The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  Then that, too, crumbled and was borne away on the intangible wind.

  "Vengeance..." the whispered word echoed against the walls of the deserted dyers' plaza.

  He opened his hands and stared at them a moment. He'd imagined vengeance would be gratifying; instead he was as empty as his hands.

  "Will he serve?" an unexpected, unfamiliar voice said from behind his left shoulder.

  Without thought Or hesitation, he turned toward the sound. He saw painted walls, draperies, and a wild-haired halfling. The halfling's face had been brutally marked with slave-scars that seemed both old and unhealed. There was, however, nothing servile in the halfling's posture or his voice when he repeated his question.

  Zvain shook his head, unable to comprehend the question until he'd sorted out where he was from where he'd been.

  "Oh, yes, Kakzim. Beyond our wildest dreams-"

  This time the voice and face were familiar: the elegantly pale slave-master with taloned fingertips. Elabon Escrissar without his mask or the inner light of wisdom.

  Or the illusion of magic.

  He'd destroyed Pavek in the theater of his mind, not reality and took a moment's comfort from that-until he noticed the wall behind the interrogator. It was barren; the thick vines and cloying flowers were gone. Fearing the worst, he looked at the floor, where a thin layer of ash dulled the carpet.

  It didn't matter whether he'd killed Pavek in the dyers' plaza or in his mind; he'd drawn real magic to do it. His greed for vengeance had consumed the life of Athas and left nothing in return. He'd become a defiler, irrevocably doomed and condemned by a single, thoughtless and futile act.

  "-Zvain's one of us, now."

  * * *

  Pavek had begun to run as soon as he saw the vast green-crowned grove on the horizon, and he'd run himself to exhaustion before he realized that no amount of racing would get him there. Gasping and feeling like an utter fool- again-he dropped to his knees. He could only wait, lapping up the sweat that fell from his face into his cupped hands, and wait for the cool wind from the center to blow again.

  He was confident that it would. From what he'd seen so far, Telhami wouldn't miss the opportunity to mock him face-to-face in her grove. He didn't have to wait long. This time he followed the breeze obediently, even when it curled away from the grove, and set his foot on soft green grass when the sun was only a few handspans above the treetops. The druid's grove was alive with pattering sound. Pavek flinched left and right at each step before he observed water drops falling through the trees, striking leaves and branches before they dived into the grass. He'd heard or seen nothing like it before. Face up toward the trees, he stumbled through the gentle rain, paying more attention to the foliage than his feet.

  "However did you survive as a templar in the lion's city?" He demonstrated his survival skills, bounding into the air like a startled erdlu, but landing, fists clenched and teeth bared, in a compact, wary crouch.

  Telhami reclined on the far bank of a spring-fed stream. At least, he assumed it was Telhami. Quraite's chief druid had discarded her veil. The sunlight filtered through the trees revealed her as a woman no longer young, but hardly a withered crone. Prejudiced by a lifetime of dealing with templars, he took her relaxed presence and ironic tone as intimidation ploys and countered with insolence: immersing his face in the surprisingly cold water, as if it were something he'd done ten thousand times before.

  "Yes, yes, Pavek. Take your time. You already know everything that I could teach you."

  More intimidation, and successful this time-which left him that much more determined to conceal how decisively she'd stung him. He sauntered across the stream.

  "I knew enough to get here, didn't I?" he asked as he sat. "You and Ruari thought I'd wander forever. Well, I followed your cool wind from the center, and now I'm ready to be taught whatever it is that you have to teach."

  Telhami responded with a solitary arched eyebrow. "You run a good race, Just-Plain Pavek, but you don't know how to win. It doesn't matter if you're growing trees or trying to get another scarlet thread for your sleeve-in the end it's not the power that matters, it's the will behind it. Here, as you noticed, power drips down from the trees. Hold out your hand and it flows over you, but can you catch it, Just-Plain Pavek? Can you speak its silent language? Can you bend it with your will?"

  "That's what I'm here to be taught."

