Cinnabar Shadows

Chapter Thirteen

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

Mahtra didn't know any better. She evidently thought when someone older asked her a question, she had to answer. But Zvain—? Ruari couldn't excuse his human friend for blurting out their secrets. Zvain knew the wisdom of discretion and outright deceit. He'd advised it often enough while they were still in Urik's purview. Once they were on the barrens, though, following that scrap of bark Ruari still devoutly believed was a trap, Zvain's common sense and wariness had evaporated.

The woman who'd asked them their business gave Mahtra and Zvain another eyeballing before returning her attention to Ruari. She was human and standing; he was half-elf and mounted on a kank's high saddle, yet she successfully looked down her nose at him, conveying a wealth of disdain in the arch of her brow.

"You look a tad underprepared for the mountains and the forests," she said dryly. "Do you even know where you are?"

Without hesitation, Ruari shook his head. Maybe there was more of Mahtra in him than he'd thought.

"Ject," she said.

He wasn't sure if that was her name, the name of the settlement, or a local insult—until he remembered someone had greeted them with the name as they rode up.

She grabbed his bug's antenna and got it moving forward. He could have seized the bug's mind with druidry, thwarting her intentions without twitching a muscle of his own. That would have been almost as stupid as mentioning the map or the halfling they were looking for. There was an aura around magicians of any stripe, an indefinable something that set druids, priests, defilers, and even templars slightly apart. Ruari didn't get that feeling from any of the strangers around him. He'd need a better reason than stubborn pride before he gave his own limited mastery away.

Ject was about Quraite's size, counting the buildings or people, but similarities ended there. Costly stone and wood were common here on the edge of the Tablelands. Ject's buildings looked as solid as Urik's walls, yet seemed as hastily thrown up as any wicker hut in Quraite. Striped and spotted hides from animals Ruari couldn't name cured on every wall. Skulls with horns and skulls with fangs hung above every door or window. Weapons, mostly spears and clubs, stood ready in racks outside the largest building. Taken with the hides and the skulls, they gave Ject the air of a community engaged in perpetual conflict.

And perhaps it was. The people of Ject had to eat, and there were no fields or gardens anywhere, just barrens and scrub plants up to the back walls of the outer ring of buildings. Ruari had heard tales of four-fingered giths who ate nothing but meat and the gladiators of Tyr who feasted on the flesh of those they defeated, but most folk required a more varied diet to remain healthy. If the Jectites were like most folk, they had to be getting their green foods and grain from somewhere else, possibly from a forest, if not from a field.

The human woman had mentioned mountains, which Ruari could see, and forests, which he could not. Beyond the mountains, there might be forests where the Jectites got their food, where the creatures whose hides and skulls were fastened to Jectite houses lived free, and where trees with bark smooth enough and pale enough to serve as parchment might grow.

For the first time since they'd left Codesh, Ruari thought they might have come to the right place. He wished Pavek were with them to savor the triumph—and to negotiate with the Jectites for the guide they'd need for the next step in the journey. But Pavek wasn't here. Ruari stared at the mountains oblivious to everything else and waiting for the ache to subside.

"Kirre," the human woman said when Ruari became enraptured by an eight-legged leonine captive.

The kirre had windswept horns to protect the back of its head as well as the more usual leonine teeth, a double allotment of claws, and wicked barbs protruding from its tail. Its fur was striped with black and a coppery hue that matched Ruari's skin and hair. Similar hides were curing on the front walls. Ruari imagined the strength it took to slay such a beast, the skill it took to capture one, but mostly he imagined the feel of its fur beneath his fingers and the throaty cumble of its purr.

"They're the kings of the forest ridge," the woman elaborated. "Are you so sure you want to climb up there looking for halflings and black trees?"

Ruari forgot to answer. As a half-elf, he had one unique trait he owed to neither of his parents: an affinity for wild animals, which his druidry complemented and enhanced. At that moment, deep in the throes of his own grief, he was especially vulnerable to the mournful glare in the kirre's eyes. Had he been alone, he would have been off his bug and reaching fearlessly inside the pen to scratch the cat's forehead.

But Ruari wasn't alone, and he wrenched his attention away. When he did the kirre threw itself against the walls of its pen and made an eerie sound, neither a growl nor a roar, that raised bumps all over Ruari's skin.

The woman gave him a contemptuous glance. "Half-elves," she muttered with a shake of her head. "You and your pets. Don't even think about cozying up to this one. She's bound for the games at Tyr. Turn her loose or tame her, and we'll send you instead."

