Cinnabar Shadows

Chapter Six

How old are you?

A voice, a question, and the face of an ugly man haunted the bleak landscape of Mahtra's dreams.

Seven ripe cabras. A whirling spiral with herself at the center and seven expanding revolutions stretching away from her. The spiraling line was punctuated with juicy, sweet fruit and the other events of the life she remembered. Seven years—more days than she could count—and all but the last several of them spent inside the yellow walls of Urik. She hadn't known the city's true shape until she looked back as the huge, painted bug carried her away to this far-off place.

Mahtra hadn't remembered a horizon other than rooftops, cobbled streets, and guarded walls. She had known the world was larger than Urik; the distant horizon itself wasn't a surprise, but she'd forgotten what empty and open looked like.

What else had she forgotten?

There is no before Urik.

Another voice. Her own voice, the voice she wished she had, echoed through her dreams. Did it tell the truth? Had she forgotten what came before Urik, as she had forgotten what stretched beyond it?

Turn around. Step beyond the spiral. Find the path. What before Urik? Remember, Mahtra. Remember....

The spiral of Mahtra's life blurred in her dream-vision. Her limbs became stiff and heavy. She was tempted to lie down where she was, at the center of her life, and ignore the beautiful voice. What would happen if she fell asleep while she was dreaming? Would she wake up in her life or in the dream, or somewhere that was neither living nor dreaming?

Somewhere that was neither living nor dreaming...

Mahtra knew of such a nowhere place. She had forgotten it, the way she'd forgotten the colors and shapes on the other side of Urik's walled horizon. It was the outside place, beyond the memories of the cabra-marked spiral.

A place before Urik.

A place of drifting, neither dark nor bright, hot nor cool. A place without bottom or top, or any direction at all, until there was a voice and a name:

Mahtra.

Her name.

Walking, running, swimming, crawling, and flying—all those ways she'd used to move toward her name. At the very end, she fought, because the place before Urik had not wanted her to leave. It grew thick and dark and clung to her arms, her ankles. But once Mahtra had heard her name, she knew she could no longer drift; she must break free.

Mahtra put a word to the substance of her earliest memories: the place before Urik was water and the hands were the hands of the makers, lifting her out of a deep well, holding her while she took her first unsteady steps. Her memory still would not show her the makers' faces, but it did show Mahtra her arms, her legs, her naked, white-white flesh.

Made, not born. Called out of the water fully-grown, exactly the person she was in her dream, in her life:

Mahtra.

The hands wrapped her in soft cloth. They covered her nakedness. They covered her face.

Who did this? The first words that were not her name touched her ears. What went wrong? Who is responsible? Who's to blame for this—for this error, this oversight, this mistake? Whose fault?

Not mine. Not mine. Not mine!

Accusing questions and vehement denials pierced the cloth that blinded her. The steadying hands withdrew. The safe, drifting place was already sinking into memory. This was the true nature of the world. This was the enduring, unchanging nature of Mahtra's life: she was alone, unsupported in darkness, in emptiness; she was an error, an oversight, a mistake.

That face! How will she talk? How will she eat? How will she survive? Not here—she can't stay here. Send her away. There are places where she can survive.

The makers had sent her away, but not immediately. They dealt honorably with their errors. Honorably—a dream-word from Urik, not her memory. They taught her what she absolutely needed to know and gave her a place while she learned: a dark place with hard, cool surfaces. A cave, a safe and comforting place... or a cell where mistakes were hidden away. Cave and cell were words from Urik. In her memory there was only the place itself.

Mahtra wasn't helpless. She could learn. She could talk— if she had to—she could eat, and she could protect herself. The makers showed her little red beads that no one else would eat. The beads were cinnabar, the essences of quicksilver and brimstone bound together. They were the reason she'd been made, and, though she herself was a mistake, cinnabar would still protect her through ways and means her memory had not retained.

When Mahtra had learned all she could—all that the makers taught her—then they sent her away with a shapeless gown, sandals, a handful of cinnabar beads, and a mask to hide their mistake from the world.

