Lynn Abbey - Cinnabar Shadows

That was Orekel's plan, when his ankle wasn't hurting so bad he couldn't think or talk. Maybe, if he'd been able to stand or she'd been confident her protection would work again, they might have tried it.

But Orekel couldn't stand and, though she'd chewed through and swallowed their last bit of cinnabar, the little lion that Zvain had stolen from the palace, Mahtra didn't think she'd ever be able to use the maker's protection again. Something was missing. There was now a dark place inside her, a place she'd never realized was lit until the flame went out.

And now there was no more talk of escape. Well into the third day of their captivity, their prison was quiet—except for Orekel's babbling and groans. She and Zvain had nothing left to say to each other.

Mahtra huddled by herself in the curve where the side became the bottom. She drew her knees up to her chest, rested her cheek on them, and wrapped her arms over her shins.

The spiral of her life had become a circle; she was back where she'd begun: in deep, silent darkness.

After his time in Telhami's grove, Pavek thought he'd be prepared for the forest, but there was little comparison between a meticulously nurtured grove and the wild profusion of a natural forest.

Instead of the guardian aspect that pulled a grove together with a single purpose, a single voice, the halfling forest was a battleground with every mote of life competing for its place on the land.

It was a place hostile to them as well—which was not entirely surprising. War bureau maniples did not go quietly, no matter where they went, though they were traveling light, at least as far as magic was concerned. Except for the medallions they all wore and the ensorcelled bit of halfling hair, Pavek knew of no Tablelands magic that they'd brought across the mountains into the forest. There were no defiling sorcerers with them, no priests, either—unless the forest sensed that templars borrowed spellcraft from the Lion-King or recognized Pavek's clumsy curiosity as the sign of a druid.

Even without magic, however, a living forest had reason to resent their intrusion. A double maniple of templars armed with broad-bladed, single-edged swords hacked a wide swathe through the undergrowth as they marched, still following the straight course set by the strands of blond hair Pavek now carried in a little pouch on the gold chain of his high templar's medallion.

It was the morning of the twelfth day and the start of their first full day in the forest. Last night, the two moons had been in the sky all night. They were both nearly full, and silvery little Ral was yapping toward golden Guthay's middle.

Pavek could remember other times when both moons had shown their full faces at the same time, but never when they'd been on the collision course of last night. It seemed to Pavek that Ral would crash against Guthay's trailing edge tonight or tomorrow night, which would be the significant thirteenth night. He mentioned his suspicions to the commandant once they'd broken camp and were marching through the forest again, and his concern that Ral would be destroyed. "If Kakzim knew that the moons were going to crash—"

Pavek bit his lip and held silent while he weighed what the Lion-King had told him about how using magic now would destroy Urik. Easier to believe that no spells would be available until after the sorcerer-king had prevented catastrophe in the heavens than to think Hamanu had been serious bout birthing dragons and the death of Urik.

Which thoughts made Pavek wonder why the Lion-King would have lied to him about such a matter, if the truth were so linked to this mission. That was not a question to ask Commandant Javed.

"I hadn't thought of it that way, Commandant," he said. "You're right. Of course."

"You're young yet. There's a lot to learn that never gets taught. You just have to put the pieces together yourself— remember that."

Pavek assured the older, wiser elf that he would, and their march through the forest continued. The sense that the forest itself was hostile to them grew steadily stronger until Javed and the maniple templars sensed it also.

"It's too damned quiet," Javed concluded. "Trees. I hate trees. The forest is an ambusher's paradise. They can put their scouts in the branches and tell their troops to lie low in the shade beneath them. Get out your hair, Lord Pavek; see if our halfling's tried to close a trap behind us."

It was the trees themselves that were looking down on them—at least that's what Pavek thought. The hair indicated it as well. Its line hadn't varied since they used it first at Khelo: Kakzim was still ahead of them.

But the two-time Hero of Urik took no chances. He tightened their formation, giving orders to every third templar: "Keep your eyes on the trees ahead of us, on either side, and especially behind. Anything moves, sing out. I'd sooner duck from wind and shadows than have halflings running up our rumps."

They did a lot of shadow dodging that morning, but they also got a heartbeat's warning before the first arrow flew at them. Trusting their silk tunics and leather armor, Commandant Javed ordered the maniples together in a tight circle. He commanded them to kneel, presenting smaller targets to the hidden archers and safeguarding their unprotected legs.

"Defend your face! That's where you're vulnerable," Javed shouted, taking his own advice when an arrow whizzed toward him. "But mark where the arrows are coming from. We'll take these forest-scum brigands when their quivers are empty."

The soft, smooth silk lived up to the commandant's claims, and the lightweight, slow-moving arrows failed to find targets time and again. One templar cried out when an arrow grazed her hand, and moments later she'd fallen unconscious. But she was their only casualty, and gradually the arrow flights came to a halt and the forest was silent.

"Mark where you saw 'em. Move out in pairs." This time the commandant gave his orders in a voice that wouldn't carry to the trees. "We don't have to catch them all, just one or two." Then he turned to Pavek and whispered: "You mark any, my lord?"

Pavek pointed to a crook halfway up one substantial tree where he'd spotted a shadowed silhouette against the branches.

Javed flashed his black-and-white smile. "Let's go catch us a halfling—"

But fickle fortune was against the heroes. Their quarry dropped down and hit the ground running. Javed's elven legs weren't what they'd been in his prime, and Pavek had never been much of a sprinter. The halfling went to ground in a stand of bramble bushes.

Other pairs were luckier. When the maniples reassembled near the body of the unconscious templar, they had captured four halflings, none of whom seemed to understand a word Commandant Javed said when he asked where their village was.

Intimidation was an art among templars. Pavek had been taught the basic skills in the orphanage. Being big, which Pavek had always been, and ugly, which he'd become early on life, Pavek had a natural advantage. The joke was that he was a born intimidator, but the truth was that Pavek didn't enjoy making other folk writhe in terror or anxiety. He was good at it because he hated it, and now that he held the highest rank imaginable, he intended never to professionally intimidate anyone again. He gave a hands-off gesture and stepped aside to allow the commandant to finish what he'd begun.

"You're lying," Javed told the captives who knelt before him. He looked aside to Pavek and began speaking above heads that rose no higher than his thigh. "My name is Commandant Javed of Urik, and I give you my word as a commandant that we're searching for one man, one male halfling with blond hair and slave scars on his face. He committed crimes in Urik, and he will answer for them. No one else need fear us. We won't harm you or your families or your homes if you give us the criminal we've come for. You will help us—understand that. Dead or alive, one of you will guide us to your homes. Now, which one of you will it be?"