by Lynn Abbey
Still, he was relieved when one of the spell-chanters worked his way to the rear where the dull-eyed humans gathered, and reported that they'd gone too deep to pull anything through their medallions without creating an ethereal disturbance that could be easily detected by any Code-shite with a nose for magic.
The sergeant didn't hide her preferences. "If there's anyone at all in the damned cavern."
But the chanter saw things differently. "It will not matter where they are, Sergeant. The deeper we go, the harder we must pull, and the bigger the ethereal disturbance, which radiates like a sphere and will reach Codesh long before we do. It is also true, sergeant, that the harder we pull, the less we are receiving. I believe it will not be long before we receive nothing useful at all no matter how hard we pull. The Mighty Lord Hamanu's power does not seem to penetrate the rock beneath his city."
They conferred with the red-headed priest in templar's clothing. He couldn't account for the problems the chanters were having. In Urik, he and other earth-dedicated priests worked very quietly because Hamanu's power reached into their sanctuaries quite easily.
"The rock here must be different, Ediyua," he addressed the sergeant not by her rank, but by her name, confirming Pavek's suspicion that they were kin. "I could investigate, but it would take time, perhaps as much as a day."
Ediyua muttered a few oaths. In her opinion, they should return to the palace; the war bureau didn't like to fight without Hamanu backing them up, but Pavek was the great commander for this foray, and the final decision was his.
Hearing that the Lion-King's power wouldn't reach the reservoir cavern had shaken Pavek's confidence. He'd been so certain Hamanu was toying with them. Now it seemed the great king truly needed the help and skill of a ragtag handful of ordinary folk to thwart Kakzim's plan to poison the city's water. Pavek still considered himself and all of his companions to be pawns in a great game between Hamanu and the mad halfling, but the stakes had been raised to dizzying heights.
"The bowls," he said finally. "Destroying the bowls— that's the most important thing. If we go back to the palace without doing that, we'll be grease and cinders. The Lion's given orders that the bowls are to be burnt before we link up with the other maniple in Codesh at midday. And we're going to burn them, or die trying, because if we fail, the dying will be worse."
There was a grumble of agreement from the nearest templars. Even the sergeant nodded her head.
Pavek continued. "I was seen and recognized yesterday on the Codesh killing ground. Our enemy knows I'll be coming back, one way or another. He'll have guards in the cavern—workmen, too—but no magic except mind-bending. He's a mind-bender, I think. Tell everyone to be alert for thoughts that aren't their own. It's dark as a tomb in there. Keep your elves up front. Let them use their eyes. Forget spellcraft. There're twenty of you, Sergeant. If you can't defeat three times your number without pulling magic, Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy won't be enough to save you."
A globe of flickering witch-light magnified the sergeant's vexation at listening to a civil bureau regulator tell her how to prepare for a fight. But she gave the orders Pavek wanted to hear. All magic was stifled, and they finished their journey as Pavek recommended, keeping themselves low to the ground. He got a moment's satisfaction when another report filtered back to them stating that there were at least a score of Codeshites in the cavern, some working atop shining platforms, while the rest were both armed and armored.
Leaving the balsam oil with the two dwarves, Pavek followed the sergeant to the front of their column. As he'd done the previous day, he sneaked down the ramp and cautiously stole a peek across the reservoir. The scaffolds and bowls shone with their glamourous light, inciting awestruck gasps from his companions. Unlike the previous day, however, the cavern swarmed with activity. Workers were on the scaffolds and at their bases, hauling buckets up from the shore and adding who-knew-what to the simmering sludge. Beyond the workers stood a ring of guards—Pavek counted eighteen—all with their backs to the scaffolds and with their poleaxes ready.
The sergeant swore and crawled back with him to the tunnel passage where they could confer. The plan they made was simple: Leaving the nontemplars behind with the sealed sacks; the rest of them would fan out along the shore and advance as far as possible before they were spotted by the dwarves among the Codeshites. Once they were seen, they'd charge and pray there were no archers hiding in the darkness. Even if there were, the plan wouldn't change.
