The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (19 page)

It isn't a good explanation, but there can be no good explanation for why Rajaat did what he did.

For myself, when I stood outside the white tower, I, too, was mad—with hunger. When I laid my
black-boned hands on Myron of Yoram's quivering chest, I knew I would regret it, but when the
Troll-Scorcher's substance began to flow into me, I forgot everything else. It's not a good explanation; it's
simply the truth.

Yoram's smoldering eyes reappeared when I touched him, sun bright and malevolent in the
lavender twilight. Mauled though he was, he was still a mighty sorcerer, and he recognized me as the
renegade farmer's son.

Mann. My name came to me on a netherworld wind of hot, sharp cinders. Kill me if you dare.
I'll curse you with my dying breath.

He strained against the thin silver chain that bound him, wrist, ankle, and neck, to the cart.
Remembering my helpless day on the plains, bound to a mekillot stake while the eyes of fire blazed within
me, I snapped the chains. A great death sigh went up from the plants and wildlife surrounding Rajaat's
pristine tower as the erstwhile Troll-Scorcher reaped power for his spell. But he tried too hard and took
too long. I pressed my lips against his and sucked him hollow in a single inhaled breath.

Manu, he said again, my human name, and the entirety of his curse.

Mounds of reeking meat collapsed inward, becoming ash and dust that vanished quickly in the
evening breeze. I stood straight, sated and clearheaded. Layers of Yoram's substance padded my bones.
My ribs had expanded as the old Troll-Scorcher died; they contracted as I exhaled. I felt a warm stream
of breath against the back of my tawny-skinned hand. A part of me felt human again.

Look at him!
A champion's vagrant thought pierced me to the heart. They'd arrayed themselves in a ring
around me and the now-empty cart. Their auras shone brighter than Ral or Guthay above the eastern
horizon. None among them seemed well-disposed toward me; none among them was well-disposed
toward me.

"Don't be a fool!"

Borys of Ebe identified himself with his warning; I recognized his name from my mortal days in
the Troll-Scorcher's army and recalled his voice from earlier in the afternoon. I turned toward his voice
as an invisible wall came down between me and the rest. The Dwarf-Butcher held out his hand, not in
friendship, but to demonstrate that he controlled the wall. He was a powerfully built man, like the race he
slaughtered, and tall. His hair was pale and confined in long braids; his eyes glowed with a blue fire.

"We cannot harm one another—not here," Borys explained, leaving no room for doubt in my
mind that he would harm me where he could, when he could. "Clothe yourself, man, and we'll be done
with this. I won't drink blood with a naked peon."

"Naked peon—?" I began, letting my rage flare.

The wall glowed crimson, stifling my inept spell. Snickering echoed at my back: with Yoram's
substance clinging to my bones I was not a handsome man. Shamed and bested, I imagined a drab,
homespun cloak—and yelped with surprise when the heavy cloth manifested around me.

But I learn quickly. Unfurling the coarse cloak from my shoulders, I heaved it into the night air
and transformed it into shimmering cloth-of-gold. I transformed myself, as well, becoming Hamanu
Troll-Scorcher before the radiant cloak touched me again. I was as tall as Borys of Ebe, but lithe and
graceful as Manu had been, crowned with Dorean's long black hair, and meeting Borys's stare through
her calm, gray eyes.

"Will you drink blood with me now?" I challenged without knowing precisely what I implied.

But before Borys could answer, the invisible wall around me flared crimson again as it absorbed
another champion's wrath. Not mine, or Borys's, though he was quickly engulfed in the tumult as spells
rebounded around the circle. Untouched in the center, I saw that my peers despised me no more than
they despised one another, and that I had "nothing to fear from them.

Fear was something we all reserved for Rajaat, our creator, whose hand fell harshly upon us,
scattering the rampant spells, smashing Borys's wall, and quenching each aura, each illusion. We were all
naked before him, and though none of us was as grotesque as the War-Bringer himself, our ensorcelled
flesh was no improvement on the natural human form.

Fill them! Share them! Drink them!

Rajaat's commands were more than words; they were demanding images that seared my
consciousness. Two of the women and one of the men fell to their knees. A fourth champion vomited bile
that etched a crater in the ground. I, at least, held my feet and saw the crystal goblets rise from the cart
where they'd first appeared. I caught mine before it struck me; several others weren't so quick or lucky.

