Cinnabar Shadows (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 4)

The spiral of Mahtra's life blurred in her dream-vision. Her limbs became stiff and heavy. She was tempted to lie down where she was, at the center of her life, and ignore the beautiful voice. What would happen if she fell asleep while she was dreaming? Would she wake up in her life or in the dream, or somewhere that was neither living nor dreaming?

Somewhere that was neither living nor dreaming...

Mahtra knew of such a nowhere place. She had forgotten it, the way she'd forgotten the colors and shapes on the other side of Urik's walled horizon. It was the outside place, beyond the memories of the cabra-marked spiral.

A place before Urik.

* * *

A place of drifting, neither dark nor bright, hot nor cool. A place without bottom or top, or any direction at all, until there was a voice and a name:

Mahtra.

Her name.

Walking, running, swimming, crawling, and flying—all those ways she'd used to move toward her name. At the very end, she fought, because the place before Urik had not wanted her to leave. It grew thick and dark and clung to her arms, her ankles. But once Mahtra had heard her name, she knew she could no longer drift; she must break free.

Mahtra put a word to the substance of her earliest memories: the place before Urik was water and the hands were the hands of the makers, lifting her out of a deep well, holding her while she took her first unsteady steps. Her memory still would not show her the makers' faces, but it did show Mahtra her arms, her legs, her naked, white-white flesh.

Made, not born. Called out of the water fully-grown, exactly the person she was in her dream, in her life:

Mahtra.

The hands wrapped her in soft cloth. They covered her nakedness. They covered her face.

Who did this? The first words that were not her name touched her ears. What went wrong? Who is responsible? Who's to blame for this—for this error, this oversight, this mistake? Whose fault?

Not mine. Not mine. Not mine!

Accusing questions and vehement denials pierced the cloth that blinded her. The steadying hands withdrew. The safe, drifting place was already sinking into memory. This was the true nature of the world. This was the enduring, unchanging nature of Mahtra's life: she was alone, unsupported in darkness, in emptiness; she was an error, an oversight, a mistake.

That face! How will she talk? How will she eat? How will she survive? Not here—she can't stay here. Send her away. There are places where she can survive.

The makers had sent her away, but not immediately. They dealt honorably with their errors. Honorably—a dream-word from Urik, not her memory. They taught her what she absolutely needed to know and gave her a place while she learned: a dark place with hard, cool surfaces. A cave, a safe and comforting place... or a cell where mistakes were hidden away. Cave and cell were words from Urik. In her memory there was only the place itself.

Mahtra wasn't helpless. She could learn. She could talk— if she had to—she could eat, and she could protect herself. The makers showed her little red beads that no one else would eat. The beads were cinnabar, the essences of quicksilver and brimstone bound together. They were the reason she'd been made, and, though she herself was a mistake, cinnabar would still protect her through ways and means her memory had not retained.

When Mahtra had learned all she could—all that the makers taught her—then they sent her away with a shapeless gown, sandals, a handful of cinnabar beads, and a mask to hide their mistake from the world.

Follow the path. Stay on the path and you won't get lost.

And with those words the makers disappeared forever, without her ever having seen their faces. In her dream, Mahtra wondered if they had known what awaited her on the path that led away from their isolated tower. Did they know about the predators that stalked the eerie, tangled wilderness around their tower? Were those ghastly creatures mistakes like herself? Had they strayed from the path and become forever lost in the wilderness? Were they the lucky mistakes?

Mahtra had followed the makers' instructions until the shadowy wilderness ended and the path broadened into the hard ground of the barrens. She wasn't lost. There were men waiting for her. Odd—her memory hadn't held the words for water or cave or any of the beasts she'd avoided in the wilderness, but she'd known mankind from the start, and gone toward them, as she had not gone toward the beasts.

In the dream, a shadow loomed between Mahtra and the men. She veered away from the memories it contained.

Stay on the path.

Again, she heard the voice that might be her own and watched in wonder as a glistening path sliced through the shadow, a path that had not existed on that day she did not want to remem

ber.

Follow the path.

The voice pulled her into the shadow where rough hands seized her, tearing her gown and mask. Her vision blurred, her limbs grew heavy, but she was not in the drifting place. A flash of light and sound radiated from her body. When her senses were restored, she stood free.

This was what the makers meant when they said she could protect herself. This was what happened to the cinnabar after she ate the red beads. The men who'd held her lay on the ground, some writhing, others very still. Mahtra ran with her freedom, clutching the corners of her torn gown against her breasts. She ran until she could run no farther and darkness had replaced the light: not the pure darkness of a cave or cell, but the shadowy darkness of her first moonless night.