Cinnabar Shadows

Chapter One

Urik.

Viewed through the eye of a soaring kes'trekel, the walled city was a vast sulphur carbuncle rising slowly out of a green plain. Towers, walls, and roofs shimmered red, gold, and amber, as if the city-state itself were afire in the steeply slanted light of a dying afternoon. But the flames were only the reflections of the sun's bloody disk as it sank in the west: an everyday miracle, little noticed by the creatures great and small, soaring or crawling, that dwelt in Urik's purview.

Roads like veins of gold traced from city walls to smaller eruptions in the fertile plain. Silver arteries wove through the patchwork fields that depended on that burden of water as Urik depended on the fields themselves. Beyond the ancient network of irrigation channels, the green plain faded rapidly to dusty, barren badlands that stretched endlessly in all directions except the northwest, where the dirty haze of the Smoking Crown Volcano put a premature end to the vision of man and kes'trekel alike.

Drifting away from the haze, toward the city, a kes'tre-kel's eye soon enough discerned the monumental murals decorating the mighty walls. One figure dominated every scene: a powerful man with the head of a lion. Sometimes inscribed in profile, other times full-face, but never without a potent weapon grasped in his fist, the man's skin was burnished bronze, his flowing hair a leonine black, and his eyes a fierce, glassy yellow that shone with blinding brilliance when struck by the sun.

The kes'trekel swerved when Urik's walls flashed gold. Through uncounted generations, the scaled birds had adapted to the harsh landscapes of the Athasian Tablelands. They knew nothing natural, nothing worthwhile, nothing safe or edible shone with such a brief yet powerful light. Given their instincts and wings, they sought other, less ominous night roosts. The men and woman trudging along the dusty ocher roads of Urik's plain possessed the same instincts but, bereft of wings, could only flinch when the blinding light whipped their eyes, then swallow a hard lump and keep going.

Unlike the kes'trekels, men and women knew whose portrait was repeated on Urik's walls: Lord Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of Mountain and Plain, the Great King, the Sorcerer-King.

Their king.

And their king was watching them.

No Urikite doubted Lord Hamanu's power to look through any wall, any darkness to find the secrets written on even a child's heart. Lord Hamanu's word was Law in Urik, his whim Justice. In the Tablelands where death was never more than a handful of unfortunate days away, Lord Hamanu gave Urik peace and stability: his peace, his stability— so long as his laws were obeyed, his taxes paid, his templars bribed, and he himself worshiped as a living, immortal god.

Lord Hamanu's bargain with Urik had withstood a millennium's testing. There was, despite the cringing, a measure of pride in the minds of those roadway travelers: their king had not fallen in the Dragon's wake. Their city had prospered because their king was as wily and farsighted as he was rapacious and cruel. The mass of them felt no urge to follow the road into the badlands, to the other city-states where opportunity consorted openly with anarchy. Wherever they lived—on a noble estate, in a market village, or within the mighty walls—most Urikites willingly hurried home each evening to their suppers and their families.

They had to hurry: Lord Hamanu's domain extended as far as his flashing eyes could be seen, and farther. Early on in his career as sorcerer-king, he'd decreed a curfew for law-abiding folk that began with the appearance of the tenth star in the heavens. And, unlike some of his other law-making whims, that curfew stood unchanged. Law-abiding folk knew better to linger where the king or his minions could find them after sunset.

Except in the market villages.

In another longstanding whim, Lord Hamanu did not permit anyone to enter his city unannounced, and he levied a hefty tax on anyone who stayed overnight at a public house within its walls. In consequence of this whim—and the city's daily need for food that no whim could eliminate—ten market villages studded Urik's circular plain. In a rotation as old as the reign of King of the Plain himself, the ten villages relayed produce from nearby free-farms and outlying noble estates into the city. They also gave their names to the days of Urik's week. On the evening before its nameday, each village swelled with noisy confusion as farmers and slaves gathered to gossip, trade, and—most importantly—register with the templars before the next morning's trek to the massive gates of Urik. Nine of the villages were sprawling, almost friendly settlements with walls and gatehouses that could scarcely be distinguished from animal pens. Registrators from the civil bureau of Lord Hamanu's templarate had become as much a part of the community as templars could, considering their loyalties and the medallions hung around their necks, symbols of Hamanu and the terrible power a true sorcerer-king could channel to and through his chosen minions.

