The Lion King Arrives

Fires are burning inside the ramparts. The survivors of Quraite are gathered around them, beaten down, grieving, barely holding it together. And then Hamanu of Urik walks through the trees.

Nobody is ready for it. He is breathtakingly handsome in golden armor, radiating arcane power, terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Some people just pass out cold. The rest drop to their knees. Pavek has been following him since the wastes and he can barely keep up. Ten paces behind the sorcerer-king is the best he can manage.

Hamanu pauses by one of the fires. He looks around at his previously hidden little corner of domain. He surveys the quaking villagers. And then he says the thing nobody expected.

“Where is she? Where is Telhami?”

Not “who rules this place.” Not “explain yourselves.” He already knows. He knows her name. Pavek files that away for later, because right now those sulfur eyes are locked on him and he needs to answer fast.

“In there.” He points at Telhami’s hut.

The Doorframe Problem

Here is a thing about Hamanu. His head rises above the roof-beam. His shoulders are wider than the doorway. A regular person would duck. Maybe ask someone to bring her outside. Hamanu just drives his claws through the reed walls, grabs the support poles, lifts the entire hut over his head, and hurls it clear over two ramparts.

That is how a sorcerer-king deals with a doorframe that does not fit him.

Akashia and Ruari are frozen beside Telhami’s body. They have been wrapping her in linen cloth. They look up, slack-jawed, at the Lion towering over them. He waves one clawed hand. They scramble out of the way.

And then the most feared ruler on Athas sinks to one knee. His clawed fingers curl around Telhami’s cheek so gently that her thin, translucent skin does not even crease.

“Telhami?”

She opens her eyes. She smiles at him. And it is clear, instantly, that she knows him. Not as an enemy. As something much older and more complicated than that.

They Have History

“So, this is Quraite,” he says.

Her smile deepens with obvious pride. He laughs. It is warm, incandescent, echoing through the trees. “But I was invited!” he says, responding to something only they can hear.

These two go way back. You can feel it in the pauses, in the laughter, in the way he kneels beside her like a man visiting someone he lost a long time ago. Telhami was once one of his favorites. She served him in Urik before she walked away to become a druid. They share a private history that nobody else in this village can touch.

He asks her to come back. Borys is dead, he says. The stalemate is broken. For the first time in a thousand years, he does not know what will happen next. Come back to Urik.

She closes her eyes. That is her answer.

Hamanu stands. You can hear age creaking in his bones. “Hold them tight or set them free, they always slip away. Always.”

I was not expecting to feel things for the sorcerer-king of Urik. But right there, he is not a monster. He is someone who has outlived everyone he ever loved, watching the last one go.

The Promotion

Then he snaps back. He hooks his claw into the leather thong of Pavek’s templar medallion and drags it into the firelight. He gouges his claw right through the marks showing Pavek’s rank and bureau. Scrapes them clean off the metal.

That sounds like a punishment. It is actually the opposite. A medallion with no rank markings means you belong to no bureau. You answer directly to the king. Pavek just became a High Templar.

“The best always slip away, Pavek. Remember that.”

For one strange moment, Hamanu looks almost human. Brown eyes instead of sulfur. A face a woman might have found attractive. Then he turns, walks through the ramparts, and disappears into the night.

“They die, Pavek. They slip away when your eye’s on something else, and you can never get them back. Think of them as flowers: a day’s delight and then they die.”

Pavek stares after him. Akashia slips her arm around his back and rests her head against his chest. He puts a hand on her neck, carefully working out the knots. He does not think these things will ever feel easy for him.

The Morning Count

Sunrise is brutal. More than half the adults died on the ramparts. Twelve groves will wither without their druids. But the children survived. Akashia takes them to gather wildflowers for the shrouds.

Pavek stands over Yohan’s body all morning. He places a steel sword on top of the flower sprigs. Because a man, especially a dwarf, should carry more than flowers into the ground. That small detail wrecked me. Pavek never had friends before Quraite. Now he knows what it costs.

Telhami’s Last Words

They carry Telhami to her grove one final time. She is barely alive but her mind is as sharp as ever. She speaks directly into Pavek’s thoughts while he walks.

She calls him Just-Plain Pavek. Asks if he has made his decision. The Lion made a handsome offer, she says. She knows. She took the same offer once. Hamanu would not have ruled a thousand years if all his favorites were like Escrissar.

That line is a gut punch. Telhami stood exactly where Pavek stands now. She chose the king, served him, then walked away.

But Pavek breaks from the procession. Because he remembers someone they all forgot.

Zvain

The boy is sitting in a hollow in the grass, picking at his toes. His shirt is shredded. His back and arms are scratched up. He spent the worst night of his life alone in this grove while nightmares tore the sky apart. And nobody came to tell him who won.

“Go away!”

Pavek kneels. He apologizes. Not smoothly. Not eloquently. He says he is a third-rank regulator at heart and he cannot say it any better. He is sorry Zvain got left. Sorry about his mother. She must have loved him because he is not a bad kid. He did not deserve any of this.

Zvain shudders, lets out a long breath, and folds himself into Pavek’s arms.

They sit there in silence for a long time. Pavek can feel Telhami watching from the trees. She is part of the grove now.

“Where do you want to go? Stay here, or go back to Urik?”

“Right here? Everything watches here.”

Pavek laughs softly. “Not right here. In Quraite. With the druids.”

They decide to stay. Zvain tells him the halfling alchemist’s name: Kakzim. There are loose threads still. A reason to go back to Urik someday. But not today.

And then Telhami’s last words drift through his mind, warm and fading:

You ran a fine race, all the way to the end. Your gambits played well; you’ve won it all, Just-Plain Pavek. Take care of yourself, now that the race is over. Take care of him and the others. Take care of my grove; I give it to you. Learn to run wild and free before you return to the city.

The brazen gambit is finished. Pavek won.

Book: The Brazen Gambit by Lynn Abbey Series: Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas, Book One ISBN: 1-56076-872-X

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