building that stood atop the tunnel. Paddock was the reason Cerk had spent the night underground, watching the men who were guarding the scaffolds.
When the do-nothing templars charged across the killing ground to rescue the scarred man and his companions, elder brother had had one of his fits. He’d bit his tongue and writhed on the floor like a spiked serpent. Cerk had feared Brother Kakzim would die on the spot—ending this whole ill-omened enterprise—but he hadn’t. He’d gotten to his feet and wiped his face as if nothing strange had happened. Then he’d started giving orders. Elder brother wanted guards around the scaffolds and guards on the killing floor. He wanted more reagents added to the bowls, and he wanted them stirred constantly.
They had a night and a day to destroy Urik. They couldn’t afford to wait the extra days until the contagion reached its peak strength, far beneath the conjoined moons. At least that’s what Brother Kakzim swore, when he wasn’t issuing orders or muttering oaths against the scarred man, Paddock, who, according to elder brother, was as relentless as a dragon. To Cerk, it seemed an unreasonable panic and the final proof that his mentor was irredeemably mad. Using the Unseen Way, Cerk had kenned the demon-dragon, Paddock, while he pounded on walls in the middle of the killing ground, and he’d found a mind that was remarkable only in its ordinariness.
Truly it was a tragedy—Cerk’s own tragedy. Had he given his oaths to Brother Kakzim, he would no longer consider himself bound by them. But he’d given his oath to the sacred Black-Tree and his fate if he broke it would surely be worse than if he obeyed the orders of a madman. And so Cerk sat uncomfortably on the rocks, his mind empty except for the slowest curiosity about the lamp and how long its wick would burn before he had to refill the oil chamber.
Then Cerk heard a shout. He raised his head, but several moments elapsed before his thoughts crystallized into intelligence and he realized the guards he’d hired were under attack. Another moment passed before Cerk recognized the uniformly yellow-garbed attackers as templars from the city, and a third before he spotted a brawny, black-haired human with an ugly, scarred face in their midst.
Paddock!
Brother Kakzim wasn’t mad—at least not where templar Paddock was concerned. The Codeshites were fighting for their lives, and they fought hard, but they were no match for the templars, who fought in pairs, one attacking, one defending, neither one taking an injury from the desperate Codeshites.
Cerk made one solid attempt to cloud the minds of the nearest templars. He sowed doubt, because it was easiest and most effective. One templar hesitated, and his Codeshite opponent struck him down as if he were a killing-ground beast. But the fallen templar’s partner threw off Cerk’s doubt. She finished off the Codeshite who’d struck down her partner with two strokes of her sword, then sidestepped and teamed herself with another pair. Another templar—Cerk didn’t know which one—not only rejected the mind-bending doubt, but hurled it back.
The unknown templar’s Unseen assault was the primitive defense of an untrained mind. Cerk thought he’d dodged it easily, yet it proved effective. His own doubts swelled. He saw no way to save the Codeshite guards or those who’d scrambled off the scaffolding to add confusion, not skill, to the fight. The bowls themselves were doomed, because Cerk did not doubt that Paddock had brought a way to destroy them.
Brother Kakzim would have another fit, but Brother Kakzim had to know, which meant that Cerk had to get to the surface. Grabbing the lantern—halfling eyes were no better than human eyes in the dark—Cerk darted through the rock debris and into the darkest shadow.
He ran as fast as he could, as far as he could. Then with his lungs burning and his feet so heavy his wobbly legs could scarcely lift them, Cerk slumped against the wall. The tunnel was quiet except for his own raspy breaths. He’d outrun the sounds of combat, and it seemed there was no one coming up behind him. A part of him cried out to stay where he was, to blow out the lamp and cower in the safe darkness.
But the darkness wasn’t safe. Someone would follow him through the tunnel, be it templar or Codeshite, and whoever it was, it would be an enemy when they met. If there was safety, it lay with Brother Kakzim in their rooms