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"Or little Sacha."
"I'll get him last, and bring him here by force, if I have to."
"After I've told you what you need to know?"
"I have hopes, my dear enchantress." Borys laid his hand atop Sielba's.
She withdrew hers from below. "And you have promises, promises as hollow as Rajaat's." Her smile belied her words.
So much, then, Hamanu observed, for Borys's persuasion—or any acknowledgment that without him they'd be ignorant of the War-Bringer's plans. The elder champions disappeared, leaving Hamanu with the silks, the slaves, and the remains of their feast. When they returned, Sielba settled herself on the cushions close beside him, while Borys stood beside the door.
"Stay here, Hamanu," the elder champion said.
An order, not a suggestion, and Hamanu didn't take orders; he wouldn't be treated like a child or slave. If Borys hadn't learned that at Kemelok, he'd learn it now.
The air in Sielba's banquet hall stilled. Water drops hung suspended in the fountains, and the human slaves fell to the floor. Borys's doing; Hamanu had done nothing to harm them.
As he started to stand, Sielba threw herself at Hamanu's feet. She tangled him in the cushions. The huge and well-built palace shuddered when they collapsed together.
"Stay with me, Lion of Urik," she urged as they wrestled with small but potent sorcery.
Long ago, Myron of Yoram's officers had humiliated him with their superior sword-skills. Hamanu then spent years practicing with every weapon known to man to insure that such a thing would never happen again. He thought that because he was strong and skilled, he could win any fight. He should have taken a few days, at least, to learn the cunning strategies with which women traditionally fought and won. Sielba used his lion's strength against him. She drained his spells as fast as he conceived them and then twisted his arm behind his back so thoroughly that the black bones beneath his illusion threatened to snap. When he was aware of his predicament, she whispered in his ear again, in her huskily seductive voice:
"It's better this way. Trust me."
Hamanu was no more inclined to do that than he was to trust Rajaat.
"I'll return with the others, then we'll deal with the War-Bringer," Borys said from the doorway. "In the meantime, maybe you'll learn something useful."
Sielba let her guard down once Borys was gone. The Lion of Urik, taking quick advantage of the tricks she'd just taught him, freed himself, and achieved a similar twisting grip on her arm.
"And now, what are you going to do, Lion of Urik?" she asked. Her voice came from behind his shoulder though her face was smothered in the pillows. "You're a quick and rever farmer's lad, but that's hardly enough."
Later Hamanu would blame the wine, Sielba's shifty and shimmering red-blue iridescent wine. The wine wasn't to blame; no amount of wine could affect him, no more than the spiced delicacies could fatten his gaunt body. He was young as immortals reckoned age, but a score of years had passed since he'd touched a woman's cheek without leaving a bruise or kissed her lips without bloodying them.
In time, Hamanu mastered illusion's most subtle aspects and could seduce whomever he wished or secret himself in a mortal mind to explore the world with another's senses. In time, he and Yaramuke's queen would descend into the quarrel that ended with her death and the destruction of her city. Until then, Sielba offered, if not love, fascination, and he offered the same to her. The Lion of Urik was a different man when Borys returned two days later. The ten other champions emerged, one after another, from the Butcher's netherworld wake. Hamanu kept his temper and said nothing when he saw how thoroughly the Butcher of Ebe had established himself as the champions' champion, the one who would free them from their creator.
Hamanu had already measured himself against Borys, and the Dwarf Butcher was no War-Bringer. If Borys wished to be the touchstone of their rebellion, he'd let Borys have his wish. There'd be opportunity for another rebellion, if necessity demanded one. Rajaat's champions had treachery bred in their bones. Hamanu was no exception.
As afternoon in Yaramuke became evening and their strategy took its final shape, Hamanu quietly accepted a subordinate's role. The champions' strategy was as simple as it was risky. Emerging from the Gray, all at the same time and close to Rajaat's tower, they'd each cast a different, destructive spell. No one of the spells would be sufficient to overpower the first sorcerer, but together, they might distract and confound him long enough for Borys, or Dregoth, or Pennarin, or even Hamanu—the four champions who prided themselves on their sheer, brute strength—to dispatch their creator with a physical weapon. Failing that— but only if the quartet seemed truly doomed—the others would attempt to destroy Rajaat's Dark Lens.
Better, they'd decided, to live without the magic they passed to their minions than to face Rajaat's wrath with the Lens still in existence.
Their simple strategy collapsed as soon as they were in the Gray. Savage winds erupted from every corner of the netherworld. The winds buffeted the mighty sorcerers, sending them caroming into each other and away from each other, as well.
Too many champions, too many unnatural creatures for even this unnatural place, Hamanu thought as he struggled to retain his orientation in the chaos.
Borys had a less charitable notion: Arala! Get a ward on Sacha Arala—he's behind it.
Prudence launched a bolt of blue-green sorcery off Hamanu's right hand, and off other hands, as well. They blinded each other in their eagerness to stop Sacha Arala's treachery. The Curse of Kobolds screamed for mercy that was not forthcoming until Dregoth announced that he had the traitor in his grasp. The winds ebbed. The champions regrouped and continued toward Rajaat's tower, which shone in the Gray as a sliver of pure white light.
In silence, the champions surrounded the netherworld beacon, then returned to the material world where, hiding in the moonlight shadows, Rajaat War-Bringer waited for them.
A fiery maw engulfed Pennarin before he'd invoked his spell. The maw closed, and Rajaat's first champion was gone.
Hamanu took a breath and cast his spell: a simple transmutation of dry, rock-hard dirt into mire as hot and viscous as molten lava. The ground beneath Rajaat's feet began to glow. Through the tumult of spells and counterspells, the Lion of Urik heard the War-Bringer cry his name.
"Hamanu... Hamanu, you're next!"
