The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  They glowered, each waiting for the other to answer first, and listening as alarm raced through the village. Quraiters who had not been included in the meeting ran past the open door, all headed for the southeast path: the path by which Pavek had entered Quraite and that he had not explored since, because the salt plain encroached closest there.

  "Who?" Yohan demanded, breaking loose from Pavek's grip.

  "No idea," Pavek insisted with a shrug.

  He'd felt something, and that was more than Yohan had possibly done, but that was all, and that was completely gone now. He stood in the doorway. Only a few weanling children remained in the common, tended by a few adults whose southeasterly pointing faces proclaimed that they'd rather be somewhere else.

  "What's the stowaway? If I knew that-maybe-"

  Yohan pressed behind him in the doorway. "Where they store the zarneeka seeds to ripen and age under the ground." He shouldered past and started walking.

  There was no one left to give him an order, so he fell in step a few paces behind. The shimmering white expanse of the salt wastes was visible from the far side of the tree ring around the village. A few clumps of rock and scraggly bushes dotted the wilderness. No druid could nurture a grove this close to the Sun's Fist. But Yohan kept going, following Quraiters strung out in a sparse line until they were indistinguishable from the wilderness itself.

  * * *

  They gathered in a place without trees or water, where the salt flats seemed a bit closer and the village behind them was reduced to a line of half-sized trees. Pavek, at the rear of the gathering, was as ignorant as he'd been at the hut. But the crowd parted for him-or it parted for Yohan-and he was able to flow to the center in the dwarfs wake.

  Telhami sat on an unremarkable stone beside a shallow, round, and apparently empty hole. She sifted gritty dirt through the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. Her neck was bent deeply: Pavek remembered that sunlight hurt her eyes, and remembered her broad-brimmed, veiled hat hanging in its place by the door. He wished he'd thought to bring it with him; a foolish, sentimental wish since, when he left the hut, he hadn't known where he was going.

  A downcast Akashia approached them. "Ruari," she whispered to Yohan, loudly enough for Pavek to hear. The dwarf spat into the yellow-flecked ground.

  "Can't be," he countered. "That doesn't square with Telhami collapsing right when she did. The moment was too perfect. You were going to take zarneeka to Urik; now you can't. Ruari couldn't be eavesdropping and undermining at the same time. Don't blame the half-wit scum just because your guardian got the upper hand."

  Akashia gave him a sharp-edged glower. "He was sitting here, in the ruins, waiting for Grandmother when she arrived. He confessed everything. He'd talked to the elves; he knew everything we knew. He was afraid you'd persuade us to take the zarneeka to Urik, or steal it yourself, if you couldn't. He decided to take matters into his own hands. He hates you, Pavek. Hates you with a passion that blinds him to everything else. He thought he was the only one who could stop you."

  "But he stopped you instead," Pavek snorted with irony and earned himself another bitter look.

  "We're right, Pavek, and you're wrong. You're all wrong: both of you and Ruari, as well."

  "The guardian disagrees."

  "This was Ruari's doing: his hate, his blindness."

  "Where is he? This time I do want to talk to him."

  "I don't know." Akashia flinched toward Telhami as she turned away.

  Pavek had learned the language of guilt and anxiety before he left the orphanage. It was an early, essential part of a templar's education. Instructors made certain their students learned to read the truth on the faces around them, and-if they were wise or clever-to hide their own emotions behind an enigmatic, intimidating sneer. Pavek wore a templar sneer when he cast a shadow over Telhami and called her name.

  The instructors had never claimed he was wise or clever. They'd repeatedly said he was a fool who didn't know when to keep his big mouth shut.

  "Where'd you send Ruari?" he demanded.

  She opened her hands. The yellow-stained dirt streamed to the ground. "I didn't send him anywhere. He's hiding in his grove."

  "Where's his grove?"

  "I can't tell you," her voice was faint and listless. "He wished for privacy, Just-Plain Pavek. I grant it to him. He wants to be alone for a while. I told him what you said. He needs to be alone."

