The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  Yohan was speechless, but Pavek swore loudly enough to awaken the entire village.

  And Quraite's guardian. Awareness flowed into him- threatened to destroy him with its intensity-then Ruari's hand was flat against his arm, helping him shape the power he'd instinctively invoked.

  "Don't coddle me with your forgiveness," he roared, "or your tally of what's been paid and what's still owed. I know better; I know Escrissar! Look at me, Telhami. Look inside me! Look at what I know about Elabon Escrissar and tell me that there's nothing left to do!"

  The old woman did not use her mind-bender's power to take the images he so desperately wanted to hurl into her mind's eye. She didn't even raise her eyes to meet his, but she did, somehow, cut him off from the guardian's power.

  Ruari's hand slipped away, and the energized air within the hut dissipated on the midnight breeze.

  "Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy is far greater than yours," Pavek whispered. She'd diminished his voice when she reaped the guardian's strength away from him. "He'd never let a favorite slip away unavenged."

  His legs were dead-weight beneath him. Each step was precarious as he turned and plodded toward the door. Telhami said nothing, did nothing to stop him.

  * * *

  There were three fresh kanks, provisions, and well-crafted obsidian weapons waiting beside the central well when Pavek picked himself up from the tree-shaded place where he'd fallen-literally-to sleep after leaving Telhami's hut. Telhami wasn't around. Ruari said she'd left the village for her grove at dawn, walking with just her staff to support her. He said that she was sorry, that she'd grieved and sobbed, torn her clothes and wailed that she was ready to die before she left her hut. Challenged by both himself and Yohan, Ruari admitted he'd spent the night spying and promptly ran off.

  The boundless energy of youth, Pavek thought enviously while he washed sleep-grit from his eyes. He was stiff and sore, as if he'd been the loser in an uneven brawl-as, in a sense, he had been: Telhami had bested him before he'd known he was in a fight.

  And then, before dawn, she'd conceded defeat.

  He threw a leather harness over the kank's carapace, narrowly dodging its saliva-drenched mandibles. It trilled in the high-pitched, nerve-jangling way of bugs, making the hair all over his body stand on end, but the bug minded its manners. He tightened straps around the food sacks and water jugs, and attached a long, obsidian knife to his belt.

  Yohan was already mounted. The dwarf's eyes were still a study in red and black, but his strength had been restored by a haif night's sleep. Ruari was returning with a fourth kank..

  "In case we find her," he explained before any questions could be asked. "In case we get very lucky."

  An extra kank couldn't hurt-especially if, as Ru said, they got very lucky. Pavek waited in silence while Ruari harnessed both his kank and the extra one. Villagers came to see them leave. The farmers saluted them with fingers twisted into various luck-signs or pressed sprigs of tiny white flowers into their hands. The druids hung back, their expressions more complex and much harder to read.

  Few words were exchanged. Everyone, presumably, had heard Pavek's midnight explosion-by rumor, at least, if he hadn't actually awakened them. There wasn't much more to say. The sky was bright and cloudless, as it usually was. A storm-dust, wind, or Tyr-might sweep down on them before they got to Urik, with no one in Quraite ever the wiser. But, if there were no storms, they'd reach Urik in about four days. And after that-?

  What could anyone say to three men riding to certain and unpleasant death?

  What could they say to each other?'

  Nothing.

  Yohan tapped his kank's antenna to get it moving. Ruari went next with an optimist's bug at the end of a rope. Pavek took up the rear.

  * * *

  Telhami was waiting for them on the verge of the Sun's Fist. Her silhouette was hunched and shrunken. Despite the familiar veiled hat, Pavek didn't recognize her at first. She asked-an honest request, not a disguised command-to use her arts together in their minds to sequester their knowledge of Quraite against all inquiry. It wouldn't, she insisted, prevent them from returning, but it would thwart Elabon Escrissar or anyone else who sought to unravel their memories.

  "For Quraite-?" she asked.

