The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King Read online

  "Hey, cripple-boy! I'm talkin' to you, cripple-boy!"

  "Cripple-boy—what's the difference between you an' a snake?"

  There were three of them, he had that knowledge before a meaty hand clamped across the back of his neck and shook him hard.

  "Snakes don't die till sundown, cripple-boy, but you're gonna die now." He hit the cobblestones with his crutch in his hands, for all the good it would do him. He didn't recognize them, certainly hadn't ever done them any harm. That wouldn't matter. They were predators; he was prey. It was as simple as that, and as quick. There was an alley behind him, and though a whole man would undoubtedly say that its shadows and debris would work to a predator's advantage, not his, he dragged himself toward it, still clinging to his crutch.

  * * *

  Nouri couldn't have said what drew him out of his shop's oven-filled courtyard and put him at the counter at just that moment. Perhaps he'd had a reason and forgotten it. Dawn was the end of his day. His customers were workmen, laborers who bought their bread first thing in the morning, ate what they needed, and took the crusts home to feed their families when their work was done. Perhaps, though, it was the Lion's whim: an urge of fortune best blamed on Urik's mighty king. Either way, or something else entirely, Nouri was behind the counter, staring out the open door, when the adolescent thugs seized the beggar.

  His beggar.

  Father had always said a beggar was good for business—a polite and clean beggar with an obvious but not hideous deformity. The crippled boy was all that, and more: His wits weren't afflicted. He kept an eye on the street, an open ear for passing conversation, for thieves and thugs and, on occasion, profit.

  If the boy had ever asked, Nouri would have given him a nighttime place beneath the counter. But the boy was proud, in his way; he wouldn't take charity, not above his place on the stoop or a few broken crusts of bread.

  Nouri was always a bit relieved when he heard the boy thump and settle on the stoop. Urik was a dangerous place for anyone who didn't have a door to lock himself behind. In his heart, Nouri had known that the morning would come when the beggar wouldn't appear. But he hadn't imagined the boy would come to his end not fifty paces from his shop's stoop.

  The tools of Nouri's trade hung on the wall behind him. Not least among them was the wedge-shaped mallet he used to beat down the risen dough between kneadings; it could be used for beating down other things... murderous young thugs who thought a crippled boy was fair game.

  Nouri's wife, Maya, and his three journeymen were in courtyard unloading the oven. Maya would have stopped him if she'd seen him with the mallet in his hand, heading out the door. And the journeymen would have been some assurance of his own safety: he was bigger than any of the youths, but not all of them together. If he'd taken the time to think at all, he might well have thought better of justice. Urik had enough beggars, and his stoop was an attractive place for their trade; he'd have another soon enough. Nouri wasn't a templar or a thug; he'd never struck a man in anger, not even his apprentices, who deserved a beating now and again.

  But Nouri didn't stop to think. He crossed the street and charged down the alley at a flat-out run. With a backhand swing of the mallet, he caught the laggard of the trio from behind. The youth went down with a shout that alerted his companions, the biggest of whom was also the closest. Paste-faced with fear, the thug tried to defend himself with the crippled boy's crutch, but the weight of Nouri's mallet swept the lighter shaft aside.

  The baker delivered a blow that shattered teeth and released a spray of blood and saliva from the thug's mouth. Nouri was defenseless and vulnerable in the wake of the violence he'd done, but the third thug didn't linger to press his advantage. The last youth hied himself out of the alley without a backward glance for his bloodied and fallen companions.

  "Get out," Nouri suggested in a voice he scarcely recognized as his own. "Get out now, and don't show your faces around here again." It was good advice, and Bloodymouth retained the wit to take it. He hauled his stunned companion to his feet, and with arms linked around each other for support, they beat a clumsy retreat to the street.

  "Boy?" he called into the shadows. "Janni?" He thought that was the boy's name; you or bay were usually sufficient to get his attention when he sat on the stoop. "Don't be afraid, boy. Are you hurt, boy?"

  Then, fearing the worst—that he'd been too late—Nouri set down both mallet and crutch. He waded into the shadows and began flinging rubbish aside before familiar sounds snared his attention: tap, thump, and drag; tap, thump, and drag again. The cold hand of fear clutched the baker's heart as he turned toward the light and the street.