Ruari's mortification turned to anger, though there was nothing he could do for himself or the kirre who was doomed to bloody death at a Tyrian gladiator's hand—and to be eaten thereafter. The thought sickened him and hardened him. Grabbing the nearly empty packs from behind the saddle, Ruari swung down from the bug's back and led the way toward the front of the large building.

In Quraite, he kept a passel of kivits, furry and playful predators about the size of the kirre's head. He kept them hidden in his grove where few ever witnessed the half-elven affection he lavished on them. When he returned to his grove, he'd still cherish them and care for them, but as he left the keening kirre behind, Ruari vowed that he'd return to Ject some day to bond with a kirre—and set one free, if he could.

The largest building in Ject turned out to be a tavern open to the sunset sky and vast enough to seat every resident, with benches to spare.

"We're traders and brokers," the woman explained. "And you've come at a slow time. Our stocks are down. Most of our rangers are out hunting. All our runners are out making deliveries and taking orders. If you're from the cities and you want something from the forest, we can get it. If you're from the forest and you want something from the cities, we can get that, too. There's nothing we can't provide, for the right price. But for ourselves—we stay here year round, and this is all we need."

She swept an arm around. Huge casks were piled in a pyramid against one wall. Long tables and benches filled the tavern's one room.

"What about you, my copper-skinned friend? What do you need? Supplies? You're looking a mite empty."

She prodded the packs he had hanging down from his shoulder and, not accidentally, ran callused fingertips along his forearm. He'd have gotten smacked hard, on the hand and probably on the cheek, if he'd been so brazen with a Quraite woman, but when the tables were turned, Ruari was too astonished to do or say anything.

"A guide? I know my way around."

She headed for one of the tables and clearly intended that Ruari follow her. He paused before committing himself and turned back toward the open door.

Mahtra had her arm around a mul whose shoulders were so heavily muscled that his head seemed to rest on them, not his neck. The mul was twirling the long fringes of Mahtra's black gown through his thick fingers. She'd done the same thing in Farl the one night they stayed in that village, but no matter how many times Ruari told himself that Mahtra was eleganta, and that she could take care of herself better than he or Zvain, the sight made him uncomfortable.

What was it that Pavek had said to him the night Mahtra arrived, in Quraite? You're too pretty. You wouldn't survive a day on the streets of Urik. Ruari was hoping he'd survive an evening in Ject. The woman beckoning him to the empty bench opposite her had already said she'd trade anything, anywhere for the right price. She was sending the kirre to Tyr, but she'd threatened to send him in its place. Ruari wondered where else she might send him for the right price and resolved that he'd drink nothing in this place, not even the water.

"Pleasure first; trade later. What'll it be?" she asked.

"Ale? Broy? The halflings make a blood-wine that's sweet as honey and kicks like a molting erdland."

Ruari whispered: "Ale." He couldn't stomach the thought—much less the sight—of the other two beverages, even if he wasn't going to drink them.

The woman snapped her fingers loudly and shouted for two mugs of something that didn't sound like ale. He felt betrayed, but said nothing. They stared at each other until the bucket-sized containers arrived in the fists of a weary, one-eyed dwarf. The human woman smacked her mug against his, sloshing some of the foamy brew onto the table, then she took a swig. Ruari pretended to do the same.

"So—you've got a map that shows the way to a black tree? Even with a map, there's a lot of treacherous country between here and there, especially for a lowlander like you. Kirres may be the kings of the ridge, but there're a lot of other ways to die up there. And the halflings themselves—"

Suddenly she was jabbering away in a language—Ruari supposed it was Halfling—that was full of chirps and clicks as well as singsong syllables.

"Didn't think so," she proclaimed and took another long pull at her mug. "Negotiating with halflings is a tricky pass, if you know their tongue—which you don't. You're going to need a guide, my coppery friend. And not just any guide, someone who knows the ridge well. Let me see your map, and I might be able to tell you who to hire."

It appeared that Mahtra and Zvain weren't the only ones who thought the map was real. Ruari decided he must look very young and very naive. Did she think he didn't remember the looks she'd given him while he was still astride the bug, or her threats? But even as his pride raised his hackles, he could fairly hear Pavek's voice at the base of his skull, telling him that some battles could be won without a fight. At least without an obvious fight.

He fumbled with his mug. "Would you?" he asked with a nervous smile. The smile was forced; the nervousness wasn't. There were no taverns in Quraite, and he'd learned his knavery from his elven cousins, who'd misled him many times before. "It's so hard to know who to trust. I guess I have to start somewhere—" The mug overturned, drenching him from the waist down in a sticky, golden brew— which was not anything Ruari had intended to do, though it worked to his advantage when the woman drained her own mug before demanding refills from the tapster.

