The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  "High time for you to get your lazy bones off the floor. The Moonracers have folded up their tents and raised a cloud of dust over the salt flats. Sun's two hands above the trees.".

  Now he remembered exactly why he'd taken refuge beside the ale barrel. With a single syllable oath of despair, he sat up. "The meeting in Telhami's hut. Is it over? What did Akashia say? Did she convince the others to keep on taking zarneeka seeds to Urik?" His tongue still tasted like the inside of a slop bucket, but there was nothing he could do about it until he got to the well, which seemed, suddenly, a long walk away.

  "They're waiting for you," Yohan informed him, dropping a hide-wrapped travel flask into his lap. "You're the one who knows Urik and its templars."

  He unstoppered the flask and passed the opening quickly beneath his nose: old habits, again. Mention had been made of Urik and templars, and when Urik was in a templar's mind, no amount of caution was excessive. But the piercing scent of bitterroot filled his nostrils, and he took a full-mouth swig. The days-old taste vanished. After another pull, he returned a half-emptied flask with a grunt of thanks.

  Yohan tossed him a freshly washed and still damp shirt. Six days' of unshaved beard snagged the cloth as he tugged it over his head. He stroked his chin with a thumb. If he didn't want to face the druids looking like squatter-scum, he needed a lengthy session with a razor and lump of pumice.

  The veteran dwarf extended his arm and made a fist, having apparently read his thoughts. "No rime for that. They're waiting."

  "I don't understand why they're waiting," he complained. I've got nothing to say. Akashia knows what I think."

  "And what do you think, Just-Plain Pavek?" The question held a hint of challenge.

  He grasped the dwarf's wrist and gained his feet with a clean jerk. "Burn it all, every last bush and seed, then pray no one comes looking. Same as I thought last night. Akashia thinks otherwise. I told her I won't argue with her. I'm not getting myself caught between her and Telhami."

  All the bachelor bedding was neatly rolled against the outer walls as they walked down the center of the long hut. All except his own, which needed airing, and-he counted twice to be certain-Ruari's, which hadn't been touched since someone spread it out the previous evening. "Where's he this morning?"

  "You won't get caught between Akashia and Grandmother," Yohan ignored his question completely. "They agree with each other."

  Quraite was quiet outside the bachelors' hut, with no visible signs of the recent festivities. A few farmers were using the morning's last few cool moments to do the heavy work of arranging the evening's fire in the pit-hearth. They hailed Yohan and him with unusual friendliness-or so he thought; he still had trouble measuring these things.

  The men said nothing until they reached the well where they were beyond anyone's earshot. Pavek stretched the night-kinks out of his shoulders raising a bucket of cool water to the surface.

  "Why wait for me, if the women agree with each other? Why not just load up the bugs and start riding toward Urik?"

  He waited a moment for the dwarf's answer, and when none seemed forthcoming-as none had been to his question about Ruari-he bent over the bucket to wash his face. "I'm the one who says when the bugs are loaded-" Pavek continued splashing water on his cheeks "-and when we leave for Urik. And I'm the one who wants to hear you speak your mind beneath Grandmother's roof."

  He sprayed an unwitting mouthful of water over the edge of the bucket. "You what?"

  "I agree with you, that's all. Quraite's been sending zarneeka to Urik since before Grandmother was born, or so she says. And she says, too, that Quraite's not going to fail its obligations just because some Lion's-pet templar has dealt himself into the exchange. I say it's all dangerous nonsense. Athas isn't the place it was before Grandmother was born. Things could change now and stay changed for another thousand years, and maybe wind up worse than they were. Whatever good Ral's Breath does for the rabble, it isn't enough to risk hauling zarneeka seeds to Urik now, or ever again. You know it; I know it. And the guardian knows it, too. But Quraite's used to my saying 'burn the whole crop.' I've never been in favor of it. Damn city doesn't have anything we need; we're surrounded by salt, no point in trading for it!"

  Yohan gestured helplessly. "I only know what they tell me-" he corrected himself "-what Ruari told me after he talked to Kashi. It wouldn't be the first time the women and the guardian have disagreed."

  The rope winch whined as Pavek let the bucket plummet down the well shaft to the water. "They disobey the guardian?" he asked, trying-and failing utterly-to convince himself that this made any sort of sense. "There are rotting bones in Telhami's grove. Near as I can tell, this guardian just reaches out of the ground with roots for fingers, and grabs the ones it doesn't like-"

  "Thought so," Yohan grunted, as if this settled some age-old doubt in his mind. "I couldn't make anything happen, you know. Tried 'til my eyes bugged out of my head. Wasn't worth the effort, so I gave it up. life's good enough here without druidry. But you're different. They say you turned yourself into a sorcerer-king's fountain that first day. You've stuck with it, and you've met the guardian. When you speak up, they'll hear the guardian's voice. Maybe they'll listen."

  He shook his head. In his limited experience, Quraite's guardian was a presence, not a personality, not something a man met or spoke with. "I can't help," he insisted, backing away. Yohan matched him step for step. "Maybe the guardian speaks to the others, but it doesn't speak to me. And, anyway, I'm no persuader."

  "Disaster will come to Quraite if they send zarneeka seeds to the city again! The Lion of Urik will stalk across the salt flats. Do you want that to happen?" Yohan's tone hardened and his jaw jutted forward.

  "What happens happens. If Telhami's gotten away with disobeying the guardian before, maybe she'll get away with it again. Maybe she's wiser than the guardian."

  Dwarves stood shorter than humans. The top of Yohan's bald head barely cleared the middle of his chest. It wasn't easy for Yohan to launch a backhanded clout against the side of a taller man's skull and land it before that taller man sidestepped the danger, but Yohan got the job done with a resounding crack.

