The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,117
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 innate conviction that he’d never be treated fairly, a greater appreciation for vengeance than justice, and a quick and cruel temper. There were scores just like him wearing yellow in this quarter and scattered through the encampments outside the city walls. But Ruari had followed a different path. His mother had been a free elf of the tribes and the open barrens, and when she abandoned her rape-begotten son, she’d dropped him in Telhami’s arms instead of an Elven Market flesh-peddlar’s.
Telhami had reshaped Ruari’s destiny, channeling all his empathy into Athas until she’d made a druid out of him.
She’d been ancient when she began her shaping work. Hamanu scarcely recognized his beloved archdruid on the surface of Ruari’s memory, but underneath, closer to the half-elf’s heart, Telhami hadn’t changed at all. She might not have succeeded with one of her last novices if Pavek hadn’t come along to shake Ruari’s world down to its foundations before building it back up again.
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.
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