The overdressed jozhal's knife would have been useful. I hadn't begun to master the art of putting
an edge on an illusion and I was, of course, too proudly stubborn to ask questions. The flame-haired
woman bit her tongue until her blood flowed freely, but that reminded me too much of the moments when
Rajaat was healing me. I watched Borys slit a vein in his forearm with an extension of his thumbnail and
managed a similar gesture.

When our goblets were filled and steaming, Rajaat bid us exchange them. I sought the
Dwarf-Butcher, but he eluded me, and I sipped the jozhal's thick blood instead. Sacha Arala, Curse of
Kobolds: his name and more filled my conscious mind, as my name must have entered his. Arala's
cleansing war against the mischievous kobolds had ended shortly after the Troll-Scorcher's war against
the trolls had begun. He passed his empty days in Rajaat's shadow.

In my mind he said he'd befriend me and teach me the champion's way.
I didn't need sorcery to know a lie when I heard it.

The blood of another forgotten king, Gallard Gnome-Bane, was in the third goblet. After that, I
grew confused as one after another of Rajaat's champions battered me with lies and illusions.

I remember Borys, though, whose blood filled my eighth goblet. The dwarves had slain the first
champion Rajaat dedicated against them. He, like I, was a recreation. His goblet held a nameless past
along with his own. The first Butcher had claimed kingship and royal ancestry, but Borys had been a
commoner before Rajaat plucked him off the blasted battlefield.

Once he'd stood where I stood, in the center of the champions' scorn. Until I proved myself, he'd
give me nothing and set obstacles in my path if he could, but if I triumphed over the trolls he offered
something better in the future.

My own goblet came back to me at the last. It remained half-full; my new peers had been less
than gluttonous. I gulped the thick, cooling ichor down. The visions I got from my own blood were the
eviscerated memories of Deche. I threw the crystal down hard enough to shatter it.

"The last champion speaks," green-eyed Gallard said and raised his goblet high before throwing it
down.

The others, even Dregoth who'd assailed me when I'd challenged Borys, copied my gesture. For
an instant, there was harmony among us, a shared distrust and disregard for our creator, who watched us
with his mismatched eyes from the white tower's gate.

Then Albeorn said, "Are we done here? I have a war to win."

The War-Bringer nodded, and our moment of unity evaporated. The Elf-Slayer was gone,
vanished into the night, followed by the other champions, until only Borys,

Sacha Arala, and I remained.

"I'll go with you," Arala suggested. "You'll need someone to show you the way."

"Don't listen to him," Borys advised. "Don't trust anyone who's stood beneath the Dark Lens. He
doesn't—" Borys shook a finger in Arala's direction, and the Pixie-Blight retreated. "I don't. That's all the
advice I got; all that I needed. What you can't learn from Yoram's memories, you can learn as you go."

He drew a down-thrust line through the air in front of him, as he'd drawn a line on his forearm
earlier. Instead of blood dripping into a goblet, silvery mist leaked into the moonlight. Borys's hands
disappeared as he thrust them slowly into the mist, which grew thicker, until it surrounded him and he was
gone.

Rajaat' and Arala both watched me as I imitated the Butcher's movements. I shudder to think
what would have become of me—of Athas—had cold tendrils of the netherworld not wound themselves
immediately around my wrists.

"You'll serve." Those were the War-Bringer's parting words as I stepped into the Gray.

Only a fool goes through his life without ever catching the scent of fear around his shoulders. As I
am not a fool, I have many times been afraid and never more intensely than that moment when the
netherworld closed behind me.

The Unseen realm measures no east or west, up or down, past or future. If a mortal lost his
course, he might drift his life away before he found it again; an immortal man, of course, would drift
longer.

I drifted only long enough to ransack Yoram's memories for his knowledge of the Gray and the
striped silk tent at the center of his army. When those brown and ocher stripes were bright as life itself, I
fixed them in my mind's eye and strode out of the Gray.

At the very last I remembered my nakedness and made myself into the warrior Myron of Yoram
had never been.

Slaves slept in the corners of my tent while my officers gamed for gold and jewels at my map
table.
"Enough!" I shouted, loud enough to wake my slaves and the recently dead, alike.

