Cinnabar Shadows (5 page)

From here she should see the whole community: thirty-odd huts and homesteads beside thirty-odd
hearths burning bright in the cavern's eternal night: But there were only a handful of fires, and all of them
were wildfires, outside the hearths. The charred scent was thick in the air; Mahtra could taste it through her
mask, feel it on her skin through the shawl. The only sounds came from the crackling fires. There was no
laughter, no shouts, none of the ordinary buzz that should have greeted her ears here.

"Father?" Mahtra whispered. "Mika?"

She started to run, but hadn't gone ten paces before she tripped and stumbled hard to her knees. The
cabras went flying. Mahtra groped for them, for the cause of her tumble. She wasn't the only cavern
dweller with human eyes. Most of the community didn't see in the dark. There were penalties for cluttering
the paths; there'd be a reckoning when Father and the other elders found out.

Mahtra's hands touched something round, but it wasn't a cabra fruit. It was hair... a head... a lifeless
head. Her hands dripped blood when she sprang back.

"Father! Father!"

She couldn't run. There were other bodies in the gallery.

There were bodies everywhere, all lifeless and bloody.

"Father!"

Mahtra staggered to the gallery's end and the first of the homesteads where flames consumed the last
of a hide-and-bone hut like her own and a human woman she recognized lay on her back, staring up.

"Dalya!"

Dalya had never understood Mahtra's clumsy speech, but she didn't blink at the sound. Dalya didn't
move at all. Dalya was as lifeless as the rest, and suddenly Mahtra couldn't get air into her lungs no matter
how hard she breathed. Warmth kindled in her burnished scars again. The protective membrane twitched in
the corners of her eyes.

"No!" she gasped, ordering her body to behave, as if it belonged to someone else.

She couldn't lose her vision. She had to see. She had to find Father, and trembling so badly that she had
to crawl, she made her way down once-familiar lanes to another burning hut.

Mahtra sat on her knees a few paces short of the destruction. The makers had given her human eyes
where light and darkness were concerned, but they hadn't given her the ability to cry as humans and all the
other sentient races did. It had never been a hardship before, but now—looking at Mika's body, partly
seared by fire, and his face, split by a gouge that reached from his forehead across his right eye, nose, and
cheek before it ended on his neck—now, Mahtra could only make sad, little noises deep in her throat. The
sounds hurt worse than any mottled skin she'd acquired in the high templar residences.

But the makers had made Mahtra strong. She rose to her feet and stepped around Mika's corpse.
Father lay a few steps farther. Fire hadn't touched him; a club had: his skull was crushed. Mahtra couldn't
see his face for the gore. Kneeling again, she slid her slender arms beneath him and lifted him carefully,
easily. She carried him to the water's edge where she washed the worst away.

The keening sounds still trilled in the base of Mahtra's throat. Sharp pains from no visible source lashed
her heart. Grief, she told herself, remembering how Mika's cheeks had glistened the night his family died.
Grief and cold and dark: Death, suddenly more real than anything else around her. Crouched and cowering
over Father, Mahtra peered into the darkness, expecting Death to appear.

Death was here in the cavern. She could feel it. Death would take her, too; she couldn't stay. But as
she lowered Father to the stony shore, he opened his remaining eye.

Mahtra—

His voice sounded in her mind; his lips had not moved.

"Father? Father—what's happened? What has happened? Mika... You... Father, tell me—What do I
do now?"

You must leave, Mahtra. They will come back, and they will overwhelm even you—

"Who? Why? You did no wrong, Father; this should not have happened. You did no wrong."

It doesn't take wrong for killing to start, Father explained, patient with her newness even now.

"Killing," Mahtra felt the word in her thoughts, on her malformed tongue. It wasn't a new word, but it
had a new meaning. "Have you been killed, Father?"
Yes—

Mahtra felt Father's sadness. He would chastise her, she thought, as he had chastised her for keeping
the black shawl. She knew wrong couldn't be made right—she knew that from looking in the high templar
mirrors.

Father surprised her. You have powerful patrons, Mahtra. They will help you. This must not
happen again. You must make certain of it.

