Lynn Abbey - Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas 04 - Cinnabar Shadows

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CINNABAR SHADOWS
Lynn Abbey
Dark Sun, Chronicles of Athas, Book 04
Scanned, formatted and proofed by Dreamcity
Ebook version 1.0
Release Date: June, 02, 2004
Cover an by Brom.
First Printing: July 1995
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 94-61678
ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
This book is dedicated to Lonnie Loy my accountant
A good accountant is like a good magician: There are lots of places you just won't survive without one
on your side.
Chapter One
Urik.
Viewed through the eye of a soaring kes'trekel, the walled city was a vast sulphur carbuncle rising
slowly out of a green plain. Towers, walls, and roofs shimmered red, gold, and amber, as if the city-state
itself were afire in the steeply slanted light of a dying afternoon. But the flames were only the reflections of
the sun's bloody disk as it sank in the west: an everyday miracle, little noticed by the creatures great and
small, soaring or crawling, that dwelt in Urik's purview.
Roads like veins of gold traced from city walls to smaller eruptions in the fertile plain. Silver arteries
wove through the patchwork fields that depended on that burden of water as Urik depended on the fields
themselves. Beyond the ancient network of irrigation channels, the green plain faded rapidly to dusty,
barren badlands that stretched endlessly in all directions except the northwest, where the dirty haze of the
Smoking Crown Volcano put a premature end to the vision of man and kes'trekel alike.
Drifting away from the haze, toward the city, a kes'tre-kel's eye soon enough discerned the
monumental murals decorating the mighty walls. One figure dominated every scene: a powerful man with
the head of a lion. Sometimes inscribed in profile, other times full-face, but never without a potent weapon
grasped in his fist, the man's skin was burnished bronze, his flowing hair a leonine black, and his eyes a
fierce, glassy yellow that shone with blinding brilliance when struck by the sun.
The kes'trekel swerved when Urik's walls flashed gold. Through uncounted generations, the scaled
birds had adapted to the harsh landscapes of the Athasian Tablelands. They knew nothing natural, nothing
worthwhile, nothing safe or edible shone with such a brief yet powerful light. Given their instincts and
wings, they sought other, less ominous night roosts. The men and woman trudging along the dusty ocher
roads of Urik's plain possessed the same instincts but, bereft of wings, could only flinch when the blinding
light whipped their eyes, then swallow a hard lump and keep going.
Unlike the kes'trekels, men and women knew whose portrait was repeated on Urik's walls: Lord
Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of Mountain and Plain, the Great King, the Sorcerer-King.
Their king.
And their king was watching them.
No Urikite doubted Lord Hamanu's power to look through any wall, any darkness to find the secrets
written on even a child's heart. Lord Hamanu's word was Law in Urik, his whim Justice. In the Tablelands
where death was never more than a handful of unfortunate days away, Lord Hamanu gave Urik peace and
stability: his peace, his stability— so long as his laws were obeyed, his taxes paid, his templars bribed, and
he himself worshiped as a living, immortal god.
Lord Hamanu's bargain with Urik had withstood a millennium's testing. There was, despite the cringing,
a measure of pride in the minds of those roadway travelers: their king had not fallen in the Dragon's wake.
Their city had prospered because their king was as wily and farsighted as he was rapacious and cruel. The
mass of them felt no urge to follow the road into the badlands, to the other city-states where opportunity
consorted openly with anarchy. Wherever they lived—on a noble estate, in a market village, or within the
mighty walls—most Urikites willingly hurried home each evening to their suppers and their families.
They had to hurry: Lord Hamanu's domain extended as far as his flashing eyes could be seen, and
farther. Early on in his career as sorcerer-king, he'd decreed a curfew for law-abiding folk that began with
the appearance of the tenth star in the heavens. And, unlike some of his other law-making whims, that
curfew stood unchanged. Law-abiding folk knew better to linger where the king or his minions could find
them after sunset.
Except in the market villages.
In another longstanding whim, Lord Hamanu did not permit anyone to enter his city unannounced, and
he levied a hefty tax on anyone who stayed overnight at a public house within its walls. In consequence of
this whim—and the city's daily need for food that no whim could eliminate—ten market villages studded
Urik's circular plain. In a rotation as old as the reign of King of the Plain himself, the ten villages relayed
produce from nearby free-farms and outlying noble estates into the city. They also gave their names to the
days of Urik's week. On the evening before its nameday, each village swelled with noisy confusion as
farmers and slaves gathered to gossip, trade, and—most importantly—register with the templars before the
next morning's trek to the massive gates of Urik.
Nine of the villages were sprawling, almost friendly settlements with walls and gatehouses that could
scarcely be distinguished from animal pens. Registrators from the civil bureau of Lord Hamanu's templarate
had become as much a part of the community as templars could, considering their loyalties and the
medallions hung around their necks, symbols of Hamanu and the terrible power a true sorcerer-king could
channel to and through his chosen minions.
