The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  The woman took a deep breath, staring at the single roof-beam of her establishment. Aware of her own foolishness- treating a vendor of the elven market as if she were a woman of Quraite-Akashia tightened her mind-bending defenses. But the woman was no master of the Unseen Way; her vacant expression was the product of a Tyr-storm of wildly suspicious thoughts whipping through her mind.

  "You bringin' me trouble?" she shouted. Her eyes were sharp-focused now, and filled with rage and madness. "You settin' the yellow-robes on me? You wantin' my place, my trade?" She swore and stalked forward, head down and shoulders raised. "I'll give you trouble. I'll give you more trouble than you dreamed-"

  The hysterical woman came toward Akashia, Yohan sidestepped between them before harm was done.

  "No trouble," he insisted, retreating with cautious, well-balanced strides, pushing her back toward the curtain door.

  "I'm sorry," she apologized as soon as they were both in the alley.

  The red-dressed woman's shouts quieted to inarticulate muttering, but they could still hear her moving through her shop. Fingers with ragged nails appeared at the edges of the curtain, pulling it taut, lashing it to the flimsy frame.

  "Go away! Go away, you hear! Take your trouble somewhere else!"

  The Quraiters were eager to obey. Yohan grabbed the cart traces and, without saying a word, started for the street. Once they were milling through the crowds, Akashia insisted softly, "It was my fault,"

  Yohan pursed his lips together and adjusted his grip on the traces. He was as angry as she'd ever seen him, and angry at her as well-which, she knew, was an anger he., found difficult to express.

  "I'm ashamed of myself." She said the things she thought he'd want to say, that she needed to hear. "I was wrong. I made a terrible mistake, thinking because she was my age, she was like me-"

  "Don't talk, that's all," Yohan grumbled. "Let me do the talking. All the talking."

  "I won't forget again," she assured him. "We learned something, though. The Lion-King's confiscated the remaining Ral's Breath. He must know it's been tampered with. Pavek's-"

  "There's no 'must' with Urik or the lion. We don't know anything, yet."

  They went along in stony silence awhile, until she spotted the distinctive signboard slung out over a cross street

  "Do we try there?" she asked. "I'll be quiet, I swear it."

  "See to it," Yohan replied with the same sternness he'd used in the earlier street confrontation.

  Then, after rolling the cart from the street to a less-trafficked alley and leaving the two farmers to stand guard beside it, he led her into the apothecary's shop.

  This second proprietor was an elf, lean and shifty as any lifelong desert nomad, and clear-headed, as the red-dressed woman had not been. His establishment was better stocked, with neat shelves full of bowls and boxes, each labeled with a picture of its contents and the symptoms those contents were purported to relieve. One smallish box bore one picture of a yawning moon and another of a crying baby with an oversized tooth. She nudged Yohan gently and made arrowlike movements with her eyes to direct his attention to the proper place. He acknowledged with a deliberate blink.

  Yohan and the elven proprietor observed all the rude forms of Urikite conversation. They traded smooth insults and sly insinuations, but the result was the same: the apothecary had no Ral's Breath in stock-the box she'd noticed was, in his words 'as empty as our Lord Hamanu's tomb.' And the elf was adamantly uninterested in purchasing anything they might have to offer.

  "Too much trouble," he insisted. "If you're in pain, go to a sawbones healer, or buy yourself something that works-" He gestured toward a shelf of amber bottles, each labeled with a sleeping or smiling face.

  "And that doesn't attract too much attention?" Yohan inquired.

  "That's always wise, isn't it? Who but a fool wants to attract attention?"

  Yohan pointed at the empty Ral's Breath box. "A fool with a baby that's cutting a tooth? There'll always be mothers with babies, and always the fathers who provide them. How does a licensed apothecary meet the demand when yellow-robe scum take away his goods?"

  It seemed for a heartbeat that the elf was going to give them a useful answer, then shouts erupted outside. Akashia instantly recognized the distressed voices of the Quraite fanners and feared the worst. The elf didn't know about the farmers or the loaded cart they guarded, but he came to the same conclusion.

