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The normal silence of the Gray became deafening. Flares of dark ether appeared without warning and wound a tightening spiral around Hamanu's attenuated shadow. Another moment—as Hamanu's mind measured time in the netherworld—and he'd have pressed his luck too hard. He'd have to break away, if he could, without his precious glimpse of the Hollow.
There was no air in the Gray. A netherworld traveler didn't breathe, yet Hamanu held his breath, and his shadow shrank. He risked everything to get a little lower, a little closer, and got his heart's desire: a glimpse of a Hollow without substance or shadow, light or dark. The Hollow was nothing at all—except the War-Bringer's essence.
Because Hamanu's own spells, his own substance and essence, had helped to forge the Hollow thirteen ages ago, he knew it was not empty. He knew as well—and with no small horror—that it was riddled with cracks through which shadow, if not substance, could seep.
Without thought for the consequences, Hamanu cursed his complacency. Five years ago, he'd trusted Sadira because it was convenient, because they'd declared a truce on the shores of Ur Draxa's lava lake, because he'd trusted that her hatred of him and the champions would be enough to insure her vigilance.
He'd been a fool then, and was twice a fool now: his thoughtless curse had broken his concentration.
His shadow expanded violently, touching both the Black and the dark, spiraling flares. Arms and legs extended like a cartwheel's spokes, he tumbled wildly, gathering shadow with every turn. In panic, he clawed for the amulet case and the beads it contained. Shadow engulfed his hand.
He had a moment to contemplate his folly. Then a vaguely human-shaped figure manifested itself between him and the Black.
Rajaat, Hamanu thought and, anticipating a fate truly worse than death, got a firm hold on his courage and dignity. Though the figure grew larger, its silhouette did not devolve into Rajaat's asymmetric deformities, and its aura was neither menacing nor vengeful. It simply broke the flow between the Black and Hamanu's shadow.
Once again, Hamanu prepared himself for death.
Not yet, the still-distant figure roared above the deafening silence.
Its outstretched right arm crossed its body and extended a finger toward a point beyond its left foot. Hamanu looked in the indicated direction and began tumbling again. This time, however, an attractive presence other than the Black, held him in its grip. Like any dying man, mortal or immortal, Hamanu grasped any opportunity, however unproven, to escape certain oblivion.
With bold and practiced strokes, Hamanu swam with this new current. Glancing over his shoulder as he passed beneath his savior's foot, he glimpsed the Lion-King of Urik bestriding the Black. Hamanu had no time to ponder the extraordinary sight. He was moving fast through the Gray, and a sense of boundary had already sprung up in his mind.
Hamanu ripped out of the netherworld while he was some distance above the ground. The choice was deliberate: he didn't know where he was, and while a fall wouldn't hurt him, an emergence that left him half in and half out of any solid object would be fatal, even for an immortal champion. Tucking his head and shoulder as he hit the ground, Hamanu rolled several times before he got his feet under him.
A true adept of mind-bending or magic could always establish his place in the world. Though the hot daytime air around him was saturated with water and, therefore, more opaque than the netherworld, Hamanu felt the push and pull of Athas beneath his feet, and knew for certain that he was within the ruins of Borys's city, Ur Draxa.
A thick mat of squishy plants had cushioned his fall, a mat that covered every surface, including the walls, where the walls were still standing. Stagnant water seeped through the illusory soles of Hamanu's illusory sandals. He gave himself sturdier footwear and wrestled with garments that were already damp and clinging to his skin.
Ahead, Hamanu heard the rumble of thunder, the ear-popping crack of lightning. He was puzzled for a moment; then he understood: five years after Tithian had been trapped inside the Dark Lens, his rage continued unabated. The would-be Tyrant of Tyr was responsible for the violent Tyr-storms throughout the heartland. Here in Ur Draxa, he was responsible for the unrelenting, stifling fog. He'd forged an environment like nothing Hamanu had encountered elsewhere on Athas.
Taking a step in the direction where his inner senses told him he'd find the lava lake, Hamanu's foot sank to midcalf depth before striking a buried cobblestone path. The squishy mat belched, and twin scents of rot and decay filled his nose. Initially, Hamanu the Lion-King was repelled by the stench. After a moment's reflection, Manu the Fanner recognized that the streets of Ur Draxa were more fertile I than Urik's best fields.
He slogged the next little distance plotting the ways and means to bring the riches home.
Hamanu wasn't the only one stumbling through to Ur Draxa's treasure. His inhumanly sharp ears picked up other feet sinking in the bog. He didn't fear discovery; the fog hid him better than any spell. A talkative pair slogged past, so close and diffident, he could have stolen their belt-pouches. By their accents, they were Ur Draxans struggling to adapt to a diet of slugs, snails, and dankweed.
How the mighty had fallen! While Borys ruled the city that he'd founded nine hundred years ago, the Ur Draxans were the fiercest warriors beneath the bloody sun. Now they were bog farmers, and Hamanu dismissed them as no threat to the veterans he'd send to harvest Tithian's sludge.
On the other hand, Manu had been raised by farmers who went to war against nature each time they planted their seeds in the unforgiving ground. He knew that farmers weren't meek in defense of their land. The battles would be different here, but folk who fought them would be as tenacious as any farmer, anywhere.
As tenacious as he himself had been, returning to the Kreegills after the trolls were gone.
He'd discharged his veterans, giving each of them a year's wages and a lecture on the virtues of going home. He told them to rebuild what the war had destroyed and to forget what they'd seen, what they'd done in his service. His mistake—if it was a mistake and not another sleight of destiny's hand—was telling them about the home he wanted to rebuild for himself in the Kreegills.
A man could spend a lifetime bringing the valley back to what he remembered—an immortal lifetime. Hamanu tried, though he was hindered from the start by the best efforts of his companions, who didn't know the first thing about growing grain, or living in the same place, day-in, day-out, season after changeless season.
The ones who couldn't take the boredom packed up and left. Hamanu had thought he was well rid of them. He went back to teaching the land-wisdom he'd learned from his father and grandfather to the veterans who remained. But the veterans who returned to the lowlands—and those who'd never left—couldn't live without war. Rumo
rs reached the Kreegills of brigands who terrorized the plains, flaunting the medallions he'd given them. The rumors claimed that lowland farmers and townsfolk believed Hamanu Troll-Scorcher had become Hamanu Human-Scorcher, ready to enforce the demands of any petty warlord.
Even now, a thousand years later, Hamanu's sweaty shoulders stiffened at the memory. The first time he'd heard what his discharged veterans were doing in his name, he'd been stunned speechless. The second time, he'd vowed, would be the last. He'd always been ready to take full responsibility for his war against the trolls, for the orders he'd given that his veterans had carried out. But he wouldn't—then or ever—bear the blame for another man's crime.
In a cold fury, Hamanu had left the Kreegills for the second time. With his loyal veterans behind him, he tracked down those who betrayed both him and humanity. He killed the boldest—and found he had as much a taste for human suffering as he'd once had a taste for trolls. He could have killed every medalLion-bearing brigand and every low-life scum who'd fallen in with them. But killing his own kind— those who'd been his kind when he was a mortal man—sickened Hamanu even as it sated him.
His metamorphosis advanced. He grew too massive for any kank to carry and, therefore, walked everywhere in the half-man, half-lion guise he'd adopted before his final battle with Windreaver. His followers didn't mind; for years, they hadn't believed he was a man like them. They thought they served a living god.
A living god, Hamanu thought as he went down to his knees in the reeking sludge, would pay better attention to where he put his feet!
