Part 9 (1/2)

Another of the officers-a short, round-faced fellow that no other man would consider a threat in a fight but was the highest ranked of all-shouted, ”Recall!” From the midst of the honor guard, a drum began to beat. I waved the armed guard aside and beheld a boy, fair-haired, freckled, and shaking with terror as he struck the recall rhythm with his leather-headed sticks.

His signal was taken up by two other drummers, each with a slight variation. The round-faced officer said there should have been five drummers answering the recall, one for each officer. The drummers were boys, not veterans, not armed. They'd been no threat to us when we attacked and rolled up their line, but the round-faced officer swore they wouldn't have run, that they were as brave as any veteran, ten times braver than I. By the look in his eye, I understood that at least one of the boys was kin to him, one of the boys who hadn't sounded his drum. He judged me the boy's murderer, just as I'd once held Bult responsible for Dorean.

By my command, we searched the field, looking for the missing drummers. We found the three missing boys before sundown, their cold fingers still wrapped around their drumsticks.

Battle is glorious because you're fighting the enemy, you're fighting for your own life and the lives of the veterans beside you. There's no glory, though, once the battle has ended. Agony sounds the same, whatever language the wounded spoke when they were whole, and a corpse is a tragic-looking thing whether it's a half-grown boy or a fullgrown, warty troll.

There were more than a hundred corpses around that hilltop. I'd walked away from Deche, and the death it harbored, hardly by my own choice. When the time came, I'd buried Jikkana, and Bult, and I'd seen to it that all the others went honorably into their graves. But a hundred human corpses...

”What do we do do with them?” I asked One-Eye over a cold supper of stale bread and stiff, smoked meat. ”We'll need ten days to dig their graves. We'll be parched and starving-” with them?” I asked One-Eye over a cold supper of stale bread and stiff, smoked meat. ”We'll need ten days to dig their graves. We'll be parched and starving-”

One-Eye found something fascinating in his bread and pretended not to hear me. The woman officer answered instead: ”We leave them for the kes'trekels and all the other scavengers. They're meat, meat, Manu. Might as well let some creature have the good of 'em. We head west at dawn tomorrow-if you want to catch those trolls.” Manu. Might as well let some creature have the good of 'em. We head west at dawn tomorrow-if you want to catch those trolls.”

And we did, but not at dawn. The round-faced officer kept us waiting while he buried his boy deep in the ground, where no scavenger would disturb him.

They held me in thrall, those five officers did, with their hard eyes and easy a.s.surance. I knew I was cleverer than Bult and all his ilk, but, though I'd taken their swords away, I felt foolish around them. My veterans saw the difference, sensed my discomfort. By the time we'd marched two days into the west, those who'd joined me before the hilltop battle and those we'd acquired in that battle's aftermath heeded my commands, but only after they'd stolen a glance at my round-faced captive.

”Show me the trolls!” I demanded, seizing his arm and giving him a rude shake.

He staggered, almost losing his balance, almost rubbing the bruise I'd surely given him. But he kept his balance and kept the pain from showing on his face. ”They're here,” he insisted, waving his other arm across the dry prairie.

The land was as flat as the back of my hand and featureless, except farther to the southwest, where a scattering of cone-shaped mountains erupted from the gra.s.s. They were nothing like the rocky Kreegills, but trolls were a mountain folk, and I believed the officer when he said we'd find trolls to the southwest.

”The mountains move!” I complained later that day. I'd reckoned the odd-shaped peaks were closer, that we'd be among them by sundown.

There was throttled laughter behind me. As veterans were measured, I scarcely pa.s.sed muster. I'd seen the Kreegills, and the heartland, but the sinking land-that's what the officers called the prairie-was new to me. It appeared flat, but appearances deceived, and sinking was as good a description as any for the land we crossed.

The dry gra.s.s was pocked with sinkholes large enough to swallow an inix. The holes weren't treacherous-not at a slow pace, with men walking ahead, prodding the ground with spear b.u.t.ts to find the hidden ones, the ones crusted over with a thin layer of dirt that wouldn't hold a warrior's weight. But sinkholes weren't the only difficulty the gra.s.s concealed. The prairie was riddled with dry stream beds, some a half-stride deep, a half-stride wide. Others cut deeper than a man was tall-deeper than a troll-twice as wide. They were banked with wind-carved dirt that dissolved to clumps and dust under a man's weight.