  Janni, the crippled boy, reached the stoop while Nouri watched. He lowered himself to the flat stone, same as he did each morning, and secured his crutch behind him before arranging his twisted leg on the cobblestones where passersby and Nouri's customers could see both it and the wrapped-straw begging bowl.

  "Whim of the Lion," Nouri whispered. His hands had risen of their own will to cover his heart. He forced them down to his sides, though his fear had not abated, and the foreboding had only just begun.

  "What have I done?" he asked himself.

  The kneading mallet lay where he'd left it, bloodstained the same as Nouri's shirt. But the crutch... was gone. The only crutch Nouri could see was the one propped against his shop's wall.

  "Whim of the Lion," he repeated and turned back to the shadows as his gut heaved.

  * * *

  Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of the World, King of the Mountains and the Plains, and a score of other titles claimed during his thousand-year rule of the city, could soften be found on the highest roof of his sprawling palace. The royal apartments were on the roof. The doors and chambers could have accommodated a half-giant, though the furnishings were scaled for a human man, and austere as well, despite their gilding and bright enamel.

  The king sat at a black marble table outside the lattice-walled apartments and stared absently toward the east, where the sun had risen an hour earlier. Hamanu hummed a tune as he sat, an eight-tone trope. A hint of midnight's coolness clung to the shadow behind him. A robe of lustrous silk hung loosely about his powerful torso. Its dull crimson color perfectly complemented his tawny gold skin and the black mane that swept back from a smooth, intelligent forehead to fall in thick, shiny elflocks against his shoulders.

  There was no softness anywhere about him. His eyes held the deep yellow color of ripe agafari blossoms; his lips were firm and dark above a beardless chin. The faint crinkles around his eyes might have marked him as a man of good humor, who enjoyed a frequent, hearty laugh—but they could as easily be the brands of a cruel nature.

  A sword of steel so fine it shone like silver in the sun rested blade-up in an ebony rack behind the king. Two darkly seething obsidian spheres sat on cushioned pedestals, one at the sword's tip, the other beside its hilt. Suits of polished armor in various sizes and styles stood ready on the backs of straw men. The armor showed signs of wear, but not a trace of the gritty, yellow dust that was the bane of Urik's housekeepers, as if the king's mere presence were enough to control the vagaries of wind and weather—which it was.

  Hamanu blinked and stirred, shedding distraction as he rose from his chair. A balustrade of rampant lions defined the roof's edge. He leaned his hand on a carved stone mane and squinted hard at his domain until he'd seen what he needed to see, heard what he wanted to hear. His face relaxed. His thoughts drifted to more familiar places: the mind of his personal steward these last hundred years. Enver, it's time.

  Hamanu smiled and patted the stone lion lightly on its head. He'd had a satisfying night, last night. This morning he was disposed to indulgence and good humor.

  He was seated behind the marble table again when Enver made his appearance, leading a small herd of slaves bearing breakfast trays and baskets filled with petitions and bribes.

  "Omniscience, the bloody sun of Athas shines brightly on you and all your domain this morning!" Enve
r announced with reverence and a well-practiced bow from the waist.

  "Does it, now?" Hamanu replied with arch inflection. "Whatever has happened, dear Enver?" Indulgence did not preclude—and good humor well-nigh demanded—a taste of mortal fear before breakfast.

  "Nothing, Omniscience," the dwarf replied, flustered with piquant terror.

  The slaves behind Enver clumped into a cowering mass that endangered the safe arrival of Hamanu's breakfast. He didn't need to eat. There was very little that Hamanu needed to do. But he wanted his breakfast, and he wanted it on the table, not the floor or splattered across the day's petitions.

  "Good, Enver." Hamanu's smile had teeth: blunt, human teeth, though, like everything else about him, that could change in a eye blink. "Exactly as it should be. Exactly as I expect."

