The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,27
it began to flow down three of the four rough-hewn walls. The liquid murmur soothed Hamanu’s nerves and awed the novice druid, who stifled his curiosity about the spells that made it flow. But the waterfalls had a simple purpose: conversations in this chamber couldn’t be overheard by any means, physical or arcane.
“Sit,” Hamanu told Pavek as he, himself, began to pace around the glistening boulder with martial precision. “Javed has passed beneath the gates. He’ll be here soon.”
Pavek obeyed. He focused his mind on the water flowing over the boulder, and his thoughts grew quiet. Then Pavek’s thoughts vanished into the sand. Hamanu ceased his pacing. He could see the man with his eyes, hear his breathing, and the steady beat of his heart, but the Unseen presence by which the Lion-King observed his templars and any living creature that captured his attention was suddenly and completely missing.
Not even Telhami had mastered that feat.
The guardian, Hamanu told himself, the druidic essence of Urik that shunned an unnatural creature forged of Rajaat’s sorcery, but heeded the call of a very ordinary man. The Lion of Urik cast an imperceptible sphere around his druid-templar and let it expand, hoping to detect some perturbation in the netherworld that would illuminate the guardian’s disposition.
He found nothing and was contemplating the implications of magic that could nullify a man’s thoughts and elude a champion’s scrutiny when trumpets announced Commandant Javed’s approach. Hamanu touched the minds of the guards in the corridor, and the high bronze doors swung open to admit the elf who’d held the title, Champion of Urik, for forty years.
The elf was tall for his kind. He stood head and shoulders above Pavek, above Hamanu, himself, in his human glamour. His skin and hair were as black as the boulder in the middle of the chamber—or they would have been if he hadn’t ridden hard and come directly to his king. Road dust streaked the commandant from head to foot; he almost looked his age. Pavek, who was, by rank, Javed’s superior, offered his seat on the marble bench.
Javed bent his leg to Hamanu, then turned to Pavek. “I’ve sat too long already, my lord. It does an old elf good to stand on his own feet awhile.”
Which was true, as far as it went. Hamanu could feel the aches of Javed’s old bones and travel-battered wounds. He could have ignored them, as he ignored his own aches, but accorded the commandant an empathic honor Javed would never suspect.
“May I hold this for you?” Pavek—ever the third-rank regulator—asked, reaching for the leather-wrapped parcel Javed carried under one arm.
But the parcel was the reason Javed had raced across the barrens and risked his king’s wrath with a mind-bender’s shield. The commandant had a paternal affection for the scar-faced Pavek; but he wouldn’t entrust this parcel to anyone but his king.
“What did you find, Javed? Scrolls? Maps?” Hamanu asked, fighting to contain his curiosity, which could kill any man who stood too long between him and satisfaction.
Javed had seen that happen. He hastily laid the parcel on the bench and sliced the thongs that bound it, lest the knots resist and get him killed. Beneath the leather were layers of silk—several of the drab-dyed, densely woven shirts Javed insisted were a mortal’s best defense against a poisoned arrow or blade.
Hamanu clenched his fists as the commandant gingerly peeled back sleeve after sleeve. He knew already there was nothing so ordinary as a sorcerer’s scroll or cartographer’s map at the heart of Javed’s parcel. Though neither mortal had noticed, the chamber had become quiet as the minor magic that circulated the water was subsumed by the malevolence emerging from the silk. The Lion of Urik steadied himself until his commandant had stepped back.
The last layer of silk, which Javed refused to touch, appeared as if it had been exposed to the harsh Athasian sun for a full seventy-seven year age. Its dyes had faded to the color of moldering bones. The cloth itself was rotting at the creases.
“Great One, two good men died wrapping it up so I could carry it,” Javed explained. “If it’s your will, I’ll lay down my own life, but if you’ve still got a use for an old, tired elf, Great One, I think you’d best unwrap the rest yourself.”
“Where?” Hamanu asked in a breathless whisper, no more eager to touch the silk or what it contained than either Javed or Pavek. “How? Was there anything with it?”