  The druid flicked her hand, and a water-plume splattered his cheek. "I can't teach you how to wield your own will! What do you take me for-? Another sorcerer-king? An incubating dragon? I tell you: the spirit of Athas surrounds us. Speak to it. Bargain widi it. Invoke it. Either you can do it, or you can't. Forget your scrolls. Start with light; that's the simplest spell. Make light, Just-Plain Pavek, while the sun still shines. Make water while it flows beside you. Call a bird or bee down from the treetops. You know the invocations. They're the same for a druid, a sun-cleric, or a Lion's templar-you did know that, didn't you, Just-Plain Pavek? So, make something happen. Something. Anything. Show me what you can do."

  * * *

  Telhami sat back to watch and wait. She'd been prepared to wait several days; this stranger had done well to reach her grove the same afternoon he'd set out to find it. Though she'd decided, considering what he'd been, mat she wouldn't add her voice to the cool wind. She'd done that for Yohan who, even so, had needed three days to find her grove his first time.

  Yohan had dreamed of magic, like this youthful templar.

  Yohan had tried his best, but not as dramatically as Pavek, who grunted, groaned, and knotted every muscle with his efforts. He put forth a prodigious amount of sweat and tweaked the consciousness of Quraite's guardian spirit. It was not impressed and certainly not compelled, but it was aware.

  Once a stranger roused the guardian-which Yohan had never done-she desperately wanted him or her to succeed. The price of failure here, where Quraite was strongest, was invariably death. If Pavek could not shape the guardian's will with his own, the ground would open around him and his corpse would join several dozen others shrouded in the myriad roots. And although that was a fate that served her purpose-adding lifeforce to Quraite-Telhami preferred to nurture Quraite with living druids rather than strangers' corpses.

  On the other hand, Pavek was not the only disenfranchised templar wandering the Tablelands. The sullen broods of several city-states had been cut loose when their sorcerer-kings died or disappeared. Surely Pavek was not the only one who missed his borrowed power. She knew she'd sleep more easily if Pavek demonstrated that once a mind had become a conduit for a sorcerer-king's corruption, it could never master a more honest invocation of Quraite's guardian.

  "It's impossible!" he explained with a disgusted snarl, tearing out a handful of grass and flinging it across the stream. "There's no silent voice for me to listen to. Not even that damned 'cool wind' of yours to follow. I know what I'm supposed to be looking for, and it's not there. You lied to me, old woman. Cheated and deceived me. You knew it couldn't be done, but you wanted to watch me burst apart trying. You wanted me to break my own spirit, to keep your own hands lily-clean. Well, I've seen your kind before: they're all over the templarate. And I've learned not to play your games. I won't make a fool of myself for your amusement. I quit instead!"

  She could keep any emotion from shadowing her face, even the frustration she and the grove shared at that, moment. He'd come close. He'd come very close and brought the cup to his lips, but he had not sipped or swallowed. And she did not know whether disenfranchised templars in general, or only this templar in particular, were incapable of druidry.

  Of course, if all templars were quitters...

  But she wasn't fool enough to think that. She sensed that Pavek's shortcomings were uniquely his own.

  "You lack patience, persistence, and, most of all, you lack faith of any kind in me, in my grove, in yourself. I'm the one who's been cheated and deceived, Pavek. You said you wanted to learn; you lied. Find your own way, Just-Plain Pavek, if yo
u dare."

  She gathered up her hat and veil, though the sun was close to setting and its light wouldn't bother her eyes when she left the grove, left him here overnight. He was quite safe, unless he tried something destructive. And if he was foolish enough to do that, he deserved to spend eternity among the roots.

  Pavek stiffened as she floated up from the ground. Fear was the dominant emotion on his face, and his thoughts were so focused on Ruari's exhortation: Feed his bones to the trees, Grandmother, that the half-elf's spiteful words echoed literally through the trees.

  He shouted "Wait!" and without waiting to see if she heard or complied, squeezed his eyes shut.

  Tilting her head to one side, listening to the guardian's surge as it honored an evocation, she sank back to the grass. Pavek hadn't suddenly acquired faith, but he was desperate, too desperate to think and, according to Akashia, this would-be druid was at his best when he wasn't thinking.

  There was no grunting or straining this time, merely a prolonged exhalation that emptied his mind as well as his lungs. She leaned forward, holding her breath as the guardian stirred. There was an image visible on the surface of Pavek's mind: King Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, astride a mound of vanquished warriors with the severed head of one of them gripped in his upstretched hand.