Father made an image grow in Mahtra's mind then, the last image of his life: a stone-head club, an arm
descending, and a wild-eyed, burn-scarred face beyond it. After the image, there was nothing more; but the
image was enough.

It was a stranger's face for a heartbeat, then in her mind's closer inspection, Mahtra saw a halfling's
distinctive old-young features. A single black line emerged from the scars. It made two angles and
disappeared into raw flesh again. That was enough, along with the wild eyes. She knew him. "Kakzim," she
whispered as she rose and walked away without a backward glance.

Death was loose in the cavern, in the clubs and flame. Death would take Father and Mika—if
she didn't find them first.

Mahtra stood at the junction of the antechamber corridor and the sloping gallery ramp that led
to the water. The community was inflames that soared and crackled and threw countless shadows of
sweeping arms and dripping stone-headed clubs onto the rock walls. Screams reverberated off the
hard rock all around her and echoed between her ears, as well. Mahtra couldn't distinguish
Father's screams, or Mika's, from all the others, but they were down there among the flames and the
carnage.

Mahtra ran as fast as she could, leaping lightly over those whom Death had already claimed.
She'd gone faster and farther than she'd gone before. Hope swelled in her pounding heart, but
hands rose out of the darkness at the base of the ramp. They grabbed her wrists and her ankles.
They pulled her down, held her down. Faces that were only eyes and voices hovered over her,
muttering a two-word chorus: mistake and failure.

She fought free of them, sprang to her feet and ran onto the stony shore where flames and
screams made everything seem unfamiliar. Dodging arms and clubs, Mahtra looked for the path that
would take her to the hide-and-bone hut where Father and Mika were waiting. There were paths
she'd never seen before, and all of them blocked by the same five mutilated corpses who rose up
when she approached them, blaming her, not Death, for their dying.

She was frantic with despair when a wild-eyed halfling ran toward her. His cheeks were on fire
and his bloody club was the most terrible of all Death's weapons. While Mahtra cowered, he found
the familiar path that wound between the reproachful corpses and led to the hide-and-bone hut
where little Mika stood bravely before the door.

The burnished marks on Mahtra's face and shoulders grew warm. Her vision blurred and her
limbs stiffened, but it wasn't herself she wanted to protect; it was Father and Mika, and they were
too far away. In agony, she forced her eyes to see, her legs to move. One stride, two strides...
gaining on Death with every stride, but still too late.

The club fell and the only scream she heard was Father and Mika screaming as halfling-Death
battered the hut with his club. Mahtra threw herself at Death and was repelled, simply repelled.
Death did not want her; Death wouldn't threaten a made creature like her, who'd never been born—
and without threat, Mahtra's flesh wouldn't kindle, her vision wouldn't blur.

Gouts of Mika's blood flew off the club as Death whirled it overhead. The sticky clots adhered
to Mahtra's face. She fell to her knees, clawing at her hard, white skin, unable to breathe, unwilling
to see. Her vision finally blurred, now—when it was too late and there was blood already on her
hand, but she didn't give up, not completely. Lunging blindly, Mahtra aimed herself where her
mind's vision said Death last stood. She felt the hem of Death's robe in her hands, but Death didn't
fall. Death pulled free, and she fell instead.

Crawling again, she sought Death by the sound of his club as it fell, again and again. Warm,
sticky fluid pelted her. She wanted to curl into a tight ball, but forced her back to straighten, her
head to rise. She opened her eyes—
—And saw sunlight. The nightmare images of fear, rage, helplessness, and defeat faded quickly in the
bright light of morning. Since escaping the cavern, Mahtra had had this same nightmare, with its hopeless
ending, whenever she'd fallen asleep. Its terrors were at least familiar, which was not true of her
surroundings.

And be seen through them.

Mahtra felt her nakedness as an afterthought, but reacted swiftly, tucking the coverlet tightly around
her lest she be seen by someone uninvited. There was no one watching. She was alone, as far as she
could tell, in this bright bedchamber, and there was no one in the next chamber, which she could see
through an open doorway.

Her gown was neatly folded on a chest at the foot of the bed. Her belt and coin pouch were on top of
the dress; her sandals had been cleaned, oiled, and set beside them. And her mask—her mask wasn't on
the chest. Mahtra's hands leapt to her face. The mask wasn't there, either. She kept her fingers pressed
over what the makers had given her for a mouth and nose and racked her memory for the places she had
been last night.

