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punishment for immortal hubris:
they'd ruined his city and stripped all living flesh from the proud Ravager of Giants. He remained the
champion he'd been on the day of his death, but he'd never be anything more. Dregoth was what folk
called undead, kaiskarga in the halfling tongue, the oldest of the many languages Hamanu knew.
    In shame, and under the threat of worse punishment, Dregoth had dwelt for ages beneath his
ruined city. Mortal chroniclers forgot Dregoth, but his peers remembered— especially Uyness of
Waverly, whom living mortals had called Abalach-Re, Queen of Raam, and whom Dregoth remembered
as his betrayer.
    Now Uyness was dead with Borys, and Dregoth wanted Raam's empty throne. Hamanu
reasoned that Nibenay might well support Giustenal's ambitions in that direction with agafari staves,
because, whether or not he conquered every empty-throned city, Dregoth could never become another
dragon as Borys had been. Like as not, Gallard would support Dregoth no matter which city the undead
champion had designs upon. Like as not, Gallard—who fancied himself the most subtle of Rajaat's
champions-hoped there'd come a day when he and Dregoth were the only champions left. If the price of
attaining dragonkind was the annihilation of every mortal life in a city or three, how much easier to pay
when none of the cities in peril were one's own?
    Gallard had that much conscience, at least. Kalak hadn't hesitated at the thought of consuming
Tyr. That's what got him killed by his own subject citizens and templars, but Kalak of Tyr had been a
fool and freebooter from the start, long before the champions were created.
    And Hamanu of Urik—what had he been before he was an immortal champion?
    Hamanu's thoughts sluiced sideways. In his mind's eye, he was suddenly far away from his
precious city. He stood in another place, another time: a field of golden-ripe himali grain surrounded by
hardworking kith and kin. Warm summer breezes lifted his hair and dried the sweat on his back. There
was a hay rake in his youthful hands. A youngster—a brother too small to cut grain or rake—sat nearby
with reed pipes against his lips, diverting the harvesters as they labored. The brother's tune was lost to
time along with his name. But the dark-haired, gray-eyed maiden who stood behind the boy in memory,
swaying in the music's rhythm, her name would never be forgotten while the Lion-King lived: Dorean.
    For Dorean, Hamanu had become a man in his family's eyes. For him, Dorean had become a
woman. The life that had once lain before them, filled with fields of grain, growing children, and a love
that never needed words, was the only life Hamanu had ever wanted. If he'd done right by Dorean, if
he'd protected her, as a man was sworn to do, he never would have seen the walls of Urik.
    His body would lie beside hers, turned to dust and dirt a hundred times over.
    A shadow wind sundered Hamanu's memory. He released the balustrade and turned around. A
dusty breeze took shape, as tall as he was, yet far broader.
    "Windreaver," he said flatly as the shape became substantial and the last commander of the troll
army stood between him and the pool.
As big as half-giants, as clever as elves or dwarves, trolls had been formidable enemies for a
champion-led army, and Windreaver had been—and remained—the most formidable of the trolls. He'd
lived and fought for two ages before he and a fifty-year-old Hamanu faced each other and Windreaver
fought his last battle. A wispy curtain of silver hair hung around his swept-back ears, and the wrinkles
above his bald brow were as pronounced as the brow ridge itself. Age had not dulled Windreaver's
obsidian eyes. They were as bright, black, and sharp on the palace roof as they had been on the
windswept cliff high above a wracken sea.
    Hamanu hissed, an effective, contemptuous gesture in his unnatural shape. When hate was
measured, he and Windreaver were peers. If Enver was one aspect of