  Ruari and Yohan dismounted; Pavek stayed where he was. They knelt on the hard ground and were entranced by mind-bending and spellcraft. He and Telhami were effectively alone.

  "For Quraite," she repeated, and he wasn't swayed. "The guardian will keep your secrets safe from Elabon Escrissar."

  Settling himself in the kank's saddle he realized he knew exactly what the emptiness had contained: the background against which he'd lived his recent life. There were names: Telhami, Akashia, the farmers and the other druids, each associated with a familiar face and floating in an unnatural gray fog, as if he had dwelt in a cloud of smoke since leaving Urik.

  He had Telhami's word that he could find his way back, if me was lucky enough to escape Elabon Escrissar; and that he would betray nothing if his luck ran out. It was thin, cold comfort, and he shivered the length of his spine, prodding the kank onto the dazzling Sun's Fist behind Ruari and Yohan.

  * * *

  They left the kanks at a homestead barely within the broad belt of irrigated farms from which Urik drew its foodstuffs. A small shower of silver from Yohan's coin pouch bought promises that the bugs would cared for and left in an open pen. There was risk. There was always risk when one man bought another man's promise; neither knew who else might raise the asking price.

  But few things held as much risk as breaking into a High Templar's house with thoughts of assassination in their minds.

  Getting into Urik wasn't so difficult. Generations of templarate orphans had dared each other into reckless explorations of the city's remotest corners. They lacked prestige and promotions, but their knowledge of Urik was legendary. And just as Pavek was certain that there was no passage through walls near the elven markets, he knew there was one beneath the northwest watchtower. The only thing he feared as he cleared away the rubble from a loose foundation stone was meeting a band of his younger counterparts somewhere in the narrow, twisting passageway.

  He knew they were halfway to the templar quarter when the passage widened into the shimmering blue-green curtain of the sorcerer-king's personal warding.

  "You first," he said to Ruari, who turned gray in the eerie light and refused to move. "You've got my medallion. Give it back if you don't want to go first." He held out his hand.

  "What makes you think I've got it with me?" Ruari countered, all spit and vinegar, and clutching his shirt where Pavek had known the ceramic lump was hidden.

  He cocked his head toward Yohan who, with a weary sigh, thumped the half-wit between the shoulders, propelling him through the curtain, which hissed and sparkled but did not harm him. He and the dwarf scurried through before the sparking died.

  "What if I didn't?" Ruari demanded.

  "You'd be dead," he said bluntly and kept walking.

  * * *

  The passage ended not far from the orphanage along the interior wall of the templar quarter, the most familiar part of the city for him, but not for the other two, who were clearly daunted by the monotonous tangle of precise intersections and nearly identical facades.

  "How do you know where we're going?" Ruari asked in an urgent whisper, revealing that he failed to recognize the subtle decorations that distinguished a High Templar's private house from a civil bureau barracks- and that he couldn't read the inscriptions painted above every door.

  "Magic."

  And knowing that Ruari would realized that he'd been pulled and would need to even the score, Pavek drifted closer, allowing the nervous scum to jab a fist into his arm. He hoped physical contact would settle the youth down. Curfew hadn't rung, and though the foot-traffic was light, fellow wasn't the only color on the streets. There were artisians and tradesmen making their way to homes in other quarters. A little laughter and sport helped them ble
nd in. Hugging the shadows would've drawn precisely the attention he didn't want, especially as they neared their destination.

  Outwardly, House Escrissar looked no different from any other flat red and yellow facade. There were three doors- High Templars lived in luxury, but nothing was allowed to disturb the symmetry of the quarter-each marked with the same angular symbol the halfling alchemist wore on his cheek. There were interrogator's glyphs, too, and warnings that no one was welcome across the threshold unless specifically invited.

  The orphans had respected those warnings. Their scavenging expeditions stayed well away from House Escrissar, at least during Pavek's lifetime. But the buildings of the templar quarter were identical, and he had no trouble locating the boiled leather panel that, when lifted, revealed a midden shaft: High Templars did not bury their rubbish in their atrium gardens, nor did they dump it out the upper story windows as folk did in those mixed quarters where scroungers kept the streets clean. They-or their slaves-gathered it up discreetly in buckets and barrels for other slaves to collect.

