Cinnabar Shadows

by Lynn Abbey

  Do what you want in Telhami's grove, she'd said, as hateful and bitter as any Urik templar. Wander where you will. Sit under your waterfall and never come back, if you think there's nothing more important to be done. But don't drag me after you. I don't care.

  Pavek couldn't remember the waterfall without also remembering Kashi's face contorted with scorn. He'd tried to find his way back, to restore himself in the pure beauty of the place, but he couldn't remember the way. She'd seared the landmarks from his mind.

  It wasn't right. His old adversaries in the templarate could have a man's eyes gouged out if he looked at them wrong, but, except for the deadheart interrogators, they left his memories alone.

  Another gust of wind struck Pavek's cheek.

  "Work, that's what you need, Just-Plain Pavek. Escrissar's havoc isn't all mended yet, not by a long shot. There's a stream not too far from here. He knocked down the trees along its banks; now it's dammed and stagnant. Can't count on anything natural to set it flowing again, not here in the Tablelands. The channel needs to be cleared and the banks need to be shored up."

  With one last thought for the waterfall, Pavek followed today's path into the grove. He'd never been one for rebellion. Following orders had kept him alive in Urik; it would keep him alive in Quraite as well.

  A little walking on Telhami's path and Pavek came to a place where a mote of Elabon Escrissar's wrath had come to ground beside what been a stand of sweet-nut trees beside a brook. The trees were all down, black with mold, and crawling with maggots. Their trunks had dammed the brook, turning it into a choked, scummy pond. An insect haze hovered above the mottled green water and the stench of rotting meat weighed down the air.

  Compared to the other places where Escrissar's malice had struck the grove, this place was healthy and almost serene. There was no danger here, only the hard work of getting the water to flow again. Evidently, Telhami had been saving this particular mess for a day when she thought he needed the kind of distraction only exhaustion could bring. Pavek wondered how many such places she held in reserve, how many he'd need before he could think of Kashi without sinking into his own mire.

  Telhami shimmered into sight atop one of the decaying trees. "Get the water flowing. Work with the land rather than against it." Time was that Pavek wouldn't have known what to look for and she would have fed him clues. Now she expected him to resolve messes on his own. He dropped to one knee and surveyed the land with his own squinted eyes. There was nothing he could do for the fallen trees, but he could see the way the stream used to flow and he could get it flowing again.

  "Brilliant, Just-Plain Pavek, just-plain brilliant," the shimmering sprite mocked him from her perch. "You'll run out of blood before you run out of bugs!"

  Much as Pavek loved the sensations of druid magic flowing through him, druidry might never be the first thought in his mind when he confronted a problem. Feeling foolish, he closed his eyes and pressed his palms into the mud. Quraite's guardian was there, waiting for him.

  Elsewhere, Pavek thought, adding the image of another scummy pond that might, or might not, exist somewhere in the grove. The guardian's power rose into Pavek and out of him. It stirred the bugs, gathering them into a buzzing, blurred ribbon of life that abandoned Pavek without resistance or hesitation. Flushed with his own success, Pavek sat down on his heel, sighing as residual power drained back into the land.

  Every place had a guardian; that was the foundation of druidry. Every tree, every stone had its spirit. When the Tablelands had teemed with life, the guardians of the land had been lively, too. In the current age of sun-battered and lifeless barrens, druids could still draw upon the land for their power, but except in places like Quraite, where the groves retained a memory of ancient vigor, the guardians they touched were shattered. Those guardians that weren't weak were mad and apt to pass that madness to a druid who associated too closely with them.

  Quraite's guardian had no personality of its own that Pavek had been able to discover. Telhami, by her own admission, was only a small aspect of its power and sanity. Pavek suspected that every druid who died in Quraite became part of the guardian, and a few Quraiters who weren't druids as well. He'd sensed another aspect from time to time: Yohan, the dwarven veteran who'd died that day when Escrissar attacked. In life, Akashia had been Yohan's focus, the core of loyalty and purpose all dwarves needed. In death, he still protected her, not as a banshee, but as an aspect of the guardian.

  "On your feet, Just-Plain Pavek, or the bugs'll be back before you've moved a stick!"

