I ran from the cavern. I ran when I could, but I had to stop to rest. I heard nothing behind me. Perhaps they won’t come. Perhaps they won’t find the passage and will return to Urik.”
“Wishes and hopes, little brother.” Brother Kakzim picked up the clay slabs he’d been inscribing and squeezed them into useless lumps that he hurled into the farthest corner, but those acts were the only outward signs of his distress. “Our nemesis will follow us. You may be sure of it. He is my bane, my curse. While he lives, I will pluck only failure from my branches. The omens were there, there, but I did not read them. Did you see his scar? How it tracks from his right eye to his mouth? His right eye, not his left. An omen, Cerk, an omen, plain as day, plain as the night I first saw him—”
He seems sane, but he is mad, Cerk thought carefully, in the private part of his mind, which only the most powerful mind-bender could breach. Brother Kakzim has found a new realm of madness beyond ordinary madness.
“Have I told you about that night, little brother? I should have known him for my nemesis from that first moment. Elabon tried to kill him with a half-giant. A half-giant!” Brother Kakzim laughed, not hysterically as a madman might, but gently, as if at a private joke. “So much wasted time; so much time wasted. While he lives, nothing will go right for me. I must destroy him, if the Black-Tree is to thrive. I must kill him. Not here. Not where he has roots. Cut off his roots! That’s what we must do, little brother, cut off our nemesis at his roots!”
Cerk stood still while Brother Kakzim embraced him enthusiastically. This was better than mindless rage, better than being beaten, but it was still madness.
“Together we can do it, little brother. Gather our belongings. We must leave quickly—leave for the forest at once—after I’ve spoken to the others. We will fail, but we must not fail to try! Always try, little brother. Omens are not always what they seem!”
It is madness, Cerk thought in his private place. Pure madness, and I’m part of it. I can do nothing but follow him until we reach the forest—if we reach the forest. Then I will appeal to the Elder Brethren of the Tree. I’ll spill my blood on the roots, and the Black-Tree will release me from my oath.
He held his hand against his chest and squeezed the tiny scars above his heart, the closest thing to prayer that a Black-Tree brother had.
“Don’t be sad, little brother.” Brother Kakzim suddenly seized Cerk’s arms. “The only failure is the last failure. No other failure lasts! Gather our belongings while I talk to the others. We must be gone before the killing starts.”
Grimly Cerk nodded his obedience. Brother Kakzim released him and walked out onto the open gallery where he picked up a leather mallet and struck the alarm gong.
“Hear me! Hear me, one and all. Codesh is betrayed!”
Cerk listened as the killing ground fell silent. Even the animals had succumbed to Brother Kakzim’s mind-bending might. Then elder brother began his harangue against Urik and its templars generally, and the yellow-robed villains about to emerge onto the killing ground. It was truth and falsehood so tightly interwoven that Cerk, who’d been in the cavern when the attack began and knew all the truth there was to know was drawn toward the gallery with his fists clenched and his teeth bared. He stopped himself at the door and closed it.
The closed lacquered door and his own training gave Cerk the strength to resist Brother Kakzim’s voice. No one else in the abattoir would be so lucky.
He was filling a second shoulder-sack when the room began to shake. It was as if the ground itself were shuddering, and even though he knew the Dragon had been slain, Cerk’s first thoughts were that it had come to Codesh to consume them all.
The scrap of white-bark—the scratched lines and landmarks that had guided him to Urik a year ago and that he’d been about to stuff into the sack—floated from Cerk’s fingers. He tried to walk, but a gut-level terror kept his feet glued where they stood, and he sank to his knees instead.
“Listen to them!” Brother Kakzim exclaimed as he shoved through the door. “Failed brilliance; brilliant failure. My voice freed their rage. Yellow will turn red!” He did