Cinnabar Shadows (25 page)

Any other time, he'd cherish the bark simply for the vision it gave his druid spirit, but there was no time,
and the bark was more than bark. Someone had covered it with straight black lines and other, irregular

"Writing," he mused aloud.

That gave him Zvain's swift attention. The boy grabbed the bark out of his hands. "Naw," he drawled,
"that's not writing. I know writing when I see it; I can read—and there're no words here."

"I know writing, too," Ruari insisted, although he was better at recognizing its many forms than in
reading any one of them. "There's writing here, halfling writing, I'll wager. And other things—"

"That's a mountain," Mahtra said, tapping the bark with a long, red fingernail. "And that's a tree—like
the ones I saw where you live."

"It's a map!" Zvain exalted, jumping up and throwing the bark scrap into the air. "Kakzim left us a
map!"

Ruari snatched the bark while it was still well above Zvain's head and gave him a clout behind the ear
as well. "Don't be a kank-brained fool. Kakzim's not going to gather up everything else and leave a map
behind."

"What's a map?" Mahtra asked.

"Directions for finding a place you've never been," Ruari answered quickly, not wanting to be rude to
her.

"Then maybe he left it behind because he doesn't need it anymore."

Ruari closed his hand over Mahtra's. She was seven, younger than Zvain. She not only didn't know
what a map was, she didn't understand at all the way a man's mind worked. "It's garbage, like Zvain said, or
it's a trap."

"A trap?" she asked, freeing herself and taking the scrap from his hand to examine it closely.

She didn't understand, and Ruari was still ransacking his mind, searching for better words, when they
heard, first, a gong clattering loudly and, second, a roar that belittled it to a tinkling cymbal.

"The Lion-King!" Zvain said as they all turned toward the sound, toward Codesh's outer gate.

"Pyreen preserve and protect!" Ruari took the bark map, rolled it quickly, and pushed it all the way up
inside his shirt hem. "Is there anything else? Anything?"

Zvain said, "Absolutely nothing," and Mahtra shook her head.

Ruari grabbed his staff and headed for the killing ground with the other two close behind him.

The first thing Ruari noticed was that the templars and Codeshites were still fighting near the gate. The
second was that they'd moved Pavek out of the sun.

Pavek was sitting on the ground with his back against one of the massive tables where the Codeshites
turned carcasses into meat. His head was tilted to one side; he seemed to be resting, maybe sleeping. His
face was a gray shade of pale, but Ruari wasn't concerned until he was close enough to see that Pavek's
mangled left hand was inside a bucket. Water was excellent for washing a wound and keeping it clean, but
submerging that bad an open wound was a good way to bleed a man to death.

"Damn you!" he shouted and, grasping his staff by its base, swung its bronzed lion end at the three men
standing by while Pavek slowly died.

The nearest templar raised his sword to parry the staff. The templar could have attacked, could have
slain Ruari, who was fighting with his heart, not his head, and his heart was breaking; but the yellow-robed
warrior didn't take the easy slash or thrust. He parried the staff, beat it aside, closing the distance between
them until he could loft a sandal-shod kick into Ruari's midsection. Catching the staff with one hand as it
flew through the air, he tried to catch Ruari with the other.

Ruari dodged, and landed hard, flat on the ground an arm's length from Pavek. Ignoring the pain in his
own gut, the half-elf crawled forward. He plucked the frayed leather thong out of the dirt, then tried to lift
Pavek's hand out of the bucket.

"My choice," Pavek said, his voice so weak Ruari read the words on his lips more than he heard them
with his ears.

The priest held onto Zvain—barely. The burnished skin on Mahtra's shoulders was glowing again, and
her bird's-egg eyes were open so wide they seemed likely to fall out of her face.

"What's happening?" she demanded.

"He's killing himself!" Ruari shouted. "He's bleeding himself to death!"

"The king is coming," the priest said, as if that were an explanation.

Pavek asked, "You couldn't find Kakzim?" before Ruari could challenge the priest.

