The Brazen Gambit (20 page)

But what unnerved her proved helpful for Pavek who, as the warm Athasian morning became the longer, hotter
Athasian afternoon, had some small success widi the simple mnemonics and invocations she suggested to him. He
was not a difficult student-not argumentative, like Ruari, who wanted to try his own ways before he mastered the tried
and true methods, or uncertain, like most other youngsters. Just-Plain Pavek was just plain exhausting.

Failure didn't daunt him. Even when he failed ten or twenty times in succession, he'd simply shake his head to
clear it, close his eyes, raise his hands, and be ready for another attempt.

Sweat-stained and trembling, she called a halt while the sun was still well above the treetops. Pavek was
disappointed, saying his lessons in Telhami's grove lasted until the sky was as red as the sun. But Grandmother
insisted that her pupils do everything for themselves, while she subscribed to gentler theories of education, pressing
her hands against his each time he attempted an invocation, rough-shaping the guardian's primal energies before they
reached him.

Today Pavek had summoned spheres of water and fire and called a timid songbird down from the trees. Today he
wanted to practice until the moons rose.

She threw up her hands. "Enough! Let's save something for tomorrow."

He grinned, the first she'd seen. He'd never be handsome-he looked better with a beard but he preferred to go
clean-shaven-but a smile took the menace out of his face and balanced it nicely. It vanished the moment she invited
him into the pool. Wild water, no matter how sweet or cold, apparently didn't tempt the city dweller, especially when he
couldn't see the bottom of it.

He sat in the grass with his back to the water until she was thoroughly refreshed, then they headed back to the
village, walking side-by-side. This time he answered her questions about Urik and asked a few of his own, mostly
about druidry. They saw smoke rising from cookfires while they were still in the scrubland between the grove and the
village. Succulent and spicy aromas met them on the footpaths through the garden fields. Recognizing them all, she
stopped talking and began to run. Pavek kept pace, and she stole a sidelong glance to see if he looked as hungry as
she felt. He didn't; that vaguely sullen, menacing mask of disinterest he wore most of the time had clamped down over
his face again. , The first person she saw in the village was Ruari, crouched on the porch of a pantry hut, frantically
scouring a wooden bowl. She assumed he'd taken extra food to his grove and was now destroying the evidence. The
druids, who did not work in the gardens, weren't supposed to take more than their fair share from the pantries, but Ru
was always finding orphaned kivit kittens and sheltering them in his grove until they could fend for themselves. It was
one of his better habits, and all the mote endearing because he tried so hard to conceal it, lest anyone think he was
tender-hearted or soft-headed, or a half-elf.

Since Pavek's arrival, very little food had vanished from the pantries. She knew she wouldn't be the only one who
was glad to see Ruari pilfering again. After telling Pavek to go ahead, she called her friend's name and left the path.

Ruari's head came up-slack jawed and white eyed, caught squarely in an act of compassion. She smiled to
reassure him and got a glower of purest malice as a reply. Then, with the bowl in one hand and a clump of scrubbing
thorns in the other, he darted out of sight behind another hut.

"I won't tell anyone," she protested, but he remained in hiding and, after another futile effort, she went on her
own way to supper.

The men and women preparing the evening meal hailed her at once, asking her if she'd brought anything special
for the pots from her grove. She hadn't. She'd forgotten completely-Pavek's lessons had driven everything else from
her mind. So she offered to stir one of the pots instead. But Telhami, standing straighter and stronger after a day of
rest, called her over.

They were still discussing Pavek's progress, or the lack of it, on the porch of Telhami's hut when the supper-horn
sounded.

Day and night, Quraiters went about their own business. They came together as a community only for the
evening meal. The hard-packed dirt around the cookfires echoed laughter and gossip as neighbors shared the events
of their day with each other. Akashia and Telhami shared in the daily greetings, but ate apart from the rest, continuing
their conversation.

From the corner of her eye, Akashia caught Ruari emerging from his hiding place. He took his place with a
handful of age-mates-the same youths she herself had played and worked with until Telhami singled her out for special
instruction. Ruari ate with them, but he didn't look at or talk to anyone.

