Read The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King for Free Online

Stepping down into the water, his movements resembled a bird's, not a man's.
    He dived to the bottom of the pool and rose again to the surface. Habits that thirteen ages of
transformation could not erase brought his hands up to slick nonexistent hair away from his eyes. For a
heartbeat—Hamanu's hollow chest contained a heart; he hoped it remained human, though he couldn't
know for certain—he sank limply through the water. Then the skeletal arms pumped once, demonstrating
no lack of strength, and lifted his entire body out of the water.
    The gaunt, black king had the power to hover motionless in the air or to fly faster than any raptor.
Hamanu chose, instead, to return to the pool's embrace with a spectacular, unappreciated splash. He
rolled onto his back and tumbled through the clear, warm water like a cart's wheel until he'd raised waves
high enough to leave puddles on the roof. He was oblivious to everything except his own amusement until
a bolt of pain lanced from his forefinger to his spine.
    Roaring a curse at the four corners of the world, Hamanu made a fist and studied the pale red
and gray sliver protruding through the soot-black flesh. It was bone, of course, human bone, another tiny
fragment of his ancient humanity lost, now, forever. He pinched it between two talons and jerked it free.
    A mortal man would have died from the shock. A mortal man did die. Deep within Hamanu's
psyche, a mortal man died a hundred times for every year of his immortal life. He would continue to die,
bit by bit, until there was nothing left and Rajaat's metamorphic spell would have completed its dirty
work. The metamorphosis should have been complete ages ago, but Hamanu, when he'd understood
what Rajaat had intended, had set his will against the War-Bringer. The immortal king of Urik could
neither stop nor reverse his inexorable transformation; he slowed its progress through deprivation and
starvation.
    When his loathsome shape was concealed in a tangible human glamour, Hamanu ate with gusto
and drew no nourishment from his food. In his own form, Hamanu lived with agony and hunger, both of
which he'd hardened himself against. He could not die and had long since reached the limits of unnatural
withering. Hamanu endured and swore that by force of will alone he'd deny Rajaat's spell until the end of
time.
    A bead of viscous blood the color and temperature of molten lava distended Hamanu's knuckle.
He stared at it with disgust, then thrust his fist beneath the water. Stinking steam broke the surface as a
sinuous black coil streamed away from the open wound. Hamanu sighed, closed his eyes, and with a
sun-warmed thought, congealed his blood into a rock-hard scab.
Another lost battle in a war that had known no victories: magic in any form fueled the
metamorphosis. Hamanu rarely cast spells in their traditional form and was miserly with his templars, yet
his very thoughts were magic and all his glamours. Each act of defiance brought him closer to ultimate
defeat. Even so—and though no one glimpsing him in his bathing pool would suspect it—Hamanu was far
closer to the human he'd been at birth than to what Rajaat intended him to become. Within his still-human
heart, Hamanu believed that in the battle between time and transformation, he would be triumphant.
    At this hour, with the red sun just past its zenith, Urik rested quieter than it did at midnight.
Nothing moved save for a clutch of immature kes'trekels making lazy spirals above the walls of the Elven
Market. Slaves, freemen, nobles, and templars; men and women; elves, humans, dwarves, and all the
folk who fell between had gone in search of shadows and shelter from the fierce heat. There was no one
bold or foolish enough to gaze at the sun-hammered palace roof where a lone silhouette loomed against
the dusty sky.
    Hamanu touched the minds of his minions throughout the city, as a man might run his tongue along
the backs of his teeth, counting them after