The Brazen Gambit (23 page)

"Pavek's ready to talk," Yohan announced. "Aren't you, Pavek?"

So he talked, softly at first. Telhami's face was calm. Her eyes, seemingly focused on some other time and place,
were unreadable. Akashia, he discovered after a moment, was no more able to look at him than he'd been able to look at
her. But everyone else was staring at him, none more pointedly than Yohan, himself.

He told them about Laq: what he'd seen of its making, how it killed, and then, for no good reason at all, he told
them about Zvain.

"He lost his father to that poison-" Never mind that the boy had said the raver wasn't his father "-and his mother.
He's an orphan now on the streets of Urik. A common person of Urik, one of those you say you're helping. What good
does your zarneeka do him? He can't afford to buy Ral's Breath; it can't cure the emptiness in his life. It won't protect
him from the slavers and worse that haunt Urik's streets, looking for orphans like him. Picture him in your mind, then
ask him how important your precious zarneeka is to him when he's not going to get Ral's Breath, he's just going to
have to live with the havoc and destruction Laq wreaks on his world-"

The words stopped flowing as suddenly as they had begun. His voice, which had risen to an impassioned
bellow, went quiet His tongue lay lifeless on the floor of his mouth. There wasn't another mortal sound in the hut. All
eyes were on him, even Akashia's. All mouths gaped silently open, even Telhami's.

And he realized, as his knees went liquid, that he was not alone. The guardian's essence had flowed through him,
as it flowed through Akashia when she healed or Telhami when she flew invisibly from one part of Quraite to another.
The guardian had shaped the words he, himself, had chosen to speak. The guardian had lent him an eloquence and
power that could not be ignored.

He tried again to speak, to offer an explanation, an excuse for what had happened, but the guardian was finished
with him. Its essence drained away, swirling down his legs like wind and water. Yohan's fist, still clamped over his
shirt, was a necessary support.

"I'm-I'm not-I'm finished," he stammered before Yohan reeled him in.

"He speaks well for me," someone whose face Pavek couldn't see, whose voice he didn't recognize, announced
to the others.

Murmured harmony rippled through the hut, around and behind him, but not in front of him, where neither
Telhami nor Akashia appeared pleased.

"Zvain-" Pavek began haltingly, seeking words that would explain how ordinary the boy was in the brutal world
of Urik, so different from Quraite.

"Is doomed," Telhami concluded, and it seemed, from the set of her spine and the bright intensity of her eyes,
that the guardian flowed with her, now. "There's nothing anyone can do for him. We must think about those who will
survive. They're the future. We will not burn our zarneeka bushes for their sakes. We will not cower here, hiding from
enemies we have not measured for ourselves. We will return to Urik. We will study this poison, Laq, and this High
Templar and his minions. And we will thwart his ambitions without-"

Suddenly, Telhami fell, clutching her gut and nearly tumbling from her platform. Akashia was right there, panic in
her face and voice, but not in the commands she shouted, "Clear a path! Let the air in! Fetch water!" nor was it in her
arms as she cradled the woman she revered as Grandmother.

Pavek retreated with the others, making room for the breezes and for the druid dashed for the well with a bowl in
his hands. He crowded against Yohan, whose brawny arm shivered against his back. It seemed clear, if ominous, to a
templar: Quraite's guardian did not approve of Telhami's plan and Quraite's guardian was more powerful than any
living druid. Perhaps, as Yohan claimed, the guardian had ignored the community's prior disobedience, as Hamanu
tolerated an occasional curse against his name and as slaveowners endured their living property's sullen insolence;
but it wasn't ignoring disobedience this time.

Before the water arrived, a flickering light began to radiate across Telhami's body. Swiftly, the soft yellow light
thickened until Akashia's arms could not be seen through the dazzle.

She's dying, Pavek thought. Quraite's claiming her, as it claimed the bones in her grove. For a heartbeat he
wondered if the guardian's appetite would be sated with the old woman, or if it would feed on additional disobedience,
Akashia's disobedience. Then the radiance collapsed, and coherent thought fled his mind.

Dazed and blinking, but otherwise unharmed, Akashia sat empty-handed in the dusty sunlight of an Athasian
day.

"She's gone," someone whispered, a fanner by the look of her.