  She felt the mind-bending assault too: a burning agony that lanced her eyes and roared in her ears. It threatened to engulf every mote of knowledge and identity in her mind, but it was not the worst she'd encountered: when Grandmother taught the Unseen Way she hadn't pulled her punches. After an eyeblink of monsters from the mind-bender's nightmares, Akashia successfully wrapped herself in a fortress of peace. The attack beat harmlessly against her defenses, which, in the nature of the Unseen Way, formed an invisible sphere around her body that extended to Yohan and the apothecary, both of whom had fallen to the floor in screaming terror.

  The power of an Unseen attack was such that the invading images summoned up the victim's direst memories that continued to wreak their havoc after the mind-bender had withdrawn. Akashia had thrown up her fortress before the invasion took root; she cast out the mind-bender's repulsive images one by one.

  Yohan's lesser defenses had been overwhelmed. His mind radiated gore-a gathering of dwarves cut down and mutilated by mounted soldiers-until she pinched the bridge of his nose. His thoughts righted themselves quickly and he caught her hand before she could administer a similar mercy to the writhing elf.

  "No time! Which way? Where's it coming from?"

  She swung her mind's attention from the visible world to the Unseen one where an evil drone echoed everywhere. No matter what she did, she couldn't localize the attack, which was continuing. "I-I don't know. It's everywhere-" Then another, more horrible thought rose from her own imagination. "We're surrounded."

  "We've got to try-" Yohan towed her toward the door. "Maybe they're not looking for us."

  But she knew, as soon as he said the words, that the attack had been directed at them-even though it caught the apothecary and a dozen street-side passersby in its net. And the Quraite farmers, as well. They'd both collapsed beside the cart. Blood seeped from the nose, mouth, and ears of the man who'd lost his knife. Akashia touched him lightly and withdrew. His life essence had been driven out; there was nothing she could do for him.

  The other farmer was still alive, but his mind remained empty after she banished the ravening beasts of his nightmares. His sense of self might come back of its own, given enough time--but there wasn't any time at all. Luckless city-dwellers lay on the ground, a few of them bleeding like the first fanner, the others wailing in their misery as the attack continued.

  A ragged, half-grown boy crouched warily a short step away from one of the fallen passersby. He reached for the coin purse looped over the man's belt and suffered no ill-effects until, in trying to tug it free, his head and shoulders leaned forward. Then he collapsed with a shriek. She thought he might roll free, but in an instant the mind-bending attack had paralyzed him and he was as helpless as the others. Still she knew how to defeat the assault.

  "We can get away." She grappled with the living, but mindless farmer, trying to lift him into the zarneeka cart. "The attack's a sphere that's held right here. If we can get outside it-"

  Yohan pulled her away from the farmer and the cart. "No time," he snarled. "Is he still attacking?''

  "He?" She listened with her mind's ears and heard the strident drone still battering futilely against her defenses.

  "He. She. What difference does it make? Is it continuing?"

  "Yes. The same as before. I can't tell where it's coming from. It still seems to be coming from everywhere at once." "Then it doesn't matter where we go." Yohan kept a firm left-side grip on-her wrist, to keep them together and remain within the protective sphere of the mind-bending defenses she maintained. He scanned the streets and shado
ws beyond the apothecary. They were empty now, except for those Urikites unfortunate enough to get caught in the attack. She guessed that even the scroungers had fled once they saw the boy collapse. She thought their chances for escape were good and tried to pull back to the cart.

  "Forget them. Stay close. You're what's important," he snarled. "He's out there," the dwarf said more softly, making a slow study of the nearest rooftops. "I can feel him."

  She believed him; sometimes an individual with a wild mind-bending talent could do things, discern enemies, that a trained mind could not. They moved carefully among the stricken Urikites until they crossed an unseen boundary and the drone, but not Yohan's wariness, diminished.

  "Hide us," he commanded as they sneaked around one corner, then another.

