Lynn Abbey - Cinnabar Shadows

"Keep it, then. Do whatever you do with it."

"If it's cinnabar."

He nodded. He'd taken ten strides, maybe twenty, without mourning Pavek. He'd strung his thoughts together and made a decision—the decision Pavek would have made, he hoped, and with that hope his defenses crumbled. The grief, the aching emptiness, overwhelmed him ten times, maybe twenty, stronger than before.

Unable to hide or halt the sudden flow of tears, Ruari sat down on the edge of the road. He wanted to be alone, but Zvain was beside him in an instant, leaning against his shoulder, dampening his sleeve. He wanted to be alone, but he put his arm around the human boy instead, thinking that was what Pavek would have done. If Mahtra had knelt or sat beside him, Ruari would have comforted her the same way, but she stood behind them, keeping watch.

"There's someone coming this way," she said finally. "Coming from Codesh."

With a sigh, Ruari got to his feet, hauling Zvain up as well. There was a solitary traveler on the road far behind them, and behind the traveler, a swath of green fields becoming the dusty yellow of the barrens. The ring road had curved toward Farl; Codesh had disappeared.

"Come on. We've got to keep walking."

"Where?"

The questions had started again.

"Where, after Farl? What are we going to do?"

He said nothing, nothing at all, and Zvain asked:

"Is it kanks and Quraite, or do we go somewhere else?"

It was easier for Ruari to get angry with Zvain's adolescent whine. "Where else?" Ruari shouted. "Where else could we go? Back to Urik? Do you think we could just set ourselves up in that templar-house? Damn it, Zvain, think first, before you open your mouth!"

Zvain's mouth worked soundlessly. His nostrils flared, his eyes overflowed, and, with an agonized wail, he spun on his heel and started back to Codesh at a blind, stumbling run. Huari hesitated long enough to curse himself, then effortlessly made up the distance between them.

"I'm sorry—"

Zvain wriggled out of his grasp, but he was finished with running and merely stood, arms folded, head down, and law clenched in a sad, sullen sulk, just out of Ruari's reach.

"I said I was sorry. Wind and fire, I hurt inside, too. I want him here. I want this morning back; I'd make him take that damn gold medallion—"

"That's why Hamanu closed his eyes. Don't you remember, in that room with the black rock, Hamanu warned Pavek that if he didn't take the medallion, he wouldn't listen. He gave Pavek another chance to take it this morning; the medallion was sitting on top of his clothes. I saw Pavek leave it behind. Damn—" Ruari's voice broke.

"Not your fault," Zvain said quickly before his voice got Host in sobbing. He lunged at Ruari, giving the half-elf an embrace that hurt and dulled their other pain. "Not your fault, Ru. Not our fault."

Mahtra joined them, not to grieve, but to say: "The man behind us is getting closer. Shouldn't we be walking?"

The answer was yes, and just as the ring road curves had hidden Codesh, they brought Farl into view. Farl, a place where Ruari had never been, the first place he'd go after Pavek. And after Farl? He had to decide.

"I say we find ourselves kanks as soon as we get there, and head home—to Quraite."

"Whatever you say," Zvain agreed without enthusiasm.

But then, none of them had any enthusiasm. Ruari wasn't looking forward to returning to Quraite, to telling Kashi their misadventures, but he couldn't think of anywhere else to go.

"You have Kakzim's map," Mahtra reminded him, as if she'd heard Ruari's thoughts. "We could go to a place we've never been."

"The map's a trap," Ruari replied.

Zvain shot back: "Pavek didn't want to see it, didn't want to hear about it. Pavek thought it wasn't a trap. He thought it was worthwhile."

Pavek wasn't thinking; Pavek was dying! Ruari wanted to say, and didn't. He fished the map out of his shirt-hem instead and unrolled it as they walked. If the toothy shape near the right side of the bark scrap was a mountain... if the smudge above the shape was not a smudge, but smoke... then the mountain might be the Smoking Crown Volcano, and the circle in the lower right-hand corner might be Urik. A black line connected the circle and the mountain. The line continued leftward and upward in jagged segments, each separated with symbolic shapes: wavy lines that might be water, smaller mountains, smaller circles, and others Ruari couldn't immediately interpret. The black line ended at the base of a black tree, the only symbol that was the same color as the line and was, on the map, as large as the Smoking Crown.

And Pavek hadn't wanted to see the map, hadn't wanted to hear anything about it.

Because he didn't want to tell Hamanu where they'd gone?

It was possible. Pavek took risks. Today, he'd raised a guardian no druid dreamed existed, and he'd done it because it might keep them alive. A year ago, he'd surrendered himself into druid hands because getting rid of Laq was more important than his own life.

Go home and plant... a big, ugly lump of a tree. And carve my name into its bark.

"Later," Ruari said aloud, drawing concern from his companions, "we'll follow the map, somehow, wherever it takes us—all the way to that big black tree."

He'd fallen asleep in the wrong position, lying on a bed that was harder than dirt. Every joint in his body ached and complained when he yawned himself awake—

But he was awake.

Pavek knew he had awakened, knew, moreover, that he was alive. He remembered Codesh and silting with his hand in a water bucket, hoping to die before Hamanu caught up with him. Those were his last memories, but he hadn't died. At least Pavek didn't remember dying, although the dead weren't supposed to remember that was the whole reason he'd had his hand in the bucket: he hadn't wanted to be alive—feeling or remembering—when Hamanu found him.

Could he have died and been restored to life? Hamanu could transform life into death in countless ways, but as Pavek understood histories, legends, and dark rumors, the Lion-King could not transform death into life. A wise man wouldn't bet his life against a sorcerer-king's prowess. Pavek was willing to bet he hadn't died—

Though he'd almost be willing to bet that Hamanu hadn't found him. What Pavek saw when he opened his eyes seemed almost like Quraite: a one-room house with woven-wicker walls and a thatched roof. The door was shut, the window, open. From the very hard bed he could see leafy branches and cloudless sky.

Pavek thought about standing up, but first things first: there'd been a reason the last thing he remembered was his hand dangling in a bucket. It hadn't hurt then, despite the damage when the medallion burst apart, and still didn't. After taking a deep breath, Pavek lifted his left arm into the sunlight and, in complete amazement, rotated it front to back. Palm-side or knuckle-side, his mangled hand had been restored. Movement and sensation had been restored as well. Each finger bent obediently to touch the tip of his thumb.

All healing was spellcraft of one sort or another, but this was spellcraft beyond Pavek's imagining. He rose from the bed, went to the window where the light was better—and his hands remained the same, exactly the same, but mirror images of each other.

Pavek was alive, restored, and wise enough not to waste time questioning good fortune. Setting both hands on the window ledge, he leaned out for a better examination of his surroundings. There were walls, not fields, beyond the tree he'd seen from the bed, masonry walls built from four rows of man-high stones. The sounds that came over those walls, though faint, were the sounds of a city, of Urik. Pavek knew the walls of Urik as well as anyone who'd ever spent a quinth of nights standing watch by moonlight. He knew how the city was put together, and he knew that the only place he could be was inside the palace, which meant Hamanu, which meant he had died.