by Lynn Abbey
* * *
Akashia regained consciousness in a room filled with sweet incense and soft voices. A lightweight linen sheet covered her from feet to shoulders; the air against her face was cool. Night had almost certainly fallen, and she had almost certainly fallen into the hands of the tattooed woman, the ugly dwarf, and the mind-bender, Elabon Escrissar-the very enemies Pavek had warned them about.
"Pavek's enemies, not yours. Not yet," a smooth, masculine voice replied, by which she understood that Escrissar was a powerful mind-bender, indeed.
Akashia opened her eyes. The mind-bender wasn't wearing the black mask and robe Pavek had described. In plain, pale domes, he was simply a bland-looking man, a half-elf by birth and radiantly evil by temperament. A scarred halfling stood to one side, neither smiling nor scowling: the alchemist responsible for Laq. There was no sign of the ugly dwarf or the tattooed woman, but there was a dark-haired boy by the open door of the small, luxurious room where they'd brought her.
The boy smiled when he caught her looking at him. It was a smile that made Akashia's blood freeze in her heart.
"I do not want to be your enemy, dear lady. Pavek was born a thick-skulled idiot; he'll the a sorry hero. But not you. You understand. You've held power yourself. You have ambitions."
He came up the shadowed, twisted pathways she had blasted through her defenses, through her very self. All silk and seduction, he touched the tender, aching places of her mind, of her body, offering her things she had scarcely imagined before this horrifying moment.
She drew a shuddering breath, closed her eyes, and fought with all her might to throw him out.
Chapter Fourteen
Pavek's days had assumed a different routine while Akashia was gone. He still went to Telhami's grove every other day-they scrupulously avoided certain subjects of conversation: zarneeka, Urik, Laq, and Akashia, herself. But on the day between, he carried a hoe into the fields and worked with the farmers. The back-breaking work gave him time to think about the lessons Telhami gave him, and the subjects they did not discuss. Thinking was good for his incipient druidry: he could wring water out of the air now, on demand and without a headache, but as the empty days of Akashia's absence began outnumber his fingers, his mood darkened.
Aside from Telhami, only one person intruded on his enforced solitude: Ruari.
They had not become fast-friends after they returned from the youth's grove, although Pavek had stood firm, in his brawly templar way, for the half-elf s right to rejoin the community then and there. Remembering himself at Ruari's I age, Pavek reckoned that he'd saddled the boy with too great a debt and was content to let him keep his distance. Besides, the half-witted scum was a whiner, and a complainer; and Pavek, veteran of the orphanage and the civil bureau, had no patience for either trait.
He looked up from his hoeing and saw Ruari waiting for him at the end of the row-the row he'd intended as his last row of the day, unless he showed Ruari his back now and kept working until the scum gave up and left. But he'd let Ruari catch his eye, which was all the invitation Ruari required.
"Go away, scum," he said when a long, lean shadow touched his feet. It was a polite, even friendly, greeting among templars.
"You beat me up bad. I couldn't fight you off. I want to learn how."
"Keep your mouth shut." He offered the advice he'd heard and ignored many times before. "That way you won't start so many fights you can't finish."
"I don't start fights," Ruari snapped, giving the lie to his words with the tone of his voice. "They just happen. Maybe if I won once in a while, I wouldn't have so many."
A vagrant laugh slipped into Pavek's mouth. He clamped a hand over his chin to contain it.
"Wind and fire! Why're you laughing? What's so funny?"
Ruari took a swing at him, which Pavek blocked with his forearm. The hoe slid off his shoulder and landed in the dirt. The scum was quick; Pavek would grant him that Too quick. Once he was riled, Ruari whipped up the air with his fists, landing blows that were little more than love-taps, and leaving himself vulnerable to the powerful punch of an admittedly slower, far-more-massive opponent. But instead of a punch, Pavek reached through Ruari's guard, grabbed shirt and skin, and lifted him off the ground.
"You've got two arms, scum. Two fists. Keep one of 'em at home for yourself."
"That's what Yohan always says."
"Listen to him." Pavek let go, and Ruari landed lightly and easily on the balls of his feet. "He's a good teacher." "He's not here-" "Just go away, scum."
