Cinnabar Shadows

Dark Sun, Chronicles of Athas, Book 04

This book is dedicated to Lonnie Loy my accountant

Urik.

Viewed through the eye of a soaring kes'trekel, the walled city was a vast sulphur carbuncle rising
slowly out of a green plain. Towers, walls, and roofs shimmered red, gold, and amber, as if the city-state
itself were afire in the steeply slanted light of a dying afternoon. But the flames were only the reflections of
the sun's bloody disk as it sank in the west: an everyday miracle, little noticed by the creatures great and
small, soaring or crawling, that dwelt in Urik's purview.

Roads like veins of gold traced from city walls to smaller eruptions in the fertile plain. Silver arteries
wove through the patchwork fields that depended on that burden of water as Urik depended on the fields
themselves. Beyond the ancient network of irrigation channels, the green plain faded rapidly to dusty,
barren badlands that stretched endlessly in all directions except the northwest, where the dirty haze of the
Smoking Crown Volcano put a premature end to the vision of man and kes'trekel alike.

Drifting away from the haze, toward the city, a kes'tre-kel's eye soon enough discerned the
monumental murals decorating the mighty walls. One figure dominated every scene: a powerful man with
the head of a lion. Sometimes inscribed in profile, other times full-face, but never without a potent weapon
grasped in his fist, the man's skin was burnished bronze, his flowing hair a leonine black, and his eyes a
fierce, glassy yellow that shone with blinding brilliance when struck by the sun.

The kes'trekel swerved when Urik's walls flashed gold. Through uncounted generations, the scaled
birds had adapted to the harsh landscapes of the Athasian Tablelands. They knew nothing natural, nothing
worthwhile, nothing safe or edible shone with such a brief yet powerful light. Given their instincts and
wings, they sought other, less ominous night roosts. The men and woman trudging along the dusty ocher
roads of Urik's plain possessed the same instincts but, bereft of wings, could only flinch when the blinding
light whipped their eyes, then swallow a hard lump and keep going.

Unlike the kes'trekels, men and women knew whose portrait was repeated on Urik's walls: Lord
Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of Mountain and Plain, the Great King, the Sorcerer-King.

Their king.

And their king was watching them.

No Urikite doubted Lord Hamanu's power to look through any wall, any darkness to find the secrets
written on even a child's heart. Lord Hamanu's word was Law in Urik, his whim Justice. In the Tablelands
where death was never more than a handful of unfortunate days away, Lord Hamanu gave Urik peace and
stability: his peace, his stability— so long as his laws were obeyed, his taxes paid, his templars bribed, and
he himself worshiped as a living, immortal god.

Lord Hamanu's bargain with Urik had withstood a millennium's testing. There was, despite the cringing,
a measure of pride in the minds of those roadway travelers: their king had not fallen in the Dragon's wake.
Their city had prospered because their king was as wily and farsighted as he was rapacious and cruel. The
mass of them felt no urge to follow the road into the badlands, to the other city-states where opportunity
consorted openly with anarchy. Wherever they lived—on a noble estate, in a market village, or within the
mighty walls—most Urikites willingly hurried home each evening to their suppers and their families.

They had to hurry: Lord Hamanu's domain extended as far as his flashing eyes could be seen, and
farther. Early on in his career as sorcerer-king, he'd decreed a curfew for law-abiding folk that began with
the appearance of the tenth star in the heavens. And, unlike some of his other law-making whims, that
curfew stood unchanged. Law-abiding folk knew better to linger where the king or his minions could find
them after sunset.

Except in the market villages.

In another longstanding whim, Lord Hamanu did not permit anyone to enter his city unannounced, and
he levied a hefty tax on anyone who stayed overnight at a public house within its walls. In consequence of
this whim—and the city's daily need for food that no whim could eliminate—ten market villages studded
Urik's circular plain. In a rotation as old as the reign of King of the Plain himself, the ten villages relayed
produce from nearby free-farms and outlying noble estates into the city. They also gave their names to the
days of Urik's week. On the evening before its nameday, each village swelled with noisy confusion as
farmers and slaves gathered to gossip, trade, and—most importantly—register with the templars before the
next morning's trek to the massive gates of Urik.
Nine of the villages were sprawling, almost friendly settlements with walls and gatehouses that could
scarcely be distinguished from animal pens. Registrators from the civil bureau of Lord Hamanu's templarate
had become as much a part of the community as templars could, considering their loyalties and the
medallions hung around their necks, symbols of Hamanu and the terrible power a true sorcerer-king could
channel to and through his chosen minions.