  "The guardian wouldn't suck his bones into the ground, for you?" He could hear the foolishness in his voice. He wished he could swallow his tongue, but recklessness was another old habit, impossible to resist when righteousness fanned its flames. "He wished for privacy, instead, and you granted his wish. For how long, Telhami? How long does Ruari need to be alone in his grove. Until he starves?"

  "A druid can't starve in his grove," Yohan said from behind. "Mind yourself. Ruari's safe enough in his grove, if mat's where he is."

  Recklessness, it seemed, was catching.

  He spread his feet to shoulder width and propped his fists atop his hips. "Where is the scum? I want to tell him he's done the right thing. I need to tell him. How can I find him?"

  "You can't!" Akashia sprang, shouting, to her feet. She smashed her fist sincerely, but ineffectively, against his chest. "Ruari's gone to his grove and pulled it in around him. He's cut himself off. He doesn't want to be found. He doesn't want anything to do with anyone, ever again."

  "I'm not interested in what the scum wants. Point me toward his grove. I'll walk until I find the little beggar."

  "Knowing where Ruari's grove is-was-won't help you. He's hiding, Pavek," Telhami said in a soft voice that, nonetheless, captured his attention. "There's nothing any of us can do, you least of all. Ruari's hiding. His choice-a druid's choice-not mine. Ruari hasn't stopped anything. Zarneeka will go to Urik as it always has; that's my choice. He couldn't accept that. I couldn't let him leave Quraite, not as full of spite and vengeance as he was. He chose to hide forever and a day. Forever's a long time, Just-Plain Pavek, but a day or a week will do him good. But the choice to hide was his, and the choice to return will be his. And mine. This is not a quarrel between him and you, Pavek. Ruari is a druid, and this is the way it must be, Pavek. Do you understand?"

  "In my dreams, great one." The invocation for fire was written clearly in his mind's eye. The power to transform the very air around them into a wall of flames throbbed beneath his feet. Telhami knew it; he could look into those ancient, unblinking eyes and see the knowledge there. And power far greater than any he could hope to command.

  Your choice, Pavek. Her voice was clear, but her lips hadn't moved.

  The tips of his fingers touched; the guardian's power surged within him, then ebbed. He wasn't a druid. He couldn't choose to hide in a grove. He could choose between understanding and incineration: a familiar sort of choice for a man who'd worn King Hamanu's yellow. A comfortable choice.

  Ruari meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. The scum simply hated him to the point of poison and beyond, because of his father, not zarneeka. Let Ruari hide in his damned grove. Let him stay there until he rotted, if he couldn't starve. He was more trouble than he was worth; the world wasn't losing anything-

  Except justice: a balance of rights and wrongs between him and Ruari that could never be redressed with one of them hiding forever and a day. The invocation erased itself; the power evaporated.

  "I don't understand, and I refuse to make your choice. I will find him." The cool, guiding breeze from a druid's grove blew only when the druid willed it to. The air around the ruined stowaway grew still as Quraite's druids, one by one and following Telhami's example, inhaled the essence of their groves.

  But druidry wasn't the only magic in Quraite. A small, ceramic lump had entered the guardian's land with Pavek. He had taken it directly from King Hamanu's hands when he was still a boy living in the templar orphanage. The memory of the king's stale breath, his sulphurous eyes, and the burning heat of his flesh would never fade. No
r, King Hamanu had assured him and the dozen other youngsters inducted into the templarate that day, would his memory of each of them. A Urik templar was linked to his medallion.

  Though the crude ceramic might be exchanged for fine carved stone or precious metal-if a templar rose high enough through the ranks-the unique impression made on Induction Day endured.

  The medallions could only be used by the templar into whose hands it had been placed by the king. Woe betide the forgetful templar who lost his medallion, and greater woe betide the fool who, finding a stray medallion, tried to use it.

  Pavek could have selected his medallion from a hundred perfect forgeries. Even here in Quraite, where the guardian averted Hamanu's prying eyes, he felt its absence as a nagging hole in his consciousness, stronger or weaker depending on the medallion's actual location.

  Depending on Ruari's location, since Ruari had the medallion.

  Without the competing influences of twenty-odd breezy groves to confound him, Pavek needed only to close his eyes and turn his head to determine the direction in which bis medallion could be found. There was a chance the half-wit scum had left it in the bachelors' hut with his bedding, but Pavek found himself looking away from the village when he opened his eyes. He started walking without saying a word.