Follow the path. Stay on the path and you won't get lost.

And with those words the makers disappeared forever, without her ever having seen their faces. In her dream, Mahtra wondered if they had known what awaited her on the path that led away from their isolated tower. Did they know about the predators that stalked the eerie, tangled wilderness around their tower? Were those ghastly creatures mistakes like herself? Had they strayed from the path and become forever lost in the wilderness? Were they the lucky mistakes?

Mahtra had followed the makers' instructions until the shadowy wilderness ended and the path broadened into the hard ground of the barrens. She wasn't lost. There were men waiting for her. Odd—her memory hadn't held the words for water or cave or any of the beasts she'd avoided in the wilderness, but she'd known mankind from the start, and gone toward them, as she had not gone toward the beasts.

In the dream, a shadow loomed between Mahtra and the men. She veered away from the memories it contained.

Stay on the path.

Again, she heard the voice that might be her own and watched in wonder as a glistening path sliced through the shadow, a path that had not existed on that day she did not want to remember.

Follow the path.

The voice pulled her into the shadow where rough hands seized her, tearing her gown and mask. Her vision blurred, her limbs grew heavy, but she was not in the drifting place. A flash of light and sound radiated from her body. When her senses were restored, she stood free.

This was what the makers meant when they said she could protect herself. This was what happened to the cinnabar after she ate the red beads. The men who'd held her lay on the ground, some writhing, others very still. Mahtra ran with her freedom, clutching the corners of her torn gown against her breasts. She ran until she could run no farther and darkness had replaced the light: not the pure darkness of a cave or cell, but the shadowy darkness of her first moonless night.

Her cinnabar beads could protect her, but they couldn't nourish her flesh nor slake her thirst. She rested and ran again, not as far as she'd run the first time, not as far as she had to. The men followed her. They knew where she was. She could hear them approach. The cinnabar protected her again, but the men were wily: they knew the range of her power and harried her from a safe distance throughout the night.

Fear, Mahtra. Fear. There is no escape.

The men caught her at dawn, when she was too exhausted to crawl and the cinnabar flash was no more potent than a flickering candle. They bound her wrists behind her back and hobbled her ankles before they confined her in a cart. She had nothing but her mask to hide behind, because even these cruel and predatory creatures—

No mask. Nothing. Nothing at all. There is no escape from your memory.

Mahtra's mask vanished. She was truly, completely naked in the midst of men who both feared her and tormented her. There were other carts, each pulled by a dull-witted lizard and carrying one of the makers' unique creations. She called to them, but they were not like her; they were nameless beasts and answered with wails and roars she couldn't understand. Her voice made the men laugh. Mahtra vowed never to speak where men could listen.

Crouched in the corner of the cart as it began to move, she heard the word Urik for the first time.

Urik! the voice of her dream howled. Remember Urik! Remember the fear. Remember shame and despair. There is no escape!

She shook her head and struggled against her bonds.

There was no escape from the voice in her dream, but the dream was wrong. Memory was wrong. She still had the makers' mask; it had not been taken from her. It had not vanished. Urik was on the path the makers had told her to follow. It was the place where she belonged, where the makers said she could, and would, survive.

Remember Urik. Remember Elabon Escrissar of Urik!

In a heartbeat, Mahtra did remember. A torrent of images etched with bitter emotion and pain fell into her memory. Consistent with her nakedness and helplessness, the images expanded her memories, transforming everything she'd known. The shame she'd felt for her face spread to cover her entire body, her entire existence, and fear extended its icy fingers into the vital parts of her being.

Fear and shame and despair. They are a part of you because you were a part of them. Remember!

Mahtra fought out of the dream. The cruel men of memory disappeared, along with the bonds around her wrists and ankles. Her mask returned, comfortable and reassuring around her face, but the last victory—waking up—eluded her. She found herself on a gray plain, more dreary and bleak than anything she'd imagined, assaulted by an invisible wind that blew against her face no matter where she looked. While Mahtra tried to understand, the wind strengthened. It drove her slowly backward, back to the dream and memories of shame.

