Rajaat, creator of sorcery as well as champions, had written the grammar of spellcraft in his own youth, long before the Cleansing Wars began. Since then, additions to the grimoires had been few, and mostly inscribed in blood: a warning to those who followed that the experiment had failed. Hamanu's stealthy spell was perilously unproven. Its name existed only in his imagination. He would, in all likelihood, survive any miscasting, but survival wouldn't be enough.
Still scowling, Hamanu walked away from the table. He stopped at a heap of clutter no different from the others and made high-pitched clicking noises with his tongue. Before Windreaver could say anything, a lizard's head poked up. Kneeling, Hamanu held out his hand.
The lizard, a critic, was ancient for its kind. Its brilliant, many-colored scales had faded to subtle, precious shades. Its movements were slow and deliberate, but without hesitation as it accepted Hamanu's finger and climbed across his wrist to his forearm. Its feet disappeared as it balanced on real flesh within the illusion.
"You astonish me," Windreaver muttered from a corner.
Hamanu let the comment slide, though he, too, was astonished, hearing something akin to admiration in his enemy's voice. He was evil; he accepted that. A thousand times a thousand judgments had been rendered against the Lion of Urik. He'd done many horrible things because they were necessary. He'd done many more because he was bored and craved amusement. But his evil was as illusory as his humanity.
The Lion-King couldn't say what the lizard saw through its eyes. Its mind was too small, too different for him to occupy. Scholars had said, and proven, that critics wouldn't dwell in an ill-omened house. They'd choose death over deception if the household doors were locked against their departure. From scholarly proofs, it was a small step to the assumption that critics wouldn't abide evil's presence, and a smaller step to the corollary that critics and the Lion of Urik should be incompatible.
Yet the palace never lacked the reclusive creatures. Shallow bowls of amber honey sat in every chamber for their use—even here, amid the noxious reagents, or on the roof beneath Hamanu's unused bed.
With the critic on his arm, Hamanu returned to the worktable, dipped his finger in just such a delicately painted bowl, and offered a sticky feast to his companion. Its dark tongue flicked once, probing the gift, and a second time, after which the honey was gone. A wide yawn revealed its toothless gums, and then it settled its wrinkled chin flat on the Lion-King's forearm, basking in the warmth of his unnatural flesh.
With a crooked and careful finger, Hamanu stroked the critic's triangular skull and its long flanks. Bending over, he whispered a single word: "Rajaat," and willingly opened his mind to the lizard as so many had unwillingly opened their minds to him.
The critic raised its head, flicked its tongue—as if thoughts were honey in the air. Slowly it straightened its legs, turned around, and made its way back to Hamanu's hand, which was poised above the blue light, above the simmering cauldron.
A shadow fell across Hamanu's arm. "This is not necessary, Manu."
"Evil cares nothing for necessity," Hamanu snapped. "Evil serves itself, because good will not." He surprised himself with his own bitterness. He'd thought he no longer cared what others thought, but that, too, was illusion. "Leave me, Windreaver."
"I'll return to Ur Draxa, O Mighty Master. There is nothing you can learn there that I cannot—and without the risk."
"Go where you will, Windreaver, but go." The critic leapt into the cauldron. For an instant the workroom was plunged in total darkness. When there was light again, it came only from the brazier. The brew's surface was satin smooth; both the troll and the critic were gone.
The reagents must age for two nights and a day before they could be decanted, before the stealthy spell could be invoked.
There was much he could write in that time.
I removed Bult's sword from his lifeless hand. It was the first time I'd held a forged weapon. A thrill like the caress of Dorean's hair against my skin raced along my nerves. The sword would forever be my weapon. Casting my gorestained club aside, I ran my hand along the steel spine. It aroused me, not
as Dorean had aroused my mortal passions, but I knew the sword's secrets as I had known hers.
The dumbstruck veterans of our company retreated when I swept the blade in a slow, wide arc.
"Now we fight trolls," I told them as Bult's corpse cooled. "No more running. If running from your enemy suits your taste, start running, because anyone who won't fight trolls fights me instead."
I dropped down into the swordsman's crouch I'd seen but never tried. I tucked my vitals behind the hilt and found a perfect balance when my shoulders were directly above my feet. It was so comfortable, so natural. Without thinking, I smiled arid bared my teeth.
Three of the men turned tail, running toward the nearest road and the village we'd passed a few days earlier, but the rest stood firm. They accepted me as their leader—me, a Kreegill farmer's son with a wordy tongue, a light-boned dancer, who'd killed a troll and a veteran on the same day.
"Ha-Manu," one man called me: Worthy Manu, Bright Manu, Manu with a sword in his hand and the will to use it.
The sun and the wind and the homage of hard, human eyes made me a warlord that day. My life had come to a tight corner. Looking back, I saw Manu's painful path from Deche: the burning houses, the desecrated corpses of kin... of Dorean. Ahead, the future beckoned him to shape it, to forge it, as his sword had been shaped by heat and hammer.
I couldn't go back to Deche; time's tyranny cannot be overthrown, but I was not compelled to become Hamanu. A man can deny his destiny and remain trapped in the tight corner between past and future until both are unattainable. The choice was mine.
"Break camp," I told them, my first conscious command. "I killed a troll last night. Where there's one troll, there're bound to be more. It's nigh time trolls learned that this is human land."
There were no cheers, just the dusty backs of men and women as they obeyed. Did they obey because I'd killed Bult and they feared me? Did they listen because I offered an opportunity they were ready to seize? Or was it habit, as habit had kept me behind Bult for five years? Probably a bit of each in every mind, and other reasons I didn't guess then, or ever.
In time, I'd learn a thousand ways to insure obedience, but in the end, it's a rare man who wants to go first into the unknown. I was a rare man.
We had three kanks. Two of the bugs carried our baggage: uncut cloth and hides, the big cook pots, food and water beyond the two day's supply every veteran carried in his personal kit—all the bulk a score of rootless humans needed in the barrens. The third kank had carried Bult and Bult's personal possessions and our hoard of coins. I appropriated the poison-spitting bug and rode in unfamiliar style while our trackers searched for troll trails.
I counted the coins in our coin coffer first—what man wouldn't? We could have eaten better, if there'd been better food available at any price in any of the villages where we traded. I found Bult's hidden coin cache and counted those coins, too. Bult had been a wealthy man, for all the good it had done him. Wealth didn't interest me, not half as much as the torn scraps of vellum Bult had kept in a case made from tanned and supple troll hide.