The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (18 page)

In my ignorance, I imagined my familiar world transformed to a world of blue mountains and
sand, blue barrens, and blue himali fields. Rajaat changed my mind, showing me blue water beneath a
blue sky. I overlooked the oceans; so much water meant nothing to me.

Where was the land? I wondered. Rajaat showed me islands and drifting cities shaped like
schooners running before the wind. Where were the people of this blue world? I wondered. The cities
teemed with life. Human life, I assumed, and Rajaat did not correct me. Then.

His hands moved from my head to my neck, from my neck to my shoulders and onward, down
my body. Bone, sinew, nerve, and every other part of me quickened beneath his fingers. Bit by bit, I
became a man again. The pain was exquisite—I ground my regrown tongue until it was a bloody rag
between my teeth, lest my soon-to-be peers heard me scream or moan.

Daylight faded. Cool, gray shadows reached across the cart before Rajaat was satisfied with my
regeneration. He bid me move each limb, then rise slowly. I sat, stood, and took a tentative step,
watching my feet, ankles, knees, and hips as if I had never seen them before. I was myself again, a
sound-bodied man, as I had not been when Myron of Yoram's bullies dragged me from the pit. The
scars of war and farming were gone, hut my mother would have known me by the crooked big toe on my
left foot.

My audience was clad in silk and jewels or sparkling armor such as Athas has never seen, before
or since. I, of course, was birth-naked and subject to intense scrutiny. Visions of grunting beasts and
sweating slaves were thrust into my consciousness. Flame-haired Sielba ran her possessive passions over
my body. She took me by surprise; I flushed with shame, not because I was a hot-blooded man, easily
aroused, but because she meant me to be ashamed.

Only Borys of Ebe would have nothing to do with me. His contempt was complete. Dwarves
interested him; my shame and suffering didn't.

"Can you walk?" Rajaat asked.

The War-Bringer stood on a beaten dirt path. Behind him stood a slender spire so amber bright
that it seemed aflame, though the color was only the setting sun's reflection on pristine white stone. Myron
of Yoram's cart rested beside the path. His flayed, tattered skin moved as he breathed, and his mewling
echoed in my ears.

My legs would bear me, but I couldn't walk toward my savior without walking past that cart. I
hesitated, summoning my courage. Gallard, Sielba, and the others mocked me; my shame was immense,
but it wouldn't move my feet. Rajaat made a slight, two-fingered gesture, after which my strength or
courage were of no importance: his will brought me to his side.

"Prepare a feast," the first sorcerer said, speaking to those magnificent men and women as if they
were slaves.

He pointed at the cart where he'd restored me and where a mass of tall, crystal goblets instantly
stood. I saw outrage flicker, then die, on their faces as, one after another, they started toward the cart.
And all the while, Rajaat's steady control over me never wavered. It would be a king's age before I could
seize the minds of so many mortals and direct them to separate actions. I cannot, even today, seize a
champion's thoughts, nor can any of my peers, but Rajaat could hold us all... easily.

Rajaat was cautious with me. He turned me sunwise; toward the brilliant tower, away from the
cart where Myron of Yoram lay. But there wasn't enough caution to spare me the understanding of what
food, what drink, would be served at the impending feast. I braced myself against my savior's influence.
My new body trembled like a smoke-eater's.
Walk! Rajaat roared in my mind. Your destiny awaits.

What are you? I asked, shattering the wall, though my true question was: what will I become?

Rajaat intervened before I had an answer to either question. A cold, gray mist enveloped me.
Walk! he commanded a second time, and with his will wrapped around mine, I entered the Gray.

I emerged in a small chamber where light flashed brightly and without warning. The floor beneath
my bare feet was quicksilver glass, as cold as a tomb at midnight. A stride ahead, the quicksilver angled
into a pool of still, dark water. The ceiling above me was a rainbow of colored crystals, six stones
mounted in a ring around a seventh crystal that was darkness incarnate.

While I watched in mute wonder and awe, jagged streams of colored light pulsed from the
crystals in the rainbow ring. Each pulse was stronger than the preceding one and brought the separate
streams closer to a conjunction at the center of the dark crystal.

Watch, Rajaat told me, though I needed no encouragement.

