The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,24
another, then reformed. There was a boy above Pavek’s shoulder, a sturdy black-haired boy who smiled too easily to have been raised in a templar orphanage, as Pavek had been. In the quirky way of memory, Hamanu remembered learning the boy’s name, Zvain, in another part of this palace a little more than two years ago. He recalled the name because it was uncommon in Urik and because the taste of the boy’s shame and misery had been as honey on his immortal tongue.
Zvain was another mortal who’d been scarred by Escrissar and by Telhami, too. He was an orphan through no fault of his own and a survivor because when he’d needed a hand, the hand he’d seized was Pavek’s.
It was almost enough to make one of Rajaat’s champions believe in justice and higher powers.
But for every Zvain who triumphed over his destiny, there were ten copper-hued Ruaris hovering behind him. The youthful half-elf of Pavek’s dream was handsome, proud… brittle, and oh-so-appetizing to a jaded king who craved the passions of his subjects. Just as well that Pavek had left his unforgettably vulnerable friend behind in Quraite. Even in another man’s dream, Ruari’s dark needs cried out, and copper eyes flashed green as the distant spirit responded to a champion’s hunger-Then vanished with a yawn as Pavek levered himself up on his elbows.
“Great One!” the bleary-eyed templar muttered. Confusion reigned in his thoughts. He didn’t know if he should stand and bow or remain where he was with his face pressed against the dirt.
“I disturbed your dreams,” Hamanu admitted.
Pavek’s eyes widened; he made his decision. His head dropped like a stone, and he prostrated himself in the dirt.
“Great One, I don’t remember—”
Which was a lie; honest men told lies to protect the truth.
Pavek didn’t want to remember his dream, but Ruari’s face floated on the surface of his thoughts and would not sink—could not sink—until Hamanu released it, whereupon the burly human shivered despite the oppressive heat.
“When I asked you to set my garden in order,” Hamanu began mildly, “I expected you to demonstrate your mastery of druid spellcraft. I didn’t expect you to work yourself to exhaustion digging in the dirt with hand tools.”
Hamanu told a lie of his own to balance Pavek’s. He knew there was no magic save his own in Urik’s palace and that his magic had doomed this cloister. He’d hoped, of course, that Pavek might waken his guardian to infuse this barren soil with new vigor, but, in truth, Hamanu would have been disappointed if Pavek had obeyed him with any force more potent than sweat or brawn.
“If you wanted an overnight forest, Great One, you should have summoned someone else.” As always, Pavek’s stubborn honesty won out over the combined might of his fear and good sense.
“Another druid?” Hamanu asked; teasing mortals—tormenting them—was low treatment of those with no means to oppose him, but it did stave off his more dire cravings. “Your friends, perhaps? Ruari? That blond woman who means so much to you—as you mean so little to her? Tell me her name, Pavek; I’ve forgotten.”
“Akashia, Great One,” Pavek admitted softly; a templar could not disobey his king’s direct command. The man’s shoulders shook as he pushed himself to his knees. “She’d sooner die than serve you, Great One, but even if you compelled her to come, she could do no more than what I’ve done. Nothing will grow here. The soil has been scorched.”
And what, a champion might ask, had brought that particular word to Pavek’s mind? “Do I compel you, Pavek?” Hamanu asked instead, less benignly than before.
“I don’t know, Great One. To hear your voice, Great One——To feel you in my mind—” His chin sagged again.
“Do you feel compelled? Did you feel compelled when Enver brought you a plain ink message written on plainer vellum?”
“You know where Quraite is, Great One. They have no protection from your wrath, should you choose to punish them. How could I refuse?”
Pavek spoke to the dirt. His eyes were closed. He expected to die in a thousand horrible ways, but nothing would keep him from telling the truth as he understood it. And yet, irony of ironies, of all those living under Athas’s bloody sun, Pavek was among the very few who had nothing to fear from the Lion-King. He didn’t need to fear for his precious Quraite; Telhami had secured the enclave’s perpetual security long before Pavek’s grandparents were born.