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"But Rajaat—" the temp
lar protested. "A dragon will protect Athas from Rajaat, isn't that true? Isn't that what the dragon—what Borys the Butcher of Gnomes did for two thousand years?"
Rajaat wasn't Pavek's worry. Rajaat would be Sadira's worry, and Rkard's. Rajaat would be their punishment for doing nothing when they could have put an end to both Rajaat and dragons. Hamanu wouldn't talk to Pavek about Rajaat.
"Borys was the Butcher of Dwarves," Hamanu corrected gently, after forcing the War-Bringer out of his mind. "Gal-lard was the Gnome-Bane; he took the name of Nibenay after Borys became the dragon, which was a thousand years ago, not two thousand."
"But—" Pavek had been educated in the templar orphanage; he knew the official history of his city.
"We lie, Pavek. We've all lied; all the champions. When the wars ended, Tyr measured its years from one High Sun solstice to the next, a full three hundred and seventy-five days, but Draj and Balic measured theirs by equinoxes. Their years were half as long. Albeorn—Andropinis of Balic—didn't want to be associated with the champion Elf-
Slayer. So we lied, we took history apart and put it back together again so mortals who might remember the Cleansing Wars might never think that we had led them." Hamanu squeezed Pavek's hands tighter around the scroll case, then let go. "This, and this alone, is the truth. Keep it safe."
Pavek frowned. The gesture tugged his scar and caused a twinge of pain, which Hamanu shared.
"You should let me fix this."
"More illusions? More taking history apart and putting it back different?" Pavek asked.
"You'd be a handsome man. Women would notice."
"It's not my face that keeps Kashi away," Pavek said honestly.
And Hamanu had to agree. He traced the ugly scar with a fingertip, but left it alone. "Good-bye, Pavek, Just-Plain Pavek. It's time for me to go."
Pavek started to nod, but his chin stayed down against his chest. "I will miss you, Great One." His voice was thick. "If ever I have a son, I will name him Hamanu."
"Kashi won't stand for that," Hamanu said as he turned away.
He was halfway to the door when Pavek called him back.
"Telhami—" the templar began. His face was raised; his eyes were glistening. He had to begin again. "Telhami will be waiting for you."
Hamanu cocked an eyebrow, not trusting his own voice.
"When... if... you'll become part of the guardian after, Great One. That's what she says. And she'll be waiting for you."
He hadn't thought about after; it gave him the strength to turn away and walk out the door.
Chapter Fifteen
Ruari had wedged himself into the corner where his narrow cot met the walls of his room, the better to keep both cot and walls from swaying wildly. His eyelids were the heaviest part of his body, but he didn't dare let them close. Without the moonlight patterns on the wall to tell him up from down, he'd be overwhelmed with the sensation of falling backward, endlessly falling backward until his gut began to heave in the other direction.
The half-elf knew this because it had already happened, not once, but twice. He'd shed his reeking clothes outside the room and crawled the last distance to his cot on his hands and knees. His mind wasn't working particularly well, but it seemed fairly certain that he'd never felt quite this sick, this stupid, this drunk before. Given a choice between death right then or holding the walls up and his gut down until dawn, Ruari would have chosen death without hesitation.
"Preserve and protect," he muttered, the conclusion of a druid blessing the first few words of which he'd forgotten.
Grinding his heels into the mattress, Ruari pushed himself backward, but his legs were weak and the walls of Pavek's red-and-yellow house were made of brick, not woven reeds, like the walls of his hut back in Quraite. Terror seized him when she reached the cot and laid a surprisingly warm—for death, anyway—hand on his foot.
Terror was nothing Ruari's wine-drenched gut could handle at that moment. He made a desperate sideways lunge. Death caught him before he hit the floor.
"You shouldn't drink so much," she chided him.
Death smoothed his dank hair behind his ears—which Ruari didn't appreciate. Ears were supposed to match and his didn't. One of them was more tapering, more elven, than the other. He tried to hide the defect; she caught his hand before he caught his hair.
"Relax," she suggested, raising his hand. "You'll feel better." She pressed her lips against his knuckles.
Very warm lips.
