by Lynn Abbey
Maybe it was time to go back to Urik—not forever, not to accept the Lion-King's offer, but for Zvain. The boy would be better off returning to his old life, scrounging under Gold Street, than surrounded by scorn in Quraite. Pavek knew he was telling himself a lie, a choice between scorn and scrounging was no choice at all. He'd have to come up with something better, or convince himself that Zvain's fate was no concern of his.
He swung an arm around Zvain's shoulders, trying to reel him in for a reassuring hug and wound up wrestling with him instead. Ruari joined in, and they were fully absorbed in their own noisy games as they came into the village-proper.
"It's taken you long enough to get here!"
A woman's voice brought them all to a shame-faced halt.
"We came as soon as I heard the message. I was deep in the grove," Pavek lied quickly. "They had to wait for me to get back to the pool."
"Quraite could have been destroyed by now," Akashia countered, believing the lie, Pavek guessed, but unpersuaded by it.
He guessed, as well, that Quraite's destruction would take more than an afternoon. Rather than pull down or fill in barricades and ditches they'd thrown up before their battle against Escrissar, Akashia had given orders to expand. Quraite had surrendered fertile fields to permanent fortifications. By the time she was satisfied, finished, there'd be two concentric elf-high berms around the village with a palisade atop the inner one and a barrier of sharpened stakes lining the ditch between them.
"You're supposed to set an example, Pavek," she continued. "Your grove is the very center of Quraite. If you don't care, why should anyone else? They follow your example. Not just Ruari and—"
But Akashia wouldn't say Zvain's name, not even during a tirade. The boy hid behind Pavek.
"Not just these two, but all the rest. You should be wary all the time."
"Telhami wasn't worried," Pavek snapped quickly, thinking more about Zvain than the effect his words were going to have on Akashia. He might have gut-punched her for the look of shock and pain that came down over her face.
"Sorry I said anything," Pavek apologized, ignoring the fist Zvain thumped against his spine. "I know it's hard for you, not having Telhami's grove, or her to talk to. If there's anything you need to ask, I can—"
Once again he'd said precisely the wrong thing.
"I don't need your help, high templar of Urik!"
His jaw dropped; she'd never called him that before.
"Well, that is you, isn't it? There's a woman coming across the Sun's Fist, bound straight for Quraite as if she knows exactly where it lies, and there's only one thought in her head: Find Pavek, high templar of Urik! Not the erstwhile templar, not the just-plain civil bureau templar, but high templar. Why not make yourself useful: Go out there and welcome her."
Pavek was speechless. His hands rose and fell in futile gestures of confusion. He certainly didn't know who was coming. If there was any substance to Telhami's shimmering green body, he was going to grab her and shake her until her teeth rattled, but until then, all he could do was mutter something incoherent in Akashia's direction and start walking toward the Fist, with Ruari and Zvain clinging to his shadow.
Chapter Five
Salt sprites still danced on the Sun's Fist—short-lived spirals of sparkling powder that swirled up from the flats and glowed like flames in the dying light of sunset. In the east, golden Guthay had already climbed above the horizon. Pavek spread his arms, stopping his young companions before they strode from the hard, dun-colored dirt of the barrens onto the dead-white salt. With the moon rising, there'd be ample light for finding their visitor and no need to risk themselves on the Fist until the sun was well set.
"Who do you think it is?" Ruari asked while they waited.
Pavek shook his head. He hadn't left any women behind who would come looking for him; none at all who might know him as a high templar. That was an unwelcome title that Lord Hamanu had bestowed upon him, which implied—to Pavek's great discomfort—that Lord Hamanu had sent the messenger, too.
He strained his eyes staring Urik-ward. There was nothing there to be seen, not yet. He consoled himself with the knowledge that Telhami must have known and that while she would tease and test him relentlessly, her mischievous-ness didn't include exposing Quraite to danger.
"Maybe she's dead," Zvain suggested, adding a melodramatic cough to indicate the way her death might have occurred.
Ruari countered with: "Maybe she got lost, or maybe she will get lost. The guardian reaches this far, Pavek. It could cloud her mind, if you don't want to meet her, and she'd wander till her bones baked."
