Lynn Abbey - Cinnabar Shadows

"Some of the scum have run toward that far corner," one of the templars said, pointing where he meant. "There must be a way out. We'll go with you as far as the village walls."

The priest said he'd stay to the end, in case Pavek needed a nudge "to separate his spirit from his body before the Lion-King got too close." He said he wasn't worried about Hamanu, and that was a lie—but maybe he'd lost everything he cared about when red-haired Ediyua went down in the passage.

Ruari didn't say good-bye, just took hold of Mahtra and Zvain and started walking fast to catch up with the templars who'd already left. He didn't look back, either.

Not once.

Not until they were clear of the Codesh walls.

Pavek was gone.

Pavek was dead.

One of the many roars Ruari heard while trudging along the ring road to Farl might have marked the moment when the Lion-King found his high templar's pale corpse. Another might have marked the moment when deadheart spells animated Pavek's body one last time. The last roar, the loudest and longest that he and Mahtra and Zvain heard, could only have marked the king's frustration when he found that Pavek, Just-Plain Pavek, had outwitted him.

Ruari brushed a knuckle quickly beneath his eye, catching a tear before it leaked out, drying the telltale moisture with an equally quick touch to his pant leg. Life went forward, he told himself, repeating the words Telhami had used every time he bemoaned the violence and hatred that had brought him into an uncaring world. There was nothing to be gained by looking back.

Then Pavek raised a guardian spirit out of Urik, where no other druid would have dreamed to look for one. Pavek changed—tried to change—the lay of life in a sorcerer-king's domain, and Pavek had paid the price of folly.

Life went forward. Don't look back.

But Ruari did look back. He sneaked a peek over his shoulder every few moments. The skyline of Codesh was still there, crowned with a thin cloud of dust and smoke that grew thinner each time he looked.

"You come from Codesh?" an overseer called from one of the roadside fields, his slave scourge folded in his hand. "What's the uproar?"

"Damn butchers tried to slaughter their templars. Got rid of some of them, but Hamanu answered their call."

The overseer scratched his nose thoughtfully. "They killed a few templars, and the Great Lord himself came out for vengeance. That ought to put the fear into them. High time."

"High time," Ruari agreed, ending the conversation as they walked beyond the field.

"Get it right, Ruari, or you'll make folk suspicious. It's Lord Hamanu or King Hamanu or Great and Mighty Lord King Hamanu when you're talking to someone who's got a scourge in their hand!" Zvain objected once they were out of the overseer's hearing. "You can't talk about Hamanu as if you've met him!"

"But I have met him," Ruari complained. "He terrorized us, then he gave us gifts. He encouraged us, then he abandoned us. 'Hamanu answered their call'—that's the biggest lie I've ever told, Zvain: he closed his eyes!"

"Doesn't matter. I'm telling you, you can't talk about Lord Hamanu that way. Say it the way I told you, or folk are going to get suspicious and start asking questions."

Ruari shrugged. "All right. I'll try."

Zvain had lived in Urik all his life, while Mahtra had lived under it and Ruari had grown up nowhere near it. The three of them together didn't have half Pavek's experience or canniness, but Pavek was gone. Dead. And Zvain had suddenly become their font of wisdom where the city and its customs were concerned. Ruari knew the responsibility weighed heavily on Zvain's shoulders and the boy was staggering under the load—

Wind and fire! They were all staggering, putting one foot in front of the other because stopping meant thinking and thinking meant Pavek. He'd known Pavek for a year, one lousy year—and for most of that year they'd been at each other's throats.... No, he'd been at Pavek's throat, trying to rile him into a display of templar temper, trying to kill him with kivet poison because... because?

On the dusty road to Farl, midway through the longest afternoon of his life, Ruari couldn't remember why he'd poisoned Pavek's dinner. But not so long ago he'd wanted Pavek's death so badly it made him blind. Now he could scarcely see for another reason and hurriedly sopped up another tear before it betrayed him.

"What are we going to do when we get to Farl?" Mahtra asked when another stretch of hot, dusty road had passed beneath their feet. "Will we stay there? Overnight? Longer? Where will we get our supper? How many coins do we have?"

Ruari didn't know if Mahtra grieved at all. She couldn't cry the way he and Zvain tried not to cry. Her eyes weren't right for tears, she said, and the tone of her voice never varied, no matter how many questions she asked. Ruari didn't care about anything, including Farl, which was where they were headed. They were only going there because the two templars who got them out of Codesh said they shouldn't go back to Urik and the road to Farl was right there in front of them when the templars said it. Without Mahtra's questions, Ruari wouldn't have given a single thought to where they'd stay once they got to the village, or whether he ever ate another meal.

Mahtra was living proof that life went forward and that there was no use looking back. Her questions demanded answers—his answers. If Zvain had become their wisdom, Ruari discovered that he'd become their leader.

"We're poor," he said. "Not so poor that we'll starve right away, but—it's this way: I know the supplies we'd need to have to get back to Quraite: three riding kanks, at least seven water jugs, food for ten days, some other stuff, for safety's sake. That's what Kashi, Yohan, and I always had, but we had our own bugs, our own jugs, and Kashi did the buying when we needed food. I don't know how much going home will cost, or whether we have enough to get there."

Zvain offered a different idea before Ruari could answer. "I could—well—lift a bit. I got good at that." The boy dug deep in the wide hem of his shirt. He produced a little lion carved from rusty-red stone. "I lifted this right under Hamanu's nose!"

"Lord Hamanu," Ruari insisted, then, more seriously: "Wind and fire, Zvain—think of the trouble you could have gotten us into!"

"We'd be better off if I had," the boy replied, and there was nothing either one of them could say after that.

But nothing seemed to stanch Mahtra's questions. "Can I hold it? Keep it?"

"What for?" Ruari asked. "We get caught with something from Hamanu's palace and—" He mimed the drawing of a knife blade across his throat.

Mahtra took the figurine from Zvain's hand and held it up to her mask. "We won't get caught with it, if it's cinnabar."

Ruari cocked his head, asking a silent question of his own.

"I'll chew it up and swallow it," she replied. "If it's cinnabar. I can't tell through my mask. If it is, the more I swallow, the better I can protect myself. Lord Hamanu gave me plenty—" she parted a little pouch at her waist. "But, without Pavek, I don't think I can have too much cinnabar."

Zvain made disgusted, gagging noises, and Ruari's first instinct was to do the same thing. But he couldn't act on his first instincts, not anymore, no more than Pavek had.

Ruari's throat tightened, but he beat back that instinct, too, and all the memories. He forced himself to think of the crunching sounds he'd heard before the power passed through him and the passage caved in. If they had to choose between selling the staff Hamanu had given him or the red lion Zvain had stolen, Ruari supposed they should keep the lion. He could fashion himself another staff, he had a good carving knife now, thanks to Pavek, but Mahtra's ability to transform the air around them into a mighty, sweeping fist was a better weapon.