In many cases, the registrators had been born and raised in their village, as had their parents,
grandparents, and so on back through the generations. In their inmost thoughts, they considered themselves
Modekaners, Todekites, Khelons, and such. Villagers rather than city-dwellers, they had no ambition to
brave the dangers of Urik's greater hierarchy. To protect their sinecures, the rural yellow-robes had learned
the arts of negotiation. They compromised when compromise would resolve a village problem without
attracting the attention of their superiors in the civil bureau—much less that of their overlord, Mighty
Hamanu.
Long after curfew on market-day eve and market-day night, there was usually music in the village
streets and raucous laughter in its inns.
Except in the market village of Codesh.
The first day of Urik's week and the first of its villages, Codesh was as old as the city itself. In the
beginning, before conquering Hamanu laid claim to this corner of the Tablelands, it was also larger than
Urik—or so the village elders proclaimed at every opportunity. Codeshites feared Hamanu more than their
compatriots in the other villages because they challenged him more than his other subjects would dare.
When there was trouble outside Urik's walls, Codesh was the first place the templars came. Not templars
from the tame civil bureau, but hardened veterans from the war bureau, armed with dark magic and the will
to use it.
There was no camaraderie between templars and villagers in Codesh.
Wicker walls and rickety towers weren't sufficient for the fractious village. Both Codeshite and Urikite
templars wanted stalwart towers and fortress walls that might give them the advantage if push ever came
to shove. Codesh's walls were only a third as high as Urik's, but that was more than enough to separate the
stiff-necked Codeshites from the more congenial market-farmers who congregated outside the village walls
on Codesh eve and Codesh night each week.
There were murals on the Codesh walls: the obligatory portraits of the Lion of Urik, without the sunset
flashing eyes, and invariably armed with a butcher's poleaxe, which explained what the village was and why
its insolence was tolerated generation after generation. Codesh was Urik's sanctioned abattoir: the place
where beasts of every kind were brought for slaughter in the open-roofed, slope-floored killing ground and
processed into meat and other necessities.
Nothing valuable was wasted by the butchery clans of Codesh. Each beast that came into their hands
was slain, gutted and carefully flensed into layers of rawhide and fat that were consigned to subclans of
tanners and Tenderers, all of whom maintained reeking establishments elsewhere within the Codesh walls.
The Tenderers took the small bones and offal, as well, adding them to the seething brews of their
giant-sized kettles. Long bones went to bonemen who excised the marrow with special drills, then sold the
best of what remained to joiners for the building of houses, and the scraps to farmers for their fields.
Honeymen collected the blood that ran into the pits at the rear of each killing floor. They dried the
blood in the sun and sold it underhand to mages and priests of every stripe. They also sold their rusty
powder overhand to the farmers who dribbled it like water on their most precious crops. Gleaners collected
their particular prizes—jewel-like gallstones, misshaped organs, bright green inix eyes, polished pebbles
from erdlu gizzards—and sold them, no questions asked, to the highest bidder. Gluemakers took the last:
hooves, talons, beaks, and the occasional sentient miscreant whose body must never be found.
And if some bloody bit did fall from a clansman's cart, sharp-eyed kes'trekels flocked continuously
overhead. With an eerie scream, the luckiest bird would fold its wings and plummet from the sky. A score
of others might follow. A kes'trekel orgy was no place for the fainthearted. The birds brawled as they fed,
sometimes on each other, until nothing remained. Even a strong-stomached man might wisely turn away.
The mind-bender who'd claimed the mind of a soaring kes'trekel from boredom hours earlier let it go
when it became part of that descending column of hungry scavengers. He settled into his own body, his
thoughts returning to their familiar byways through his mind, sensation coming back to arms, not wings, to
feet, not talons. The constant, overwhelming stench of Codesh struck the back of his nose. He breathed out
heavily, a conscious reflex, expelling the poisons in his lungs, then breathed in again, accepting the Codesh
air as punishment.
"Brother Kakzim?"
The urgent, anxious whisper in Kakzim's ear completed his return. He opened his eyes and beheld the
killing floor of Codesh's largest slaughterhouse. His kes'trekel was one of a score of birds fighting over a
length of shiny silver gut. Before Kakzim could avert his eyes, the largest kes'trekel plunged its sharp beak
into the breast of the bird whose mind he had lately haunted. Echoes of its death gripped his own heart; he'd
been wise, very wise, to separate himself from the creature when he did.
He steadied himself on the polished bone railing that framed the balcony where he stood, waiting for
the pangs to end. It was a somewhat awkward reach. Everything in Codesh was built to accommodate the
needs of adults of the human race, who were by far the most numerous and, indeed, the most average of
the sentient races throughout the Tablelands. Elves and dwarves made do without much difficulty,
half-giants were cramped and clumsy, and halflings like himself were always reaching, climbing, or standing
on their toes.
"Brother? Brother Kakzim, is there—? Is there a problem, Brother Kakzim?"
Kakzim gave a second sigh, wondering how long his companion had been standing behind him. A
moment? A watch? Since he snared the now-dead kes'trekel? Respect was a useful quality in an
apprentice, but Cerk carried it too far.
