by Lynn Abbey
Only Borys of Ebe would have nothing to do with me. His contempt was complete. Dwarves interested him; my shame and suffering didn't.
"Can you walk?" Rajaat asked.
The War-Bringer stood on a beaten dirt path. Behind him stood a slender spire so amber bright that it seemed aflame, though the color was only the setting sun's reflection on pristine white stone. Myron of Yoram's cart rested beside the path. His flayed, tattered skin moved as he breathed, and his mewling echoed in my ears.
My legs would bear me, but I couldn't walk toward my savior without walking past that cart. I hesitated, summoning my courage. Gallard, Sielba, and the others mocked me; my shame was immense, but it wouldn't move my feet. Rajaat made a slight, two-fingered gesture, after which my strength or courage were of no importance: his will brought me to his side.
"Prepare a feast," the first sorcerer said, speaking to those magnificent men and women as if they were slaves.
He pointed at the cart where he'd restored me and where a mass of tall, crystal goblets instantly stood. I saw outrage flicker, then die, on their faces as, one after another, they started toward the cart. And all the while, Rajaat's steady control over me never wavered. It would be a king's age before I could seize the minds of so many mortals and direct them to separate actions. I cannot, even today, seize a champion's thoughts, nor can any of my peers, but Rajaat could hold us all... easily.
Rajaat was cautious with me. He turned me sunwise; toward the brilliant tower, away from the cart where Myron of Yoram lay. But there wasn't enough caution to spare me the understanding of what food, what drink, would be served at the impending feast. I braced myself against my savior's influence. My new body trembled like a smoke-eater's. Walk! Rajaat roared in my mind. Your destiny awaits.
What are you? I asked, shattering the wall, though my true question was: what will I become?
Rajaat intervened before I had an answer to either question. A cold, gray mist enveloped me. Walk! he commanded a second time, and with his will wrapped around mine, I entered the Gray.
I emerged in a small chamber where light flashed brightly and without warning. The floor beneath my bare feet was quicksilver glass, as cold as a tomb at midnight. A stride ahead, the quicksilver angled into a pool of still, dark water. The ceiling above me was a rainbow of colored crystals, six stones mounted in a ring around a seventh crystal that was darkness incarnate.
While I watched in mute wonder and awe, jagged streams of colored light pulsed from the crystals in the rainbow ring. Each pulse was stronger than the preceding one and brought the separate streams closer to a conjunction at the center of the dark crystal.
Watch, Rajaat told me, though I needed no encouragement.
A pinpoint of pure, colorless light sprang into being the instant the jagged streams touched. It swallowed the rainbow colors and began to swell, growing brighter as it did, until the dark crystal was filled with more light than my still-mortal eyes could bear. I closed my eyes, turned my head, and felt a faint concussion through my private darkness. When I opened my eyes again, the room was dark, as it had been when I entered it, and the jagged rainbow streams were no longer than my finger.
"The Dark Lens in the Steeple of Crystals," Rajaat whispered in my ear. "Do not ask what it is, how it was made, or where it comes from. In all the planes of existence, there is nothing that compares to it. Stand in the pool beneath it and become my greatest creation, my final champion."
My family did not raise a fool for a son. I didn't need questions to know that the gift Rajaat offered was nothing any sane man should accept. Yet I knew as well that I would not survive refusing it. I'd chosen death once before when I'd faced Myron Troll-Scorcher—and Rajaat had restored me. My life had become too precious to squander a second time. Stubbornness failed, and my legs took me forward, across the quicksilver and into the opaque water as the rainbow streams pulsed toward each other again.
"You will not regret this," Rajaat assured me.
"I already—"
The colored lights merged into a lance of pristine light that pierced my skull with fire. I screamed mortal agony and slowly began to rise. The Dark Lens burst open. Inside, it was exactly as high as a man, exactly as broad as his outstretched arms. When my heart was at its center, it sealed into a perfect sphere again. Rajaat's sorcery took many-colored shape around me. It became a pillar of light, lifting me and the Lens into the sunset sky.