"No, he's scarpered," the half-elf admitted, shaking his head and turning his empty palms up. All the
disappointment he'd dreaded showed in Pavek's eyes just before he closed them with a shrug, as if the big
man had stayed alive this long only because he'd hoped his friends would be successful. Taking a painful
breath, Ruari finished: "He got away clean, again. Didn't leave anything behind."

But Pavek raised his good hand and turned away. "No. No, I don't want to see it. Don't tell me about it.
Just—Just get out of Codesh quickly. All three of you."

"Why?" Zvain, Mahtra, and Ruari demanded with a single voice.

Pavek looked up at the priest.

"Under necromancy, a dead man must tell the truth, but he can't reveal what he didn't know while he
was alive."

"Necromancy?" Ruari said slowly, as the pieces began to fall into place. "Deadhearts? Hamanu?"

The templar who'd parried Ruari's staff nodded. "We kill our prisoners before we take them to the
deadhearts. The dead don't suffer; they don't feel pain."

"They don't remember," the other templar corrected. "Everything stops when they die. They've got no
present, no future; only the past."

"No."

"I can hope, Ru," Pavek said in his weak voice. "What good would I be anyway, Ru, without my right
hand?"

"No," Ruari repeated, equally soft and weak.

"I raised a guardian, here—in Codesh, in his realm. He's not going to be happy, and he's not going to
rest until he controls it or destroys it. I can't let him do that, and the only way I can stop him from trying...
and succeeding is if I'm already a corpse when he finds me. It takes a druid to raise a guardian. The
Lion-King's not a druid, Ru, and after I'm dead, I won't be either."

Another roar, louder than the first, warned them all that there wasn't much time.

"You can't raise it, Ru. I know that, and I know that you don't believe me when I tell you that—not
truly—and that'll get you killed, if you don't get out of here... now."

Pavek spoke the truth: Ruari didn't believe that he couldn't raise the Urikite guardian, and the
Lion-King would use that belief. He'd die trying to raise the wrong guardian, or he'd die the moment he
succeeded. He had to leave, and take Zvain and Mahtra with him, but he put his arms around Pavek
instead.

"I won't forget you," he gasped, trying to remain a man, trying not to cry.

"Go home and plant a tree for me. A big, ugly lump of a tree. And carve my name in its bark."

The tears came, as many as Ruari had ever shed for someone else. Zvain wormed in between them,
silently demanding his moment, and getting it, before Ruari pulled him to his feet.

"Wait—" Pavek called, and Ruari dared to hope he'd changed his mind, but Pavek only wanted to give
him the coin pouch from his belt and his most prized possession: a small steel-bladed knife snug in its
sheath.

"Some of the scum have run toward that far corner," one of the templars said, pointing where he
meant. "There must be a way out. We'll go with you as far as the village walls."

The priest said he'd stay to the end, in case Pavek needed a nudge "to separate his spirit from his body
before the Lion-King got too close." He said he wasn't worried about Hamanu, and that was a lie—but
maybe he'd lost everything he cared about when red-haired Ediyua went down in the passage.

Ruari didn't say good-bye, just took hold of Mahtra and Zvain and started walking fast to catch up with
the templars who'd already left. He didn't look back, either.

Not once.

Not until they were clear of the Codesh walls.

Pavek was gone.

Pavek was dead.

One of the many roars Ruari heard while trudging along the ring road to Farl might have marked the
moment when the Lion-King found his high templar's pale corpse. Another might have marked the moment
when deadheart spells animated Pavek's body one last time. The last roar, the loudest and longest that he
and Mahtra and Zvain heard, could only have marked the king's frustration when he found that Pavek,
Just-Plain Pavek, had outwitted him.

Ruari brushed a knuckle quickly beneath his eye, catching a tear before it leaked out, drying the telltale
moisture with an equally quick touch to his pant leg. Life went forward, he told himself, repeating the words
Telhami had used every time he bemoaned the violence and hatred that had brought him into an uncaring
world. There was nothing to be gained by looking back.

Then Pavek raised a guardian spirit out of Urik, where no other druid would have dreamed to look for
one. Pavek changed—tried to change—the lay of life in a sorcerer-king's domain, and Pavek had paid the
price of folly.