A pinpoint of pure, colorless light sprang into being the instant the jagged streams touched. It
swallowed the rainbow colors and began to swell, growing brighter as it did, until the dark crystal was
filled with more light than my still-mortal eyes could bear. I closed my eyes, turned my head, and felt a
faint concussion through my private darkness. When I opened my eyes again, the room was dark, as it
had been when I entered it, and the jagged rainbow streams were no longer than my finger.

"The Dark Lens in the Steeple of Crystals," Rajaat whispered in my ear. "Do not ask what it is,
how it was made, or where it comes from. In all the planes of existence, there is nothing that compares to
it. Stand in the pool beneath it and become my greatest creation, my final champion."

My family did not raise a fool for a son. I didn't need questions to know that the gift Rajaat
offered was nothing any sane man should accept. Yet I knew as well that I would not survive refusing it.
I'd chosen death once before when I'd faced Myron Troll-Scorcher—and Rajaat had restored me. My
life had become too precious to squander a second time. Stubbornness failed, and my legs took me
forward, across the quicksilver and into the opaque water as the rainbow streams pulsed toward each
other again.

"You will not regret this," Rajaat assured me.

"I already—"

The colored lights merged into a lance of pristine light that pierced my skull with fire. I screamed
mortal agony and slowly began to rise. The Dark Lens burst open. Inside, it was exactly as high as a
man, exactly as broad as his outstretched arms. When my heart was at its center, it sealed into a perfect
sphere again. Rajaat's sorcery took many-colored shape around me. It became a pillar of light, lifting me
and the Lens into the sunset sky.

What can I recount of my final mortal moments? My flesh became fire, my bones red-hot steel on
the smith's anvil. Even my memories were reduced to flame and ash. Then, when there was nothing left
but light itself, the Lens focused inward. Drawing substance from the dying sun, the risen moons, and the
countless stars above our cloudless sky, Rajaat created his final champion.

My heart beat in rhythm with the world below me, and I rejoiced as immortality quickened in my
veins. I saw Athas as I wished it could be: a bountiful paradise of flowering fields, green forests,
white-capped mountains, and blue lakes and rivers, all bound together beneath a shifting lace of clouds.

Never! Rajaat shattered my vision. Athas does not belong to us! We are the unclean, the
defilers. Our children are raised from dung. Our blood is filth. It is not for us to envision the
future. You must cleanse the world so it may be returned to the pure ones. The blue world he had
shown me earlier—the Athas of endless ocean and floating cities—supplanted my own vision. I looked
closer and saw that the cities were populated with halflings, which astonished me because then, as now,
halflings were not a city-dwelling race. Humanity's debt folk on your shoulders. It must be paid, Manu
of Deche. It must be paid in full.
Bands of sorcery tightened around me, commanding me to accept my destiny, to obey the
War-Bringer, to revere Rajaat, my creator. I surrendered.

The bands loosened, and Rajaat had made his final champion. I cannot speak for the mistakes
and flaws Rajaat claimed existed in my peers, but I knew my own even before the Dark Lens settled
back into the rainbow ring atop the Crystal Steeple. I took the first sorcerer's gifts because I had no
other choice, but I clung to the shards of my vision, a farmer's vision of a many-colored Athas.

And it was well that the seeds of my rebellion were already planted when the Dark Lens spat me
out. There could be no secrets as I lay on the quicksilver glass, my translucent skin stretched taut over a
star-flecked midnight skeleton.

"Arise."

Lightning fingers caressed me as I gathered myself into a crouch, then slowly stood. I stared at
my black-boned hands. I wondered how I could see anything, but I dared not touch my face.

"Are you in pain anywhere? Do you feel the lack of any vital part of yourself?" Rajaat asked from
the periphery.

"No, nothing hurts. Nothing's lacking," I answered slowly, realizing that he'd known my answers
before he'd asked the questions. "I'm—" I sought words to describe the indescribable. "I'm hollow...
empty. I'm hungry."

I met Rajaat's mismatched eyes and saw that he was gleeful. Then I remembered the feast. When
my mind's eye touched the memory of Yoram's scorched carcass, my hunger swelled. Looking down, I
saw a pulsing hollow beneath my ribs.