"Enough!" A voice that was not Mahtra's or the dream's thundered across the gray plain. It set an invisible wall against the wind and, a moment later, dealt Mahtra a blow that left her senseless.

"Enough!"

Akashia inhaled her mind-bending intentions from the subtle realm where the Unseen influenced reality. She feared she recognized that voice, hoped she was wrong, and took no chances. As soon as she was settled in her physical self, she swept a leafy frond through the loose dirt and dust on the ground in front of her, destroying the touchstone patterns she'd drawn there. In another moment she would have erased them from her memory as well, replacing them with innocent diversions.

But Akashia didn't have another moment.

A wind from nowhere whisked through her Quraite hut. It took a familiar shape: frail-limbed and hunched with age, a broad-brimmed hat with a gauze veil obscuring eyes that shone with their own light.

Not a friendly light. Akashia didn't expect friendship from her one-time mentor. She knew what she'd been doing. There were fewer rules along the Unseen Way than there were in druidry. Still, it didn't take rules to know that Telhami wouldn't approve of her meddling in the white-skinned woman's dreams.

"Grandmother."

A statement, nothing more or less, a paltry acknowledgment of Telhami's presence in this hut, their first meeting since Telhami's death a year ago. For in all that time, no matter what entreaties Akashia offered, Telhami hadn't left her grove, hadn't strayed from the man to whom she'd bequeathed that grove. Even now, after all that silence, Telhami said nothing, only lifted her hand. Wind fell from her outstretched arm, an invisible gust that scoured the ground between them. When it had finished, the touchstone pattern had reappeared.

She drew a veil of her own around her thoughts, preserving her privacy. While Telhami might have the mind-bending strength to pierce Akashia's defenses, Akashia had survived more fearsome assaults than Grandmother was likely to throw at her, no matter how great her disappointment. Courtesy of Elabon Escrissar, Akashia knew what dwelt in every murky corner of her being, and she'd learned to transform that darkness into a weapon.

If Telhami wanted to do battle with those nightmares, Akashia was ready.

"Is this judgment?" Telhami's spirit demanded, adding its own judgment to its disappointment.

Akashia offered neither answer nor apology to the woman who'd raised her, mentored her, ignored her and now presumed to challenge her.

"I asked you a question, Kashi."

"Yes, it's judgment," she said, defying the hard bright eyes that glowed within the veil. "It had to be done. She came from him!" she snarled, then shuddered as defiance shattered. Escrissar's black mask appeared in her mind's eye. And with the mask, bright unnatural talons fastened to the fingers of his dark-gloved hands appeared also. Talons that caressed her skin, leaving a trail of blood.

The New Race woman's mask was quite, quite different. Her long red fingernails seemed impractical; nevertheless a rope had been thrown and pulled tight. Akashia couldn't think of one without thinking of the other.

"It had to be done," she repeated obstinately. "I told Pavek to take her to his grove—to the grove you bequeathed to him—but the Hero of Quraite refused. So I judged her myself."

"Ignoring his advice?"

"She'd already blinded his common sense. I'm not afraid, Grandmother; I'm not weak. There was no reason for you to turn to him instead of me. Pavek will never understand Quraite the way I do, even without your grove to guide me. He doesn't care the way I care."

"The white-skinned woman came from Hamanu, not his high templar," Telhami corrected her, ignoring everything else. "The Lion-King sent her. She alone traveled under his protection, she alone survived the Sun's Fist. It's not for druids to judge the Lion-King, or his messengers. If you will not believe the woman herself, if you refuse to listen to Pavek, believe me."

Why? Akashia wanted to scream. Why should she believe? All the while she'd been growing up, learning the druid secrets under Grandmother's tutelage, Urik and its sorcerer-king had been Quraite's enemy. Everything she learned was designed to nurture the ancient oasis community and hide it from the Lion-King's rapacious sulphur eyes. The only exception was zarneeka, which the druids grew in their groves and which Quraite sent to Urik to compound into an analgesic for the poor who couldn't afford to visit a healer. And then, they learned that Escrissar and his halfling alchemist were compounding their zarneeka not into Ral's Breath, but into the maddening poison Laq.