  Enver bobbled a less-enthusiastic smile and the slaves shuttled trays and baskets to the table before scurrying to the far corner of the roof and the out-of-sight safety of the stairway. Hamanu caught their relieved sighs in his preternatural hearing. He could hear anything in Urik, if he chose to listen; his vision was almost as keen. More than that, he could kill with a thought and draw sustenance from a mortal's dying breath.

  And sometimes he did—for no reason greater than whim or boredom or aching appetite. But today, a loaf of fresh-baked bread was the only sustenance that interested him. With manners to equal the most pampered noblewoman's, the king broke the loaf apart, then dipped a small, steaming chunk in amber honey before raising it to his lips.

  Fear was intoxicating, but fear could not compare to the changeable taste and texture of a yeast-risen mixture of flour and water when it was still hot from the oven..

  "Enver," Hamanu said between morsels, "there's a bakery at the northeast corner of Joiner's Square—"

  "It shall be closed at once, Omniscience, and the baker sent to the mines," Enver eagerly assured him, adding another bow and an arm-wave flourish for good measure.

  The dwarf was more than Hamanu's steward; he was a templar, an executor, the highest rank within the civil bureau. Enver's left sleeve was so laced with precious metal and silk that it fell a handspan beyond his fingertips as he remained folded in the depth of his bow. It was a ridiculous pose and a futile attempt on Enver's part to hide his disapproval behind an obsequious mask. The fear was back as well, a fetid vapor in the warming air.

  Hamanu ignored the temptation, trying instead to remember if he'd been either more capricious or predictable of late. He strove to remember each day precisely as it happened, but after thirteen ages it was difficult to separate memory from dreams. A man like Enver, or the druid-templar Pavek, or any one of his score of current favorites, had simpler memories and a more reliable conscience.

  Today, however, Enver had exercised his conscience needlessly.

  "I have something else in mind, dear Enver. The baker there—" He paused, casting his thoughts adrift in Urik until they found the mind he wanted—"Nouri Nouri'son, he saved my life this morning."

  Enver straightened his spine and his sleeve. "Omniscience, may I inquire how this occurred?"

  "Oh, the usual way." Hamanu sopped up honey with another morsel of bread, chewed it slowly, savoring both it and the dwarf's bursting curiosity. "The streets were dirty. I'd retreated into an alley to cleanse them, but this baker, Nouri Nouri'son, took it upon himself to rescue me with a kneading mallet."

  "Remarkable, Omniscience."

  "True. All-too-sadly true. He was so intent on saving me that he let the criminals get away." "Get away, Omniscience? Not for long, surely."

  Enver shook his head. "But you're watching them, Omniscience?"

  "Dear Enver, of course I'm watching them. Even now I'm watching them. But, we were talking about the baker, weren't we? Yes. I have a task for you. I want two sacks of the finest flour—not warehouse flour, but my flour, white himali from the palace—taken to that baker's shop on Joiner's Square, and a purse of silver, too—else he'll fire the ovens with inix dung! Tell him he is to bake a score of loaves, the best loaves he's ever baked, and to deliver them to the palace before sundown."

  The dwarf's grin was as broad and round as Guthay on New Year's Eve. The executor was quick with numbers and devious despite his rigorous conscience. Nouri Nouri'son could buy a year's worth of charcoal with a purseful of silver, and unless the man were a complete failure at his trade, he could make a hundred loaves with two sacks of palace flour.

  "I shall be seen, Omniscience," Enver said, more eagerly than before. "The merchant lords, the high templars, the nobles, too, and all their cooks, I shall be seen by them all, Omniscience. By sundown the entire city will know you're eating bread baked by Nouri Nouri'son. They'll stand in line outside his doors."

  "Mind you, dear Enver, it's a small shop on a small square. I think, perhaps, half the city would be sufficient. A quarter might be wiser."

  "Word will spread, Omniscience."

  Hamanu nodded. No one would have noticed three bodies in an alley. No one had noticed the solitary corpse he'd left in a doorway somewhat south of the square. But a generous gesture, that would change lives in ways not even he could predict.

  "Is that all, Omniscience?"

  The king nodded, then called his steward back. If he was going to make a generous gesture to the man who saved his life, he might as well make a similar gesture to the one whose life he'd borrowed. "There'll be a beggar on the stoop. A human youth with a crippled leg. Put something useful in his bowl."

