Five days later, imprisoned beneath the great BlackTree, surrounded by dank, dark dirt, with Zvain and Orekel little more than voices in the blackness, she still shuddered at the memory.
That theft had been Kakzim's personal vengeance against her. He'd humiliated the others, too, especially Ruari. When the half-elf told Kakzim that Pavek was already dead, the former slave had reeled backward as if Ruari had landed a blow in a particularly vulnerable place, and then transferred all his vicious hatred from Pavek, who was beyond his reach, to Ruari, who had no defense.
Throughout their two-day-long, stumbling, starving walk through the mazelike forest, Kakzim had harried Ruari with taunts and petty but vicious physical attacks. The half-elf was badly bruised and bleeding from a score of cuts, and barely able to stand by the time they reached their destination: the BlackTree.
Nothing in her spiraling memory could have prepared Mahtra for her first sight of the halfling stronghold. The crude bark map they'd found in Codesh depicted a single tree as large as the Smoking Crown Volcano, which they'd ridden near on their way to the forest. But coming upon it suddenly in this arm's-length world of trees everywhere, the black tree seemed exactly as big as the volcano.
Ten of her standing with arms extended could not have encircled its trunk. Roots as big around as Orekel's dwarven torso breached the dim, moss-covered clearing around the tree's trunk before returning into the ground.
But it wasn't the black tree's trunk or roots that lingered in Mahtra's memory, sitting here in the darkness between those roots. It was the moment she'd raised her head, hoping to see the sky through branches as big around as a kank's body. There'd been no sky, only the soles of a dead-man's feet.
She'd cried out. Kakzim had laughed, and—worse—the feet had moved, and Mantra had realized that a living man, a halfling, hung above her, suspended from a mighty branch by a rope wound tight beneath his arms.
Worse still, the living, hanging halfling was not alone. There were other halflings dangling from other branches, more than she could easily count. Some of them were alive, like the halfling whose feet were directly above her head, but others were rotting corpses, barely recognizable.
Worst of all—the memory Mahtra could not escape even now in her prison beneath the tree—was the great drop of blood that had struck between her eyes as she stood, transfixed by the horror above her. With her hands bound behind her back, she hadn't been able to wipe the blood off, and her pleas for help, for mercy, brought only laughter from her captors.
Her skin was still wet when Kakzim ordered his fellow halflings to drive her, Zvain, and Orekel through a narrow hole between the roots. Prodded by sharp spears, they'd wriggled like serpents through the hole, a narrow tunnel, and—blindly at the end—tumbled into the dank, dirt pit that now imprisoned them.
Orekel had gone first; he'd hurt his leg falling several times his own height into the pit. Then Zvain, who'd landed on top of the dwarf, and finally her. She'd landed on them both.
And maybe, she shuddered at the thought, they'd hung him in the tree.
That memory was all too clear. She'd been able to scrape the blood from her face, crawling on her belly down that tunnel, but there was nothing she could do for the blood in her memory.
It was daytime in the world above; she could tell because some light got in around the roots that wound around the sides of their prison. There was enough to see Zvain and Orekel, whose leg had swollen horribly since he fell. When night came, she could see nothing at all.
Night had come twice since they landed in the pit.
Food had come twice also, both times in the form of slops and rubbish thrown down the hole. It was vile and disgusting, but they were starving. Liquid seeped through the dirt walls of their prison. Mahtra's tongue tasted water, but her memory saw blood.
Orekel, who understood Halfling, said their captors were planning a big sacrifice when the little moon, Ral, passed in front of big Guthay. When he wasn't drunk with pain, he made plans for their escape:
Zvain was the smallest; he could climb up both their backs and through the hole to the tunnel. Then, using Mahtra's shawl, which Kakzim had left along with everything else save her mask and Ruari's knife, Zvain could hoist Mahtra to freedom. Her protection would do its work. They could find a rope—there was plenty of rope available—to get him out of the hole, find the treasure, and make good their escape before the halflings recovered from Mahtra's thunderclap.
That was Orekel's plan, when his ankle wasn't hurting so bad he couldn't think or talk. Maybe, if he'd been able to stand or she'd been confident her protection would work again, they might have tried it.
But Orekel couldn't stand and, though she'd chewed through and swallowed their last bit of cinnabar, the little lion that Zvain had stolen from the palace, Mahtra didn't think she'd ever be able to use the maker's protection again. Something was missing. There was now a dark place inside her, a place she'd never realized was lit until the flame went out.
And now there was no more talk of escape. Well into the third day of their captivity, their prison was quiet—except for Orekel's babbling and groans. She and Zvain had nothing left to say to each other.
Mahtra huddled by herself in the curve where the side became the bottom. She drew her knees up to her chest, rested her cheek on them, and wrapped her arms over her shins.
The spiral of her life had become a circle; she was back where she'd begun: in deep, silent darkness.
After his time in Telhami's grove, Pavek thought he'd be prepared for the forest, but there was little comparison between a meticulously nurtured grove and the wild profusion of a natural forest.
Instead of the guardian aspect that pulled a grove together with a single purpose, a single voice, the halfling forest was a battleground with every mote of life competing for its place on the land.
It was a place hostile to them as well—which was not entirely surprising. War bureau maniples did not go quietly, no matter where they went, though they were traveling light, at least as far as magic was concerned. Except for the medallions they all wore and the ensorcelled bit of halfling hair, Pavek knew of no Tablelands magic that they'd brought across the mountains into the forest. There were no defiling sorcerers with them, no priests, either—unless the forest sensed that templars borrowed spellcraft from the Lion-King or recognized Pavek's clumsy curiosity as the sign of a druid.
Even without magic, however, a living forest had reason to resent their intrusion. A double maniple of templars armed with broad-bladed, single-edged swords hacked a wide swathe through the undergrowth as they marched, still following the straight course set by the strands of blond hair Pavek now carried in a little pouch on the gold chain of his high templar's medallion.
It was the morning of the twelfth day and the start of their first full day in the forest. Last night, the two moons had been in the sky all night. They were both nearly full, and silvery little Ral was yapping toward golden Guthay's middle.
Pavek could remember other times when both moons had shown their full faces at the same time, but never when they'd been on the collision course of last night. It seemed to Pavek that Ral would crash against Guthay's trailing edge tonight or tomorrow night, which would be the significant thirteenth night. He mentioned his suspicions to the commandant once they'd broken camp and were marching through the forest again, and his concern that Ral would be destroyed. "If Kakzim knew that the moons were going to crash—"
Pavek bit his lip and held silent while he weighed what the Lion-King had told him about how using magic now would destroy Urik. Easier to believe that no spells would be available until after the sorcerer-king had prevented catastrophe in the heavens than to think Hamanu had been serious bout birthing dragons and the death of Urik.