  Pavek warned his companions to watch their footing while me studied the shaft that stretched to the rooftop above them. There was no shimmering curtain to block his view of the stars. But not all wards declared themselves so boldly. Escrissar might have sealed himself within invisible wards, but even he would have had. to beg the spell from King Hamanu, and the king might have wondered why. Pavek was willing to wager his life that there were no invisible wards in the shaft or anywhere else. Not that it mattered much. He wasn't expecting to be alive when curfew struck. He'd never had many ambitions, had never expected to grow old-even when his life was secured by a yellow robe with a regulator's colors woven through the sleeves. Death gathered up men like him sooner rather than later; but he'd never considered that death was waiting around midnight's corner. Suddenly his pulse was racing, and he shook so badly he leaned against the wall for support.

  Pavek's thoughts turned gray and filled with open, honest faces, brown-haired teal-eyed Akashia foremost among them. If home-that place beyond the empty fog-had held Akashia, he would have gone. He wouldn't die for Laq or Ral's Breath or Urik; but she was here, needing vengeance, needing rescue. Her cries echoed through fog and dark.

  She was here.

  "Pavek-?"

  That was Ruari's voice calling him out of the fog, and Yohan's heavy hand steadying his shoulder. He shrugged the hand away.

  "She's here. She's still here, still alive. I heard her."

  "Pavek-whatever you're doing. Stop!"

  Stop what? he wondered, then he felt it, the same swirling power he felt in the groves of Quraite. Quraite-the name, the place he shouldn't remember, mustn't remember. Confused and moaning, he wound his fingers in his hair, twisting it tightly until there was enough pain to take away the fog, the faces, and-finally-the name itself.

  The mote of emptiness in his memory had returned. The name and everything associated with it was gone. He sank into a deep squat, trying to understand what had just happened.

  "What was that all about?" Yohan demanded.

  "An evocation," Ruari said, his voice as shaky as Pavek felt. "You evoked something... something. Hamanu. Did you evoke Hamanu?"

  Pavek looked up in time to see Ruari fumbling with the medallion. "No," he whispered, still mystified, himself. "Not Hamanu. I don't know.... It felt like-" The emptiness loomed around him, and words failed utterly. "I don't know," he said, and repeated the phrase several times.

  "A guardian."

  He denied it, and Yohan swore; but Ruari was certain. "Guardians arise from the spirit of Athas," he said, as if he were reciting one of Telhami's lessons. "But a guardian isn't Athas. It's what makes one aspect of Athas different from all the others: one mountain, one grove, one stream-one unique something."

  "There's nothing here," Yohan objected. "Buildings and people. They've sprawled over everything. There's nothing left for a guardian."

  "Urik. Urik's here. Urik's unique."

  Pavek stood up. He pressed his palms against the wall of House Escrissar and closed his eyes. The presence was there: Urik, far older than the sorcerer-kings-massive, and powerful. It rose to meet him, and he stepped back, letting the power subside once he had sensed what he needed, and nothing more.

  "She is here."

  The smoothed and painted plaster of the templar quarter facades did not extend to the midden shafts, where unfinished brick provided a multitude of handholds for three men climbing to the roof. Like most wealthy Urik residences, House Escrissar was built around a courtyard filled with fruit trees, fragrant flowers, fountains, and pools, and lined from ground to roof with an arbor of berry-vines. The courtyard was quiet except for the fountains. It was dark, too, with only a faint dappling of light seeping through the tracery of a few of the many rooms that faced the courtyard. It was also deserted-or so Pavek devoutly hoped. Neither experience nor logic suggested where they should lower themselves from the roof to the upper story of living rooms, but, having come further and survived longer than any of them had expected, they grew more cautious with each passing moment.

  "Are you certain?" Yohan asked when Pavek hoisted his leg over the balustrade.

