Cinnabar Shadows

by Lynn Abbey

  "Shall I escort you to the palace, Great One?" the instigator asked.

  Pavek understood that the man would expect another gratuity when they reached the palace gate. He needed another moment to remember that he was a high templar now and that there was no need for him to reward this man, or anyone. Nor was he compelled to accept services he didn't want.

  "I know the way, Instigator," he said firmly, liking the sound. "Your place is here. I would not take you from it. Let Manip, there, haul our cart to my house." That was a way to reward the templar who'd actually taken the eavesdropping risk, and rid themselves of a bulky pile in the bargain. The other cart, Mahtra's cart with the abundance of pillows, was already on its way back to Modekan.

  "Great One, the palace?" The instigator's tone was less bold. "The Mighty Lord was informed of your imminent arrival, Great One. He expects you and your companions."

  "That is not your concern, Instigator." Pavek made his voice cold. He smiled his practiced templar smile and felt his scar twitch.

  The tricks of a high templar's trade came easily. He could grow accustomed to the power, if he weren't careful. Corruption grew out of the bribes he was offered, the bribes he accepted, which was no surprise, but also out of those he refused, and that was a surprise.

  He set Manip, the cart, and three ceramic bits on their way toward the templar quarter, then herded his companions deeper into the city, where they could almost disappear into the afternoon crowds.

  "Didn't you hear what he said?" Zvain demanded when they were sheltered in the courtyard of an empty shop. "Wheels of fate, Pavek—King Hamanu's got his eye out for us. We're goners if we don't hie ourselves to the palace!"

  "And do what when we get there?" Pavek countered. "Slide across the floor on our bellies until he tells us what to do next?"

  Zvain said nothing, but his expression hinted that he had expected to slither.

  "Mahtra, can you take us to the reservoir now?" Pavek turned to her. "I want to see it with my own eyes before we go to the palace."

  She pulled back, shaking her head like a startled animal.

  "If we're going to hunt for Kakzim, we have to start where he was last seen."

  "My Lord Hamanu—" Mahtra began to protest.

  But Pavek cut her off. "Doesn't know everything there is to know in Urik." The words were heresy, but also the truth, or Laq would never have gotten loose in the city. "Can you lead us there? I don't want to go to the palace with an empty head."

  "There was death everywhere. Blood and bodies. I didn't want to go back. I didn't go back. Father, Mika, they're still there."

  A child, Pavek reminded himself. A seven-year-old who'd come home one morning and found her family slaughtered. "You don't have to go all the way, Mahtra. Just far enough so we know where we're going. Zvain will stay with you—" "No way!" the boy protested. "I'm going with you. I'm not afraid of a few corpses."

  "You'll stay with her, won't you, Ru?"

  "Aye," Ruari replied, but he was staring at the roofs across the street where something had just gone thump.

  "There—you lead us as far as you can, and Ruari will stay with you until Zvain and I get back." Never mind that he'd trust Mahtra's street-sense before he'd trust Ruari's; Mahtra was reassured.

  "We have to get to the elven market. There'll be enforcers to pay, and runners. I haven't paid them since—" Mahtra's voice faltered. Pavek began to worry that the return to Urik had overwhelmed her, but she cleared her throat and continued. "There's Henthoren. I don't know if he'll let me bring someone new across his plaza..."

  "We'll worry about that when we get there," Pavek said with a shrug.

  He might have known the passage would be in the elven market—the one place in Urik where a high templar's medallion wouldn't cut air. They'd be better off if no market enforcer or runner suspected who he was, what he was. Tucking the medallion inside his shirt, he started walking toward the market. He had three companions, each of whom wanted to walk beside him, but only two sides, Ruari staked a claim to Pavek's right side. He held it with dire glowers and few expert prods from his staff, which Pavek decided diplomatically to ignore.

  "What do I do with these?" the half-elf asked plaintively.

  Pavek looked down on a handful of colorful seal-stones sitting in Ruari's outstretched hand. "Did anyone tell you a story that you believed?"

  "No. They all wanted something from me."

  "Throw them away."

  "But—?"

  The stones went tumbling when Pavek jostled the half-elf's arm.