"I want to learn from you. Aren't you impressed? Flattered?" The whine was back in Ruari's voice; it grated in Pavek's ears, "/think you're better than the old dwarf. Me- the half-wit scum who hates all rotted, yellow-robe templars, and tried to poison you-I want you to teach me how to fight."
There was a fading bruise on Ruari's chin, another on his arm, and a third, larger, one across his chest, visible through the open neck of his shirt, all souvenirs of their last encounter. Pavek picked up the hoe with a display of hostility that made Ruari dance back a pace or two and hoist his fists again. But he was only teasing, not taking bait. He dug into the dirt where Ruari had been standing.
The boy reafeed he'd been gulled. "Pavek-?"
He broke up a clod of dirt with the blade of the hoe and threw a handful of weeds over his shoulder onto the barren ground beyond the irrigated fields. Ruari's shadow didn't move, and neither did his mouth, for a pleasant change. Another long, silent moment passed. Pavek kicked the blade into the ground, then he headed out of the field. With a wave of his fingers, he invited Ruari to join him.
"Show me what you've got," he said, and the half-elf bobbed on his toes, with his slender arms and fists in front of him.
Swearing under his breath, Pavek shook his head and turned away. "You'll never be a brawler, Ru." He retrieved his hoe. "Now try it," he said, tossing the bone-shafted tool at the youth, who caught it deftly.
Everyone in the Tablelands had to know enough about fighting to defend him- or herself. Gender didn't matter much, either in the cities or the wastelands: if you didn't look like you could fight back, the full run of predators and scavengers took note. Quraite was protected land, but common sense said the guardian would better protect those who showed the inclination to protect themselves. Pavek had watched the Quraiters, farmers and druids alike, training one day in ten with bows and ordinary tools like the hoe Ruari held in front of him, one hand circling the shaft in a sun-wise direction, the other going the counter-way.
Pavek assessed the youth quickly and coldly, the way he himself had been taught. Then, instead of exploiting the weaknesses he saw-of which there were remarkably few (Yohan was a good trainer, Ruari's failings were rooted in his personality, not his technique)-he tried to correct them.
They went at it through the dying light of another arid afternoon, swapping the hoe and the attack. One of two things usually happened when a man tried to teach another the finer aspects of fighting: one man got angry, the lesson ended, and a serious brawl erupted, or they found a common rhythm and the seeds of equal friendship were planted.
With the bloated sun in his eyes and the hoe in his hands, Pavek feinted to his right side, drawing Ruari's attack. Then he swung the hoe low above the ground, letting the sweat-polished shaft slide through his fingers until the angled blade was smack against his wrists. The tactic was designed to strike an enemy's shins and sweep him off his feet; the minimal countermeasure was a leap into the air to avoid the swinging shaft. Gladiators executed the technique with a variety of weapons. Pavek had learned it in the orphanage.
"You're supposed to jump, not trip over your own big, baazrag feet," he said, trying to make light of what he knew-from personal experience-was a very painful moment, and hoping, as the moments lengthened, that the silent, huddled-up youth wasn't nursing broken bones.
"Now you tell me," Ruari finally replied in a choked, quavery voice. His face was pale when he looked up, but he did a hero's work trying to laugh. "You
're supposed to be my teacher."
Pavek lowered the hoe and extended a hand. "Sorry, scum-didn't think you were that stupid. Can you stand?"
Ruari nodded, but took the help that was offered. He held onto Pavek's wrist an extra moment while he took a few hobbling steps.
"Men," a woman grumbled from not too far away. "Never too old for child's play."
They both turned toward the sound. Ruari gasped: "Grandmother," and dropped Pavek's wrist as though it were ringed with fire. There was no guessing how long she'd been watching them, no reading her purpose through her hat's gauzy veil.
"Yohan's coming back. He's on the Sun's Fist."
"Alone?" Pavek snaked an arm around Ruari's shoulder before Telhami answered, ready to restrain the boy, if the answer was what he suddenly feared it would be.
"Alone," she admitted, and for a heartbeat that broad-brimmed hat seemed to shake and shrink.
Ruari surged on wobbly ankles. Pavek caught him before he shamed himself with a fall.
"Easy. If he's on the salt, we've got time, don't we?" He imagined meeting the eyes behind the veil and making them blink. "You don't already know what went wrong?"
