Lynn Abbey - The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King

"It is yours, Great One. Everything I have—"

"Manu," he said, grabbing Pavek's arm to keep him from kneeling.

Pavek nodded. "Your will, Great One—Manu."

They went up the stairs together. The child who'd lost the toy was waiting inside the hall along with two others, one definitely a dwarf, the other definitely a girl. They were soft-voiced and polite until Pavek relinquished the top. Then they were off, shrieking like harpies.

"Are you collecting every castoff and stray in Urik?"

"They have nowhere else to go, Gr—" Pavek caught himself. "I find one... but there's never just one. There's a sister, or a friend, or someone." He gestured at the ceiling. "This place, it's so big. How can I say no?"

"I can't have this, Pavek. You're giving the bureaus a bad name."

Pavek gave Hamanu the same worried look Enver had given him at least once a day. But Pavek—Whim of the Lion—knew when his humor was being tested.

"Not to worry, Manu. My neighbors think I'm fattening them up for market."

They laughed. It was invigorating to laugh in the face of doom. Manu, head-and-shoulders shorter than Pavek, reached out and gave the bigger-seeming man a hearty, laughing thump between the shoulder blades, which rocked him forward onto his toes. For a heartbeat, there was silence, and a world of doubt in Pavek's thoughts. Then Pavek dropped an arm on Manu's shoulder and laughed— tentatively—again.

A cold supper had been laid out in the moonlit atrium and a score of men and women gathered together to enjoy it. Hamanu was mildly surprised to see Javed sitting beside his chalk-skinned bride. The king of Urik might reasonably expect the Hero of Urik to lay his old bones on the hard ground of the army encampment the night before a great battle. But Javed knew exactly what they faced and how little difference his own presence on the battlefield would make tomorrow, and Mahtra, his bride, was as comfortable in this dwelling as she was anywhere. She'd practically lived here when it had belonged to Elabon Escrissar.

For that matter, Hamanu had visited House Escrissar many times and in many guises, but never as himself, certainly never as Manu.

There was a glimmer of inquiry from Javed's mind when Pavek introduced Manu, a Gold Street scribe left behind when his employer pulled up stakes and ran for a noble estate outside the walls. Hamanu had no difficulty raising a mind-bender's facade to defeat the commandant's curiosity. He had to scramble a bit, though, to keep up with the story that Pavek was cutting quickly out of whole cloth.

As for the other guests, beside Javed and Mahtra, there were the Quraite druids, all eight of them, including the young half-elf Hamanu had met before. Beyond-the-walls druids weren't the only guests in Pavek's house; there were Urikites, too, eating at his table, and not merely the strays he'd swept off the streets: A cheery earth-cleric helped himself to a handful of dried berries while a smattering of merchants and artisans—most of whom would not have nodded to each other on a sunlit street—talked softly among themselves. That they spoke naively of an unattainable future didn't diminish the remarkable nature of the gathering, especially in the red-striped home of a high bureau templar.

Pavek was a remarkable man, sitting at the foot of his own table—when he sat. Somewhere in the house there had to be servants, but Pavek was the one who poured wine for Manu and anyone else who needed it. He was the one who brought fresh food from the sideboard and carried away the empty bowls. A truly remarkable man, Hamanu decided as he sipped his wine and settled among the cushions. Quite possibly remarkable enough to evoke a miracle.

Hamanu's spirit was as calm and optimistic as it had been since he'd left Tyr, which, perversely, left him thinking not about where he was or with whom he was, but about Windreaver. Having put himself in the midst of friends, the immortal champion found himself with nothing to say, except to an ancient troll he'd never speak to again, no matter what happened tomorrow. He hadn't helped himself, either, with his choice of illusion.

He'd made himself Manu as Manu had been in Deche. Smooth-chinned and slight, that Manu appeared years younger than the rest of Pavek's atrium guests. He was a child among adults, and they patronized him. Hamanu could have aged himself: Manu had been a hardened veteran by the time Myron of Yoram snatched him away from the trolls in the sinking lands. Lean and scarred, he could easily have been mistaken for a half-elf, if there'd been half-elves in those days and if he hadn't been short-statured, even among humans.

But, then, being mistaken for a half-elf wouldn't necessarily make Manu more welcome or more comfortable in this gathering. The only half-elfin the atrium was Ruari, the youngest of the Quraite druids, who'd collapsed under the weight of his terror a few years ago when the Lion-King had asked him his name. Surrounded by congenial folk on the opposite side of the table, Ruari wasn't talking to any of them, nor they to him. All Ruari's attention went into his wine cup, which had been filled too many times.

Among the numerous legends that attempted to explain how Athas came to be, there were many tales of elves and humans. Half the tales maintained that elves were humanity's first cousins, the oldest of the Rebirth races. The other half, predictably, maintained that elves were the last, the youngest, the race that yearned in its heart to be human again. All the tales agreed, though, that elves and humans found each other considerably more attractive than either race found their inevitable half-breed offspring.

Frequently abandoned by their parents, half-elves were a dark and lonely lot. A casual stroll through any slave market would uncover a disproportionately large number of half-elves, as would a roll call of the templar ranks in any city. Hamanu had always found them fascinating, and in this gathering of Pavek's friends, none was more fascinating than Ruari.

Ruari's aura was all defense, closed in on itself; it posed no challenge for a champion's idle curiosity. There was nothing about Ruari's life that didn't yield itself to Hamanu's very gentle Unseen urging. The young man had all the earmarks of a typical templar: a vulnerable heart, an innate conviction that he'd never be treated fairly, a greater appreciation for vengeance than justice, and a quick and cruel temper. There were scores just like him wearing yellow in this quarter and scattered through the encampments outside the city walls. But Ruari had followed a different path. His mother had been a free elf of the tribes and the open barrens, and when she abandoned her rape-begotten son, she'd dropped him in Telhami's arms instead of an Elven Market flesh-peddlar's. Telhami had reshaped Ruari's destiny, channeling all his empathy into Athas until she'd made a druid out of him.

Pavek's efforts could go for naught, too, before this night was over. Ruari was so handsome, so attractive, with his shades of copper hair, skin, and eyes; and Windreaver was an aching hole in Hamanu's spirit that hadn't begun to heal: Hamanu hid his hand beneath a cushion. He made a human fist and let an unborn dragon's talons dig into the heel of his palm.

He should have taken Manu outside the walls to Lord Ursos's estate, where catharsis—especially the catharsis of pain and fear—was an every-night ritual.

A sudden movement on Ruari's shoulder startled both the half-elf and the Lion-King. Half-elves had a special rapport with animals, which Ruari's druidry enhanced. The house critic—exhausted, no doubt, by children who thought it was a brightly colored toy—had taken refuge behind the copper curtain of Ruari's hair. But Manu's presence had roused it from its slumber. Both youths, Manu and Ruari, looked up from the slowly stretching lizard and met each other's eyes.