Part 21 (2/2)

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 half 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.”

Reluctantly, Pavek slid from the kank's back. He had to kneel: there was no other way she could touch his eyes and ears or press her thumbs against his temples. Bolts of white lightning rebounded within his skull, within his mind. When they ended, Telhami was gone, the other two had remounted, and there was a mote of utter emptiness in his memory.

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, Akas.h.i.+a, the farmers and the other druids, each a.s.sociated 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sageway.

He knew they were halfway to the templar quarter when the pa.s.sage widened into the s.h.i.+mmering 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 s.h.i.+rt where Pavek had known the ceramic lump was hidden.

He c.o.c.ked 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 pa.s.sage 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 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. 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 sc.u.m 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 blend 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 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. 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 s.h.i.+mmering 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.

”I'll go alone from here,” Yohan suggested gently. ”You've done your part. Go home. Live another day. Take Ruari.”

Pavek's thoughts turned gray and filled with open, honest faces, brown-haired teal-eyed Akas.h.i.+a foremost among them. If home-that place beyond the empty fog-had held Akas.h.i.+a, 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 a.s.sociated 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. something. Hamanu. Did you evoke Hamanu?” 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.”

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