"No," her voice was barely audible. "I know that he's alone, nothing more. I've come to you, before the others. You've a right."
She turned away and, gripping her staff in a white-knuckled fist, began the long walk to the village and her hut. Pavek almost felt sorry for her, except: "You sent them! You wouldn't listen, not to me, not to your guardian. You thought your zarneeka was more important, and that you were so much smarter, wiser. Damn you, Telhami, this falls on you!"
Telhami's form shimmered and vanished.
"You shouldn't've said that, Pavek."
"It's the truth. Somebody's got to say it."
"Not you. You should've kept your mouth shut."
"Good advice, scum-but I don't listen to good advice." He picked up the hoe, tried to break the shaft over his thigh, and when that failed hurled the tool at the half-round disk of the setting sun. "Damn!-"
* * *
They met Yohan in the wastes between the village and the Sun's Fist. The dwarf had aged profoundly since they'd last seen him. His eyes were red-rimmed and set in deep, dark hollows. His muscles had withered. His bedraggled kank was as shaky as him, and not one of the sleek Moonracer-bred bugs the Quraiters favored. He needed a steady hand when he slid from the saddle and would not meet either man's eyes as he told his story in broken, near incoherent snatches.
He said he'd ridden day and night, sleeping in the saddle when he could no longer keep his eyes open. Eating hadn't been a problem; he'd had no food with him when he escaped from Urik, and hadn't wasted time stealing any. He'd had water, for the first few days. Since then he'd kept going on will alone.
Pavek, having suspected something similar from the moment Telhami gave them the news, offered Yohan a waterskin fresh from the village well. The dwarf brushed it aside.
"It's no use. I'm finished."
"What happened first? How did it go bad?"
"Escrissar."
Pavek swore. He'd dared to hope that, whatever the catastrophe, Yohan had simply left Akashia in some temporary shelter, before racing back to Quraite for help. Hearing Escrissar's name, he could only hope that she was already dead.
Very dead.
He took a swallow from the flask to calm himself.
"Stan at the beginning-"
Yohan obliged. Between Ruari's game ankles and the dwarf's exhaustion, their pace was slow enough that the tale was nearing its elven market climax as the three men approached the green fields.
"How'd you escape?" Pavek demanded, stopping short while they were still on barren ground. He knew his city and a dozen ways through the walls that didn't involve the gates. But none of those secret passages used the elven market.
"That dwarf, that hairy bastard in a procurer's robe, and a common woman with serpents tattooed on her arm were coming for us. I don't know-maybe I could have taken them both, but that still left Escrissar, the mind-bender, and Kashi hadn't kenned where he was all afternoon. I wanted to stand together right there, or stand alone to give her the escape." Yohan ground his knuckles against his eyes and stared at the violet sky. "One of us had to get back to Quraite, she said. I couldn't keep the secret, not against what we were facing: a mind-bender Kashi couldn't ken. But she swore she could. And I knew the way out; she didn't-"
"Pavek! No!" Ruari shouted, trying ineffectively to loosen Pavek's hold on Yohan.
Pavek let go of his own accord, shoving the dwarf back-ward and turning his helpless fury on the half-elf. "There's no passage in the market; the walls there are solid. He had to have help to get out of the market and out of Urik. Escrissar's help, scum. Escrissar! Escrissar set him free, sent him back to us!"
"Not Escrissar," Yohan said wearily. "Elves. An old debt. A tribe that didn't die at the same time a free village went down to templars. They named me 'friend' and said they- all of them, whatever tribe-would owe me life whenever I needed it. They got me out. Debt's paid now. Understand?"
Reluctantly Pavek nodded. He wanted to lash someone with his rage, but what Yohan said made sense. It even answered some of his questions about Yohan himself. But the dwarf's history couldn't hold his thoughts, which skewed back to his original question:
"How did you escape? You were up against Rokka and Dovanne." He knew them by their descriptions. "You could've taken them in a fair fight But if Escrissar was lurking, you shouldn't have gotten away, Yohan. He should've nailed you to the ground, just like he did those poor-sod fanners you left guarding the cart."
