Cinnabar Shadows

"You're awake at last!"

The voice came from a human man, about his own age and stature, but better looking, a man who slapped his hands against his thighs as he stood up from a solid stone bench.

"How do you feel? How's the hand?"

Pavek held it out and flexed the fingers. "Good as new... good as the other one."

A smile twitched across the stranger's lips. Pavek sighed and dropped to one knee.

"A thousand thanks, Great Lord and Mighty King. I am not worthy of such miracles."

"Good—I had doubts you'd ever agree with me about anything."

Still on a bent knee, Pavek stared at his left hand and shook his head. "Great King, I am grateful, but I am, and will always be, a thick-headed oaf of a man."

"But an honest oaf, which is rare enough around here. I am not blind, Lord Pavek. I know what is done in my name. I am everything you imagine me to be, and more besides. Elabon Escrissar did amuse me; I had great hopes for him. I have no hope for an honest oaf, and an honorable one in the bargain. By my mercy, Lord Pavek—could you not at least have taken a look at that map?"

A man couldn't fall very far when he was already on his knee, which was fortunate for Pavek. "Did I die, Great King? I don't remember. Was I already dead? The red-haired priest—I never learned his name—he didn't... You didn't..."

"I didn't what, Lord Pavek? Look at me!"

In misery and fear, Pavek met the Lion-King's eyes.

"Do you truly think I must slay a man to unravel his memories? Do you think I must leave him a gibbering idiot? Look at your hand again, Lord Pavek: that is what I can do. Did you die? Does it matter? You're alive now—and as thick-headed as ever.

"A thousand years, Lord Pavek. A thousand years. I knew how to kill a man when I was younger than you. I've killed more than even I can count; that is the essence of boredom, Lord Pavek. Every death is the same; every life is different. Every hand is different."

Pavek swallowed hard, gri

Hamanu roared with laughter. His human disguise slipping further away with each unrestrained guffaw. The Lion-King grew taller, broader, becoming the black-maned, yellow-eyed tyrant of Urik's outer walls. He laughed until, like a lesser, mortal man, his ribs ached and, clutching at his side, he hobbled back to his bench. The ground shuddered when his weight hit the stone.

While Pavek blinked, the leonine Hamanu vanished and a human one took his place. He was older than he'd seemed when Pavek walked through the wicker door: a man nearing the end of his prime, weathered and weary, with scars on his face and a touch of gray in his dark hair.

"I was born in there," this mortal Hamanu said. His voice was soft; Pavek had to stretch forward to hear it. "I took my first steps in the ancestor of that house when it stood a day's ride north of here, before the troll army swept through, destroying everything in its path—except me. I was in the Scorcher's army. Later, much later, when the trolls memory—" Hamanu's plain brown eyes narrowed, and he seemed to be looking at a point behind Pavek's head, a point far-removed in place and time. His voice seemed to echo from that distant, imaginary place. "I went to the Pristine Tower because trolls destroyed this house. I won the war I was made to fight; the war the others could not win. Troll means nothing to you—" The king looked directly at Pavek again. "When the war was over and the dust, oh the dust, had settled, I rebuilt my house and I tried to bring back the wives and children the trolls had slain. They weren't the same."

A sense of loss, preserved for a mille

"I'm sorry. I never thought... never imagined.... We're taught you're a god: immortal, omnipotent, unchanging. I doubted, but..." Words fell off Pavek's tongue until he managed to choke them off with a groan.

"Did you? What did you doubt?" Another shimmering transformation, and the king was a beautiful youth. "My power? My eternity? Come—tell me your doubts. Let me reassure your faith."

Pavek remained where he was, mute and kneeling.

"Very well, doubt it all. Power has limits. Eternity has a begi

Unable to disobey, Pavek straightened his back and neck. The human-seeming Hamanu was gone, replaced by the apparition who'd terrified them all in the audience chamber when he examined the stains on Ruari's staff. The long serpentine neck curved toward him. The whiplike tongue flashed out to touch the scar on his cheek. A blast of hot, reeking air followed the tongue.

"See me as I truly am, Lord Pavek. Borys the Dragon is dead; Hamanu the Dragon is about to be born!"

Another searing blast enveloped Pavek as he knelt, but, hot as it was, it wasn't enough to break the cold terror paralyzing his lungs.

"A thousand years I held back the changes. I hoarded every templar's spell; I kept Urik safe from change, Lord Pavek. Every mote of my magic is a grain of sand falling through the glass, marking the lime until the change, when a dragon must be born. This shape you see is the sum of my changes: a thousand years more than a man, but ten thousand... twenty thousand lives less than a dragon. That incarnate fool, Kalak, would have sacrificed all the lives in his city to birth the dragon within him. I will not sacrifice Urik to any dragon. Urik is mine and I will protect it—but each day that I do nurtures the dragon within me, hastening the moment when it must be born."

The king stretched his long neck toward the bloody sun. His massive, fanged jaws opened and, expecting a mighty roar or a blast of fire, Pavek closed his eyes. But the only sound was a sibilant curse. When Pavek reopened his eyes, Hamanu in his most familiar leonine form had reappeared.

"You can appreciate my dilemma."

Pavek could understand that Urik was in danger either from its own sorcerer-king's transformation or from one of the other remaining sorcerer-kings, but true appreciation of the Lion-King's dilemma was beyond him. He nodded though, since anything else might provoke another transformation.

"Good, then you will be pleased and willing to tell me everything you know about this thing you raised, this druid guardian, this aspect, this semblance that formed in Codesh."

Pavek had been willing to bleed to death rather than respond to that request. He wished for Telhami's wisdom and remembered Telhami implying that she and Urik's king had once been more than friends.

"Great King, I can hardly tell you more than Telhami must have told you. I am a neophyte in the druid mysteries—no better than a third-rank regulator."

"Telhami said our cities were abominations. Gaping sores, she called them, where the natural order is inverted.

She said that Urik obliterated the land from which it rose and swore no guardian could abide within my purview. I believed her then and all the years since, until you came back to Urik—not this time, but once before. Something stirred when you stood outside House Escrissar."

"Yes, Lord Pavek," the Lion-King replied, his voice echoing in Pavek's ears, and between them as well. "I know about House Escrissar." Then he smiled his cruel, perfect smile. "I knew about it then; there was no need to probe deep into yo, past."

"Great King, what can I tell you that you don't already know?"

"How you raised a guardian that Telhami swore couldn't exist."

"Great King, I can't answer that. That first time outside House Escrissar, I didn't know what I'd done. In Codesh, I was desperate," Pavek didn't mention why. "And, suddenly—without my doing anything—the guardian was there."

"If despair is the proper incentive..." The Lion-King extended his claws. "Raise your guardian now."