The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 5)

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 m

en 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.

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 me—of Athas—had 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.

"Go to your veterans," I told the human lumps cowering at my feet. "Prepare to break camp. When the bloody sun rises again, this army—my army—is 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.