by Lynn Abbey
"And if I refuse?" he flexed muscles that, though less impressive than a dwarf-human half-breed mul's, were more than sufficient to smash a cleric's round skull against the nearest wall. "Do you have another solution to your problem? What if I refuse to leave your sanctuary?"
Oelus matched his tone without physical display. "You don't remember arriving here; you won't remember leaving. I'm not often wrong about a man; I don't want to be wrong about you. Listen to your heart. The poor, parched earth of Athas knows how you've managed to keep it alive where you've been. Listen to it..."
An amber flame danced hypnotically on the wick of the oil lamp. Pavek stared and cursed inwardly.
Suppose Oelus was right; suppose his templar's life had placed all spellcraft beyond his reach? Could he still barter his knowledge of the zarneeka misappropriation to the druids in exchange for... what?
But compare that with life scrounging in the city. What good was a clever mind or a strong back when he'd always be looking over his shoulder for a flash of yellow?
And why not take a wiry, orphan boy with him? Was he a dead-heart, too--no different from Elabon Escrissar or the fanatics behind the Veil?
"Damn your eyes, priest," Pavek said aloud, his own way of conceding the wisdom of Oelus's suggestions.
The radiant smile reappeared on the cleric's face. He pumped Pavek's hand and clapped him on the back. "You are a good man. I predict good fortune for you, and for the boy. A woman will come later with your supper. Eat heartily, without fear. Tomorrow you'll greet the sun as a new man with a new life."
Pavek shook off the camaraderie. "Naked as the day I was born and just as poor. Spare me, priest. I grew up in a templar orphanage; I've heard it all before. Bring me your potions in a plain cup-"
"All that you came with will be returned," Oelus insisted, his smile undimmed. "Saving the shirt, which was not fit for rags. We'll give you another-and a few bits for your purse, enough to see you and the boy started."
"I had a knife, a gray steel knife-"
"With human hair wound beneath the hilt leather? Yes, it's kept and safe."
A fist Pavek did not remember making relaxed. Air filled his lungs in a sigh. The hair was Sian's, cut from her corpse in the boneyard, more cherished than any single memory of their few years together, before the orphanage. He held a hand against his naked neck.
"My medallion?" like her hair, it belonged to a lost time. Twenty years of time now lost as completely as Sian.
Oelus frowned. "You have no need of it-"
"Nor have you," he interjected sharply and saw deceit on the cleric's face. "Was that the Veil's price? Will they use my medallion to attack the king?" Strangely, the notion offended him. Mages who left children to fend for themselves on the streets of Urik were, to borrow Oelus's expression, cut from the same cloth as King Hamanu, but without the king's experience and, yes, wisdom in ruling the city.
"No, it is with your other possessions. But, surely, you do not wish to be tempted to wield its power in your new life?"
"You know Hamanu's magic corrupts, but you don't know how it works, do you? Believe me, priest, there's less temptation to me than there is to you."
"But if you're discovered with it-?"
"Then my 'new life' is over. It's mine, cleric, will you return it to me?"
"That medallion will bring you grief, Pavek."
"Do you read the stars or scry the future? Don't harry me with vague threats, priest. Tell me what you know, or tell me that you'll return my possessions, as you promised."
The cleric exhibited a moment of doubt, then, visibly reluctant, nodded. "I would have you remember me as a man of my word, whatever the danger that medallion brings you."
Light appeared in the passageway beyond the chamber and, moments later, a shadow and a woman bearing a steaming loaf of bread on a tray.
'Tour supper," Oelus explained. "May the earth lie gentle beneath your feet all the days of your life, Pavek, and give you rest at the end of it." He touched Pavek's forehead with the fingers of his right hand. "It is not every man who gets to start over. Take care of yourself and that boy."
Despite his protests that he wanted his draught in a plain, bitter cup, the aromas seeping through the bread set his mouth watering and blunted his appreciation of the cleric's blessing. Matching Oelus's bow with a curt nod of his head, he'd retrieved the tray before the sounds of Oelus's sandals faded.
The door remained open-a challenge he ignored.