  "But—?" he repeated. "The stones themselves—shouldn't I try to return them, if I don't want them?"

  "Forget the stones. Potters sell them at twenty for a ceramic bit, forty after a rain. Forget the Modekaners. If you'd believed them, it might be different—might be. But you didn't believe them. Trust yourself, Ru. You for damn sure can't trust anyone else."

  Ruari wiped the lingering dust onto his breeches. The great adventure had lost its glow for him and was further dimmed when they passed through the gates into the elven market. Ruari had been conceived somewhere in the dense maze of tents, shanties, and stalls. His Moonracer mother had fallen afoul of a human templar. The templar was long dead, but Ruari still held a grudge.

  The market was quiet, at least as far as enforcers and runners were concerned. Mahtra led them confidently from one shamble-way to the next. Keeping an eye out for authority, Pavek spotted several vendors who seemed to recognize her—hardly surprising given her memorably exotic features—but no one called to her. And that wasn't surprising either. Folk in the market minded their own business, but they had a good memory for strangers, an excellent memory for the three strangers traveling in Mahtra's wake.

  They stopped short on the verge of a plaza not greatly different from a handful of others they'd crossed without hesitation.

  "He's not here. Henthoren's not here," Mahtra mumbled through her mask. She pointed at an odd but empty construction, an awning-chair atop a man-high tower and the tower mounted on wheels. Henthoren—a tribal elf by the sound of his name—presumably sat in the chair, but there were no elves to be seen today, not even among the women pounding laundry in the fountain. "He's gone."

  "He can't stop you from leading us across then, can he?" Pavek chided gently. "Let's go."

  She led them to a squat stone building northwest of the fountain. The stone was gray, contrasting with the ubiquitous yellow of Urik's streets and walls. There were rows of angular marks above a leather-hinged grating. Writing, Pavek guessed, but none that he was familiar with. After spending all his free time breathing dust and copying scrolls in the city archive, he thought he'd deciphered every variant script in the Tablelands cities. He'd have liked a few moments to study the marks, but Mahtra had opened a grate.

  "Wind and fire," Ruari exclaimed as he crossed the threshold. "We're flat out of luck, Pavek."

  Zvain used more inventive language to say the same thing. Mahtra said nothing until Pavek was inside the stone building.

  That was possible. The warding was as thick and bright as any Pavek had seen before; thicker by far than the wardings the civil bureau maintained on the various postern passages through the city walls. He'd guess a high templar had hung the shimmering curtain.

  "There was some light before, but there was a passage here, too." Mahtra indicated a place now hidden by the warding. "We'd use the passage. Now—They showed me what would happen if I touched the light."

  "It must be twice as powerful as the one under the walls," Ruari said, making a pensive face. He remembered warding from when Pavek had led them through a postern passage on their way to rescue Akashia from House Escrissar. "At least twice as powerful. I can feel it; it makes my teeth hurt and my hair stand up. The other one didn't. Don't think your medallion trick's going to work like it did last year."

  Pavek shouldered his way to the front. He took his medallion from his neck and grasped it carefully by the edges, with the striding lion to the front. "
You forget: I'm at least twice the templar I was then."

  A cascade of blue-green sparks leapt to the medallion, leaving a black, wardless space in the curtain. Pavek moved the ceramic in an outward-growing spiral, collecting more sparks, making a bigger hole. His arm was numb and faintly blue-green by the time he had a hole large enough to let them through. He went last; it closed behind him, leaving them in darkness. Pavek sucked his teeth and swore under his breath.

  "What's the matter?" Ruari asked.

  "One-sided warding."

  "So? Then we've got no problem getting out—"

  The half-elf would have walked headlong into oblivion if Pavek hadn't seized his arm and shoved him against the rough stone wall.

  "Death-trap, fool! Warding to keep curious folk out, but a blind trap for anyone who was already inside when the wards were set."

  Ruari went limp against Pavek's grip on his shirt. "Can we get out?"

  "Same way we got in—just have to make certain I'm in front and my medallion's in front of me," Pavek said with more good-humor and optimism than he felt. "Wish I had a bit of chalk to mark the walls. Wish I had a torch to see the walls..."

  "There're torches on the other side," Mahtra volunteered, then added: "There used to be."