What can I recount of my final mortal moments? My flesh became fire, my bones red-hot steel on the smith's anvil. Even my memories were reduced to flame and ash. Then, when there was nothing left but light itself, the Lens focused inward. Drawing substance from the dying sun, the risen moons, and the countless stars above our cloudless sky, Rajaat created his final champion.
My heart beat in rhythm with the world below me, and I rejoiced as immortality quickened in my veins. I saw Athas as I wished it could be: a bountiful paradise of flowering fields, green forests, white-capped mountains, and blue lakes and rivers, all bound together beneath a shifting lace of clouds.
Never! Rajaat shattered my vision. Athas does not belong to us! We are the unclean, the defilers. Our children are raised from dung. Our blood is filth. It is not for us to envision the future. You must cleanse the world so it may be returned to the pure ones. The blue world he had shown me earlier—the Athas of endless ocean and floating cities—supplanted my own vision. I looked closer and saw that the cities were populated with halflings, which astonished me because then, as now, halflings were not a city-dwelling race. Humanity's debt folk on your shoulders. It must be paid, Manu of Deche. It must be paid in full. Bands of sorcery tightened around me, commanding me to accept my destiny, to obey the War-Bringer, to revere Rajaat, my creator. I surrendered.
The bands loosened, and Rajaat had made his final champion. I cannot speak for the mistakes and flaws Rajaat claimed existed in my peers, but I knew my own even before the Dark Lens settled back into the rainbow ring atop the Crystal Steeple. I took the first sorcerer's gifts because I had no other choice, but I clung to the shards of my vision, a farmer's vision of a many-colored Athas.
And it was well that the seeds of my rebellion were already planted when the Dark Lens spat me out. There could be no secrets as I lay on the quicksilver glass, my translucent skin stretched taut over a star-flecked midnight skeleton.
"Arise."
Lightning fingers caressed me as I gathered myself into a crouch, then slowly stood. I stared at my black-boned hands. I wondered how I could see anything, but I dared not touch my face.
"Are you in pain anywhere? Do you feel the lack of any vital part of yourself?" Rajaat asked from the periphery.
"No, nothing hurts. Nothing's lacking," I answered slowly, realizing that he'd known my answers before he'd asked the questions. "I'm—" I sought words to describe the indescribable. "I'm hollow... empty. I'm hungry."
I met Rajaat's mismatched eyes and saw that he was gleeful. Then I remembered the feast. When my mind's eye touched the memory of Yoram's scorched carcass, my hunger swelled. Looking down, I saw a pulsing hollow beneath my ribs.
"What have you done to me?" I cried out recklessly, though Rajaat would have heard my thoughts had I tried to stifle my words and, in truth, I doubt that I would have tried.
"I have made you a champion. I have instilled in you the power to cleanse Athas of all its impurities. You no longer depend on the fruits of the land or the flesh of life for your nourishment. I have given you a gift beyond measure. Sunlight will sustain you, but you will grow sleek only in pursuit of your destiny. As you cleanse Athas, death will be your ambrosia. Begin with the trolls. Begin with your predecessor. Go down, Hamanu, Scorcher of Trolls, and claim your feast."
Nausea of the mind overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees and hid my face behind my hands, as a man might do. But I was no longer a man, no longer a mortal man with a mortal man's love of life and fear of death. Grieving for my lost self, I made tears flow from the holes where my eyes should hav
e been. The tears were sorcery. I realized that immortality wasn't the only gift Rajaat had given me. My whims were spells. I marveled at my powers, then I felt my hunger.
I knew in an instant that it was death I craved, not bread.
"Hate me, if it pleases you," Rajaat said without losing his smile. My thoughts were transparent to him. "I don't expect thanks... or willing obedience."
I swallowed hard, never mind that I had no gullet except in my imagination; a champion's imagination is more potent than material truth. The imaginary act, however, stirred my appetite to new heights.
"Will you or not, you'll fulfill your destiny." Rajaat's foul teeth showed within his grin. "Be my loyal champion, and you'll rule the world, once it's clean. But, deny your hunger, Hamanu, and you'll go mad. Go mad and know that you will not be sated until you have consumed every living thing beneath the bloody sun. Your choice matters little to me. You will serve, and Athas will be cleansed of its impurities. You will consume the foul and the deformed."
