Cinnabar Shadows (2 page)

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.