Cinnabar Shadows

A fist of Unseen wind struck Mahtra's thoughts, shattering them and leaving her empty-minded until other thoughts filled the void: It was not fitting that BlackTree refused to hear Kakzim's prayers, refused to acknowledge his domination. He'd committed no crimes, made no errors. He'd been undone by the very mongrels and misfits he'd sworn to eliminate, which was surely proof of the honor and validity of his intentions.

Pavek would have been the perfect sacrifice, but Pavek had escaped. Kakzim would offer three sacrifices in Pavek's place—Ruari first, then Zvain, then Mahtra herself—all three offered while the two moons shone with one light. Their blood would nurture the BlackTree's roots, and all of Kakzim's minor errors would be forgiven, forgotten. The BlackTree would accept him as the rightful heir of halfling knowledge.

She tied the rope off with the others already knotted at the base of the BlackTree's huge trunk, then she looked at Zvain. His turn would come next, when the overlapping moons were visible above the treetops. Her turn would come at midnight, when Ral was centered within Guthay's orb. She would walk freely to the stone, made by halflings and unmade the same way.

Made by halflings?

Mahtra recaptured her thoughts, broke the wall, and beat back the Unseen fist. Made by halflings—the voices in the darkness at the begi

Mahtra couldn't cry, but she could scream. She turned her head toward Kakzim when she screamed and nailed him with a look as venomous and mad as he'd ever given the world. Thunder brewed inside her as all the ci

He might succeed in unmaking her, but that would come too late. Mahtra extended her arms, as if to embrace a lover, and surrendered herself to what the halflings had given her, confident that her thunder would kill.

Pavek had carried their guide almost from the start of their headlong march through the forest. He believed too late for halfling legs might be just in time for longer human legs, if they stormed through the forest like a thirst-crazed mekillot, never slowing, never weaving right or left. The little fellow on Pavek's shoulders had collected a few more bruises dodging branches on a maze of trails not made by anyone of Pavek's extended height, but Cerk hadn't complained, simply grabbed fistfuls of Pavek's hair and shouted out "right" or "left" at the appropriate time.

The twin moons had risen before the sun completely set. Between them, they shed sufficient light through the leaves to keep the trail visible to Pavek's dim, human eyes; but it was a strange light, filled with ghosts and shimmering wisps and luminous eyes in slanting pairs and foreboding isolation. The novice druid's skin crawled as Cerk guided him through the haunted trees, but he never hesitated, not until a solitary clap of thunder rolled through the moonlit forest.

"Mahtra!" Pavek shouted.

"The white-ski

Thinking he no longer needed a guide, Pavek came to a stiff-legged halt and tried to lift Cerk down, but the halfling clung to him, insisting:

"You won't find it without me, even now. We must all stay together!"

Pavek turned to Javed, who'd halted beside him, as the other templars had come to a stop behind them. With his nighttime skin and elven eyes, the commandant was little more than a moonlit ghost himself.

"You heard him. Commandant."

"Do you think you could ever outrun me, my lord?" Ivory teeth made a smile beneath glassy eyes.

"Javed—" Pavek dug the toe of his sandal into the loose debris that covered the forest floor. "I plan to outrun death itself."

He filled his lungs and pushed off with all the strength in his body. The elven commandant fell behind for two paces, then he was back at Pavek's side, gri

"Lean into your strides, Pavek, put your head down and breathe!"

Pavek hadn't the wherewithal to answer, but he took the lessons to heart as Cerk shouted another "Veer left!" in his ear.

He saw hearthfires flickering in the near-distance. He'd heard nothing louder than Cerk or the pounding of his own feet since the thunder rolled over them, but silence didn't reassure him. Mahtra's protection was a potent weapon. She could have felled a score of halflings, but they wouldn't stay down for long. Pavek fingered the knotted leather looped over the top of his scabbard and drew his sword as he and Javed led their templars into a clearing that was larger than the whole halfling settlement, quiet as a tomb and almost as dark at its heart.

"Spread out. Keep your wits and swords ready!" Javed shouted his orders before he stopped ru

In pairs, as always, the men and women of the war bureau did as they were told.

"Mahtra! Mahtra, where are you?" Pavek set Cerk down without protest and spun on his heels as he called her name again: "Mahtra!"

"Pavek?" Her familiar, faintly inflected voice came from the black center of the clearing. "Pavek!" He heard her coming toward him before her pale skin appeared in the moonlit. Javed took a brand from the nearest hearth. Her mask was gone. Another time, her face would have astonished him—he would have made a rude fool of himself gaping and staring. Tonight, he blinked once and saw the blood on Mahtra's neck, shoulder, and arm instead; her own blood, from her stiff, uncertain movements. Then he noticed the bodies. There were bodies everywhere: halflings on the ground, felled by thunder and just starting to move; halflings overhead, dangling from the branches of the biggest tree Pavek had ever seen, halflings whom Mahtra might have stu

"Hamanu's mercy," Pavek's voice was soft, his lungs were empty, and his heart. "Cut him down." He couldn't breathe. His sword slipped through his fingers. "Zvain?" he whispered, starting another sweep of the bodies in the tree and those on the ground, looking for a halfling who wasn't a halfling.

"Alive," Mahtra said. "Hurt. Cut him down?"

All of which confirmed Pavek's dire guess that Ruari was neither hurt, nor alive. His mouth worked silently; the commandant gave the order. Two templars ran where the hanging ropes led, into the dark, toward the great tree's trunk. Their obsidian swords sang as they hacked through the ropes. Bodies fell like heavy, reeking rain, Ruari's among them, completely limp... deadweight... dead.

Pavek started toward his friend's lifeless body; the emptiness beneath his ribs had become an ache.

Mahtra stopped him. "Kakzim's gone. He grabbed me; he was touching me when the thunder happened. Another mistake. He got away."

"Which way?" Rage banished Pavek's grief and got his blood flowing again. "Which way, Mahtra?"

"I don't know. He got away before I could see again."

Pavek swore. His rage was fading without a target; grief threatened. "Couldn't you hear something?" he demanded harshly, more harshly than Mahtra deserved.

Her neck twisted, bringing one ear down to her bloody shoulder: her best impression of misery and apology. "A sound, maybe—over there?" She pointed with her bloody arm.

A sound, that was all the help Mahtra could give him; it would have to be enough. Retrieving his sword, Pavek jogged into the moonlit forest. Javed called him a fool. Cerk warned him his chase was futile and doomed. He could live with doom and futility—anything was better than facing Ruari's corpse.