They'd made a mistake, she and Telhami; Escrissar's deadly ambitions had taken them by surprise. They'd paid dearly for that mistake. Quraite had paid dearly. Telhami had died to keep Escrissar from conquering zarneeka's source, villagers and other druids had died too, and they'd be years repairing the damage to the groves and field.

But they would have won—had won—before the sorcerer-king's intervention—Akashia believed that with all her heart. What she couldn't believe was Urik's ruler on his knees beside Grandmother's deathbed, caressing Grandmother's cheek with a wicked claw that was surely the inspiration for the talons Escrissar had used on her.

The sense of betrayal souring Akashia's gut was as potent now as it had been that night. Clenching a fist, relaxing it, then clenching it again, she waited for the spasms to subside. When they had, she calmly dragged a foot through the touchstone patterns—defying Telhami to restore them again.

"Mahtra went to House Escrissar frequently and willingly, she said so herself. She was there, Grandmother. She was there when Escrissar interrogated me, when he laid me to waste—just like the boy was! They witnessed... everything!"

She was, to her disgust, shaking again, and Telhami stood there, head drawn back and tilted slightly, glowing eyes narrowed, taking everything in, coldly judgmental—as Grandmother had never been.

"And what is it that you expected to accomplish?" "Justice! I want justice. I want judgment for what was done to me. They should all die. They should endure what I endured, and then they should die of shame."

"Them!"

The unnatural eyes blinked and were dimmer when they reappeared. "You didn't," Grandmother whispered. "That's the root, isn't it. You wanted to die of your shame, but you survived instead, and now you're angry. You can't forgive yourself for being alive."

"No," Akashia insisted. "I need no forgiving. They need judgment."

"Destroying Mahtra won't change your past or the future. Destroying Zvain won't, either. Born or made, life wants to go on living, Kashi. The stronger you are, the harder it is to choose death."

Not everyone is as determined as you, Kashi. Some of us have to stay alive, and while we live, we do what we have to do to keep on living. Pavek's sneering face surfaced in Akashia's memory, echoing Telhami.

"You were assailed by corruption, you were reduced to nothing, you wanted to die, but you survived instead. Now you want to punish Mahtra for your own failure and call it justice. What judgment for you, then, if Mahtra's only crime were the same as yours: She survived the unsurvivable?"

It was a bitter mirror that Pavek and Telhami raised. Akashia raked her hair and, for the first time, averted her eyes.

"Where is my justice? Awake or asleep, I'm trapped in that room with him. I can't forget. I won't forgive. It's not right that I have all the scars, all the shame."

"Right has little to do with it, Kashi—"

"Right is all that remains!" Akashia shouted with loud anguish that surprised her and surely awoke the entire village. Embarrassment jangled every nerve, tightened every muscle. For a moment, she was frozen, then: "Everything's dark now. I see the sun, but not the light. I sleep, but I don't rest. I swallowed his evil and spat it back at him," she whispered bitterly. "I turned myself inside out, but he got nothing from me. Nothing! Every day I have to look at that boy and remember. And, she's come to put salt on my wounds. They know. They must know what he did to me. And yet they sleep sound and safe."

"Do they?"

She set her jaw, refusing to answer.

"Do they?" Telhami repeated, her voice a wind that ripped through Akashia's memory.

According to Ruari, Zvain at least did not sleep any better than she. And for that insight, she'd turned against her oldest friend, her little brother.

Something long-stressed within Akashia finally collapsed. "I'm weary, Grandmother," she said quietly. "I devote myself to Quraite. I live for them, but they don't seem to care. They do what I tell them to do, but they complain all the while. They complain about using their tools in weapons-practice. I have to remind them that they weren't ready when Escrissar came. They complain about the wall I've told them to build. They say it's too much work and that it's ugly—"

"It is."