Pavek was the last to enter the commons, the last to pick up a bowl. The servers had gone to eat their own meals,
abandoning their ladles on the pot rims. The templar served himself, his custom and his choice, made at his first
Quraite supper and continued without exception since that night. He ate quickly, standing up and completely by
himself. As soon as the last drop of stew had been sopped up with the last morsel of bread, he cleaned his bowl and
returned it to a large basket by the well.

He left the commons, headed for the fallow fields, where, according to Yohan who kept an eye on him when he
was in the village and made regular reports to Telhami, he would sit by himself, recreating his memorized spellcraft in
the dust with a piece of straw.

"What will become of him, Grandmother?" she asked, though she knew there were only two alternatives: he
would master their spellcraft and become a druid, or he would become a farmer, as all other Quraiters were farmers. She
refused to consider the third alternative: that he would wind up in the roots of Telhami's grove.

"Too soon to say."

While other Quraiters relaxed into a twilight of song and storytelling around a crackling fire, Akashia remained on
the porch. The greatest of Quraite's mysteries did not reside in any ancient grove or in the guardian's mystic presence;
they resided in Telhami's keen understanding of the forces that shaped the Tablelands. And so Akashia sat, listened,
and learned another lesson about the movements of the moons and the winds, of seeds, oil, metal, and salt, and every
other thing upon which their lives depended.

Pale Ral, the smaller moon, rose above the trees to begin its journey through the stars. Ral was solitary this
evening, Guthay was resting with the sun. The heat of day gave way to the chill of evening and the fireside gathering
dispersed, singly and in pairs and families. She would have gone with them if she could. Her day had begun earlier
than usual, and she hadn't had Grandmother's advantage of an afternoon nap, but Telhami was talking about salt and
gave no sign of tiring. So she waved to friends who walked past, and tried to stay awake.

Her eyes were still open but her thoughts had wandered into dreams when someone shouted their names. A
moment passed while she collected her wits. By then Telhami had vanished, using the guardian's energy to travel
instantaneously to the problem. She had to wait until a boy skidded to a stop in front of her.

"It's the templar," the child said breathlessly. "He's dying. Grandmother says, bring her herbs, and hurry."

Surprisingly and inexplicably numb from heart to fingertips, she collected a handful of thong-wrapped pouches.
The boy led her beyond the trees where Pavek's moans were a better guide than the boy.

"What's happened?" she asked, although Pavek's pain-contorted body told an eloquent tale.

"Poisoned himself," Telhami muttered, taking two of the pouches from her hand.

"Poisoned himself?"

She would have sworn to anyone, including the guardian of Quraite, that Pavek had been in the best of spirits
when they returned from her grove. He'd shaped the elements with only a little help from her; bis belief that he would
master druidry had been restored. He'd smiled, and even laughed-as if he were made of the same emotional stuff as
other men. "He had no cause to poison himself," she concluded, trying to assure herself as much as Telhami and the
other shadows beneath the trees.
"Poison," Telhami repeated, and this time, as a black froth bubbled through Pavek's lips, there could be no
further doubt.

The herbs confirmed the diagnosis, nothing more. Telhami turned toward the shadows

"Yohan?"

"Nothing, Grandmother," he said wearily. "Whatever he ate, he ate it to the last crumb and drop, or he didn't eat
it here in the village."

"He ate supper with the rest of us," another shadow interjected, going soft and slow at the end. "We all ate what
he ate."

No one said anything for a moment, while Pavek, no longer vomiting, pressed his fists into his gut and curled
around them. He was conscious, after a fashion, muttering names between his moans: Dovanne, Rokka, Escrissar. But
he was unaware of his immediate surroundings. Of Telhami or Yohan... of her as she once again tried to shield his
head.

"That won't help," Telhami chided. "Give me your hands."

Obediently, because Telhami was right, she raised her hands, palms-out, above Pavek's chest. As Ruari had
channeled the lifeforce of Athas for her when she wrought healer's spellcraft on the injured kank, she took the
second's role for Telhami. Here in Quraite, where the guardian's presence was concentrated, she surrendered herself
completely to its power.

