The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King

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. Family—Mother and Father, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. Community—Deche 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.

"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 arm—his arm—little 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 eaten—haven'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 remembering—reliving—of 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 civil-bureau 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 mind—that 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dwarf executor bowed low. "I thought—"

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

"Yes, Omniscience."

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

"Thank you, dear Enver."

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

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

The dwarf halted in his tracks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamanu had to find out what the War-Bringer had accomplished in that time.

The first part of Hamanu's plan was simple, in concept, if not execution: a careful approach to the throbbing Black, along a line oblique enough to give him a glimpse of the Hollow while, at the same time, leaving him with enough speed and energy to escape its lethal attraction. The spell he'd cast moments ago in his workroom gave him a good chance for success. If he'd truly been Pavek, in the flesh or spirit, he might have evoked the Lion-King's name. But Hamanu didn't believe in his own power over fate and fortune:

A shadow sprouted around Hamanu, a Pavek-shaped shadow reaching through the Gray toward the Black where all shadows were born or died. Flecks of brilliant white, paradoxical and inexplicable, appeared in the Black, migrating, as Hamanu's shadow lengthened, to the point where the shadow and the Black would meet. Hamanu struggled not to follow his shadow.

The normal silence of the Gray became deafening. Flares of dark ether appeared without warning and wound a tightening spiral around Hamanu's attenuated shadow. Another moment—as Hamanu's mind measured time in the netherworld—and he'd have pressed his luck too hard. He'd have to break away, if he could, without his precious glimpse of the Hollow.

There was no air in the Gray. A netherworld traveler didn't breathe, yet Hamanu held his breath, and his shadow shrank. He risked everything to get a little lower, a little closer, and got his heart's desire: a glimpse of a Hollow without substance or shadow, light or dark. The Hollow was nothing at all—except the War-Bringer's essence.

Because Hamanu's own spells, his own substance and essence, had helped to forge the Hollow thirteen ages ago, he knew it was not empty. He knew as well—and with no small horror—that it was riddled with cracks through which shadow, if not substance, could seep.

Without thought for the consequences, Hamanu cursed his complacency. Five years ago, he'd trusted Sadira because it was convenient, because they'd declared a truce on the shores of Ur Draxa's lava lake, because he'd trusted that her hatred of him and the champions would be enough to insure her vigilance.

He'd been a fool then, and was twice a fool now: his thoughtless curse had broken his concentration.

His shadow expanded violently, touching both the Black and the dark, spiraling flares. Arms and legs extended like a cartwheel's spokes, he tumbled wildly, gathering shadow with every turn. In panic, he clawed for the amulet case and the beads it contained. Shadow engulfed his hand.

He had a moment to contemplate his folly. Then a vaguely human-shaped figure manifested itself between him and the Black.

Rajaat, Hamanu thought and, anticipating a fate truly worse than death, got a firm hold on his courage and dignity. Though the figure grew larger, its silhouette did not devolve into Rajaat's asymmetric deformities, and its aura was neither menacing nor vengeful. It simply broke the flow between the Black and Hamanu's shadow.

Once again, Hamanu prepared himself for death.

Not yet, the still-distant figure roared above the deafening silence.

Its outstretched right arm crossed its body and extended a finger toward a point beyond its left foot. Hamanu looked in the indicated direction and began tumbling again. This time, however, an attractive presence other than the Black, held him in its grip. Like any dying man, mortal or immortal, Hamanu grasped any opportunity, however unproven, to escape certain oblivion.

With bold and practiced strokes, Hamanu swam with this new current. Glancing over his shoulder as he passed beneath his savior's foot, he glimpsed the Lion-King of Urik bestriding the Black. Hamanu had no time to ponder the extraordinary sight. He was moving fast through the Gray, and a sense of boundary had already sprung up in his mind.

Hamanu ripped out of the netherworld while he was some distance above the ground. The choice was deliberate: he didn't know where he was, and while a fall wouldn't hurt him, an emergence that left him half in and half out of any solid object would be fatal, even for an immortal champion. Tucking his head and shoulder as he hit the ground, Hamanu rolled several times before he got his feet under him.