"I don't know," he said without looking at the younger halfling. "Tell me why you're standing here like a
singed jozhal, and I'll tell you if there's a problem."
The senior halfling lowered his hands. The sleeves of his dark robe flowed past his wrists to conceal
hands covered with scars from flames, knives, and other more obscure sources. The robe's cowl had fallen
back while his mind had wandered. He adjusted that, as well, tugging the cloth forward until his face was in
shadow. Wispy fibers brushed against his cheeks, each feeling like a tiny, acid-ripped claw. Kakzim made
another quick adjustment and let his breath out again.
The bloody sun had risen and set two-hundred fifty-four times since Kakzim had brushed a steaming
paste of corrosive acid over his own face, exchanging one set of scars for another. That was two-thirds of
a year, from highsun to half ascentsun, by the old reckoning; ten quinths by the current Urik reckoning,
which divided the year into fifteen equal segments; or twenty-five weeks, as the Codeshites measured time.
For a halfling born in the verdant forests beyond the Ringing Mountains, weeks, quinths, and years had no
intrinsic meaning. A halfling measured time by days, and there had been enough days to heal the acid
wound into twisted knots of flesh that still burned when touched or moved. But the acid scars were more
honorable than the ones they replaced, and constant pain was a fitting reminder of his failures.
When he was no older than Cerk—almost twenty years ago—Kakzim had emerged from the forests
full of fire and purpose. The scars from the life-oath he'd sworn to the BlackTree Brethren were still fresh
on his heart. The silty sea must be made blue again, the parched land returned to green. What was
done must be undone; what was lost must be returned. No sacrifice is too great. The BlackTree had
drunk his blood, and the elder brothers had given him his life's mission: to do whatever he could to end the
life-destroying tyranny of the Dragon and its minions.
The BlackTree Brethren prepared their disciples well. Kakzim had sat at the elders' feet until he'd
memorized everything they knew, then they'd shown him the vast chamber below the BlackTree where lore
no halfling alive understood was carved into living roots. He'd dwelt underground, absorbing ancient,
forgotten lore. He knew secrets that had been forgotten for a millennium or more and the elders,
recognizing his accomplishments, sent him to Urik, where the Dragon's tyranny was disguised as the
Lion-King's law.
Kakzim made plans—his genius included not merely memory, but foresight and creativity—he watched
and waited, and when the time was ripe, he surrendered himself into the hands of a Urikite high templar.
They made promises to each other, he and Elabon Escrissar, that day when the half-elf interrogator took a
knife, carved his family's crest into Kakzim's flesh, then permanently stained the scars with soot. Both of
them had given false promises, but Kakzim's lies went deeper than the templar's. He'd been lying from the
moment he selected Escrissar as a suitable partner in his life's work.
No halfling could tolerate the restraints of forced slavery; it was beyond their nature. They sickened
and died, as Escrissar should have known... would have known, if Kakzim hadn't clouded the templar's
already warped judgment with pleas, promises and temptations. Escrissar had ambitions. He had wealth and
power as a high templar, but he wanted more than the Lion-King would concede to any favorite. In time,
with Kakzim's careful prompting, Escrissar came to want Lord Hamanu's throne and Urik itself. Failing
that—and Kakzim had known from the start that the Lion-King could not be deposed—it had been possible
to convince Escrissar that what he couldn't have should be destroyed.
Reflecting on the long years of their association, Kakzim could see that they'd both been deluded by
their ambitions. But then, without warning from the BlackTree or anything Kakzim could recognize as their
assistance, Sorcerer-King Kalak of Tyr was brought down. Less than a decade later Borys the Dragon and
the ancient sorcerer Rajaat—whom the BlackTree Brethren called the Deceiver—were vanquished as
well.For the first time in a millennium there was reason for a BlackTree brother to expect success in his
life's work.
Kakzim sent a message back across the Ringing Mountains—his first in fifteen years. It was not a
request for instructions, but an announcement: The time had come to unlock the ancient halfling
pharmacopoeia, the lore Kakzim had memorized while he dwelt among the BlackTree's roots. The time
had, in fact, come and passed.
Kakzim informed the elders that he and the man who thought he was Kakzim's master were making
Laq—an ancient, dangerous elixir that restored those on exhaustion's brink, but enslaved and destroyed
those who took it too often. Their source was innocuous zarneeka powder they'd found in Urik's cavernous
warehouses. The supply, for their needs and purposes, was virtually unlimited.
The seductive poison spread quickly through the ranks of the desperate or despondent, sowing death.
He and Escrissar planned to expand their trade to include the city-state of Nibenay. When both cities were
contaminated, their sorcerer-kings would blame each other. There'd be war. There'd be annihilation and,
thanks to him, Brother Kakzim, the BlackTree Brethren would see their cause victorious.
Kakzim promised on his life. He'd opened the old scars above his heart and signed his message with his
own blood.