When we came to such a chasm, there was naught to do but walk the bank until it narrowed-or until we came to an already trampled place where crossing was possible. Muddy water lingered in a few of the chasms. There were footprints in the mud: six-legged bugs, four-footed beasts with cloven hooves, two-footed birds with talons on every toe, and once in a while, the distinctive curve of a leather-shod foot, easily twice the size of mine.

A band of trolls could hide in those muddy chasms. If a troll knew the stream's course-which crossed which, which went where-his band could travel faster than ours, and un.o.bserved.

As the sun grew redder and shadows lengthened, our round-faced officer advised making camp in one of the chasms. There weren't many who wanted to sleep in an open-ended grave. Myself, a boyhood in the Kreegills and five years with Bult had conditioned my notions of safety: I wanted wanted those odd-shaped mountains beneath my feet. I wanted to see my enemy while he was still a long way off. those odd-shaped mountains beneath my feet. I wanted to see my enemy while he was still a long way off.

And I was Hamanu. I got what I wanted.

Marching by torchlight and moonlight, pus.h.i.+ng the veterans until they were ready to drop, I made camp at the base of one of the strange mountains. In form, the mountains were like worm mounds or anthills-if either worms or ants had once grown large enough to build mountains with their castings. Their gra.s.s-covered slopes were slippery steep, without rocks anywhere to give a handhold or foothold.

By daylight, we'd find a way to the top; that night, though, we made a cold camp at the bottom. The sinking lands were familiar in one way, at least: scorching hot beneath the sun, bone-chilling cold beneath the moon. Veterans and officers wrapped themselves into their cloaks and huddled close together.

I took the first watch with five st.u.r.dy men who swore they'd stay awake.

I faced south; the trolls came from the north. The first thing I heard was a human scream cut short. I know we'd fallen into a trap, but to this day I wonder if that trap had been set by the trolls or the Troll-Scorcher's officers. Whichever, it wasn't a battle-only the trolls had weapons; humans died tangled in their cloaks, still drowsy or sound asleep.

I had my sword, but before I could take a swing, a human hand closed around the nape of my neck. My strength drained down my legs, though I remained standing. Fear such as I'd never known before shocked all thoughts of fight or flight from my head. A mind-bender's a.s.sault-I know it now-but it was pure magic then, for all I, Manu of Deche, the farmer's son, understood of the Unseen Way.

I thought I'd gone blind and deaf as well, but it was only the Gray, the cold netherworld sucking sound from my ears as I pa.s.sed through in the grip of another hand, another mind. For one moment I stood on moonlit ground, far from the odd-shaped mountain. Then a raspy, ominous voice said: ”Put him below.”

Something hard and heavy hit me from behind. When I awoke, I was in a brick-lined pit with worms and vermin for my company. Light and food and water-just enough of each to keep me alive-fell from a tiny, unreachable hole in the ceiling.

I never knew how the last battle of my human life ended, but I can guess.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Hamanu's chin, human-shaped in the morning light that filtered through the latticed walls of his workroom, sagged toward his breastbone. The instant flesh brushed silk, though both were illusory, the king's neck straightened, and he sat bolt upright in his chair.

Grit-filled eyes blinked away astonishment. He who slept once in a decade had caught himself napping. There was tumult in the part of Hamanu's mind where he heard his templars' medallion-pleas-not the routine pleas of surgeon-sergeants, orators or others whose duties gave them unlimited access to the Dark Lens power he pa.s.sed along to his minions. To Hamanu's moderate surprise, he'd responded to such routine pleas while he slept. After thirteen ages, he was still learning about the powers Rajaat had bestowed on him. Another time, the discovery would have held Hamanu's attention all day, more, but riot this day. His mind echoed with urgency, death and fear, and other dire savors.

The Lion-King loosed filaments of consciousness through the Gray, one for every inquiry. Like a G.o.d he would not claim to be, his mind could be in many places at once-wandering Urik with his varied minions while being scattered across the barrens in search of endangered templars.

