Despite two thousand years of rule, Kalak had never understood that a city's might wasn't measured by the size of its armies or the magnificence of its palaces, but in the labor of its farmers. In a good year, Tyr could feed herself; in a bad one, she bought grain from Urik or Nibenay.
Kalak had been a man of limited vision and imagination. In Urik, there were free folk and freed folk as well as slaves; guild artisans and free artisans; nobles who lived on estates outside the city walls and nobles who lived like merchants near the market squares. In Urik, a man or woman of any station could find outlets for enterprise and ambition. In Tyr, folk were either free, rich, and noble, or enslaved, poor, and very common. For two thousand years, ambition had. been a criminal offense.
The rebels of Tyr, whose recklessness had turned the heartland on its ear could, perhaps, be forgiven for thinking that slavery was the cause of all their problems. It was easier to identify abused slaves and set them free than it was to resurrect a dynamic society from stagnation. At least, the council-ruled city hadn't succumbed to rampant anarchy as Raam or Draj had done since the demise of their champion kings and queens.
Sadira and her companions had shown themselves capable of learning. Perhaps Windreaver was right and Tyr was the heartland's future.
Hamanu left the hardpan track. He approached a gate guarded by two women and a passel of children, who could not have kept him out even if he'd been no more than the peddler he appeared to be. Indeed, the Lion-King's problem wasn't getting onto the estate, but escaping the curious women who wanted to examine his nonexistent wares. Realizing that curiosity might be worse at the estate-house, Hamanu scooped up a handful of dried grass and pebbles as he walked away from the gate.
"For your mistress's delight," he explained as he displayed the dross to the door-steward.
With only a tiny suggestion bending through in his mind—not enough to rouse anyone's suspicions—the steward saw a handful of whatever the steward imagined would -please Sadira this deceptively unremarkable morning.
The steward chuckled and rubbed his hands together. "Follow me, good man. I'm sure she'll want some for both Rikus and Rkard."
Hamanu wondered what the man had seen, but kept his wondering to himself as the steward led him through a series of corridors and courtyards to a small, elegant chamber where—by the bittersweet flavor of the air—Sadira of Tyr was in the midst of a melancholy daydream.
No need for you to remain. Hamanu put the thought in the steward's mind. I'll introduce myself to your mistress.
When the steward was out of sight in the next corridor, Hamanu erased his entire presence from the mortal's memory. Then he crossed the threshold into Sadira's chamber.
"Dear lady—?" He interrupted her as gently, as unmagically as he could, though aside from his simple peddler's illusion, he'd done nothing to disguise himself, and Sadira should recognize him instantly.
She did. "Hamanu!"
"No cause for alarm, dear lady," he said quickly, holding his hands palms-up, though, like her, he didn't need conventional gestures, conventional sources to quicken his sorcery. "I've come to talk—"
Before Hamanu could say anything more to reassure her, the sorceress quickened a spell. It erupted faster than thought, and whatever its intended purpose, its sole effect was to destroy completely the little pebble Hamanu cached between the black bones of his left forearm.
A smoking gap formed in Hamanu's peddler illusion. Hot, viscous blood dripped onto the floor, corroding the delicate mosaic. The physical pain was intense, but it paled beside the heart-stopping shock as greasy smoke began to flow from the wound. Hamanu clapped his right hand over the gap. The smoke seeped around his fingers. Windreaver took shape in the smoke.
"We come to the end of the trolls at last."
"No." A soft, impotent denial. "Let go of the past, Hamanu. It's time."
"Leave it be, Hamanu," Windreaver cautioned, and laid a faintly warm, faintly tangible hand over the Lion-King's wounded arm. "I know your ways. You think this is no accident. You think this is my vengeance. It's not. Thirteen ages is too long to think of vengeance, Hamanu. We've fought the past long enough. Think of the future." The troll's smoky fingers began to collapse. "I'll wait for you, Manu of Deche. I'll prepare a place beside me, where the stone is young..."
Four greasy streaks of soot on Hamanu's arm and a larger splotch on the floor were all the remained of the last and greatest commander of the once-great race known as trolls.
Sadira rose from her stool. Her foot came down beside the stain.
"Stay back!" Hamanu warned.
The power of death was inside him, and the will to use it She lived because Windreaver wished her to live. Hamanu would honor the last troll's wish—if he could. And if he couldn't let her live, then he'd live with the consequences, as he'd lived with all his other consequences.
Sadira sensed her danger and retreated. "What—" she began, then corrected herself. "Who was that? Another dragon?"
It was an almost-honest question. The half-elf had no notion of trolls or the Troll-Scorcher. Her experience bound Hamanu with dragons instead. He collected his wits and tried to speak, but it was too soon.
Sadira mistook his silence. "Did you think that you could come in here and work your foul sorcery on me?" she asked with all the arrogance that Rajaat's sorcery could breed in a sorcerer's mind. "I know how to destroy dragons. Kalak, Rajaat, Borys, you—you're all alike. You destroy my world. Athas won't be safe until every dragon's dead."
Hamanu's tangled emotions snapped free. The rage that killed with a thought vanished like a cool breeze at midday. Grief and mourning were set aside for the moment when he'd be alone—very alone. He forgot, in large part, why he'd come, and that Rajaat's promised doom hung over his city. What remained was the capriciousness, the cruelty that fully deserved the hatred the half-elf directed at him.
She was a fool, and he intended to enjoy proving it to her.
"You know very little, Sadira of Tyr, if you don't know the difference between Kalak and Borys, Borys and Rajaat, Rajaat and me."
"There is no difference. You're all the same. All evil. All life-sucking defilers," she insisted. "I know you get your magic from the Dark Lens. I know you'd enslave all Athas if no one stood against you. I know all the lies, you told me that day in Ur Draxa when Rkard bested Rajaat. You were children rebelling against your father, but the only reason you rebelled was envy. You wanted his power for yourselves. What more do I need to know?"
"You need to know that every dragon is different and that Rajaat created dragons when he created sorcery and that was long before he created champions to wage his Cleansing Wars. You need to know that if a sorcerer lives long enough to master the secrets of the Unseen netherworld, then that immortal sorcerer will change into a dragon—but not a dragon like Borys. Borys wasn't a sorcerer when he became a dragon; he was a champion. Rajaat shaped his champions out of human clay in his white tower. He bathed them in a black-water pool and stood them in a Crystal Steeple beneath the Dark Lens. The dragon is a part of a champion's nature—a large part, an inevitable part—but not the only part, or the most powerful part."
"Anything else?" Sadira asked, feigning disinterest.
She feigned disinterest because she owed her sooty armor and shadow magic to an immersion in that black-water pool and to spells cast in the Crystal Steeple. Her inner thoughts betrayed a deep concern about the powers she used so freely. The Dark Lens hadn't been in its proper place when the shadowfolk transformed her. Rajaat hadn't been there, either, but the shadowfolk were Rajaat's minions, and they'd acted on his orders. Sadira had reason to be worried,