"Go to your veterans," I told the human lumps cowering at my feet. "Prepare to break camp.
When the bloody sun rises again, this army—my army—is going to fight trolls and fight trolls until there
are no more."

There was mutiny, not that night, but not long after. Yoram's officers were lazy folk, used to living
in luxury. Most adapted readily to my methods. Those who didn't perished, one way or another. My first
few years as champion were spent putting down mutinies rather than fighting trolls. I had a lot to learn
about both fighting and leading, and Yoram's memories were of no use to me on either score.

More than once, I thought of Borys of Ebe, but the simple truth was that Rajaat kept us
champions isolated from each other. I could have sent scouts in search of the Dwarf-Butcher... and lost
good scouts for my efforts. I could have searched for him myself, but I hadn't traveled widely, and while
the Gray can take you anywhere you desire, it's unwise to let the Gray take you anywhere you haven't
been before.

And Borys had already given me all the advice I needed: what I couldn't extract from Yoram's
memories, I learned for myself.

Five years after I left Rajaat's tower, my army was a small fraction of the size it had been when I
claimed it. We traveled kank-back wherever our enemy led us. In those days, my metamorphosis was
less advanced, and I rode bugs from dawn till dusk. Every man and woman under my yellow banner was
a tried veteran skilled in fighting, scavenging, and survival. And every one of them wore a yellow
medallion bearing my likeness around his neck. While I led the Troll-Scorcher's army, no veteran's pleas
or prayers went unheard.

Rajaat had made me an immortal champion, with a hunger that only the deaths of trolls could truly
sate. Rajaat's Dark Lens had given me an inexplicable ability to channel magic to any man or woman who
wore my medallion. Not the life-sucking sorcery such as I had already mastered, but a clean magic, such
as elemental priests and druids practiced. Yoram had known of the Dark Lens's power, but he'd never
used it, lest a troll escape his appetite.

To my disgust, I came to understand my predecessor's reasoning. Rajaat told his greatest lie
when he said pain belonged to my past. Without a steady diet of death—troll death, in particular—my
skin collapsed against my bones. I suffered terrible agonies of emptiness, and my black immortal bones
ground, one against the other. Let it be said, though, that I had suffered far worse when Myron of Yoram
held me in the eyes of fire.

Until I slew a troll with the eyes of fire, I didn't understand the true nature of Rajaat's sorcery.
The second time filled me with a self-loathing so profound that I tried, and failed utterly, to kill myself.
There was no third time. I schooled myself to live without the obscene bliss the eyes of fire provided.
Fear and ordinary death were enough to keep the madness at bay, and once I learned that immortality
was not an illusion I could cast aside according to my will, pain itself became meaningless.

I gave my veterans all the spells and magic they desired, thinking I was thwarting Rajaat's plans
for both me and Athas. In the seventh year of my campaign against Windreaver's trolls, I learned that I
was wrong. Rajaat had anticipated my duplicity. Mote by mote, my body was transformed each time the
Dark Lens's power passed through me on its way to my veterans.

One evening, after a routine invocation to purify our drinking water, spasms stiffened my right
hand and arm. I retreated from my army, claiming that I needed solitude to plan our next attacks. The
truth was simpler: for seven years I hadn't shed my glamour or looked upon my black-boned self, and I
wished to be alone when I did. What I saw by Guthay's golden light horrified me. I was taller and heavier
than I'd been. My rib cage had narrowed, and my breast-bone thickened into a ridge such as flightless
erdlus have beneath their wings. Bony spurs had sprouted above my ankles, and a shiny black claw was
rising out of a new knuckle on the least finger of my right hand.

As I stared at what had become of my hand—what would become of it—I heard the
War-Bringer's deranged laughter through the Gray. After that, my army fought as human men and
women, using our wits and weapons whenever we could, resorting to sorcery and Dark Lens magic only
when nothing else would bring us a victory.

For ten long years, my army never camped two nights running in the same place. Windreaver
kept his trolls divided. We couldn't pursue them all, all the time, but we tried, and time, inexorable time,
was on our side. Human villages still sent their food tithes to the annual muster. There was never a
shortage of volunteers to counter attrition in the ranks.