After a certain point and a certain amount of ale, a human mind—or any other mind—became as suggestible as a kank's. Ruari had a lot to learn about mind-bending and druidry both, but he'd had a lot of experience lately with bugs. A few rays of sunlight still streaked the open sky above their table when Ruari caught his first predatory thought and wove it back into the woman's mind. The stars were bright from one roofbeam to the other and there were two empty pitchers between them on the table when Ruari figured he'd learned as much as he could.

She laid her head atop her folded arms when he stood up. The tapster caught his eye. Ruari joined him by the pyramid of casks.

"The lady—" He pointed to the woman whose name he hadn't learned. "Take care of her, please? She said she'd pay for everything."

"Mady?" the tapster replied with evident disbelief.

"On my honor, that's what she swore."

The tapster's eyes made the journey from Ruari to the woman and back again. " 'Tain't like her."

Ruari shrugged. "She said she wasn't feeling well. I guess the ale didn't agree with her."

"Aye—" the tapster agreed, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe so. Didn't give you no problems now, did it?"

"Not at all," Ruari said and hurried out the door where he figured his problems would begin in earnest. "Zvain? Mahtra?" he whispered urgently into the darkness.

With what he'd learned from the woman, Mady, Ruari thought that a bit of druidry and his innate ability to follow the lay of the land could get them through the mountains and into the forest. He was less certain about the halflings. Mady had said the local halflings weren't cannibals, they merely sacrificed strangers to appease the forest spirits, and held celebration feasts afterward if the sacrifices had been accepted. It was too fine a distinction for him to swallow comfortably, but he'd deal with halflings when he had to, not before.

"Mahtra? Zvain?"

The world was edged in elven silver as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Ordinary colors vanished, replaced by the shimmering grays of starlight. Ruari could see the buildings with their hanging hides and skulls and brilliant candlelight seeping through cracked shutters. He could have seen anything moving from his feet to the farthest wall of the farthest building, but he couldn't see Mahtra or Zvain.

Growing anxious and fearing he might have to leave without them, Ruari started toward the pens where they'd left the kanks. The kirre started keening once it caught his scent. He almost missed someone calling his name.

"Ruari! Over here!"

It was Zvain, hiding behind a heap of empty casks between the animal pens and the tavern. Ruari dared to hope the shadow crouched beside Zvain was Mahtra, but that hope was dashed when he realized the shadow was standing and not crouched at all. Gray nightvision sometimes played tricks on a color-habituated mind. Ruari couldn't make sense out of what he saw: The stranger was a bit too tall and bulky to be a halfling. Its head was covered with wild hair that fell below its shoulders, so it couldn't be a hairless dwarf. He was about to decide Zvain had found another New Race individual when the stranger reached up to scratch its hair and pulled a dead animal off its bald scalp.

The stranger was a dwarf, a dwarf wearing a cap Ruari didn't want to see by the light of day.

"I solved all our problems, Ru," Zvain exalted, urging the dwarf forward. "This is Orekel. He says he can get us to the black tree."

It was true that Ruari's trousers were still damp and he smelled of sweat and ale, but the air around Orekel was almost certainly flammable. Ruari shook the dwarf's hand tentatively—and without inhaling—then retreated. Considering what he'd gone through to get free of Mady, Orekel was no improvement.

"We got it all figured, Orekel an' me," Zvain continued, unfazed by Ruari's silent displeasure. "All we have to do is give Orekel our kanks—he'll use them to settle his credit with the tapster in there, an' then he'll be our guide. It's a good deal, Ru—we can't take the bugs into the mountains anyway. Orekel's gone 'cross the mountains and into the forests a lot of times. You've got to hear the stories he tells! He says he can find anything up there—"

"Back up," Ruari interrupted. "You said we give him our kanks? How're we supposed to get home without our bugs?"

"Not a problem," Zvain said before turning to the dwarf. "You tell him, Orekel—"

"Gold," the dwarf said, grabbing Ruari's wrist and pulling on it hard enough to make the half-elf stoop. "That black tree—she's full of gold and silver, rubies and emeralds. The great halfling treasure! Can you see it, my friend?"

Everyone in Ject wanted to be Ruari's friend. "No," he grumbled, trying to free his wrist.

But a dwarf's fist wasn't lightly shed. Orekel pulled larder, and Ruari sank to one knee to keep his balance. They were more nearly face-to-face now. Ruari got light-leaded from the fumes.