  "I can see," Ruari informed them, relying on the night-vision he'd inherited from his elven mother. "I've marked these rocks in my mind. I'll know this place when we're here again. Swear it."

  "See that you do," Pavek said, and Zvain tittered nervously somewhere on his left. "Still wish I had a torch."

  "The path's not hard," Mahtra assured them. "I never carried a torch, and I can't see in the dark. Hold hands; I'll lead."

  And she did, without a hint of her earlier trepidations. Her grip was cool and dry around Pavek's fingers, while Zvain, behind Pavek, had a sweaty hand that threatened to slip away with every hesitant step the boy took. Ruari brought up the rear, or Pavek assumed he did. Between his druid training and his innate talents, the half-elf could be utterly silent when he chose.

  The air in the passage was nighttime cool and heavy with moisture, like the air in Telhami's grove. It had a faintly musty scent, but nothing approaching the stench Pavek would have expected from the carnage Mahtra had described. He'd believed her since she appeared on the salt flats. He'd trusted her unquestioningly, as he trusted no one else, certainly not the Lion-King who'd sent her. A thousand ominous thoughts broke his mind's surface.

  "There's light ahead," Ruari announced in an excited whisper.

  Light meant magic or fire. Pavek took a deep breath through his nose. He couldn't smell anything, but he couldn't see anything, either.

  "Let me go first," he said to Mahtra, striding past her.

  The passage was wide enough for two good-sized humans and high enough that he hadn't bumped his head. They'd come through a few narrower spots, but none that made Pavek feel as if the ground had swallowed him whole. He didn't suggest that Mahtra stay behind or that Ruari stay behind with her. He didn't sense danger ahead, not in that almost-magical way a man could sometimes sense a trap or ambush before it was too late, but if things did go bad, he wanted Ruari and his staff where they could be of some use—not to mention the 'protection' Mahtra claimed to possess but hadn't ever described or demonstrated.

  He thumbed the guard that held his steel sword—scavenged from the battlefield after the battle with Escrissar's mercenaries for Quraite—in its scabbard. "Stay close. Stay quiet," he ordered his troops. "Keep balanced. If I stop short, I don't want to hear you grunting and stumbling."

  The enclosed passage ended at the top of a curving ramp. Overhead, there was open air filled with the dim light, solid rock on his left, and a slowly diminishing wall on his right. Pavek edged along the wall, keeping his head down, until the wall was low enough for him to see over while still providing him with something to hide behind. After taking a deep breath for courage, he peeked over the top—

  And was so amazed by what he saw that he forgot to hunker down again.

  Urik's reservoir was larger than any druid's pool, larger than anything Pavek could have imagined on his own. It was a dark mirror reflecting the glow from its far shore, flawless, except for circular ripples that appeared and faded as he gazed across it. The glow came from five huge bowls that seemed at first to hover in the still air, though when he squinted, Pavek could make out a faint, silvery scaffolding beneath them.

  Other than the bowls, there was nothing: no corpses, no burnt-out huts, none of the debris a veteran templar expected to find in the aftermath of carnage.

  But the bowls themselves...

  Pavek didn't have the words to describe their delicate, subtly shifting color or the aura that shone steadily around them. They were beautiful, identical, perfect in every imaginable way, and now that he'd seen them, the foreboding he hadn't felt when Ruari first saw light ahead fell on him like burning oil.

  Mahtra wasn't a liar. Lord Hamanu was trustworthy. And someone—Kakzim—had contrived the deaths of countless innocents and misfits so these bowls could be set in their places above the water.

  Set there and left alone.

  By everything Pavek could see or hear, there wasn't another living creature in the cavern. He gave the agreed-upon signal, and Ruari brought the other two down the ramp.

  Mahtra gasped.

  Zvain began a curse: "Hamanu's great, greasy—" which he didn't finish because Pavek clouted him hard on the floating ribs. Notwithstanding an eleganta's trade or the things Mahtra must have seen in House Escrissar, there were some things honest men did not say in the presence of women. The boy folded himself around the ache. Tears ran from his eyes, but he kept his lips sealed and soundless.

  "What do you think?" Pavek gave his attention to Ruari, who was his superior where magic was concerned.