"It's for their protection! I won't let anything harm them. I've put a stop to our trade with Urik. No one goes to the city; no one goes at all, not while I live. I'd put an end to the Moonracer trade, too... if I could convince them that we have everything that we need right here."

Akashia thought of the arguments she'd had trying to convince the Quraiters, farmers and druids alike. They didn't understand—couldn't understand without living through the horror of those days and nights inside House Escrissar.

"Alone," she said, more to herself than to Telhami. "I'm all alone."

"Alone!" Telhami snorted, and the sound cut Akashia's spirit like a honed knife. "Of course you're alone, silly bug. You've turned your back to everyone. Life didn't end in House Escrissar, not yours nor anyone else's. Walls won't keep out the past or the future. You're alive, so live. You've been pleading for my advice—yes, I've heard you; everything hears you—well, that's it. That, and let them go, Kashi. Let Pavek go, let Ruari go. Let them go with your blessing, or go with them yourself—"

"No," Akashia interrupted, chafing her arms against a sudden chill. "I can't. They can't. Pavek's the Hero of Quraite. The village believes in him. They'll lose heart if he goes—especially if he goes to stinking Urik—and doesn't come back. I had to judge that woman. If I could make her reveal what she truly was, he wouldn't follow her. He'd stay here, where he belongs. They'd all stay here."

The sleeping platform creaked as Telhami sat down beside Akashia. She had neither pulse nor breath, but her hands were warm enough to drive away the chill.

"At last we get down to the root: Pavek. Pavek and Ruari. They do know what happened. You can scarcely bear the sight of either of them—or the thought that they might leave you. It would be so much easier, wouldn't it, if all the heroes of Quraite were dead: Yohan, Pavek, Ruari, and Telhami— all of us buried deep in the ground where we could be remembered, but not seen."

She swiped tears with back of her hand, but more followed.

"Pity?" The bloodless hands were warm, but the voice was still cold and ruthlessly honest. "What pity? None was asked for, none was given. Outside this hut, I've seen life go on. I've seen compassion. I've seen love and friendship grow where nothing grew before. But I see no pity, no clinging to a past that's best forgotten."

"I don't want to forget. I want my life back. I wish life to be as it was before."

It was a foolish wish—life didn't go backward—but an honest one, and Akashia hoped Telhami would say something. She hoped Grandmother would reveal the words that would prevent Pavek and Ruari from leaving Quraite.

"Let them go, Kashi," Grandmother said instead. "Tear down the wall."

"It won't ever be the same as it was."

"It won't ever be different, either, unless you let go of what happened."

"I can't."

"Have you tried?"

She shook her head and released a stream of tears, not because she'd tried and failed but because it was so easy to forget, to live and laugh as if nothing had changed—until a word or gesture or a half-glimpsed shadow jarred her memory and she was staring at Escrissar's mask again.

"Laugh at him," Grandmother advised after the old spirit unwound her thoughts. "Run through your fields and flowers and if he appears—laugh at him. Show him that he has no more power over you. He'll go away, too."

More tears. Kashi took a deep breath and asked the most painful question of all: "Why, Grandmother—why did you give your grove to him?"

"It was not mine to give," Telhami's spirit confessed. "Quraite chose its hero. And a wise choice it was, in the end. I'd made a mess of it, Kashi. Can you imagine the two of us grappling with all those toppled trees? We'd be at it forever—but Pavek! The man was born to move wood and rock through mud. You should see him!"

And for a moment, Kashi did, hip-deep in muck, cursing, swearing and earnestly setting the grove to rights again. She had to laugh, and the tears stopped.

"You're not alone," Grandmother said suddenly, which Akashia mistook for philosophy, then she heard footsteps outside the hut.

Telhami disappeared before Akashia could tell her midnight visitor to go away. Feeling betrayed and abandoned once again, Akashia plodded to her door where two of Quraite's farmers greeted her. One held a pottery lamp, the other, Mahtra's hand.

"She had a dream," the lampbearer said. "A nightmare. It scared us, too. Pavek said he'd be in the bachelor hut, but we thought..."

