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Hamanu thought of the leonine giant he'd seen guarding the Black and the Hollow beneath it. "Hamanu is Urik." He let the starlight dribble off the back of his hand. "If I went somewhere else, I'd leave too much behind. I'd leave myself behind."
"What of yourself, Hamanu? Borys is dead. The War-Bringer's prison ca
"There must be. There will be!" Hamanu's shout echoed off the mountain walls. A cloud of pale steam hovered in the air where his voice had been. "I will find a way for Urik to survive in a world without dragons and without Rajaat."
Windreaver merged with the fading mist. "You won't find it here. The Kreegills have been dead for a thousand years. They have no answers for you, Hamanu. Forget the past. Forget this place. Forget Deche and the Kreegills, your woman and me. Think of the future. Think of another woman, Sadira of Tyr. Rajaat had a hand in making her, true, and he's used her, made a fool of her and you. But she's no champion. Her metamorphosis begins each day at dawn and unravels at sundown. She's not immortal. She's not bound to the Dark Lens. She's not like you, Hamanu, not at all, but her spells hold; by day, they hold. Find a way to make them hold at night, and maybe you'll have an Athas without either dragons or the War-Bringer."
Sadira of Tyr was a beautiful woman, though the Lion-King was ages past the time when aesthetics influenced his judgment, and he'd shed Rajaat's prejudices against humanity's cousins long before that. Elves, dwarves, even trolls and races Rajaat had never imagined, they were all human under their skin. There were no misfits, no outcasts, no malformed spirits made manifest in flesh; there was only humanity, individual humans in their infinite variety. He was human, and he would not despise himself. That was Rajaat's flaw—one of many. Rajaat despised himself, and from that self-hatred he conceived the Cleansing Wars and champions.
Rajaat's madness had nothing to do with Hamanu's opinion of Sadira. "She's a dangerous fool." Or her council-ruled city. "They're all fools."
"So were you, once. She'll never learn otherwise with fools for teachers, will she? You've got three days, Hamanu. That's a lot, if you use it properly."
Windreaver was gone before Hamanu concocted a suitable reply. He could have called the troll back. Windreaver came and went on the Lion-King's sufferance; his freedom was as illusory as Hamanu's tawny, black-haired humanity. When his master wanted him, his slave came from whatever place he was, however far away.
Hamanu thought Windreaver traveled through the netherworld, but the troll was never apparent there. Like the mist from Hamanu's voice, Windreaver might still hover, invisible and undetectable, in the ancient troll ruins. He might have remained there after Hamanu slit the Gray and strode from the mountain valley down to the plains northwest of Urik.
The Lion of Urik knew the way to Tyr, the oldest city in the heartland. Kalak, Tyr's now-dead king, had been an immortal before the Cleansing Wars began. Unlike Dregoth, Kalak had spurned Rajaat's offers and never become a champion, though in the chaos after Borys's transformation, he'd found what remained of Sacha Arala and Wyan.
The Tyrant of Tyr had suborned the mindless heads, replacing their champions' memories with demeaning fictions. He convinced them that he, not they, was the source of the Dark Lens magic Tyr's templars wielded at home and in Kalak's endless wars with his champion neighbors.
If he'd tried, Hamanu might have pitied the Pixie-Blight and Curse of Kobolds, but he'd never tried. The traitors had served Urik's interest because Tyr's purview controlled the heartland's sole reliable ironworks, as Urik controlled the vast obsidian deposits near the Smoking Crown volcano. With the traitors' Dark Lens magic, Tyr controlled its treasures just well enough to keep the mines and smelters from falling into a true champion's hands.
Hamanu wouldn't have tolerated that, and the other champions wouldn't have tolerated a Urik that controlled both obsidian and iron. They'd have united against him, as they did now, but in greater number, and with Borys leading them. For thirteen ages, the Lion-King had supported the Tyrian Tyrant more often than he'd warred with him, until the doddering fool thought he could become a dragon to rival Borys.
Fifteen years ago, that had been the single act of monumental foolishness that brought Hamanu to this morning on the Iron Road. In the guise of a shabby, down-on-his-luck merchant, the king of Urik walked slowly through the morning chill asking other merchants—
"Which way to the old Asticles estate?" which was where, according to his spies, the sorceress maintained a household of former rebels and former slaves.
They pointed him toward a hardpan track that wound through estates, farms, and irrigated fields. Guthay had worn her rings above the entire heartland, not just Urik. Tyr's fields were lush and green, though not as tall as Urik's. The unwieldy Council of Advisors hadn't summoned levies to protect their established fields or take advantage of Guthay's bounty. The Tyrian farmers had simply waited until their fields were nearly dry before they planted. Tyr would reap a good harvest, but nothing like the one Urik's farmers hoped to bring in... if there was a Urik, four days from now.
Despite two thousand years of rule, Kalak had never understood that a city's might wasn't measured by the size of its armies or the magnificence of its palaces, but in the labor of its farmers. In a good year, Tyr could feed herself; in a bad one, she bought grain from Urik or Nibenay.
Kalak had been a man of limited vision and imagination. In Urik, there were free folk and freed folk as well as slaves; guild artisans and free artisans; nobles who lived on estates outside the city walls and nobles who lived like merchants near the market squares. In Urik, a man or woman of any station could find outlets for enterprise and ambition. In Tyr, folk were either free, rich, and noble, or enslaved, poor, and very common. For two thousand years, ambition had. been a criminal offense.
The rebels of Tyr, whose recklessness had turned the heartland on its ear could, perhaps, be forgiven for thinking that slavery was the cause of all their problems. It was easier to identify abused slaves and set them free than it was to resurrect a dynamic society from stagnation. At least, the council-ruled city hadn't succumbed to rampant anarchy as Raam or Draj had done since the demise of their champion kings and queens.
Sadira and her companions had shown themselves capable of learning. Perhaps Windreaver was right and Tyr was the heartland's future.
Hamanu left the hardpan track. He approached a gate guarded by two women and a passel of children, who could not have kept him out even if he'd been no more than the peddler he appeared to be. Indeed, the Lion-King's problem wasn't getting onto the estate, but escaping the curious women who wanted to examine his nonexistent wares. Realizing that curiosity might be worse at the estate-house, Hamanu scooped up a handful of dried grass and pebbles as he walked away from the gate.
"For your mistress's delight," he explained as he displayed the dross to the door-steward.
With only a tiny suggestion bending through in his mind—not enough to rouse anyone's suspicions—the steward saw a handful of whatever the steward imagined would -please Sadira this deceptively unremarkable morning.