The Brazen Gambit (18 page)

Once again, the templar's name formed in his throat; once again he swallowed before it escaped.

"Who, Zvain?"

The voice came from behind. He spun and saw nothing.

"Who?"

He spun around again. The Laq-sellers continued to pummel Pavek, who was crawling toward him.

"Answer me, Zvain!"

There was nothing to account for the voice that echoed off the walls of the empty square. The speaker was
unseen.

Unseen...

Mind-bending masters of the Unseen Way were, by the very nature of their talent and practice, more hidden than
those who wore the Veil. To his knowledge, Zvain had never met an Unseen Master, but he knew how mind-benders
could turn a young man's world inside out, trapping him in his own memory, attacking him with the horrors of his own
imagination. Tales said that every sentient creature had the instinctive power to cast out even the most potent
mind-bender, but he, staring in panic at the cloudless sky of his memory and imagination, had no idea how to defend
himself.

"Zvain!"

A different voice this time. Familiar and focused. Pavek, no longer a blundering, unclever templar, but a strong
and brave man who fought with an obsidian trident. Blood no longer streamed from Pavek's face, but from the
Laq-sellers who lay in heaps at his feet. Zvain ran toward the fighter who would, surely, rescue him.

"Who am I!"

The question came from Pavek's mouth and echoed off the walls. Zvain skidded to his knees. His savior was not
Pavek, not a savior at all, but the mind-bender. And not wanting to see his own death reflected in Pavek's familiar eyes,
he tried to lower his head, but he'd been transfixed.

The false Pavek regarded him with undisguised disgust as he raised his trident. Zvain found enough strength to
tremble and whimper. But the mind-bending imposter aimed the trident at himself and, laughing manically, thrust the
tines into his own head. With razor-edged talons he slowly peeled Pavek's face away from his skull

No-Not his skull.
Unable to look away, Zvain gaped in horror as a gold-etched black mask appeared where the mind-bender's face
should have been. And, by King Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy, he knew the patterns on that mask-

The interrogator's mask was fully revealed; Pavek's inside-out face hung in tatters from red and black talons that
had replaced the vanished trident. The templar shock it once; the slashed parchment reformed itself, right-side out.

"Pavek. That misbegotten jozhal's still got his nose where it doesn't belong."

The templar shook his talons a second time, and Pavek's face floated away on an intangible wind. Then Elabon
Escrissar turned toward him, and he would have vomited up his fear, if he'd been able to do anything at all. Laq was
deadly, but Elabon Escrissar was worse, and the two together, as it seemed they were, was evil beyond measure.

"Don't be afraid, Zvain. Your loyalty is commendable, for all that it was misplaced. You shall be rewarded-"

Sheer terror finally broke his paralysis when the talons were less than a handspan from his nose. He flopped onto
his side and curled into a tight, quivering ball. His heart stopped when cool fingers caressed his cheek.

"There, there, Zvain. Don't be afraid. Truly. When you fear the worst, it manifests before you; that is the mind's
nature. Banish your fears and be rewarded. Raise your head. Open your eyes."

Slowly, unwillingly at first, he began to relax. His heart calmed, and the knotted muscles in his neck loosened.
When his eyes opened, he looked upon a wise and kindly face, a face so pale it seemed to glow with its own gentle
light.

"No," Zvain whispered, trying to recall his fear and the slave-master's true face.

Black talons traced a feather-gentle line across his cheek. He felt his skin open.

"Banish your fears. Accept what I show you as the truth."

The talons were gone, replaced by soothing fingertips that sealed his wounds. Blood became tears.

"Pavek would not help you-Pavek did not love you."

Elabon Escrissar gestured toward emptiness. It filled with a swarthy, stoop-shouldered human dressed in a dirty,
sweat-stained yellow robe. The scars on Pavek's face pulsed malignantly. His eyes squinted, and his lips twisted into a
beasdy sneer.

"He abandoned you, didn't he? He consorted with your enemies, the Laq-sellers-"

The itinerant trio, as ugly and depraved as before, appeared around Pavek, bound to him by chains of congealed
blood.

"And you thought he was your friend. My poor Zvain- you thought he would rescue you, protect you. But he
betrayed you instead-"

A cool fingertip touched his tears, drying them, so he could see with perfect clarity.

"What can I give you for a reward, Zvain?"

"Vengeance."

"That is not enough. What else do you want?"

"Magic."

"They are yours. Take them."

He felt parchment fingers touch his forehead, then withdraw.

"Take ashes and dust."

The conducive substances appeared on the ground. He gathered a handful of each before rising to his feet. He
could see the templar's face-stern and vengeful now, but still glowing with inner wisdom-and Pavek's-turning more
bestial each time his scar throbbed-and the truth was very, very clear in his mind.

"Open your mouth. Speak the words on the tip of your tongue-"

He obeyed, willingly. Harsh syllables hung in the air. They summoned the dust from his right hand and the ash
from his left. Pavek began to scream; his tongue lengthened and swelled grotesquely until it plugged his throat. The
screaming stopped, but the tongue continued to grow as Pavek's entire body was consumed by one of its lesser parts.

Completely enrapt by the horror and magic, Zvain watched as the slug-thing burst its yellow robes and writhed
on the paving stones. It sprouted countless wormy fingers, each with a throbbing scar, a single Pavek-eye, and a
silently shrieking Pavek-mouth. As the last of the dust and ash evaporated from his clenched hands, the Pavek-thing
began to shrivel. The tiny eyes turned to ash, the open mouths filled with dust, and the wormy fingers shriveled into
black splotches that spread and merged until what remained of Pavek resembled nothing so much as the tell-tale black,
protruding tongue of a Laq-eater's corpse.

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.