"Thanks for the thought, but I doubt it," Pavek said with a bitter laugh. "If not wanting to meet her were enough, Akashia would have done it already."
If Just-Plain Pavek had been a wagering man—which he wasn't—he'd have wagered everything he owned that Akashia had done her best to direct the guardian's power against their visitor. That power was formidable, but it wasn't infallible or insurmountable. Elabon Escrissar wouldn't have been able to find Quraite, much less attack it, if he hadn't been able to pawn Zvain off on him, Ruari, and Yohan while they were distracted rescuing Akashia from Escrissar. But once Zvain was in Quraite he opened his mind to his master. From that moment forward, Escrissar had known exactly where to bring his mercenary force, and there was nothing Quraite's guardian could do to cloud his mind.
Likewise, Lord Hamanu had apparently known of Quraite's existence. He'd asked after Telhami by name immediately after he'd disposed of Escrissar and chided her gently about the village's sorry condition. But even the Lion of Urik hadn't known where Quraite was until Pavek had unslung his medallion and shown the way. The mind of a sorcerer-king was, perhaps, the most unnatural, incomprehensible entity Pavek could imagine, but he was certain Lord Hamanu hadn't forgotten any of them, or where they lived.
The sun was gone. The last salt sprites dissolved into powder that would sleep until dawn. Countless shades of lavender and purple dyed the heavens as the evening stars awakened. Pavek recognized their patterns, but he took his bearings from the land itself before he started across the Fist.
There were two places in this world whose location Pavek believed he would always know. Quraite, behind him, was one. He could see green-skinned Telhami in his mind's eye and calm his own pounding heart in the slow, steady rhythms of life that had endured longer than the Dragon. The other place was Urik, but then, Pavek had roused a guardian spirit in Urik, too, much to Telhami's surprise.
The path between Urik and Quraite was a sword-edge in Pavek's mind: straight, sharp, and unwavering. As far as he knew, he was the only one walking it, but if there were a woman coming the other way, they'd meet soon enough.
Heat abandoned the salt as quickly as the sun's light. They hadn't walked far before the ground was cool beneath their feet and they were grateful for the shirts on their backs. A little bit farther, when the sky had dimmed to deep indigo and the stars were as bright as the moon, Pavek heard the sounds he'd dreaded. Zvain heard them, too, and as he'd done in the face of Akashia's scorn, he tucked himself into Pavek's midnight shadow.
"The Don's bells," the boy whispered.
Pavek grunted his agreement. Most folk who dared the Tableland barrens did so discreetly, striving not to attract the attention of predatory men and beasts. It was otherwise with Lord Hamanu's personal minions. They carried bells—tens, even hundreds of ceramic bells, stone bells, and bells made from rare metals—that announced their passage, and their patron, across the empty land. During Pavek's ten years in the orphanage and ten subsequent years in the civil bureau, he knew of only one time that Urik's official messengers had been waylaid.
Lord Hamanu had hunted the outlaws personally and brought the lot of them—a clutch of escaped slaves: men, women, and their children—back to Urik in wicker cages. With his infinitesimal mercy, the Lion-King could have slain the outlaws in a thousand different and horrible ways, but Urik's king had no mercy where his minion-messenger
s were concerned. He ordered the cages slung above the south gate. The captives had all the water they wanted, but no protection from the sun or the Urikites, and no food, except each other as they starved, one by one. As Pavek recalled, it was two quinths before the last of them died, but the cages had dangled for at least a year, a warning to every would-be miscreant, before the ropes rotted through and the gnawed bones finally spilled to the ground.
Quraite would deal fairly with its uninvited visitor, or suffer the consequences. Pavek swallowed hard and kept walking.
Ruari saw them first, his elven inheritance giving him better night vision and an advantage in height over his human companions.
"What are they?" he asked, adding an under-breath oath of disbelief. "They can't be kanks."
But they were; seven of them spread out in an arrowhead formation. Seven, and all of them bearing travel-swathed riders. And Kashi had sensed only one mind, blaring its intentions as it moved closer to Quraite. That implied magic, either mind-benders who could conceal their thoughts and presence, or templars drawing the Lion-King's power through their medallions, or defilers who transformed plant-life into sterile ash in order to cast their spells. Then again, Urik's king had a well-deserved reputation for thoroughness; he might have sent two of each.