"Look ye up there." Orekel directed Ruari's attention to the mountains. "You see those two peaks that're almost alike. We go between them, my friend, and down into the forest. There's a path, a path right through the heart of the halflings' sacred ground, right up to the trunk of that big, black tree. Can you see it now? As much treasure as your arms can carry. Buy your kanks back with halfling gold. Buy a roc and fly home. Can you see it, son?"

"No." This time Ruari twisted his wrist as he jerked it up and out of Orekel's grasp. "If you know all this, what's kept you from getting rich yourself?"

"Ru—" Zvain hissed and gave Ruari a kick in the shin as well.

Orekel shuffled his ghastly cap from one hand to the other, giving a good impression of abject embarrassment. "Oh, I would go. I would've gone a thousand times and made myself as rich as the dragon. But I get tempted, you see, when I've got a bit of jingly at my belt. I get just a mite tempted and the wine, oh, she tastes so sweet. The next I know, I'm out here with a sore head and the tapster, he's got a claim on me. I regret my temptation. Lord, I do regret it. Never again, says I to myself each and every time, then along comes some jingly and it's all the same. I do see my flaws. I do see them, but they rear up and grab me every time. But you've come at just the right time, son. I'm sober as the day is long and not in so deep with the tapster that your bugs won't buy me out. We'd be partners, the three of us."

Ruari retreated another step. "Zvain," he said with more politeness than he felt or needed. "Would you come over here, please?" Zvain hesitated, but took the necessary steps. "What? Did you make a better bargain with that

"Look at him. Get a whiff of him—if you dare. Your Orekel's a complete sot! I wouldn't give him a dead bug—"

The boy stood his ground. "Did you make a better bargain?"

"I learned some things. I could get us to those two mountains—"

"Did you learn how to speak Halfling? Did you know they're particularly fond of sacrificing half-elves?"

He didn't, and he hadn't, but: "That makes no difference. Wind and fire—I don't like this place at all. I'd rather be lost in the elven market than spend the night here where everybody wants to help us. Do you trust him with your life, Zvain? 'Cause that's what it's going to come down to—"

Ruari's tirade got cut short by the sound of a thunderclap on a dry, cloudless night. Zvain cursed, the dwarf dived for cover, swearing it wasn't his fault, while Ruari stared at one of the buildings where dust puffed through the upper story shutters.

"That white-skinned friend of yours?" Orekel asked from his hiding place.

"Yes," Ruari answered absently. He wondered what else could go wrong, and Pavek's voice at the base of his skull told him to quit wondering.

"Who'd she go with?"

"A mul. Big shoulders. Huge shoulders."

"Bewt. That's bad. You want to leave Ject now, son. Right now. Forget about her. It's late. I'm sorry, son, but Bewt— he's got a temper. You don't want to be in his way, not at all, son. We'll just leave the kanks here and tip-toe out the back. Son, son—are you listening, son?"

"Ruari?" Zvain added his urgent whisper. "Ruari— what're we gonna do?"

He didn't know—but he didn't have to make any decisions just yet. Mahtra had emerged from the building and was running toward them on Ject's solitary street, with her fringes flying. She didn't have Ruari's nightvision; he had to shout her name to let her know where they were. Other folk were coming onto the street, looking around, looking at Mahtra as she ran toward them.

Orekel was gibbering. "She—Her—She must've killed him."

That was a possibility; they'd better be running before the Jectites found the mul's body. It had come down to a choice Ruari was loathe to make: Orekel and tiptoeing into the mountains, or a kank-back retreat into the barrens. He was sure he was going to regret it later, but Ruari chose Orekel over the kanks because someone had unharnessed them.

Without the proper saddles, there was no way to ride or control the bugs.

An enraged mul—Bewt—stumbled onto the street. "Where is she?" he bellowed, looking left and right. Muls inherited their dwarven parent's strength, but their human parent's sight.

He turned to the dwarf. "Get us out of here, quick. Before he spots us."

Orekel cast a worried glance toward the tavern.

"Now—if you want to go to the black tree. Get going. I'll catch up." On level ground, a half-elf could literally run circles around a dwarf. "Keep an eye out for Mahtra; she's got ordinary eyes, and I've got something to do before I go."

"Ru—!"

"It should improve our chances," he said to Zvain. "Now go!"

After one last glance at the tavern, Zvain and Orekel shuffled off through the maze of animal pens. Ruari had Pavek's steel knife out when Mahtra came to a stop at his side.

"I told him I wouldn't remove my mask. I told him."