Some folk needed neither spellcraft nor mind-bending to convey their notions silently. The farmer's hollow-eyed, slack-jawed expression said everything that needed to be said.

"Yes, I understand." She made space in the doorway for Mahtra to pass. With her strange coloring and wide-set eyes—not to mention whatever the mask concealed—the white-skinned woman's face was almost unreadable. When Mahtra squeezed herself against the door jamb rather than brush against her, Akashia had the sense that they were equally uncomfortable with the situation. "She can stay here with me for the rest of the night. Pavek shouldn't have troubled you in the first place."

" 'Tweren't no trouble," the farmer insisted, though he was already retreating with his wife and his face belied every word.

Akashia stood in the doorway, watching them walk back to their hut, and all the while conscious of the stranger at her back. As soon as was polite, she shut the door and braced it with her body. She didn't know what to say. Mahtra solved her problem by speaking first.

"It was only a dream. I didn't know my dreams could frighten someone else. That has never happened before. You said I should go to the grove. What is a grove? Would my dreams frighten anyone there?"

"No." Akashia pushed herself away from the door with a sigh. "Not tonight. It's too late."

It was too late for the grove under any circumstance. Mahtra's voice wasn't natural. Her jaw scarcely moved as she formed the words and the tone was too deep and deliberate to come from her slender throat; yet listening to her now, Akashia believed Mahtra had lived in the world for only seven years. As much as she craved justice, Akashia couldn't send a seven-year-old to the grove.

"No, nothing, thank you."

Of course not, Akashia realized, feeling like a fool. Eating or drinking would have meant removing the mask. While ransacking Mahtra's memory, Akashia had found the white-skinned woman's self-image—what she thought she looked like. If it was halfway accurate, there was good reason for that mask, though appearances alone would not have bothered Akashia.

One thing that did bother her was the way that Mahtra chose to stand a step away from the touchstone patterns on the dirt floor. Grandmother had known what they were: mind-benders' mnemonics, makeshift symbols Akashia had used to push and poke her way through Mahtra's dreams. Akashia was the only one who could have deciphered their meaning, yet Mahtra stared at them as if they were a public text on a Urik wall.

Akashia strode across her hut. She stood in the center of the pattern, scuffing it thoroughly—she hoped—with her bare feet before she took Mahtra by a white wrist. "Please sit down." Akashia tugged her guest toward a wicker stool. "Tell me about your dream," she urged, as if she didn't already know.

Mahtra's narrow shoulders rose and fell, but she went where Akashia led her and sat down on the stool. "It was a dream I would not want to have again. I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn't wake up."

"Were you frightened?" Akashia sat cross-legged on her sleeping platform. It was wrong to ask these questions, but the damage was already done, and she was curious. Mind-benders rarely got a chance to study the results of their efforts.

The pale blue-green bird's-egg eyes blinked slowly. "Yes, frightened, but I don't know why. It was not the worst dream."

"You've had other dreams that frightened you more?"

"Worse memories make worse dreams, but they're still dreams. Father told me that dreams can't hurt me, so I shouldn't be frightened by them. Sometimes memories get worse while I'm dreaming about them. That happened tonight, but that wasn't what frightened me."

"What did frighten you?" Akashia found herself speaking in a small voice, as if she were talking to a child.

Mahtra stared at her with guileless but unreadable eyes.

"Near the end, when I couldn't stop dreaming, I remembered memories that weren't mine. They frightened me."

Akashia's blood ran cold. She thought of the touchstone pattern and the possibility that she was not as skilled with the Unseen Way as she believed, at least not with the mind of a child-woman who'd been made, not born. "What kind of memories?" she asked, curiosity getting the better of her again. "How do you know

they weren't your own?" For a long moment Mahtra stared at the ground, as she'd stared at the patterns. Perhaps she was simply searching for words.

"Father was killed in the cavern below Urik, but Father didn't die until after I found him and after he'd given me the memories that held his killer's face—Kakzim's face—so I could recognize it. Father was very wise and he was right to save his memories, but now I remember Kakzim and I remember being killed. In my dreams the memories are all confused. I want to save Father and the others, but I never can. It's only a dream, but it makes me sad, and frightened."