Life went forward. Don't look back.

But Ruari did look back. He sneaked a peek over his shoulder every few moments. The skyline of
Codesh was still there, crowned with a thin cloud of dust and smoke that grew thinner each time he looked.

"You come from Codesh?" an overseer called from one of the roadside fields, his slave scourge folded
in his hand. "What's the uproar?"

"Damn butchers tried to slaughter their templars. Got rid of some of them, but Hamanu answered their
call."

The overseer scratched his nose thoughtfully. "They killed a few templars, and the Great Lord himself
came out for vengeance. That ought to put the fear into them. High time."

"High time," Ruari agreed, ending the conversation as they walked beyond the field.

"Get it right, Ruari, or you'll make folk suspicious. It's Lord Hamanu or King Hamanu or Great and
Mighty Lord King Hamanu when you're talking to someone who's got a scourge in their hand!" Zvain
objected once they were out of the overseer's hearing. "You can't talk about Hamanu as if you've met
him!"

"But I have met him," Ruari complained. "He terrorized us, then he gave us gifts. He encouraged us,
then he abandoned us. 'Hamanu answered their call'—that's the biggest lie I've ever told, Zvain: he closed
his eyes!"

"Doesn't matter. I'm telling you, you can't talk about Lord Hamanu that way. Say it the way I told you,
or folk are going to get suspicious and start asking questions."

Ruari shrugged. "All right. I'll try."

Zvain had lived in Urik all his life, while Mahtra had lived under it and Ruari had grown up nowhere
near it. The three of them together didn't have half Pavek's experience or canniness, but Pavek was gone.
Dead. And Zvain had suddenly become their font of wisdom where the city and its customs were
concerned. Ruari knew the responsibility weighed heavily on Zvain's shoulders and the boy was staggering
under the load—

Wind and fire! They were all staggering, putting one foot in front of the other because stopping meant
thinking and thinking meant Pavek. He'd known Pavek for a year, one lousy year—and for most of that
year they'd been at each other's throats.... No, he'd been at Pavek's throat, trying to rile him into a display
of templar temper, trying to kill him with kivet poison because... because?

On the dusty road to Farl, midway through the longest afternoon of his life, Ruari couldn't remember
why he'd poisoned Pavek's dinner. But not so long ago he'd wanted Pavek's death so badly it made him
blind. Now he could scarcely see for another reason and hurriedly sopped up another tear before it
betrayed him.

"What are we going to do when we get to Farl?" Mahtra asked when another stretch of hot, dusty road
had passed beneath their feet. "Will we stay there? Overnight? Longer? Where will we get our supper?
How many coins do we have?"

Ruari didn't know if Mahtra grieved at all. She couldn't cry the way he and Zvain tried not to cry. Her
eyes weren't right for tears, she said, and the tone of her voice never varied, no matter how many questions
she asked. Ruari didn't care about anything, including Farl, which was where they were headed. They were
only going there because the two templars who got them out of Codesh said they shouldn't go back to Urik
and the road to Farl was right there in front of them when the templars said it. Without Mahtra's questions,
Ruari wouldn't have given a single thought to where they'd stay once they got to the village, or whether he
ever ate another meal.

Mahtra was living proof that life went forward and that there was no use looking back. Her questions
demanded answers—his answers. If Zvain had become their wisdom, Ruari discovered that he'd become
their leader.

"We're poor," he said. "Not so poor that we'll starve right away, but—it's this way: I know the supplies
we'd need to have to get back to Quraite: three riding kanks, at least seven water jugs, food for ten days,
some other stuff, for safety's sake. That's what Kashi, Yohan, and I always had, but we had our own bugs,
our own jugs, and Kashi did the buying when we needed food. I don't know how much going home will
cost, or whether we have enough to get there."

Zvain offered a different idea before Ruari could answer. "I could—well—lift a bit. I got good at that."
The boy dug deep in the wide hem of his shirt. He produced a little lion carved from rusty-red stone. "I
lifted this right under Hamanu's nose!"

