The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,56
found the fifteen surviving templars in a line behind Andelimi. Their varied medallions hung exposed against their breasts. Defeat was written on their faces because he had not heard their pleas in time. They knew what was happening—that he’d taken possession of Andelimi—and that it had happened too late.
“We stand, O Mighty Lion! We fight, O Great Hamanu!” the maniple’s adjutant shouted to the king he knew was watching him through a woman’s eyes. He saluted with a bruising thump on his breast. “Your templars will not fail you!”
The adjutant’s thoughts were white and spongy. His hand trembled when he lowered it. Urik’s templars didn’t have a prayer of winning against the undead legion sprawled before them, and the adjutant knew it. He and Andelimi wished with all their hearts that death—clean, eternal death—would be theirs this afternoon.
They’d get their wish only if Hamanu slew them where they stood and drained their essence, furthering his own metamorphosis.
Hamanu pondered the bitter irony: only living champions were afflicted by the dragon metamorphosis. Dregoth was as undead as the army he’d raised, utterly unable to become a dragon, will he or nill he. There was no limit on Dregoth’s sorcery except the scarcity of life in his underground city.
The very-much-alive Lion of Urik tested the netherworld with a thought, confirming his suspicions. Giustenal’s champion had raised the undead army creeping toward Urik. Hamanu could turn them, mind by empty mind, but he’d have to fight for each one, and victory’s price was unthinkably high.
“You will retreat,” he told the maniple with Andelimi’s voice.
They weren’t reassured. Undead marched slowly but relentlessly; they never tired, never rested. Only elves could outrun them—unless there were elves among the undead.
“Better to stand and fight.” A slow-moving dwarf muttered loudly.
He stood with his fists defiant on his hips. Whatever death Hamanu chose for him—his undercurrent thoughts were clear—it would be preferable to dwarven undeath with its additional banshee curse of an unfulfilled life-focus. In that, the dwarf was mistaken. The Lion-King could craft fates far worse than undeath—as Windreaver would attest—but Hamanu let the challenge pass. Urik’s fate hung in the balance, and Urik was more important than teaching a fool-hearted dwarf an eternal lesson.
“Set all your water before me.”
While the adjutant oversaw the assembling of a small pile of waterskins, Hamanu thrust deeper into Andelimi’s consciousness, impressing into her memory the shapes and syllables of the Dark Lens spell he wanted her to cast. If grief had not already numbed her mind, the mind-bending shock would have driven her mad. As it was, Hamanu’s presence was only another interlude in an already endless nightmare.
When the waterskin pile was complete and the arcane knowledge imparted, Hamanu made Andelimi speak again: “After the spell is cast, you will each take up your waterskins again and begin walking toward the north and west. With every step, a drop of water will fall from your fingertip to the ground. When the undead walk where you have walked, the lifeless blood in their lifeless veins will burst into flames.”
“There is not enough water here to see us back to our outpost!” the dwarf interrupted, still hoping for a clean death. “The undead will engulf us—”
“There is a small oasis north of here—”
The maniple knew it well, though it was not marked on any official map. They collected regular bribes from the runaway slaves it sheltered. It was a minor corruption of the sort Hamanu had tolerated for thirteen ages.
“Its spring has water enough to hold the undead at bay—simply fill your waterskins from the spring, and then walk around the oasis. And after the undead army has marched past…” Hamanu narrowed Andelimi’s eyes and made her smile. A lion’s fangs appeared where her teeth should have been. “After the undead army has passed, burn the oasis and bring the vagrants back to Urik for the punishment they deserve.”
They’d obey, these templars he was trying to save. No power under the bloody sun would protect them otherwise. Hamanu, their king, deserved his cruel, capricious reputation. They’d march to Urik because it had been known for thirteen ages that there was no way for a yellow-robe templar to hide from the Lion of Urik. They could bury their medallions, break them, or burn diem, and it wouldn’t save them. Once his mind had touched theirs, he could find them, and so, they would obey-Never imagining that if Dregoth’s army reached Urik, there might not be a Lion left to find them.