Cinnabar Shadows (28 page)

The stranger was a dwarf, a dwarf wearing a cap Ruari didn't want to see by the light of day.

"I solved all our problems, Ru," Zvain exalted, urging the dwarf forward. "This is Orekel. He says he
can get us to the black tree."

It was true that Ruari's trousers were still damp and he smelled of sweat and ale, but the air around
Orekel was almost certainly flammable. Ruari shook the dwarf's hand tentatively—and without
inhaling—then retreated. Considering what he'd gone through to get free of Mady, Orekel was no
improvement.

"We got it all figured, Orekel an' me," Zvain continued, unfazed by Ruari's silent displeasure. "All we
have to do is give Orekel our kanks—he'll use them to settle his credit with the tapster in there, an' then
he'll be our guide. It's a good deal, Ru—we can't take the bugs into the mountains anyway. Orekel's gone
'cross the mountains and into the forests a lot of times. You've got to hear the stories he tells! He says he
can find anything up there—"

"Back up," Ruari interrupted. "You said we give him our kanks? How're we supposed to get home
without our bugs?"

"Not a problem," Zvain said before turning to the dwarf. "You tell him, Orekel—"

"Gold," the dwarf said, grabbing Ruari's wrist and pulling on it hard enough to make the half-elf stoop.
"That black tree—she's full of gold and silver, rubies and emeralds. The great halfling treasure! Can you
see it, my friend?"

Everyone in Ject wanted to be Ruari's friend. "No," he grumbled, trying to free his wrist.

But a dwarf's fist wasn't lightly shed. Orekel pulled larder, and Ruari sank to one knee to keep his
balance. They were more nearly face-to-face now. Ruari got light-leaded from the fumes.

"Look ye up there." Orekel directed Ruari's attention to the mountains. "You see those two peaks
that're almost alike. We go between them, my friend, and down into the forest. There's a path, a path right
through the heart of the halflings' sacred ground, right up to the trunk of that big, black tree. Can you see it
now? As much treasure as your arms can carry. Buy your kanks back with halfling gold. Buy a roc and fly
home. Can you see it, son?"

"No." This time Ruari twisted his wrist as he jerked it up and out of Orekel's grasp. "If you know all
this, what's kept you from getting rich yourself?"

"Ru—" Zvain hissed and gave Ruari a kick in the shin as well.

Orekel shuffled his ghastly cap from one hand to the other, giving a good impression of abject
embarrassment. "Oh, I would go. I would've gone a thousand times and made myself as rich as the dragon.
But I get tempted, you see, when I've got a bit of jingly at my belt. I get just a mite tempted and the wine,
oh, she tastes so sweet. The next I know, I'm out here with a sore head and the tapster, he's got a claim on
me. I regret my temptation. Lord, I do regret it. Never again, says I to myself each and every time, then
along comes some jingly and it's all the same. I do see my flaws. I do see them, but they rear up and grab
me every time. But you've come at just the right time, son. I'm sober as the day is long and not in so deep
with the tapster that your bugs won't buy me out. We'd be partners, the three of us."

Ruari retreated another step. "Zvain," he said with more politeness than he felt or needed. "Would you
come over here, please?"
Zvain hesitated, but took the necessary steps. "What? Did you make a better bargain with that

"Look at him. Get a whiff of him—if you dare. Your Orekel's a complete sot! I wouldn't give him a
dead bug—"

The boy stood his ground. "Did you make a better bargain?"

"I learned some things. I could get us to those two mountains—"

"Did you learn how to speak Halfling? Did you know they're particularly fond of sacrificing half-elves?"

He didn't, and he hadn't, but: "That makes no difference. Wind and fire—I don't like this place at all. I'd
rather be lost in the elven market than spend the night here where everybody wants to help us. Do you trust
him with your life, Zvain? 'Cause that's what it's going to come down to—"

Ruari's tirade got cut short by the sound of a thunderclap on a dry, cloudless night. Zvain cursed, the
dwarf dived for cover, swearing it wasn't his fault, while Ruari stared at one of the buildings where dust
puffed through the upper story shutters.

"That white-skinned friend of yours?" Orekel asked from his hiding place.

"Yes," Ruari answered absently. He wondered what else could go wrong, and Pavek's voice at the
base of his skull told him to quit wondering.

