The Brazen Gambit (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 1)

Escrissar scrabbled across the ground, a scavenger surprised by a true predator. "I have found the source of Laq," he babbled, as if any mortal could lie successfully to a sorcerer-king.

"Ambition has blighted your imagination, my pet. You bore me."

Hamanu's voice was as weary as his clawed hand was swift. He seized Escrissar by the neck and, lifting him off the ground, began to squeeze. The interrogator struggled wildly, then hung limp, but the king was not finished. By the light of the Lion-King's golden eyes, Pavek watched in nauseous horror as Hamanu's fist squeezed ever tighter. The bones in Escrissar's neck snapped and crumbled; gore flowed from his lifeless mouth and nostrils.

And still Hamanu was not finished with his former favorite. He cast a spell the color of his eyes that wrapped itself around the interrogator's corpse and, layer by layer, from black robes to white bones, consumed it.

When there was nothing left, the yellow eyes found Pavek on his knees again and trying heroically not to be sick.

"I have need of a High Templar. Follow me."

The king headed for the village.

Pavek found his feet, somehow, and followed.

Chapter Seventeen

Fires had been lit in the hearths within the village's inner rampart. A bright, crackling fire made any night seem safer -except when the flickering light reflected on Hamanu of Urik as he strode through the trees. Pavek, hard pressed to stay within ten human paces of the sorcerer-king, had neither the time nor the energy to call out a warning. Besides, nothing prepared anyone for the Lion: breathtakingly handsome in his golden armor, radiant with arcane power, cruel and terrible beyond mortal measure. After a day of loss and triumph, a handful of Quraiters simply swooned at the sight. The rest wisely dropped to their knees.

"Where is she?" Hamanu asked. "Where is Telhami?"

Not Who r

ules here? or some question of that sort, which Pavek had expected, but Where is Telhami? because, inexplicably, the Lion already knew who ruled Quraite. If he lived another day, Pavek promised himself he'd think through all the implications of this discovery, but for the moment-because those sulphur eyes were focused on him-he answered plainly:

"In there." And pointed to Telhami's hut.

Hamanu's head rose above the roof-beam. His shoulders were wider than the doorway. Pavek held his breath, waiting for the king to call Telhami by name, fearing what he would do if she could not answer. But Hamanu solved his problems on his terms. He pierced the hut's reed walls with his claws, seized the support poles and lifted the entire structure over his head before tossing it over the inner and middle rampart. His size was no longer a problem.

Akashia and Ruari were held motionless in panic, both looking up, slack-jawed, from the length of linen cloth they'd wrapped around Telhami's corpse. Hamanu motioned them aside with a small gesture from bis huge, clawed hand, and they hastened to obey. Telhami lay in repose on her sleeping platform, arms folded over her breast, thin gray hair spread across a linen pillow. Remembering what the king had done with Escrissar, Pavek dreaded what he might do with her.

Then the rightly feared ruler of Urik sank to one knee. While Pavek watched with the others, clawed fingers curled around Telhami's cheek so gently that her translucent parchment skin was not creased.

"Telhami?"

Pavek had thought she was dead, but she opened her eyes and, after a moment, smiled. It seemed that not only did King Hamanu know Telhami, she knew him, and not as an adversary.

"So-" the king began, "this is Quraite."

Telhami's smile deepened with evident pride, but she said nothing. Perhaps she couldn't speak, or move. Her hands seemed waxen in the light.

"It has seen better days, I think. Don't you?"

There was a moment's pause, then Hamanu laughed, an incandescent sound that echoed lightly from the trees.

"But I was invited!"

The king extended his hand toward Pavek, who reluctantly came closer. When he was in range, Hamanu ran a clawed finger down Pavek's neck, hard enough that he could feel its strength and sharpness, but not-he thought-hard enough to break the skin. That, he was certain, would come later, after the king had toyed with him and tired of his fear.

"I never grow tired of fear, Pavek," King Hamanu assured him with a grin that revealed glistening fangs. "Never." Then he hooked the inix leather thong of Pavek's templar medallion, which the king withdrew into the firelight. "A regulator of the civil bureau." A claw gouged through the marks that indicated Pavek's rank, effectively eliminating him from that rank and that bureau. Hamanu let the defaced, but intact, medallion thump against Pavek's breast-bone, in effect proclaiming that he was a templar without a formal rank: a High Templar, if he ever chose to claim that distinction. "The best always slip away, Pavek. Remember that."

And for a moment Hamanu seemed-he could not possibly be-less a leonine sorcerer-king with sulphur eyes and more a man, an ordinary man with clear brown eyes and a face a woman-Telhami-might find attractive.

Then King Hamanu turned back to the sleeping platform.

"Come back with me, Telhami. It's not too late. Athas has changed. Borys is gone; the stalemate is broken. Nothing is as it was, Telhami. For the first time in a millennium, I do not know what will happen after I wake up. Come back to Urik-"

He fell silent and remained that way until Telhami closed her eyes. Then he stood up with a sigh of disappointment and age creaking in his bones. "Hold them tight or set them free, they always slip away. Always," he said to no one in particular and stared at the moons.