Long after curfew on market-day eve and market-day night, there was usually music in the village streets and raucous laughter in its inns.

Except in the market village of Codesh.

The first day of Urik's week and the first of its villages, Codesh was as old as the city itself. In the beginning, before conquering Hamanu laid claim to this corner of the Tablelands, it was also larger than Urik—or so the village elders proclaimed at every opportunity. Codeshites feared Hamanu more than their compatriots in the other villages because they challenged him more than his other subjects would dare. When there was trouble outside Urik's walls, Codesh was the first place the templars came. Not templars from the tame civil bureau, but hardened veterans from the war bureau, armed with dark magic and the will to use it.

There was no camaraderie between templars and villagers in Codesh.

Wicker walls and rickety towers weren't sufficient for the fractious village. Both Codeshite and Urikite templars wanted stalwart towers and fortress walls that might give them the advantage if push ever came to shove. Codesh's walls were only a third as high as Urik's, but that was more than enough to separate the stiff-necked Codeshites from the more congenial market-farmers who congregated outside the village walls on Codesh eve and Codesh night each week.

There were murals on the Codesh walls: the obligatory portraits of the Lion of Urik, without the sunset flashing eyes, and invariably armed with a butcher's poleaxe, which explained what the village was and why its insolence was tolerated generation after generation. Codesh was Urik's sanctioned abattoir: the place where beasts of every kind were brought for slaughter in the open-roofed, slope-floored killing ground and processed into meat and other necessities.

Nothing valuable was wasted by the butchery clans of Codesh. Each beast that came into their hands was slain, gutted and carefully flensed into layers of rawhide and fat that were consigned to subclans of tanners and Tenderers, all of whom maintained reeking establishments elsewhere within the Codesh walls. The Tenderers took the small bones and offal, as well, adding them to the seething brews of their giant-sized kettles. Long bones went to bonemen who excised the marrow with special drills, then sold the best of what remained to joiners for the building of houses, and the scraps to farmers for their fields.

Honeymen collected the blood that ran into the pits at the rear of each killing floor. They dried the blood in the sun and sold it underhand to mages and priests of every stripe. They also sold their rusty powder overhand to the farmers who dribbled it like water on their most precious crops. Gleaners collected their particular prizes—jewel-like gallstones, misshaped organs, bright green inix eyes, polished pebbles from erdlu gizzards—and sold them, no questions asked, to the highest bidder. Gluemakers took the last: hooves, talons, beaks, and the occasional sentient miscreant whose body must never be found.

And if some bloody bit did fall from a clansman's cart, sharp-eyed kes'trekels flocked continuously overhead. With an eerie scream, the luckiest bird would fold its wings and plummet from the sky. A score of others might follow. A kes'trekel orgy was no place for the fainthearted. The birds brawled as they fed, sometimes on each other, until nothing remained. Even a strong-stomached man might wisely turn away.

The mind-bender who'd claimed the mind of a soaring kes'trekel from boredom hours earlier let it go when it became part of that descending column of hungry scavengers. He settled into his own body, his thoughts returning to their familiar byways through his mind, sensation coming back to arms, not wings, to feet, not talons. The constant, overwhelming stench of Codesh struck the back of his nose. He breathed out heavily, a conscious reflex, expelling the poisons in his lungs, then breathed in again, accepting the Codesh air as punishment.

"Brother Kakzim?"

The urgent, anxious whisper in Kakzim's ear completed his return. He opened his eyes and beheld the killing floor of Codesh's largest slaughterhouse. His kes'trekel was one of a score of birds fighting over a length of shiny silver gut. Before Kakzim could avert his eyes, the largest kes'trekel plunged its sharp beak into the breast of the bird whose mind he had lately haunted. Echoes of its death gripped his own heart; he'd been wise, very wise, to separate himself from the creature when he did.

