The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,65
stubborn lump of humanity who stirred forgotten memories, gave his king passage across the waste. Hamanu had saved Telhami’s village from one of his own. He would have saved her, too, but she chose to die, instead.
He never knew if she’d found her damned waterfall. Because he’d loved her, he hoped she had. Because she’d left him, he hoped otherwise. Pavek might know, but thirteen ages had taught a farmer’s son not to ask questions unless he truly wanted the answers.
“Go home,” he told Pavek. “I’ll watch the chest overnight. Come back tomorrow or the day after.”
The templar rose to one knee, then froze as a breeze spiraled down from the ceiling, a silver-edged breeze that roiled the vellum and became Windreaver.
A fittingly unpleasant end to an unpleasant day.
“I thought you’d gone to Ur Draxa.”
“I have a question, O Mighty Master.”
“I might have known.”
A breeze and a shadow, that was all the influence the troll had in the material world, but he could observe anything—Rajaat in his Ur Draxan prison or a scarred templar reading sheet after sheet of script-covered vellum.
“Your little friend might find the answer interesting, O Mighty Master if you’re inclined to answer.”
Hamanu could pluck thoughts from a living mind or unravel the memories of the naturally dead; he could do nothing with his old enemy, Windreaver, except say—“Ask for yourself. Don’t involve Pavek in your schemes.”
“O Mighty Master, it’s his question as well as mine. I heard it off his own tongue as he turned the last sheet over.”
Poor Pavek—he’d said something that Windreaver had overheard, and now he was using every trick he’d learned as a templar, every bit of druidry Telhami had taught him, to keep his wayward thoughts from betraying him. It was a futile fight, or it would have been, if Hamanu weren’t wise to Windreaver’s bitter ways.
“Ask for yourself!”
His voice blew Windreaver’s silver shadow into the room’s four corners. It was no more than a moment’s inconvenience for the troll, whose image reappeared as quickly as it had vanished.
“As you command, O Mighty Master. Why did Rajaat choose a thick-skulled, short-witted, blundering dolt, such as you were, to replace Myron of Yoram?”
He almost smiled, almost laughed aloud. “Windreaver, I never asked, and he never told. He must have had good reasons—not from your view, of course. You would have beaten Myron, eventually, but once I was Troll-Scorcher, my victory was inevitable.”
A blunt-fingered shadow hand scratched a silvery forward-jutting jaw. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Someone taught you strategies and tactics Yoram never imagined, and you never guessed while you were…” Windreaver’s voice, his deep, sonorous troll’s voice, trailed off to a whisper.
“Alive?” Hamanu finished for him. “You cannot accept that the son of a Kreegill farmer conquered the trolls. You’d prefer to believe that Rajaat conjured some long-dead genius to inhabit my body.”
“The thought had crossed my mind. I was there in the sinking lands, Manu of Deche. I saw you: a stringy human. You looked young, acted younger, standing behind your bright steel sword with your jaw slung so low that a mekillot could crawl down your gullet. You were unworthy of the weapon you held. I watched as your own men came to kill you for die shame and defeat you’d brought them. Then I blinked, and you were gone. The next time I saw you—”
Insubstantial silver tears seeped from the shadow’s eyes, and it came to Hamanu that Windreaver had recognized him that day on the cliff. It came to him as well that Windreaver could answer one of his undying questions.
“Were we betrayed?”
Windreaver inhaled his tears. “Betrayed?”
“Did Myron of Yoram sell my veterans to your trolls? Did you know where to find us?”
“We retreated to the sinking lands whenever the yora plants there had grown high enough to harvest. The Troll-Scorcher never followed us; you learned why—”
“I followed you.”
“Yes, O Mighty Master, you followed us everywhere, but Myron of Yoram did not. I think he did not expect you to return, but he didn’t betray you, not to us. I didn’t guess the great game Yoram played until I looked over Pavek’s shoulder and read your recounting.”
They stared at each other, through each other—immortal ghost and immortal champion. The air was thick with unspoken ironies and might-have-beens.
Pavek, the mortal who didn’t understand, couldn’t possibly understand, cleared his throat. “O Mighty King—what happened after the battle? How did you escape from the prison-hole?”
Hamanu shook his head. He hadn’t escaped, not truly, not ever.
“Yes,” Windreaver added, breaking the spell. “Rajaat must