Long after curfew on market-day eve and market-day night, there was usually music in the village
streets and raucous laughter in its inns.

Except in the market village of Codesh.

The first day of Urik's week and the first of its villages, Codesh was as old as the city itself. In the
beginning, before conquering Hamanu laid claim to this corner of the Tablelands, it was also larger than
Urik—or so the village elders proclaimed at every opportunity. Codeshites feared Hamanu more than their
compatriots in the other villages because they challenged him more than his other subjects would dare.
When there was trouble outside Urik's walls, Codesh was the first place the templars came. Not templars
from the tame civil bureau, but hardened veterans from the war bureau, armed with dark magic and the will
to use it.

There was no camaraderie between templars and villagers in Codesh.

Wicker walls and rickety towers weren't sufficient for the fractious village. Both Codeshite and Urikite
templars wanted stalwart towers and fortress walls that might give them the advantage if push ever came
to shove. Codesh's walls were only a third as high as Urik's, but that was more than enough to separate the
stiff-necked Codeshites from the more congenial market-farmers who congregated outside the village walls
on Codesh eve and Codesh night each week.

There were murals on the Codesh walls: the obligatory portraits of the Lion of Urik, without the sunset
flashing eyes, and invariably armed with a butcher's poleaxe, which explained what the village was and why
its insolence was tolerated generation after generation. Codesh was Urik's sanctioned abattoir: the place
where beasts of every kind were brought for slaughter in the open-roofed, slope-floored killing ground and
processed into meat and other necessities.

Nothing valuable was wasted by the butchery clans of Codesh. Each beast that came into their hands
was slain, gutted and carefully flensed into layers of rawhide and fat that were consigned to subclans of
tanners and Tenderers, all of whom maintained reeking establishments elsewhere within the Codesh walls.
The Tenderers took the small bones and offal, as well, adding them to the seething brews of their
giant-sized kettles. Long bones went to bonemen who excised the marrow with special drills, then sold the
best of what remained to joiners for the building of houses, and the scraps to farmers for their fields.

Honeymen collected the blood that ran into the pits at the rear of each killing floor. They dried the
blood in the sun and sold it underhand to mages and priests of every stripe. They also sold their rusty
powder overhand to the farmers who dribbled it like water on their most precious crops. Gleaners collected
their particular prizes—jewel-like gallstones, misshaped organs, bright green inix eyes, polished pebbles
from erdlu gizzards—and sold them, no questions asked, to the highest bidder. Gluemakers took the last:
hooves, talons, beaks, and the occasional sentient miscreant whose body must never be found.

And if some bloody bit did fall from a clansman's cart, sharp-eyed kes'trekels flocked continuously
overhead. With an eerie scream, the luckiest bird would fold its wings and plummet from the sky. A score
of others might follow. A kes'trekel orgy was no place for the fainthearted. The birds brawled as they fed,
sometimes on each other, until nothing remained. Even a strong-stomached man might wisely turn away.

The mind-bender who'd claimed the mind of a soaring kes'trekel from boredom hours earlier let it go
when it became part of that descending column of hungry scavengers. He settled into his own body, his
thoughts returning to their familiar byways through his mind, sensation coming back to arms, not wings, to
feet, not talons. The constant, overwhelming stench of Codesh struck the back of his nose. He breathed out
heavily, a conscious reflex, expelling the poisons in his lungs, then breathed in again, accepting the Codesh
air as punishment.

"Brother Kakzim?"

The urgent, anxious whisper in Kakzim's ear completed his return. He opened his eyes and beheld the
killing floor of Codesh's largest slaughterhouse. His kes'trekel was one of a score of birds fighting over a
length of shiny silver gut. Before Kakzim could avert his eyes, the largest kes'trekel plunged its sharp beak
into the breast of the bird whose mind he had lately haunted. Echoes of its death gripped his own heart; he'd
been wise, very wise, to separate himself from the creature when he did.