Ruari thought the words were an apology as well as an explanation. It was hard to tell with Mahtra; her tone of voice never varied no matter the circumstances. Bewt might not have understood the risk he was running when she warned him, but then, he shouldn't have tried to take off her mask, either.

"It's all right," Ruari assured Mahtra as he knelt down beside the kirre's pen and went to work on the knotted cha'thrang rope the Jectites used to secure the door. "Zvain's gone ahead—around there—did you see him? He was with a dwarf." The kirre came over to investigate. It touched his hand with a soft-furred paw. There was some rapport between them, curiosity mostly on the kirre's part. Even a half-elf druid needed time to bond with a creature of such size and ferocity—time they didn't have.

"Did you see them? Zvain and the dwarf? They headed for the mountains. It would be better if you went after them. I don't know what the kirre's going to do when I get this pen open."

"I saw a shadow," Mahtra replied, eyeing the kirre with discomfort. "Ruari—hurry. They're coming. I'm sure they saw me run around the tavern. I'm sorry."

Ruari could hear the Jectites, too. He sawed furiously at the tough fiber. Without steel, he wouldn't have had a chance. "Just go. Follow the dwarf and Zvain. I'll catch up."

But that was her way; Ruari understood the expressions playing across the kirre's tawny eyes better than he'd ever understand the New Race woman.

"Stand away from that pen, boy!" one of the Jectites shouted from a distance. "Call your friends back. You've got deeds to answer for."

Some of the Jectites split away and backtracked toward the front of the tavern, where the racks of spears stood outside the door. The rest, though, weren't coming closer. Ruari gave a sharp push on the knife and sliced through the last cha'thrang fibers. He held the door shut with his knee.

Beautiful kirre, Ruari advanced his thoughts cautiously into the cat's predatory mind. Brave kirre. Wild kirre. Free kirre. He recalled the forest vision he'd received from the white-bark map. The kirre's ears relaxed. Her eyes began to close, and a purr rumbled in her throat.

Those folk. Ruari transplanted his vision of the Jectite villagers into her mind, though a kirre's night vision was probably better than his own. He didn't know how she was captured, so he recalled the battle on Quraite's dirt rampart and transplanted the moments when he'd been most frightened and enraged. The images resounded in the kirre's memory. She echoed spears and nets and the unintelligible yapping of men. Those folk. Ruari repeated, then opened the door.

The kirre knocked Ruari down as she sprang free. He scrambled to his feet while the Jectites screamed and the mighty cat roared. Running toward his own freedom, Ruari assuaged his budding guilt with the thought that whatever happened to the kirre, it was better than death in the Tyr arena. He could still hear her roars when he spotted Mahtra, her shoulders beacon-bright by starlight, running across the barrens beyond the village.

"Wind and fire—cover yourself up!" he advised when he caught up with her.

Zvain and the dwarf, Orekel, were panting from exhaustion, trying to maintain the pace she set, her legs as spindly as an erdlu's and likely just as strong.

"We can slow down." Ruari dropped his own pace to a walk, then stopped altogether when Orekel continued to wheeze. "They're too busy right now to come after us. Catch your breath. How far until we're under cover?"

The dwarf raised a trembling arm toward the mountains. Ruari suppressed a curse. Without kanks, they'd need luck to reach the foothills before sunrise and pursuit. If the villagers were going to chase them, they would be on the barrens long before then.

There were no trails, no places to hide. Ruari pushed his companions as hard as he dared, as hard as Orekel could be pushed. Slow and steady, that was the dwarven way. Even a dwarf as out-of-condition as the drunken Orekel could walk forever, but push him to a trot and he was blowing hard after a hundred paces. If he'd complained once, Ruari would have left him behind, but Orekel stayed game throughout the night.

Orekel sobered up, too, sweating out the wine and ale. When it came to their distant goal of Kakzim and the black tree, Ruari still didn't give the dwarf a gith's thumb of trust, but in simpler matters—like picking a path across the stone wash that abutted the mountains when Orekel's ankles were as much at risk as theirs—he was willing to let the dwarf have the lead.

The stone wash that they reached shortly before dawn was a nasty piece of ground. A fan-shape of stones ranging in size between mekillots and a halfling's fist spilled out of a gap between the mountains. There was no guessing how many stones there were, or how long it had taken to accumulate them all, but the footing was especially treacherous for long-legged folk like Ruari and Mahtra.

