by Lynn Abbey
And Kashi was a young, vigorous woman who looked upon the men of Quraite as brothers, not suitors. It was only natural that she might stumble upon her first love in Urik. That was, after all, no small part of the reason why Telhami sent her there in the first place- With Yohan, of course, to watch over her. Two or three human generations ago, the veteran dwarf had been a stranger in Quraite himself. He strode out of the salt barrens in the heat of the day, alone and afoot, guided, he'd said, by an emptiness in his heart, From that first moment she'd trusted his dedication as she'd trusted few others. She bared the mysteries of her grove to him by moonlight but, try as he might, poor Yohan couldn't grow weeds behind an erdlu-pen. The druids' path was closed to him.
If that ragged, ugly and dirty stranger Kashi had hauled out of Urik had harbored a harmful thought toward druids in general or Kashi in particular, he'd have died long before the Fist of the Sun closed around him. Kashi had become Yohan's focus years ago, when her mother died. Yohan would protect her with his life, or spend hereafter as a wailing banshee.
Thoughts of Akashia and Yohan brought a smile to her lips and energy to her limbs. She sipped the water if of Quraite, giving appropriate thanks to spirits both living and i inanimate who made it crisp, dear, and refreshing, then she swallowed the test in two gulps.
"Bring me my hat and veil, little one. They've reached the trees. We don't want to keep them waiting, do we?"
"No, Grandmother," the child agreed, taking the bowl from her hands before fetching the hat from a peg in the center post of the straw hut.
Telhami bowed her head, but only a little. Once she'd been as tall as Akashia; now she was no taller than a gap-toothed girl-child. When the gauzy veil had been looped around her neck and shoulders, she took up a gnarled wooden staff and left her shady hut. Even with the veil, the burning sunlight hurt her eyes. The girl lead her to the center of the circular village where the travelers and the stranger awaited.
Any journey to Quraite was a strenuous experience. When the journey was compounded by the Smoking Crown storm, which fury Telhami had sensed in her momentary mind-bending contact with Akashia, it was no surprise that the travelers seemed weary to the point of exhaustion. Kashi accepted the steadying hands of her friends and neighbors as she dismounted; Ruari, riding doubled-up behind her and favoring a swollen, discolored knee, clearly needed them. Even Yohan was a shade slow leaping down from his kank's saddle.
But no amount of hard-traveling, wind, rain, or mud could account for that tattered stranger atop the soldier-kank. He was, as the girl-child promised, a big man- although his cramped position, wedged beneath the cargo racks, had made him seem larger than he was. His face was marred by a much-broken nose. There was an old scar twisting his upper lip and new ones streaked across his cheek. She had to look at him with her mind's eye to see that he was still a young man, no more than a few years older than Kashi herself-
Where had Kashi found him? Sleeping drunk in some Urik alley?
The stains and tears in the stranger's clothing were older by far than the storm. His hair and beard hadn't been properly groomed in weeks. There was a story here, and she could feel her old-bones weariness melt with anticipation of hearing it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a breeze of children bearing three bowls of water among them, one for each of the returning Quraiters: Akashia, Ruari, and Yohan. There no water for the stranger, who was not yet a part of the community or its traditions.
Brawny humans suffered almost as much as half-giants in the Fist of the Sun. The stranger's thirst hung like an aura around him, an aura she observed closely through her veil. He stood still, like the kanks, while the others drank, giving away nothing of his inner character.
A strange stranger, indeed, if he could watch mouthfuls of water splash and vanish in the dirt without blinking his eyes or running a pasty tongue over salt-cracked lips.
Where had Kashi found him?
And though she'd kept the question strictly within her own thoughts, Kashi looked her way before returning her half-full bowl to the children. Kashi pointed them in the stranger's direction and gave them a gentle shove before coming over.
"I have brought a stranger to Quraite, Grandmother," she said in the formal tones the occasion required. "He calls himself Just-Plain Pavek. He acted without thinking to save Ruari's life during-"
"He's no stranger! He's a templar!" Ruari interrupted, surging between the just-named Pavek and the children, knocking the bowl out of their hands before the stranger got anything to drink. "A street-scum, filthy, yellow-robe templar. Don't trust him, Grandmother. Send him away before he brings more disasters on us. Put him beneath the trees!"