The essence of Hamanu, the core of his self-which was much more than a skein of conscious filaments, more even than his physical body-remained in the workroom where he looked down upon a haphazard array of vellum sheets, all covered with his own bold script. Blots as large as his thumbnail stained both the vellum and the exposed table-top, a testament to the haste with which he'd written. There were also inky gouges where he'd wielded the bra.s.s stylus like a sword. The ink was dry, though, as was the ink stone.

”O Mighty King, my lord above all-” Mighty King, my lord above all-”

A new request. Hamanu replied with another filament, this time wound around a question: What is happening?

This wasn't the first time the Lion-King had been inundated with requests for Dark Lens magic. The desiccated heartland that Rajaat's champions ruled was a brutal, dangerous place where disaster and emergencies were commonplace. But always before, he'd been awake, alert, when the pleas arrived. His ignorance of the crisis-his templars' desperation-had never lasted more than a few heartbeats. He'd been awake, now, for many heartbeats, but so far, none of his filaments had looped back to him. He had only his own senses on which to rely.

And dulled senses they were. Hamanu's illusion wavered as he stood. Between eye blinks, the arms he braced against the table were a tattered patchwork of dragon flesh and human semblance. He yawned, not for drama, but from long-dormant instinct.

”Too much thinking about the past,” he muttered, as if literary exertions could account for the unprecedented disorder in his immortal world. Then, rubbing real grit from the corners of his illusory eyes, Hamanu made his way around the table.

The iron-bound chest where his stealth spell ripened appeared unchanged. Pa.s.sing his hand above the green-glowing lock, he kenned the spell's vibrations-complex, but according to expectation-within.

”O Mighty King, my lord above all. Come out of your workroom. Unlock the door. Lion's Whim, my king-I beg you, O Mighty King: Answer me!”

Still cross-grained and pillow-walking from his interrupted nap, Hamanu turned toward the sound, toward an ordinary door. Neither the voice nor the door struck a chord of recognition.

”Are you within, O Mighty King? It is I, Enver, O Mighty King.”

Enver. Of course it was Enver; the fog in Hamanu's mind lifted. He could see his steward with his mind's eye. The loyal dwarf stood just outside the door he'd sealed from the inside with lethal wards. Anxious wrinkles creased Enver's brow. His fingers were white-knuckled and trembling as he squeezed his medallion.

Hamanu judged it ill omened that this morning, of all mornings, Enver was addressing him as a mighty king rather than an omniscient G.o.d. He broke the warding with a wave of his hand, slid back the bolt, and opened the door.

”Here I am, dear Enver. Here I've been all along. I was merely sleeping,” Hamanu lapsed into his habitual bone-dry, ironic inflection, as if he were-and had always been-the heavy-sleeping human he appeared to be.

The dwarf was not taken in. His eyes widened, and anxiety rippled above his brows, across his bald head. A frantic dialogue of inquiry and doubt roiled Enver's thoughts, but his spoken words were calm.

”You're needed in the throne chamber, O Mighty-Omniscience.” With evident effort, Enver resurrected the habits of a lifetime. ”Will you want breakfast, Omniscience? A bath and a swim?” With evident effort, Enver resurrected the habits of a lifetime. ”Will you want breakfast, Omniscience? A bath and a swim?”

A few of the filaments Hamanu had released when he awakened were, at last, winding back to him, winding back in a single ominous thread. Templars had died at Todek village, died so fast and thoroughly that their last thoughts revealed nothing, and the living minds that had summoned him were uselessly overwrought.

Elven templars were already running the road from Todek to Urik. Their thoughts were all pulse and breath. Coherent explanations would have to wait until they arrived at the palace.

Other filaments had traveled to a score of templars at a refugee outpost on Urik's southeastern border. There, the filaments had been frayed and tangled by the same sort of interference the Oba of Gulg had wielded in the southwest yesterday. In the hope that something would get through, Hamanu widened the Dark Lens link between himself and his templars. He granted them whatever spells they'd requested. But it wasn't spells those desperate minds wanted. They wanted him: Hamanu, the Lion-King, their G.o.d and mighty leader, and they wanted him beside them.