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He didn't have to wait long.
"Hamanu of Urik."
Through the darkness of his throne chamber, Hamanu recognized the predatory voice of Abalach-Re, once known as Uyness of Waverly, the late ruler of Raam. Over the ages, the Lion-King's eyes had changed, along with the rest of him. Urik's Lion-King could see as dwarves, elves, and the other Rebirth races saw—not merely the reflection of external light, but the warm light that radiated from the bodies of the living. More than that, he could see magic in its ethereal form: the golden glow of the medallions his templars wore, the deep cobalt aura—scarcely visible, even to him—that surrounded the blond Raamin templar.
Uyness's voice came from the aura, but not from any spell the queen of Raam had cast in life or death. Hamanu thought immediately of Rajaat, but the first sorcerer hadn't cast the spell that put words in the air around the dumbfounded Raamin; nor had any other champion. Yet it was a subtle, powerful spell, as subtle and powerful as the stealth spell Hamanu aged in his workroom. The realization that he could not put a name to the sorcerer who cast it sent a shiver down his black-boned spine.
"Mark me well, Hamanu of Urik: the War-Bringer grows restless. He's waited thirteen ages to have his revenge. He remembers you best—you, the youngest, his favorite. The wounds you gave him will not heal, except beneath a balm of your heart's blackest blood. He seeks you first. He'll come for you, little Manu of Deche. He already knows the way."
On any other day, Hamanu might have been amused by the haphazard blend of truth, myth, and outright error the spell-spun voice spoke. He would have roared with laughter, gone looking for the unknown sorcerer, and—just possibly—spared the poor, ignorant wretch's life for amusement's sake.
Any other day, but not today. Not with Rajaat's blue lightning pummeling his city. Though the spell-caster didn't know what Uyness of Waverly would have known from her own memory of the day, thirteen ages ago, when the champions betrayed their creator and created a prison for him beneath the Black, there were undeniable truths in the thick air of the throne chamber. Rajaat was restless, Rajaat wanted revenge, and Rajaat would start with Urik.
Taking the chance that there was a conscious mind still attached to the spell, Hamanu said mildly, "Tell me something I don't already know. Tell me where you are and why you come to Urik now, when the War-Bringer's attention is sure to catch you... again. Wasn't one death enough?"
The cobalt aura flickered, as it might if motes of the Raamin champion's true essence had been used in its creation. "The Shadow-King found me," she said when her aura was restored. The statement wasn't quite an answer to Hamanu's questions. It might have been an evasion. It certainly couldn't lave been the truth. Gallard of Nibenay was many things, none of them foolish enough to search the Black near Rajaat's Hollow prison for the lingering remains of any champion, least of all, Uyness of Waverly. More than the rest of them, the Raamin queen relied on myth and theological bombast to sustain her rule. There were two reasons Nibenay hadn't swallowed Raam long ago: One was Urik, sitting between the cities; the other was Dregoth, who hated Uyness with undead passion.
The Tyr-storm, which had lapsed into faint rumblings after its initial surge, showed its power before the spellcast voice answered. Thunderbolts rained down on Hamanu's yellow-walled city—his keen ears recorded a score of strikes before echoes made an accurate count impossible. An acrid stench filled the chamber and brought tears to the eyes of his assembled templars. The storm's blue light shimmered in the pungent air, then coalesced into a swirling, luminous pillar that swiftly became Uyness of Waverly in her most beautiful disguise, her most seductive posture.
"Rajaat grows strong on our weakness, Hamanu. Without a dragon among us, no spell will hold him. We need a dragon, Hamanu. We need a dragon to keep Rajaat in the Hollow. We need a dragon to create more of our own kind, to restore order to our world. We choose you to be the dragon. Rajaat will come to Urik for revenge. He will destroy you. Then he will destroy everything. The champions come to honor you, Hamanu of Urik. We offer you lives by the thousand. You will become the dragon, and Athas will be saved."
Chapter Nine
Another barrage of blue lightning and deafening thunder pummeled Urik from above. The lightning-limned figure of the Raamin queen vanished with the afterglow and didn't reform. In the tumult, the sound of one man collapsing slowly on the marble tiles was heard only by Hamanu, who bent a thought around the blond templar's heart to keep it beating.
This Tyr-storm seemed fiercer than the last such storm to pound Urik's walls. Indeed, it seemed fiercer than any since the first—perhaps because like that storm, this one had arrived unexpectedly. Five years ago, Urik's most exalted templars had succumbed, at least temporarily, to the madness Tyr-storms inspired. Now the survivors stood impassively in the flickering blue light. If they were not confident that the storm would spend itself quickly—and Hamanu discerned their doubts through the lightning and the thunder—they were at least determined not to let their neighbors see their weakness.
Hamanu tolerated any mortal trait in his templars, except weakness. The men and women in his throne chamber were hard, often to the point of cruelty; competent, to the point of arrogance; and strong willed, even in his presence. They'd hesitate to ask the questions the Raamin queen's voice had raised in their minds, but inevitably, one of them would overcome that hesitation.
To forestall the death that would follow such insubordination, Hamanu reached into the blond templar's mind.
Who sent you? What do you know about the message and the object you bore?
Spasms rocked the Raamin templar as he lay unnoticed on the marble floor. He'd need a miracle to survive interrogation by a champion other than his mistress, and despite whatever promises the Raamin queen might have made while she lived, champions couldn't conjure miracles.
Don't fight me, Hamanu advised. Answer my questions. Recount.
The templar complied, giving Hamanu vision after vision of a Raam fallen in anarchy deeper than any he'd imagined. Five years after the woman Raamins called Abalach-Re,
the grand vizier of a nameless, nonexistent god, had disappeared, Raamin merchants, nobles, templars, and the worst sort of elven tribes had carved her city into warring fiefdoms.
Her templars, as ignorant as ever of the true source of their power, had tried to reestablish their magical link with the god that Uyness had claimed to serve. Small wonder, then, that these days the despised, dispirited Raamin templars struggled to hold their own quarter and the gutted palace. Small wonder, too, that when some of them began seeing a familiar face in their dreams, hearing a voice they'd despaired of hearing again, they'd done whatever it had told them to do. They went down to the dust-scoured wharves where the silt schooners tied up. There they found the shard among the rocks that were sometimes visible along the shore—
Without moving from the dais, Hamanu turned his attention to the elven runner who'd brought the second shard.
Recount, he commanded.
The elf's heart skipped a beat or two, but he was young and healthy, and he came to no permanent harm.
A pair of messengers, O Mighty King, came to the Todek registrator claiming to be templars from Balk—
Another city, far to the south of Urik, but also on the Sea of Silt.
Our registrator, she disbelieved. They were afoot, rat-faced and worse for traveling, with nothing in their scrips but a handful of ceramic chips so worn there was no telling what oven baked them or where. But they knew the things templars know, O Mighty King, and there was one among us who'd been to Balic and knew they had the city pegged aright: merchants and nobles in charge, just as in Tyr. Templars all dead or in hiding. So, the registrator listened—
We all listened close, O Mighty King, when the pair said King Andropinis wasn't dead, but that he needed help before he could give them power again. He'd said they'd find help in Urik if they delivered a message.
Hamanu interrupted, And the message was the leather-wrapped parcel?
