The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King (30 page)

"I don't know, Pavek. But she's beautiful, and I think she loves me," Ruari whispered his answers
before they separated. "I think it's forever."

"I'm sure it is." Pavek held Ruari at arm's length; the young man was clearly besotted. But that
was hardly surprising. "I'm sure you'll be very happy together."

He saw them together in his mind's eye—Ruari and a beautiful woman and children, also
beautiful; one of whom had yellow eyes. Pavek hadn't ever had a vision before; prophecy wasn't at all
common among druids... or templars. But he believed what he saw, and it lifted his heart. He hugged
Ruari again, then let him go, and walked by himself to the tower's southern balustrade where, with his
vision still strong in his mind, he stared at the empty road until he could see both of them together.

A hand fell heavily on his shoulder: Javed, his face deep in a hard, unreadable expression.

"Manu?" the elven commandant asked.

"Yes."
Javed's hand left Pavek's shoulder. It made a fist that struck the black breastplate armor over the
commandant's heart: a lifetime of unquestioning obedience followed by an eyes-closed sigh.

Pavek nodded. "Hope," he agreed.

But not for long. While both men watched, a second sun began to rise where the southern road
met the horizon. It was as bright as the eastern sun and the same bloody color.

"Whim of the lion," one of the sergeants swore; the rest of them had lost their voices.

The templars lost more a few moments later when every medalLion-wearing man and woman
collapsed. Pavek wrapped his arms around his head, lest his skull burst from the fire within. He beat his
forehead on the rough planks of the watchtower floor. That helped, countering pain with pain. Someone
stood behind him and broke his medallion's golden chain; that helped more.

But by then, it wasn't the physical pain that kept him on his knees with his face to the floor. It was
the certain knowledge that the Lion-King, the Unseen presence in his life since he'd turned fifteen and
received his first crude, ceramic medallion, had released him, had abandoned him, rather than destroy
him.

Slowly, Pavek straightened and sat back on his heels. Javed was in front of him; his lips were
bleeding where he'd bitten them. There were no words for what they felt as they steadied themselves
against the balustrade and stood up. They turned away from each other and looked south, where the
second sun had vanished behind—or within—a towering pillar of dust and light.

One of the lesser-ranked templars in the gate tower began a cheer. It died unfinished in her
throat. No mortal could celebrate what was happening in the south once the sounds of death and sorcery
reached the Urik walls.

The cloud-pillar grew until it could grow no higher—as high and mighty as the towering plumes
that heralded an eruption of the Smoking Crown volcano to the northwest. Then, like those sooty
plumes, the pillar began to flatten and spread out at its top. Lightning arcs connected the outer edge of
the spreading cloud with the ground. The lightning danced wildly; it persisted longer than the blue bolts of
a Tyr-storm.

Pavek knew—they all knew, though none of them was a weather witch—that the bolts sprang up
from the ground, not down from the cloud.

The templars of Nibenay, Gulg, and Giustenal were not as fortunate as their Urikite peers. Their
kings had sacrificed them and the rest of the three enemy armies to the dragon taking shape within the
seething pillar.

Without warning, the cloud disintegrated before their awestruck eyes. A deep, rumbling roar
struck the tower a few heartbeats later. Like a mighty fist—a dragon's fist—it drove each and every one
of them backward. The tower shuddered and swayed; strong men and women fell to their knees and
screamed in abject terror. Behind them, within Urik itself, roofs and walls collapsed, their lesser tumult
subsumed in the ongoing echo of the southern blast. An echo that seemed, to Pavek, to last forever.

"We're next!" he shouted. He felt his words in his lungs and on his tongue, but his voice never
penetrated his deafened ears.

But one voice did: Behold! The Dragon of Urik!

And another voice, immediately after the first: Now, Pavek.

He crawled to the balustrade. The blast-weakened rail crumbled in his hand when he clutched it.
Pavek stood carefully, looked south. Everything was quiet beneath the light and heat of a single sun. The
cloud was gone—as if it had never been. The three dark sprawls where the three enemy armies had
camped were gone, too. The places where they'd been were as pale and dazzling as bleached bones in
the morning light.

But the dark line of Urik's army still circled the still-green fields. They'd survived. They'd all
survived. Their king was, indeed, stronger than the nature Rajaat and the other champions had given him.