  Her blood froze: if Pavek summoned the sorcerer-king through Quraite's guardian spirit, they were doomed. She willed herself to intercede, but Pavek held the guardian, and it resisted her.

  She knew a moment of fear darker and deeper than any other in her life. She called on her own faith to sustain her, and then there was water.

  Everywhere.

  An otherworldly image of the Lion-King hovered above her spring, with water seeping from the wounds of the warriors beneath its feet. More water spouted from the mouth of the head he held in his hand. Water looped and spiraled and formed a swirling cloud around Pavek himself.

  "A fountain!" she laughed, in genuine relief as water splashed her face. "You remembered a fountain! Water and stone together! Well done!"

  Pavek's fountain collapsed the instant her words penetrated his consciousness. He was drenched and dazed. For several moments he did not move at all. Her elation faded: a druid's first invocation was the most dangerous, because the guardian must be released at its end. The more a neophyte druid invoked, the more dangerous the release. Pavek had invoked far more than the few splattering drops she'd expected, and there was a very real chance he'd invoked more than he could safely release. She held her breath, waiting for the ground to open and guardian to claim him.

  Finally he blinked and raised his still-dripping hands.

  "Water. My water." He extended his arms toward her. "My water."

  She pressed her fingertips against his. It was an awesome personal accomplishment for a faithless man, and a chilling precedent.

  "Yes," she agreed solemnly. No need to share her doubts and concerns. "It's a beginning, Pavek. The beginning of another race. Will you finish it? Can you win it?"

  The innocent joy drained from his face.

  "You can, Just-Plain Pavek," she assured him, and herself, as she invoked Quraite's guardian and rose above the grass. "Tomorrow. Here. Now, return home. Supper will be waiting for you."

  * * *

  The moons had set and his clothes were dry by the time Pavek returned to Quraite. He'd hoped Yohan was the silhouette squatting by the lone fire, but it was Ruari instead. The half-elf looked up as he approached. Ruari said nothing, and Pavek didn't either, once he saw his medallion hanging from the half-wit scum's neck.

  Chapter Ten

  A fist-sized oil lamp hanging from a crossbeam cast shadowy light through the single room. Telhami sat on a wicker bench, her eyes closed. She'd slumped, precariously pressed against the bark-covered center pole. Her head had fallen forward at an odd angle. For one horrifying moment, Akashia thought her friend and mentor had died.

  "Grandmother?" Akashia couldn't make herself cross the threshold. "Grandmother..."

  Telhami awakened with a shudder. Her eyes opened, and she stared at the doorway.

  "Kashi? Kashi, what are you doing here in the middle of the night? Is something wrong?"

  "You summoned me," Akashia whispered. "You were dreaming, Grandmother. You summoned me from your own dreams." Her voice grew louder, steadier as the situation became clearer.

  Telhami shook her head, but her face grew thoughtful.

  Akashia became convinced she saw things correctly: "You're worried about Pavek and Laq, aren't you, Grandmother? Confide in me, Grandmother. Tell me what troubles you. I brought him and his problems to Quraite. Let me help you deal with them."

  "No." Telhami continued to shake her head. "It's nothing that serious, Kashi. Certainly nothing for you to worry about. Pavek strives hard, but learns slowly. It's frustrating for both of us, no worse than that. And Laq is a problem that will solve itself."

  "How?"

  "I don't know-yet."

  Bracing herself against the bench and the center pole, Telhami pushed herself upright. She took an unsteady step, releasing the bench but keeping her other hand's fingertips curled firmly on the rough bark for balance.

  "But I will, Kashi. I will. It's a matter of time and memory. A little more of each, and I'll have the answer."

  "Not if you wear yourself out first." She accepted the fundamental truth of Telhami's assertion. Where Quraite's guardian and Quraite's history were concerned, she hadn't learned much-she wasn't ready to learn. But Pavek was another matter. "If the templar has told the truth about Laq, then Laq is the more serious problem. The templar himself is insignificant Surely he didn't learn anything in the Don's archive that is more important than what the Lion's minions are doing with our zarneeka. Let me teach Pavek in my grove for a few days, at least until you've found what you're searching for. I've led the children through their catechism. I enjoy it, and you'd be free to do what only you can do."