"Gone," echoed from the other side of the room, more frantic as the instant of disbelief yielded to grief and
unbearable emptiness.

"Grandmother's gone!" erupted from several mouths, several hearts-bereavement no longer limited to the farmers.

The unimaginable had happened. The unthinkable demanded immediate attention. Akashia stood up, pale and
shaken, but apparently aware of her responsibilities. Pavek felt himself grow calmer, felt his feet root themselves in the
dirt again as she raised her hands to summon the guardian and read its essence. In the company of so many druids, in
such extraordinary circumstances, he felt it, too, though he lacked the wisdom and experience to interpret the message,
whipping through his body and his mind.

"Not gone," Akashia announced after a moment, emphasizing finality and rejecting it at the same time. "She's
gone to the stowaway. The stowaway's attacked. The stowaway's breached! She seeks. She finds...."

With her voice trailing off into a sob, Akashia fled the hut. The rest followed, farmer and druid alike, her words
having evidently had more meaning to them than they'd had to him. He guessed, but did not know.

He caught Yohan's arm. "What stowaway?" he asked as dwarf asked: "Who breached it?"

They glowered, each waiting for the other to answer first, and listening as alarm raced through the village.
Quraiters who had not been included in the meeting ran past the open door, all headed for the southeast path: the path
by which Pavek had entered Quraite and that he had not explored since, because the salt plain encroached closest
there.

"Who?" Yohan demanded, breaking loose from Pavek's grip.

"No idea," Pavek insisted with a shrug.

He'd felt something, and that was more than Yohan had possibly done, but that was all, and that was completely
gone now. He stood in the doorway. Only a few weanling children remained in the common, tended by a few adults
whose southeasterly pointing faces proclaimed that they'd rather be somewhere else.

"What's the stowaway? If I knew that-maybe-"

Yohan pressed behind him in the doorway. "Where they store the zarneeka seeds to ripen and age under the
ground." He shouldered past and started walking.

There was no one left to give him an order, so he fell in step a few paces behind. The shimmering white expanse
of the salt wastes was visible from the far side of the tree ring around the village. A few clumps of rock and scraggly
bushes dotted the wilderness. No druid could nurture a grove this close to the Sun's Fist. But Yohan kept going,
following Quraiters strung out in a sparse line until they were indistinguishable from the wilderness itself.

They gathered in a place without trees or water, where the salt flats seemed a bit closer and the village behind
them was reduced to a line of half-sized trees. Pavek, at the rear of the gathering, was as ignorant as he'd been at the
hut. But the crowd parted for him-or it parted for Yohan-and he was able to flow to the center in the dwarfs wake.

Telhami sat on an unremarkable stone beside a shallow, round, and apparently empty hole. She sifted gritty dirt
through the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. Her neck was bent deeply: Pavek remembered that sunlight
hurt her eyes, and remembered her broad-brimmed, veiled hat hanging in its place by the door. He wished he'd thought
to bring it with him; a foolish, sentimental wish since, when he left the hut, he hadn't known where he was going.

A downcast Akashia approached them. "Ruari," she whispered to Yohan, loudly enough for Pavek to hear. The
dwarf spat into the yellow-flecked ground.

"Can't be," he countered. "That doesn't square with Telhami collapsing right when she did. The moment was too
perfect. You were going to take zarneeka to Urik; now you can't. Ruari couldn't be eavesdropping and undermining at
the same time. Don't blame the half-wit scum just because your guardian got the upper hand."

Akashia gave him a sharp-edged glower. "He was sitting here, in the ruins, waiting for Grandmother when she
arrived. He confessed everything. He'd talked to the elves; he knew everything we knew. He was afraid you'd persuade
us to take the zarneeka to Urik, or steal it yourself, if you couldn't. He decided to take matters into his own hands. He
hates you, Pavek. Hates you with a passion that blinds him to everything else. He thought he was the only one who
could stop you."

"But he stopped you instead," Pavek snorted with irony and earned himself another bitter look.

"We're right, Pavek, and you're wrong. You're all wrong: both of you and Ruari, as well."

"The guardian disagrees."

"This was Ruari's doing: his hate, his blindness."

"Where is he? This time I do want to talk to him."

"I don't know." Akashia flinched toward Telhami as she turned away.