  But hiding in Urik was not like hiding in Quraite. There was no guardian to invoke or familiar lands in which to lose themselves. She could use the Unseen Way to trick another mind into not seeing what was right before his or her eyes. But mind-bending was all illusion and completely dependent on her ability to find the one or many who were attacking them. She tried again to trace the attack to its source, now that they were beyond its range-and encountered a defensive barrier as strong as Telhami's and darker than she'd imagined that anything could be.

  Nothing she knew would pierce the mind-bender's defense or insert an illusion behind it. She wasn't even certain how far away the mind-bender was. Though if he-now that Yohan had planted the notion in her head, it seemed to Akashia that the attack had had a distinctly masculine aura-was not physically nearby, then he was that much more skilled, that much stronger.

  And the mind-bender's presence didn't lessen as they walked through the market, trying not to attract attention.

  "We're being followed." She said, with real fear in her heart and voice. "Watched."

  They were deep in the elven market now, alongside the towering yellow walls in an area where nomadic elves hoisted their tents for the days or weeks they spent inside Urik. When the Moonracers-the only nomad tribe Akashia knew by name or sight-visited Quraite, they were courteous guests, welcomed with feasting, singing, and dancing. Here in the market, though the clothes and colors were familiar, the faces were unfriendly, even cruel.

  "The door?" Yohan asked while making intricate movements with his hands.

  Her eyes widened, and so did the elf's, revealing a glimmer of cooperation. She thought that they'd found help, hoped and prayed that they'd found it. But he cocked his head, like a jozhal sniffing the wind; he was kenning her with the Unseen Way and sensed both her defenses and the attack that caused her to raise them.

  "Sundown," he said with a semblance of regret. "Come back at sundown and it will be opened. Live that long, my friend, and return."

  He held the first two fingers of his right hand against his chin, a gesture that conveyed silence and respect and something more that she could not interpret. Then he took a step backward and quickly disappeared into the maze of tents. "What was that?"

  Yohan muttered under his breath before answering: "An old debt. Very old. But debts have to be paid, Kashi. Never forget that. We can collect at sundown."

  "He called you friend." Friendship was not casual among elves, especially nomadic tribes. "Who was he?"

  "Never met him before."

  He started back the way they'd come. Their enemy hadn't given up. The sense that they were being watched or followed lingered throughout a long, frustrating afternoon. It ebbed occasionally-Yohan could walk in her protection without holding her hand-and intensified when they tried to return to the alley where they'd abandoned the cart and their companion. She fretted with guilt about the farmer, but, the dark pressure against her defenses never let up completely, and she understood that there were rescues she didn't dare attempt.

  And there were those she had to plan immediately.

  "If he attacks again, you must get away," she told Yohan when they were resting behind a sausager's oven.

  "No-"

  "I'm serious, Yohan. Absolutely serious. Whoever is after us-" In her mind she'd begun identify the mind-bender as the templar Pavek had named Elabon Escrissar, the man who'd put a price on Pavek's head, the man who turned their zarneeka into Laq "-whoever he is, he's a mind-bender. A powerful mind-bender. He'd get Quraite out of you, Yohan; you know that. But I can keep the secret-to the death, if I have to."

  "Kashi-"

  "I can. I must. I will. And you must get back to Quraite. You were right all along. Pavek is right; the Moonracers are right. This is about Laq, about a deadly poison and a madman-two madmen: Elabon Escrissar and that halfling alchemist. It's not about zarneeka or Ral's Breath. I should have listened. We should have stayed away. You must warn Grandmother. You must tell her to protect Quraite."

  Yohan stared into the heat waves shimmering above the oven. "I'd sooner die than leave you, Kashi."

  "No-"

  The word slipped out as a sigh, but she knew, from way he'd said the words that the suspicions she'd had since childhood were, indeed, true. Yohan's dwarven focus wasn't his devotion to Quraite or his devotion to Grandmother and the other druids. It was devotion to her and her alone. She'd become the center of his life. Whatever happened to her, he took it as bis personal guilt. If she died, Yohan was doomed to the half-life of a banshee, haunting the wastelands forever because he'd failed to protect the one thing above all others that was important to him.

  "Then we must return to Quraite together."