  "Oh, yes, Omniscience! Will that be all, Omniscience?"

  "One last thing, before you return to the palace, hie yourself to the fountain in Lion's Square and throw a coin over the edge."

  Enver's grin faded as his eyes widened. "Omniscience, what should I wish for?"

  "Why—that Nouri Nouri'son's bread is as good as his kneading mallet, what else?"

  Chapter Two

  Hamanu's morning audiences began when Enver left the roof. They ended when the king had broken the seal on the last scroll in the baskets on his marble table and had summoned, by a mind-bending prick of conscience, the last petitioner in the unwindowed and, therefore, stifling, waiting chamber below.

  Sometimes petitioners abandoned their quest for a private audience before they felt the unforgettable terror of their king's presence in their thoughts. Sometimes Hamanu didn't second-guess a petitioner's misgiving. Other times he pursued the tender-hearted spirit throughout Urik and beyond; he had that power. After thirteen ages of practice, Hamanu could give his whims wills of their own and set them free to wander his city as he himself did almost every night, borrowing shape and memory—stealing them—and making another life his own for a moment, a year, or a lifetime.

  Hamanu had a handful of willful whims and stolen shapes loose in the city just then, and touched them lightly as the day's last petitioner climbed the stairs. A thief who'd shown creative promise in his craft had seized a woman—a child, really, half his age—and forced her to the ground in the kitchen yard of her own modest home.

  The king seared the thief's mind and flesh with a single thought. The last image that passed through the thief's senses was the woman screaming as her rapist's hot blood burst over her. Then the thief was thoroughly dead, and the last petitioner was walking across the palace roof.

  Deceit was another matter.

  He watched the merchant—Eden—lift the hem of her gown and step over the blasted remains of the day's most unfortunate petitioner. Most unfortunate, so far.

  Her mind was filled with disgust, not fear. For the corpse, Hamanu hoped. As himself—as Hamanu, King of Urik—he dealt with few women, save templars and whores. His reputation was burdened with an ancient layer of tarnish. Respectable families hid their wives and daughters from him, as if that had ever protected anyone.

  This Eden, with her white linen gown, pulled-back hair, and unpainted face, was the epitome of respectability. Far more respectable than the young nobleman—the late, young nobleman—whose bowels were beginning to stink in t
he brutal sunlight.

  Hamanu didn't truly mind that Renady Soleuse had inherited his estate through the proven expedient of slaughtering his father and his brothers and the rest of his inconvenient kin; link's king didn't meddle in family affairs. And Hamanu wasn't outraged that the accusations of water-theft Renady leveled against his neighbors were whole-cloth lies; audacity was, in truth, a reliable pathway to royal favor. But the young man had lied when Hamanu had asked questions about the financial health of the Soleuse estate, and worse, the fool had counted on a defiler charlatan's lizard-skin charm to protect him while he lied.

  Hamanu killed for deceit.

  The hereditary honor of Soleuse had been extinguished with thought and fire, both somewhat sorcerous in origin and wielded with a soldier's precision. Now, Hamanu and Urik were short a noble family to manage the farms and folk the Soleuse had been lord to. Most likely he'd offer the honor to Enver. After more than an age overseeing a king's private life, Hamanu judged that the affairs of a noble estate should be child's play for the likes of Enver. But, perhaps he'd offer the spoils of Soleuse to this Eden, this plain half-elf woman with a man's name.

  He'd hate to have to kill her. Two petitioners in one morning: that was both careless and wasteful.

  "Why are you here?" Hamanu asked. His templars had written that she offered trade. No surprise there: she was a merchant; trade was her life's work. But, what sort of trade? "Recount."

  She hesitated, moistening her lips with a pasty tongue and wrinkling her linen gown between anxious fingers. "O Mighty King of Urik, King of Athas, King of the Mountains—" Her face turned as pale as her gown: she'd lost the rhythm of his titles and her mind—Hamanu knew for certain—had gone blank.

  "And so on," he said helpfully. "You have my attention."

  "I am charged with a message from my husband, Chorlas, colleague of the House of Werlithaen."