"What have you done to me?" I cried out recklessly, though Rajaat would have heard my
thoughts had I tried to stifle my words and, in truth, I doubt that I would have tried.

"I have made you a champion. I have instilled in you the power to cleanse Athas of all its
impurities. You no longer depend on the fruits of the land or the flesh of life for your nourishment. I have
given you a gift beyond measure. Sunlight will sustain you, but you will grow sleek only in pursuit of your
destiny. As you cleanse Athas, death will be your ambrosia. Begin with the trolls. Begin with your
predecessor. Go down, Hamanu, Scorcher of Trolls, and claim your feast."

Nausea of the mind overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees and hid my face behind my hands,
as a man might do. But I was no longer a man, no longer a mortal man with a mortal man's love of life
and fear of death. Grieving for my lost self, I made tears flow from the holes where my eyes should have
been. The tears were sorcery. I realized that immortality wasn't the only gift Rajaat had given me. My
whims were spells. I marveled at my powers, then I felt my hunger.

I knew in an instant that it was death I craved, not bread.

"Hate me, if it pleases you," Rajaat said without losing his smile. My thoughts were transparent to
him. "I don't expect thanks... or willing obedience."

I swallowed hard, never mind that I had no gullet except in my imagination; a champion's
imagination is more potent than material truth. The imaginary act, however, stirred my appetite to new
heights.

"Will you or not, you'll fulfill your destiny." Rajaat's foul teeth showed within his grin. "Be my loyal
champion, and you'll rule the world, once it's clean. But, deny your hunger, Hamanu, and you'll go mad.
Go mad and know that you will not be sated until you have consumed every living thing beneath the
bloody sun. Your choice matters little to me. You will serve, and Athas will be cleansed of its impurities.
You will consume the foul and the deformed."

Again I surrendered. Mind against mind, will against will, I was no match for my creator. A battle
with him would have left me a maddened beast, ravaging life wherever I found it. He'd told me the truth
about myself. My hunger grew less resistible with each beat of my heart.

Rajaat stepped sideways, revealing an open door, and the downward spiral beyond it. Measuring
what remained of my sanity, I judged I could get to the ground, where Myron of Yoram awaited me,
before I succumbed to madness.

"Your choice," Rajaat reminded me as I strode past him.
My choice, indeed, and I descended slowly, testing the limits of madness at each step. While I
stood in the Steeple of Crystals, what I knew of sorcery could have been written in bold script on a
single vellum sheet. By the time my right heel struck the ground, I was a master. I'd learned the deadly
dance of life and magic: My hunger sucked life from plant and animal alike. My hunger killed. I
could—and would—learn to use my hunger to fuel mighty sorcery, but it would kill whether I learned or
not.

Become careful, Hamanu. Become very careful. Become whatever you want. It won't
matter. Your destiny is to use the gifts that I have given you.

Warning and promise together. I knew it at the time, though I thought the War-Bringer meant
only that I was to cleanse the world of trolls. I thought—all the champions thought—that Rajaat meant to
return Athas to us and to humanity when our wars were finished. We were wrong; I was wrong. It took
me many years to understand that Rajaat hated humanity above all, because humanity embodied chaos
and transformation. Humanity had engendered the Rebirth races. Rajaat's champions would cleanse
Athas of what he considered unnatural creatures—including humanity itself—before returning it to the one
race he considered natural and pure: the halflings.

I have never fully understood why the War-Bringer needed champions. His power was so much
greater than ours. He could have cleansed Athas of every race in a single afternoon. For thirteen ages,
I've examined this question. I have no good answer. The answer must lie with the halflings themselves.
Halflings destroyed their blue world, which Rajaat wished to recreate, and when it was gone—before
they retreated into their tribal, forest lives—halflings created humanity. But which halflings?

Surely there was some dissent, some rebellion driven underground. Perhaps rebel halflings
created Rajaat; perhaps he found them on his own. Whichever, Rajaat had halfling allies before he
created the first champion, and he and his allies nurtured one another's hatred of the green world Athas
had become. Hatred made them all mad; madness made them devious, and because Rajaat was both
mad and devious, he created champions to do the bloody work of cleansing Athas of the races he hated,
while his own hands remained unsullied.