The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,28

head. “A piece of parchment, Great One. A message, I imagine. But the thing had bleached and aged it like this silk. We didn’t so much find it as one of our men stumbled across it and died…” The elf paused and met Hamanu’s eyes, waiting for a reaction Hamanu wasn’t ready to reveal. He coughed nervously and continued, “I can’t say for certain that the Nibenese left anything behind deliberately—”

“You may be certain it was deliberate,” Hamanu assured him with a weary sigh.

He waved the mortals aside and shed the glamour surrounding his right hand. Neither man reacted to the skeletal fingers, with their menacing black talons—or, rather, each man strove to swallow his shock as Hamanu carefully slit the remaining silk.

A black glass shard as long as an elf’s arm came into view. Obsidian, but as different from the obsidian in Urik’s mines as mortals were from Rajaat’s champions.

“Dregoth?” Hamanu mused aloud. Was this what Gal-lard had received in payment for his agafari staves? Before he could wonder further, a red ember grew on the shard’s tip. “Stand back,” he advised his mortal companions. “Stand very still.”

A smoky pall rose from the shard, obscuring the ember from any eyes less keen than Hamanu’s, which saw in it a familiar, blue-green eye. A foul odor, partly brimstone, partly the mold and decay of death, permeated the window-less chamber. Shedding his human glamour completely, Hamanu bared dripping fangs. The pall congealed in a heartbeat and, like a serpent, coiled up Hamanu’s arm. It grew with lightning speed until it wound from his ankles to his neck.

“Damn Nibenay!” Javed shouted as he drew his sword, risking his life twice-over as he disobeyed his king’s command and prepared to do battle with sorcery.

“Fool!” Hamanu replied, which froze the commandant where he stood, though it was neither the Shadow-King nor Javed who occupied the forefront of his thoughts. “I am no longer the man fate made of me,” he warned the sooty serpent constricting his ribs and neck.

Working his hand through the serpent’s sorcerous coils, Hamanu found the head and wrenched it into the light where he could see it. And it could see him.

“I am not the man you thought I was.”

With a flicking gesture, Hamanu impaled the serpent’s head on his thumb’s talon, then he let the heat of his rage escape from his heart. The serpent writhed. Ignoring the talon piercing its skull, it opened its mouth and hissed. Glowing, molten blood flowed from its fangs, covering Hamanu’s wrist. Hamanu hissed back and, reaching into the Gray, summoned a knife from the void.

He cut off the serpent’s head. Its coils fell heavily to the floor around his feet, where they released noxious vapors as they dissolved.

The poison posed no threat to Hamanu, but Javed and Pavek fell to their knees. The Lion of Urik was in no mood for sacrifice, especially of his own men. Reversing his grip on the hilt of his knife, which was forged from the same black glass as the now-shrunken shard, Hamanu drew a line along his forearm.

His hot blood sizzled when it struck the ooze on the floor. Dark, oily smoke rose as it consumed the dregs of vanquished sorcery. The stench grew worse, but it was no longer deadly. When the ooze was gone, Hamanu inhaled the odor into himself. He looked down on his mortal companions, who were still on their knees and far beyond fear.

“Did you bring the message?”

Javed nodded, then produced a stiff, stained sheet of human parchment. “I knew you’d want it, Great One.”

Hamanu seized the parchment with a movement too quick for mortal eyes to follow. The ink was gone, as Javed warned, but there were other ways to read a champion’s message. He closed his eyes, and the Shadow-King’s blurred features appeared in his mind.

You have seen our danger. This was sent to me. You can imagine who, imagine how. We’ve gone too long without a dragon. If we can’t make one, he will. Mark me well, Hamanu: he’ll find a way to shape that turd, Tithian, into a dragon, if we don’t stop him. Long before he died, Borys confided in me that Rajaat had intended to shape you into the Dragon of Tyr until he—Borys, that is—decided otherwise. It’s not too late. The three of us can shape you before Rajaat tries again with Tithian. I’ve evolved a spell that will preserve your sanity. It won’t be the way it was with Borys; we can’t