"It must, dear Enver. It must."
Hamanu's attention began to wander before Enver was three syllables into the next entry on his tightly clutched scroll. Between floods and preparations for war, he'd neglected his minions for the better part of a seventy-five-day quinth. The minions survived, of course—most of them. When he wasn't living their lives, they lived their own, much as they'd done before he'd woven his curiosity into their being. Casting an Unseen net, Hamanu touched them, one by one. A beggar had died. A nobleman had eaten unwisely and suffered the consequences in a dark, befouled corner of his luxurious home. Lord Ursos entertained an unwilling guest. Cissa's daughter had another tooth coming in. Nouri Nouri'son had adopted his beggar and put him to work behind the counter of his busy bakery.
Ewer's recitation progressed from religion to refugees, a subject that did not engage Hamanu's curiosity or require his attention. Though it pleased the Lion-King to think that the suffering citizens of Raam, Draj, and even far-off Balic would choose Urik as their sanctuary, his templars dealt with such strangers. Urik's borders were, of course, legally sealed, but Hamanu trusted his yellow-robes to determine when, where, and against whom his laws should apply.
He went back to his minions, until another trip-word scratched his hollow ear: arrows. The Khelo fletchers were squabbling with the Codesh butchers over the price of feathers for the thousands of arrows the army required.
"Tell the butchers they'll sell their damned feathers at the established rate, or their heirs will donate them in perpet—"
O Mighty Hamanu! Lion-King, Lord, and Master, hear me!
A distant voice echoed in Hamanu's mind. The totality of his awareness raced backward, along a silver thread of consciousness through the Unseen netherworld, to the source.
The Gray was charged with acid needles, and Hamanu's vision, when he opened his sulphur eyes above the desperate templar, was streaked with lurid colors. There was powerful magic—someone else's powerful magic—in the vicinity.
O Mighty Hamanu! Hammer of the World! Grant me invincible armor and earthquake!
Squinting through the magic, Hamanu made out chaos and bloodshed: a full cohort of his own templars outnumbered by ragtag brigands. Or, not brigands. Another moment's study discerned a well-armed, well-drilled force disguised for brigandage. In the midst of the Urikites' impending defeat, a militant, a human man with tears of panic streaming down his face, raised his bronze medallion and entreated the Lion-King for the third time:
O Mighty Lion, grant me invincible armor and earthquake, lest I die!
A wise invocation—in its way. An earthquake, if Hamanu empowered the spell to create one, would swallow everything on the battlefield, friend and foe alike, except for the invincibly armored militant. Though sacrifice was necessary in battle, the Lion-King of Urik was not in the habit of rewarding militants who'd save themselves and doom the lesser ranks and mercenaries they led. He'd have considered granting the earthquake while withholding the invincible armor—and savored the militant's death—if the netherworld turbulence wouldn't have negated any spell he granted.
There were only a handful of mind-benders capable of disturbing the netherworld enough to disrupt the bond between a champion and his templars. The champions themselves were foremost in that small group. Hamanu knew the hallmarks of their spellcasting intimately.
Inenek, Hamanu loosed an enemy's name to the Unseen wind. It was her spoor he scented in the netherworld and her disguised Gulgan templars winnowing his own. Ogre-Naught.
The turbulence ebbed, replaced by a sultry voice, full of seduction and, though Inenek tried to hide it, hate. You tricked me once, Manu, but never again. Rajaat chose you for your strength, not your brilliance. You're not as clever as you think you are. Surrender to me, and Urik will survive.
A wind-driven fist shrieked through the Gray with the power to smash a mountain into gravel.
Your promises are as empty as your threats, Inenek, Hamanu replied, dispelling her assault with a roar of laughter.
Inenek had always been vulnerable to mockery. The netherworld shone with futile lightning; she'd never learned to control her temper, either. Hamanu dispelled the bolts as he'd dispelled the shrieking fist. Inenek—the Oba of Gulg, she called herself now—was arguably the least among the champions. How she'd annihilated the ogres was a mystery Hamanu had never taken the time to solve. He suspected she'd disguised herself as an ogress and slain every male after taking him into her bed.
The Ogre-Naught couldn't harm him, but his besieged templars were doomed if he didn't intervene. With his eyes still glowing, Hamanu turned to Enver, who'd sensed nothing amiss until that moment.
"I go," he told the dwarf. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Enver's widening eyes before he slit the rooftop air with a talon and stepped into the Gray.
Hamanu departed Urik as a black-haired man. He emerged on the battlefield as the black-maned Lion of Urik, taller than a half-giant, stronger and far more deadly. A gold sword gleamed in his right hand. It sliced through the warrior weapons raised against him, and through the warriors as well. Hamanu wielded his sorcery-laced sword with the skill gained in a very long lifetime of practice, inflicting precise slaughter among his enemies.
He didn't bother to guard his back or slow his attacks with parries; the Lion of Urik was only another glamour, hiding his true form. A calm and sharp-eyed observer—had there been any on the field—would have noticed the discontinuity as metal weapons passed through the Lion's ephemeral form before shattering against otherwise invisible dragon flesh. Wooden and bone-crafted weapons met a different fate. They burst into short-lived flames when they breached his infernal aura.
With their king wreaking havoc among their enemies, the Urikite templars rallied. They surged forward in a score of close-fought skirmishes. Hamanu welcomed their renewed courage; he'd reward them with their lives. And as for the militant who led them...
One lapse of leadership might be forgiven—if the militant's panic hadn't been stronger than Inenek's Unseen interference, Hamanu wouldn't have known that his templars needed him. A second lapse would be unforgivable, unsurvivable. Hamanu strained his hearing. He found half of what he listened for: a mortal heart pounding hard beneath a bronze medallion.
Bakheer! Hamanu seized the militant's disarrayed thoughts and rattled them. Fight, Bakheer.
Hamanu didn't enjoy killing his own templars. At the very least, it was a waste of mortal life. At the worst, because of the medalLion-forged bond he shared with them, their deaths brought his darkest appetites to the fore. Fight the enemy, Bakheer. Fight to the death... or face me.
A sane man would have listened, would have understood and thrown himself at Inenek's minions, but Bakheer was no longer sane. What Inenek had begun, Hamanu inadvertently finished. Bakheer's mind shattered. His heart beat one final time, and his spirit flared in the instant before Rajaat's last champion savored it.
The tiny morsel of mortality tantalized Hamanu's much-denied appetites. For a moment, there were neither Urikites nor enemies on the field before him, only aching need, and the motes of life that would sate it.
The Lion of Urik roared words too loud and angry for mortal ears to interpret: "Damn you!"
Hamanu turned away from temptation, away from the battlefield. Abandoning his templars, he cast himself into the netherworld... where a whirlwind awaited him.
Inenek had guessed his choice—his predictable weakness—and caught him in a mind-bender's trap. Stripped of all his glamour, reduced to a spindly shadow of his unnatural form, Hamanu, was sucked away from his templars. He wasn't surprised when a black maw appeared suddenly, far below his feet, growing larger with each howling spiral.