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a brawl. Half of the citizens were asleep and dreaming. One
was with a woman; another with a man. The rest were lying still, hoarding their thoughts and energy. He
did not disturb them.
    His own thoughts drifted back to the woman, Eden, and her message. He asked himself if it was
likely that the Shadow-King Nibenay, once called Gallard, Bane of Gnomes, would send staves of his
precious agafari wood to their undead peer in blasted Giustenal. The answer, without hesitation, was
yes—for a price.
    There was no love lost between any of Rajaat's champions, including Dregoth of Giustenal and
Gallard. They didn't trust each other enough for unrequited generosity. They didn't trust each other at all.
It had taken a dragon, Borys of Ebe in the full culmination of Rajaat's metamorphosis, to hold the
champions to the one cause that demanded their cooperation: maintaining the wards on their creator's
netherworld prison, a thing they called the Hollow beneath a place they called the Black.
    Hamanu recalled the day, over five years earlier, when Borys had been vanquished, along with
several other champions. For one afternoon, for the first time in a thousand years, Rajaat had been free.
The fact that Rajaat was no longer free and had been returned to his Hollow owed nothing to the
cooperation of the three champions who'd survived Borys's death and Rajaat's resurrection. They
distrusted each other so much that they'd stood aside and let a mortal woman—a half-elf named Sadira
of Tyr—set the prison wards.
    It had been different long ago, in the Year of Enemy's Fury in the 177th King's Age. After Borys
first set the wards on Rajaat's Hollow, there'd been nearly a score of immortal sorcerers ruling their
proud heartland cities. With the passage of thirteen ages, they'd winnowed themselves down to seven.
Then a decade ago, Kalak, the Tyrant of Tyr, had been brought down by his own ambition and a handful
of mortal rebels, including one of his own high templars and Sadira, the same Sadira who'd vanquished
Borys and reset the wards around Rajaat's Hollow.
    In the Lion-King's judgment, Kalak was a fool, a careless fool who'd deserved the crime
committed against him. Kalak was no champion. Hamanu had, perhaps, trusted the Tyrant of Tyr more
than he trusted his peers, but he'd respected him less. He cursed Kalak's name each time it resurrected
itself in his memory. Kalak's demise had left an unfillable hole in Tyr, the oldest—if not the largest,
wealthiest, or most powerful—city in the heartland. And now, thanks in no small part to the subsequent
behavior of the rebels who'd killed their immortal sorcerer-king, the thrones of Balic, Raam, and Draj
were vacant, too.
    It was easier to list who among Rajaat's champions was left: himself, Gallard in Nibenay, Inenek
in Gulg, and undead Dregoth in Giustenal—none of them a dragon.
    So long as Rajaat was securely imprisoned in the Hollow beneath the Black, Hamanu didn't
object to the missing dragon.
Once Borys had completed Rajaat's metamorphosis and walked the heartland as a dragon,
Borys had ruled everyone. Even the immortal sorcerers in their proud city-states had jumped to a
dragon's whim. There had been wars, of course—cities devastated and abandoned—but the balance of
power never truly changed. What Borys demanded, Borys got, because he kept Rajaat confined in the
Hollow.
    The prospect might have tempted some of them—though never Hamanu—if they hadn't all
watched helplessly as a maddened, mindless Borys ravaged the heartland immediately after they'd cast
the spells to complete his metamorphosis. For his first hundred years, wherever Borys went, he sucked
the life out of everything. When he was done, the heartland was the parched, blasted barren place it
remained to this day.
    Dregoth had already succumbed to temptation and drawn the wrath of his immortal peers. Borys
had rounded them up for a second time, and they'd found a fitting eternal