He'd had no doubts. Escrissar was the perfect dupe: cruel, avaricious, enthralled by his own
importance, blind to his flaws, easily exploited, yet blessed with vast wealth and indulged by Lord Hamanu,
the very enemy they both hoped to bring down. The plans Kakzim had made were elegant, and everything
was going their way until a templar of the lowest sort blundered across their path.
Paddle, Puddle, Pickle... Kakzim couldn't remember the ugly human's name. He'd seen him once only,
at night in the city warehouse when catastrophe had been the furthest thought from his mind. The
yellow-robed dolt was boneheaded stupid, throwing himself into battles he couldn't hope to win. It beggared
halfling imagination to think that templar Pickle could stand in their way at all, much less bring them down.
But the bonehead had done just that, with a motley collection of allies and the kind of luck that didn't come
by chance.
Kakzim had abandoned Escrissar the moment he saw disaster looming. Halflings weren't slaves;
BlackTree Brethren weren't martyrs, not for the likes of Elabon Escrissar. Kakzim raided Escrissar's
treasury and went to ground while the high templar marched to his doom on the salt wastes.
Ever dutiful to the elder brothers of the BlackTree, Kakzim had sent another message across the
Ringing Mountains. He admitted his failure and promised to forfeit his now-worthless life. Kakzim used all
the right words, but his admissions and promises were lies. He knew he'd made mistakes; he'd been bested,
but not, absolutely not, defeated. He'd learned hard lessons and was ready to try again. The cause was
more important than any one brother's life, especially his.
Brother Kakzim wasn't any sort of martyr. He told the elder brothers what they'd want to hear and
fervently hoped they'd believe his promise of self-annihilation and never bother him again. He was deep in
his next plotting, here in the market-village of Codesh, when his new apprentice arrived fresh out of the
forest and with no more sense than a leaf in the wind.
He'd wanted to send Cerk back. Bloody leaves of the bloody BlackTree! He'd wanted to kill the
youngster on the spot. But without the resources of House Escrissar behind him, Kakzim discovered he
could use an extra set of hands, eyes, and feet—so long as he didn't delude himself that those appendages
were attached to a sentient mind.
"Brother Kakzim? Brother Kakzim—did you—? Have you—? Are you having one of your fits? Should
I guide you to your bed?"
Fits! Fits of boredom! Fits of frustration! He was surrounded by fools and personally served by the
greatest fool of all!
"Don't be ridiculous. Stop wasting my time. Tonight's an important night, you know. Tell me whatever it
is you think I must know, then leave me alone and stop this infernal chatter about fits! You're the one with
fits.""Yes, Brother Kakzim. Of course. I merely wanted to tell you that the men have begun to assemble.
They're ready-armed exactly as you requested—but, Brother, they wish to be paid."
"Then pay them, Brother Cerk!" Kakzim's voice rose into a shrill shout as he spun around on his
companion. The cowl slid back, dusting his flesh with excruciation as it did. "We're so close. So close. And
you torment me!" He grabbed the youngster's robe and shook it violently. "If we fail, it will be your fault!"
*****
Cerk staggered backward, lucky to keep his balance-lucky to be alive at all.
The elders of the BlackTree had warned him Brother Kakzim would not be an easy master, but that he
should be grateful for the opportunity. They said Brother Kakzim was a genius in the alchemic arts. There
was no halfling alive who knew what Brother Kakzim knew about the old ways of manipulation and
transformation. Brother Kakzim had decrypted the ancient knowledge the Brethren guarded at the
BlackTree. He knew what the ancestors knew, and he'd begun to use it. The elders wanted to know more
about how Brother Kakzim was applying his knowledge. They wanted Cerk to be their eyes and ears in
Urik.
An apprentice should be grateful for such an opportunity, for such trust, and Cerk supposed he was.
Brother Kakzim was a master beyond reckoning where alchemy was concerned; Cerk had learned things
in this foul-smelling village he could never have learned in the BlackTree Forest. But Cerk wished the elder
brothers had mentioned that Brother Kakzim was completely mad. Those white-rimmed eyes above the
ruined cheeks looked out from another plane and had the power to cloud another man's thoughts, even
another halfling's thoughts.
Cerk was careful not to look straight at Brother Kakzim when the madness was on him, as it was now.
He kept his head down and filled his mind with thoughts of home: lush green trees dripping water day and
night, an endless chorus of birds and insects, the warm, sweet taste of ripe bellberries fresh off the vine.
Then Cerk waited for the danger to pass. He judged it had when Brother Kakzim adjusted his robe's
sleeves and cowl again, but he was careful to stay out of reach.
"It is not just the men who want to be paid, Brother Kakzim. The dwarves who own this place want to
be paid for its use tonight, and for the rooms where we've lived. And the joiners say we owe them for the
scaffolding they've already constructed. We owe the knackers and the elven gleaner, Rosu. She says she's
found an inix fistula with the abscess still attached, but she won't sell it—"
"Pay them!" Brother Kakzim repeated, though without the raving intensity of a few moments past.
"You have the coins. I've given you all our coins."
