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The Lion-King cast a minor pall over his throne chamber. An eerie quiet spread through the crowd. Conversation, movement, and—most important for a champion who was needed elsewhere, but couldn't be seen with his vacant-eyed attention focused in that elsewhere—memory ceased around him.
I hear you—Hamanu examined the trembling mote of consciousness and found a name— Andelimi. I see you, Andelimi. Take heart.
His words reassured the templar, but they weren't the truth. Hamanu glimpsed the southeast border through a woman's eyes. Her vision was not as sharp as his own would be, but it was sharp enough: black scum dulled an expanse of sand and salt that should been painfully bright.
An army of the undead, he said in Andelimi's mind, because it reassured her to hear the truth of her own fears.
We cannot control them, O Mighty King.
Controlling the undead—of all the mysteries Rajaat's Dark Lens perpetrated, that one remained opaque. Like the other champions, through sorcery Hamanu held vast power over death in all its forms. He could inflict death in countless ways and negate it as well, but always at great cost to his ever-metamorphosing self. Not so his templars, whose borrowed magic had its origin in the Dark Lens and was fundamentally different from the sorcery Rajaat had bestowed on his champions.
The magic his templar syphoned from the Dark Lens neither hastened the dragon metamorphosis nor degraded ordinary life into ash. And, since the undead didn't hunger, didn't thirst, didn't suffer, the champions often relied on their living templars' ability to raise the casualties of earlier battles whenever it seemed that marching a mass of bodies at an enemy would insure victory.
Which wasn't often.
Once a templar had the undead raised and moving, he or she faced the chance that someone else would usurp control of them. Not an equal chance, of course. Some living minds were simply better at controlling undead, and all other aspects being equal, a more experienced templar—not to mention a more experienced priest, druid, sorcerer, or champion could usurp the undead from a novice.
Hamanu personally tested his templars for undead aptitude and made certain the ones who had it got the training they needed. The war bureau wouldn't have allowed Andelimi and the twenty other templars in her maniple out the gates without an apt and trained necromant templar among them—especially in the southeast, where Urik's land abutted Giustenal.
Hamanu stirred Andelimi's thoughts. Where is your necromant? Rihaen tried, O Mighty King, she assured him. Hodit, too.
Her eyes pulled down to the hard-packed dirt to the left of her feet; Hamanu seized control of her body and turned her toward the right. Andelimi was a war-bureau sergeant, a veteran of two decade's worth of campaign. She knew better than to fight her king, but instinct ran deeper than intellect. She'd rather die than look to her right. Hamanu kept her eyes open long enough to see what he needed.
Andelimi's thoughts were bleak. She'd barely begun to mourn. The dead elf had been her lover, the father of her children, the taste of sweet water on her tongue.
Rihaen had tried to turn the undead army, but the same champion who'd sundered the link between Urik's templars and Urik's king had roused these particular corpses. Instead of usurping Giustenal's minions, Rihaen had been usurped by them. His heart had stopped, and he'd become undead himself, under another mind's control. Hodit, who was also apt and trained, had—foolishly—tried to turn Rihaen and suffered the same fate.
The remaining templars of the maniple, including Andelimi, had overcome their own undead. It could be done without recourse to magic, and every templar carried the herbs, the oils, or the weapons to do it. But what the raiser of Giustenal's undead army had done to Rihaen and Hodit could not be undo
ne. For them, the curse of undeath was irrevocable. Their bodies had fallen apart. Nothing recognizable was left of Andelimi's beloved except a necromant's silver medallion and several strands of his long, brown hair, all floating on a pool of putrid gore.
For the honor of his own ancient memories of Deche and Dorean, Hamanu would have left Andelimi alone with her grief. But it had been her anguish that cut through Dregoth's interference, and for the sake of Urik, he could show her no mercy.
Andelimi!
She crumpled to the ground; he thrust her to her feet.
Where are the others of your maniple? Who survives?
Hamanu would not make her look at Rihaen again, but he needed to see. He forced her eyes open, then blinked away her tears. He found the fifteen surviving templars in a line behind Andelimi. Their varied medallions hung exposed against their breasts. Defeat was written on their faces because he had not heard their pleas in time. They knew what was happening—that he'd taken possession of Andelimi—and that it had happened too late.
"We stand, O Mighty Lion! We fight, O Great Hamanu!" the maniple's adjutant shouted to the king he knew was watching him through a woman's eyes. He saluted with a bruising thump on his breast. "Your templars will not fail you!"
The adjutant's thoughts were white and spongy. His hand trembled when he lowered it. Urik's templars didn't have a prayer of winning against the undead legion sprawled before them, and the adjutant knew it. He and Andelimi wished with all their hearts that death—clean, eternal death— would be theirs this afternoon.
They'd get their wish only if Hamanu slew them where they stood and drained their essence, furthering his own metamorphosis.
Hamanu pondered the bitter irony: only living champions were afflicted by the dragon metamorphosis. Dregoth was as undead as the army he'd raised, utterly unable to become a dragon, will he or nill he. There was no limit on Dregoth's sorcery except the scarcity of life in his underground city.
The very-much-alive Lion of Urik tested the netherworld with a thought, confirming his suspicions. Giustenal's champion had raised the undead army creeping toward Urik. Hamanu could turn them, mind by empty mind, but he'd have to fight for each one, and victory's price was unthinkably high.
"You will retreat," he told the maniple with Andelimi's voice.
They weren't reassured. Undead marched slowly but relentlessly; they never tired, never rested. Only elves could outrun them—unless there were elves among the undead.
"Better to stand and fight." A slow-moving dwarf muttered loudly.
He stood with his fists defiant on his hips. Whatever death Hamanu chose for him—his undercurrent thoughts were clear—it would be preferable to dwarven undeath with its additional banshee curse of an unfulfilled life-focus. In that, the dwarf was mistaken. The Lion-King could craft fates far worse than undeath—as Windreaver would attest— but Hamanu let the challenge pass. Urik's fate hung in the balance, and Urik was more important than teaching a fool-hearted dwarf an eternal lesson.