  Akashia called him; Telhami also-and voices he didn't recognize. If Yohan's had been among them, he might have reconsidered. But the dwarf held his peace and soon the only sounds were those of his own sandals on the dry ground.

  * * *

  He expected something odd, something sudden or frightening, but Ruari's grove, when it came into sight, was a low-lying tangle of briars and saplings, far smaller than Telhami's or Akashia's, but otherwise essentially the same. A shimmer of druidry hung about the place, which from the outside seemed no more than few hundred paces across. There certainly was no sign of Ruari himself, though the ache of the missing medallion was a palpable force in Pavek's mind. He hesitated before wading into the rampant shrubbery, and held his breath until his lungs burned once he entered the grove. Thorns carved bloody tracks into his legs, but that was the true nature of thorns and nothing magical.

  "Ruari!" he shouted loudly enough to penetrate every shadow. "Stop hiding."

  There was no answer; he hadn't truly expected one. He thrashed and cursed his way to what seemed to be the visible center of the grove. The medallion felt close enough to touch, but Ruari was nowhere to be seen.

  "She says this hiding-thing is your choice. You may as well come out where I can see you. I'm not going anywhere until you know you did the right thing, wrecking the stowaway."

  Something cracked the base of Pavek's skull. It might have been a nut or a small stone; he didn't turn around.

  "Talk to me, street-scum."

  "Go away!" a familiar, anger-filled voice shouted, followed by another pellet striking his flank.

  He stayed right where he was, looking straight ahead, out of the grove. "We can't let Telhami settle this for us, street-scum."

  "I'm not street-scum!" Another shout, closer by the sound, and another pellet flung hard enough to make him wince.

  "You act like it: another dumb-fool, too-smart-to-think clod of street-scum. I know the type."

  "You know nothing!"

  But even in the absence of footfalls through the brush, the medallion told him when to turn around, where to grab himself an armful of street-scum. Ruari kicked and punched and clamped his teeth into Pavek's forearm-for which he clouted him hard behind the ear. Then dropped the stunned fool into the thorns.

  "You want to hate yellow-robe templars, scum, that's all right with me. I hate a few myself. You want to hate your father or your mother, that's all right, too. I didn't have much luck with my parents, either. We're even. But you want to take your hate out on me, and that's just plain foolish, street-scum."

  "That's what you say!"

  Fists forward and teeth bared, Ruari surged out of the briars.

  They grappled for no more than a moment before Pavek got the upper hand and hurled him into the thorns again. "That's what I say because it's the truth. You-"

  Ruari took a deep breath and launched himself again. Pavek had enough time to step aside, which would have allowed the youth to dive head-first into the underbrush. His mind's eye showed the gouged and bleeding copper-skinned face that would result. He was tempted, but stayed where he was, taking the scum's charge full-force in his gut.

  They both went down, with Ruari pummeling Pavek's flanks. Yohan had taught his pupil well; Ruari knew how to land an effective punch with his compact fists and where to aim them. Pavek roared and thrashed free. A wicked thorn caught below the corner of his right eye as he did, and he got to his feet with a finger-long gash across his cheek. The sight of his blood made Ruari bolder and more reckless than the scum already was. The thought that he might have been seriously injured brought out Pavek's coldest rage.

  He settled into the brawler's stance he'd shown to Yohan, then he lowered a fist, daring Ruari to strike at his jaw. Ruari took the dare, leaving his right side undefended. Pavek was heavier, faster, and far more experienced; he beat aside Ruari's punch and struck twice, left-handed, on the scum's jaw and right shoulder before withdrawing.

  Ruari's lips trembled and, hard as he tried, he couldn't hold his right arm steady.

  "Had enough?"

  The half-wit shook his head and charged. Pavek leaned away from the attack, stuck out an arm, and caught Ruari across the ribs, knocking the wind out of him. This time Ruari couldn't clamber upright. He lay awkwardly in the briars, gasping for breath.

