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He'd made himself Manu as Manu had been in Deche. Smooth-chi
But, then, being mistaken for a half-elf wouldn't necessarily make Manu more welcome or more comfortable in this gathering. The only half-elfin the atrium was Ruari, the youngest of the Quraite druids, who'd collapsed under the weight of his terror a few years ago when the Lion-King had asked him his name. Surrounded by congenial folk on the opposite side of the table, Ruari wasn't talking to any of them, nor they to him. All Ruari's attention went into his wine cup, which had been filled too many times.
Among the numerous legends that attempted to explain how Athas came to be, there were many tales of elves and humans. Half the tales maintained that elves were humanity's first cousins, the oldest of the Rebirth races. The other half, predictably, maintained that elves were the last, the youngest, the race that yearned in its heart to be human again. All the tales agreed, though, that elves and humans found each other considerably more attractive than either race found their inevitable half-breed offspring.
Frequently abandoned by their parents, half-elves were a dark and lonely lot. A casual stroll through any slave market would uncover a disproportionately large number of half-elves, as would a roll call of the templar ranks in any city. Hamanu had always found them fascinating, and in this gathering of Pavek's friends, none was more fascinating than Ruari.
Ruari's aura was all defense, closed in on itself; it posed no challenge for a champion's idle curiosity. There was nothing about Ruari's life that didn't yield itself to Hamanu's very gentle Unseen urging. The young man had all the earmarks of a typical templar: a vulnerable heart, an i
Pavek's efforts could go for naught, too, before this night was over. Ruari was so handsome, so attractive, with his shades of copper hair, skin, and eyes; and Windreaver was an aching hole in Hamanu's spirit that hadn't begun to heal: Hamanu hid his hand beneath a cushion. He made a human fist and let an unborn dragon's talons dig into the heel of his palm.
He should have taken Manu outside the walls to Lord Ursos's estate, where catharsis—especially the catharsis of pain and fear—was an every-night ritual.
A sudden movement on Ruari's shoulder startled both the half-elf and the Lion-King. Half-elves had a special rapport with animals, which Ruari's druidry enhanced. The house critic—exhausted, no doubt, by children who thought it was a brightly colored toy—had taken refuge behind the copper curtain of Ruari's hair. But Manu's presence had roused it from its slumber. Both youths, Manu and Ruari, looked up from the slowly stretching lizard and met each other's eyes.
Look away quick, Hamanu advised, but druid-trained Ruari resisted Unseen suggestion.
Ruari's eyes narrowed, and he tried to stop the critic from climbing down his arm. Outrage, jealousy, and envy erupted from the half-elf's spirit, piquing the attention of the other sensitives in the atrium. Pavek, who alone knew how hot the fire Ruari played with truly burned, was frantic in his determination to break the attractive spell between them.
Pavek might have succeeded. Critic minds didn't comprehend sorcerous illusion. The critic saw what it saw and placed its feet accordingly. Once the lizard had ambled across the table and begun its journey up Manu's arm, Hamanu had to pay more attention to the substance of his illusion than to the half-elf glowering at him.
Then someone—possibly Javed, Hamanu quite didn't catch the voice—said something about the ways in which a veteran might fortify himself before a battle that might well be his last.
"I know what I'd do," Ruari interjected boldly. His narrow-eyed stare was still fastened on Manu, whom he clearly considered younger and less experienced than himself. "I'd find myself a woman and take her back to my room."
But Ruari didn't stop there. He went on, describing his wine-fueled fantasies—and they were fantasies. Hamanu perceived that on the top of Ruari's thoughts: the boy had dallied, nothing more. Pavek told his young friend to be quiet. By then it was too late.
Too late to visit Lord Ursos.
Too late for Ruari.
Though Pavek tried, putting himself squarely between them when the supper was, at last, concluded and the guests were departing. Ruari was the last to find his feet. Lopsided and stumbling from the wine, he aimed himself at an open door and headed off, alone, for his bed.
"He's hotheaded and harmless," Pavek insisted, and beneath his words the thought: If you must consume someone, Great One, consume me.
That would have defeated Hamanu's hopes and intentions entirely. They were alone now, except for the critic still balanced on Hamanu's shoulder. The lizard never flinched when Hamanu remade his illusion, becoming the tawny-ski
"You will come to the southern gate at dawn."
They stood face-to-face, Pavek a bit shorter now, but not falling to his knees.
"I know."
Hamanu unslung the scroll case. "For Urik." He placed his u
"I will try, Great One."
"You will not try, Pavek. You will succeed. You will raise Urik's guardian. You will evoke every power it possesses, and you will destroy me, Pavek. That is my command."
Rajaat, the Dark Lens, the Gray, the Black, and a dragon, they were all just words to Pavek. He tried to rank them in his mortal mind, but for him, there was no catastrophe greater than Urik without its Lion-King.
"You'll know, Pavek. You'll know when you see what I become. Your conscience won't trouble you."
"But Rajaat—" the templar protested. "A dragon will protect Athas from Rajaat, isn't that true? Isn't that what the dragon—what Borys the Butcher of Gnomes did for two thousand years?"
Rajaat wasn't Pavek's worry. Rajaat would be Sadira's worry, and Rkard's. Rajaat would be their punishment for doing nothing when they could have put an end to both Rajaat and dragons. Hamanu wouldn't talk to Pavek about Rajaat.
"Borys was the Butcher of Dwarves," Hamanu corrected gently, after forcing the War-Bringer out of his mind. "Gal-lard was the Gnome-Bane; he took the name of Nibenay after Borys became the dragon, which was a thousand years ago, not two thousand."
"But—" Pavek had been educated in the templar orphanage; he knew the official history of his city.
"We lie, Pavek. We've all lied; all the champions. When the wars ended, Tyr measured its years from one High Sun solstice to the next, a full three hundred and seventy-five days, but Draj and Balic measured theirs by equinoxes. Their years were half as long. Albeorn—Andropinis of Balic—didn't want to be associated with the champion Elf-