Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
This chapter hit me like a truck. We finally get the full picture of who Mahtra is, where she came from, and what “made, not born” actually means. But that is only half the story. The other half belongs to Akashia, and it is devastating.
This chapter is basically a heist movie set in a fantasy hellscape. Three guys with obsidian knives break into an interrogator’s fortified house to rescue one woman. It goes sideways almost immediately. They barely get out alive.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Salt sprites are still dancing on the Sun’s Fist as sunset dies. Golden Guthay (one of Athas’s moons) climbs the eastern horizon. Pavek stops Ruari and Zvain at the edge of the salt flats. No point risking themselves out there until the sun is well set and the moonlight is strong enough to navigate by.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
After three chapters of scheming halflings, massacred cavern-folk, and a mysterious New Race woman meeting the Lion-King, we finally meet our main character. And he’s… weeding.
This chapter is where we finally see the story through Akashia’s eyes, and it makes her way more sympathetic than I expected.
Chapter 12 opens with a sandal nudging Pavek in the ribs and a voice saying “It’s morning.” He groans. His head is full of bad memories from the night before. He argued with Akashia about zarneeka, then parked himself next to the Moonracer’s honey-ale barrel and drank too much.
Chapter 11 is a quieter one. No poison. No midnight crises. Just Pavek grinding through druid lessons and slowly building a life at Quraite. But Abbey packs so much character detail into this chapter that it ends up doing more heavy lifting than the action scenes.
This chapter opens in the middle of the night with Akashia bolting out of her hut because Telhami summoned her in a dream. Not on purpose. Telhami was asleep and her subconscious worries reached out through the guardian’s magic and dragged Akashia out of bed. That’s how stressed the old woman is about Laq.
Pavek wakes up hog-tied inside a handcart rolling over terrible pavement.
His wrists and ankles are bound together behind his back and anchored to the cart itself. His limbs are stretched to the point of screaming. His hands and feet are completely numb. There is straw thrown over him, a cloth blindfold over his eyes, and the cold air of a night outside the walls of Urik.
Chapter 2 picks up a few days later. The bruise from the orphan boy’s punch has faded. Pavek is back to his regular duties, transferring salt sacks in the customhouse, ticking off counts on a wax tablet. Just another day of grunt work for a third-rank Regulator.