Now, Pavek. Now, or never!

There was a black dot on the southern road, moving toward them. Far smaller than the
monstrous creature Pavek had seen within the cloud, he didn't, at first, comprehend the words echoing in
his thoughts. He didn't comprehend that they had not come from a frantic Quraite druid, but from the
moving dot, the dragon, racing toward Urik's walls.

There were no mnemonics or patterns in Pavek's mind when he evoked the city's essence, just
need—burning, desperate need.

Surely need had never been greater than the moment when Pavek reached out of himself to
evoke—to implore and beg for—the Urik guardian's aid. The other times, the guardian had been pleased
to save a handful of individuals. Surely, the guardian would be pleased now to save the entire city.

Hamanu had thought so, and as he poured himself into the evocation, Pavek believed in Hamanu
and the guardian equally, together. The guardian was the life essence of the city and Hamanu—the
Hamanu that Pavek had known-had just died for it. No one could do more than the Lion-

King had done, yet Pavek tried, pouring himself into the evocation until he was empty, until they
could see the dragon clearly: a scintillating black presence, as tall as the south gate tower and coming
closer, with nothing—nothing at all—rousing from the depths to stop him.

Wisps of netherworld mist rose from the dragon's lustrous hide. His shape shifted subtly as he
approached the tower. The changes were difficult for a mortal eye to perceive, but the eldest of the
Quraite druids had a notion:

"He's not finished, not fully realized."

Pavek remembered the vellum, remembered the passages about Borys and the hundred years
during which the unfinished dragon had ravaged the heartland before he regained his sanity.

"He's bigger than the Dragon of Tyr," Javed said to no one in particular; he was the only one
among them who could make the comparison. "Different, yet the same."

"The guardian, Pavek." That was Ruari. "Where's the guardian?"

"I couldn't evoke it," he answered, giving voice to defeat and despair. "They can't be in the same
place, Hamanu and the guardian."

A chorus of curses erupted, followed by moans of fear and despair, and a shout as one of the
druids chose to leap from the tower to her death rather than face the Dragon of Urik. The dragon was a
hundred paces away—a hundred of Pavek's paces, about eighty of Javed's, about ten of the dragon's.
They could see it quite clearly now, more clearly than anyone truly wished to see a dragon.

Pavek, who'd seen Hamanu's true shape, saw the resemblance, though, in truth, the resemblance
wasn't great. The talons were the same, though much larger, and the dragon's eyes were sulphur yellow.
They were lidless eyes, now, covered with iridescent scales that shimmered in the light. Their pupils were
sword-shaped, sword-sized. They did not seem so much to be eyes looking out as they seemed to be
openings into a fathomless, dark space.

The longer Pavek looked at them, the less resemblance there seemed to be, until the dragon tilted
its massive head.

"He sees us," Javed said. "Hamanu knows we're here. Go away, O Mighty One! Urik isn't your
home any longer. Go fight Rajaat!"

The dragon cocked its head to the other side. Pavek was tempted—they were all tempted—to
hope that something of Urik's Lion-King remained, resisting the madness that had claimed Borys's sanity
for a hundred years. Hope vanished when the dragon roared and a gout of steaming grit battered the
massive gate directly beneath them.

The dragon strode forward, its arms spread wide enough to seize a mekillot, ghastly liquid
dripping from its bared fangs. Pavek's heart froze beneath his ribs; he couldn't keep his eyes open. The
blasted, battered walls shuddered, and then there was light—brilliant, golden light that blinded him though
his eyes were closed. There was a second dragon roar, and a third, with mortal screams between them.
The air reeked and steamed.
Pavek thought he was going to die with the others, but death didn't take him, and when he
opened his eyes he saw that everyone around him remained alive, as well. Those who'd screamed had
screamed from terror, not injury.

Urik's walls replied with another golden flash, and the dragon retreated.

"The Lion-Kings!" a templar shouted. "The eyes of the Lion-Kings."

The huge crystal eyes of the carved and painted portraits that marched along the city's walls were
the source of the golden light that flashed a third time to drive the dragon farther back.

"The guardian," Pavek corrected as he began to laugh and shout for joy.