"Brother? Brother Kakzim, is there—? Is there a problem, Brother Kakzim?"

Kakzim gave a second sigh, wondering how long his companion had been standing behind him. A moment? A watch? Since he snared the now-dead kes'trekel? Respect was a useful quality in an apprentice, but Cerk carried it too far.

"I don't know," he said without looking at the younger halfling. "Tell me why you're standing here like a singed jozhal, and I'll tell you if there's a problem."

The senior halfling lowered his hands. The sleeves of his dark robe flowed past his wrists to conceal hands covered with scars from flames, knives, and other more obscure sources. The robe's cowl had fallen back while his mind had wandered. He adjusted that, as well, tugging the cloth forward until his face was in shadow. Wispy fibers brushed against his cheeks, each feeling like a tiny, acid-ripped claw. Kakzim made another quick adjustment and let his breath out again.

The bloody sun had risen and set two-hundred fifty-four times since Kakzim had brushed a steaming paste of corrosive acid over his own face, exchanging one set of scars for another. That was two-thirds of a year, from highsun to half ascentsun, by the old reckoning; ten quinths by the current Urik reckoning, which divided the year into fifteen equal segments; or twenty-five weeks, as the Codeshites measured time. For a halfling born in the verdant forests beyond the Ringing Mountains, weeks, quinths, and years had no intrinsic meaning. A halfling measured time by days, and there had been enough days to heal the acid wound into twisted knots of flesh that still burned when touched or moved. But the acid scars were more honorable than the ones they replaced, and constant pain was a fitting reminder of his failures.

When he was no older than Cerk—almost twenty years ago—Kakzim had emerged from the forests full of fire and purpose. The scars from the life-oath he'd sworn to the BlackTree Brethren were still fresh on his heart. The silty sea must be made blue again, the parched land returned to green. What was done must be undone; what was lost must be returned. No sacrifice is too great. The BlackTree had drunk his blood, and the elder brothers had given him his life's mission: to do whatever he could to end the life-destroying tyranny of the Dragon and its minions.

The BlackTree Brethren prepared their disciples well. Kakzim had sat at the elders' feet until he'd memorized everything they knew, then they'd shown him the vast chamber below the BlackTree where lore no halfling alive understood was carved into living roots. He'd dwelt underground, absorbing ancient, forgotten lore. He knew secrets that had been forgotten for a millennium or more and the elders, recognizing his accomplishments, sent him to Urik, where the Dragon's tyranny was disguised as the Lion-King's law.

Kakzim made plans—his genius included not merely memory, but foresight and creativity—he watched and waited, and when the time was ripe, he surrendered himself into the hands of a Urikite high templar. They made promises to each other, he and Elabon Escrissar, that day when the half-elf interrogator took a knife, carved his family's crest into Kakzim's flesh, then permanently stained the scars with soot. Both of them had given false promises, but Kakzim's lies went deeper than the templar's. He'd been lying from the moment he selected Escrissar as a suitable partner in his life's work.

No halfling could tolerate the restraints of forced slavery; it was beyond their nature. They sickened and died, as Escrissar should have known... would have known, if Kakzim hadn't clouded the templar's already warped judgment with pleas, promises and temptations. Escrissar had ambitions. He had wealth and power as a high templar, but he wanted more than the Lion-King would concede to any favorite. In time, with Kakzim's careful prompting, Escrissar came to want Lord Hamanu's throne and Urik itself. Failing that—and Kakzim had known from the start that the Lion-King could not be deposed—it had been possible to convince Escrissar that what he couldn't have should be destroyed.

Reflecting on the long years of their association, Kakzim could see that they'd both been deluded by their ambitions. But then, without warning from the BlackTree or anything Kakzim could recognize as their assistance, Sorcerer-King Kalak of Tyr was brought down. Less than a decade later Borys the Dragon and the ancient sorcerer Rajaat—whom the BlackTree Brethren called the Deceiver—were vanquished as well.