Ruari longed for the staff he'd left leaning against the Ject kank pen, but the rest of the gear they'd abandoned was no great loss. The important things: strips of leather for repairing their sandals, sealed jars of astringent salve they'd been carrying since they left Quraite, a set of firestones, a flint hand axe for firewood, and a handful of other useful objects were in the saddle packs he still had slung over his shoulder. The most important thing of all—not counting the white-bark map that was still in his sleeve and not as useful as the Jectites would have hoped—was Pavek's steel-blade knife, too precious for the sack. Ruari kept it secured in its sheath, and the sheath firmly attached to his belt. He'd use it to whittle himself a new staff out of the first straight sapling they saw, though by then, they'd probably be out of the mountains, where he'd have less need of it.

By midmorning, they'd picked their way across the stone wash, with no worse souvenirs than a collection of scraped ankles. But the worst lay ahead in the steep gap itself. Orekel said it would be safer, if not easier, if they'd had some rope to string between them as they negotiated the narrow ledges and nearly sheer cliff-faces. On the other hand, they could take the treacherous passages as slowly as they needed to: looking back toward Ject, they saw no dust plumes on the barrens.

Even Orekel tried to cheer the shattered boy, offering the loan of his lucky cap.

"This little ves kept me alive more than once, son," the dwarf insisted with the shaggy fur hanging over his hands instead of his ears. "The ves—they're canny little beasts. Made me think I was somewhere I wasn't. Tried to lure me right into their den. Gnaw me down to the bone, they would've. But I got me this'un by the tail here. Squeezed it so hard it had to show me where I was. Then I ate it for my dinner and turned its skin into my lucky cap. But you're looking like you need more luck today than me, so's you wear it."

It was a sincere if inept attempt to get them moving again, and it raised the dwarf a notch in Ruari's opinion; but it did nothing for Zvain, who'd flattened his back against the cliff and refused to take another step.

"Just leave me here. I've gone as far as I can."

Ruari and Orekel tried all manner of encouragement and pleading, but it was Mahtra who found the magic words:

"If this is as far as he can go, why can't we do what he wants and leave him here? The sun's coming around. It's going to be as hot as the Sun's Fist against these rocks in a little while. Why should we all die because he doesn't want to move again?"

"She's right about the sun," Orekel said softly to Ruari, though Zvain was between them and could easily hear every word. "We got to get moving, son, or we'll fry."

They were already parched and achy from a lack of water, which Ruari could remedy with druidry. The mountains were livelier than the Sun's Fist. If they'd had a bucket, he could have filled it several times over. Without a bucket, he was hoping they'd last until he found a natural depression in the rocks. Here on the ledge, he had nothing but his cupped hands to hold the water he conjured out of the air.

"Come on, Zvain," Ruari pleaded.

Mahtra walked ahead. "I'm leaving. Finding Kakzim's more important."

Orekel shrugged. "The lady's right, son. We can't stay here." He followed Mahtra.

"Zvain—?"

The boy turned slowly away from Ruari and took a halting step in Orekel's direction.

Ruari found his hollow rock near the top of the gap. On his knees with his eyes closed and his arms outstretched, he recited the druid mnemonics for the creation of water in the presence of air and stone. The guardian aspect of this place was sharp-edged like the cliffs, and heavy like the mountains themselves. Ruari couldn't hold it the first time, and his spell did not quicken. The recitation ended with the hollow as dry and empty as it had begun. Grimly, the half-elf withdrew Pavek's knife from its sheath and made a shallow gash along his forearm. With his blood as a spark, the spell quickened and water began to collect in the hollow.

When the water was flowing steadily, Ruari sat back on his heels, letting the others drink while he recovered from the strain of druidry in an unfamiliar place.

"Magician, eh?" Orekel asked.

"Druid." Ruari offered the correct name for his sort of spellcraft.

"Don't kill no plants, do you?"

"Wind and fire, no—I'm not a defiler, nor a preserver. I'm not a wizard at all. My power comes from the land itself, all the aspects of it."

"So long as you don't suck things down to ash. Can't go taking nobody into the forest who'd turn 'em into ash."

"Don't worry."

Zvain had finished drinking. Orekel drank next, with Ruari's permission, then Ruari himself drank his fill. When he'd finished, water was still bubbling in the hollow, faster than they could drink it down. It spilled over the top and seeped across the soles of his sandals while Mahtra stood and stared.

"You better drink," Ruari advised. "I can't do that again until sundown, and we don't have anything to carry water in."

The boy and the dwarf didn't need a second invitation, but Ruari stayed on the opposite side of the hollow, his fists propped against his hips.

"After all this time, Mahtra—after all we've been through —do you truly think we're going to laugh or run away screaming?"

"You might," she replied with that smooth honesty that left more questions than answers in Ruari's mind.