Hamanu had definitely spared nothing to make certain his messenger reached her destination. His kanks were the giants of their kind, and laden with supply bundles in addition to their riders. Their chitin was painted over with bright enamels that glistened in the moonlight and, of course, hung with clattering bells.
When they needed transportation, the druids of Quraite bartered for or bought kanks from the Moonracer tribe. The elven herders were justly proud of their shiny black kanks, selectively bred for endurance and adaptivity. Lord Hamanu, however, wasn't interested in a bug that could run for days on end with nothing but last-year's dried scrub grass to sustain it. The Lion-King of Urik wanted big bugs, powerful bugs, bugs that made a man think twice before he approached them. And what the Lion wanted, the Lion got.
And Pavek would get, too, if he returned to Urik, because these were the bugs that the high templars and the ranking officers of the war bureau rode. The thought made Pavek's knees wobbly as he stood his ground in front of the advancing formation.
The kanks chittered among themselves, a high-pitched drone louder than all the bells combined. They clashed their crescent-hooked mandibles, a gesture made more menacing by the yellow phosphorescence that oozed out of their mouths to cover them. There were worse poisons in the Tablelands, but dead was dead, and kank drool was potent enough to kill. Pavek loosened his sword in its scabbard and wrapped his right hand around its hilt. "In the name of all Quraite, who goes?" he demanded.
"I can't see their faces," Ruari advised with his better nightvision. "They're all slumped over. I don't like this—"
The lead kank—the biggest one, naturally, with mandibles that could slice through a man's neck or thigh with equal ease—took exception to Pavek's weapon. With its antennae flailing, it emitted an ear-piercing drone and sank its weight over its four hindmost legs.
"It's going to charge," Ruari shouted in unnecessary warning.
"You've entered the guarded lands of Quraite! Hospitality is offered. Stand down," Pavek shouted with less authority than he would have liked to hear in his voice. He had the sword drawn, but he and the other two with him were doomed if he had to use it. "Stand down, now!"
The kank reared, brandishing the pincer claws on its front legs. Pavek's breath froze in his throat, then, to his complete astonishment, the kank's hitherto silent, motionless rider hove sideways and tumbled helplessly to the ground, like a sack of grain. That was all the signal Ruari needed. He wasn't fool enough to use druidry in competition with a rider's prod, but if the riders weren't in control, he knew the spells.
Pavek felt his heart skip a beat as Ruari drew upon the guardian's power. He muttered a few words—mnemonics shaping the power and directing it—to create rapport between himself and the bugs. The now-riderless kank dropped to all six feet with a clatter of chitin and bells as Ruari began weaving his arms about. One by one the kanks began to echo his movements with their antennae. Their clashing mandibles slowed, then stopped, and high-pitched chittering faded into silence.
"Good work!" Pavek exclaimed, pounding Ruari on the shoulder hard enough to send him sprawling, but there was a grin on the half-elf's face when he stood up. Pavek was as pleased with himself for remembering the niceties of friendship as he was that Ruari had saved their lives.
With the danger past and the niceties disposed of, there were questions to be answered. Keeping a wary eye on the huge, drowsy kank, Pavek scabbarded his sword and knelt down beside the fallen rider. He got his first answer when, as he rolled the body over, the rider's heavy robe opened. There was a handspan's worth of dark thread intricately woven into a light-colored right-side sleeve. The war bureau wore its ranks on the right and though the patterns were difficult to read, Pavek guessed he was looking at a militant templar, if he was lucky, a pursuivant, if he wasn't—and he usually wasn't lucky.
The robe slipped through his suddenly stiff fingers: old habits getting the better of him. Third-rank regulators of the civil bureau didn't lay hands on war bureau officers. Chiding himself that he was neither in Urik nor a third-rank regulator, Pavek got his hands under the templar's body to finish rolling it over. From the inert weight, he was prepared to see a man's face, even prepared to look down at a corpse. He wasn't prepared for the dark, foul liquid that spilled from the corpse's mouth and nose. It had already soaked the front of his robe and shirt. Pavek's hands holding the robe became damp and sticky.
