The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,116
Urik might reasonably expect the Hero of Urik to lay his old bones on the hard ground of the army encampment the night before a great battle. But Javed knew exactly what they faced and how little difference his own presence on the battlefield would make tomorrow, and Mahtra, his bride, was as comfortable in this dwelling as she was anywhere. She’d practically lived here when it had belonged to Elabon Escrissar.
For that matter, Hamanu had visited House Escrissar many times and in many guises, but never as himself, certainly never as Manu.
There was a glimmer of inquiry from Javed’s mind when Pavek introduced Manu, a Gold Street scribe left behind when his employer pulled up stakes and ran for a noble estate outside the walls. Hamanu had no difficulty raising a mind-bender’s facade to defeat the commandant’s curiosity. He had to scramble a bit, though, to keep up with the story that Pavek was cutting quickly out of whole cloth.
Somewhere in Pavek’s fundamentally honest breast beat the heart of a boy who’d grown up in a templar orphanage, where deception was the mother of survival. If anyone in the atrium had questioned their host’s tale, Hamanu felt certain Pavek’s answers would have been both entertaining and achingly sincere. But no one was at all surprised that their high-templar host had scrounged up another guest.
As for the other guests, beside Javed and Mahtra, there were the Quraite druids, all eight of them, including the young half-elf Hamanu had met before. Beyond-the-walls druids weren’t the only guests in Pavek’s house; there were Urikites, too, eating at his table, and not merely the strays he’d swept off the streets: A cheery earth-cleric helped himself to a handful of dried berries while a smattering of merchants and artisans—most of whom would not have nodded to each other on a sunlit street—talked softly among themselves. That they spoke naively of an unattainable future didn’t diminish the remarkable nature of the gathering, especially in the red-striped home of a high bureau templar.
Pavek was a remarkable man, sitting at the foot of his own table—when he sat. Somewhere in the house there had to be servants, but Pavek was the one who poured wine for Manu and anyone else who needed it. He was the one who brought fresh food from the sideboard and carried away the empty bowls. A truly remarkable man, Hamanu decided as he sipped his wine and settled among the cushions. Quite possibly remarkable enough to evoke a miracle.
Hamanu’s spirit was as calm and optimistic as it had been since he’d left Tyr, which, perversely, left him thinking not about where he was or with whom he was, but about Windreaver. Having put himself in the midst of friends, the immortal champion found himself with nothing to say, except to an ancient troll he’d never speak to again, no matter what happened tomorrow. He hadn’t helped himself, either, with his choice of illusion.
He’d made himself Manu as Manu had been in Deche. Smooth-chinned and slight, that Manu appeared years younger than the rest of Pavek’s atrium guests. He was a child among adults, and they patronized him. Hamanu could have aged himself: Manu had been a hardened veteran by the time Myron of Yoram snatched him away from the trolls in the sinking lands. Lean and scarred, he could easily have been mistaken for a half-elf, if there’d been half-elves in those days and if he hadn’t been short-statured, even among humans.
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.