been restored as well. Each finger bent obediently to touch the tip of his thumb.
He’d been healed before—several times at the templar infirmary and once in an unknown underground sanctuary—and had the scars to prove it. But there were no scars on Pavek’s hand—at least not the scars he expected. Side-by-side comparison of his right hand with his left revealed a mind-boggling symmetry: every scar he’d ever gotten on his right hand was now duplicated on his left, and the left-hand scars he used to have were gone.
All healing was spellcraft of one sort or another, but this was spellcraft beyond Pavek’s imagining. He rose from the bed, went to the window where the light was better—and his hands remained the same, exactly the same, but mirror images of each other.
Pavek was alive, restored, and wise enough not to waste time questioning good fortune. Setting both hands on the window ledge, he leaned out for a better examination of his surroundings. There were walls, not fields, beyond the tree he’d seen from the bed, masonry walls built from four rows of man-high stones. The sounds that came over those walls, though faint, were the sounds of a city, of Urik. Pavek knew the walls of Urik as well as anyone who’d ever spent a quinth of nights standing watch by moonlight. He knew how the city was put together, and he knew that the only place he could be was inside the palace, which meant Hamanu, which meant he had died.
It was just as well Pavek wasn’t a gambling man.
There were sandals resting on the dirt floor beside the bed and clothes, fine linen garments like the ones he’d ruined in Codesh, hung on a peg by the improbably rustic door. Pavek wasn’t surprised to find a gold high templar’s medallion hanging beneath them. When he’d finished dressing and raking his hair with his fingers—he didn’t need a bath or a shave, which said something about either the amount of time that had passed since Codesh or the quality of care he’d received since men—he stuck his head through the golden noose and opened the door.
“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, grinned anxiously, and said: “Mine aren’t, Great King—not anymore.”
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