Men died from the bright, brutal heat on the Sun's Fist— Pavek had nearly died there himself the first time he came across it—but he didn't think anything nearly so natural had killed this man.
"Is he—?" Zvain asked and Pavek, who hadn't known the boy was so close, leapt to his feet from the shock.
"Very," he replied, trying to sound calm.
"May I—May I search him?"
Pavek started to rake his hair, then remembered his fingers and looked for something to wipe them on instead. "Search, not steal, you understand? Everything you find has got to go back to Urik, or we'll have the war bureau hunting our hides as well." He left a dark smear on the kank's enameled chitin.
The boy pursed his lips and jutted his chin, instantly defensive, instantly belligerent. "I'm not stupid"
"Yeah, well—see that you stay that way."
He headed for the next kank and another bloody, much-decorated templar: a dwarf whose lifeless body, all fifteen stones of it, started to fall the moment he touched it. Cursing and shoving for all he was worth, Pavek kept the corpse on top of the kank, but only after he'd gotten himself drenched in stinking blood.
"This one's dead, too," Ruari shouted from the far end of the kank formation.
"Is it a woman?" Pavek wiped his forearms on the trailing hem of the dwarf's robe. "Akashia said a woman was coming."
"No, a man, a templar, and, Pavek, he's got a damned fancy yellow shirt. You think, maybe, there's someone else out here?" "Not a chance. The Lion's the one who changed my rank. These are his kanks, his militants. He's the one who's sending Quraite a messenger. Keep looking."
The saddle had been burnt down to its mix bone frame, although the chitin on which it sat was unharmed, suggesting that the incineration had been very fast, very precise. A leather sack protruded slightly from a hollowed-out place below the pommel, a stowaway of some sort that had been exposed when the padding burned. A few iridescent markings lingered on the sack. Pavek couldn't decipher them, but with the rest, he was fairly certain Lord Hamanu had sent a defiler along with the templars. The defiler's apparent fate confirmed his suspicion that nothing natural had befallen these travelers.
There was another, larger sack attached to the rear of the saddle. The high bureau's seven interlocking circles were stamped in gold on its side. Usu
ally such message satchels were sealed with magic, but there was no magical glamour hovering about the leather, and thinking its contents might tell them something about Lord Hamanu's message, Pavek looked around for a stick with which to prod it open.
He'd just found one when Ruari erupted with a streak of panicky oaths. Casting the stick aside and drawing his sword in its place, Pavek raced to the half-elf's side.
"Pyreen preserve and protect!" Ruari sputtered, invoking the aid of legendary druid paladins. "What is she... it?" he asked, retreating from the rider he'd hauled down from the bug's back.
Pavek caught Ruari at the elbows from behind and steered him to one side. For all his sullenness and swagger, for all his hatred of Urik and the human templar who, in raping his elven mother, had become his father, Ruari was an innocent raised in the clean, free air of Quraite. He knew elves and dwarves and humans and their mixed-blood offspring, but nothing of the more exotic races or the impulses that might drive a woman to mark her body, or wrap it in a gown tight enough to be a second skin and cut with holes to display what the women of Quraite kept discreetly covered.
A templar, though, had seen everything the underside of Urik had to offer—or Pavek thought he had until he squatted down for a better look at what Ruari had found. She was beyond doubt a woman: leaner than Ruari or a full-blooded elf, but not an elf, not at all. Her skin wasn't painted; white-as-salt was its natural color, despite the punishment it must have taken on the journey. Pavek couldn't say whether the marks around her eyes were paint or not, but the eyes themselves were wide-spaced and the mask that ran the length of her face between them covered no recognizable profile. He'd never seen anyone like her before, but he knew what she was—
"New Race."
"What?" Ruari asked, his curiosity calming him already.
"Rotters," Zvain interrupted. He left off searching, but didn't come all the way over to join them. "Better be careful, they're beasts for the arena. Things that got made, not born. Claws and teeth and other things they shouldn't have. Rotters."