Someone was sure to run for Codesh. Ruari and the red-haired priest had their orders to watch which way those runners went. Then, with Zvain and Mahtra's help, they were to carry the sacks to the scaffolds whatever way they could.
"With luck, we'll have those bowls burning before reinforcements arrive from the abattoir," Pavek concluded.
The war bureau templars commended themselves to Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy. Pavek embraced his friends. In the darkness it didn't matter, but his eyes were damp and useless when he joined the other templars on the shore.
* * *
Cerk sat in the rocks near the entrance to the tunnel leading back to the village. Among themselves in the forests, halflings weren't daunted by physical labor, but on the Tablelands, where the world was overflowing with big, heavy-footed folk, a clever halfling stayed out of the way whenever there was work to be done.
He'd earned his rest. Gathering all the bones for the scaffolds and the hides for the bowls had taxed his creativity to the limit. Simply getting everything into the cavern had been a challenge. The Codesh passage had collapsed sometime in the distant past. When Brother Kakzim had first found it, the twisting tunnel was barely large enough for a human and broad enough for a dwarf. There wasn't enough clearance to maneuver the long bones Cerk needed for the scaffolds. He'd hired work-crews every night for a week to clear away the debris before the longest bones could be manhandled into the cavern.
Brother Kakzim had raged and stormed. Elder brother wanted monuments of stone to support his alabaster brewing bowls. By the shade of the great BlackTree itself, Cerk could have kept those crews excavating for another year, and there wouldn't have been enough room to get the bowls Brother Kakzim wanted into the cavern—assuming he'd been able to find any alabaster bowls, much less the ten that elder brother swore he needed. Cerk had worked miracles to get enough hide to make the five wicker-frame bowls they did have.
A little appreciation would have been welcomed. Instead Brother Kakzim had assaulted Cerk both physically and mentally. The lash marks across Cerk's back had healed shut, but they were still sore and tender. In the end—at least before the end of Cerk's life—elder brother's madness had receded and reason prevailed. The contagion could be successfully brewed in the five bowls Cerk provided, and their scrap-heap origin could be disguised with a well-constructed glamour.
Cerk still didn't understand why the glamour had been necessary. It had taken every last golden coin in the Urik cache to create it: half to find a defiler willing to cast such a spell and the other half for the reagents. They'd gotten some of the gold back when they'd slain the defiler after he raised the glamour, but most of their money was gone, now. And for what? The workers who saw the illusion were the same folk who'd lashed bones together to form the scaffolds and stitched their fingers raw making the bowls. Cerk certainly wasn't impressed by it, and they weren't going to invite the sorcerer-king to the cavern to witness the spilling of the bowls, the destruction of his city.
The only other folk who'd seen the illusion were that scarred human, Paddock, and his companions. At least that's what Brother Kakzim had said yesterday when the foursome appeared in Codesh and headed like arrows for the old building that stood atop the tunnel. Paddock was the reason Cerk had spent the night underground, watching the men who were guarding the scaffolds.
When the do-nothing templars charged across the killing ground to rescue the scarred man and his companions, elder brother had had one of his fits. He'd bit his tongue and writhed on the floor like a spiked
serpent. Cerk had feared Brother Kakzim would die on the spot—ending this whole ill-omened enterprise—but he hadn't. He'd gotten to his feet and wiped his face as if nothing strange had happened. Then he'd started giving orders. Elder brother wanted guards around the scaffolds and guards on the killing floor. He wanted more reagents added to the bowls, and he wanted them stirred constantly.
Truly it was a tragedy—Cerk's own tragedy. Had he given his oaths to Brother Kakzim, he would no longer consider himself bound by them. But he'd given his oath to the sacred BlackTree and his fate if he broke it would surely be worse than if he obeyed the orders of a madman. And so Cerk sat uncomfortably on the rocks, his mind empty except for the slowest curiosity about the lamp and how long its wick would burn before he had to refill the oil chamber.
Then Cerk heard a shout. He raised his head, but several moments elapsed before his thoughts crystallized into intelligence and he realized the guards he'd hired were under attack. Another moment passed before Cerk recognized the uniformly yellow-garbed attackers as templars from the city, and a third before he spotted a brawny, black-haired human with an ugly, scarred face in their midst.
