The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,23
the water barrels.
No great mercy there, the king reminded himself as he, like the distant slaves, sipped water from a wooden ladle in the shadows of the peasant cloister, deep within his palace. While he’d lived, Borys, the Dragon of Tyr, had levied a thousand lives each year from each champion to maintain the spells around Rajaat’s prison. The obsidian mines required even more lives—too many more lives—to keep Urik secure.
Letting slaves rest each afternoon insured that they’d live to hack at the black veins for a few more days. The life span of a mine slave was rarely more than two seventy-five-day quinths of the three-hundred-seventy-five-day Athasian year. An obsidian sword didn’t last much longer, chipping and flaking into uselessness. Maintaining the balance between able-bodied slaves and the baskets of sharp-edged ore Urik’s defense required was one task Hamanu refused to delegate to his templars. It was his age-old decree that gave the wretches their daily rest and the threat of his intervention that kept the templar overseers obediently under their awning.
It certainly wasn’t mercy.
Mercy was standing here, concealing his presence from Pavek, who’d fallen asleep in the shade of one of the dead fruit-trees. Waking the scar-faced man would have been as easy as breathing out, but Hamanu resisted the temptation that was, truly, no temptation at all. He could experience a mortal’s abject terror anytime; the sweet-dreaming sleep of an exhausted man was precious and tare.
As soon as he’d returned to the city yesterday afternoon, Enver had sent a messenger to the palace, begging a full day’s recovery before he resumed his duties. Faithful Pavek, however, had visited his Urik house only long enough to bathe and change his travel-stained clothes. He appeared at the palace gates as the sun was setting and passed a good part of the moonlit night reading the vellum sheets still spread across the worktable.
Pavek was a clever man; he’d had no difficulty reading Hamanu’s narrative or understanding its implications, but, mostly, Pavek was an upright man who radiated his emotions as fire shed heat. This morning, he’d radiated an intense unwillingness to talk about what he’d read. Hamanu had honored that reluctance in his own way, by putting the novice druid to work in his lifeless garden.
Naked tree stumps and neatly tied bales of twigs and straw testified to Pavek’s diligent labor—at least until exhaustion had claimed him. He sprawled across the fresh-cleared dirt, legs crooked and one arm tucked under his cheek, as careless as a child. Images, not unlike the heat mirages above the market squares, shimmered above Pavek’s gently moving ribs, though unlike a true mirage, which any mortal could observe, only Hamanu could see the wispy substance of the templar’s dreams.
They were a simple man’s dreams: the shapes of Pavek’s loved ones as they lived within him. There was a woman at his dream’s shimmering center; Hamanu’s human lips curved into an appreciative smile. She was blond and beautiful and, having met her one momentous night in Quraite, the Lion of Urik knew his ugly templar didn’t embellish her features. Hamanu didn’t know her name; there weren’t enough mortal names to label all the faces in thirteen ages of memory. He recalled her by the texture of her spirit and through the uncompromising honesty of Pavek’s dream.
The blond druid had fallen afoul of Hamanu’s one-time favorite, Elabon Escrissar, during the zarneeka crisis that had first brought Pavek to Hamanu’s attention. Scars of abuse, disgrace, and torment entwined beneath her loveliness. She’d healed somewhat in the years since Hamanu had last seen her, but she’d heal more if she’d accept the love, as well as the friendship, his high templar offered her. She might, in time; women often grew wise in the ways of mortal hearts, and she’d been raised by the archdruid, Telhami, who was among the wisest of women.
Or, she might not. Bitter scars might offer more consistency and security than any man’s love.
Regarding mortal frailty and apologies, Hamanu had seen almost everything in his life; very little surprised anymore—or intrigued him. Enver’s father, who’d lived two hundred fifty-six years, had begun to see the world with immortal detachment shortly before he died. Pavek, though, was a young man, and the woman he loved was younger still. Men and women lived longer and in greater variety than flowers, but Hamanu had seen how fast they withered—especially when he embraced them.
He gestured subtly with an index finger. Pavek sighed, and the woman’s dream images collapsed into one