Cinnabar Shadows

Pavek, who had not yet risen from his knees, placed his identical palms flat on the ground. If despair were the necessary condition for druidry, he should have been able to raise ten guardians.

"Tell your guardian the Lion of Urik, the King of Mountain and Plain, requires assurance that it is not a pawn of my enemies."

In Codesh and last year, when they searched for Akashia outside the walls of House Escrissar, the guardian power had leapt into Pavek's body, but here, in the palace, in heart of Urik's heart, the land was empty—obliterated, exactly as Telhami had described it. The trees that shaded them were sterile sticks, engendered with Hamanu's magic and sustained in the same way. The stones in the walls were each a tomb for an aspect of a larger, long-vanished guardian.

Nothing Pavek did quickened the land: no druid magic, not even the simplest evocation of water, could be wrought where he knelt. He sat back on his heels.

"There's nothing," he muttered, omitting Hamanu's royal title. "Just nothing, as if there never was anything at all."

"Yet that night outside House Escrissar, something stirred, and in Codesh, you raised an invincible creature out of dust and offal."

Pavek nodded. "And now there's nothing. No guardian, no aspect, nothing at all. Druid magic should not work in Urik, Great King—yet I know it has, and not only for me. I don't understand; I must be doing something wrong. A thousand pardons, Great King. I am not Telhami; I don't have her wisdom or strength. Perhaps if I tried again, if I went back to House Escrissar—"

"Possibly," Hamanu agreed and frowned as well. The retribution Pavek feared seemed unlikely as the Lion-King scratched his chin thoughtfully with a sharp, black claw. "Telhami could get her spellcraft to work elsewhere in Urik, but never when I was nearby. Even so, she could work the lesser arts of druidry, never the great ones, never a guardian. It is a mystery you and I will unravel when you return to Urik."

Pavek sat still a moment, savoring the life he still had before asking: "When I return?"

"Kakzim lives. The Codeshites we interrogated said that Kakzim incited them to their rebellion, then left them to their fate. Some saw him and another halfling ru

"Did the Codeshites know where Kakzim might have gone?"

The Lion-King held out his hand. A knotted string appeared; it hung from a black claw's tip and held, within the knot, a few strands of pale blond hair. "A team of investigators searched what remained of their rented quarters.

They found this caught in the doorjamb. Hold it where the wind does not blow, and it will lead you to the halflings."

He took the string carefully, respectfully, but without quite concealing his skepticism. "How can you be certain? Hair is hair. My friends searched those quarters, too."

"And found that map you refused to look at." King Ha-manu sighed heavily. "Mahtra has no hair. Both Ruari and Zvain have hair that's too dark, and all of them are too tall, unless Ruari was on his hands and knees when he hit his head. That is halfling hair, Pavek, and it will lead you to Kakzim. Guard it carefully. You begin your search tomorrow; kanks are waiting for you at Khelo. A double maniple from the war bureau awaits you there as well. The Codesh survivors volunteered; the others are solid veterans. We will make our own search for Urik's guardian when you return; you will return, Pavek, with Kakzim or proof of his death."

Orders had been given—orders the Lion-King had intended to give Pavek from the begi

"My friends—Ruari, Zvain, and Mahtra—what happened to them?"

"If you spent half as much time thinking about yourself as you think about others, Pavek, you'd go farther in this world. Your friends escaped from Codesh before I arrived. They went to Farl. Five days ago, Ruari sold the staff I gave him to a herder; since then, I do not know. You know my dilemma, Pavek: magic hastens the dragon. I will not risk Urik to find any one man—not Kakzim, not a friend of yours. If it suits you, you may search for them after we've raised the guardian."

"It suits me, Great King," Pavek said to the great king's back.

With the purse Ruari had gotten from Pavek before he died, the silver he got in exchange for his staff, the handful of coins Zvain insisted he "found" beneath a pile of rubbish in a Farl alley, and the three silver coins Mahtra got he-didn't-ask-where, they had enough money to purchase three unimpressive kanks from the village pound and outfit them with shabby saddles, peeling harnesses, and other supplies of dubious quality.

Six days west of Farl, they were down to two kanks. Tempers were short, and they spent a part of each day arguing whether any of the landmarks they passed matched those on their white-bark map. If it weren't for Ruari's fundamentally sound sense of distance and direction, they'd have been hopelessly lost. Each time they set off in a direction the three of them eventually agreed was wrong, he'd been able to get them back to a place they recognized.

The sun was at its height in the heavens and there wasn't a sliver of shade anywhere—except in the lee of the same three boulders where they'd camped last night.

"I told you these rocks matched the three dots," Ruari grumbled as he dismounted. He hobbled the bug before offering a hand to either Mahtra or Zvain, who rode together on the other one.

"They're awfully small," Mahtra said.

"All right, they don't match the three dots—-and we've followed Kakzim's damned map into the middle of nowhere. In case you haven't noticed, we're ru

"You don't have to shout," Zvain complained as he jumped down from the kank's saddle.

Mahtra tried to make peace. "We'll go north next. We always go two directions before we settle on one."

"At least two."

Ruari got the last word as he hobbled the second kank and let it go foraging. The surviving kanks were doing better than their riders. Bugs could eat just about anything that wasn't sand or rock; people were more particular. They'd run out of village food two days ago. Ruari didn't consider it a serious problem; he'd had little trouble hunting up a steady supply of bugs, grubs, and lizards—more than enough to keep the three of them healthy, but Zvain was fussy, and Mahtra truly seemed to become ill on the wriggly morsels. She'd sooner forage with the kanks—which she did, after Ruari rationed out their water.

It was midafternoon before they were remounted and headed north. Ruari wasn't as well-organized as Pavek, and certainly wasn't as effective getting Mahtra and Zvain moving; he owed Pavek an apology—

The half-elf closed his eyes and pounded a tight fist against his thigh. Pavek's name hadn't crossed his mind since sunrise. He was ashamed that he'd forgotten his friend for so many hours and was grieved by the memories, once they returned. The downward spiral between shame and grief hadn't ended when Mahtra and Zvain both called his name.

"Look—" Mahtra extended her long, white arm.

Wisps of smoke rose through the seared air. They could be mirages—the sun's pounding heat made everything shimmer by late afternoon. But the smoke didn't shimmer, and it wasn't long before they saw other signs of habitation. Zvain prodded their bug's ante