Kakzim sent a message back across the Ringing Mountains—his first in fifteen years. It was not a request for instructions, but an announcement: The time had come to unlock the ancient halfling pharmacopoeia, the lore Kakzim had memorized while he dwelt among the BlackTree's roots. The time had, in fact, come and passed.

Kakzim informed the elders that he and the man who thought he was Kakzim's master were making Laq—an ancient, dangerous elixir that restored those on exhaustion's brink, but enslaved and destroyed those who took it too often. Their source was innocuous zarneeka powder they'd found in Urik's cavernous warehouses. The supply, for their needs and purposes, was virtually unlimited.

The seductive poison spread quickly through the ranks of the desperate or despondent, sowing death. He and Escrissar planned to expand their trade to include the city-state of Nibenay. When both cities were contaminated, their sorcerer-kings would blame each other. There'd be war. There'd be annihilation and, thanks to him, Brother Kakzim, the BlackTree Brethren would see their cause victorious.

Kakzim promised on his life. He'd opened the old scars above his heart and signed his message with his own blood.

He'd had no doubts. Escrissar was the perfect dupe: cruel, avaricious, enthralled by his own importance, blind to his flaws, easily exploited, yet blessed with vast wealth and indulged by Lord Hamanu, the very enemy they both hoped to bring down. The plans Kakzim had made were elegant, and everything was going their way until a templar of the lowest sort blundered across their path.

Paddle, Puddle, Pickle... Kakzim couldn't remember the ugly human's name. He'd seen him once only, at night in the city warehouse when catastrophe had been the furthest thought from his mind. The yellow-robed dolt was boneheaded stupid, throwing himself into battles he couldn't hope to win. It beggared halfling imagination to think that templar Pickle could stand in their way at all, much less bring them down. But the bonehead had done just that, with a motley collection of allies and the kind of luck that didn't come by chance.

Kakzim had abandoned Escrissar the moment he saw disaster looming. Halflings weren't slaves; BlackTree Brethren weren't martyrs, not for the likes of Elabon Escrissar. Kakzim raided Escrissar's treasury and went to ground while the high templar marched to his doom on the salt wastes.

Ever dutiful to the elder brothers of the BlackTree, Kakzim had sent another message across the Ringing Mountains. He admitted his failure and promised to forfeit his now-worthless life. Kakzim used all the right words, but his admissions and promises were lies. He knew he'd made mistakes; he'd been bested, but not, absolutely not, defeated. He'd learned hard lessons and was ready to try again. The cause was more important than any one brother's life, especially his.

Brother Kakzim wasn't any sort of martyr. He told the elder brothers what they'd want to hear and fervently hoped they'd believe his promise of self-annihilation and never bother him again. He was deep in his next plotting, here in the market-village of Codesh, when his new apprentice arrived fresh out of the forest and with no more sense than a leaf in the wind.

He'd wanted to send Cerk back. Bloody leaves of the bloody BlackTree! He'd wanted to kill the youngster on the spot. But without the resources of House Escrissar behind him, Kakzim discovered he could use an extra set of hands, eyes, and feet—so long as he didn't delude himself that those appendages were attached to a sentient mind.

"Brother Kakzim? Brother Kakzim—did you—? Have you—? Are you having one of your fits? Should I guide you to your bed?"

Fits! Fits of boredom! Fits of frustration! He was surrounded by fools and personally served by the greatest fool of all!

"Don't be ridiculous. Stop wasting my time. Tonight's an important night, you know. Tell me whatever it is you think I must know, then leave me alone and stop this infernal chatter about fits! You're the one with fits."

"Yes, Brother Kakzim. Of course. I merely wanted to tell you that the men have begun to assemble. They're ready-armed exactly as you requested—but, Brother, they wish to be paid."

"Then pay them, Brother Cerk!" Kakzim's voice rose into a shrill shout as he spun around on his companion. The cowl slid back, dusting his flesh with excruciation as it did. "We're so close. So close. And you torment me!" He grabbed the youngster's robe and shook it violently. "If we fail, it will be your fault!" *****

The elders of the BlackTree had warned him Brother Kakzim would not be an easy master, but that he should be grateful for the opportunity. They said Brother Kakzim was a genius in the alchemic arts. There was no halfling alive who knew what Brother Kakzim knew about the old ways of manipulation and transformation. Brother Kakzim had decrypted the ancient knowledge the Brethren guarded at the BlackTree. He knew what the ancestors knew, and he'd begun to use it. The elders wanted to know more about how Brother Kakzim was applying his knowledge. They wanted Cerk to be their eyes and ears in Urik.

