes.
I wish for your bones, your heart, your shadow.
The dragon leapt out of the lava, trailing fire behind him. He arched his back and dived
beneath the molten surface. Beyond the reach of curse or care, he plunged to the bottom, where lava
became stone, where the remnants of Rajaat's substance had formed a crystal matrix around the
Dark Lens. Smashing the crystal, he gathered the shattered pieces in his arms. He left the Lens for
the mortals to destroy or control, as they wished; it was merely an artifact, neither inherently good
or evil. Then, with the last of his strength, he took himself into the stone heart of Athas.
*****
Athas claimed the black dragon. It stripped him of his hard-won treasures; swallowing the
War-Bringer's substance while it sealed the dragon himself in a tomb that shrank and squeezed.
Then, when there was nothing left of the dragon, Athas restored Hamanu's sanity, while leaving him
encased in stone. He was still immortal: he couldn't die, even without air, water, or food, with the
weight of the world pressed around him.
There was no end of Hamanu, no end to his memories as Athas pummeled him and polished
him, a living pebble moving slowly through the world's gut. He relived every moment of his life.
He suffered. He regretted. He endured the pain and torment of the choices he'd made; then the LionKing of Urik relived his life again.
And again until Athas was done with Hamanu and spat him out.
Hamanu was senseless when he fell from an unknown height. He landed hard on his
shoulder and rolled to his side, unable for a moment to perceive his surroundings or to comprehend
that he was living, not remembering.
Slowly, and with a fragility that had never been a part of his remembered life, Hamanu
rediscovered the muscles, sinew, and bones of his body. He found his feet, and then his hands,
which he used to steady himself as he stood. The world was smooth beneath his fingers, hard and
warm andfollowing a jolt of consciousness that nearly cost Hamanu his balanceutterly without
illusion. The flesh he felt was his own simple, vulnerable, forgotten flesh. Wherever he'd come,
Hamanu had left the Dragon of Urik behind. His whims had no power and the ache in his shoulder
where he'd landed couldn't be numbed with an idle thought.
Belatedly, Hamanu found his eyes and opened them; after so many stone-bound memories,
he'd forgotten sight, the world that was smooth, hard, and warm was also gently luminous, casting a
soft golden light onto a young man's hands, a young man's arms, legs, and torso. The surface lay a
hand's depth within the light. He moved his hands through the light, seeking but not finding the gap
through which he must have fallen.
"It took you long enough."
Sound startled Hamanu and he dropped into a brawler's crouch. The ease of his movements
startled him as well, but not as much as what his eyes revealed when he turned around: The glowing
chamber defied easy measurement. It could have been a hundred paces square or a thousand, yet at
its center, hovering higher than his head, Hamanu saw his own ostentatious, uncomfortable throne.
And sitting on the throne was a figure he remembered well, a half-man, half-lion figure that his
laborers had painted on his city walls, a black-maned figure with a naked golden sword at his side.
The Lion-King of Urik, who'd saved Hamanu when he was deeply disguised and blundered
too close to the Black.
The guardian of Urik.
For the first time in his lifeif he was aliveHamanu was speechless. He looked from the
Lion-King to his own hand, his own mortal hand returned to him through sorcery he couldn't
fathom and for reasons he dared not guess. Myriad questions filled his mind; answers followed, all
but one.
"Why could I never find you?"

The Lion-King descended from his throne. He seemed no taller than Hamanu, no stronger,
but Hamanu remembered illusion's power and was not deceived.
"I sought my city's guardian. You could have revealed yourself," the now-mortal man
complained. "For Urik, you could have revealed yourself."
"My spiritthe spirit of Urik that you engenderedwas there from the beginning. I
revealed myself a thousand times, ten thousand times. You were always looking in the wrong place,
Manu. You became a great kinga great manbut you cherished your past and it remained with
you, until you were ready to part with it."
Hamanu opened his mouth and closed it again. He was a proud man, but throughout his long
life he'd cherished nothing... nothing after Dorean. He hadn't died, so he'd lived from one day to the
next until Rajaat had made him a champion. As a champion, he'd won a terrible war and governed a
mighty city and become the Dragon of Urik. As a dragon, he'd entombed himself in stone beneath a
lava lake, and there recollected his entire life more times than he cared to count. He knew in the
depths of his being that he cherished nothing.
Yet the Lion-King, the guardian of Urik, had spoken the truth, and Hamanu couldn't argue
with the truth. Once again he studied his own mortal hand.
"How long?" he asked.
"A thousand years in the stone," the guardian replied. "A thousand years to understand
yourself."
"A thousand years to scrape off Rajaat's curse," Hamanu countered. "A thousand years to
return to the beginning, to Urik. Does my city endure?"
"Your city! Have you learned nothing, Manu? Will you go back into the stone for another
thousand years?"
"A thousand years or ten thousand. What difference would it make? Regret won't change my
memories; punishment won't, either. What I did cannot be undone. Leave me in the stone beside
Windreaver until the sun and the wind scour our cursed bonesbut answer my question: Does my
city, endure?"
The guardian threw back his lion's head and laughed. "My city, Manu, my city! It was never
yours. No mannot even a cursed and immortal championcan possess a city."
Hamanu was mortal again, with no more power than he'd had long ago when he'd faced
Myron Troll-Scorcher on the dusty plain. He faced the guardian as he'd faced the Troll-Scorcher,
armed with only his quick intelligence and stubbornness.
"My city, because I gave it its shape. I gave it its strength to stand against what Athas had
become, against what Rajaat had done through me and the others. My city, because without me
you'd be the guardian spirit of an underground lake. I gave you my shape, my strength. You are me
and Urik is my city."
The guardian ceased laughing. He bared the Lion-King's fangs. His sulphur eyes seethed,
then quieted. "You talk too much, Manu. That mouth of yours will get you killed... eventually. Our
city, Manu. Our city endures. Look into the light, and see what Urik has become."
A curtain of light appeared between them. For a moment, it was a tapestry of Urik, of what
Urik had become in the thousand years since Hamanu's dragon had departed. Then the curtain grew
brighter and the images faded.
"Pass through, Manu," the guardian commanded. "There is nothing more for you to do in
this world. Your destiny was fulfilled: Urik survives. Urik will survive."
He was free. After a thousand years of life and a thousand years in the stone, Hamanu had
come to the end of his path. He was free to walk into the light.
There was music: a reed pipe melody. There was a woman to welcome him.
And, further on, they found a waterfall.