Cinnabar Shadows Epilogue: Pavek Stays Among Friends

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

Waking Up

Pavek drifts in and out. He remembers fragments. Someone apologizing because there’s no piece of linen large enough to cover him head to foot. He remembers laughing at that. Remembers sunlight and food and sleeping under the stars because the halfling houses are too small for him.

Then his eyes open, clear-headed, and Commandant Javed is standing over him with that cryptic smile.

“Do you think you’ll live, Lord Pavek?”

Every muscle aches. Every ache brings a memory. By the time he’s sitting up, he’s recalled everything. Silk shirts. Kakzim’s head in a silk shirtsleeve. Mahtra carrying it. A day and a night of dreamless sleep between him and those memories.

Javed tells him his life was never in danger. A few nicks and scratches. A bit more running than he’s used to. He grins. “But you’ll mend.”

“I’ll mend,” Pavek agrees, and closes his eyes, thinking about faces he’ll never see again. “I’ll mend.”

The Revelation

When he opens his eyes, Mahtra is standing behind Javed. Her shoulder isn’t bandaged. No scabs, no scars. Javed whispers that “the child heals quickly.” Remarkable, he says. He’s never met anyone like her.

It’s a relief for Pavek to know he doesn’t need to worry about Mahtra’s future. She’s found someone who will take care of her in the commandant. That leaves him free to focus on his own grief.

Then Javed asks for a decision. The two maniples are cramped, hungry, and ready to go home. There are two men bound to bed who won’t be up for another week. And there’s Pavek. He can march home now or stay and heal.

Two injured men. Not the dead templar (she was a woman, and Javed forgot the boy). Two men.

“Zvain?” Pavek asks.

Not Zvain. Zvain is fine. Annoyingly fine, from Javed’s expression.

“Who’s injured then?”

“A noisy dwarf from Ject. And that half-elf friend.”

Pavek’s heart stops.

“Ruari? Ruari’s alive?”

He didn’t die on Kakzim’s tree. He survived. And Mahtra told him this already. Told him first thing, while Javed was pulling him out of the brook. Pavek didn’t hear a word.

Mahtra is indignant. “I told you. You heard me, Lord Javed, didn’t you? I told him first thing. You didn’t pay any attention!”

Pavek hides his face behind his hands. He doesn’t know if he’ll laugh or cry. He does neither. The emotions just shatter against each other and he uncovers his face and asks where Ruari is.

Across the village. Copper hair the only unbandaged part of him. Surviving. Mending bit by bit. The BlackTree halflings damn near killed him. Javed says he would have slaughtered the lot of them for what they did, “even for a half-breed bastard,” but he’d taken Pavek’s measure and didn’t think his lord would approve.

Pavek returns the smile. “No, you’ve measured me right, Commandant.”

The Last Decision

“And you have my leave to take the maniples back to Urik. I choose to stay here, with my friends.”

Javed nods. An elf can always appreciate friendship, even if he doesn’t appreciate the friends. He asks permission to take Kakzim’s head as proof. Somehow, he jokes, he thinks it’ll be a while before Pavek wanders back to Urik. “If you listen to that dwarf, you’ll waste the rest of your life looking for halfling treasure!”

Not treasure, Pavek thinks. But a lion and a knife.

He says goodbye to the maniples that afternoon. Then, with Zvain on one side and Orekel bending his ear on the other, Pavek takes up vigil at Ruari’s side.

My Thoughts

The epilogue is short. Sixty lines. But it does everything it needs to.

The big moment is obviously Ruari being alive. Pavek went through the entire climax believing his friend was dead. He chased Kakzim through the forest in grief. He killed the halfling partly because fighting was better than standing over a corpse. And now he finds out that Mahtra told him hours ago and he just didn’t hear it.

That detail is so human. In the middle of the worst night of your life, someone gives you the best news possible and it bounces off because your brain is already full. Mahtra’s reaction is perfect too. She’s not comforting or understanding. She’s annoyed. She told him and he wasn’t listening.

The relationship between Pavek and Javed comes to a natural end. The old warrior has nothing left to teach the young templar. He measured Pavek and found him worthy, even if his friends are a mixed bag of half-elves, street kids, drunken dwarves, and New Race women. Javed takes the head home. Pavek stays.

And the last line. Pavek at Ruari’s side, with Zvain and Orekel for company, thinking about a knife and a lion lost somewhere in the forest. It’s not a triumphant ending. It’s a quiet one. The villain is dead. The friends are battered but together. The sorcerer-king is waiting back in Urik with more questions. But for now, Pavek sits with the people who matter and waits for one of them to wake up.

That’s enough. That’s the whole point.

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