"Lord Hamanu," Ruari insisted, then, more seriously: "Wind and fire, Zvain—think of the trouble you
could have gotten us into!"

"We'd be better off if I had," the boy replied, and there was nothing either one of them could say after
that.

But nothing seemed to stanch Mahtra's questions. "Can I hold it? Keep it?"

"What for?" Ruari asked. "We get caught with something from Hamanu's palace and—" He mimed the
drawing of a knife blade across his throat.

Mahtra took the figurine from Zvain's hand and held it up to her mask. "We won't get caught with it, if
it's cinnabar."

Ruari cocked his head, asking a silent question of his own.

"I'll chew it up and swallow it," she replied. "If it's cinnabar. I can't tell through my mask. If it is, the
more I swallow, the better I can protect myself. Lord Hamanu gave me plenty—" she parted a little pouch
at her waist. "But, without Pavek, I don't think I can have too much cinnabar."

Zvain made disgusted, gagging noises, and Ruari's first instinct was to do the same thing. But he
couldn't act on his first instincts, not anymore, no more than Pavek had.

Ruari's throat tightened, but he beat back that instinct, too, and all the memories. He forced himself to
think of the crunching sounds he'd heard before the power passed through him and the passage caved in. If
they had to choose between selling the staff Hamanu had given him or the red lion Zvain had stolen, Ruari
supposed they should keep the lion. He could fashion himself another staff, he had a good carving knife
now, thanks to Pavek, but Mahtra's ability to transform the air around them into a mighty, sweeping fist was
a better weapon.

"Keep it, then. Do whatever you do with it."

"If it's cinnabar."

He nodded. He'd taken ten strides, maybe twenty, without mourning Pavek. He'd strung his thoughts
together and made a decision—the decision Pavek would have made, he hoped, and with that hope his
defenses crumbled. The grief, the aching emptiness, overwhelmed him ten times, maybe twenty, stronger
than before.

Unable to hide or halt the sudden flow of tears, Ruari sat down on the edge of the road. He wanted to
be alone, but Zvain was beside him in an instant, leaning against his shoulder, dampening his sleeve. He
wanted to be alone, but he put his arm around the human boy instead, thinking that was what Pavek would
have done. If Mahtra had knelt or sat beside him, Ruari would have comforted her the same way, but she
stood behind them, keeping watch.

"There's someone coming this way," she said finally. "Coming from Codesh."

With a sigh, Ruari got to his feet, hauling Zvain up as well. There was a solitary traveler on the road far
behind them, and behind the traveler, a swath of green fields becoming the dusty yellow of the barrens. The
ring road had curved toward Farl; Codesh had disappeared.

"Come on. We've got to keep walking."

"Where?"

The questions had started again.

"Where, after Farl? What are we going to do?"

He said nothing, nothing at all, and Zvain asked:

"Is it kanks and Quraite, or do we go somewhere else?"

It was easier for Ruari to get angry with Zvain's adolescent whine. "Where else?" Ruari shouted.
"Where else could we go? Back to Urik? Do you think we could just set ourselves up in that
templar-house? Damn it, Zvain, think first, before you open your mouth!"

Zvain's mouth worked soundlessly. His nostrils flared, his eyes overflowed, and, with an agonized wail,
he spun on his heel and started back to Codesh at a blind, stumbling run. Huari hesitated long enough to
curse himself, then effortlessly made up the distance between them.

"I'm sorry—"

Zvain wriggled out of his grasp, but he was finished with running and merely stood, arms folded, head
down, and law clenched in a sad, sullen sulk, just out of Ruari's reach.

"I said I was sorry. Wind and fire, I hurt inside, too. I want him here. I want this morning back; I'd
make him take that damn gold medallion—"

"That's why Hamanu closed his eyes. Don't you remember, in that room with the black rock, Hamanu
warned Pavek that if he didn't take the medallion, he wouldn't listen. He gave Pavek another chance to take
it this morning; the medallion was sitting on top of his clothes. I saw Pavek leave it behind. Damn—"
Ruari's voice broke.