The half-elf shook his head and lowered his arms. "Have it your way, then," he said and started walking. He'd gone several paces when she called out:

"Wait!"

Ruari turned around as she lowered her hands from the back of her head, bringing the mask with them. The mask was a good idea, he decided immediately. Her face was so unusual, he couldn't keep from staring. Mahtra had no nose to speak of, just two dark curves matched against each other. She didn't have much of a chin, either, or lips. Her mouth was tiny—about the right size for those red beads she liked so much—and lined with teeth he could see from where he stood. Yet for all its strangeness, Mahtra's face wasn't deformed. With her eyes and skin, an ordinary human face would have been deformed. Mahtra's face was her own.

"Different," Ruari acknowledged aloud. "Maybe different enough to warrant a mask—but it's your face—the face that belongs to the rest of you."

"Ugly," she retorted, and he saw that her mouth did not shape her voice and words.

"No—Pavek's..." He sighed and began again. "Pavek was ugly."

"Akashia said no. She said he wasn't an ugly man."

Another sigh. "Kashi said that, did she?" It was too late to consider what Kashi might have meant. "What did she say about me?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all—but we weren't talking about you."

"Take your time," he said to Mantra, rubbing his forearm, though that wasn't the part of him that hurt. "I'll wait just up here. We can let the other two get a bit ahead."

Ruari found himself a rock that gave Mahtra her privacy and him a good view of Zvain and Orekel as they continued up the gap. He took out Pavek's knife, and wondered whose black hair had been braided around the hilt. Not Kashi's. Not anyone Ruari had ever heard Pavek mention. Maybe they would have gotten their affections straightened out if they'd had the time; maybe not. One thing for certain: he'd made a fool of himself trying to capture Kashi's attention and affection when Pavek had already secured it.

Mahtra reappeared with her mask in place, and together they continued up the gap, easily catching up with Zvain and Orekel. The sun came around in the middle of the afternoon, baking their bodies into numb silence. The three lowlanders—who'd never seen a mountain up close, much less climbed one—thought the gap would never end, but it did as the sun was setting. As green faded to black, they got their first look at a verdant forest that stretched ahead of them as far as they could see.

For Ruari, the sight was a waking dream. Telhami's grove in Quraite remembered forests and offered the hope that a forest might return. This—this vastness that was everything the barren Tablelands had ceased to be, was Telhami's hopes fulfilled, Quraite's promise kept. He would have sat there staring at it all night, except the mountain cooled faster than the barrens did, and he was shivering before he knew it.

It wasn't long until they were huddled together against the rocks, trying to keep warm and not succeeding. Orekel said it was too dangerous to descend the mountain without sunlight to show them the way. There was nothing with which to build a fire and though Ruari's druidry could wring water and a bland but nutritious paste out of the cooling air, he knew no spell that would provide them with warmth.

Pavek might have known such a spell. Pavek claimed to have memorized as many of the spellcraft scrolls as he'd been able to read in the Urik city archives. But it seemed more likely that no one in the long history of the parchec tablelands had bothered to formulate a spell for heat, so they took turns in the middle of their huddle. When dawn reached over the mountain crest, it found them stiff, sore, and still weary.

The descent into the forest was harder on their legs than yesterday's climb through the gap had been. Ruari discovered new muscles along his shins and across the tops of his feet. It would have been easier if his body had simply gone numb, but he felt every step from his heel to the base of his skull. He had no idea how the other three were doing; his world began and ended with the aches of his body.

When Orekel asked to see the map, Ruari dug it out of his sleeve without a second thought.

"Son, this here, this here's not a map, son."

"I never said it was," Ruari countered, smiling wearily and looking for something to sit on that wouldn't be impossible to get up from afterward.

Ruari eased himself onto the trunk of a fallen tree. He wished he didn't hurt so much. The forest was a miraculous place—the promise every druid made in his grove fulfilled to the greatest imaginable measure. There were birds and insects to complement the trees, and gray-bottomed clouds in the distance bearing the promise of real, not magic-induced, rain. The land quivered and crawled with riotous life, more life in a handful of moist, crumbly dirt than in a day's walking across the barren Tablelands.

And Ruari couldn't appreciate it. Not only did he hurt too much, he wasn't here to immerse himself in druidry. He'd come to the forest to find a black tree, to find Kakzim and bring him to justice. For Pavek. All for Pavek, because it was Kakzim's fault that Pavek was dead. He'd take Kakzim's head back to Urik and hurl it at Hamanu's palace. Then he'd go home to Urik and plant a tree for his friend.

