Cinnabar Shadows Chapter 8: House Escrissar - Keys, Chains, and a Gardener's Devotion

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

This is one of those chapters that is quiet on the surface but full of weight underneath. Pavek takes possession of House Escrissar, the home of the dead high templar who tortured his friends. What he finds inside forces him to confront things no amount of sword practice can solve.

Moving In

Civil bureau administrators are waiting outside House Escrissar when Pavek arrives. They hand him a key ring big enough to hang a man, a porphyry seal bearing his name and rank, and offer him a gold medallion. Pavek refuses the gold and keeps his battered ceramic.

He signs the deedstone with his name. Just-Plain Pavek. The administrators wrap it up, seal it with wax, and leave.

The house has been sealed for months. Everything is covered in yellow dust. But Zvain and Mahtra both confirm it looks exactly as they remember it. That sends a chill down Pavek’s spine. He expected to find evidence of a monster’s lair. Torture instruments. Something horrible. Instead, the walls are painted with gardens and green forests. The frescoes could have been commissioned by a druid.

That is the first gut punch. Evil does not always look evil.

The Gardener’s Chain

Then Initri appears. She is the oldest, most frail half-elf Pavek has ever seen, bent so far over by age that she naturally stares at her own feet. Her cheeks carry the black-lined scars of Escrissar’s slaves. She and her husband chose to stay inside the sealed house after all other slaves were dispersed.

Her husband tends the gardens. Pavek wants to meet this gardener, the man who made flowers bloom in a monster’s house. Initri leads them to the center of the residence, where lush vines cover the walls and wax-flower creepers carpet the ground. A beautiful place.

The old half-elf kneels beside a fountain, weeding. He is deaf. He does not notice them until Initri touches him. They lean against each other as he stands. And then Pavek sees the metal collar around the gardener’s neck and the stone-link chain descending from it. Each link is as thick as the old man’s thigh. The chain weighs as much as he does.

This is the scene that broke me. Here is a man who had every reason to destroy life, chained to the ground in a torturer’s house, and instead he made everything grow. He nurtured beauty in the worst possible place.

Initri stares at the keys in Pavek’s hand. She has been staring at them since he walked in. She knows which key opens the collar. A key shaped like a thighbone. She guides Pavek’s fingers through the stiff mechanism with tiny jerks and jiggles. The lock clicks open. The chain falls. The collar comes off.

The gardener examines the collar. Tears fall from his eyes onto the corroded metal. Initri shows no sentiment at all. She asks if beans will serve for supper.

The Slavery Argument

Ruari is furious. He stormed off the moment he saw the chain, and now he comes back swinging.

“You should have freed them, Lord Pavek. Or doesn’t owning your parents’ parents bother you?”

This sets off one of the best arguments in the entire book. Ruari insists slavery is wrong. Pavek does not disagree. But he pushes back on the simple solution.

Free them and then what? Turn them out of the house? Where would they go? Would you send two ancient half-elves across the deadly wastes to Quraite? Would you send every slave in Urik?

Ruari says they could be free in Urik. Pavek fires back that freedom is a hard road and costs money. The gardener could work for someone else, Ruari suggests. Pavek points out that nobody hires gardeners in Urik. They buy them. Besides, this is the old man’s garden. He was chained here but he chose to make it bloom. “Should I banish him from his grove?”

Then Pavek makes the argument that really stings: “Make him a slave to coins instead of men? Is that such an improvement? What if he gets sick? If he’s a slave, I’m obligated to take care of him. But if I’m paying him, what’s to stop me from just hiring another man?”

Ruari shouts that slavery is plain wrong. Pavek shouts back: “I didn’t say it was right! Life’s not simple, not my life, anyway.”

This is not a debate with a winner. Abbey does not hand you an easy answer. Both of them are right. Both of them are wrong. And the old couple stands there watching, their faces giving away nothing.

Mahtra in the Moonlight

After Ruari leaves, Pavek takes the gardener’s maul and starts hammering the chain links. Futile labor, stone grinding against stone, but it clears his head. That is very Pavek. He would rather work himself into exhaustion than think his way through a problem.

Mahtra finds him. Their conversation is strange and lovely. She tells him the gardener’s name is Agan, and that Escrissar sometimes called Agan “my thrice-damned-father.” The implication sits there like a stone. Escrissar may have enslaved his own parent.

Then Mahtra asks if she can call Pavek “Father.” He says no. He is Pavek, Just-Plain Pavek. She pulls tight, hurt, and he feels terrible. But she recovers and tells him she has learned to control her cinnabar power. Angry-afraid makes it start. Sad-afraid makes it stop. It is progress.

She says she wants to learn from him, to be responsible for her mistakes the way he takes responsibility for his. It is a beautiful moment. Pavek can only say, “Thank you. I’ll try to teach you well.” And pray desperately for the supper bell.

Peace Offering

Ruari comes back during supper carrying a turquoise house-lizard on his shoulder. These lizards can sense distressed minds and flee from trouble. If one sits on your shoulder, it means you have calmed down. In the cities, a house with one of these lizards is a house where friends can be found.

Ruari offers the lizard to Pavek. It is friendship. The greatest gift an elf can give. The lizard probes Pavek with its tongue, then climbs his arm and settles on his shoulder.

The chapter ends with Pavek lying awake in the garden, listening to the city’s midnight sounds, unable to sleep despite the familiar noise. His thoughts drift back to the cavern sludge. He checks the stains on Ruari’s staff, and they plan their trip to Codesh.

This chapter does so much with so little action. A key turns, a chain falls, two men argue about right and wrong, and a lizard climbs an arm. But every scene lands hard. This is Abbey writing at her best.

Previous: Chapter 7 - Journey Back to Urik | Next: Chapter 9 - Hunt for Kakzim in Codesh