"Who'd she go with?"

"A mul. Big shoulders. Huge shoulders."

"Bewt. That's bad. You want to leave Ject now, son. Right now. Forget about her. It's late. I'm sorry,
son, but Bewt— he's got a temper. You don't want to be in his way, not at all, son. We'll just leave the
kanks here and tip-toe out the back. Son, son—are you listening, son?"

"Ruari?" Zvain added his urgent whisper. "Ruari— what're we gonna do?"

He didn't know—but he didn't have to make any decisions just yet. Mahtra had emerged from the
building and was running toward them on Ject's solitary street, with her fringes flying. She didn't have
Ruari's nightvision; he had to shout her name to let her know where they were. Other folk were coming
onto the street, looking around, looking at Mahtra as she ran toward them.

Orekel was gibbering. "She—Her—She must've killed him."

That was a possibility; they'd better be running before the Jectites found the mul's body. It had come
down to a choice Ruari was loathe to make: Orekel and tiptoeing into the mountains, or a kank-back retreat
into the barrens. He was sure he was going to regret it later, but Ruari chose Orekel over the kanks
because someone had unharnessed them.

Without the proper saddles, there was no way to ride or control the bugs.

An enraged mul—Bewt—stumbled onto the street. "Where is she?" he bellowed, looking left and right.
Muls inherited their dwarven parent's strength, but their human parent's sight.

He turned to the dwarf. "Get us out of here, quick. Before he spots us."

Orekel cast a worried glance toward the tavern.

"Now—if you want to go to the black tree. Get going. I'll catch up." On level ground, a half-elf could
literally run circles around a dwarf. "Keep an eye out for Mahtra; she's got ordinary eyes, and I've got
something to do before I go."

"Ru—!"

"It should improve our chances," he said to Zvain. "Now go!"

After one last glance at the tavern, Zvain and Orekel shuffled off through the maze of animal pens.
Ruari had Pavek's steel knife out when Mahtra came to a stop at his side.

"I told him I wouldn't remove my mask. I told him."

Ruari thought the words were an apology as well as an explanation. It was hard to tell with Mahtra;
her tone of voice never varied no matter the circumstances. Bewt might not have understood the risk he
was running when she warned him, but then, he shouldn't have tried to take off her mask, either.

"It's all right," Ruari assured Mahtra as he knelt down beside the kirre's pen and went to work on the
knotted cha'thrang rope the Jectites used to secure the door. "Zvain's gone ahead—around there—did you
see him? He was with a dwarf." The kirre came over to investigate. It touched his hand with a soft-furred
paw. There was some rapport between them, curiosity mostly on the kirre's part. Even a half-elf druid
needed time to bond with a creature of such size and ferocity—time they didn't have.

"Did you see them? Zvain and the dwarf? They headed for the mountains. It would be better if you
went after them. I don't know what the kirre's going to do when I get this pen open."

"I saw a shadow," Mahtra replied, eyeing the kirre with discomfort. "Ruari—hurry. They're coming.
I'm sure they saw me run around the tavern. I'm sorry."

Ruari could hear the Jectites, too. He sawed furiously at the tough fiber. Without steel, he wouldn't
have had a chance. "Just go. Follow the dwarf and Zvain. I'll catch up."

But that was her way; Ruari understood the expressions playing across the kirre's tawny eyes better
than he'd ever understand the New Race woman.

"Stand away from that pen, boy!" one of the Jectites shouted from a distance. "Call your friends back.
You've got deeds to answer for."

Some of the Jectites split away and backtracked toward the front of the tavern, where the racks of
spears stood outside the door. The rest, though, weren't coming closer. Ruari gave a sharp push on the
knife and sliced through the last cha'thrang fibers. He held the door shut with his knee.

Beautiful kirre, Ruari advanced his thoughts cautiously into the cat's predatory mind. Brave kirre.
Wild kirre. Free kirre. He recalled the forest vision he'd received from the white-bark map. The kirre's
ears relaxed. Her eyes began to close, and a purr rumbled in her throat.

Those folk. Ruari transplanted his vision of the Jectite villagers into her mind, though a kirre's night
vision was probably better than his own. He didn't know how she was captured, so he recalled the battle on
Quraite's dirt rampart and transplanted the moments when he'd been most frightened and enraged. The
images resounded in the kirre's memory. She echoed spears and nets and the unintelligible yapping of men.
Those folk. Ruari repeated, then opened the door.