"And your dream earlier tonight—it was like that?"

Mantra's head bobbed once, but her eyes never left the dirt. "I remember what never happened, not to me, but to someone like Father. Someone who's been killed and holding on to memories, waiting to die. I don't think I'll go to sleep again while I'm here."

Akashia was grateful that Mahtra wasn't looking at her. "There's no reason for you to stay awake." Not anymore. Akashia swore to herself that she wouldn't tamper with Mahtra's mind again.

"No one's been killed in Quraite," she continued, "not in a long time. There's no one dying here either."

"You are," Mahtra said as she raised her head and her odd eyes bore into Akashia's. "It was your voice I heard in my dream. I recognize it. You told me to remember what came before Urik. You told me to feel shame and fear, because you felt shame and fear. I felt what you felt, and then, I remembered what you remember." "No," Akashia whispered. For one moment, one heartbeat moment, the loathing she'd been trying to awaken in Mahtra had been awakened in her instead. She thought the touchstone pattern had protected her. She certainly hadn't acquired any of Mahtra's memories but, in her narrow drive for judgment, it seemed that her own had escaped. "No, that can't be."

Mahtra was a child of Urik's darkest nights, its murkiest shadows, but mostly she was a child, with a child's cold sense of right and wrong. Akashia nodded. "Yes," she said quickly, swallowing a guilty sob. "Yes, I believe he's dead. It's an even trade."

"Good. I'm glad. Without Father, there's no one to ask and I can't be sure if I've done the right thing. Your memories will sleep quietly now, and I can leave here with the ugly man and not look back. Kakzim killed Father. The ugly man and I will hunt Kakzim and kill him, too. For Father. Then all my memories will sleep quiet."

Akashia rose and faced a corner so she didn't have to face Mahtra. The white-skinned woman's world was so fiercely simple, so enviably simple. Mahtra's memories would sleep quietly, as perhaps Akashia's own memories would grow quieter, if she could truly believe in Mahtra's simple justice.

"Pavek," she said after a moment, still staring at the corner, still thinking about justice. "You should call him Pavek, if you're going to take him away. He's not an ugly man; you shouldn't call him that. He'll tell you when you've done the right thing. You should listen to him."

"Do you?"

It was a question Akashia could not find the strength to answer aloud.

"Father said the best lessons were the hardest lessons," Mahtra said after a long silence, then—to Akashia's heartfelt relief—walked softly out the door.

No need to worry: Mahtra could take care of herself wherever she went.

Reclaiming her bed, but not for sleeping, Akashia extinguished her lamp. She sat in the dark, thinking of what she'd done, what Telhami had said, and all because of the extraordinary individual the Lion-King had sent from Urik. Mahtra was like a Tyr-storm, rearranging everything she touched before disappearing. Akashia had taken a battering since sundown. She wouldn't be sorry to see the white-skinned woman leave, but she wasn't sorry Mahtra had come to Quraite, either. There was a bit of distance between herself now and the yesterday of Elabon Escrissar.

Akashia still found it difficult to think of Ruari or Pavek. Ruari was the past of hot, bright, carefree days that would never come again. Pavek was a future she wasn't ready to face. She didn't want either of them to leave with Mahtra, but she could admit that now, at least silently to herself, and with the admission came the strength to say good-bye before dawn, two days later.

She was proud of herself, that there were no tears, no demands for promises that they would return, only embraces that didn't last long enough and, from Pavek, something that might have been a kiss on her forehead just before he let go. Standing on the verge of the salt, Akashia watched and listened until the bells were silent and the Lion-King's kanks were bright dots against the rising sun. Then she turned away and, avoiding the village, walked to her own grove.

There were wildflowers in bloom and birds singing in the trees—all the beautiful things she'd neglected since her return from Urik. There was a path, too, which she'd never noticed before and which she followed... to a waterfall shrouded in rainbows.