  Pavek got to his feet. Telhami was right, as she usually was. There was nothing to be gained by thinking of the dead who protected Quraite—or Akashia, whom he would personally protect, if she'd let him. After shedding his belt and weapons, Pavek waded into the pond. One afternoon wasn't enough to get the stream flowing swiftly again, but before the sun was sinking into the trees, he'd hauled away enough debris to get water seeping through the dam in several places.

  "A little luck," he told the green-skinned spirit on an overhead branch, "and the stream will do the rest of the work for us."

  "You're a lazy, lazy man," she replied with approving pride.

  The path took an easy route back to the clearing Pavek called home. There was a stream-fed pool for water, a sandy hearth, and a rickety lean-to where he stored the hoe beside his sword. He'd thrown his sweated clothes into the pool and was about to follow them when the leaves on the nearby trees began to shiver and the grass bent low.

  "Someone's coming," Telhami said from the rocky rim of the pool.

  Pavek bent down and swept his hands through the grass. He cocked his head, listening to the leaves. Telhami knew who was coming and, after another moment of listening, he did as well. "Not someone," he corrected. "Zvain and Ruari."

  "Running or walking?"

  He touched the grass a second time and answered: "Running."

  Ruari had his own grove, as befitted a novice druid. He had trees and shrubs, the familiar wildlife that half-elves always attracted, and a pool of water not much bigger than he was. It certainly wasn't large enough to entertain two energetic youths, since Zvain spent most of his time in Ruari's shadow, having no gift for druid magic.

  Pavek wasn't surprised that they were coming to visit him. Half the time they were already in Telhami's pool by the time he returned from the grove's depths. But he was surprised that they were running. The druid groves were only a small part of Quraite, and between the groves the land was blasted by the bloody sun, just like every other place in the Tablelands. Usually, Quraiters walked, like everyone else, unless they had good reason to run. He snagged his shirt before it drifted downstream and started to follow the bending grass toward the verge.

  He hadn't taken ten steps before Ruari burst through the underbrush, running easily right past Pavek to leap fully clothed into the pool. Zvain came along a few heartbeats later—a few of Pavek's heartbeats. The boy was red-faced and panting from the chase. Ruari might never be able to run with his mother's elven Moonracer tribe, but no mere human was going to catch him in a fair race: an inescapable fact that Zvain had failed to grasp. Extending an arm, Pavek caught the boy before he flung himself into the chilly water.

  Somewhere between Urik and the grove, between then and now, Pavek had become the closest thing to a father any of the three of them had ever known, though only the same handful of years separated him and Ruari as separated Ruari and Zvain. The transformation mystified Pavek more than any demonstration of druidry, especially on those rare occasions when one of them actually listened to anything he said. Zvain leaned against him and would have collapsed if Pavek hadn't kept an arm hooked around his ribs.

  "He said it wasn't a race—" Zvain muttered miserably between gasps.

  "And you believed him? He's a known liar, and you're a known fool!"

  "He gave me a twenty-count lead. I thought—I thought I could beat him."

  "I know," Pavek consoled, thumping Zvain gently on the top of his sweaty
head.

  It wasn't so long ago that he'd been having pretty much the same conversation with Ruari, who'd nurtured the same futile hope of besting his elven cousins at their games. Life was better for the half-elf now. Like Pavek, Ruari had become a hero. He'd rallied the Quraiters to defend Pavek while Pavek summoned the Don-King. Then, when Escrissar's mercenaries had been annihilated, he'd gone to Akashia's aid, helping her to direct the guardian's power against Escrissar himself after Telhami had collapsed.

  The past two sun phases had been kind to Ruari in other ways, also. The half-elf could no longer be mistaken for a gangly erdlu in its first molt. He'd stopped growing and was putting some human flesh on his spindly elven bones. His hair, skin, and eyes, were a study in shades of copper. There wasn't a woman in Quraite—young or old, daughter or wife—who hadn't tried to capture his attention, and the Moonracer women were almost as eager. Ruari had grown into one of those rare individuals who could quiet a crowd by walking through it.