His celebration was contagious, but short-lived. The dragon didn't give up, and though the
guardian lights drove it back every time it surged forward, the stalemate could not endure indefinitely.

And wouldn't have to. Well before midday, there was another cloud pillar spilling over the
southern horizon. They speculated, exchanging the names of their enemies, until the cloud was large
enough, close enough, that they could see the blue lightning seething inside.

"Tyr-storm," was the general consensus, but Javed and Pavek knew better:

"Rajaat," they told each other.

"They'll fight; the Lion-King will win, the Dragon of Urik will win," Javed continued.

"Not here," Pavek countered. "They'll destroy the city."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he'll see it coming and go south to meet it. Far enough south to save
the city."

They made fools of themselves, then, while Rajaat's storm cloud drew closer, jumping up and
down, waving their arms, shouting, trying to get the dragon's attention. It was mad, or mindless; it didn't
understand, never looked over its shoulder to see another enemy coming up behind it.

If it—if the Dragon of Urik perceived Rajaat as the enemy. If enough of Hamanu remained within
it, hating his creator. If it hadn't become Rajaat's final champion, destined to cleanse humanity from
everywhere in the heartland.

The guardian was enough against a mad, mindless dragon, but not against Rajaat's conscious
insanity. Pavek slipped down the tower stairs. He opened the postern door—its warding had been
dispelled when Hamanu released the medallions—and began walking toward the dragon.

"Rajaat," he shouted, though the words he held in his mind were the words Hamanu had written
and the images they conjured. "Rajaat is coming to destroy Urik."

The dragon surged forward, arms out, reaching for Pavek. The yellow Lion-King lights drove it
back.

Pavek tried again: "Urik, Hamanu—Rajaat will destroy Urik!"

Another surge, another flash.

"The fields, Hamanu! He'll destroy the fields where the green grain grows!"

This time the dragon stopped. It cocked its head, as it had before, and swiveled its long neck
down to get a better look.

"Rajaat will destroy the fields, Hamanu. Winning's no good, if the grain won't grow."

A brimstone sigh washed over him. The dragon straightened and turned. It pointed its snout at the
approaching storm and along the horizon, swaying from east to west, where—Pavek hoped—it saw the
fields. At last the dragon roared and began walking—then running—to the south.

The blue storm raged above the black dragon and the dragon raged back. Neither fought with
conscious intent, but instinct was strong, as was hatred—especially in the dragon, which moved
constantly to the south, then to the southeast, as it fought. When they entered the Sea of Silt, they raised
enough dust to blot out the sun for the three days they needed to reach the island where another dragon
had built a city around a prison.

If the War-Bringer had had more than a toehold in the substantial world, he could have crushed
the black dragon as he'd crushed Borys. But he had only Tithian and Tithian's storms, which had already
proved ineffective. And he lost Tithian, too, shortly after the black dragon entered Ur Draxa, when
Tithian's mortal enemies from Tyr planted themselves on the rim of the lava lake and drove their erstwhile
king back into the Dark Lens.

That cleared a path, which the dragon followed into the molten rock. It roared; it howled as even
its tough hide was seared away by the heat. For an instant, there was thought within the agony. Rajaat's
hope soared; he spun dense sorcery from the Hollow, promising to heal his wayward champion's wounds
and grant his wishes.

I wish for your bones, your heart, your shadow.

The dragon leapt out of the lava, trailing fire behind him. He arched his back and dived beneath
the molten surface. Beyond the reach of curse or care, he plunged to the bottom, where lava became
stone, where the remnants of Rajaat's substance had formed a crystal matrix around the Dark Lens.
Smashing the crystal, he gathered the shattered pieces in his arms. He left the Lens for the mortals to
destroy or control, as they wished; it was merely an artifact, neither inherently good or evil. Then, with
the last of his strength, he took himself into the stone heart of Athas.

Athas claimed the black dragon. It stripped him of his hard-won treasures; swallowing the
War-Bringer's substance while it sealed the dragon himself in a tomb that shrank and squeezed. Then,
when there was nothing left of the dragon, Athas restored Hamanu's sanity, while leaving him encased in
stone. He was still immortal: he couldn't die, even without air, water, or food, with the weight of the
world pressed around him.