"Yes," Cerk agreed, thinking of the sack he kept under his bed. Money had no place in the BlackTree
Forest. The notion that a broken ceramic disk could be exchanged for food, goods, or a man's
service—indeed, that such bits, disks, or the far rarer metal coins must be exchanged—was still difficult for
him to understand. He grappled with the sack nightly, arranging its contents in similar piles, watching as the
piles grew steadily smaller. "I keep careful count of them, Brother Kakzim, but if I give these folk all that
they claim is theirs, we ourselves will have very little left."
"Is that the problem. Brother Cerk?"
Reluctantly, Cerk bobbed his head.
"Pay them," Brother Kakzim said calmly. "Look at me, Brother Cerk—"
Cerk did, knowing it was a mistake, but Brother Kakzim's voice was so reassuring at times.
Disobedience became impossible.
"You don't doubt me, do you?"
Cerk's lower lip trembled. He couldn't lie, didn't want to tell the truth.
"Is it the money, Brother Cerk? Haven't I always given you more money when you needed it? Money
is nothing to worry about, Brother Cerk. Pay the insects. Pay them generously. Money grows like rope-vine
in shadowed places. It's always ready for harvest. Don't worry about money, Brother Cerk."
He wasn't such a fool as that. The Brethren elders hadn't sent him out completely unprepared. It was
the precision of money that eluded him: the how and why that equated a day of a man's life with a broken
chip from a ceramic disk, while the rooms he and Brother Kakzim occupied above the slaughterhouse
equated an entire ceramic disk each week, and Rosu's festering fistula was the same as an entire shiny
silver coin.
Cerk knew where money came from generally and Brother Kakzim's specifically. Whenever the need
to refill the sack arose, he sneaked into Urik following the brother through the maze of sharp-angled
intersections and identical buildings. Brother Kakzim's money came from a blind alley hoard-hole in the
templar quarter of the city, and it was much diminished compared to what it had been when Cerk first saw
it. No doubt Brother Kakzim could harvest ceramic disks and metal coins from other trees. Brother
Kakzim didn't risk his fingers when he picked a pocket. All Brother Kakzim had to do was touch a rich
man's thoughts with mind-bending power—as Brother Kakzim was doing to Cerk at this very
moment—and that man would shed his wealth on the spot.
As Cerk should have shed his doubts beneath the seductive pressures of Brother Kakzim's Unseen
urging. And maybe the Urikites were as simple as lumbering mekillots. Maybe their minds could be touched
again and again with them never recognizing that their thoughts were no longer wholly their own. But the
BlackTree elders had taught Cerk how to defend himself from Unseen attack without the attacker
becoming aware of the defense. They'd also taught him never to underestimate the enemy.
Cerk shaped himself simple and befuddled. He made his thoughts transparent and his mind seem
empty. Brother Kakzim accepted the illusion, then molded it further to his own liking while Cerk watched
and learned and quelled waves of nausea.
"You see, little brother, there's nothing to worry about."
Brother Kakzim came close enough that their robes were touching. They embraced as elder to
apprentice, with Cerk on the verge of panic as he forced himself to remain calm and pliant. His companion
was mad. That made him more, not less, dangerous.
Cerk didn't flinch when Brother Kakzim pinched his cheek hard enough to pierce skin, then nearly
undid everything with a relieved gasp when the hand withdrew. Brother Kakzim pinched Cerk again, not on
the cheek, but over the pulsing left-side artery of his neck.
"Questions can kill," Brother Kakzim warned calmly as his fingers began to squeeze the artery shut.
Cerk has less than a heartbeat to concoct a question that wouldn't. "I—I do not understand why the
cavern-folk must die tonight," he whispered with just enough sincere terror to make Brother Kakzim unbend
his fingers.
"When the water dies, all Urik will die. All Urik must die. All that exists in the Tablelands must die
before the Black-Tree triumphs. That is our goal, little brother, our hearts' desire."
Cerk swallowed hard, but inwardly, he'd begun to relax. When Brother Kakzim talked about the
BlackTree, his mind was focused on larger things than a solitary halfling apprentice. Still, he tread carefully;
Brother Kakzim had not answered his question, which was an honest question, one to which he dearly
wanted an answer.
"Why start with the cavern-folk, Brother Kakzim? Won't they die with the rest of Urik once we've
putrefied their water? Why do we have to kill the cavern-folk ourselves? Why can't we let the contagion kill
them for us?"
A tactical mistake: Brother Kakzim backhanded him against the nearest wall. Cerk feared that worse
was to come, but his Unseen defenses hadn't broken. There were no further assaults, physical or otherwise,
just Brother Kakzim, hissing at him in Halfling.
"Cut out your tongue lest you tell all our secrets! The cavern-folk must die because our contagion
cannot be spat into the reservoir by the thimbleful. The ingredients must seethe and settle for many days
before they'll be potent enough to destroy first Urik, then all the cities of the Tablelands. Our contagions
must be incubated..." The white-rimmed eyes wandered, and Cerk held his breath. Kakzim was on the
verge of inspiration, and that always meant something more for Cerk to do without thanks or assistance.