An apprentice should be grateful for such an opportunity, for such trust, and Cerk supposed he was. Brother Kakzim was a master beyond reckoning where alchemy was concerned; Cerk had learned things in this foul-smelling village he could never have learned in the BlackTree Forest. But Cerk wished the elder brothers had mentioned that Brother Kakzim was completely mad. Those white-rimmed eyes above the ruined cheeks looked out from another plane and had the power to cloud another man's thoughts, even another halfling's thoughts.

Cerk was careful not to look straight at Brother Kakzim when the madness was on him, as it was now. He kept his head down and filled his mind with thoughts of home: lush green trees dripping water day and night, an endless chorus of birds and insects, the warm, sweet taste of ripe bellberries fresh off the vine. Then Cerk waited for the danger to pass. He judged it had when Brother Kakzim adjusted his robe's sleeves and cowl again, but he was careful to stay out of reach.

"It is not just the men who want to be paid, Brother Kakzim. The dwarves who own this place want to be paid for its use tonight, and for the rooms where we've lived. And the joiners say we owe them for the scaffolding they've already constructed. We owe the knackers and the elven gleaner, Rosu. She says she's found an inix fistula with the abscess still attached, but she won't sell it—"

"Pay them!" Brother Kakzim repeated, though without the raving intensity of a few moments past. "You have the coins. I've given you all our coins."

"Yes," Cerk agreed, thinking of the sack he kept under his bed. Money had no place in the BlackTree Forest. The notion that a broken ceramic disk could be exchanged for food, goods, or a man's service—indeed, that such bits, disks, or the far rarer metal coins must be exchanged—was still difficult for him to understand. He grappled with the sack nightly, arranging its contents in similar piles, watching as the piles grew steadily smaller. "I keep careful count of them, Brother Kakzim, but if I give these folk all that they claim is theirs, we ourselves will have very little left."

"Is that the problem. Brother Cerk?"

Reluctantly, Cerk bobbed his head.

"Pay them," Brother Kakzim said calmly. "Look at me, Brother Cerk—"

Cerk did, knowing it was a mistake, but Brother Kakzim's voice was so reassuring at times. Disobedience became impossible.

"You don't doubt me, do you?"

Cerk's lower lip trembled. He couldn't lie, didn't want to tell the truth.

"Is it the money, Brother Cerk? Haven't I always given you more money when you needed it? Money is nothing to worry about, Brother Cerk. Pay the insects. Pay them generously. Money grows like rope-vine in shadowed places. It's always ready for harvest. Don't worry about money, Brother Cerk."

He wasn't such a fool as that. The Brethren elders hadn't sent him out completely unprepared. It was the precision of money that eluded him: the how and why that equated a day of a man's life with a broken chip from a ceramic disk, while the rooms he and Brother Kakzim occupied above the slaughterhouse equated an entire ceramic disk each week, and Rosu's festering fistula was the same as an entire shiny silver coin.

Cerk knew where money came from generally and Brother Kakzim's specifically. Whenever the need to refill the sack arose, he sneaked into Urik following the brother through the maze of sharp-angled intersections and identical buildings. Brother Kakzim's money came from a blind alley hoard-hole in the templar quarter of the city, and it was much diminished compared to what it had been when Cerk first saw it.

No doubt Brother Kakzim could harvest ceramic disks and metal coins from other trees. Brother Kakzim didn't risk his fingers when he picked a pocket. All Brother Kakzim had to do was touch a rich man's thoughts with mind-bending power—as Brother Kakzim was doing to Cerk at this very moment—and that man would shed his wealth on the spot. As Cerk should have shed his doubts beneath the seductive pressures of Brother Kakzim's Unseen urging. And maybe the Urikites were as simple as lumbering mekillots. Maybe their minds could be touched again and again with them never recognizing that their thoughts were no longer wholly their own. But the BlackTree elders had taught Cerk how to defend himself from Unseen attack without the attacker becoming aware of the defense. They'd also taught him never to underestimate the enemy.

