Cinnabar Shadows

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. Ru

"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 ca

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 ma

"If this is as far as he can go, why can't we do what he wants and leave him here? The sun's coming around. It's going to be as hot as the Sun's Fist against these rocks in a little while. Why should we all die because he doesn't want to move again?"

"She's right about the sun," Orekel said softly to Ruari, though Zvain was between them and could easily hear every word. "We got to get moving, son, or we'll fry."

They were already parched and achy from a lack of water, which Ruari could remedy with druidry. The mountains were livelier than the Sun's Fist. If they'd had a bucket, he could have filled it several times over. Without a bucket, he was hoping they'd last until he found a natural depression in the rocks. Here on the ledge, he had nothing but his cupped hands to hold the water he conjured out of the air.

"Come on, Zvain," Ruari pleaded.

Mahtra walked ahead. "I'm leaving. Finding Kakzim's more important."

Orekel shrugged. "The lady's right, son. We can't stay here." He followed Mahtra.

"Zvain—?"

The boy turned slowly away from Ruari and took a halting step in Orekel's direction.

Ruari found his hollow rock near the top of the gap. On his knees with his eyes closed and his arms outstretched, he recited the druid mnemonics for the creation of water in the presence of air and stone. The guardian aspect of this place was sharp-edged like the cliffs, and heavy like the mountains themselves. Ruari couldn't hold it the first time, and his spell did not quicken. The recitation ended with the hollow as dry and empty as it had begun. Grimly, the half-elf withdrew Pavek's knife from its sheath and made a shallow gash along his forearm. With his blood as a spark, the spell quickened and water began to collect in the hollow.

When the water was flowing steadily, Ruari sat back on his heels, letting the others drink while he recovered from the strain of druidry in an unfamiliar place.

"Magician, eh?" Orekel asked.

"Druid." Ruari offered the correct name for his sort of spellcraft.

"Don't kill no plants, do you?"

"Wind and fire, no—I'm not a defiler, nor a preserver. I'm not a wizard at all. My power comes from the land itself, all the aspects of it."

"So long as you don't suck things down to ash. Can't go taking nobody into the forest who'd turn 'em into ash."