"They must be incubated in alabaster bowls—ten of them, little brother, eight feet across and deep. You'll
find such bowls and have them set up in the cavern."
Cerk blinked, trying to imagine ten alabaster bowls big enough to drown in and completely unable to
imagine where he might find such objects, or how to transport them to the reservoir cavern. For once, his
slack-jawed confusion was unfeigned, but Brother Kakzim mistook his bewilderment for insight.
"Ah, little brother, now you understand. This is not Laq to be measured by the powder packet. This is a
contagion of poison and disease on a far grander scale. Once we've simmered it and stirred it to perfection,
we'll spill the bowls into the reservoir and Urik will begin to die. Whoever draws water from a city wellhead
or drinks from a city fountain will sicken and die. Whatever fool nurses the dying, he'll die, too as the plague
spreads. In a week, Brother Cerk, no more than two, all the lands of Urik will be filled with the dead and
dying. Can you see it, Brother Cerk? Can you see it?"
Brother Kakzim seized Cerk's robe again and assailed him with Unseen visions of bloated corpses
strewn through the streets and houses of the city, on the roads and in the fields, even here on the killing
floors of Codesh. In Brother Kakzim's envisioning, only the Urikites were slain, but Cerk knew that all living
things needed water, and anything living that drank Urik's water after Brother Kakzim tainted it would die.
The useful beasts, the wild beasts, birds, insects, and plants that drank water through their roots, they all
would die.
Even halflings would die.
Cerk could see Brother Kakzim's vision more clearly than Brother Kakzim, and he was sickened by the
sight. He nodded without enthusiasm. The poor wretches living in darkness on the shores of Urik's
underground reservoir were actually the luckiest folk alive. They'd be the first Urikites to die.
A chill ran through Cerk's body. He clasped his arms tight over his chest for warmth and told himself it
was nothing more than the coming of night now that purple twilight had replaced the garish hues of the
sunset. But that was a lie. His shivers had nothing to do with the cooling air. An inner voice counseled him
to run away from Brother Kakzim, Codesh, and the whole mad idea. Cerk swallowed that inner voice.
There was no escape. The Brethren had made Brother Kakzim his master; he couldn't leave without
breaking the oath he'd sworn beneath the BlackTree.
The choice between dying with Brother Kakzim in the Tablelands and returning to BlackTree Forest
with his sacred oath forsworn was no choice at all.
"Can you see it, Brother Cerk?"
"I see it all," Cerk agreed, then squaring his shoulders within his dark robe, he grimly followed his
companion and master down from the balcony to the killing floor where a silent, surly crowd was already
gathered. "I see everything."
That evening was like a dream—a living nightmare.
At sundown, Cerk took a seat behind a table, beside the abattoir door. He methodically and mindlessly
put a broken ceramic bit onto the palm of every thuggish hand that reached toward him once its owner had
crossed the abattoir threshold. A decent wage for a decent night's work: that's what Brother Kakzim said,
as though what these men—the thugs were all males, mostly dwarves, because their eyes saw more than
human eyes in the dark—were going to do tonight was decent.
And perhaps it was. The killing that went on in the abattoirs and would go on in the reservoir cavern
wasn't like the hunting Cerk had done as a boy in the forest, and it wasn't sacrifice as the Brethren made
sacrificial feasts beneath the branches of the BlackTree. In Codesh they practiced slaughter, and the
slaughter of men was no different.
When the doors were shut and barred and a ceramic bit had been placed in every waiting hand, Cerk
had done everything that Brother Kakzim had asked of him. He rolled up his mat, intending to slip quietly
upstairs to his room, but got no farther than the middle steps before Brother Kakzim began his harangue.
Brother Kakzim was no orator. His voice was shrill, and he had a tendency to gasp and stutter when
he got excited. The burly thugs of Codesh exchanged snickering leers and for a moment Cerk
thought—hoped—they'd all walk out of the abattoir. But Brother Kakzim didn't harangue with words. Like
a sorcerer-king, Kakzim used the Unseen Way to focus his audience and forge them into a lethal weapon.
Brother Kakzim worked on a smaller scale than Lord Hamanu: forty hired men rather than an army, but the
effect was the same.
The mat slipped out of Cerk's hands. It bounced down the stairs and rolled unnoticed against the wall.
Cerk returned to the killing floor in an open-eyed trance. His inner voice frantically warned him that his
thoughts were no longer his own, that Brother Kakzim was bending and twisting his will with every step he
took. His inner voice spoke the truth, but truth couldn't overcome the images of hatred and disgust that
swirled up out of Cerk's deepest consciousness. The dark-dwellers were vermin; they deserved to die.
Their death now, for the cause of cleansing Urikj was the sacrifice that redeemed their worthless lives.
With his final mote of free thought, Cerk looked directly at Brother Kakzim and tried to give his
whipped-up hatred its proper focus, but he was no mind-bending match for an elder brother of the
BlackTree brethren. His images were overwhelmed.
