Lynn Abbey - Cinnabar Shadows

The elven market was quiet when a wedge-shaped formation of nearly thirty templars passed through the gate. It was much too quiet, and what sounds they could hear were almost certainly signals as they passed from one enforcer's territory to the next. There were silhouettes on every rooftop, eyes in every alley and doorway. But thirty templars were more trouble than the most ambitious enforcer wanted to buy, and there'd been no time for alliances. Observed, but not disturbed, they reached the squat, old building in its empty plaza as the lurid colors of sunrise stained the eastern sky.

She sent two elves and a half-elf down the tunnel first, not to take advantage of their night vision, but to chant a barrage of minor spells meant to give them safe passage. Privately, Pavek was dismayed by the sergeant's tactics. He told himself it was only civil bureau prejudice against the war bureau's reliance on magic—a prejudice born in envy because the civil bureau had to justify every spell it cast and the war bureau didn't.

Still, he was relieved when one of the spell-chanters worked his way to the rear where the dull-eyed humans gathered, and reported that they'd gone too deep to pull anything through their medallions without creating an ethereal disturbance that could be easily detected by any Code-shite with a nose for magic.

The sergeant didn't hide her preferences. "If there's anyone at all in the damned cavern."

But the chanter saw things differently. "It will not matter where they are, Sergeant. The deeper we go, the harder we must pull, and the bigger the ethereal disturbance, which radiates like a sphere and will reach Codesh long before we do. It is also true, sergeant, that the harder we pull, the less we are receiving. I believe it will not be long before we receive nothing useful at all no matter how hard we pull. The Mighty Lord Hamanu's power does not seem to penetrate the rock beneath his city."

They conferred with the red-headed priest in templar's clothing. He couldn't account for the problems the chanters were having. In Urik, he and other earth-dedicated priests worked very quietly because Hamanu's power reached into their sanctuaries quite easily.

"The rock here must be different, Ediyua," he addressed the sergeant not by her rank, but by her name, confirming Pavek's suspicion that they were kin. "I could investigate, but it would take time, perhaps as much as a day."

Ediyua muttered a few oaths. In her opinion, they should return to the palace; the war bureau didn't like to fight without Hamanu backing them up, but Pavek was the great commander for this foray, and the final decision was his.

Hearing that the Lion-King's power wouldn't reach the reservoir cavern had shaken Pavek's confidence. He'd been so certain Hamanu was toying with them. Now it seemed the great king truly needed the help and skill of a ragtag handful of ordinary folk to thwart Kakzim's plan to poison the city's water. Pavek still considered himself and all of his companions to be pawns in a great game between Hamanu and the mad halfling, but the stakes had been raised to dizzying heights.

"The bowls," he said finally. "Destroying the bowls— that's the most important thing. If we go back to the palace without doing that, we'll be grease and cinders. The Lion's given orders that the bowls are to be burnt before we link up with the other maniple in Codesh at midday. And we're going to burn them, or die trying, because if we fail, the dying will be worse."

There was a grumble of agreement from the nearest templars. Even the sergeant nodded her head.

Pavek continued. "I was seen and recognized yesterday on the Codesh killing ground. Our enemy knows I'll be coming back, one way or another. He'll have guards in the cavern—workmen, too—but no magic except mind-bending. He's a mind-bender, I think. Tell everyone to be alert for thoughts that aren't their own. It's dark as a tomb in there. Keep your elves up front. Let them use their eyes. Forget spellcraft. There're twenty of you, Sergeant. If you can't defeat three times your number without pulling magic, Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy won't be enough to save you."

A globe of flickering witch-light magnified the sergeant's vexation at listening to a civil bureau regulator tell her how to prepare for a fight. But she gave the orders Pavek wanted to hear. All magic was stifled, and they finished their journey as Pavek recommended, keeping themselves low to the ground. He got a moment's satisfaction when another report filtered back to them stating that there were at least a score of Codeshites in the cavern, some working atop shining platforms, while the rest were both armed and armored.

Leaving the balsam oil with the two dwarves, Pavek followed the sergeant to the front of their column. As he'd done the previous day, he sneaked down the ramp and cautiously stole a peek across the reservoir. The scaffolds and bowls shone with their glamourous light, inciting awestruck gasps from his companions. Unlike the previous day, however, the cavern swarmed with activity. Workers were on the scaffolds and at their bases, hauling buckets up from the shore and adding who-knew-what to the simmering sludge. Beyond the workers stood a ring of guards—Pavek counted eighteen—all with their backs to the scaffolds and with their poleaxes ready.

The sergeant swore and crawled back with him to the tunnel passage where they could confer. The plan they made was simple: Leaving the nontemplars behind with the sealed sacks; the rest of them would fan out along the shore and advance as far as possible before they were spotted by the dwarves among the Codeshites. Once they were seen, they'd charge and pray there were no archers hiding in the darkness. Even if there were, the plan wouldn't change.

Someone was sure to run for Codesh. Ruari and the red-haired priest had their orders to watch which way those runners went. Then, with Zvain and Mahtra's help, they were to carry the sacks to the scaffolds whatever way they could.

"With luck, we'll have those bowls burning before reinforcements arrive from the abattoir," Pavek concluded.

The war bureau templars commended themselves to Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy. Pavek embraced his friends. In the darkness it didn't matter, but his eyes were damp and useless when he joined the other templars on the shore.

Cerk sat in the rocks near the entrance to the tunnel leading back to the village. Among themselves in the forests, halflings weren't daunted by physical labor, but on the Tablelands, where the world was overflowing with big, heavy-footed folk, a clever halfling stayed out of the way whenever there was work to be done.

He'd earned his rest. Gathering all the bones for the scaffolds and the hides for the bowls had taxed his creativity to the limit. Simply getting everything into the cavern had been a challenge. The Codesh passage had collapsed sometime in the distant past. When Brother Kakzim had first found it, the twisting tunnel was barely large enough for a human and broad enough for a dwarf. There wasn't enough clearance to maneuver the long bones Cerk needed for the scaffolds. He'd hired work-crews every night for a week to clear away the debris before the longest bones could be manhandled into the cavern.

Brother Kakzim had raged and stormed. Elder brother wanted monuments of stone to support his alabaster brewing bowls. By the shade of the great BlackTree itself, Cerk could have kept those crews excavating for another year, and there wouldn't have been enough room to get the bowls Brother Kakzim wanted into the cavern—assuming he'd been able to find any alabaster bowls, much less the ten that elder brother swore he needed. Cerk had worked miracles to get enough hide to make the five wicker-frame bowls they did have.

A little appreciation would have been welcomed. Instead Brother Kakzim had assaulted Cerk both physically and mentally. The lash marks across Cerk's back had healed shut, but they were still sore and tender. In the end—at least before the end of Cerk's life—elder brother's madness had receded and reason prevailed. The contagion could be successfully brewed in the five bowls Cerk provided, and their scrap-heap origin could be disguised with a well-constructed glamour.