The dwarf turned away, took a half-step toward the salt, and stopped. "Last thing she said: 'Don't believe what I send.' She blasted us, Pavek. Turned her mind inside-out. Let the nightmares fly free: the hates and fears we all have locked up inside. But she'd warned me, and I didn't believe. I dropped to my knees and howled but didn't believe. Then it all just stopped. That woman and the dwarf, they were rolling on the ground; they'd believed. I got to my feet, and I saw him walking toward her... the masked one you talked about: Escrissar, with the talons. He looked at me, reached through my ribs and pulled out my heart. It was mind-bending, all mind-bending. But I believed him, and by the living doom of Kemelok, I ran away."
It didn't take a mind-bender to read a proud man's shame in the next few moments of silence. With his back still toward them, Yohan rubbed his eyes again and finished the tale: "That's all. The elves found me and got me out late the next day. I don't know where, but-for what it's worth-not through the elven market. I stole a kank, made sure no one was following me, and headed back here. It's over. I'll tell Grandmother and be gone again."
"To Urik?"
"Aye, to Urik, to Elabon Escrissar. She's gone, Pavek. I failed her, and I lost her, and my banshee will haunt that mind-bending scum until he's rotted in his grave."
"I'm going with you," Pavek said, surprising himself for a heartbeat. "I can get you into the templar quarter, into his house-"
"You're no dwarf. It doesn't matter whether I get through the city gates, as long as I'm close before they kill me. She was my focus, the faith of my life. My banshee will find him soon enough. Don't go wasting your life on my account."
I've my own scores to settle with that half-elf bastard," Pavek countered. "I'll get you there."
"Me, too," Ruari announced.
Pavek had forgotten the youth was with them, looking exceptionally grim and elven in the late twilight. He regreted his description of Escrissar, but doubted it was any great part of Ruari's determination to join them.
"What do you say, Yohan?" he asked. "The three of us take down House Escrissar: the interrogator, the halfling, Laq and everything in-between?" Yohan shook his head. "It doesn't work that way. I can't change my focus once I've broken it. I swore in my heart to take care of her, and I failed. I thought she'd see the truth about the city more clearly in the elven market, so I took her there instead of the customhouse. Your
friends-" Yohan spat the word out so sarcastically that there was no danger of mistaking its contrary meaning "-were waiting for us. Failure's forever."
"You're sure your banshee would stay in Urik?" Ruari asked, sounding young and anxious. "You're sure it wouldn't come back here? I mean, if you broke faith with your focus, it was because of Quraite, wasn't it, as much as it was that half-elf bastard in Urik? If you broke faith at all. You knew it was a bad idea to take the zarneeka to Urik. Everyone knew how you felt, but Kashi and Grandmother, they wouldn't listen. They broke faith first-"
Though Pavek thought Ruari had raised sound and serious questions, he squeezed the youth's shoulder hard enough to make him shut up. Yohan was still staring at the salt, toward distant Urik. When Ruari looked up, snarling and ready for an argument, Pavek was able to mouth. Not now and Later. He gave Ruari's shoulder a friendly shake, then released him.
"We'll go with you to Urik," he said, not a question this time.
"You, you can come, but not Ruari-"
Once again the youth scowled and opened his mouth. Once again Pavek snared a fistful of half-elf and squeezed it for silence.
"Scum's got a right," he said, negotiating in flat, unemotional tones. "He tried his best, busted up tbe stowaway, and the women got around him. He's got a right to choose which mistakes he tries to correct: Telhami's or Escrissar's."
If he finally had Yohan's measure, Pavek figured the weary dwarf would accept his offer. Besides, if Ruari became too much of a nuisance, they could always clout him unconscious and leave him behind in some market village.
"We'll ask Grandmother." Yohan capitulated and turned toward them. Relief showed on his face, for all that he was trying to hide it. No one wanted to die alone.
* * *
A little later, by the light of a lamp in her hut, Telhami told them their plan was typical male foolishness. "Kashi's dead. She'd kill herself-she knows how-before she'd submit to that creature or betray Quraite's secret You've made your point: I was wrong. What the poor suffer without Ral's Bream is a small price to pay. Until Laq is a fading memory, our zameeka stays here in Quraite, hidden away. But Kashi's dead, and no amount of breast-beating or vengeance will change that. There's nothing left to be done. We've all paid the price. Forget Urik. Forget it all. Let it lie." She looked specifically at Yohan and added: "I'll forgive your focus, with the guardian's help. There's no reason to sacrifice yourself."