A true adept of mind-bending or magic could always establish his place in the world. Though the hot daytime air around him was saturated with water and, therefore, more opaque than the netherworld, Hamanu felt the push and pull of Athas beneath his feet, and knew for certain that he was within the ruins of Borys's city, Ur Draxa.

A thick mat of squishy plants had cushioned his fall, a mat that covered every surface, including the walls, where the walls were still standing. Stagnant water seeped through the illusory soles of Hamanu's illusory sandals. He gave himself sturdier footwear and wrestled with garments that were already damp and clinging to his skin.

Ahead, Hamanu heard the rumble of thunder, the ear-popping crack of lightning. He was puzzled for a moment; then he understood: five years after Tithian had been trapped inside the Dark Lens, his rage continued unabated. The would-be Tyrant of Tyr was responsible for the violent Tyr-storms throughout the heartland. Here in Ur Draxa, he was responsible for the unrelenting, stifling fog. He'd forged an environment like nothing Hamanu had encountered elsewhere on Athas.

Taking a step in the direction where his inner senses told him he'd find the lava lake, Hamanu's foot sank to midcalf depth before striking a buried cobblestone path. The squishy mat belched, and twin scents of rot and decay filled his nose. Initially, Hamanu the Lion-King was repelled by the stench. After a moment's reflection, Manu the Fanner recognized that the streets of Ur Draxa were more fertile I than Urik's best fields.

He slogged the next little distance plotting the ways and means to bring the riches home.

Hamanu wasn't the only one stumbling through to Ur Draxa's treasure. His inhumanly sharp ears picked up other feet sinking in the bog. He didn't fear discovery; the fog hid him better than any spell. A talkative pair slogged past, so close and diffident, he could have stolen their belt-pouches. By their accents, they were Ur Draxans struggling to adapt to a diet of slugs, snails, and dankweed.

How the mighty had fallen! While Borys ruled the city that he'd founded nine hundred years ago, the Ur Draxans were the fiercest warriors beneath the bloody sun. Now they were bog farmers, and Hamanu dismissed them as no threat to the veterans he'd send to harvest Tithian's sludge.

On the other hand, Manu had been raised by farmers who went to war against nature each time they planted their seeds in the unforgiving ground. He knew that farmers weren't meek in defense of their land. The battles would be different here, but folk who fought them would be as tenacious as any farmer, anywhere.

As tenacious as he himself had been, returning to the Kreegills after the trolls were gone.

He'd discharged his veterans, giving each of them a year's wages and a lecture on the virtues of going home. He told them to rebuild what the war had destroyed and to forget what they'd seen, what they'd done in his service. His mistake—if it was a mistake and not another sleight of destiny's hand—was telling them about the home he wanted to rebuild for himself in the Kreegills.

A man could spend a lifetime bringing the valley back to what he remembered—an immortal lifetime. Hamanu tried, though he was hindered from the start by the best efforts of his companions, who didn't know the first thing about growing grain, or living in the same place, day-in, day-out, season after changeless season.

The ones who couldn't take the boredom packed up and left. Hamanu had thought he was well rid of them. He went back to teaching the land-wisdom he'd learned from his father and grandfather to the veterans who remained. But the veterans who returned to the lowlands—and those who'd never left—couldn't live without war. 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't—then or ever—bear the blame for another man's crime.

In a cold fury, Hamanu had left the Kreegills for the second time. With his loyal veterans behind him, he tracked down those who betrayed both him and humanity. He killed the boldest—and found he had as much a taste for human suffering as he'd once had a taste for trolls. He could have killed every medalLion-bearing brigand and every low-life scum who'd fallen in with them. But killing his own kind— those who'd been his kind when he was a mortal man—sickened Hamanu even as it sated him.

His metamorphosis advanced. He grew too massive for any kank to carry and, therefore, walked everywhere in the half-man, half-lion guise he'd adopted before his final battle with Windreaver. His followers didn't mind; for years, they hadn't believed he was a man like them. They thought they served a living god.

A living god, Hamanu thought as he went down to his knees in the reeking sludge, would pay better attention to where he put his feet!