She felt a gasp of horror and revulsion ripple through her community. Ruari's snarling, desperate face blocked her view of Pavek, but sidelong glances at Akashia and Yohan confirmed the basic truth of the youth's angry words. The pieces fell into place: the scars, the resignation, the apathy on the smooth, hard surface of his mind.
It was easy to think of templars as beasts; they thought of each other, and themselves, that way.
But Akashia had brought him here, and Yohan had permitted it. "Why?" she whispered, unable to purge the shock and outrage from her voice. "What place can there be for a templar in Quraite?"
"A former templar, Grandmother. A fugitive." Akashia replied in an uncertain voice. "The templarate put a forty-gold-piece price on his head because he's seen our zarneeka powder transformed into something he calls 'Laq'-"
Her ancient heart stuttered, and she heard the rest of Akashia's words with half an ear. Laq... older than the oldest trees, older than King Hamanu or his square, high-walled city, the syllable-sound awakened sadness and fear in Quraite's guardian spirit. Zarneeka bushes had survived since the days of abundant water in the shade of the trees Telhami and her predecessors nurtured. As the trees had spread, zameeka had spread, too, until there was enough to share with the downtrodden and aching folk of Urik, who called it Ral's Breath. But Laq, like the delicate yellow flower of her dreams, had been forgotten.
Who had dredged Laq from its well-deserved grave?
Hamanu?
The Lion-King had the skills and the inclination to wrest the dark secrets from the dilute powder called Ral's Breath, but if he or his defiler-minions had done so, they would have given their seductive poison a self-celebrating Urikite name.
"Grandmother-? Grandmother-?" Akashia knelt quickly, her wind-blown hair trailing on the ground before her. "I'm sorry, Grandmother. It seemed as if he told the truth; at least he believes he tells the truth. I thought-I thought you should hear him yourself, see him yourself. It's my fault. Mine alone. Ruari never trusted him, not for a moment"
She rested gnarled hands gently atop the younger woman's head. Of course Ruari had not trusted the stranger. Ruari couldn't look at a human man without thinking of his father, and when that human man was also a templar the hatred redoubled. No matter that this Pavek was much too young to have been the yellow-robed scum who'd ravished Ruari's elfin mother and left her for dead in the midden-heaps outside Urik's walls.
That man was long dead. Ghazala's kin might have shunned her while she carried her ill-gotten son, but they'd avenged her promptly. For Ghazala and the rest of the Moonrace tribe, it was over, forgotten. For Ruari, the hatred had begun at the moment of his lonely birth and was entwined in his own flesh, neither wholly elf nor human. It wouldn't end for Ruari until he accepted himself-which Telhami did not expect to see, even if she lived to be twice her current age.
Where human men or templars were concerned, young Ruari's opinion could not be heard first. She circled Kashi's face with her fingertips, lifting the younger woman's head.
"There's no fault. Not yet. Let this stranger speak for himself."
Akashia moved aside.
"Templar of Urik, stand before me!" She thumped her staff on the ground authoritatively, but she didn't invoke Quraite's guardian to cast a spell, nor did she release mind-bending energy.
; "My name is Pavek," he said, taking the first step of his own will. "I was a templar, a regulator, but no longer. No longer of Urik, either. I'm just plain Pavek, unless there's another Pavek here already; then call me whatever you wish. I've been a dead man since I saw a slave distilling black poison from gold wine and your yellow powder. There's nothing you can do to frighten me, Telhami, druid of Quraite-" "On your filthy knees, templar!"
Ruari swung his staff at the stranger's head, but even with the strength and speed of youth, he was neither strong enough, nor fast enough, to land the blow. This time Telhami did invoke the guardian, and with its aid, traversed the three paces between herself and the half-elf in a heartbeat. Her staff, carved from a living branch of the oldest tree in her grove, absorbed the sweep of Ruari's wrath. His body trembled as a backlash reverberated through his limbs and his tawny copper skin turned livid.