  No wonder Zvain ached with envy; Pavek felt that way himself sometimes. The two of them were both typical of Urik's human stock: solid and swarthy, good for moving rocks rather than the hearts of women. Zvain had an ordinary face that could blend into any crowd, which, by Pavek's judgment, was an advantage he himself had lost before he escaped the templar orphanage. The stupidest fight of a brawl-prone youth had left him with a gash that wandered from the outside corner of his right eye and across the bridge of an oft-broken nose before it came to an end at his upper lip. Years later, the scar hurt when the wind blew a storm down from the north, and his smile would never be more than a lopsided sneer. He'd put that sneer to good use when he wore a yellow robe, but here among the gentler folk of Quraite he was embarrassed and ashamed.

  Ruari surfaced with a swirl and a splash of water that pelted Pavek and Zvain where they stood.

  "Cowards!" he taunted, which was enough to get Zvain moving.

  Pavek hung back, waiting for the other pair to become engrossed in their bravado games before he stepped down into the pool. A stream-fed pool still unnerved a man who'd grown up never seeing water except in calf-deep fountains, sealed cisterns, or hide buckets hauled out of ancient, bottomless wells. Zvain loved water; he'd learned to splash and swim as if water were a natural part of his world. Pavek liked water well enough, provided it didn't rise higher than his knees. And at that depth, of course, he couldn't learn to swim.

  Early on, Pavek had hauled a rock into the shallows where, left to his own preferences, he'd sit and enjoy the current flowing around him. Sometimes—about one time in three—his companions would leave him alone. Today was not one of Pavek's lucky times. They double-teamed him, sweeping their arms through the cold water, inundating him repeatedly until he struck back. Then, Zvain wrapped his arms like twin water-snakes around Pavek's ankle and pulled him into the deep, dark water of the pool's center.

  He roared, fought, and splashed his way back to the shallows, which merely signalled the start of another round of boisterous fun. Pavek trusted them to keep him from drowning—the first time in his life that he'd trusted anyone with his life. He trusted Telhami as well. The other two couldn't perceive the old druid's spirit, but Pavek could hear her sparkling laughter circling the pool. She wasn't above lending the youths an extra slap of water to keep him off-balance, but she'd help him, too, by making the deep water feel solid beneath his feet, if he breathed wrong and began to panic.

  The fun lasted until they were all too exhausted to stand and sat dripping instead on the rocks.

  "You should learn to swim," Ruari advised.

  Pavek shook his head, then raked his rough-cut black hair away from his face. "I keep things the way they are so you'll stand a chance against me. If I could swim, you'd drown— you know that." Snorting laughter, Ruari jabbed an elbow between Pavek's ribs. "Try me. You talk big, Pavek, but that's all you do.

  Yet when Ruari slipped and started to fall, Pavek's hand was there to catch him before any damage could be done.

  "You two are kank-head fools," Zvain announced when the three of them were sitting again. "Can't you do anything without going after each other?"

  Zvain wasn't the first youth, human or otherwise, whose need for attention got in the way of his good sense. Needing neither words nor any other form of communication, Pavek and Ruari demonstrated that they didn't need to fight with each other, not when they could join forces to torment their younger, smaller companion. It was a thoughtless, spontaneous reaction, and although Pavek reserved his full strength from the physical teasing, Zvain was no match for him or Ruari alone, much less together. After a few moments, Zvain was in full, sulking retreat to the pool's far side where he sat with his knees drawn up and his forehead resting between them.

  The youngster didn't have a secure niche in the close-knit community. Unlike Pavek and Ruari, he hadn't been a hero during Quraite's dark hours. Following a path of disaster and deceit, Zvain had become Elabon Escrissar's pawn before Ruari, Pavek, and Yohan spirited him out of Urik. He'd opened his mind to his master as soon as he arrived in the village. Although Zvain was as much victim as villain, in her wrath and judgment, Telhami had shown him no mercy.

  Young as he was, she'd imprisoned Zvain here, in her grove.

  He'd lived through nights of the guardian's anger and Escrissar's day-long assault. Ruari said he was afraid of the dark still and had screaming nightmares that woke the whole village. Akashia still wanted to drive the boy out to certain death on the salt flats they called the Fist of the Sun. Kashi had her own nightmares and Zvain was a part of them, however duped and unwitting he'd been at the time. But the heroes of Quraite said no, especially Pavek whom she'd once accused of having no conscience.