"Brother? Brother Kakzim, is there—? Is there a problem, Brother Kakzim?"

Kakzim gave a second sigh, wondering how long his companion had been standing behind him. A
moment? A watch? Since he snared the now-dead kes'trekel? Respect was a useful quality in an
apprentice, but Cerk carried it too far.

"I don't know," he said without looking at the younger halfling. "Tell me why you're standing here like a
singed jozhal, and I'll tell you if there's a problem."

The senior halfling lowered his hands. The sleeves of his dark robe flowed past his wrists to conceal
hands covered with scars from flames, knives, and other more obscure sources. The robe's cowl had fallen
back while his mind had wandered. He adjusted that, as well, tugging the cloth forward until his face was in
shadow. Wispy fibers brushed against his cheeks, each feeling like a tiny, acid-ripped claw. Kakzim made
another quick adjustment and let his breath out again.

The bloody sun had risen and set two-hundred fifty-four times since Kakzim had brushed a steaming
paste of corrosive acid over his own face, exchanging one set of scars for another. That was two-thirds of
a year, from highsun to half ascentsun, by the old reckoning; ten quinths by the current Urik reckoning,
which divided the year into fifteen equal segments; or twenty-five weeks, as the Codeshites measured time.
For a halfling born in the verdant forests beyond the Ringing Mountains, weeks, quinths, and years had no
intrinsic meaning. A halfling measured time by days, and there had been enough days to heal the acid
wound into twisted knots of flesh that still burned when touched or moved. But the acid scars were more
honorable than the ones they replaced, and constant pain was a fitting reminder of his failures.

When he was no older than Cerk—almost twenty years ago—Kakzim had emerged from the forests
full of fire and purpose. The scars from the life-oath he'd sworn to the BlackTree Brethren were still fresh
on his heart. The silty sea must be made blue again, the parched land returned to green. What was
done must be undone; what was lost must be returned. No sacrifice is too great. The BlackTree had
drunk his blood, and the elder brothers had given him his life's mission: to do whatever he could to end the
life-destroying tyranny of the Dragon and its minions.

The BlackTree Brethren prepared their disciples well. Kakzim had sat at the elders' feet until he'd
memorized everything they knew, then they'd shown him the vast chamber below the BlackTree where lore
no halfling alive understood was carved into living roots. He'd dwelt underground, absorbing ancient,
forgotten lore. He knew secrets that had been forgotten for a millennium or more and the elders,
recognizing his accomplishments, sent him to Urik, where the Dragon's tyranny was disguised as the
Lion-King's law.

Kakzim made plans—his genius included not merely memory, but foresight and creativity—he watched
and waited, and when the time was ripe, he surrendered himself into the hands of a Urikite high templar.
They made promises to each other, he and Elabon Escrissar, that day when the half-elf interrogator took a
knife, carved his family's crest into Kakzim's flesh, then permanently stained the scars with soot. Both of
them had given false promises, but Kakzim's lies went deeper than the templar's. He'd been lying from the
moment he selected Escrissar as a suitable partner in his life's work.

No halfling could tolerate the restraints of forced slavery; it was beyond their nature. They sickened
and died, as Escrissar should have known... would have known, if Kakzim hadn't clouded the templar's
already warped judgment with pleas, promises and temptations. Escrissar had ambitions. He had wealth and
power as a high templar, but he wanted more than the Lion-King would concede to any favorite. In time,
with Kakzim's careful prompting, Escrissar came to want Lord Hamanu's throne and Urik itself. Failing
that—and Kakzim had known from the start that the Lion-King could not be deposed—it had been possible
to convince Escrissar that what he couldn't have should be destroyed.

Reflecting on the long years of their association, Kakzim could see that they'd both been deluded by
their ambitions. But then, without warning from the BlackTree or anything Kakzim could recognize as their
assistance, Sorcerer-King Kalak of Tyr was brought down. Less than a decade later Borys the Dragon and
the ancient sorcerer Rajaat—whom the BlackTree Brethren called the Deceiver—were vanquished as
well.