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"Another druid?" Hamanu asked; teasing mortals—tormenting them—was low treatment of those with no means to oppose him, but it did stave off his more dire cravings. "Your friends, perhaps? Ruari? That blond woman who means so much to you—as you mean so little to her? Tell me her name, Pavek; I've forgotten."
"Akashia, Great One," Pavek admitted softly; a templar could not disobey his king's direct command. The man's shoulders shook as he pushed himself to his knees. "She'd sooner die than serve you, Great One, but even if you compelled her to come, she could do no more than what I've done. Nothing will grow here. The soil has been scorched."
And what, a champion might ask, had brought that particular word to Pavek's mind? "Do I compel you, Pavek?" Hamanu asked instead, less benignly than before.
"I don't know, Great One. To hear your voice, Great One——To feel you in my mind—" His chin sagged again.
"Do you feel compelled? Did you feel compelled when Enver brought you a plain ink message written on plainer vellum?"
"You know where Quraite is, Great One. They have no protection from your wrath, should you choose to punish them. How could I refuse?"
Pavek spoke to the dirt. His eyes were closed. He expected to die in a thousand horrible ways, but nothing would keep him from telling the truth as he understood it. And yet, irony of ironies, of all those living under Athas's bloody sun, Pavek was among the very few who had nothing to fear from the Lion-King. He didn't need to fear for his precious Quraite; Telhami had secured the enclave's perpetual security long before Pavek's grandparents were born.
"I grant you the right to refuse to serve me, Pavek. Even now, I grant you that. Walk through that door. Leave, and know in your heart that I will never follow you. The decision is yours," Hamanu said, and within his illusion of human flesh and saffron-dyed linen, what remained of his own mortal heart beat faster.
Hamanu inhaled his Unseen influence: his power to bend a man's thoughts according to his own desire. The world grew quiet and dulled as his senses shrank to mortal dimensions. He truly didn't know what Pavek would choose to do. When Telhami left, he'd had the fortitude to keep his word; others hadn't been so lucky. Hamanu didn't know what he would do after Pavek made his choice. The stakes were high, but even after thirteen ages of dominion over his city, the thought that one puny mortal might deny him was acid goad between his ribs.
Pavek grasped a shovel's handle and used it to rise. "I've been a templar too long," he said as he thrust the shovel into the ground. Leaving it upright in the dirt, Pavek touched a golden chain barely visible beneath his shirt's neck. "Tell me to come, and I'll come. Tell me to leave, and I'll go. Ask me to choose, and I'll stay where I am because I am what I am."
Hamanu exhaled and resumed command of the world around him. Through the golden medallion hung on the golden chain Pavek wound between his fingers, Hamanu felt his templar's heart, the vibrations of his thoughts. Honesty had again prevailed.
His eyes met Pavek's. Despite the fear, distrust, and habit that permeated the templar's being, he didn't flinch. Perhaps that was all a champion could hope for: a man who could return his stare.
A stare would have to be sufficient for the moment. Pavek wasn't the only templar with a hold over Hamanu's attention. Someone else had wrapped a hand around a medallion. With lightning quickness, Hamaau identified the medallion's steel and gemstones and the confident hand that held it.
Commandant Javed.
A spark of recognition flowed through the netherworld to the war-bureau templar. When it bridged the gap to Javed's medallion, the two were joined in Hamanu's thoughts. He'd sent Windreaver off in search of the Shadow-King—the disembodied troll would learn things no mortal could—but he'd sent his own champion to spy on the Shadow-King's army. He wasn't surprised that the commandant was returning to Urik first.
Recount! he demanded, because it was easier to listen than to rummage blindly through chaotic thoughts. Where is this host that the Shadow-King marches across our purview?
Gone to shadows, like their king, Great One, as soon as they saw our dust on the horizon, Javed recounted. The women and their mercenaries fled rather than face us.
Hamanu scowled. For ages, he and Gallard, Bane of Gnomes, had skirmished on the barren borders of their domains, tempering their troops and probing for a decisive advantage. Never before had the Nibenese fled the field. He raked the surface of the elf's mind, gathering up images of an abandoned camp: cooling hearths, empty trenches, empty kank pens.
But not one thing of value, Hamanu mused for his commandant's benefit. Not one overturned cook pot or bale of forage. They'd pla
So it would seem, Great One—Javed agreed, but not before Hamanu plunged deeper into his memories. I'm coming, Great One! The elf's thoughts exploded in the gray ether of the netherworld.
Urik's templars did not generally study the Unseen Path. Its secrets were rooted in powers that Hamanu couldn't control as he controlled the elemental magic he released through the medallions. He made exceptions for commandants and other high-ranking templars, whose thoughts might be subject to scrutiny from Urik's enemies. As a mind-bender, Javed could not prevail against his king, but he could sound an alarm, which Hamanu wisely heeded.
I'm coming, Great One, the commandant repeated, expanding his consciousness to include the thundering kank that he, an elf of the wilderness, rode out of deference to his king—because the bug could carry him faster than his own venerable legs.
The green haze of Urik's irrigated farmland hugged the forward horizon in Javed's sight.
Great One, grant me swift passage through Modekan, to the gates of Urik, and beyond.
Templars—even exalted commandants, like Javed, or gold-wearers, like Pavek—could use their medallions to communicate directly with their king, but never with each other. If the commandant wanted to avoid a confrontation with the civil-bureau templars who stood watch over the wheel-spoke roads into Urik, much less if he wanted to ride a racing kank clear to the gates of Hamanu's palace itself, the Lion of Urik would have to make the arrangements.
There were laws that not even Javed was above, and foremost among them was Hamanu's injunction against beasts of burden on his city's immaculate streets. It was a wise law that did more than improve the sight and scent of Urik; it kept down the vermin and disease as well. But a man did not reign for thirteen ages without learning when to set his most cherished laws aside.
Granted, Hamanu said. He broke their Unseen co
Hamanu projected his voice from the palace to the village, where every templar heard it, and the rest of Modekan, too. Cheers went up, and the village gong began a frantic clanging. If he weren't absolutely confident of Javed's loyalty, Hamanu would have been greatly displeased by the elf's popularity. He had to shout his commands.
"The Champion is not to be challenged or impeded. Clear the road to Urik for his swift passage."
Discipline was lax in the village barracks: half the templars dropped to their knees; the rest thumped their breasts in salute. But Hamanu's will would be carried out—he caressed each and every templar's spirit with the razor edge of his wrath before he closed his eyes. The king made a similar appearance above Urik's southern gate before he blinked and brought his focus back to the cloister.