Paddock!
Brother Kakzim wasn't mad—at least not where templar Paddock was concerned. The Codeshites were fighting for their lives, and they fought hard, but they were no match for the templars, who fought in pairs, one attacking, one defending, neither one taking an injury from the desperate Codeshites.
Cerk made one solid attempt to cloud the minds of the nearest templars. He sowed doubt, because it was easiest and most effective. One templar hesitated, and his Code-shite opponent struck him down as if he were a killing-ground beast. But the fallen templar's partner threw off Cerk's doubt. She finished off the Codeshite who'd struck down her partner with two strokes of her sword, then sidestepped and teamed herself with another pair. Another templar—Cerk didn't know which one—not only rejected the mind-bending doubt, but hurled it back.
The unknown templar's Unseen assault was the primitive defense of an untrained mind. Cerk thought he'd dodged it easily, yet it proved effective. His own doubts swelled. He saw no way to save the Codeshite guards or those who'd scrambled off the scaffolding to add confusion, not skill, to the fight. The bowls themselves were doomed, because Cerk did not doubt that Paddock had brought a way to destroy them.
Brother Kakzim would have another fit, but Brother Kakzim had to know, which meant that Cerk had to get to the surface. Grabbing the lantern—halfling eyes were no better than human eyes in the dark—Cerk darted through the rock debris and into the darkest shadow.
He ran as fast as he could, as far as he could. Then with his lungs burning and his feet so heavy his wobbly legs could scarcely lift them, Cerk slumped against the wall. The tunnel was quiet except for his own raspy breaths. He'd outrun the sounds of combat, and it seemed there was no one coming up behind him. A part of him cried out to stay where he was, to blow out the lamp and cower in the safe darkness.
But the darkness wasn't safe. Someone would follow him through the tunnel, be it templar or Codeshite, and whoever it was, it would be an enemy when they met. If there was safety, it lay with Brother Kakzim in their rooms above the killing ground.
The cavern was much closer to Urik than it was to Codesh. Cerk had a long way to go, running or walking. He started moving again, as fast as he could, as soon as he could.
Chapter Eleven
The faint light filtering through the roof of the little building on the killing ground was the sweetest light Cerk had seen, even though it meant he was no longer running from the templars but looking for Brother Kakzim. With that thought in his mind, the reasonably apprehensive halfling took the extra moments to refill his lamp from the oil cask inside the building and to replace the lamp on a shelf beside the door. He straightened his clothes and tidied his hair before he unlatched the door and strode onto the killing ground where, with any luck, no one would pay much attention to him.
Cerk was noticed, of course. Children were forbidden on the killing ground, and away from the forests, halflings were often mistaken for children—especially in Codesh where there were hundreds of children, but only two halflings, himself and Brother Kakzim. Most of the clansmen who warned him away from their butchering knew only that they'd found an old tunnel below the old building, but some of the clansmen knew exactly where he'd been—where he should still be—and why. Some of them had kin on what had become another killing ground.
As he rounded the top of the stairs to the abattoir gallery and their rented rooms. Cerk could see Brother Kakzim sitting at a table, making calculations with an abacus, and inscribing the results on a slab of wet clay. Usually Cerk waited until elder brother finished whatever he was doing. There was nothing usual about today. He took a deep breath and interrupted before he crossed the threshold.
"Brother! Brother Kakzim—respectfully—"
Brother Kakzim swiveled slowly on his stool. His cowl was down on his shoulders. His face, with its scars and huge, mad eyes, surmounted by wild wisps of brown hair, was terrible to behold.
"What are you doing here?"
A mind-bender's rage accompanied the question. Cerk staggered backward. He struck his head hard against the doorjamb, hard enough to dispel the rage-driven assault and replace it with pain.
"Didn't I tell you to stay with the bowls?"
Cerk pushed himself away from the door, winced as a lock of hair caught in the rough plaster that framed the wood and pulled out at the roots. "Disaster, Brother Kakzim!" he exclaimed rapidly. "Templars! A score of them, at least—"
"Paddock?"
