Cinnabar Shadows (23 page)

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.

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 hysterically 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.

He was filling a second shoulder-sack when the room began to shake. It was as if the ground itself
were shuddering, and even though he knew the Dragon had been slain, Cerk's first thoughts were that it
had come to Codesh to consume them all.

The scrap of white-bark—the scratched lines and landmarks that had guided him to Urik a year ago
and that he'd been about to stuff into the sack—floated from Cerk's fingers. He tried to walk, but a
gut-level terror kept his feet glued where they stood, and he sank to his knees instead.

"Listen to them!" Brother Kakzim exclaimed as he shoved through the door. "Failed brilliance; brilliant
failure. My voice freed their rage. Yellow will turn red!" He did a joyous dance on the quaking floor, never
once losing his balance. "They're tearing down the gates, setting fire to the tower. They'll all die. I give
every yellow-scum death to my nemesis! Let his spirit be weighed beneath the roots!"

Stunned, Cerk realized that the shuddering of the walls and floor was the result of mauls and poleaxes
biting against the abattoir walls and the base of the watchtower where the templar detachment stood guard
day and night. When he took a deep breath, he could smell smoke. His feet came unglued, and he bolted for
the doorway where the scent was stronger. Dark tendrils filled the stairwell. He didn't want to be in Codesh
when the templars emerged from the little building.

"We're trapped!"

"Not yet. Have you gathered everything?"

The maddest eyes in creation belonged to Brother Kakzim who'd loosed a riot beneath his own feet
and didn't care. Cerk grabbed the sacks as they were on the table. He threw one over each shoulder.

"I gathered everything," he said from the doorway. "It's time to leave, elder brother. Truly, it's time to
leave."

When Elabon Escrissar led his hired cohort against Quraite, there had been blood, death, and injury all
around. There'd been honest heroism, too. Pavek had been an honest hero when he'd fought and when he'd
invoked the Lion-King's aid, but he wasn't Quraite's only hero. Ruari knew he'd done less that day and
risked less, too—but he'd been at Pavek's side at the right time to give Pavek the medallion and defend him
while he used it. Ruari had been proud himself that day. He was proud of himself still.

But not for today's work.

Maybe there could be no heroics when your side was the stronger side from the start, when only your
own mistakes could defeat you. The war bureau templars hadn't made any mistakes, and aside from one
fleeting touch of Unseen doubt, there'd been no Codeshite heroics. Two templars had gone down. Another
two were walking wounded. The red-haired sergeant collected medallions from the dead and put the
wounded to work guarding their prisoners.

Maybe they were the lucky ones.

Ruari wasn't sure. He'd brought the sack of balsam oil from the Urik passage and helped pour its
fragrant contents into the five glamourous bowls. His mind said they were doing the right thing, the heroic
thing, when they lit the purging fires. Kakzim and Elabon Escrissar had been cut from one cloth, and the
Codeshites had earned their deaths as surely as the Nibenay mercenaries had earned theirs on the Quraite
ramparts. Ruari's gut recalled the wounded prisoners, and as a whole, Ruari wasn't sure of anything except
that he'd lost interest in heroes.

He'd have been happy to call it quits and return to Urik or, preferably, Quraite, but that wasn't going to
happen. He and the priest had watched a lantern weave through the darkness at the start of the skirmish.
They'd seen it disappear, and when the fighting was over they'd found a passage among the deep shadows.
The wounded templars were heading home. The prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs with rope
salvaged from the scaffolds, were headed for the obsidian pits. And Ruari was headed for Codesh, walking
between Zvain and Mahtra, ahead of the templars and behind Pavek, the sergeant, and the priest.

They were on their way to meet another war bureau maniple. They were on their way to kill or capture
Kakzim. Ruari should have been excited; instead he was nauseous— and grateful when Mahtra's cool hand
wrapped around his.

The Codesh passage was much longer than the Urik passage. Caught in a grim, hopeless mood, the
half-elf began to believe they were headed nowhere, that they were doomed to trudge through tight-fitting
darkness forever. At last the moment came when he knew they were nearing Codesh, but it came with the
faint scent of charred wood, charred meat, and brought no relief. Evidently, Ruari's companions caught the
same aroma. Mahtra's grip on his hand became painful, forcing him to pull away, and Zvain whispered:

"He's burning Codesh to keep us away." The first words Ruari had heard his young friend say since
they left the elven market.

"No one would do that," the priest countered.

"He'd poison an entire city," Pavek said, "and more than a city. A mere village wouldn't stop him. If it's
Kakzim. We don't know anything, except that we smell something burning. It could be something else.
We're late, I think, the other maniple could have finished our work for us. We won't know until we get
there." Pavek might have left his shiny gold medallion behind, but he was a high templar, and when he
spoke, calmly and simply, no one argued with him.

The sergeant organized them quickly into a living chain, then gave the order to extinguish the lanterns.
Ruari, his staff slung over his back where it struck his head or heel at every step, fell in with the rest. It was
slow-going through the dark, smoky passage, but with hands linked in front and behind there was no panic.
Taller than those ahead of him and endowed with half-keen half-elf vision Ruari was the first to notice a
brighter patch ahead and whispered as much to those around him. Ediyua called for a volunteer, and the
first templar in the column went forward to investigate.

Ruari watched the templar's silhouette as he entered the faint light, then lost it when the man rounded
the next bend in the passage. The volunteer shouted back to them that he could see an overhead opening,
and screamed a heartbeat later. After giving them all an order to stay where they were, the sergeant drew
her sword and crept forward. Mahtra, next in line behind Ruari, pulled her hand free for a moment, then
gave it back to him. He heard several loud crunching sounds, as if she were chewing pebbles, and was
about to tell her to be quiet when instead of a scream, the clash of weapons resounded through the tunnel.

Ediyua hadn't rounded the bend; Ruari could make out her silhouette and the silhouettes of her
attackers, but it was someone else farther back in the column who shouted out the word, "Ambush!"

Panic filled the passage, thicker than the smoke. Discipline crumbled into pushing and shoving.
Templars shouted, but no one shouted louder than Zvain:

"No! Mahtra, no!"

A tingling sensation passed from Mahtra's hand into Ruari's. It was power, though unlike anything he'd
felt in his druidry. He surrendered to it, because he couldn't drive it out or fight it, and a peculiar numbness
spiraled up from the hand Mahtra held. It ran across his shoulders, and down his other arm—into Pavek, all
in the span of a single heartbeat. A second pulse, faster and stronger than the first, came a heartbeat later.