Securing the linen at his waist, he lifted the upper portion of the crusted bread from the hollowed loaf beneath it. The stew was thick with roots and tubers and other things that grew in the earth, but tasty nonetheless. He consumed it, the upper crust, and was tearing the bowl itself into bite-sized pieces when lassitude struck, and he fell asleep where he sat.
, Pavek awoke with die warmth of sunlight on his face and the inimitable sounds of the Urik streets in his ears. He remembered Oelus, the stew, and the moment when his eyelids became too heavy to hold open. Before he opened his eyes, his hand moved to his neck. The inix leather thong was in its familiar place.
"A man of his word," he whispered.
"Are you awake, Pavek? They said you'd wake up when the sun came'round."
He recognized the young, reedy voice. Oelus was definitely a man of his word-not the first Pavek had met, but with the others, the epithet was not entirely a compliment. He stretched himself upright, knocking his bands against a low ceiling in the process. Zvain's bolt-hole was another underground chamber. Sunlight filtered in through a yellowed slab of isinglass set between the lashed-together bones shoring up the roof and walls. Pavek blinked as oblong darkness landed in the center of the isinglass, and felt foolish as his hearing made sense of the background noises: The translucent isinglass replaced one of Urik's countless paving stones. Zvain's chamber had been carved beneath a street or market plaza.
The ex-templar shook his head and succumbed to a rueful grin. Not once during all the years he'd descended into the customhouse galleries or to his own bunk in the barracks had he suspected that ordinary citizens-and noncitizens- had also solved Urik's joint problems of oppressive heat and limited building materials by digging into the rock-hard ground.
"Where are we?"
"Near the head of Gold Street, near the Yaramuke fountain."
Pavek calculated the location: Zvain lived under one of the merchant quarters of the city. It seemed incongruous for a moment, then less so. Templars left the safety of the merchant quarters to the merchants.
"How'd you find this place, Zvain?" Pavek ducked under a bone rafter, heading for the door. How many-?"
The boy stood firm on the threshold. Neither Zvain nor the flimsy door of cloth and sticks behind him represented a meaningful barrier, but he halted all the same.
"You are a templar. You've got no manners."
Away from the isinglass the chamber was in permanent twilight. Zvain had the stature and slenderness of a boy midway through childhood, but his eyes-large, dark, and without passion-were older.
"Do I owe you anything? Last I remember, you said we'd be even if you saved my life. Did you save my life, boy, or did someone else?" Pavek countered, taking Zvain's measure with typically harsh templar tones and accusations. He could justly claim that he needed to know the boy's mettle and knew no other way to assess it, but he regretted his words when Zvain's expression melted into silent grief. "I guess you're right, boy: I've got no manners."
His hands separated in a palms-up gesture of frustration that the boy saw as an invitation. Zvain threw himself against his chest, locking arms around his waist, trembling with tears. Feeling frustrated and helpless, he wrapped an arm around Zvain's thin shoulders and rested the other hand atop his head. While pent-up tears dampened his shirt, he swayed on his hips, surveying the chamber that had become his new home.
The bed where he'd awakened was wide enough for a husband and wife. A corner filled with rags and blankets marked the nest where Zvain slept. A singl
e straight-backed chair and a tiny table completed the furnishings, except for shelves hammered into the dirt walls on which a meager assortment of domestic utensils and-yes-a tattered alphabet scroll were neatly arranged. The merchants upstairs would burn the lot for cooking fuel, but he knew better. He knew how the rabble lived. Life with Sian had been a succession of crowded rooms and reeking alleys, each one a little worse than the last. Zvain had lost much more when he became an orphan than he'd ever had.
He patted the tangled hair and squeezed the boy tight. There was a single, strangled wail as seeping tears became a torrent, but the virtue of silence was a lesson Zvain had apparently learned in his heart. The boy shuddered from head to toes without making a sound.
"We'll manage/' Pavek whispered, wishing he believed his own words.;
Pavek closed his eyes and found the benign, round face of the cleric, Oelus, smiling in the darkness of his mind's eye. Well and good for Oelus: Oelus was tucked away in his sanctuary. Oelus's robe was dry and his meals were served by women who knew how to cook. Oelus had nothing to worry about.