"Yes."
A change came over Brother Kakzim while the templar's name still hung in the air. For several moments, Brother Kakzim simply didn't move. Elder brother's eyes were open, as was his mouth. One hand was raised above his head, ready to emphasize a curse. The other rested on the table, as if he were rising to his feet. But he wasn't rising. He wasn't doing anything.
Then, while Cerk held his breath, the scars on Brother Kakzim's face darkened like the setting sun, and the weblike patches in them that never quite healed began to throb.
Cerk braced himself against the doorjamb, awaiting a mind-bending onslaught that did not come. He counted the hammer beats of his own heart: one... ten... twenty... He was getting light-headed; he had to breathe, had to blink his own eyes. In that time another change had happened. Brother Kakzim had lowered his arm. His eyes had become a set of rings, amber around black, white around amber: a sane man's eyes, such as Cerk had never seen above elder brother's scarred cheeks.
"How long?" Brother Kakzim asked calmly. Cerk didn't understand the question and couldn't provide an answer. Brother Kakzim elaborated, "How long before our nemesis and his companions find their way here?" His voice remained mild.
"I don't know, Brother. They were still fighting when I ran from the cavern. I ran when I could, but I had to stop to rest. I heard nothing behind me. Perhaps they won't come. Perhaps they won't find the passage and will return to Urik."
"Wishes and hopes, little brother." Brother Kakzim picked up the clay slabs he'd been inscribing and squeezed them into useless lumps that he hurled into the farthest corner, but those acts were the only outward signs of his distress. "Our nemesis will follow us. You may be sure of it. He is my bane, my curse. While he lives, I will pluck only failure from my branches. The omens were there, there, but I did not read them. Did you see his scar? How it tracks from his right eye to his mouth? His right eye, not his left. An omen, Cerk, an omen, plain as day, plain as the night I first saw him—"
He seems sane, but he is mad, Cerk thought carefully, in the private part of his mind, which only the most powerful mind-bender could breach. Brother Kakzim has found a new realm of madness beyond ordinary madness.
"Have I told you about that night, little brother? I should have known him for my nemesis from that first moment. Elabon tried to kill him with a half-giant. A half-giant!" Brother Kakzim laughed, not hysterica
lly as a madman might, but gently, as if at a private joke. "So much wasted time; so much time wasted. While he lives, nothing will go right for me. I must destroy him, if the BlackTree is to thrive. I must kill him. Not here. Not where he has roots. Cut off his roots! That's what we must do, little brother, cut off our nemesis at his roots!" Cerk stood still while Brother Kakzim embraced him enthusiastically. This was better than mindless rage, better than being beaten, but it was still madness.
It is madness, Cerk thought in his private place. Pure madness, and I'm part of it. I can do nothing but follow him until we reach the forest—if we reach the forest. Then I will appeal to the Elder Brethren of the Tree. I'll spill my blood on the roots, and the BlackTree will release me from my oath.
He held his hand against his chest and squeezed the tiny scars above his heart, the closest thing to prayer that a BlackTree brother had.
"Don't be sad, little brother." Brother Kakzim suddenly seized Cerk's arms. "The only failure is the last failure. No other failure lasts! Gather our belongings while I talk to the others. We must be gone before the killing starts."
Grimly Cerk nodded his obedience. Brother Kakzim released him and walked out onto the open gallery where he picked up a leather mallet and struck the alarm gong.
"Hear me! Hear me, one and all. Codesh is betrayed!"
Cerk listened as the killing ground fell silent. Even the animals had succumbed to Brother Kakzim's mind-bending might. Then elder brother began his harangue against Urik and its templars generally, and the yellow-robed villains about to emerge onto the killing ground. It was truth and falsehood so tightly interwoven that Cerk, who'd been in the cavern when the attack began and knew all the truth there was to know was drawn toward the gallery with his fists clenched and his teeth bared. He stopped himself at the door and closed it.
The closed lacquered door and his own training gave Cerk the strength to resist Brother Kakzim's voice. No one else in the abattoir would be so lucky.