The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King

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 one—not even the immortal Lion-King—could 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 farmers—nobles, free-peasants, and slaves alike—made 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 sack—the grain that the Lion-King had received first and sowed last—was 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...

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 feet—or 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 Troll-Scorcher'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 Troll-Scorcher 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.

Oh, he was an imposing figure—our 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 do—to 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 bands—and Bult was nothing if not loyal to his pay—hunted 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 four—as 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 trolls—following 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.

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 killed—the troll who would have killed me, I made no mistake there—had 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 desecration—not 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

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 young—that 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 there—you 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—knowledge—alone, 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.

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 muster—nowhere 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 mighty-bright 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 happened—but, 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 netherworld—I know he had the power, what he lacked was will and wit—and 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 victory—he wants his eyes of fire to burn slow from now until eternity!"