"Enough." She chastised with mind-bending more than words. "Enough. Allowances have been made ever since the Moonracers left you behind. Children worship their parents with love, and suffer when that love is not returned; but you are no longer a child."
"He is a templar," Ruari insisted, his voice little more than a whisper. "I know what his kind is like."
"As elves and humans know yours?" she replied with compassion that drained the angry flush from his face.
Shoulders slumped and chin hanging against his chest, Ruari retreated a single, unsteady step. "I'm sorry. Grandmother." The top of his head moved, but not enough to bring his eyes in line with hers. It dropped again, and he retreated to the farthest edge of the gathering.
She knew what she would have to do if Ruari failed to transform his anger into integrity; she hoped it would never be necessary. Then she thrust her hopes aside and scrutinized Just-Plain Pavek through the mesh of her veil. "Tell me more. Tell me about the slave."
Pavek blinked once, and his lips tightened before he said, "A halfling slave-"
"A halfling slave?" she interrupted scornfully. "Only a fool would enslave a halfling. Their spirits wither in captivity. Only a fool would say that he saw a halfling slave making poison."
"I saw what I saw: A halfling slave distilling Laq. His cheeks were carved and blackened. Any Urikite would recognize the pattern as House-"
With a shake of her staff and a surge of mind-bending energy, she nailed the templar where he stood. Anger brought the appropriate memories swimming to the surface of his mind, where she could discern them and their truthfulness. Quickly, she knew as much as she needed to know. Zar-neeka was a halfling word, left from the rime when they and humans dominated a moist, green Athas. As Athas withered, it had seemed that the halflings withered and forgot. But Laq was a halfling word, too. Whatever the halfling was doing, he was no slave, and it was a prudent certainty that he'd recovered more than one mote of ancient knowledge. The rest-the name of his nominal master and the extent of the lion-King's involvement in the treachery-could remain in the murky depths of a templar's mind, for now.
The knowledge would be safe there. Templars did the very thing halflings could not: they hid the truths of their lives from themselves. It was the only way they survived.
But Just-Plain Pavek was an imperfect templar. He had a hefty price on his head and a worried look on his face now that his muscles and his thoughts were his own again. The edge was gone from his stolid confidence.
She let the offer hang between them. There was little doubt that more than a few of those long-hidden scrolls had been written by her hand. She'd been a proud scholar once, and she'd paid the price of pride. Pavek's precious knowledge was no temptation. He'd overplayed himself, which suited her purposes perfectly. They could barter old spell-craft until she decided what to do about the reemergence of halfling alchemy.
"What is your price, Just-Plain Pavek?"
"A place to stay, food to eat, water to drink."
"For how long?" she asked, taking the same tone she'd used with Ruari. "What do you truly want? Spells in the palms of your own hands, not some lump of clay hanging from your neck?"
It was merely logical: why else would a man-a scarred, battered man with burnt-out eyes-commit useless lore into his memory? She smiled beneath her veil. She'd teach him, as she'd tried to teach Yohan, if he answered truthfully. She'd bind him to her own purposes no matter how he answered.
* * *
Pavek would have risked gold to see beneath that raggy veil. He had no gold. He had nothing at all except the truth, which he risked with toothy defiance.
"Yes," he answered loudly enough for everyone, even Ruari on the fringes, to hear. "Yes. Give me spells in the palms of my hands. Make me a druid."
A ripple of nervous laughter passed among the Quraiters, reminding him of the smile on Oelus's face when he'd made a similar request. He was conscious of his hands closing into fists and the need to quash the mockery, starting with the faceless crone in front of him who'd tilted her head like an eyeless bird and clicked her hidden tongue against her teeth.
"Is it so simply done, Just-Plain Pavek? Did you memorize a little cantrip that would transform you from parasite to druid? Bend down and whisper it to me."
He stayed as he was. There were no such invocations. He'd risked everything and missed the mark. Again. Why did he dream of magic when life's least lessons continued to elude him? "The scrolls say only that there must be a mentor and a willing student. I am willing."
"Good!" she cackled and struck the ground with her staff. "Come to my grove. We'll start at once."