"Not your fault," Zvain said quickly before his voice got Host in sobbing. He lunged at Ruari, giving the
half-elf an embrace that hurt and dulled their other pain. "Not your fault, Ru. Not our fault."

Mahtra joined them, not to grieve, but to say: "The man behind us is getting closer. Shouldn't we be
walking?"

The answer was yes, and just as the ring road curves had hidden Codesh, they brought Farl into view.
Farl, a place where Ruari had never been, the first place he'd go after Pavek. And after Farl? He had to
decide.

"I say we find ourselves kanks as soon as we get there, and head home—to Quraite."

"Whatever you say," Zvain agreed without enthusiasm.

But then, none of them had any enthusiasm. Ruari wasn't looking forward to returning to Quraite, to
telling Kashi their misadventures, but he couldn't think of anywhere else to go.

"You have Kakzim's map," Mahtra reminded him, as if she'd heard Ruari's thoughts. "We could go to a
place we've never been."

"The map's a trap," Ruari replied.

Zvain shot back: "Pavek didn't want to see it, didn't want to hear about it. Pavek thought it wasn't a
trap. He thought it was worthwhile."

Pavek wasn't thinking; Pavek was dying! Ruari wanted to say, and didn't. He fished the map out of
his shirt-hem instead and unrolled it as they walked. If the toothy shape near the right side of the bark scrap
was a mountain... if the smudge above the shape was not a smudge, but smoke... then the mountain might
be the Smoking Crown Volcano, and the circle in the lower right-hand corner might be Urik. A black line
connected the circle and the mountain. The line continued leftward and upward in jagged segments, each
separated with symbolic shapes: wavy lines that might be water, smaller mountains, smaller circles, and
others Ruari couldn't immediately interpret. The black line ended at the base of a black tree, the only
symbol that was the same color as the line and was, on the map, as large as the Smoking Crown.

And Pavek hadn't wanted to see the map, hadn't wanted to hear anything about it.

Because he didn't want to tell Hamanu where they'd gone?

It was possible. Pavek took risks. Today, he'd raised a guardian no druid dreamed existed, and he'd
done it because it might keep them alive. A year ago, he'd surrendered himself into druid hands because
getting rid of Laq was more important than his own life.

Go home and plant... a big, ugly lump of a tree. And carve my name into its bark.

"Later," Ruari said aloud, drawing concern from his companions, "we'll follow the map, somehow,
wherever it takes us—all the way to that big black tree."

He'd fallen asleep in the wrong position, lying on a bed that was harder than dirt. Every joint in his body
ached and complained when he yawned himself awake—

But he was awake.

Pavek knew he had awakened, knew, moreover, that he was alive. He remembered Codesh and silting
with his hand in a water bucket, hoping to die before Hamanu caught up with him. Those were his last
memories, but he hadn't died. At least Pavek didn't remember dying, although the dead weren't supposed to
remember that was the whole reason he'd had his hand in the bucket: he hadn't wanted to be alive—feeling
or remembering—when Hamanu found him.

Could he have died and been restored to life? Hamanu could transform life into death in countless
ways, but as Pavek understood histories, legends, and dark rumors, the Lion-King could not transform death
into life. A wise man wouldn't bet his life against a sorcerer-king's prowess. Pavek was willing to bet he
hadn't died—

Though he'd almost be willing to bet that Hamanu hadn't found him. What Pavek saw when he opened
his eyes seemed almost like Quraite: a one-room house with woven-wicker walls and a thatched roof. The
door was shut, the window, open. From the very hard bed he could see leafy branches and cloudless sky.

Pavek thought about standing up, but first things first: there'd been a reason the last thing he
remembered was his hand dangling in a bucket. It hadn't hurt then, despite the damage when the medallion
burst apart, and still didn't. After taking a deep breath, Pavek lifted his left arm into the sunlight and, in
complete amazement, rotated it front to back. Palm-side or knuckle-side, his mangled hand had been
restored. Movement and sensation had been restored as well. Each finger bent obediently to touch the tip of
his thumb.