Cinnabar Shadows Chapter 13: The Village of Ject and the Mountain Crossing

Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0

Welcome to Ject, Where Everyone Wants to Be Your Friend

Chapter 13 opens with Ruari cringing at his companions. Zvain announced they have a map. Mahtra told the armed strangers they’re looking for halflings and a big black tree. So much for keeping their mouths shut.

The settlement is called Ject, and it’s nothing like anywhere they’ve been. Stone buildings instead of wicker huts. Animal hides and fanged skulls hanging on every wall. Weapon racks outside the tavern. No fields, no gardens. Just barrens and mountains. These people are hunters and brokers who trade forest goods to the cities and city goods to the forest. They’re practical, tough, and everyone in town seems very interested in three clueless lowlanders.

A woman grabs Ruari’s kank antenna and starts leading him into town. She’s human, standing below him on his high saddle, and somehow she manages to look down her nose at him. “You look a tad underprepared for the mountains and the forests,” she says. Understatement of the century.

The Kirre and the Tavern

They pass an animal pen holding a kirre. Eight legs, horns, barbed tail, striped in black and copper. It’s being shipped to the gladiator games in Tyr. Ruari, being half-elf with an innate connection to wild animals, is immediately entranced. The woman warns him not to get any ideas. “Turn her loose or tame her, and we’ll send you instead.”

The woman, whose name is Mady, takes Ruari into the tavern while Mahtra disappears with a muscled mul named Bewt and Zvain vanishes entirely. Ruari is alone, in a strange town, with a woman who has made it clear she trades anything for the right price.

Here’s where Ruari shows some cleverness. Mady wants to see the map. She wants to be their guide. She keeps pushing drinks at him. He pretends to drink. He uses his druid mind-bending on her. Nothing flashy. Just subtle suggestions woven into the conversation as she gets drunker and he stays sober. By starlight, he’s learned what he needs about the mountain passes and the halflings. He leaves Mady face-down on the table and tells the tapster she said she’d pay for everything.

I love that scene. It shows Ruari growing up. He’s channeling Pavek without realizing it. Fighting a battle without throwing a punch.

Enter Orekel

Zvain, meanwhile, has found their actual guide. Orekel is a dwarf. He wears a cap made from a dead animal he killed with his bare hands. He smells like he could catch fire. He’s a complete drunk who owes money to the tapster and promises halfling treasure in exchange for their kanks.

Ruari’s reaction: absolutely not. Orekel’s reaction to everything: “Can you see it, son? Gold and silver, rubies and emeralds!”

But before Ruari can shut this down, Mahtra’s “protection” goes off inside a building. Thunder and dust. She’d gone upstairs with the mul Bewt, who tried to remove her mask. Bad move. The whole building shakes.

Now they need to leave before the Jectites find Bewt’s body (he’s not dead, but he’s not happy). And someone has unharnessed their kanks. No saddles means no riding.

Ruari makes a choice he knows he’ll regret: Orekel over the kanks. He grabs Pavek’s steel knife and cuts the kirre’s pen open. A little druid mind-bending, some images of the Jectites as enemies, and the kirre bursts free. While the cat causes chaos, they slip out into the dark.

I cheered at that moment. Ruari promised himself he’d come back for a kirre someday, and this was a down payment on that promise. Even at his lowest, running from a place that wanted to eat him alive, he couldn’t leave a magnificent beast caged for the arena.

The Mountain Crossing

The next section is pure physical ordeal. They cross a stone wash in the dark. They climb a gap in the mountains without rope. Zvain falls and nearly quits. His confidence is shattered. Orekel offers his lucky dead-animal cap. It doesn’t help.

Mahtra gets Zvain moving with the most Mahtra approach possible. She suggests they leave him behind because “the sun’s coming around. It’s going to be as hot as the Sun’s Fist against these rocks in a little while. Why should we all die because he doesn’t want to move again?”

It works because it’s not a trick or motivational speech. She means it. If he won’t move, she’ll walk away. The cold logic of survival cuts through Zvain’s panic where encouragement failed.

There’s a quiet moment on the mountain where Mahtra takes off her mask so she can drink water privately. Ruari talks her into showing her face. She doesn’t have a nose, barely has lips, her mouth is tiny and lined with visible teeth. But Ruari looks at her and says it’s not ugly. It’s her face. It fits.

“Pavek was ugly,” Ruari says. And Mahtra tells him that Akashia, the druid woman, once said Pavek wasn’t ugly at all. These small callbacks to the dead friend keep the grief simmering without letting it take over the narrative.

The Forest and the Net

They reach the forest on the far side. Ruari, who has spent his whole life in the scrublands, is overwhelmed. This is the druid dream made real. More life in a handful of dirt than in a day’s walking across the Tablelands.

But the forest doesn’t like them. When Ruari tries to use his druidry, the guardian aspects flood through him and reject him. The leaves seem to sprout teeth. The sense of being watched intensifies.

Orekel examines the bark map and declares it’s not actually a map to the black tree. It’s a map from the black tree to Urik. A route going the other direction. They’ve been navigating with something that was never meant to bring them where they want to go.

Before they can figure out a plan, the ground shifts. A woven vine net springs up and hoists them into the air. Mahtra’s thunderclap protection hits the net twice. Three times. Four. The net holds. She’s spent.

Halflings appear below them. A score of them, armed with spears. And one steps forward. Weblike burn scars on his cheeks. Eyes as black and deep as night.

He pokes Ruari between the ribs with a spear.

“The ugly man. Templar Paddock. Where is he?”

Kakzim found them first.

My Thoughts

This chapter is a road chapter, but Abbey keeps it from feeling like filler by constantly raising the stakes. Every step toward the black tree brings new problems. The Jectites are predatory. The mountains are brutal. The forest is hostile. And the people they’re looking for are already looking for them.

The character work carries everything. Ruari becoming the reluctant leader. Zvain breaking down and being rebuilt by Mahtra’s blunt honesty. Orekel being exactly the kind of guide you’d expect to find passed out behind a tavern. And Mahtra, always Mahtra, with her perfect practical logic and her willingness to show her face to the one person who might not flinch.

The ending is a punch. Kakzim’s voice asking for “Templar Paddock” brings the whole book crashing back. The halfling never stopped being their problem. He just moved to different ground.

Previous: Chapter 12 - Pavek Is Gone | Next: Chapter 14 - Pursuit Across the Barrens