For an instant the staff glowed green; then it and Telhami were gone. Vanished. With only the words-"Do not fail me, Just-Plain Pavek. Follow the wind from the center-" whispered in a fast-dying breeze.
"Earth, wind, fire, and rain!" Ruari exclaimed, turning the invocation into a curse. "A templar invited to Grandmother's grove."
The other Quraiters gathered around the empty place where Telhami had stood. They averted their eyes, neither agreeing with the half-wit, nor chastising him for putting their own thoughts into words.
"Start walking, templar. Grandmother's waiting for you," Ruari continued. "You better say good-bye, templar, and start walking. But you'll never find it, not if you walk forever. Your bones will walk 'til they crumble into dust.
The jest's on you-"
"That's enough, Ruari," Akashia said sternly, but her eyes were troubled, and she looked away when he stared directly into them. "Grandmother awaits you. You must find her; you can't stay here."
They were already standing at the center of Quraite, where there wasn't any wind now that the breeze from Telhami's departure had waned. He raked sweat-stiff hair away from his face. His tongue was swollen, and his lips were salt-cracked. He wanted to sit in the shade with a bowl of water, but these druids, who held themselves far above Hamanu's templars, wanted him to kill himself walking through the desert.
"A cool wind blows from the center, from the grove," Akashia assured him, as if she'd sensed his thoughts. "Feel it on your face and follow it to the grove."
He spun in place, not expecting to feel a cool breath of air, and not finding one, either. Like Ruari, Yohan stood slightly apart from the rest, with his arms folded across his chest and the index ringer of his right hand tapping above his left elbow.
Once, twice, three times, and a pause; then, once, twice, three times before another pause.
A signal. Pavek was grateful for the gesture, though he had no idea how to interpret it.
Ruari taunted him again: "Can't feel a thing, can you, templar?" The smile twisting the half-elfs lips was worthy of Elabon Escrissar, another half-elf. "Maybe you'll die standing instead of walking."
He squared his shoulders and started walking toward the smirking youth. One step. Two steps. A third, and Ruari was within arms' reach. If he was going to die anyway, there was a great temptation to take the half-wit with him. But he contented himself with a smile of his own, the particular lopsided smile that made his scar throb and revealed his teeth at the corner of his mouth.
He was well beyond the oasis before he reached up to soothe the sore flesh and agitated nerves.
By then, a cool breeze was blowing against his face.
Chapter Nine
Zvain took a tentative step into the dusky, carpeted chamber. He dared a glance at bis host, who wore an unadorned, bleached robe and sat amid similarly colorless cushions.
The master of this domain was an ageless-seeming man with pale skin and impassive features, topped by long, faintly yellow hair. His hands were folded in his lap. His face was lean and angular: elven, or partly so. His eyes sloped more than human eyes, but they were shadowed by brows of human heaviness.
Zvain could not determine their color, or more importantly, their focus.
He wanted to see those eyes very much, for although the master's voice was cordial and the chamber more than inviting, he'd just been released from considerably less congenial surroundings where his wishes, when he'd dared express them, had brought him blows, mocking laughter, and curses.
"On your knees with an answer, boy!"
A cheek-scarred mul struck him between the shoulders. He staggered forward but caught his balance before his bare feet touched the carpet. Generally, he had a free man's pity for branded slaves, but he felt no such soft emotion for the armed and armored brute who, with a succession of punches and kicks, had herded him through the long, empty corridors.
If his wishes had suddenly become commands, he knew what he wanted: "Send him away," he said hoarsely, flicking his thumb toward the mul. His throat was raw from too much crying and fear. "That's my wish."
The shadows beneath the blond man's brows deepened. He blinked, then said: "Therdukon, you are dismissed."
"Your will, my lord."
The countless sharpened scales of Therdukon's body-armor clattered against each other as the mul saluted and spun smartly on the hard leather heels of his similarly defended boots. A dozen jangling footfalls echoed before the sounds faded entirely. Zvain was impressed, but not entirely reassured. He'd seen enough on the streets to know that a master who filled his bodyguard with noisy bullies was apt to be a bully himself, with all the wrath that went with tenderness of pride.