Pavek banished the cleric with a hard-edged thought, but there was something else hovering dimly in his memory. He called it closer and it became a woman's face-not the battered, broken face of Sian or Zvain's mother, but beautiful, proud, and, at first, unrecognized. He could understand why he'd see Oelus within his mind's eye; the cleric's smile could easily have been real spellcraft, and not the product of his beleaguered imagination. But the zarneeka druid? Why had he called her out of his memory?
"You'll stay?" Zvain asked, not daring to lift his head.
The druid's face remained in Pavek's vision after he opened his eyes, daring him and judging him as she'd dared and judged him in the gateyard.
"I'll stay," he agreed. "We'll manage."
He expected the image to smile. Oelus's image would be bursting with an ear-to-ear grin, but the druid of his imagination did not change expression. Pavek's anger surged at her, at himself. He barely knew how he was going to manage, much less manage for himself and a boy. Raising children was women's work-not that Sian had mastered the art. Then inspiration came to him on a cool breeze.
Women's work indeed, and a woman who faced down templars without breaking a sweat should be willing to do it. Perhaps he had been corrupted, had no hope of learning a purer sort of spellcraft-but here was Zvain, orphaned by Laq, which had been corrupted from the druids' precious zarneeka powder. She couldn't turn her back on an orphan, wouldn't turn her back on a man that orphan trusted, even if he were a dung-skulled baazrag.
"We'll manage," Pavek repeated more confidently. "I have apian-"
Zvain shifted within Pavek's hands. His face tilted upward, the dark eyes glinted with unshed tears. "I'll help, Pavek," he promised. "I'll learn whatever you teach me, I swear it. I'm ready now. Look-" The boy squirmed free, rummaged through his blankets, coming up with a vicious object slightly longer than his forearm. Bent obliquely in the middle, it had a lump of dark stone lashed to one end and an obsidian crescent at the other. "I stole it from a gladiator. I'm ready, Pavek. We'll hunt Laq-sellers together."
The boy mimed a move that in the arena might have split an opponent from gullet to gut.
"Damn King Hamanu and all the templars." Zvain slashed again. "Damn the Veil who let him kill her to save their own precious hides! You and me, Pavek, we'll do what needs to be done!"
Zvain's eyes were still bright with tears, but otherwise the fragile, grief-stricken orphan had vanished.
"We will, won't we?" Zvain paused with the weapon cocked above his shoulder.
Words failed.
"Won't we?"
"We'll try, Zvain," Pavek answered softly. His attention was fixed on the jagged, sharp curve of the obsidian crescent. The druid's face had returned to the depths of his memory, and where was Oelus when he was needed? What would the pious cleric say to a reckless, vengeful child?
"We will, Zvain. We'll do something, I promise you that." It wasn't a lie. Pavek believed the druids would refuse to trade at the customhouse once they knew about Rokka, Escrissar, and the halfling. Without zarneeka, Laq would have to disappear. "Give that here. You can't kill all of them, Zvain-why even start?" Pavek held out his hand and held in his breath.
Zvain's eyes narrowed beneath thoughtful brows. His fingers rippled along the bone shaft, making the weapon wobble in rhythm with his own doubts. Then the decision was reached. He lowered his arm; the weapon slipped from his grasp. Pavek snatched it with one hand and the boy with the other. He lifted Zvain into a snug embrace while he stowed the weapon on the highest shelf.
"You listen to me, you hear?" He gave the clinging weight a gentle shake. "You do what I tell you to do. No more stealing from gladiators. No more talk about hunting men, no matter what they sell. This is Urik-King Hamanu's city. Break his laws and you die."
"Templars break his laws all the time. They don't die. You broke his laws. You didn't die."
Pavek scratched his itchy scalp with his free hand. He'd forgotten what little he knew about children the day he donned the yellow robe and ceased to be one himself. "Don't argue with me, Zvain," he said wearily, letting the boy slide back to the floor. "Just do what I tell you, or I'll leave. You understand that?"
The boy went wide-eyed and passionless again. Nodding solemnly, he hid his hands beneath his shirt. "I understand that, Pavek. I'll do what you tell me. I promise."