Pavek had learned the language of guilt and anxiety before he left the orphanage. It was an early, essential part of
a templar's education. Instructors made certain their students learned to read the truth on the faces around them, and-if
they were wise or clever-to hide their own emotions behind an enigmatic, intimidating sneer. Pavek wore a templar
sneer when he cast a shadow over Telhami and called her name.

The instructors had never claimed he was wise or clever. They'd repeatedly said he was a fool who didn't know
when to keep his big mouth shut.

"Where'd you send Ruari?" he demanded.

She opened her hands. The yellow-stained dirt streamed to the ground. "I didn't send him anywhere. He's hiding
in his grove."

"Where's his grove?"

"I can't tell you," her voice was faint and listless. "He wished for privacy, Just-Plain Pavek. I grant it to him. He
wants to be alone for a while. I told him what you said. He needs to be alone."

"The guardian wouldn't suck his bones into the ground, for you?" He could hear the foolishness in his voice. He
wished he could swallow his tongue, but recklessness was another old habit, impossible to resist when righteousness
fanned its flames. "He wished for privacy, instead, and you granted his wish. For how long, Telhami? How long does
Ruari need to be alone in his grove. Until he starves?"

"A druid can't starve in his grove," Yohan said from behind. "Mind yourself. Ruari's safe enough in his grove, if
mat's where he is."

Recklessness, it seemed, was catching.

He spread his feet to shoulder width and propped his fists atop his hips. "Where is the scum? I want to tell him
he's done the right thing. I need to tell him. How can I find him?"

"You can't!" Akashia sprang, shouting, to her feet. She smashed her fist sincerely, but ineffectively, against his
chest. "Ruari's gone to his grove and pulled it in around him. He's cut himself off. He doesn't want to be found. He
doesn't want anything to do with anyone, ever again."

"I'm not interested in what the scum wants. Point me toward his grove. I'll walk until I find the little beggar."

"Knowing where Ruari's grove is-was-won't help you. He's hiding, Pavek," Telhami said in a soft voice that,
nonetheless, captured his attention. "There's nothing any of us can do, you least of all. Ruari's hiding. His choice-a
druid's choice-not mine. Ruari hasn't stopped anything. Zarneeka will go to Urik as it always has; that's my choice. He
couldn't accept that. I couldn't let him leave Quraite, not as full of spite and vengeance as he was. He chose to hide
forever and a day. Forever's a long time, Just-Plain Pavek, but a day or a week will do him good. But the choice to hide
was his, and the choice to return will be his. And mine. This is not a quarrel between him and you, Pavek. Ruari is a
druid, and this is the way it must be, Pavek. Do you understand?"

"In my dreams, great one." The invocation for fire was written clearly in his mind's eye. The power to transform
the very air around them into a wall of flames throbbed beneath his feet. Telhami knew it; he could look into those
ancient, unblinking eyes and see the knowledge there. And power far greater than any he could hope to command.

Your choice, Pavek. Her voice was clear, but her lips hadn't moved.

The tips of his fingers touched; the guardian's power surged within him, then ebbed. He wasn't a druid. He
couldn't choose to hide in a grove. He could choose between understanding and incineration: a familiar sort of choice
for a man who'd worn King Hamanu's yellow. A comfortable choice.

Ruari meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. The scum simply hated him to the point of poison and beyond,
because of his father, not zarneeka. Let Ruari hide in his damned grove. Let him stay there until he rotted, if he couldn't
starve. He was more trouble than he was worth; the world wasn't losing anything-

Except justice: a balance of rights and wrongs between him and Ruari that could never be redressed with one of
them hiding forever and a day. The invocation erased itself; the power evaporated.

"I don't understand, and I refuse to make your choice. I will find him."
The cool, guiding breeze from a druid's grove blew only when the druid willed it to. The air around the ruined
stowaway grew still as Quraite's druids, one by one and following Telhami's example, inhaled the essence of their
groves.

But druidry wasn't the only magic in Quraite. A small, ceramic lump had entered the guardian's land with Pavek.
He had taken it directly from King Hamanu's hands when he was still a boy living in the templar orphanage. The
memory of the king's stale breath, his sulphurous eyes, and the burning heat of his flesh would never fade. Nor, King
Hamanu had assured him and the dozen other youngsters inducted into the templarate that day, would his memory of
each of them. A Urik templar was linked to his medallion.