The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,86
land and was easily defended because it had access to an inexhaustible water supply that could sustain a population many times the town’s then-current size.
Resting a moment beside a moss-covered statue of a dragon, Hamanu recalled the earnest Urikite faces. What they hadn’t told him that day was that their rival, Codesh, tapped the same vast underground lake and that Codesh kept a stranglehold on the only route wide enough for a two-wheeled cart between their natural citadel and the Giustenal-Tyr trade road. Hamanu had gleaned those tidbits from their stray thoughts.
In the few short years since he’d stopped waging war on the trolls, Rajaat’s last champion had become expert at gleaning thoughts from other humans’ consciences. He’d been quite surprised, and very pleased, to discover that elven blood didn’t hinder his gleaning ability at all.
Still, he’d accepted the Urikite proposal, at least as far as cleaning out their warlord’s nest before he dealt with Codesh. That was easier promised than accomplished. The warlords knew the Lion’s reputation, and made common cause against him from Codesh, sending a united plea to the court of the Tyrian Tyrant, Kalak.
Kalak was no champion, not then, not ever. He’d never stood in the Crystal Steeple atop Rajaat’s white tower. He was a powerful, unscrupulous sorcerer who ravaged the land, sucking life for his spells, leaving it sterile for a generation afterward. For the first time since he’d become a champion, Hamanu found himself in an even fight.
After that, there was no going back to the Kreegills. By the time Kalak’s dust headed back to Tyr, it no longer mattered whether the Urikites had invited him to rule their town. What the Lion fought for, the Lion kept. Knowing that he could glean their least thoughts, Hamanu had offered medallions to those who’d serve him—veterans, brigands, and Urikites, alike. There’d be no betrayals in his Urik; there’d be peace—his peace—and prosperity.
Hamanu had found his home. He crowned himself king. The sterile, ashen fields that Kalak had defiled were scraped and cleared. Fresh, fertile soil was carted in from the distant Kreegills. The farmer’s son never farmed the land again.” Ruling Urik satisfied his farmer’s urges.
There was no room for sentiment in a farmer’s heart, or in a king’s. Urik was like a field; it needed clearing, fertilizing, plowing—and a time to lie fallow, a balance of laws and taxes and judicious neglect—to be truly productive. The Urikites were like flocks. They needed to be fed, sheltered, and above all else, culled, lest undesirable traits become entrenched. He circulated his minions among them, watching his fields with his own eyes, culling his flock with his own hands. Like both fields and flocks, Urik and its citizens had to be protected against predators who appeared in the heartland as more of Rajaat’s champions emerged victorious from the Cleansing Wars.
It wasn’t threats from Tyr or Giustenal, Nibenay, Gulg, or Raam, however, that drove Hamanu to build Urik’s walls or ensconce himself in a mud-brick palace. People simply kept coining to his city on the hill. Humans, of course, though Hamanu didn’t ask questions of the immigrants, so long as they didn’t look too much like elves or dwarves—the only uncleansed races left. His dusty, sleepy town grew into a sprawling, complicated city that, of itself, attracted more folk, mostly honest folk, but a few would-be warlords, brigands, and tyrants among them.
Hamanu let them all in, and weeded the worst out after they’d begun to sprout. When his city became too big for him to do everything, he turned to the men and women who already wore his medallions around their necks. After that, it was only a few short steps to the templarate, with its three bureaus and distinctive yellow robes. After the templarate, the walls and the palace grew almost by themselves.
Those were Urik’s golden years, when rain still fell reliably, gently, each year as the sun descended to its nadir, and again neared its zenith. Those were the years before Rajaat called in his debt, before the champions rebelled against their creator, and before Borys became a dragon whose madness devastated the once-green heartland.
When Borys recovered his sanity, he founded Ur Draxa to house Rajaat’s prison and to keep the rest of Athas—especially his fellow champions—at bay. Borys’s plans had worked for thirteen ages—an eternity, perhaps, in the minds of mortal men—but not nearly long enough from Hamanu’s perspective.
He put his head down and slogged the rest of the way through the deserted outer city