"You see, little brother, there's nothing to worry about."

Brother Kakzim came close enough that their robes were touching. They embraced as elder to apprentice, with Cerk on the verge of panic as he forced himself to remain calm and pliant. His companion was mad. That made him more, not less, dangerous.

Cerk didn't flinch when Brother Kakzim pinched his cheek hard enough to pierce skin, then nearly undid everything with a relieved gasp when the hand withdrew. Brother Kakzim pinched Cerk again, not on the cheek, but over the pulsing left-side artery of his neck.

"Questions can kill," Brother Kakzim warned calmly as his fingers began to squeeze the artery shut.

Cerk has less than a heartbeat to concoct a question that wouldn't. "I—I do not understand why the cavern-folk must die tonight," he whispered with just enough sincere terror to make Brother Kakzim unbend his fingers.

"When the water dies, all Urik will die. All Urik must die. All that exists in the Tablelands must die before the Black-Tree triumphs. That is our goal, little brother, our hearts' desire."

Cerk swallowed hard, but inwardly, he'd begun to relax. When Brother Kakzim talked about the BlackTree, his mind was focused on larger things than a solitary halfling apprentice. Still, he tread carefully; Brother Kakzim had not answered his question, which was an honest question, one to which he dearly wanted an answer.

"Why start with the cavern-folk, Brother Kakzim? Won't they die with the rest of Urik once we've putrefied their water? Why do we have to kill the cavern-folk ourselves? Why can't we let the contagion kill them for us?"

A tactical mistake: Brother Kakzim backhanded him against the nearest wall. Cerk feared that worse was to come, but his Unseen defenses hadn't broken. There were no further assaults, physical or otherwise, just Brother Kakzim, hissing at him in Halfling.

"Cut out your tongue lest you tell all our secrets! The cavern-folk must die because our contagion cannot be spat into the reservoir by the thimbleful. The ingredients must seethe and settle for many days before they'll be potent enough to destroy first Urik, then all the cities of the Tablelands. Our contagions must be incubated..." The white-rimmed eyes wandered, and Cerk held his breath. Kakzim was on the verge of inspiration, and that always meant something more for Cerk to do without thanks or assistance. "They must be incubated in alabaster bowls—ten of them, little brother, eight feet across and deep. You'll find such bowls and have them set up in the cavern."

Cerk blinked, trying to imagine ten alabaster bowls big enough to drown in and completely unable to imagine where he might find such objects, or how to transport them to the reservoir cavern. For once, his slack-jawed confusion was unfeigned, but Brother Kakzim mistook his bewilderment for insight.

"Ah, little brother, now you understand. This is not Laq to be measured by the powder packet. This is a contagion of poison and disease on a far grander scale. Once we've simmered it and stirred it to perfection, we'll spill the bowls into the reservoir and Urik will begin to die. Whoever draws water from a city wellhead or drinks from a city fountain will sicken and die. Whatever fool nurses the dying, he'll die, too as the plague spreads. In a week, Brother Cerk, no more than two, all the lands of Urik will be filled with the dead and dying. Can you see it, Brother Cerk? Can you see it?"

Brother Kakzim seized Cerk's robe again and assailed him with Unseen visions of bloated corpses strewn through the streets and houses of the city, on the roads and in the fields, even here on the killing floors of Codesh. In Brother Kakzim's envisioning, only the Urikites were slain, but Cerk knew that all living things needed water, and anything living that drank Urik's water after Brother Kakzim tainted it would die. The useful beasts, the wild beasts, birds, insects, and plants that drank water through their roots, they all would die.

Even halflings would die.