The last thing Cerk clearly remembered was grabbing a torch and a stone-headed poleaxe that was as
long and heavy as he was. Then the mob surged toward a squat tower at the abattoir's rear, and he went
with them. Brother Kakzim stood by the tower's door. His face shone silver, like a skull in moonlight.
Delusion! Cerk's inner voice screamed when Brother Kakzim's eyes shot fire and one of the thugs fell
to the ground. Mind-bending madness! Go back!
But Cerk didn't go back. Wailing like a dwarven banshee, he kept pace with the mob as it made its
noisy way to the cavern.
Later, much later, when he'd shed his bloodstained clothes, Cerk consoled himself with the thought that
he wasn't strong, even for a halfling. He had no skill with heavy weapons. It was possible—probable—that
he hadn't killed anyone. But he didn't know; he couldn't remember anything after picking up the torch and
axe.He didn't know how his clothes had become bloodstained.
He was afraid to go to sleep.
Chapter Two
All residents of Urik knew precisely when Lord Hamanu's curfew began, but few knew exactly when
it ended. Those who could afford to laugh at the Lion-King's laws said curfew ended one moment after it
began. Templars said curfew ended at sunrise and they'd arrest or fine anyone they caught on the streets
before the sun appeared above the city walls, but usually they left the city alone once the sky began to
brighten. Someone had to have breakfast waiting when the high and mighty woke up. Someone had to
entertain the nightwatch templars before they went on duty and again when they left their posts. Someone
had to sweep the streets, collect the honey jars, kindle the fires; someone had to make breakfast for the
entertainers, sweepers, honeymen, and cooks. And since those someones would never be the yellow-robed
templars of the night-watch, compromises as old as the curfew itself governed Urik's dark streets.
Law-abiding folk—the good and honest folk of Urik who greatly outnumbered all others and whom the
Lion-King cherished as any herder cherished his passive flock—were wise to shut themselves behind doors
with locks, if they could afford them. But the other folk of Urik—the folk who were above the law, beneath
its notice, outside it, or whose lives simply could not be lived within its limits—went about their business
throughout the night. The templars, in their watchtowers along the city's outer walls and the inner walls
where neighborhood quarters abutted each other, knew them all by type, if not by face. So long as
nightwatch palms were liberally greased, those with business could go about it. Urik's nights were more
dangerous than its days, but no less orderly.
Nowhere were the nighttime rituals more regular than in the templar quarter itself, especially the
double-walled neighborhood that the high templars called home. Even war bureau templars, each with a
wealth of colored threads woven into their yellow sleeves, knew better than to question the comings and
goings of their superiors. They challenged no one, least of all the thieves and murderers, who'd undoubtedly
been hired by a dignitary with the clout to execute an overly attentive watchman on the spot, no questions
asked. And if the watch would not challenge the criminals in their own quarter, they certainly left the high
templars and their guests alone as well.
The sky above the eastern wall was glowing amber when an alley door swung open and a rectangle of
light briefly illuminated the austere red-striped yellow wall of a high templar residence. The dwarven
sergeant leaned heavily on the rail of her watchtower, taking note of the flash, the distinctive clunk of a
heavy bolt thrown home again, and a momentary silhouette, tall and unnaturally slender, against the
red-striped yellow wall. She snorted once, having recognized the silhouette and thereby knowing all she
needed to know.
Folk had to live, to eat, to clothe themselves against the light of day and the cold of night. It wasn't any
templar's place to judge another poor wretch's life, but it seemed to the sergeant that sometimes it might be
better to lie down and die. Short of the gilded bedchambers of Hamanu's palace, which she had never seen,
there wasn't a more nefarious place in all Urik than the private rooms of a high templar's residence. And
the slender one who slipped quietly through the lightening shadows below her post spent nearly every night
in one disreputable residence or another.
"Great Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy strike you down, child," the sergeant whispered as the footsteps
faded.
It was not a curse.
Mahtra felt anonymous eyes at her back as she walked through the templar quarter. She didn't fear
those who stared at her. There was very little that Mahtra feared. Before they drove her out onto the
barren wastes, her makers had given her the means to take care of herself, and what her innate gifts could
not deflect, her high templar patrons could. She had not developed the sensitivities of born-folk. Fear, hate,
love, friendship were words Mahtra knew but didn't use often. It wasn't fear that made her pause every
little while to adjust the folds of the long, black shawl she clutched tightly around her thin shoulders.
It wasn't because of cold, either, though there was a potent chill to the predawn air. Cold was a
sensitivity, just like fear, that Mahtra lacked, though she understood cold better than she understood fear.
Mahtra could hear cold moving through the nearest buildings: tiny hisses and cracklings as if the long-dead
bones that supported them still sought to warm themselves with shrinking or shivering. Soon, as sunrise
gave way to morning, the walls would warm, then grow hot, and the hidden bones would strive to shed the
heat, stretching with sighs and groans, like any overworked slave.
No one else could hear the bones as Mahtra could, not even the high templars with their various and
mighty talents, or the other nightfolk she encountered in their company. That had puzzled Mahtra when she
was new to her life in Urik. Her sensitivities were different; she was different. Mahtra saw her
differences in the precious silver mirrors high templars hung on their walls. They said mirrors could not lie.