  "That's your old yellow robe talking!" Pavek swung wide, and Yohan ducked out of harm's way. "Forget the bureaus. Haven't you learned anything since we hauled you out of Urik?"

  "I've learned Telhami runs Quraite the same way Hamanu runs the Urik templarate."

  Yohan struck his lower jaw again, and his teeth rammed together. He just missed taking a bite out of his own tongue and lost all desire for persuasive conversation. He squatted down in a brawler's ready stance: one fist guarding his face, the other ready to jab any available target. But there weren't many more futile things than a human man trading punches with a solid, healthy dwarf. Yohan's squat was deeper, his fists were huge, and his guard was impenetrable.

  They wove on swaying, trading feints, taking each other's measure until Yohan announced: "You're a waste of my good time, Just-Plain Pavek."

  The dwarf retreated, brushing one foot along the ground in a reverse arc as he spoke. The level of his fists and shoulders remained constant; no targets flashed before Pavek's eyes to draw a foolish attack.

  "I've tried to befriend you here. You've got a few good qualities, but they're worthless because you're the lying sort. I don't keep honor with liars."

  Pavek accepted himself as many unsavory things, but he wasn't a liar, at least not when it counted. "I've never lied to you. I've kept my mouth shut when I had to, and I've said what had to be said to keep the peace-" he thought of Ruari and the kivit poison' "-but you know bloody well that's not lying."

  "You lie to yourself, Pavek. You just plain lie to yourself all the rime. Yes, you're honest with everyone else, and honorable, after a templar's fashion. That makes it worse! You've got a better life here already than you ever hoped to have in Urik: Regulator of the Third Rank! Scraping from the bottom of the civil bureau barrel. Quraite would listen to you, but do you talk? Do you
even listen? No! What happens, happens! Death happens, Pavek. Death is what happens to us all, but I'd like to put mine off a little while longer. What about you, Regulator Pavek? Do you want to die? Do you want Akashia to get caught on Urik's streets? Do you want her to die in Elabon Escrissar's interrogation chamber? Do you want to see Quraite's fields and groves laid waste by the Lion's pet? I'm sure Escrissar will arrange it, Just-Plain Pavek-unless you die first. But you're not a lucky man, are you, Just-Plain Pavek? And templars don't fight for principles, do you, Regulator Pavek? Have you seen a free village when the templars are through with it' It's not a pretty sight, I can promise you that, no lie there."

  "Back off," Pavek snarled, taking his own advice. "I told you: I'm no liar and I'm no persuader, either; they're one and the same. Last night I told Akashia what I thought. It did no good; it did worse than no good. She wouldn't listen."

  "You gave up. You didn't try. You walked away."

  "I told her what I thought. What more could I do?"

  "Try again. Go into Grandmother's hut right now and repeat what you said last night. Remind them both what Elabon Escrissar is and what he'll do-"

  They were four paces apart now, too far for a punch or jab, far enough to think clearly about what was happening.

  He narrowed his eyes. "You know Elabon Escrissar, don't you? From where? Where are you from, anyway? You're no fanner. You wore a medallion and a yellow robe once yourself, didn't you?"

  "Mind-bender?"

  Another shake of the head.

  "You know the templarate. You know the way templars talk, the way templars think. You know Escrissar-know his type, at least. Maybe not Urik, but Raam? Tyr? Which bureau, which city?"

  "No city. Not from around here at all, not that it matters. Quraite's been my home since your grandfather was a pup. It's what I care about, I've forgotten most of the rest."

  "Quraite's your focus?"

  "Maybe. Are you going into that hut now, or are you going to keep lying and running until I plow the ground with that hard skull of yours?"

  Yohan pointed toward Telhami's hut, where he'd been, unconsciously and accidentally, retreating. Through the open door, he could see the light cloth of the druids' robes fluttering in a gentle, unnatural breeze. He couldn't see Telhami but she was undoubtedly there, doing things the way she'd always done them. She'd gambled before with Quraite's guardian-or so Yohan said-but the stakes were higher now that the Dragon was gone and Athas had changed.

  And because the stakes had been raised to their highest, Yohan said he should speak his mind. Him: ten years in a templar orphanage, ten years a templar. He didn't trust his own judgment. Why should anyone else?

  His gut churned over: he'd drunk last night, but never eaten.

  "If I did persuade them-" he said, for his own ears, not Yohan's "-if they listen to me, and I'm wrong... They'd be fools to listen to city-scum like me."

  "What are you if fate proves you right and you die knowing you could have kept Quraite alive-kept Urik alive, if that's what you care about? What happens, happens, Pavek, right? You play the game once, and you play it widi your life. Are you brave enough to let Grandmother and the others make up their own minds?"

  When the matter was stated that way, in that tone, by a leering dwarf, it really wasn't a question. A man either took an unhesitating step across the threshold, or a man wasn't a man at all. And as he wasn't ready to concede that much he. tightened his jaw and entered the hut.

  Telhami sat on her sleeping platform, a bowl of tea on her left and Akashia on her right. Other druids-about eight of. them, not including Ruari-stood along the walls or sat on the floor with a handful of the farmers among them.

  Every face turned toward him, smiled, and greeted him with a name or nod, as if he hadn't kept them waiting for who knew how long... as if they hadn't heard the tag-end of his discussion with Yohan. Akashia herself offered him tea. If it had been anyone else, he might have accepted, but he couldn't meet her eyes or trust himself to take the bowl from her hands without dropping it.

  A shadow fell from the doorway to his shoulder: Yohan stood beside him, one hand pressed against his ribs, pushing him forward. He thought-hoped-it was a signal for him to move aside, take a more inconspicuous place in an outside corner. But those hopes died. He took one step, and his shirt tightened as if an inix had clamped its jaw over the cloth.

  "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 c
ommunity'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?"