a sky-blue serpent slithered lightning-bright and -fast across the marble dais. It struck his ankle, easily piercing the human illusion. Unbounded rage and hatred boiled against Hamanu’s immortal skin. Sorcerous fangs struck deep, but there was only bone, obsidian black and obsidian hard, beneath his gaunt flesh.
With the Todek shard in his left hand, secure at his back, Hamanu reached his right hand down. He seized the serpent behind its scintillating eyes. The sorcerous creature was more sophisticated than the one he’d squelched in Nibenay’s abandoned camp, but its venom had no effect on him.
“You surprise me, War-Bringer,” he said as he held the construct up for his templars to see. He began to squeeze, and the sky-blue head darkened. “Thirteen ages beneath the Black has dimmed your wits, while mine have grown sharper in the sun.”
The serpent’s head was midnight dark when its skull burst. Venom hissed and sputtered on the dais, leaving pits the size of a dwarf’s thumbnail in the marble. It fizzled on the illusory golden skin of Hamanu’s right arm, where it harmed no living thing.
Hamanu held the serpent’s fading, dwindling body aloft so his templars could cheer his triumph. Their celebration would necessarily be brief. The other shard had ceased its thrumming, which Hamanu didn’t consider reassuring. The templars hadn’t completed their second salute when the chamber darkened. Sunset couldn’t be the cause; he hadn’t palled the throne chamber long enough for the day to be coming to its natural end. Ash plumes from the Smoking Crown volcano could have caused the darkness; but the eruptions that produced the plumes were invariably preceded by ground tremors.
A Tyr-storm was the most likely cause, those fast-moving tempests born from the would-be dragon Tithian’s failed ambitions and fueled by Rajaat’s rage. Tyr-storms were destructive, deadly, maddening, and, in the end, altogether preferable to the darkness that descended on the throne chamber once the eternal flame in the Lion’s head lantern suspended above the throne flickered, then vanished.
Hamanu would not tolerate such an affront. He whispered the sorcerer’s word for sparks. A sharp pain lanced his flank.
All sorcery required life essences before it kindled. While defilers and preservers quibbled and pointed fingers at one another, Hamanu quickened his spells with life essence from an inexhaustible, uncomplaining source: himself. He willingly sacrificed his own immortal flesh. Pain meant nothing if it thwarted Rajaat’s grand design. Whatever essence he surrendered would be replaced, of course. But a man could draw water in a leaky bucket if he moved fast enough, and although the dragon metamorphosis was, ultimately, unstoppable, Hamanu prolonged his own agony at every opportunity.
His thoughts carried the quickened sparks to the lantern wick, and the Lion’s eye gleamed gold again. An instant later, brighter light flashed through breezeway lattices-lightning as blue as the shard-born serpent had been, as blue as Rajaat’s left eye. A distant crash of thunder accompanied the lightning. Then the throne chamber was dark again—except for the golden-eyed Lion. With his templars silent around him and the wails of Urik’s frightened folk penetrating the palace walls, Hamanu waited for the next event, whatever it might be.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“Hamanu of Urik.”
Through the darkness of his throne chamber, Hamanu recognized the predatory voice of Abalach-Re, once known as Uyness of Waverly, the late ruler of Raam. Over the ages, the Lion-King’s eyes had changed, along with the rest of him. Urik’s Lion-King could see as dwarves, elves, and the other Rebirth races saw—not merely the reflection of external light, but the warm light that radiated from the bodies of the living. More than that, he could see magic in its ethereal form: the golden glow of the medallions his templars wore, the deep cobalt aura—scarcely visible, even to him—that surrounded the blond Raamin templar.
Uyness’s voice came from the aura, but not from any spell the queen of Raam had cast in life or death. Hamanu thought immediately of Rajaat, but the first sorcerer hadn’t cast the spell that put words in the air around the dumbfounded Raamin; nor had any other champion. Yet it was a subtle, powerful spell, as subtle and powerful as the stealth spell Hamanu aged in his workroom. The realization that he could not put a name to the sorcerer who cast it sent a shiver down his black-boned spine.
“Mark me well, Hamanu of Urik: the War-Bringer grows restless. He’s waited thirteen ages to have his revenge. He remembers you best—you, the youngest, his favorite. The wounds you gave him