Again I surrendered. Mind against mind, will against will, I was no match for my creator. A battle with him would have left me a maddened beast, ravaging life wherever I found it. He'd told me the truth about myself. My hunger grew less resistible with each beat of my heart.
Rajaat stepped sideways, revealing an open door, and the downward spiral beyond it. Measuring what remained of my sanity, I judged I could get to the ground, where Myron of Yoram awaited me, before I succumbed to madness.
"Your choice," Rajaat reminded me as I strode past him. My choice, indeed, and I descended slowly, testing the limits of madness at each step. While I stood in the Steeple of Crystals, what I knew of sorcery could have been written in bold script on a single vellum sheet. By the time my right heel struck the ground, I was a master. I'd learned the deadly dance of life and magic: My hunger sucked life from plant and animal alike. My hunger killed. I could—and would—learn to use my hunger to fuel mighty sorcery, but it would kill whether I learned or not.
Become careful, Hamanu. Become very careful. Become whatever you want. It won't matter. Your destiny is to use the gifts that I have given you.
Warning and promise together. I knew it at the time, though I thought the War-Bringer meant only that I was to cleanse the world of trolls. I thought—all the champions thought—that Rajaat meant to return Athas to us and to humanity when our wars were finished. We were wrong; I was wrong. It took me many years to understand that Rajaat hated humanity above all, because humanity embodied chaos and transformation. Humanity had engendered the Rebirth races. Rajaat's champions would cleanse Athas of what he considered unnatural creatures—including humanity itself—before returning it to the one race he considered natural and pure: the halflings.
I have never fully understood why the War-Bringer needed champions. His power was so much greater than ours. He could have cleansed Athas of every race in a single afternoon. For thirteen ages, I've examined this question. I have no good answer. The answer must lie with the halflings themselves. Halflings destroyed their blue world, which Rajaat wished to recreate, and when it was gone—before they retreated into their tribal, forest lives—halflings created humanity. But which halflings?
Surely there was some dissent, some rebellion driven underground. Perhaps rebel halflings created Rajaat; perhaps he found them on his own. Whichever, Rajaat had halfling allies before he created the first champion, and he and his allies nurtured one another's hatred of the green world Athas had become. Hatred made them all mad; madness made them devious, and because Rajaat was both mad and devious, he created champions to do the bloody work of cleansing Athas of the races he hated, while his own hands remained unsullied.
It isn't a good explanation, but there can be no good explanation for why Rajaat did what he did.
For myself, when I stood outside the white tower, I, too, was mad—with hunger. When I laid my black-boned hands on Myron of Yoram's quivering chest, I knew I would regret it, but when the Troll-Scorcher's substance began to flow into me, I forgot everything else. It's not a good explanation; it's simply the truth.
Yoram's smoldering eyes reappeared when I touched him, sun bright and malevolent in the lavender twilight. Mauled though he was, he was still a mighty sorcerer, and he recognized me as the renegade farmer's son.
Mann. My name came to me on a netherworld wind of hot, sharp cinders. Kill me if you dare. I'll curse you with my dying breath.
He strained against the thin silver chain that bound him, wrist, ankle, and neck, to the cart. Remembering my helpless day on the plains, bound to a mekillot stake while the eyes of fire blazed within me, I snapped the chains. A great death sigh went up from the plants and wildlife surrounding Rajaat's pristine tower as the erstwhile Troll-Scorcher reaped power for his spell. But he tried too hard and took too long. I pressed my lips against his and sucked him hollow in a single inhaled breath.
Manu, he said again, my human name, and the entirety of his curse.
Mounds of reeking meat collapsed inward, becoming ash and dust that vanished quickly in the evening breeze. I stood straight, sated and clearheaded. Layers of Yoram's substance padded my bones. My ribs had expanded as the old Troll-Scorcher died; they contracted as I exhaled. I felt a warm stream of breath against the back of my tawny-skinned hand. A part of me felt human again.
