To forestall the death that would follow such insubordination, Hamanu reached into the blond templar's mind.
Who sent you? What do you know about the message and the object you bore?
Spasms rocked the Raamin templar as he lay unnoticed on the marble floor. He'd need a miracle to survive interrogation by a champion other than his mistress, and despite whatever promises the Raamin queen might have made while she lived, champions couldn't conjure miracles.
Don't fight me, Hamanu advised. Answer my questions. Recount.
The templar complied, giving Hamanu vision after vision of a Raam fallen in anarchy deeper than any he'd imagined. Five years after the woman Raamins called Abalach-Re, the grand vizier of a nameless, nonexistent god, had disappeared, Raamin merchants, nobles, templars, and the worst sort of elven tribes had carved her city into warring fiefdoms.
Her templars, as ignorant as ever of the true source of their power, had tried to reestablish their magical link with the god that Uyness had claimed to serve. Small wonder, then, that these days the despised, dispirited Raamin templars struggled to hold their own quarter and the gutted palace. Small wonder, too, that when some of them began seeing a familiar face in their dreams, hearing a voice they'd despaired of hearing again, they'd done whatever it had told them to do. They went down to the dust-scoured wharves where the silt schooners tied up. There they found the shard among the rocks that were sometimes visible along the shore—
Without moving from the dais, Hamanu turned his attention to the elven runner who'd brought the second shard.
Recount, he commanded.
The elf's heart skipped a beat or two, but he was young and healthy, and he came to no permanent harm.
A pair of messengers, O Mighty King, came to the Todek registrator claiming to be templars from Balk—
Another city, far to the south of Urik, but also on the Sea of Silt.
Our registrator, she disbelieved. They were afoot, rat-faced and worse for traveling, with nothing in their scrips but a handful of ceramic chips so worn there was no telling what oven baked them or where. But they knew the things templars know, O Mighty King, and there was one among us who'd been to Balic and knew they had the city pegged aright: merchants and nobles in charge, just as in Tyr. Templars all dead or in hiding. So, the registrator listened—
We all listened close, O Mighty King, when the pair said King Andropinis wasn't dead, but that he needed help before he could give them power again. He'd said they'd find help in Urik if they delivered a message.
Hamanu interrupted, And the message was the leather-wrapped parcel?
No, O Mighty King. The parcel was to be a gift, a truth token from King Andropinis himself—or so they said. The registrator, she ordered them to unwrap it. They wouldn't, until we threatened them. I laughed, O Mighty King, when they cast lots and the loser made his death-promises. But he died a bad death, and the thing was still all wrapped in silk—
Sighing, Hamanu withdrew from the elf's mind while his templar was still recounting the fate of the Balkans. Would a lightning-limned image of Albeorn Elf-Slayer rise in the storm-lit chamber if he unwrapped this second shard? Would it spew a mix of truth and error, promises and threats? Were there, at this very moment, messengers from the championless city of Draj headed for Urik's walls with a deadly shard bundled under their arms?
Hamanu let the bundle under his left arm slide back onto the hard seat of the throne behind him. He was ready to deal with his elite templars, ready for the storm to be over, but not quite ready to raise a figurative fist against the powers that spawned it.
Tyr-storms weren't long-lived. Their violence worked against them. Hamanu listened outside his palace and heard the wind swirl itself into knots and die. Lightning paled quickly; thunder faded. Cold black rain pelted the city as the air cooled to a midnight chill. The pounding of countless drops was as loud as thunder. Every wall, every roof, every market square and street would have to be scrubbed clean. The Lion-King's monumental bas-reliefs that paraded around the outer walls would have to be repainted—an enormous expenditure of labor and wealth that couldn't be avoided, not even when every army in the heartland seemed to be marching toward Urik.
Hamanu cast his netherworld net beyond the city. The corners of his mouth pulled upward with relief: the Tyr-storm's fury was so tightly centered above the palace that the fields outside the walls had suffered no worse than a steady rain. The workers were safe in whatever shelters they'd found for themselves, and the seeds they'd planted were safe, as well.
His elite templars wouldn't sleep before midnight. As the storm grumbled to a close, Hamanu crafted orders for his men and women. He'd meet immediately with his war-bureau commandants and a few others in the map room, but most of his elite templars would find themselves with civic duties in the storm's aftermath. Keeping order was the templars' responsibility. There'd been casualties—he could feel the Urikite dead and dying—and property damage: collapsed buildings; fires, despite the black rain; and a smattering of mad folk, some pathetically helpless, and others more dangerous than any arena beast.
Hamanu's yellow-robed templars would see to it all. They'd dispatch the dead to the knackers; the injured to whatever healers they could afford; and they'd keep the city safe from looting, riot, and madmen. They'd organize the work gangs to put out the fires and dig out survivors. They'd get their own hands dirty, if he told them to.
And he would.
"I retire to consider what I've learned," Hamanu announced before any templar had overcome his or her reluctance to ask questions. "You will each do what your office commands in the aftermath of a Tyr-storm." The individual orders he'd crafted flowed simultaneously from his mind to theirs. "Are there any questions?"
He looked around the chamber, meeting and breaking the stare of anyone who considered a time-wasting inquiry. The templars began departing. As soon as there was a clear path to the corpse, the slaves left the treadmills. They took up the blond Raamin's body and bore it respectfully from the chamber.
Hamanu picked out one particular dark-haired head among those moving toward the door. Flicking a finger through the netherness, he tapped the man sharply on the shoulder. Pavek's face slumped forward even as his spine straightened—an impressive physical performance in its helpless, hapless mortal way—but otherwise no one suspected that he'd been singled out for private conversation with his king.
Pavek was learning the tricks of his new trade.
"I gave you no orders," Hamanu said once they were alone. He narrowed his eyes and got a good taste of common-born fear before Pavek managed to swallow it.
Slowly, Pavek raised his head. Dark mortal eyes, wide with dread, found the strength to defy the Lion-King. "O Mighty King, I was following the commands of my office. There are Quraite farmers planting seed north of the walls—"
"Eight of whom are more competent druids than you'll ever be! If all of Urik were so well protected, the fiercest Tyr-storm would be tamed to a breeze long before it got here."
Pavek gulped. Guilty thoughts swirled in his mind. He'd known about six of the druids, but not eight. He was afraid for himself, more afraid for them. It was the latter fear that stiffened his spine. "O Mighty King, you said it was time for Quraite to pay the price of your protection. It was their choice. More would have come—"
"But you thought six was enough. I tell you, Pavek, they sneaked an extra two in without your knowledge."