"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.

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 child—or a dancer—might 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 said—if—there's nothing you can do to save Urik. If he's lying—as he usually does—then 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 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 flaw—one 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 hea

rtland. Kalak, Tyr's now-dead 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.

Tags: Lynn Abbey Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net