  The half-elf rolled his lower lip out. "I don't like it. Doesn't feel..." He closed his eyes and opened them again. "Doesn't feel healthy."

  Pavek sighed. He'd had the same sensation. He'd hoped Ruari could be more specific.

  They stayed where they were, waiting for a sound, a flicker of movement to tell them they weren't alone. There was nothing—unless the most disciplined ambushers on the Tablelands were waiting for them. When Pavek's instincts said walk or scream, he started down the ramp, slow and quiet, but convinced that they were in no immediate danger. The cavern was too vast for the sort of one-sided warding they'd encountered earlier; it was too vast for any warding at all. Ruari prodded the reservoir's gravelly shore with his staff, searching for more traditional traps. He overturned a few charred lumps that might have been parts of huts or humans, but nothing that would tell anyone what had happened here less than two quinths ago, if Mahtra hadn't told them.

  When they got to the far shore, they found each bowl mounted on its own platform that leaned over the water. The silvery scaffolds shone with light as well as reflecting the greater light of the bowls they held. Caution said, look, don't touch, but Pavek was a high templar who'd painted the Lion-King's kilts. He wasn't afraid of a bit of glamour, and he recognized a ladder in the scaffold's regular cross-pieces. With his medallion against his palm, he touched a glowing strut.

  "I'll be—" he began, then caught himself. "It's made of bones!"

  Pavek ran the medallion from one lashing to the next, absorbing the silver glow. The scaffolding that emerged from the glamour was constructed from bones of every description. It was thoroughly ingenious, but except for the glamour—which was a simple deception and not much of one at that—it was completely nonmagical. He tested the built-in ladder and, finding it strong enough to bear his weight, scrambled up to the platform. Ruari came after him, but the other two stayed on the ground.

  There was a pattern: leather and bones, a lot of leather, a lot of bones. Pavek felt a word rising through his own thick thoughts, but without breaking the surface, the word was gone when the bowl suddenly shuddered.

  Hand on his sword, he turned around in time to see Ruari tottering on th
e bowl's rim. Demonstrating a singular lack of foresight, the half-elf had apparently tried to leap up there from the scaffold, but all those losing contests with his elven cousins finally yielded a victory. Ruari thrust his staff forward and down into the bowl. The move acted as a counterbalance, and he stood steady a moment before leaping lightly back to the scaffold platform beside Pavek.

  Slop from the tip of Ruari's staff struck Pavek's leg. It was warm, slimy, and unspeakably foul. Pavek swiped it off with his fingers, then shook his hand frantically. Ruari reversed the staff to get his own closer view of the remaining gook.

  He touched it, sniffed it, and would have touched it a second time with the tip of his tongue—if Pavek hadn't swung at the staff and sent it flying.

  "Have you lost what little wit you were born with, scum?"

  Ruari drew himself up to his full height, a good head-and-a-half taller than Pavek. "I was going to find out whether it was wholesome or not. Druids can do that, you know. Not bumble-thumbs like you, but real druids."

  "Idiots can do it, too, the same way you were going to do it! Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy—the stuff's poison!"

  "Poison?"

  Ruari stared at the dark slime on his fingers, and, judging by his puzzled expression, saw something entirely different. So Pavek grabbed Ruari's hand and smeared the sludge clinging to the half-elf's hand across the medallion, where it hissed and steamed with a frightful stench. Ruari was properly appalled

  "Laq?" he whispered.

  "Damned if I know."

  "Laq?" Zvain shouted from the ground where he brandished Ruari's staff.

  "You keep your hands away from that tip—understand!" Pavek shouted, which only drew the boy's attention to that exact part of the staff, which he promptly touched.

  Pavek leapt to the ground, twisting his ankle on the landing. By the time things were sorted out, both he and Zvain were limping and Ruari had joined them.

  "This time, Kakzim's trying to" poison Urik's water," the half-elf said, proud that he'd deciphered the purpose of the bowls.

  "Looks like it," Pavek agreed, putting weight gingerly on his sore ankle. "Had to get rid of the folk living here so he could build these damn bone scaffolds and skin bowls!" Which, while true, were not the wisest words he'd ever uttered.