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The lewd conversation ended abruptly when a blue spark flickered amid the gore that had been Rajaat's face.
"He's healing himself." Borys confirmed what they'd all felt.
There was a round of curses as they each cast a warding spell over their creator.
"It won't be enough," Gallard warned. "Wards won't keep out the sun once it rises. His own bones will make the shadows. We put him beneath the Black tonight, or we'll join Pennarin tomorrow."
Pennarin. Where was Pennarin? The Black, Gallard said. And how did Gallard come to know so much about the center of the Gray or what lay beneath it? Who'd taught the Bane of Gnomes? Why had he needed to learn? Who had he planned to imprison in a nowhere place where neither light nor shadow, time nor substance existed? Rajaat? Or had Gallard planned to imprison them all there eventually?
So many questions, but no reason to ask any of them. The champions couldn't kill their creator and couldn't let him heal himself whole. That left Gallard's Hollow beneath the Black. As little as he relished the notion of trusting Gallard's notion, Hamanu had nothing to offer in its place— nor did anyone else.
"Is there time?" he asked, breaking the silence that threatened to last until dawn.
Gallard grinned, revealing steel-sharp fangs behind his slack and blubbery lips. "Only one way to find out, isn't there?"
Indeed, there was only one way: follow the Gnome-Bane's instructions, stretch their powers to exhaustion scouring the heartland for reagents before dawn's light, and deliver the noxious reagents to the top of Rajaat's white tower where Gallard—and only Gallard—sat in the Crystal Steeple, waiting, enshrined beneath the Dark Lens.
After depositing a vial of fuming realgar at the Gnome-Bane's feet, Hamanu plodded down the spiral stairs. Resuming his human illusion—because it was more comfortable than his gaunt natural form—he leaned back against a crumbled wall. Champions needed sleep no more than they needed food, but even an immortal mind needed a quiet moment to reflect, this day and night.
Big Guthay had set. Little Ral was alone in a sky of a thousand stars. None shone brighter than the warding spells layered over Rajaat's body, like so many green silk veils. Hamanu lost himself in the spells' constantly changing patterns. His thoughts wandered so far that his mind seemed empty, almost peaceful. Looking straight ahead, he saw nothing until—with a jolt of returning consciousness—he saw that a black shadow had cut the warding spells in two.
He's healed. He's breaking the wards, Hamanu thought, a lump of cold terror clogging his throat.
But the shadow wasn't Rajaat's. A man crouched over Rajaat's body, casting the shadow Hamanu saw. A man who was so intent on peeling back the warding spells that he didn't hear the light tread of another champion's feet behind him, or sense another shadow mingling with his until it was too late.
"Arala!" Hamanu shouted as he seized a scrawny neck and jerked the traitor from his mischief.
Objects that might have been the War-Bringer's teeth or finger bones showered from Sacha's hands—except, the culprit wasn't Sacha Arala. In the brief moment Hamanu had before the illusion became a writhing metamorph, he recognized Wyan Bodach's face: Wyan Bodach, who'd suggested chopping Rajaat into pieces earlier.
All arms and legs in his natural form, the Pixie-Blight sprouted claws that raked through illusion to Hamanu's true flesh. The Lion roared, but held on until another champion came to investigate the furor. Unable to sort innocent from guilty, the newcomer slapped spells around them both. Hamanu's limbs grew heavy as a Kreegill peak, and Wyan was even heavier, but he kept hold. Another spell—two, three, more than he could count—wrapped around them. The arm that had been as heavy as a mountain was stone-stiff when the spellcasting was finished and Dregoth reached in to pry Bodach free.
"And do you deny it?" Dregoth asked Hamanu.
The heavy paralysis was withdrawn. Hamanu flexed his muscles and said: "I do. Wyan said he wanted a piece of Rajaat's body earlier. It's his own deceit he describes, not mine. I thought it was Sacha Arala at first. I cried out his name by mistake."
Vapors seeped from Dregoth's nose as he looked from Hamanu to Wyan and back again.
"And where is Sacha?" Albeorn asked from far on Hamanu's right side.
He and the others had gathered quickly. Some had emerged from the netherworld, the rest strode out of the nighttime shadows. Sacha Arala wasn't among them, nor was Borys, nor, of course, was Gallard. Hamanu realized they were all looking at him, distrusting him more than Wyan because he was still the outsider. He had several long moments to wonder exactly what Borys had told them while Sielba had entertained him in Yaramuke, before Sielba's husky voice broke the silence.
"Sacha's with Borys, where else? He's got no part in this—whatever this is. And neither has Hamanu. If the Lion of Urik says Wyan was cutting off bits of Rajaat, then I believe him, and I suggest we find out why before Borys gets back here."
Sielba was right about Hamanu, though he knew he'd pay dearly for her defense. She might have been right about Sacha, too. Rajaat's sycophant might have had nothing to do with Wyan's macabre gleaning. But Wyan swore otherwise.
"It was all Sacha's plan," the Pixie-Blight insisted. "He said Rajaat has no one vital
part; he can regenerate himself entirely if any living part of him is placed in the pool beneath the Dark Lens. He knew you'd keep close wards on him, so he came to me—"
"—And you went to Rajaat. You made the Gray-storm when we left Yaramuke. You used it to hide yourself while you raced here and back again. That's why he was waiting for us, why Pennarin was consumed," Uyness, who'd cleansed Athas of orcs, concluded.
It could be a true explanation. One of them had warned Rajaat—unless Rajaat's sorcery were so much more subtle than theirs that he'd spied on them in Yaramuke without their knowledge. Unless Uyness herself was their traitor: whenever one champion explained the behavior of another, she, or he, became suspect in other eyes. Hamanu had gotten a dose of that himself a few moments back. But if there'd ever been an enduring partnership among the champions, it was between Uyness and Pennarin, and they all preferred to think that there was some limit to their creator's power.
Suspicion fixed on Wyan, who threw the real onus on Sacha Arala, who wasn't there to defend himself. By Hamanu's reckoning, events didn't require Arala's treachery: Wyan could have learned all he needed from the War-Bringer after he'd raced through the Gray to warn him. But Hamanu kept his thoughts about traitors to himself, saying nothing when Borys returned with two flawless obsidian spheres and the enthralled Curse of Kobolds.
Borys had another suspect: "Gallard!" he shouted loud enough to shake the white tower where the Gnome-Bane prepared the imprisonment spell. "Gallard! Here! Now!"
Gallard grumbled and Gallard resisted. The air between the steeple chamber at the top of the tower and Borys on the ground beside Rajaat rained sparks as they argued silently, mind against mind. Then the air stilled and Gallard came outside. He swore he didn't know what Wyan was talking about.