Not this room. Not any room. Not since she'd staggered out of the cavern many days ago.

As soon as she'd felt the sun on her face, Mahtra had made her way to the high templar quarter, but
she hadn't gone back to her old eleganta life. She hadn't been inside any residence. She'd hied herself to
House Escrissar and sat herself down on the alleyway doorsill. House Escrissar was locked up, boarded up.
It had been that way for a long time—not a year, but still a long time. Before it was locked and boarded,
Mahtra had been a frequent visitor, entering at sunset through this alleyway door, leaving again at dawn.

Mahtra had met Lord Escrissar when her life in Urik was very new. He had noticed her admiring
cinnabar beads in a market plaza. He'd bought her a bulging handful and then invited her to visit him at his
residence. And because Lord Escrissar had worn a mask and because he'd made her feel welcome, she'd
accepted his invitation that night and every night for all the years thereafter, until he had vanished and his
residence had been sealed.

She'd been comfortable in House Escrissar, where everyone wore masks. Everyone except Kakzim.
The halfling was a slave, and slaves did not wear masks. Their scarred cheeks, etched in black with a
house crest, were masks enough.

Mahtra didn't understand slavery. She had little contact with the scarred drudges who hovered silently
in the shadows of every high templar residence. There were drudge slaves in House Escrissar, but Kakzim
was not one of them. Kakzim mingled with his master's guests and offered her gifts of gold and silver.

By then she knew that the high templars and their guests found her fascinating. She knew what to
expect when she led them to the little room Lord Escrissar had set aside for her, deep within his residence,
but Kakzim did not ask her to remove the mask, nor any of the other things to which she'd grown
accustomed. He wanted to study the burnished marks on her shoulders, and she permitted that until he tried
to study them with a tiny, razor-sharp knife. She protected herself so fast that when her vision cleared
again, almost everything in the room was broken and Kakzim was slumped unconscious in the farthest
corner.

Mahtra expected Lord Escrissar to chastise her, as Father would have if she'd wrought such damage
underground, but the high templar apologized and gave her a purse with twenty gold coins in it. She went
back to House Escrissar many, many times after that; she didn't started visiting the other residences in the
quarter until after House Escrissar was boarded up. She saw Kakzim almost every time, but he'd learned
his lesson and kept his distance.

When Lord Escrissar first disappeared, there had been new rumors every night, whichever high
templar residence she had visited. Lord Escrissar, she had learned, had had no friends among his peers and
wasn't missed; his guests wore masks when they had come to his entertainments because they had not
wished their faces to be noticed. Eventually the rumors had stopped flowing.

No one came back to House Escrissar; none came to find Mahtra sitting there, clutching that same
purse he had given her.

Mahtra had no friends left, not even Lord Escrissar, who'd never shown her his true face. With both
Father and Mika dead, there was no one to miss her, either. She sat on the sill of Lord Escrissar's
residence, hoping he'd know she was waiting for him, hoping he'd come back from wherever he was,
hoping he'd help her find Kakzim.

Hope was all Mahtra had as one day became the next and another without anyone coming to the door.
She was hungry, but after so much waiting, she was afraid to leave the alley, for surely Lord Escrissar
would return the moment she turned her back in the next intersection. The night-watch, which had a post on
the rooftop at the back of the alley, tossed her their bread crusts when they went off duty. Between those
mouthfuls of dry bread and water in the residence cistern, which had not been tapped since the last Tyr
storm, Mahtra survived and waited.

And Mahtra didn't do things not of her own will. Kakzim and the enforcers of the elven market had
learned that lesson. She could not have been forced here. She must have entered willingly, and removed her
mask the same way. But she remembered nothing between the alley and the bedchamber except her
nightmare.

The cold, hard presence of fear, which had become Mahtra's most constant companion since the
cavern, reasserted itself around her. She curled inward until her forehead touched her toes and her face
was completely hidden. The coverlet couldn't warm her, nor could her own hands chafing her skin. Her
body shivered from an inner chill and tears her eyes couldn't shed.