Look at him! A champion's vagrant thought pierced me to the heart. They'd arrayed themselves in a ring around me and the now-empty cart. Their auras shone brighter than Ral or Guthay above the eastern horizon. None among them seemed well-disposed toward me; none among them was well-disposed toward me.
"Don't be a fool!"
Borys of Ebe identified himself with his warning; I recognized his name from my mortal days in the Troll-Scorcher's army and recalled his voice from earlier in the afternoon. I turned toward his voice as an invisible wall came down between me and the rest. The Dwarf-Butcher held out his hand, not in friendship, but to demonstrate that he controlled the wall. He was a powerfully built man, like the race he slaughtered, and tall. His hair was pale and confined in long braids; his eyes glowed with a blue fire.
"We cannot harm one another—not here," Borys explained, leaving no room for doubt in my mind that he would harm me where he could, when he could. "Clothe yourself, man, and we'll be done with this. I won't drink blood with a naked peon."
"Naked peon—?" I began, letting my rage flare.
The wall glowed crimson, stifling my inept spell. Snickering echoed at my back: with Yoram's substance clinging to my bones I was not a handsome man. Shamed and bested, I imagined a drab, homespun cloak—and yelped with surprise when the heavy cloth manifested around me.
But I learn quickly. Unfurling the coarse cloak from my shoulders, I heaved it into the night air and transformed it into shimmering cloth-of-gold. I transformed myself, as well, becoming Hamanu Troll-Scorcher before the radiant cloak touched me again. I was as tall as Borys of Ebe, but lithe and graceful as Manu had been, crowned with Dorean's long black hair, and meeting Borys's stare through her calm, gray eyes.
"Will you drink blood with me now?" I challenged without knowing precisely what I implied.
But before Borys could answer, the invisible wall around me flared crimson again as it absorbed another champion's wrath. Not mine, or Borys's, though he was quickly engulfed in the tumult as spells rebounded around the circle. Untouched in the center, I saw that my peers despised me no more than they despised one another, and that I had "nothing to fear from them.
Fear was something we all reserved for Rajaat, our creator, whose hand fell harshly upon us, scattering the rampant spells, smashing Borys's wall, and quenching each aura, each illusion. We were all naked before him, and though none of us was as grotesque as the War-Bringer himself, our ensorcelled flesh was no improvement on the natural human form.
Fill them! Share them! Drink them!
Rajaat's commands were more than words; they were demanding images that seared my consciousness. Two of the women and one of the m
en fell to their knees. A fourth champion vomited bile that etched a crater in the ground. I, at least, held my feet and saw the crystal goblets rise from the cart where they'd first appeared. I caught mine before it struck me; several others weren't so quick or lucky.
The overdressed jozhal's knife would have been useful. I hadn't begun to master the art of putting an edge on an illusion and I was, of course, too proudly stubborn to ask questions. The flame-haired woman bit her tongue until her blood flowed freely, but that reminded me too much of the moments when Rajaat was healing me. I watched Borys slit a vein in his forearm with an extension of his thumbnail and managed a similar gesture.
When our goblets were filled and steaming, Rajaat bid us exchange them. I sought the Dwarf-Butcher, but he eluded me, and I sipped the jozhal's thick blood instead. Sacha Arala, Curse of Kobolds: his name and more filled my conscious mind, as my name must have entered his. Arala's cleansing war against the mischievous kobolds had ended shortly after the Troll-Scorcher's war against the trolls had begun. He passed his empty days in Rajaat's shadow.
In my mind he said he'd befriend me and teach me the champion's way. I didn't need sorcery to know a lie when I heard it.
The blood of another forgotten king, Gallard Gnome-Bane, was in the third goblet. After that, I grew confused as one after another of Rajaat's champions battered me with lies and illusions.
I remember Borys, though, whose blood filled my eighth goblet. The dwarves had slain the first champion Rajaat dedicated against them. He, like I, was a recreation. His goblet held a nameless past along with his own. The first Butcher had claimed kingship and royal ancestry, but Borys had been a commoner before Rajaat plucked him off the blasted battlefield.
