Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas, Book 04 - Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey

Author:Lynn Abbey [Abbey, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7869-0181-4
Publisher: Fanversion Publishing
Published: 2017-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Ruari came back during supper. Pavek didn’t ask where he’d been, but he had a turquoise and aqua house-lizard the size of his forearm clinging contentedly to his shoulder, its whiplike tail looped around his neck. In itself that was a good sign. The brightly beautiful lizards had innate mind-bending defenses: they could sense a distressed or aggressive mind at a considerable distance and make themselves scarce before trouble arrived. Even Ruari, who turned to animals for solace when he was upset, couldn’t have gotten close to the creature while he was angry.

Ruari unwound the lizard from his neck and offered it to Pavek. “My Moonracer cousins say that in the cities a house where one of these lizards lives is a house where friends can be found.”

Friendship—the greatest gift an elf could give, and a gift Ruari had never gotten from those Moonracer cousins of his. Or offered, and that’s what Ruari was offering. Pavek held out his hands with a heartfelt wish that the damn thing found him acceptable and didn’t take a chunk out of his finger. It probed him with a bright red tongue, then slowly climbed his arm.

“I’ll keep it in the garden,” he said once it had settled on his shoulder.

They ate quietly, quickly, grateful for the food rather than the cooking. The question of baths and laundry came up. House Escrissar had a hypocaust where both clothes and bodies could be soaked clean in hot water, but it required a cadre of slaves to stoke the furnace and run the pumps. Mahtra said she’d take care of herself. Pavek and Ruari sluiced themselves as best they could at the kitchen cistern. They cornered Zvain and subjected him to the same treatment. Fresh clothing came out of the packs they’d brought from Quraite: homespun shirts and breeches, not really suitable for a high templar, but what remained of Elabon Escrissar’s clothes wouldn’t go around Pavek’s brawny, human shoulders and Ruari would have nothing to do with them.

Ruari refused to sleep in a bed where Elabon Escrissar might have slept. Late evening found the half-elf spreading his blankets in the garden under the watchful, independent eyes of their new house lizard. Pavek considered telling the youth that he was a fool, that Urik was noisier than Quraite and the sounds would keep him awake, but those were the precise sounds Pavek was spreading his own blankets to hear throughout the night.

Midnight brought an echoing chorus of gongs and bells as watchtowers throughout the city signalled to one another: all’s well, all’s quiet. Pavek listened to every note, and all the other sounds Urik made while it slept—even Ruari’s soft, regular breathing an arm’s length away on the other side of the fountain. As the stars spun slowly through the roof-edged sky, Pavek tried to appreciate the irony: much as he enjoyed the cacophony of city life, he was the one who couldn’t sleep.

Pavek’s thoughts drifted, as a man’s thoughts tended to do when he was alone in the dark.

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