* * *
Zvain tried, but he wasn't the half-grown boy Pavek had taken him for. Though slight and slender, he was on the cusp of adulthood. One moment he'd be clinging to Pavek's arm as they walked familiar streets. The next, he'd spin away, all snarls and hisses, determined to have his own way, whatever the cost. He was too clever by half and suspicious by nature. Pavek still judged the Veil harshly for leaving him to fend for himself-if that's what they'd done-but before they'd eaten breakfast and made their way to the western gate, he could understand their reasoning.
He didn't dare tell Zvain what he had in mind, why he wanted to scout the gate or why, when he learned that it was the 160th day of the Descending Sun, he approached the inspector.
"The boy and me want to work, great one," he said, meeting Bukke's eyes, putting Oelus's assumptions to their hardest test.
Bukke seized Pavek's arm, giving it a brutal wrench. Pavek dropped to his knees. "Big, strong man like you-why haven't I seen you before? Why don't I know your name? Don't you know what happens to runaways, scum?"
"No runaway, great one-just down on my luck, a bit. Heard you could always get work with a strong back loading and unloading at the gates. That's all, great one." Pavek hung his head 'til his beard brushed his chest and let his fear show as well.
His medallion was stowed in the bolt-hole beside the weapon, nothing else could give away, unless Bukke made an association between the crude, weathered drawing on the wall and the man kneeling in the dust at his feet. Actually, the gate inspectors wouldn't care whether a man was free, slave, or runaway, so long as he could stand the pace, which on the appropriate market day could be brutal. Bukke gave his arm a final twist, then released it.
"What's your name, scum?"
"Oelus, great one." It was a common enough name in Urik.
"Well, Oelus, you're too late for today, but come back at dawn, and we'll put you to work."
He rose slowly to his feet, draping his hands over Zvain's shoulders, grateful that the boy had kept quiet. The disparity in their sizes and coloring was great.
"My boy, great one? He can run water, great one. I'm a bit down on my luck, great one."
Bukke laughed coarsely. "More than a bit down, if he's the best you've got, scum. What's your name, little scum?"
"Inas, great one. Can I run water, great one?" Zvain asked with a quavering voice. "Please-O great one?"
He pinched the narrow shoulders hard; no good could come from overdoing things. Bukke laughed at them both but entered their names on the roll for the morning, Inas at one-quarter wages. Zva
in remained docile and obedient until they were out of sight and earshot of the gate, then he kicked Pavek's ankle and would have punched him in the groin again-if he hadn't been expecting the move.
Chapter Six
"What's it going to be today, Pavek? Some more groveling and toe-kissing at the west gate-or are we going to do something worthwhile?"
Pavek had been dreaming about sleep when Zvain's whine awakened him. He lay still, giving nothing away. Veterans of the templarate orphanage learned to lie still with their eyes closed until other senses had measured the moment.
"Sun's already up, Pavek. If you don't hurry, you won't be the first belly-crawling, toe-kissing, yellow-loving groveler on the west gate sand. Yes, great one; no, great one; kick me again, great one... I thought you were a man, Pavek. Some man. Some forty-gold-piece fugitive. You can't do anything 'cept lick dust from yellow-scum feet-"
"That yellow-scum Bukke-o wouldn't believe me if I told him who you truly were."
Pavek didn't need his eyes to see Zvain's face shrivel into a sour pout.
If the boy were right about that one last point... If neither Bukke nor any other templar could recognize him through his laborer's sweat and grime... If he could have convinced himself of that, then he could have confided in his young companion.
But Pavek couldn't, and so he told the boy nothing about his plans and endured the abuse that only youth and innocence could generate.
Zvain wasn't the most irritating man-child to raise his breaking voice within Urik's walls. Pavek remembered himself too well for that sweeping judgement. The mul taskmaster at the orphanage had taught him the errors of orneriness with daily demonstrations. His jaw still ached when the wind blew low from the northeast. An urge to teach Zvain the same lesson the same way stiffened the muscles of his right arm.
This time there'd be no missing. He would clamp his hand around that scrawny neck and pound that noisy head into the wall until it had a damn good reason to whine. But he wasn't cut from the same cloth as the old taskmaster. In his mind's eye he saw Zvain's anger, his faith, and his tears.