The kirre knocked Ruari down as she sprang free. He scrambled to his feet while the Jectites
screamed and the mighty cat roared. Running toward his own freedom, Ruari assuaged his budding guilt
with the thought that whatever happened to the kirre, it was better than death in the Tyr arena. He could
still hear her roars when he spotted Mahtra, her shoulders beacon-bright by starlight, running across the
barrens beyond the village.

"Wind and fire—cover yourself up!" he advised when he caught up with her.

Zvain and the dwarf, Orekel, were panting from exhaustion, trying to maintain the pace she set, her
legs as spindly as an erdlu's and likely just as strong.

"We can slow down." Ruari dropped his own pace to a walk, then stopped altogether when Orekel
continued to wheeze. "They're too busy right now to come after us. Catch your breath. How far until we're
under cover?"

The dwarf raised a trembling arm toward the mountains. Ruari suppressed a curse. Without kanks,
they'd need luck to reach the foothills before sunrise and pursuit. If the villagers were going to chase them,
they would be on the barrens long before then.

There were no trails, no places to hide. Ruari pushed his companions as hard as he dared, as hard as
Orekel could be pushed. Slow and steady, that was the dwarven way. Even a dwarf as out-of-condition as
the drunken Orekel could walk forever, but push him to a trot and he was blowing hard after a hundred
paces. If he'd complained once, Ruari would have left him behind, but Orekel stayed game throughout the
night.

Orekel sobered up, too, sweating out the wine and ale. When it came to their distant goal of Kakzim
and the black tree, Ruari still didn't give the dwarf a gith's thumb of trust, but in simpler matters—like
picking a path across the stone wash that abutted the mountains when Orekel's ankles were as much at risk
as theirs—he was willing to let the dwarf have the lead.

The stone wash that they reached shortly before dawn was a nasty piece of ground. A fan-shape of
stones ranging in size between mekillots and a halfling's fist spilled out of a gap between the mountains.
There was no guessing how many stones there were, or how long it had taken to accumulate them all, but
the footing was especially treacherous for long-legged folk like Ruari and Mahtra.

Ruari longed for the staff he'd left leaning against the Ject kank pen, but the rest of the gear they'd
abandoned was no great loss. The important things: strips of leather for repairing their sandals, sealed jars
of astringent salve they'd been carrying since they left Quraite, a set of firestones, a flint hand axe for
firewood, and a handful of other useful objects were in the saddle packs he still had slung over his shoulder.
The most important thing of all—not counting the white-bark map that was still in his sleeve and not as
useful as the Jectites would have hoped—was Pavek's steel-blade knife, too precious for the sack. Ruari
kept it secured in its sheath, and the sheath firmly attached to his belt. He'd use it to whittle himself a new
staff out of the first straight sapling they saw, though by then, they'd probably be out of the mountains,
where he'd have less need of it.

By midmorning, they'd picked their way across the stone wash, with no worse souvenirs than a
collection of scraped ankles. But the worst lay ahead in the steep gap itself. Orekel said it would be safer, if
not easier, if they'd had some rope to string between them as they negotiated the narrow ledges and nearly
sheer cliff-faces. On the other hand, they could take the treacherous passages as slowly as they needed to:
looking back toward Ject, they saw no dust plumes on the barrens.

Even Orekel tried to cheer the shattered boy, offering the loan of his lucky cap.

"This little ves kept me alive more than once, son," the dwarf insisted with the shaggy fur hanging over
his hands instead of his ears. "The ves—they're canny little beasts. Made me think I was somewhere I
wasn't. Tried to lure me right into their den. Gnaw me down to the bone, they would've. But I got me this'un
by the tail here. Squeezed it so hard it had to show me where I was. Then I ate it for my dinner and turned
its skin into my lucky cap. But you're looking like you need more luck today than me, so's you wear it."

It was a sincere if inept attempt to get them moving again, and it raised the dwarf a notch in Ruari's
opinion; but it did nothing for Zvain, who'd flattened his back against the cliff and refused to take another
step.

"Just leave me here. I've gone as far as I can."

Ruari and Orekel tried all manner of encouragement and pleading, but it was Mahtra who found the
magic words: