Cinnabar Shadows (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 4)

"Did the Codeshites know where Kakzim might have gone?"

The Lion-King held out his hand. A knotted string appeared; it hung from a black claw's tip and held, within the knot, a few strands of pale blond hair. "A team of investigators searched what remained of their rented quarters.

They found this caught in the doorjamb. Hold it where the wind does not blow, and it will lead you to the halflings."

He took the string carefully, respectfully, but without quite concealing his skepticism. "How can you be certain? Hair is hair. My friends searched those quarters, too."

"And found that map you refused to look at." King Ha-manu sighed heavily. "Mahtra has no hair. Both Ruari and Zvain have hair that's too dark, and all of them are too tall, unless Ruari was on his hands and knees when he hit his head. That is halfling hair, Pavek, and it will lead you to Kakzim. Guard it carefully. You begin your search tomorrow; kanks are waiting for you at Khelo. A double maniple from the war bureau awaits you there as well. The Codesh survivors volunteered; the others are solid veterans. We will make our own search for Urik's guardian when you return; you will return, Pavek, with Kakzim or proof of his death."

Orders had been given—orders the Lion-King had intended to give Pavek from the beginning, no doubt. Hamanu began to walk toward the wall and a door Pavek hadn't noticed before. Acting on impulse, which had gotten him into trouble so often before, Pavek called out to him: "Great King—"

"My friends—Ruari, Zvain, and Mahtra—what happened to them?"

"If you spent half as much time thinking about yourself as you think about others, Pavek, you'd go farther in this world. Your friends escaped from Codesh before I arrived. They went to Farl. Five days ago, Ruari sold the staff I gave him to a herder; since then, I do not know. You know my dilemma, Pavek: magic hastens the dragon. I will not risk Urik to find any one man—not Kakzim, not a friend of yours. If it suits you, you may search for them after we've raised the guardian."

"It suits me, Great King," Pavek said to the great king's back.

* * *

With the purse Ruari had gotten from Pavek before he died, the silver he got in exchange for his staff, the handful of coins Zvain insisted he "found" beneath a pile of rubbish in a Farl alley, and the three silver coins Mahtra got he-didn't-ask-where, they had enough money to purchase three unimpressive kanks from the village pound and outfit them with shabby saddles, peeling harnesses, and other supplies of dubious quality.

Six days west of Farl, they were down to two kanks. Tempers were short, and they spent a part of each day arguing whether any of the landmarks they passed matched those on their white-bark map. If it weren't for Ruari's fundamentally sound sense of distance and direction, they'd have been hopelessly lost. Each time they set off in a direction the three of them eventually agreed was wrong, he'd been able to get them back to a place they recognized.

The sun was at its height in the heavens and there wasn't a sliver of shade anywhere—except in the lee of the same three boulders where they'd camped last night.

"I told you these rocks matched the three dots," Ruari grumbled as he dismounted. He hobbled the bug before offering a hand to either Mahtra or Zvain, who rode together on the other one.

"They're awfully small," Mahtra said.

"All right, they don't match the three dots—-and we've followed Kakzim's damned map into the middle of nowhere. In case you haven't noticed, we're running out of land!" Ruari swung his arm from due north to due west where the horizon was a solid line of jagged peaks. "The circle is north of here, between us and those mountains, or it's not anywhere!"

"You don't have to shout," Zvain complained as he jumped down from the kank's saddle.

Mahtra tried to make peace. "We'll go north next. We always go two directions before we settle on one."

"At least two."

Ruari got the last word as he hobbled the second kank and let it go foraging. The surviving kanks were doing better than their riders. Bugs could eat just about anything that wasn't sand or rock; people were more particular. They'd run out of village food two days ago. Ruari didn't consider it a serious problem; he'd had little trouble hunting up a steady supply of bugs, grubs, and lizards—more than enough to keep the three of them healthy, but Zvain was fussy, and Mahtra truly seemed to become ill on the wriggly morsels. She'd sooner forage with the kanks—which she did, after Ruari rationed out their water.

It was midafternoon before they were remounted and headed north. Ruari wasn't as well-organized as Pavek, and certainly wasn't as effective getting Mahtra and Zvain moving; he owed Pavek an apology—

The half-elf closed his eyes and pounded a tight fist against his thigh. Pavek's name hadn't crossed his mind since sunrise. He was ashamed that he'd forgotten his friend for so many hours and was grieved by the memories, once they returned. The downward spiral between shame and grief hadn't ended when Mahtra and Zvain both called his name.

"Look—" Mahtra extended her long, white arm.

Wisps of smoke rose through the seared air. They could be mirages—the sun's pounding heat made everything shimmer by late afternoon. But the smoke didn't shimmer, and it wasn't long before they saw other signs of habitation. Zvain prodded their bug's antennae, urging it to greater speed; Ruari did the same thing—until he got his kank far enough ahead to force the other one to a halt.

"Not so fast! We don't know what's up there, who's up there, or if they're going to be friendly to the likes of us." Wind and fire, he was sounding more like Pavek every time he opened his mouth. "This could still be a trap. We go in slow, and we go in cautious. Stay close together. Keep your heads down and eyes open. That's what Yohan would say—" Pavek, too, but by unspoken agreement, they didn't mention his name. "Understand?"

Still, their kanks could outrun all but the fastest elves. Ruari prodded his bug to a halt and let the strangers come to them.

"What brings you three to Ject?" one of the humans asked.

Before Ruari could voice a suitably cautious answer Zvain announced: "We followed a map!" and Mahtra added: "We're looking for two halflings, and a big black tree."

Chapter Thirteen

So much for keeping their heads down and their mouths shut.