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"You need to know that every dragon is different and that Rajaat created dragons when he created sorcery and that was long before he created champions to wage his Cleansing Wars. You need to know that if a sorcerer lives long enough to master the secrets of the Unseen netherworld, then that immortal sorcerer will change into a dragon—but not a dragon like Borys. Borys wasn't a sorcerer when he became a dragon; he was a champion. Rajaat shaped his champions out of human clay in his white tower. He bathed them in a black-water pool and stood them in a Crystal Steeple beneath the Dark Lens. The dragon is a part of a champion's nature—a large part, an inevitable part—but not the only part, or the most powerful part."
"Anything else?" Sadira asked, feigning disinterest.
She feigned disinterest because she owed her sooty armor and shadow magic to an immersion in that black-water pool and to spells cast in the Crystal Steeple. Her inner thoughts betrayed a deep concern about the powers she used so freely. The Dark Lens hadn't been in its proper place when the shadowfolk transformed her. Rajaat hadn't been there, either, but the shadowfolk were Rajaat's minions, and they'd acted on his orders. Sadira had reason to be worried,
Hamanu savored her worry. "Borys was a champion. I was Rajaat's last champion of the Cleansing Wars. Kalak wasn't a champion—" Hamanu began.
"Sacha Arala and Wyan were Kalak's champions—fools and traitors, too. They gave Tyr's templars their spells. They could have done the same for anyone—especially after Tithian found the Dark Lens."
"Tithian," Sadira sighed. In Tyr, the conversation always came back to Tithian.
"Tithian wanted it all: Rajaat's spells, the pool, the tower, the Dark Lens. He didn't think about dragons. He thought he wanted to be a sorcerer-king, but what he truly wanted to be was a champion."
"Would he—" the sorceress succumbed to her own curiosity. "Would Rajaat have made Tithian into something like you or Borys? The way Rajaat was hunting and killing sorcerer-kings, I wouldn't think he'd ever make another champion."
The trap was set, the prey was sniffing at the bait, all that remained was a little tug on the trip-cord. "Rajaat already had his next creation: something better than an immortal champion who'd slip from his control. His minions had already shaped her in his tower—with his permission, of course. They couldn't have worked magic there otherwise. She can't draw on the Dark Lens, can't channel its power to her friends, because it wasn't there when she was made. And, being mortal when she was made, she won't survive long enough to become a dragon. But she'll serve his purposes; she already has—"
Sadira boiled off her stool. The shadow-stuff that cloaked her skin when the bloody sun was above the horizon came alive with the sorcery she intended to hurl at him. But Rajaat's last champion—his last true champion-sprang his trap. Pursing his lips, Hamanu inhaled through his mouth. A thin stream of shadow-stuff whirled from her to him, and, to Sadira's wide-eyed horror, she couldn't stop it.
"There are," Hamanu explained when she was mortally pale and shaken, "a few things you don't know about yourself."
He shed what remained of his peddlar's illusion and became his favorite self: the tawny-skinned man with flowing black hair. There was just a hint of sulphur in his eyes. The shadow-stuff he'd stolen flowed in serpentine streams along his limbs.
Sadira tried to cast an ordinary spell the ordinary way Hamanu wagged a finger, and she was cut off from everything except herself. A dragon could quicken spells from the life essence he, or she, hoarded inside; a mortal sorcerer didn't have the essence to spare. Sadira wrapped her arms beneath her breasts.
"Why have you come? Why have you come now, today? You could have killed me anytime."
"Not to kill you, dear lady. I came to talk to you, but you weren't listening and, because of that, no one will ever see a troll—the silver shadow of a troll—again."
The words of an apology swirled the surface of Sadira's thoughts. She swallowed them without speaking them, which was wise, because the apology wouldn't have been sincere. She didn't care about trolls; she especially didn't care about Hamanu's loss. "Talk to me," she said instead, her thoughts a mixture of fear and defiance.
"We'll talk about sorcery. It must be quickened. You know that—" Hamanu stirred Sadira's memories. "You learned when you were twelve, when Ktandeo of the Veil came to—" he stirred deeper and found the name—"the Mericles estate, Tithian's estate—"
Hamanu's eyebrow rose. He hadn't suspected an older connection between the sorceress and the usurper, between a slave and her master.
Sadira squirmed on her stool. She froze when he smiled. Her mind conjured images of her fears; the fears women naturally and needlessly had in his presence. Foolish fears: the Lion-King hadn't raped a woman since Borys became the Dragon of Tyr.
"I'm not here for that," he said wearily. "From Ktandeo, you learned to steal the life essence from plants for your sorcery. Then you learned that with obsidian between you and your spell, you could steal the essence from any living thing. The Dark Lens is a sort of obsidian, dear lady, a very special sort: it steals from the sun, the source of all life. I don't know where Rajaat found it, but he didn't make it. He used it to make his champions, but mostly he was looking for a way to steal directly from the sun, as you first learned to steal directly from plants."
"The War-Bringer had found a way well before that." Hamanu held out his arm. The shadows had ceased writhing and were spreading a sooty pall across his tawny skin. "But his way was independent, contrary. He rebelled, refused his destiny. Because of him, all the champions rebelled and sealed Rajaat beneath the Black. For ages Rajaat had explored the sun and light; in the Hollow, he studied dark and shadow. That's when he made the shadowfolk and the shadowfolk made you. But one thing is always true, whatever Rajaat does, his sorcery exacts a price. Each time you resort to the gifts Rajaat's shadowfolk gave you, whether to quicken your spells or save a life, you slip deeper into Rajaat's destiny."
Sadira rose. She stood in the hot sunlight streaming through the open window. Her thoughts moved far below the surface of her mind. Hamanu left them alone. If the sorceress was cold, the light would warm her. If she thought her shadow-gifts would be restored, she'd be sorely disappointed. They'd be back tomorrow, and not one sunbeam sooner.
"I would know," she said, too softly for mortal ears to overhear, but loud enough for the Lion-King. "I would know if I was one of them. It can't be true. Hamanu is the liar, the deceiver."
Silently, Hamanu came up behind her and laid his hands gently on her shoulders. She shuddered as thoughts of resistance rose, then fell, in her consciousness.
"Dear lady, I have neither need nor reason to deceive you. The War-Bringer's sorcery lives within you as it lives within me. It makes patterns of light and shadow across our thoughts. We deceive ourselves." For a fleeting moment, the lava lake was foremost in his thoughts. "We've deceived each other—"
Sadira cut him short. "I'm not like you. I went to the Pristine Tower because the Dragon had to be destroyed and the shadowfolk could give me the power to destroy him."
The lake was gone; the cruel need to make her suffer for Windreaver's loss had returned. "Rajaat's shadowfolk. Rajaat's shadowfolk helped you because Borys was the key to Rajaat's prison. Once you destroyed Borys, Rajaat was free—"
"Tithian freed Rajaat! Tithian had the Dark Lens."
"Tithian was aided by the same shadowfolk who took you to the Crystal Steeple."
"I fought Rajaat. He would have killed me if Rkard hadn't used the sun and the Dark Lens together against him. I cast the spells that put him back beneath the Black. I put his bones and the Dark Lens at the bottom of a lake of molten rock, where no one can retrieve them. How can you dare say that I'm Rajaat's creation, that I serve him!"