Cerk could see Brother Kakzim's vision more clearly than Brother Kakzim, and he was sickened by the sight. He nodded without enthusiasm. The poor wretches living in darkness on the shores of Urik's underground reservoir were actually the luckiest folk alive. They'd be the first Urikites to die. A chill ran through Cerk's body. He clasped his arms tight over his chest for warmth and told himself it was nothing more than the coming of night now that purple twilight had replaced the garish hues of the sunset. But that was a lie. His shivers had nothing to do with the cooling air. An inner voice counseled him to run away from Brother Kakzim, Codesh, and the whole mad idea. Cerk swallowed that inner voice. There was no escape. The Brethren had made Brother Kakzim his master; he couldn't leave without breaking the oath he'd sworn beneath the BlackTree.

"Can you see it, Brother Cerk?"

"I see it all," Cerk agreed, then squaring his shoulders within his dark robe, he grimly followed his companion and master down from the balcony to the killing floor where a silent, surly crowd was already gathered. "I see everything."

That evening was like a dream—a living nightmare.

At sundown, Cerk took a seat behind a table, beside the abattoir door. He methodically and mindlessly put a broken ceramic bit onto the palm of every thuggish hand that reached toward him once its owner had crossed the abattoir threshold. A decent wage for a decent night's work: that's what Brother Kakzim said, as though what these men—the thugs were all males, mostly dwarves, because their eyes saw more than human eyes in the dark—were going to do tonight was decent.

And perhaps it was. The killing that went on in the abattoirs and would go on in the reservoir cavern wasn't like the hunting Cerk had done as a boy in the forest, and it wasn't sacrifice as the Brethren made sacrificial feasts beneath the branches of the BlackTree. In Codesh they practiced slaughter, and the slaughter of men was no different.

When the doors were shut and barred and a ceramic bit had been placed in every waiting hand, Cerk had done everything that Brother Kakzim had asked of him. He rolled up his mat, intending to slip quietly upstairs to his room, but got no farther than the middle steps before Brother Kakzim began his harangue.

Brother Kakzim was no orator. His voice was shrill, and he had a tendency to gasp and stutter when he got excited. The burly thugs of Codesh exchanged snickering leers and for a moment Cerk thought—hoped—they'd all walk out of the abattoir. But Brother Kakzim didn't harangue with words. Like a sorcerer-king, Kakzim used the Unseen Way to focus his audience and forge them into a lethal weapon. Brother Kakzim worked on a smaller scale than Lord Hamanu: forty hired men rather than an army, but the effect was the same.

The mat slipped out of Cerk's hands. It bounced down the stairs and rolled unnoticed against the wall.

Cerk returned to the killing floor in an open-eyed trance. His inner voice frantically warned him that his thoughts were no longer his own, that Brother Kakzim was bending and twisting his will with every step he took. His inner voice spoke the truth, but truth couldn't overcome the images of hatred and disgust that swirled up out of Cerk's deepest consciousness. The dark-dwellers were vermin; they deserved to die. Their death now, for the cause of cleansing Urikj was the sacrifice that redeemed their worthless lives.

With his final mote of free thought, Cerk looked directly at Brother Kakzim and tried to give his whipped-up hatred its proper focus, but he was no mind-bending match for an elder brother of the BlackTree brethren. His images were overwhelmed.

The last thing Cerk clearly remembered was grabbing a torch and a stone-headed poleaxe that was as long and heavy as he was. Then the mob surged toward a squat tower at the abattoir's rear, and he went with them. Brother Kakzim stood by the tower's door. His face shone silver, like a skull in moonlight.

Delusion! Cerk's inner voice screamed when Brother Kakzim's eyes shot fire and one of the thugs fell to the ground. Mind-bending madness! Go back!

But Cerk didn't go back. Wailing like a dwarven banshee, he kept pace with the mob as it made its noisy way to the cavern.

Later, much later, when he'd shed his bloodstained clothes, Cerk consoled himself with the thought that he wasn't strong, even for a halfling. He had no skill with heavy weapons. It was possible—probable—that he hadn't killed anyone. But he didn't know; he couldn't remember anything after picking up the torch and axe.

He didn't know how his clothes had become bloodstained.

He was afraid to go to sleep.