The Lion's reputation spread far beyond the Kreegill Mountains. Human refugees from deep in the heartland, where other champions had fought other cleansing wars, came to him with complaints of brigands and warlords who'd never fought a troll or worn his ceramic medallion. At first, he refused to help, but there were more refugees than the Kreegill plains could support. So, he walked westward, chasing rumors and warlords across the Yaramuke barrens until he came to a pair of sleepy towns named Urik and Codesh, where rival warlords fought for control of the trade-road between Tyr and Giustenal.

A delegation from Urik met Hamanu while he and his followers were still a good day's journey from the paired towns. There were nobles and farmers among the Urikites, freemen and -women from every walk of life—even a few individuals whose odd-featured appearance bespoke a mixture of human and elven blood, the first half-breeds Hamanu had ever seen.

Prejudice older than his champion's curse reared up within Hamanu. He thought he knew what he'd do before a single word was spoken; raze Urik for its impurity and let that town's fate bring Codesh into line. But he went through the motions of listening—a god, he thought, should appear, at least, to listen. His arm—the arm where he'd secreted the pebble that held Windreaver's silent spirit— ached the entire time he listened to the Urikite's carefully reasoned plea not only for his help in ridding their town of the warlord, but a proposal that he make Urik his home forever.

"Tyr and Giustenal are cities," Hamanu had countered, ignoring the rest. They tempted him, these proud, pragmatic people who thought nothing of the differences between the work men did—indeed between the very races of men—and everything of their common safety. "What can Urik offer me, that I should become its god?"

They told him how Urik occupied the high ground. It dominated the surrounding land and was easily defended because it had access to an inexhaustible water supply that could sustain a population many times the town's then-current size.

Resting a moment beside a moss-covered statue of a dragon, Hamanu recalled the earnest Urikite faces. What they hadn't told him that day was that their rival, Codesh, tapped the same vast underground lake and that Codesh kept a stranglehold on the only route wide enough for a two-wheeled cart between their natural citadel and the Giustenal-Tyr trade road. Hamanu had gleaned those tidbits from their stray thoughts.

In the few short years since he'd stopped waging war on the trolls, Rajaat's last champion had become expert at gleaning thoughts from other humans' consciences. He'd been quite surprised, and very pleased, to discover that elven blood didn't hinder his gleaning ability at all.

Still, he'd accepted the Urikite proposal, at least as far as cleaning out their warlord's nest before he dealt with Codesh. That was easier promised than accomplished. The warlords knew the Lion's reputation, and made common cause against him from Codesh, sending a united plea to the court of the Tyrian Tyrant, Kalak.

Kalak was no champion, not then, not ever. He'd never stood in the Crystal Steeple atop Rajaat's white tower. He was a powerful, unscrupulous sorcerer who ravaged the land, sucking life for his spells, leaving it sterile for a generation afterward. For the first time since he'd become a champion, Hamanu found himself in an even fight.

After that, there was no going back to the Kreegills. By the time Kalak's dust headed back to Tyr, it no longer mattered whether the Urikites had invited him to rule their town. What the Lion fought for, the Lion kept. Knowing that he could glean their least thoughts, Hamanu had offered medallions to those who'd serve him—veterans, brigands, and Urikites, alike. There'd be no betrayals in his Urik; there'd be peace—his peace—and prosperity.

Hamanu had found his home. He crowned himself king. The sterile, ashen fields that Kalak had defiled were scraped and cleared. Fresh, fertile soil was carted in from the distant Kreegills. The farmer's son never farmed the land again." Ruling Urik satisfied his farmer's urges.

There was no room for sentiment in a farmer's heart, or in a king's. Urik was like a field; it needed clearing, fertilizing, plowing—and a time to lie fallow, a balance of laws and taxes and judicious neglect—to be truly productive. The Urikites were like flocks. They needed to be fed, sheltered, and above all else, culled, lest undesirable traits become entrenched. He circulated his minions among them, watching his fields with his own eyes, culling his flock with his own hands. Like both fields and flocks, Urik and its citizens had to be protected against predators who appeared in the heartland as more of Rajaat's champions emerged victorious from the Cleansing Wars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A revelation came to Hamanu, a revelation so simple and yet so fraught with implications that he rocked back on his heel: Sadira's power came from shadow. By day, she was the champions' 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 thoroughly—by night.

The living god of Urik changed his opinion of himself.

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

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

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

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

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

"Hamanu. Lion of Urik."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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