  "I think she's here. I think she's alive. I think this is the way. But I'm not certain of anything. Pick some other place, if you want. This is the way I'm going."

  And the way Ruart and Yohan followed: swinging down from the roof into the vine arbor whose support slats sank ominously beneath both him and the dwarf. For several moments, they paid more attention to their footing, then Pavek heard an all-too-familiar voice:

  "... Now or later, my dear lady, dead or alive. It makes no difference to me, but I will have your secrets. Your guardian can protect your past; I possess your present and your future. Remember that each time you resist."

  Silence followed and a sense that the night had become darker. Pavek caught Yohan's arm as he surged toward the voice they'd heard.

  "She's there. I have to go to her-" Yohan's tone was urgent, mindless.

  Pavek could scarcely restrain him. "Do you want to get us all killed? Or die in front of her? Or do you want to get her out?"

  The dwarf relaxed. "Get her out."

  "Then we've got to wait."

  Yohan seemed resigned until Akashia screamed. "I can't wait. He's hurting her. I can't resist-"

  "She is. She's resisted since you left her, and she'll go on resisting until we get her out!"

  "It's that window, there," Ruari softly interrupted them. "I can climb and look through the tracery and see what we're up against. I'm light enough."

  "Go ahead," he said, giving Ruari's arm a light, well-meaning nudge for confidence's sake.

  "Go with Rkard," Yohan said more soberly. The next moments were the longest of Pavek's life. Akahia moaned, Escrissar taunted, and Ruari had completely disappeared. Someone wearing a yellow robe and carrying a lamp came and stood not an arm's length away in a corridor in the other side of the tracery that supported the berry arbor. Pavek held his breath until his lungs were burning.

  The templar went away. Ruari returned.

  "It's a small room with one door," he whispered. "Kashi's bound on a bench with cushions. He doesn't touch her, just stands there behind his long black mask, clicking his long black claws against each other-"

  "He's an interrogator," Pavek interjected. "He doesn't need to use his hands."

  And Yohan quietly swore a bloody vengeance.

  "There's someone else in the room. Shorter and standing in the shadows. I couldn't see him clearly. But I think he's wearing a mask, too."

  "The halfling. His face is covered with scars; it looks like a mask. Anyone else? Any guards? Templars?"

  "Kashi and two men wearing masks. That's all I saw. What do we do now?"

  "We wait. He's an interrogator, one of the best. They make the prisoners do the hard work. He'll leave her alone so she can think about what he's done, and what he's going to do. We'll move while he's resting, and she's helpless
."

  "You're beasts, all templars, every last one of you," Yohan murmured. "Worse than beasts. You've got no conscience."

  Pavek didn't argue.

  They waited, listening, hoping Escrissar would end the torment for the night, and expecting that the midnight gong would strike at any time. Getting through the streets to the wall-passage would be much more difficult and dangerous after curfew. Then, without warning, the moment came: the light in Akashia's prison dimmed through the tracery and two black-robed men, one quite tall, the other noticeably shorter, came along the corridor. They held their breaths and looked away, lest a flash of light reflecting off an open eye would give them away.

  "Let's go."

  The lightweight tracery panels of precious wood came out easily. They moved into the corridor. Pavek and Yohan unsheathed the long obsidian knives Telhami had provided for them. Ruari, who admitted no skill with edged weapons but claimed to have learned something about picking locks from his elven relations, went a half-step ahead. The mechanical lock was simple and the door flimsy enough that they could have battered it down with little trouble, but Ruari was quieter and almost as quick. Using a fragile contraption of straw and sinew, he eased the bolt free. It struck the floor behind the door with a thunk that common sense insisted was no where near as loud as it seemed to three jittery men in the corridor.

  Ruari reached for the handle. Both Pavek and Yohan grabbed him before he clasped it and pulled him aside. The door swung toward them of its own weight. Standing out of harm's way, Pavek caught the handle with the tip of his knife. He let it swing open.

  "Kashi?" he whispered.

  "Pavek!"