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 have 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?