Power and Betrayal - The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King Chapter 6
Book: The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King | Author: Lynn Abbey | Series: Chronicles of Athas, Book 5
We’re back in present-day Urik, and the chapter opens with Hamanu doing something surprisingly… normal. He’s sitting on his palace roof, half-listening to his dwarf steward Enver read a daily briefing scroll, and thinking about farming.
Here’s the thing about Hamanu that keeps hitting me. This is a thousand-year-old sorcerer-king, basically a living god, and he still gets genuinely excited about crops. Guthay’s moons brought unprecedented floods to Urik, and instead of seeing disaster, Hamanu mobilized his entire city to plant new fields. He opened up sealed granaries. He got his hands dirty. And when the citizens actually volunteered for the labor levies? Abbey writes that “nothing compared to the pride Hamanu had felt with them and for them.” That line got me. This monster who devours souls is out here being proud of his farmers.
But the domestic stuff doesn’t last. There’s a fun exchange where Enver tells Hamanu that the local priests want to declare a new mud demiurge called “Burbote,” and Hamanu basically trolls his own steward about it. The banter between these two is so good. Enver is completely humorless, utterly loyal, and deeply bothered that his god keeps admitting he’s not actually a god. Their dynamic is like a long-married couple where one person has no sense of humor and the other can’t stop poking at them.
Then everything shifts hard. A templar out on patrol screams for help through the psychic link, and Hamanu discovers that Inenek, the Oba of Gulg, has been ambushing his people. So he tears a hole in reality and steps onto the battlefield as the Lion of Urik. The battle sequence is brutal and efficient. Abbey describes weapons passing through his illusory lion form and shattering against the invisible dragon flesh underneath. He’s basically untouchable, and he knows it.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Hamanu accidentally kills one of his own templars, a militant named Bakheer, by touching his already-shattered mind. And that tiny morsel of human life tempts him. For a moment, everyone on the field is just food. He screams “Damn you!” and flees into the netherworld rather than lose control. Inenek is waiting with a trap, trying to drag him toward Rajaat’s prison. She fails, because she’s never been a match for Hamanu, but the fact that she’s working with Rajaat is deeply alarming.
After the battle, Hamanu interrogates a young elf templar named Kalfaen. The method is basically psychic torture. It’s not pleasant to read, but Abbey doesn’t let you look away from what Hamanu is. He nails this kid to the ground with his mind and rips the story out of him. The Gulgans used disguised refugees with poisoned wine to set up the ambush. Classic infiltration stuff.
The real kicker comes at the end. Hamanu finds another dark shard, similar to the one from earlier chapters. Rajaat’s influence is spreading. He calls out to Windreaver, his ghostly troll spy, three times with no answer. Then a fourth. Nothing. For the first time in a long time, Hamanu seems genuinely worried.
And then Windreaver shows up, being his usual insufferable self, and reveals that Rajaat’s prison beneath Ur Draxa is bulging. The lava lake that holds the War-Bringer is rising in the middle “rather like a baby’s gums when the teeth are about to erupt.” Windreaver actually apologizes for the metaphor because Hamanu has no children. I love how Abbey uses this ghost troll as comic relief while delivering the most terrifying news possible.
The wards are strained but holding. For now.
I love how this chapter gives us both sides of Hamanu. The ruler who cares about mud demiurges and crop yields. The warrior who can clear a battlefield without breaking a sweat. And the deeply lonely immortal who comes home to his palace rooftop feeling, for the first time in ages, genuinely alone. Abbey is building something here, and the tension is getting thick.
Next up in Chapter 7: Hamanu prepares a dangerous spell while writing his memoirs, and we flash back to the moment young Manu picked up a dead man’s sword and decided to stop running from trolls.