"Son—" Orekel tugged on his sleeve. "Son, I say we have a problem."

"You can't help us," Ruari said slowly. "That's the problem, isn't it? You can't find the black tree. All that talk in Ject about halfling treasure you hadn't brought out because you'd gotten 'tempted,' that was just wind in the air. You're no different than Mady: you thought we had a map we weren't smart enough to keep or follow."

Orekel removed his cap. "You put a mite too fine a point on things, son. The black tree, she's in this forest, and she's got treasure trove buried 'neath her roots. She's not two-day's walk from here, and that's a fact. But this here—" He held out the map. "Now, you don't rightly speak Halfling, so you're not likely to read it much either. So, you got to believe me, son, this here's not a map to the black tree; it's more a map to your place, I reckon, to Urik—that's where you come from, now, isn't it?"

Ruari tried to remember if he or Zvain or Mahtra had mentioned Urik since they'd met the dwarf, but his memory refused to cooperate. Maybe they had and Orekel was playing them for fools, or maybe he could read those marks, one of which spelled Urik. Either way, Ruari was too tired for deception.

"Around Urik, yes."

"Always best to be honest, son," Orekel advised, and suddenly his eyes seemed much sharper, his movements, crisper. "Now, maybe we can solve our problem—you being a druid and all—maybe you don't need a map to find the black tree. Like as not, you can just kneel down on the ground the way you did up on the crest and mumble a few words that'll show you the way."

Ruari said no with a shake of his head.

Zvain hobbled over. The boy looked at the tree trunk and—wiser than Ruari—chose not to sit down. "Sure you could, Ru. You've just got to try. Come on, Ru—try, please?"

He shook his head again; he'd already tried. As soon as Orekel had made the suggestion, Ruari had—almost without thinking—put his palms against the moss-covered bark and opened himself to the aspects of the forest. The blare of life would have overwhelmed him if he'd had the wit or will to resist it. Instead, it had flowed through him like water through a hollow log—in one side and out the other.

In the aftermath of that flow, Ruari considered it fortunate that he'd been numbed by aches and exhaustion. The guardian aspects of this forest weren't habituated to a druid's touch, weren't habituated and didn't seem to like it, not druidry in general, nor him in particular. For a moment, all the leaves had become open eyes and open mouths with teeth instead of edges.

That moment had passed once he raised his palms and consciously shut himself off from the forest's burgeoning vitality. Leaves were simply leaves again, but the sense that they were being watched persisted. For most of his life— even in his own grove, which was mostly brush and grass with a few sparse trees—Ruari had either been within walls or looking at a horizon that was at least a day's walk away. Here in the forest, he could touch the green-leafed horizon, and the forest, which had seemed like paradise before he sat down, had become a place of hidden menace.

He was afraid to cut himself a staff, lest he arouse something more hostile.

"Give it a try, son." Orekel urged. "What've we got to lose?"

"I'm too tired," Ruari replied, which was true. "Maybe later," which was a lie—but he didn't want to alarm the others.

"So, what do we do?" Zvain asked, backsliding into the whiny, selfish tone he used when he was tired, frightened, or both. "Sit here until you're rested?"

Orekel took Zvain's arm and gently spun him around. "Best to keep moving, son. Things that stay in one place too long attract an appetite."

"Move where?" Zvain persisted.

"Does it matter?" Mahtra asked. The climb down hadn't bothered her any more than the climb up, any more than anything ever seemed to bother her. If the New Races were made from something, someone else, then whatever Mahtra had been, it wasn't elven, or dwarven, or human. "We don't have a map anymore. One direction's as good as another if we don't know where we're going."

A heartbeat later, they were thrown against one another and hoisted off the ground in a net. Zvain screamed in terror; Orekel cursed, as if this had happened before, and— foolish as it was—Ruari felt better with his weight on the ropes, not his feet.

The sizzle of Mahtra's thunderclap power passed through Ruari not once, but twice. The sound was loud enough to detach a shower of leaves from their branches and make the net sway like a bead on a string. But it wasn't enough to send them crashing to the ground, and Mahtra's third blast was much weaker than the first two. The fourth was no more than a flash without the thunder.

Heartbeats later, they heard movement in the underbrush, and halflings appeared on the trail beneath them. Looking down, Ruari saw a score of halflings. None looked friendly, but the one who raised his spear and prodded the half-elf sharply in the flank had a truly frightening face, with weblike burn scars covering his cheeks and eyes as black and deep as night between the stars. He gave Ruari another poke between the ribs.

"The ugly man—Templar Paddock—where is he?"