  Telhami removed her hand from the pole. She stood straighter, and her eyes, when she turned around, were clear and bright. "Pavek is not a child, Kashi. Pavek is a man, a young man with a mind and strong thoughts of his own."

  "Grandmother, I'm not blind. I know exactly what Pavek is. I kenned him when he first told us his tale. His thoughts were strong, but there weren't very many of them. His spirit isn't dark, it's empty. Scarred and empty. I could almost pity him, Grandmother, but no more than that."

  "Almost?"

  She lowered her eyes. In Urik, she'd barely pierced the surface of Pavek's mind when she kenned him for his basic character. Still, what she had encountered had both surprised and saddened her.

  "You taught me that children are all innocent and full of potential, and that men and women are uniquely good or evil according to the sum of their deeds. But Pavek's not like that. He's not anything. His memory is filled with terrible images, Grandmother. Evil images. But he's empty. He risked his life to tell us about Laq; he risked it again to save Ruari's. And yet he's empty. It's as if Pavek has the shape of a man, but the spirit of-of something broken. Something that never grew. The spirit of I don't know what."

  "Of a templar," Telhami said gently.

  Images of habit and prejudice swarmed her mind. Templars were brutal and malicious predators, savoring the agony they brought to less fortunate, less privileged folk. Ruari's father had been a templar-a rapist and murderer whose victims, Ghazala and Ruari, had survived. When she'd kenned Pavek, she'd seen a man who was more preyed upon than predator, more numb than brutal, and scarcely more fortunate or privileged than a beast of burden. "Not a templar."

  Telhami's eyebrow arched. "Exactly a templar. Did you think they were all like Ruari's father?" She made a fire in a tiny hearth and filled a small pot with water.

  "Yes. Yes, I suppose I did. I suppose I still do. Pavek was different, even that first time, when he wore a yellow robe. Did I tell you he fought with another templar over a human infant's life? I keep thinking he should be a good man, but he's not. He's just plain br
oken."

  "I suspect all templars are broken. One way or another. They couldn't survive if they weren't. Some survive better than others, of course. I doubt Ruari's father was the worst to wear the yellow. But broken is as true a description as any. The pieces grind together when he invokes the guardian. Are you sure you want to take a broken man to your grovel

  "He can't harm me," she said, with less confidence than she'd intended. "If he forgets or tries, he'll be very sorry."

  "And what about you? How sorry will you be, Kashi? How disappointed or betrayed?"

  "Betrayed? Betrayed by what? I said I know he's not a good man. He's not even an attractive man. I know I brought him here, Grandmother, but I don't particularly like him, and I certainly haven't lost my head or my heart to

  "You're certain?"

  "Of course I'm certain. Wind and fire, Grandmother, you're as bad as Ruari. Do you think I'd be blinded by the first stray man that stumbled across my path-and a templar at that?"

  * * *

  Telhami threw tea into the pot. "No," she conceded, swirling the leaves, studying their patterns on the water.

  Akashia hadn't been blinded by Pavek, but she was blind to her own beauty and to beauty's effect on the men around her. Not that Pavek seemed to be affected by beauty... or anything else. Beyond his determination to master spellcraft, Pavek seemed to have no other interests. His very dogged-ness blocked his progress; Quraite's guardian responded to livelier spirits'. Perhaps Akashia's notion was not so bad, after all. Kashi was good with beginners...

  Then the image of a copper-haired youth stormed through her mind, all flashing eyes and scowls.

  "There'd be trouble with Ruari," she admitted aloud.

  "If there was going to be trouble with Ruari, it would have happened by now. He hasn't said anything since Pavek invoked the guardian. We all felt it. Ru wasn't happy, but he couldn't very well argue after that."

  Fragrant steam rose from the pot, restoring her more thoroughly, more gently than her contact with the living pole of her hut. She was tired. Pavek's determination combined with his lack of progress made him an exhausting pupil. Moreover, Pavek slept soundly each night while she pondered the problems he'd brought out of Urik. Ruari might not argue with Quraite's guardian, but she did, every night.