"Ah—you are awake, child. There is water here for washing, then you must dress yourself, yes? The
august emerita waits for you in the atrium."

Mahtra raised her head cautiously, with her fingers splayed over her malformed face, leaving gaps for
her eyes. A human youth stood in the doorway with a bundle of linen in his arm. He was well fed and well
groomed, with only a few faint lines on his tanned cheeks to proclaim his status in this place. She knew in
an instant she'd never seen him before. Except for Kakzim, she'd encountered no slaves who'd stare so
boldly at a freewoman.

She wanted to tell him to go away, or to ask where she was and who the august emerita might be,
since she knew no one by that name or title. But, that was talking and, especially without her mask, she
didn't talk to strangers. So, she glowered at him instead, and without thinking stuck her tongue at him, as
Mika had done whenever she told him to do something he didn't want to do. The slave yelped and jumped
backward, nearly dropping his bundle of cloth. He turned and fled the room without another glance at her.
For several heartbeats, Mahtra listened to his sandals slapping; the august emerita lived in a very large
residence.

Her mask could be anywhere. It could be in the next room, but more likely it was in the atrium, with the
august emerita. If she could face Death every night in her dreams, she could face the august emerita. The
sooner she did, the sooner she could get out of here and back to her vigil outside House Escrissar. Mahtra
made good use of the wash-stand first. Life by the underground water had spoiled her for the city's
scarcity. Even here, in what was plainly an important place, the basin was barely large enough for her
hands and the water was used up before she felt completely clean.

It was better than nothing, much better than the grit and grime she'd accumulated sitting in the
alleyway. Her skin was white again, a stark contrast with her midnight gown, which had been brushed and
shaken with sweet leaves before it was folded. She found her shawl beneath her gown. It, too, had been
handled carefully by the august emerita— or her slaves. In lieu of her mask, Mahtra wrapped the shawl
over her head, the way the wild elves did when they visited Henthoren in the elven market.

The youthful slave had not returned; Mahtra set out alone to find the august emerita in her atrium. It
wasn't difficult. An examination of the roofs and walls revealed by the bedchamber window had convinced
her that she was, indeed, still in the high, templar quarter where all the residences were laid out in squares
and the atrium was the square at the center of everything else. She made mistakes—the residences weren't
identical, except on the outside—but she saw no one and no one saw her. Aside from the vanished slave
and the august emerita for whom she was searching, Mahtra seemed to be the only person wherever she
went.

She thought she was still alone when she reached the atrium. At the heart of the august emerita's
residence was a wonder of trees and vines, leaves and flowers in such profusion that, suddenly, Mahtra
understood growing as she hadn't understood it before. The atrium was filled with sounds as well, sounds
she had never heard before. Most of the sounds came from birds and insects in brightly colored wicker
cages, but the most fascinating sound came from the atrium fountain.

Lord Escrissar's residence had an atrium and a fountain, of course, but his fountain was nothing like the
august emerita's fountain where water sprayed and spilled from one shallow, pebble-filled bowl to another,
dulling the background noise of Urik so much that it could scarcely be heard. And the pebbles themselves
sparkled in many colors —and some of them were the rusty-red of cinnabar! One cinnabar pebble from the
fountain's largest bottom bowl surely wouldn't be missed.

She heard laughter then, from two places: to her right, where the slave held his sides as he giggled, and
behind, where a human woman—the august emerita—sat behind a wicker table and laughed without
moving her lips.

"Ver guards his treasure well, child," the emerita said. "Take your cinnabar pebble from another bowl."

Mahtra was wary—how could the woman have known she wanted a cinnabar pebble?—but she was
clever enough about the ways of high templars to know she should take what had been granted without
delay. And the august emerita was a high templar. Though she wrapped her ancient body in layers of sheer
silk just like a courtesan, there was a heavy gold medallion hanging around her withered neck. Mahtra
snatched the biggest red pebble she could see, then, while it was still dripping, stuffed it in her mouth.

"Good. Now, come, sit down and have something more nourishing to eat."

There was a plate of things on the wicker table... pinkish-orange things with too many legs and wispy
eyestalks that were still moving and were nothing that Mahtra wanted to eat.