Lynn Abbey - Cinnabar Shadows

In the aftermath of that flow, Ruari considered it fortunate that he'd been numbed by aches and exhaustion. The guardian aspects of this forest weren't habituated to a druid's touch, weren't habituated and didn't seem to like it, not druidry in general, nor him in particular. For a moment, all the leaves had become open eyes and open mouths with teeth instead of edges.

That moment had passed once he raised his palms and consciously shut himself off from the forest's burgeoning vitality. Leaves were simply leaves again, but the sense that they were being watched persisted. For most of his life— even in his own grove, which was mostly brush and grass with a few sparse trees—Ruari had either been within walls or looking at a horizon that was at least a day's walk away. Here in the forest, he could touch the green-leafed horizon, and the forest, which had seemed like paradise before he sat down, had become a place of hidden menace.

He was afraid to cut himself a staff, lest he arouse something more hostile.

"Give it a try, son." Orekel urged. "What've we got to lose?"

"I'm too tired," Ruari replied, which was true. "Maybe later," which was a lie—but he didn't want to alarm the others.

"So, what do we do?" Zvain asked, backsliding into the whiny, selfish tone he used when he was tired, frightened, or both. "Sit here until you're rested?"

Orekel took Zvain's arm and gently spun him around. "Best to keep moving, son. Things that stay in one place too long attract an appetite."

"Move where?" Zvain persisted.

"Does it matter?" Mahtra asked. The climb down hadn't bothered her any more than the climb up, any more than anything ever seemed to bother her. If the New Races were made from something, someone else, then whatever Mahtra had been, it wasn't elven, or dwarven, or human. "We don't have a map anymore. One direction's as good as another if we don't know where we're going."

A heartbeat later, they were thrown against one another and hoisted off the ground in a net. Zvain screamed in terror; Orekel cursed, as if this had happened before, and— foolish as it was—Ruari felt better with his weight on the ropes, not his feet.

The sizzle of Mahtra's thunderclap power passed through Ruari not once, but twice. The sound was loud enough to detach a shower of leaves from their branches and make the net sway like a bead on a string. But it wasn't enough to send them crashing to the ground, and Mahtra's third blast was much weaker than the first two. The fourth was no more than a flash without the thunder.

Heartbeats later, they heard movement in the underbrush, and halflings appeared on the trail beneath them. Looking down, Ruari saw a score of halflings. None looked friendly, but the one who raised his spear and prodded the half-elf sharply in the flank had a truly frightening face, with weblike burn scars covering his cheeks and eyes as black and deep as night between the stars. He gave Ruari another poke between the ribs.

"The ugly man—Templar Paddock—where is he?"

"I've heard there's a hunters' village about a day's ride from here. They call it Ject. It's a way station for beasts on their way to the combat arenas of the cities. It's full of scoundrels, knaves, and charlatans of every stripe, some of whom'll lead a party across the mountains and into the halfling forests. It's a day's ride to the southeast, but we could hire a guide for an easier passage, if you think we should, Lord Pavek."

Unlike the ride from Quraite to Urik, there were no bells on the huge kank Lord Pavek rode, no excuse for not hearing Commandant Javed's statement, no excuse for not answering the implied question.

Still, under the guise of careful consideration, Pavek could take the time to shift his weight, easing strained joints and muscles. He'd been kank-back for the better part of three days, and the only parts of him that didn't hurt were the ones that had gone numb while the walls of Urik were still visible behind them.

Pavek thought he'd set a hard pace when he'd gotten himself, Mahtra, Ruari, and Zvain from Quraite to Urik in ten days. Since leaving Khelo shortly after his conversation with Lord Hamanu, Pavek had learned new things about the bugs'—and his own—endurance.

Together with Commandant Javed of Urik's war bureau, a double maniple of troops, and an equal number of slaves, Pavek had pushed the war bureau's biggest, toughest bugs relentlessly, following the line he saw when he suspended the strands of ensorcelled halfling hair in the draft-free box he kept lashed to the back of his saddle.

And now, when they were almost on top of the mountains they'd been chasing since yesterday morning, the commandant was suggesting a two-day detour. More than two days: it would surely take longer to walk through the forest on the other side of the mountains than it would to ride to this Ject.

But Pavek had learned over the past few days not to trust Commandant Javed's statements at face value.

"Is that a recommendation, Commandant?" In that time, Pavek had learned the trick of answering Javed's questions with questions. It made him seem wiser than he was and sometimes kept him from falling into the commandant's traps.

"A fact, Lord Pavek," Javed said with a smile and no sign of the aches that plagued Pavek. "You're the man in charge. You make the decisions; I merely provide the facts. Do we veer southeast, or do we hold steady?"

A challenge. And another question, the same, but different.

Hamanu had said the templars in the double maniple were all volunteers, but the Lion hadn't said anything about the commandant, whether or not he was a willing participant in this barrens-trek or not; and, if he was, why? Those facts might have helped Pavek interpret Javed's smiles.

Commandant Javed had served Urik and the Lion-King for six decades, all of them illustrious. He was well past the age when most elves gave up their running on foot and sat quietly in the long sunset of their lives, but the only concession the commandant made to his old bones and old injuries was the kank he rode as if he'd been born in its saddle.

There were three rubies mounted in Javed's steel medallion, one for each time he'd been designated Hamanu's Champion, and two diamonds commemorating his exploits as Hero of Urik.

Among Pavek's cherished few memories of life before the orphanage was the day he'd stood on the King's Way, holding his mother's hand and watching the parade as the great Commandant Javed returned triumphant from a campaign against Gulg.

The farmers and druids of Quraite nowadays called Pavek a hero; Pavek reserved that honor for the black-skinned, black-haired elf riding beside him.

"A decision, Lord Pavek," the commandant urged. "A decision now, while the wheel can still turn freely." He gestured toward the outriding templars. "Timing is everything. Do not confuse a decision with an accident or lost opportunity, my lord."

Good advice. Excellent advice. So why wasn't Javed leading this expedition? Never mind that high templars outranked commandants: that only proved to Pavek that Commandant Javed had been more successful at holding on to his steel medallion than he himself had been at holding on to his regulator's ceramic one.

So why was Javed here at all? After conquering every challenge Urik's war bureau offered and successfully resisting a golden medallion, why was Commandant Javed headed into the halfling forest at a regulator's side, and looking to that regulator for orders?

"Now, Lord Pavek." The commandant smiled again, ivory teeth gleaming through the black gash in his weathered face.

Pavek turned from that face and looked straight ahead at the mountains.

"No guides," he said. "We've already got our guide." He thumped the box behind him and shot a sideways glance at the commandant, whose smile had faded to a less-than-approving frown. "When we brought the cavern poison to Lord Hamanu, he said we had time to destroy it because Ral didn't 'occlude' Guthay—whatever that means—for another thirteen days. Well, we got rid of the poison, but we didn't catch Kakzim. Maybe he's gone home in defeat and we can catch him anytime, but maybe he's got something else he can unleash when the moons 'occlude' four nights from now.