  So Zvain stayed on charity and sufferance. He couldn't learn druidry—even if he hadn't been scared spitless of the guardian, his nights in this grove had burned any talent out of him. The farmers made bent-finger luck signs when the boy's shadow fell on them; they refused to let him set foot in the fields. That left Ruari, who had his own problems, and Pavek, who spent most of his time in this grove, avoiding Akashia.

  A vagrant breeze rippled across the pool and Zvain's shoulders. The boy cringed; Pavek did, too. There was only one good reason for Pavek to return to Urik and the Lion-King's offer of wealth and power in the high bureau: Zvain's misery here in Quraite. It wasn't noticeable when the boy was whooping and hightailing after Ruari, but watching that lump of humanity shrink deeper into the grass was almost more than Pavek could bear.

  "Let's go," he said, rising to his feet and retrieving the shirt he'd thrown on the grass. Ruari hauled himself out of the pool, but Zvain stayed where he was. "Talk to him, will you?" he asked the half-elf as he wrung the shirt out before pulling it over his head.

  Ruari grumbled but did as he was asked, crouching down in the grass beside Zvain, exchanging urgent whispers that ignited Pavek's own doubts as he bent down to lace his sandals. Those doubts seemed suddenly justified when he looked up again and saw them standing together with a single guilty expression shared across their two faces.

  "Give it up," he snarled and started toward the verge.

  There was another frantic exchange of whispers, then Ruari cleared his throat vigorously. "You should maybe bring your sword...."

  Pavek stopped short. "What for?" But he headed for the lean-to without waiting for an answer. "I'm not teaching you swordplay, Ru. I've told you that a thousand times already."

  "I know. It's not for me," Ruari admitted softly. "Kashi wants you to bring it. There might be trouble. There's something out on the Sun's Fist."

  "Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy!" Pavek swore, adding other, more colorful oaths he hadn't used much since coming to Quraite. He glanced into the nearest trees where there was no sign of Telhami. She was a part of the guardian; she could sense what was happening out on the brutal salt plain as easily as she had sensed Ruari and Zvain approaching earlier. He thought she would have told him if there was any danger. "When? Where? Riders? How many?
" he asked when he had the sword buckled around his waist and neither of his glum companions had volunteered more information. "Moonracers?"

  "Who, Ruari? Who does Akashia say is out on the Fist? Damn it, Ruari—answer me! Did she send you out here with that message? that warning? and you decided to ignore it?"

  "I forgot, that's all. Wind and fire, Pavek—whoever it is, they're on the salt; they won't be here until after sundown, if they don't melt and die first."

  "She wasn't really worried or nothing," Zvain added in his friend's defense. "She just said there's someone on the Fist, coming straight toward us like an arrow, and that we—"

  He gulped and corrected himself; Akashia never talked to him. "That Ru should come out here and get you. There's lots of time."

  "In your dreams, Zvain! Lots of time for her to decide where she's going to hang our heads. Don't you two ever learn?"

  It wasn't a fair question. Zvain couldn't sink any lower in Akashia's estimation. Likely as not, the boy wouldn't complain if things came to a head and Akashia exiled the three of them together. And as for Ruari...

  Ruari and Akashia had grown up together, and though it had always seemed to Pavek that she treated the half-elf more like a brother than a prospective suitor, Ruari had made no secret of his infatuation. Before they became heroes, they'd been rivals, in Ruari's mind at least. The half-elf's hopes had soared once Kashi turned her back on Pavek. He'd courted her with flowers and helpfulness. Pavek thought he'd won her, but something had gone wrong, and now Akashia treated Ruari no better than she treated him. Ruari had every woman in the village swooning at his feet. Every woman except the one that mattered.

  "Never mind," Pavek concluded. "Let's just get moving."

  They did, covering the barrens at a steady trot with the sword slapping, unfamiliar and uncomfortable, against Pavek's thigh. He kept an eye on the horizon where dust plumes would betray travelers approaching Quraite in a group. But the air there was quiet, and so was the village as they approached through the manicured, green fields. Folk paused in their work to greet Pavek and Ruari, ignoring Zvain, which made the boy understandably sullen.