The Lion King's Past - The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King Chapter 2
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
Previous: Chapter 1 | Next: Chapter 3
Chapter 2 is where things open up. We leave the nighttime streets and step into the politics, the body horror, and the history that drives everything in this book.
It starts with Hamanu finishing his morning audiences. He kills a young nobleman named Renady Soleuse right there on the palace roof. Not for being a murderer (Renady killed his own family to inherit the estate). Not even for lying about his finances. Hamanu killed him because the fool wore a defiler’s charm and thought it would protect him while he lied. You can lie to Hamanu about a lot of things. But if he catches you in the act? You’re done.
Then comes Eden, a half-elf merchant woman with a man’s name and nerves of steel. She brings a message from her husband Chorlas, who’s stuck in Nibenay. The message reveals that Nibenay is shipping agafari wood staves to a deserted oasis near Giustenal. That means the Shadow-King is arming the undead champion Dregoth. Eden doesn’t just deliver the message, though. She tells Hamanu straight up that she believes Nibenay is arming Urik’s enemies.
And that’s why it matters. Eden is terrified, but she doesn’t let fear run her. She tells Hamanu her husband is old and wants to come home to die in Urik. She’s bargaining with a sorcerer-king, and she does it with dignity. Hamanu is impressed. He gives her an amber seal and basically tells her to get Chorlas to the Lion Fountain before sunset or he’ll consider it treason. It’s his version of being nice.
Then comes the bathing scene. And honestly, this part got me. Hamanu dismisses everyone, seals himself away, and drops his human disguise. What he reveals is horrifying. His true form is a skeletal black creature with talons, fangs, a collapsed nose, and no hair. He walks on elongated toes like a bird. His skin is stretched tight over misshapen bones. He looks more dead than alive.
This is what Rajaat’s metamorphosis is doing to him. He starves himself, avoids using magic, and endures constant pain to slow the process. Every spell he casts pushes him closer to what Rajaat intended. While splashing in his bathing pool, a bone fragment pushes through his finger. A piece of his original human skeleton, lost forever. I love how Abbey handles this. It’s body horror, sure, but it’s also deeply sad. Hamanu is losing himself one bone at a time.
After the bath, his spy Windreaver shows up. Windreaver is a troll. Or was. He’s the last of his kind, kept alive by Hamanu’s magic as a permanent reminder of the genocide Hamanu committed. Their relationship is pure mutual hatred wrapped in grudging respect. Windreaver reports that Nibenay is forming an actual army on the plains. Not just shipping staves to Giustenal. The Shadow-King might be coming for Urik itself.
Hamanu dismisses the warning, but Windreaver twists the knife with one question: “Where are your children, Lion-King of Urik?” A thousand years, and Hamanu has no heirs, no legacy beyond the city itself. That stings.
The chapter closes with Hamanu remembering his mortal past. A field of golden grain. A hay rake. A brother playing pipes. And Dorean, the dark-haired girl he loved. The life he wanted: fields, children, peace. The life that was taken from him.
Then he says something that changes the entire book: “I’ll tell the whole story, in writing.” He’s going to write his history and give it to someone who can judge him fairly. That someone turns out to be important. But that’s for Chapter 3.
What strikes me about this chapter is how Abbey builds sympathy for a monster. Hamanu is a killer, a tyrant, a creature of nightmare. But he’s also lonely, rotting from the inside, fighting a losing battle against his own body, and haunted by a girl named Dorean. You don’t forgive him. But you understand him. And that’s harder to pull off than it sounds.
Coming up next: Hamanu sits down to write his story and we finally hear it in his own words. His childhood in the village of Deche, his first love, and the day the trolls came.