Cinnabar Shadows (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 4)

She pulled her hand back to her hard-lipped mouth.

"Behave yourself! The halfling knowledge isn't to be touched by corrupt mongrels like you." Kakzim sneered. "Your protection doesn't work in the dark, does it, Mahtra?"

With her stinging hand still pressed against her mouth, Mahtra gave a wide-eyed nod, which was a lie—one of the very few that she'd ever told, but one for which she thought Father would forgive her. Pavek certainly would, or Ruari or Zvain. She could almost hear the three of them telling her not to let Kakzim know that she'd felt a spark inside when the halfling struck her hand.

Or that Kakzim himself had told her something she hadn't known before: darkness did stifle her protection, but she needed only a very little light to make it work again. A daily walk between the templar quarter and the elven market had been enough, so that she'd never suspected light was as important as cinnabar, but the little worms she mustn't touch were almost bright enough themselves.

The halflings were sealing their prison, leaving Orekel alone inside it, and that made Zvain frantic. He fought again, screaming that he and the dwarf couldn't be separated, and got beaten again. The two humans Mahtra knew best, Zvain and Pavek, were each inclined to risk themselves for others, regardless of the consequences. It was very brave, she supposed, but also very foolish. Wherever they were going—now that the halflings were making them move forward again—the dwarf was better off where he was.

As for Ruari—Mahtra hoped, as the halflings prodded her through another tight passage, that Ruari was with Pavek and Father in the place where people went after they died.

But Ruari was still alive.

They came out into another prison chamber, similar to the one they'd left, except it was open to the sky and afternoon bright, and the first thing she saw was Ruari's long, lean body hanging down from rope tied around his wrists. The second was the shallow movements of his ribs.

Mahtra called his name. His head, which had fallen forward against his chest, didn't move. Zvain did more than call; he bolted away from his guards and threw himself at Ruari's legs. He either had not

remembered or didn't care that his own hands were tied and the slightest jostle would upset Ruari's delicate balance atop the stump.

Ruari swung free. He made a sound that should have been a scream but was a hoarse gasp instead. The muscles of his upper body knotted in spasms Mahtra could feel in her own back and shoulders.

"Go ahead. Cut him down," Kakzim said, handing a knife to another halfling who attacked the knots at the end of Ruari's rope.

Mahtra had last seen the knife the halfling used when it was attached to Ruari's belt and first seen it attached to Pavek's. Now it belonged to Kakzim, who reclaimed it once Ruari's weight was sufficient to fray through the rope. Mahtra had a half-heartbeat to remind herself that no good came from owning things, before Ruari landed in the bottom of the pit: a twitching, groaning collection of arms and legs that couldn't hope to stand on its own.

A second halfling untied Zvain's wrists.

"Get him up, you two," Kakzim barked at Mahtra and Zvain.

It seemed unspeakably cruel to seize Ruari by the wrists and ankles, to drag him to the opening where they'd entered the pit and manhandle him through the tight passage, but Zvain and Mahtra had no choice in the matter. The halflings were eager to put their sharp sticks to use and, no matter what they did to him, it would have been worse if they'd forced the barely conscious Ruari to move on his own. Like Orekel, the half-elf was oblivious to everything that wasn't pain. He didn't recognize them by sight or sound, though he knew Kakzim's voice and cringed whenever he heard it.

Mahtra had guessed where they were headed and what Ruari's part in the "convergence" would be when the passage through which they were dragging Ruari began to slope upward to the surface. The thought that he would hang from the black tree until he died and rotted disturbed her, although she saw no alternatives. She'd seen people slay other people—the nightmare image of Father's crushed skull was never out of memory's reach—but she didn't know how to kill, didn't want to learn, not even to end Ruari's suffering.

She was strong enough to carry him in her arms, and she picked him up once they stood outside without asking per-mission or waiting to be told. The cinnabar she'd swallowed quickened as soon as the sunset light struck her face. She could make a boom, as Zvain called her protection. She and the boy might be able to run far enough and fast enough to escape the halflings, but not if she were carrying Ruari. They'd have to leave the half-elf behind, the dwarf, too—and then there'd be a chance that Zvain wouldn't come with her.

Mahtra didn't need Zvain or anyone else since Father had died. She could escape on her own—and would, she decided, before she let the halflings drive her underground again or hang her in the tree. But those things weren't happening right now and something altogether different might happen before they did, so she decided to wait before making her own escape.

A horde of halflings stood waiting beneath the black tree's branches. They chanted phrases Mahtra didn't understand when she appeared with Ruari draped across her arms, and repeated them as she followed Kakzim to a long, flat stone set in the ground like a bed or table.

"Put him down," Kakzim said, and she obeyed, then retreated, also obediently.

Kakzim shouted something in Halfling, and the chanting stopped. Everything was quiet while the blood-colored sun shot rays of blood-colored sunset through the leaves of the black tree. Kakzim used the metal-bladed knife to make a pair of shallow gashes along the inside of Ruari's shins, just above his ankles. There was a groove in the flat stone, unnoticeable in the shallow light until it began to fill with Ruari's blood and channel it to the moss-covered ground. When the first red drops struck the moss, the chanting resumed and somewhere someone began beating a deep-voiced drum.

The drum beat slowly at first, while halflings wound more rope around Ruari's chest, beneath his armpits. It began to beat faster when one of the halflings climbed into the tree with the rope's free end tied loosely around his waist. After weaving carefully through the main limbs, the halfling shinnied out along one of the thickest branches, then looped his end of the rope over the branch and dropped it to the ground.

"Grab it and pull," Kakzim ordered, his voice almost lost in the shrill chanting of the other halflings. "Both of you! Now!"

The halflings guarding them had exchanged their sharpened prods for stone-tipped spears once they were above ground, and Zvain's arms bloodied fast, batting the tips away as he tried to stand his ground. Though most of the halflings aimed at his flanks and thighs, trying to make him walk, one thrust high, putting a gouge just above the boy's left eye.

Between Zvain's shriek and the blood that flowed thick and fast down his face, it was impossible to measure his injury, except that it wasn't what Kakzim wanted. The onetime slave screamed at his halflings, disciples—and one of them, perhaps the one who'd thrust high, threw his spear aside and dropped to one knee with his hands pressed over his eyes and ears. As he swayed from side to side, oblivious to the world, blood began to trickle from his nostrils. And all the while, Kakzim stood, tense, with his fists clenched, his eyes closed and the scars on his face throbbing in rhythm with the solitary drum.

"Mahtra," Zvain pleaded, staring at her with his un-bloodied eye while he kept both hands pressed over the other.

Blood no longer trickled from the halfling's nostrils; it poured out of him in a steady stream. He'd fallen on his side, already unconscious.

"Yes, Mahtra," Kakzim purred. He turned from the dead halfling. "Take up the rope and pull."

Mahtra was angry and frightened by the blood and dying. She was hot inside and could feel her arms starting to stiffen. The cloudy membranes in the corners of her eyes fluttered as she considered if this was the right moment to loose her protection.