Cinnabar Shadows (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 4)

The words echoed inside Pavek's skull. He was not certain he'd heard them with his ears and didn't try to answer with his fear-thickened tongue. Instead, Pavek threw up images a mind-bender could absorb: He'd tried. He'd done his best to solve problems he didn't understand. He was merely a human man. If they had failed, it was because he had failed, and he alone should bear the blame. But his failure was not deliberate—merely mortal.

Pavek stared into the eyes of a creature who was everything he was not. He willed himself not to blink or flinch, and after an eternity it was the creature who turned away. With the tension broken and their lives saved for another heartbeat, Pavek let his head hang as he tried, gasp by painful gasp, to draw air into his burning lungs.

"It is enough. I am satisfied. I am satisfied with you, Lord High Templar, and with what you have done. But you are not finished."

A shadow fell across Pavek's back. He could see the Lion

King's feet without raising his head. They were ordinary human feet shod in plain leather sandals. For one fleeting moment he thought he'd rather die than raise his head— then shuddered, waiting for the fatal blow, which did not fall, though Pavek was certain he had no secrets from his king. It seemed Lord Hamanu wanted him to live a little longer.

Sighing, Pavek straightened his neck and looked upon a king once again transformed, this time into a man no taller than he. A hard-faced man, no longer young, but human, very human with weary human eyes and graying human hair.

"What else must I do, 0 Mighty King?"

"I will give you a cadre from the war bureau. Lead them into the cavern. Destroy the scaffolds. Destroy the bowls and their contents. Then, find the passage to Codesh. Another cadre will await you. With two cadres, find Kakzim, find those who assist him. Destroy them, if you feel merciful; bring them to me, if you don't."

"Now?"

"Tomorrow... after dawn. This sludge, as you call it, is no simple poison; it must be destroyed with the same precision that has been used in its creation. Kakzim has breached the mists of time and brewed a contagion that could despoil every drop of our water, if it fully ripened. It's dangerous enough now: spill a drop of it into our water by accident as you destroy the bowls, and someone surely will sicken and die. But in a handful of days..." Hamanu paused and drew a hand through his gray-streaked hair, transforming it into the Lion-King's mane, and himself as well. "Of course! Ral occludes Guthay in exactly thirteen days! Release the contagion then and it would spread not only through water, but through air and the other elements. All Athas would sicken and die. We must take no chances, Pavek, you and I. I will decoct Kakzim's horror, reagent by reagent, until I know its secrets, and you will follow my orders precisely when you destroy it—"

"My Lord—" Pavek squandered all his courage interrupting Urik's king. "My Great and Mighty King—all Athas is too

much for one man. I beg of you: destroy the bowls yourself. Do not entrust all Athas to a blunderer like me."

"You will not blunder, Just-Plain Pavek; it's not in your nature. You will not question what I do or what I entrust to others. You will respect my judgment and you will do what I tell you to do. Tomorrow you will save Athas. Tonight you and your friends will be my guests. Your needs will be attended... and your wishes."

Lord Hamanu held out his hand. The golden medallion Pavek had refused yesterday rested in the scarred and callused palm of a born warrior.

Pavek wasn't tempted. "I'm not wise enough to wish, O Mighty King."

"You're wise enough. I would have lived a life much like yours, if I'd been as wise as you. But if you do not wish now, your wishes will never be heard."

He thought of Quraite and his wish that it be kept safe and secret, but he wouldn't take the gold medallion, not even for Quraite.

Hamanu smiled. "As you wish, Lord Pavek. As you wish." As he turned to Mahtra his aspect changed yet again, becoming that of a beautiful youth with one graceful arm extended toward her. She took it and they left the audience hall together.

For one night Pavek and his companions lived as if they were each the king of Urik. A score of slaves escorted them to a sumptuous room with a broad balcony that overlooked a garden as lush as any druid's grove. The walls were decorated with gold-leaf lattice. Music, played by musicians in galleries concealed by those lattices, floated on the breezes made by silk-fringed fans. The floors were cool marble polished until it shone like glass. Between the room and the balcony, there was a bathing pool, half in shadow, half in light. More slaves stood beside it. Armed with vials of amber oil, they promised to knead the aches out of the weariest man. Silk bedding in rainbow colors was piled in one of the corners while in the center of the room the slaves laid out a feast truly fit for a king.

Common foods had been prepared as no ordinary man had seen them before. The bread had been baked in fluted shapes then arranged on a platter so they resembled a bouquet of flowers. Cold sausage had been twisted and tied into a menagerie of parading wild animals. The uncommon foods had been prepared less fancifully. There was a bowl of fruit in varieties that Pavek had never seen before and Ruari, even with his greater druidic training, could not name. There were heaping plates of juicy meats, sliced thin and garnished with rare spices. But the feast's centerpiece was a silvered bowl filled with a fragrant beverage and with colorless stones that were cold to the touch.

"Ice," a slave explained when the stone Pavek had been examining slipped through his numbed fingers. "Solid water."

Pavek picked the stone up and gingerly applied his tongue to the surface. He tasted water, wet and cold. There could be only one explanation for a stone that sweated water:

"Magic," he concluded, and returned the unnatural lump to the bowl.

The bowl's liquid contents, a blend of fruity flavors that were both tart and sweet, were more to Pavek's liking, but no amount of wonder or luxury could erase from his memory the images of Lord Hamanu's transformations. Ruari and Zvain were similarly affected. They ate, as boys and young men would always eat when their throats weren't cut, but without the energy they would have brought to such a meal had it been served in any other place, at any other time.

Orphanage templars learned what was important early in their lives. Pavek could sleep in just about any bed, or without one, and he could eat whatever was available, be it mealy bread, maggoty meat, or Lord Hamanu's rarest delicacies. He filled a platter with foods he recognized, then wandered out to the porch where the setting sun had turned the sky bloody red.

Zvain followed Pavek like a shadow. Since they'd left the audience chamber, Zvain had rubbed his cheek raw, doing far more damage than the Lion-King had done, at least on the surface. The boy's eyes were haunted, and he was clearly afraid to wander more than a few steps from Pavek's side. When Pavek sat on a bench to eat his meal, Zvain sat on the floor next to him. He leaned back, not against the bench, but against Pavek's leg and heaved a sigh that ended with a shudder.

Feeling more obligated than sympathetic, Pavek asked, "Do you want to talk?" and was relieved when the boy's reply was a sulky, sullen shrug.

Predictably, Ruari's misery took a noisier form. The half-elf joined them on the balcony, set his plate down, and paced an oval around Pavek's bench. Muttering curses under his breath, he seemed to want the attention Zvain didn't.

And when Pavek's neck began to ache from tracking Ruari's movements at his back, he relented and asked the necessary question:

"What's wrong?"