Lynn Abbey - Cinnabar Shadows

He might succeed in unmaking her, but that would come too late. Mahtra extended her arms, as if to embrace a lover, and surrendered herself to what the halflings had given her, confident that her thunder would kill.

Pavek had carried their guide almost from the start of their headlong march through the forest. He believed too late for halfling legs might be just in time for longer human legs, if they stormed through the forest like a thirst-crazed mekillot, never slowing, never weaving right or left. The little fellow on Pavek's shoulders had collected a few more bruises dodging branches on a maze of trails not made by anyone of Pavek's extended height, but Cerk hadn't complained, simply grabbed fistfuls of Pavek's hair and shouted out "right" or "left" at the appropriate time.

The twin moons had risen before the sun completely set. Between them, they shed sufficient light through the leaves to keep the trail visible to Pavek's dim, human eyes; but it was a strange light, filled with ghosts and shimmering wisps and luminous eyes in slanting pairs and foreboding isolation. The novice druid's skin crawled as Cerk guided him through the haunted trees, but he never hesitated, not until a solitary clap of thunder rolled through the moonlit forest.

"Mahtra!" Pavek shouted.

"The white-skinned woman is still alive," Cerk agreed.

Thinking he no longer needed a guide, Pavek came to a stiff-legged halt and tried to lift Cerk down, but the halfling clung to him, insisting:

"You won't find it without me, even now. We must all stay together!"

Pavek turned to Javed, who'd halted beside him, as the other templars had come to a stop behind them. With his nighttime skin and elven eyes, the commandant was little more than a moonlit ghost himself.

"You heard him. Commandant."

"Do you think you could ever outrun me, my lord?" Ivory teeth made a smile beneath glassy eyes.

"Javed—" Pavek dug the toe of his sandal into the loose debris that covered the forest floor. "I plan to outrun death itself."

He filled his lungs and pushed off with all the strength in his body. The elven commandant fell behind for two paces, then he was back at Pavek's side, grinning broadly, running effortlessly.

"Lean into your strides, Pavek, put your head down and breathe!"

Pavek hadn't the wherewithal to answer, but he took the lessons to heart as Cerk shouted another "Veer left!" in his ear.

He saw hearthfires flickering in the near-distance. He'd heard nothing louder than Cerk or the pounding of his own feet since the thunder rolled over them, but silence didn't reassure him. Mahtra's protection was a potent weapon. She could have felled a score of halflings, but they wouldn't stay down for long. Pavek fingered the knotted leather looped over the top of his scabbard and drew his sword as he and Javed led their templars into a clearing that was larger than the whole halfling settlement, quiet as a tomb and almost as dark at its heart.

"Spread out. Keep your wits and swords ready!" Javed shouted his orders before he stopped running.

In pairs, as always, the men and women of the war bureau did as they were told.

"Mahtra! Mahtra, where are you?" Pavek set Cerk down without protest and spun on his heels as he called her name again: "Mahtra!"

"Pavek?" Her familiar, faintly inflected voice came from the black center of the clearing. "Pavek!" He heard her coming toward him before her pale skin appeared in the moonlit. Javed took a brand from the nearest hearth. Her mask was gone. Another time, her face would have astonished him—he would have made a rude fool of himself gaping and staring. Tonight, he blinked once and saw the blood on Mahtra's neck, shoulder, and arm instead; her own blood, from her stiff, uncertain movements. Then he noticed the bodies. There were bodies everywhere: halflings on the ground, felled by thunder and just starting to move; halflings overhead, dangling from the branches of the biggest tree Pavek had ever seen, halflings whom Mahtra might have stunned, halflings who'd died long ago, and—scattered in the torchlight—bodies that weren't halflings, including a lean, lanky half-elf he recognized between two heartbeats.

"Hamanu's mercy," Pavek's voice was soft, his lungs were empty, and his heart. "Cut him down." He couldn't breathe. His sword slipped through his fingers. "Zvain?" he whispered, starting another sweep of the bodies in the tree and those on the ground, looking for a halfling who wasn't a halfling.

"Alive," Mahtra said. "Hurt. Cut him down?"

All of which confirmed Pavek's dire guess that Ruari was neither hurt, nor alive. His mouth worked silently; the commandant gave the order. Two templars ran where the hanging ropes led, into the dark, toward the great tree's trunk. Their obsidian swords sang as they hacked through the ropes. Bodies fell like heavy, reeking rain, Ruari's among them, completely limp... deadweight... dead.

Pavek started toward his friend's lifeless body; the emptiness beneath his ribs had become an ache.

Mahtra stopped him. "Kakzim's gone. He grabbed me; he was touching me when the thunder happened. Another mistake. He got away."

"Which way?" Rage banished Pavek's grief and got his blood flowing again. "Which way, Mahtra?"

"I don't know. He got away before I could see again."

Pavek swore. His rage was fading without a target; grief threatened. "Couldn't you hear something?" he demanded harshly, more harshly than Mahtra deserved.

Her neck twisted, bringing one ear down to her bloody shoulder: her best impression of misery and apology. "A sound, maybe—over there?" She pointed with her bloody arm.

A sound, that was all the help Mahtra could give him; it would have to be enough. Retrieving his sword, Pavek jogged into the moonlit forest. Javed called him a fool. Cerk warned him his chase was futile and doomed. He could live with doom and futility—anything was better than facing Ruari's corpse.

Kakzim left no trail. There was a path, but it petered out on the bank of a little brook. Kakzim could have crossed the water or followed it upstream or down—if he'd come this way at all. The chase was futile and doomed, and Pavek knew himself for a fool.

A sweating, overheated fool.

The forest was cooler than the Tablelands, but not by much, and its moist air had glued Pavek's silk shirt to his skin. He knelt on the bank, his sword at his side, and plunged his head beneath the surface, as he would have done after a day's work in Telhami's grove. The forest spoke to him while he drank, an undisciplined babble, each rock and tree, every drop of water and every creature larger than a worm trumpeting its own existence: wild life at its purest, without a druid to teach it a communal song.

Pavek raised his dripping head. The moons had risen above the treetops. Javed was right: little Ral was slipping, silently and safely, across Guthay's larger sphere. Silver light mixed with gold. He could feel it on his face, not unlike the sensations a yellow-robe templar felt when Hamanu's sulphur eyes loomed overhead and magic quickened the air.

Insight fell upon him. Templars reached to Hamanu for their magic. Druids reached to the guardian aspects of the land for their magic. Kakzim had wanted the power of two moons when he aimed to poison Urik or sacrifice Ruari. It was a useless parade of insights: Magicians reached for magic to work their magic. Different magicians reached to different sources. A magician reached to the source that worked for him, and magic happened.

Anyone could reach, but if a man grabbed and held on with all his strength, all his will, magic might happen. And if you were already a doomed fool, you might as well reach for the moons, and the sparkling stars, too.

Pavek reached with his hands and his thoughts. He drew the silver-gold moonlight into himself and used it to summon the voices of the forest. When he held them all-moons and voices together—and his head seemed likely to burst from the strain, he shaped a single image.