  "What's it going to take to get through to you that I'm not your enemy? I'm not your father and you're not going to prove anything by hating me as if I were. You've damn near twice lost the only home you've got, and what have you got to show for it? I'm still here, and you're one gasp away from being meat."

  Ruari worked his mouth, trying to muster enough strength and saliva to spit.

  "Fool," Pavek muttered.

  He thumped Ruari's still-heaving ribs with his foot. The youth began to choke. Pavek grabbed an arm and jerked him to his feet. Ruari's eyes were full of spite, but he couldn't talk, couldn't stand on his own feet, and didn't want to land in the briars again. He clung to Pavek's arm; the ceramic medallion dangled around his neck in easy reach. Pavek left it hanging there, knowing that so long as the half-elf wore it, he'd know where the scum was. And fearing that, short of killing Ruari, he wasn't ever going to convince the stubborn scum that there was no good reason for them to feud with each other.

  They stood there a while, with Pavek keeping an ungentle hold on Ruari's arm. Ruari couldn't fill his lungs. He wheezed and trembled, leaning hard against him, because he could do nothing else.

  Pavek knew, from long years on the practice ground, that elves could gasp themselves to death if their lungs collapsed. He didn't think he'd hit Ruari nearly hard enough, but it was always hard to gauge the vulnerabilities of half-elves. Sometimes they were weaker than either of their parents.

  "Come on, Ru," Pavek urged, forgetting himself and using the youth's familiar name. "Calm down. Take it slow." He felt something soft brush against the back of his legs: kivits, three of them, their ears twitching each time Ruari gasped, their large, dark eyes seemingly glazed with anxious tears. They rose up on their hind-legs and touched the youth's limp legs with dexterous forepaws.

  Familiars, Pavek thought. Every half-elf was supposed to have them. His old nemesis the administrator Metica was rumored to sleep with a nest of poisonous snakes. He didn't want to think what sort of familiars Elabon Escrissar might keep. But the kivits were clearly Ruari's familiars, and just as clearly distressed by the sight of him.

  "I'm getting tired of this," he complained as he swept an arm under Ruari's legs, lifting him up. "I'm no nursemaid."

  Now that Ruari had shown himself, the features of the grove were apparent. Pavek carried Ruari to the side of a small, bubbling pool and propped him up against a sapling
willow tree. The kivits bounded onto Ruari's shoulders, nuzzling into his hair and against his face. Pavek raised a hand to chase them away, but Ruari's eyes had closed, and he was breathing easier.

  He tended his own cuts and scratches in the pool, then sat on his heels, waiting for Ruari to complete his recovery. It didn't take long.

  "Nothing's changed. I still hate you. You're still a lying, treacherous lump-of-scum templar, and I'm still going to kill you."

  "Give it up, scum. You're not a dwarf. You don't have a to-the-death focus to worry about. Stop being so stubborn and think straight for a change. If I'd wanted to kill you or hurt you or anyone else, I could have done it ten times over by now. I'm not your enemy. I'm not Quraite's enemy. I'm not anybody's enemy-except some templars back in Urik: the ones making Laq. We're on the same side, Ruari. While you were wrecking that stowaway, I was trying to convince Telhami and Akashia not to take any more zarneeka to Urik. They weren't listening to me, but you stopped them. You did the better job."

  Ruari scratched the itchy spots on each of his kivits before he met Pavek's stare. "How do I know I can believe you? You lie real good, templar-man, like you lied about my poison."

  "You believe a man after you ask what he's got to gain by lying. I've got nothing to gain by lying to you, and I haven't killed you yet. That should be enough."

  "Kashi." Ruari looked down at the kivits as soon as he'd uttered the word.

  "Mekillots will fly first. You may enjoy being a fool, but I don't. That woman's never going to be interested in an ugly, third-rank templar."

  "She is."

  "I'm not," Pavek insisted with a force that surprised himself. "I know better than to overreach."

  Ruari pushed the kivits down and rose unsteadily to his feet. "I'd kill you."

  "She'd kill me first."

  "She wouldn't. Kashi's not like that. She doesn't see the evil in a person."

  He could think of a dozen things to say, all of which would have set them brawling again. Instead, he extended a finger toward a kivit and tickled the tip of the inquisitive creature's nose.