  He clapped her once on the knee before rising again to his feet, a signal that their rest was done and it was time to start moving again. "That, we must."

  * * *

  The sun descended, growing as large as the bulging dome tower atop King Hamanu's palace and glowing like fresh-spilled blood. Yohan, whose sense of direction had never faltered, returned them to the nomad encampment alongside the walls. They were both exhausted, and Akashia's mind still rang with a mind-bender's probe, but she allowed herself to believe that they would escape through whatever door the austere elf would provide. And once they were out of Urik, she had no doubt that they could make their way safely to Quraite.

  She wasn't foolish enough to think that the danger was past, but her breath came easier, and there was new strength in her legs.

  The elf with straw-colored braids was nowhere to be seen when they entered the tent-covered expanse between the market and the wall. She turned to ask Yohan a question and caught a flicker of movement among the tents. Her eyes alone saw nothing untoward: the encampment was crowded. There were movements everywhere. But her mind's eye, made a vigilant pan of her defenses by the Unseen Way, had seen a smear of templar yellow. Not the color of the walls, but the more garish color worn every day by every templar and that, coupled with the continued mind-bending pressure against her defenses, was not to be ignored.

  She shook Yohan's wrist and pointed to the place where her mind said the yellow had appeared and disappeared. "Danger!"

  Yohan swept her behind him and stood chin-out, facing the tents, ready for whatever fate blew their way. A fast heartbeat later the ugliest, hairiest dwarf she'd ever seen- the procurer to whom they usually traded their zarneekamarched purposefully into sight. "It's over," the procurer announced without drawing a weapon. "Give up quietly. You've brought a forbidden commodity into the city. There's a fine to be paid, and a few questions to be answered. Nothing serious-if you come quietly."

  But she stayed where she was. The procurer was dressed in a rumpled robe of regulation color, he was the smear of yellow her mind's eye had seen, but he wasn't the source of the mind-bending probes.

  "There's another one, the mind-bender. You'll lose your protection if too much distance comes between us."

  "I'll stand. You run."

  Run where? she wanted to ask. He was the one who knew Urik's secrets and he was the one to whom the elf had promised a door....

  If the elf hadn't just turned around and sold them to the highest bidder.

  The whole qu
estion became moot a moment later when a second figure emerged from the tent maze: a human woman, powerfully built, and dressed in templar yellow. Her right arm, naked from the shoulder down, was covered with a bizarre tangle of serpentine tattoos.

  "You run," Akashia whispered into Yohan's ear. "Run all the way to Grandmother."

  He didn't budge a step as the hairy dwarf and tattooed woman advanced. The elves of the encampment saw trouble brewing and made themselves scarce.

  "I'll manage to protect you until you can hide," she whispered urgently. "Run!"

  "Protect us both."

  "I can't. Find your 'friend.' Use the 'door.' Debts must be paid." She gave Yohan a shove in the small of his back, nothing that could ordinarily move a man of his brawn and determination. "I'm sorry, Yohan. I'm sorry in my heart that I brought you here, but you have to go. One of us has to get back to Quraite. Don't look back and don't believe what I send." She kissed the top of his bald head, breathing out a bit of spellcraft as she did, though she was far from Quraite and her druidry was weak. She hoped to give him some protection from the attack she intended to make, but mostly she wanted him to run away.

  Yohan shifted his balance and began to move. He took a few heavy-footed, short-legged strides before the other dwarf gave chase. The woman could have caught Yohan, but she'd never have brought him down; she came after Akashia instead.

  Akashia counted three beats of her pounding heart then, holding back only the wherewithal to sequester Quraite's secrets deep within her memory, launched an all-out mind-bending assault of her own. The creatures of all the nightmares she remembered shot across the void and into the imagination of any mind close enough to receive them and not trained to resist them.

  Her last conscious thoughts were for Yohan's safety and escape, then she surrendered completely to the darkest corners of her imagination. She let out hatred, fear, and vengeance: every malicious thought she'd ever had and repressed-exactly as Grandmother had told her she'd have to do if she came to a moment like this, when everything important was at stake.

  And even though she risked losing herself forever in the dark.