Of course, everyone was different in a mirror's magical reflection. Some of those she met nightly in these
identically striped residences were more different than she was. That was hardly surprising: the high
templars who commanded the gatherings Mahtra attended were collectors of the exotic, the new, and the
different of the city.
But Mahtra's difference was inside, too, like the bones hiding inside the walls, as if she were made of
old bones herself. Father said no, that she was flesh and blood and living bone, for all that she'd been made,
not born. He was very wise, Father was, and as old as she was new, but he couldn't explain the difference
between made and born. Mahtra listened carefully to all that Father said. He'd taught her left from right,
right from wrong, and many other things about this world in which she'd found herself new and grown;
made, not born. She was grateful and could neither imagine nor remember her life without Father's
welcome each morning when she returned to their hide-and-bone hut beside the underground water, but
where she herself was concerned, Mahtra believed the differences she saw in high templar mirrors and
those she heard in the walls.
Mahtra's skin was white, that was one difference—not pale like that of a house-bound courtesan who
never saw the light of day, but white like chalk or salt or bones that the sun had bleached dry. Her skin was
cool to the touch, harder and lightly scaled, as if she'd been partly made from snakes or lizards. Her body
grew no hair to cover her stark skin, but there were burnished, sharp-angled scars on her shoulders and
around her wide-set turquoise eyes, scars that were like gold-leaf set into her flesh. The makers had put
those scars on her, though Mahtra could not remember when or how. They were what the makers had
given her to protect her, as born-folk had teeth and knives. Mahtra knew she could protect herself against
any threat, but she could not explain how she did it, not to Father, not to herself.
The dignitaries she met at the high templar gatherings were fascinated by her skin—as they were
fascinated by anything exotic. They handled her constantly, sometimes with ardent gentleness, sometimes
not. The reasons for their fascination were unimportant to Mahtra, so long as they gave her something
when they were finished. Coins were best; coins had so many uses. She could take them to the market and
exchange them for food, fuel, clothing, or anything else Father and the other waterside dwellers needed.
Jewels were almost as useful; they could be turned into coins in the elven market. Sometimes, though, her
nighttime consorts gave Mahtra things she kept for herself, like the long, black shawl she wore this chilly
morning.
A human merchant had given Mahtra the shawl at one of the first high templar gatherings she'd
attended. He said the forest-weavers of Gulg had woven it from song-spider silk. He said she should wear
it to conceal her delicate white-white skin—and the dark mottled blotches he'd made on it. She obeyed
without argument. Obedience was so much easier than argument when she was still so new and the world,
so old.
Father had sucked on his teeth when she handed him the shawl. Burn it or sell it, he said, throwing it on
the damp, stony shores of the water; there were better ways to live above ground, if that was where she
was determined to live. But Father couldn't tell her how to live those better ways, any more than he could
explain the difference between made and born.
So Mahtra disobeyed him, then, and kept the shawl as a treasure. It warmed her as she walked
between the hut and the high templar residences and it was softer than anything she'd felt before or since.
She didn't think about the merchant; neither he nor the mottled blotches mattered enough to remember. Her
skin always turned white again, no matter how dark a night's handling left it.
And the shawl would hide her no matter what color her skin was.
Hiding; hiding was why Mahtra kept the shawl pulled tight around her. The stares of folk who were
only slightly different from each other hurt far more than the hands that touched her at the high templar
gatherings. Children who looked up from their street games to shout "Freak," or "Spook," or "Show us your
face!" hurt most of all, because they were as new as she was. But children were born; they could hate,
despise, and scorn. She was made; she was different.
Mahtra clung to her shawl and the shadows until she reached yesterday's market. Early-rising folk and
nightfolk like herself were dependent on the enterprising merchants of yesterday's markets: collections of
carts that appeared each sunrise near Urik's most heavily trafficked intersections. Yesterday's markets
served those who couldn't wait until the city gates opened and the daily flood of farmers and artisans surged
through the streets to the square plazas where they set up their stalls and sold their wares. The vendors of
yesterday's markets lived in the twilight and dawn, buying the dregs of one day's market to sell before the
next day's got under way.
Yesterday's markets were very informal, completely illegal, and tolerated by Lord Hamanu because
they were absolutely necessary to his city's welfare. And as with all other things that endured in Urik,
yesterday's markets had become traditional. The half-elf vendor who laid claim to the choice northwestern
corner where the Lion's Way crossed Joiners' Row sold only yesterday's fruit, as his father had sold only
摘要：

CINNABARSHADOWSLynnAbbeyDarkSun,ChroniclesofAthas,Book04Scanned,formattedandproofedbyDreamcityEbookversion1.0ReleaseDate:June,02,2004CoveranbyBrom.FirstPrinting:July1995PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaLibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber94-61678ISBN:0-7869-0181-0ThisbookisdedicatedtoLonnieLoymyaccoun...

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