Other druids worked their magic in different ways. Other clerics certainly did. But in Quraite where Telhami had
learned druidry and where her way was now the only way, one druid channeled the lifeforce and a second invoked the
spell whenever it was possible. She heard the first droning syllable of the invocation; her flesh grew warm. She heard
the second; her hands burned as if her fingers had become flames. Then nothing, heard or felt, as Telhami took what
she offered and fought for Pavek's life.

Time passed without measure or mark. The healing fire was quenched. She yawned and stretched, no worse for
her experience, and looked down on Pavek, stretched out between her knees and Telhami's. His limbs were relaxed, but
not limp. His chest rose in a deep, regular rhythm and, in the hollow of his throat, four dark beads the size of a jozhal's
eye glistened in the moonlight.

Cautiously Telhami touched one bead with a moistened finger, then pressed the tip against her tongue.

"Kivit."

Kivits excreted an effective poison through musk glands beneath their cheeks. They spread the ooze across their
fur as they groomed themselves. The defensive coating made the little creatures an unappetizing mouthful to any but
the most desperate predator. Quraite's farmers smeared kivit musk around the trunks of their trees while the fruits
budded and ripened. It killed any field vermin that ventured across it, but a man was in no danger, unless he gorged
himself on kivit, fur and all-at best an unlikely possibility-or he mistook a sun-dried clot of concentrated musk for a
date or raisin-a mistake he should have corrected the moment his mouth puckered.

Her thoughts raced toward a dreaded conclusion: Ruari collected kivits in his grove. Ruari collected and dried
kivit musk for the farmers. Ruari had run away when she'd caught him scrubbing a bowl.

Not cleaning it. Not so innocent, but lining the bowl with poison.

It could be done. Pavek had made himself predictable, vulnerable. He came late, took the last bowl, and served
himself. He'd never complain if the stew tasted strange, never suspect that his was different. And he'd use a
sponge-like chunk of bread to mop up every last morsel and drop from the bowl's sides. Every last morsel and drop of
poison, too.

"Kashi?"

Telhami interrupted her down-spiraling thoughts. She met the sharp, ancient eyes with a shiver. It didn't matter
what Pavek was, who he'd been, or what he might become. What Ruari had done would be Ruari's death once
Grandmother knew about it.

"Kashi?"

"It's nothing," she lied and, knowing that lie would not be sufficient, added: "I'm a fine one to chide you about
wearing yourself out with Pavek. One day guiding him through his lessons, and I'm so exhausted I can't see straight."

Lying was frowned upon in Quraite, but it was not a capital offense, and she congratulated herself that she'd
been able to come up with a good lie so easily. With a heartbeat's effort, she could even convince herself that the
guardian understood and approved.

"You young folk need more sleep than I," Telhami agreed. "Danger's passed here. Go on, take yourself to bed.
Pavek will tell us what happened when he wakes up tomorrow morning-"

That had the ring of certainty to it-and all the more reason for her to find Ruari first. She rose unsteadily. No lying
there: her muscles were cramped from kneeling on the chilled ground. The healing had lasted longer than she'd
imagined.

"Until morning," she whispered, careful to retreat toward her own hut, and getting well beyond the torchlight
around Pavek before beginning her search.

Ruari might have retreated to his grove. He might have left Quraite entirely-which was what she was going to tell
him to do in no uncertain terms. But Ruari hadn't inherited a grove. His tiny plot of nurtured ground was as far from the
center of Quraite as it could be while remaining under the guardian's purview. She'd search there last, just before she'd
decide that he'd left Quraite forever. First there was the bachelor hut, where he usually slept and where a finger hooked
through the reed walls revealed Ruari's undisturbed blankets folded along the wall among a half-dozen snoring men.

He sat there, cross-legged in the shadows, waiting to be caught with the incriminating bowl squarely in his lap.

"Why, Ru? Why?"

He hadn't heard her coming, hadn't expected her at all. The bowl bounced in the dusty dirt as he scrambled to his
feet, looking right and left-as if he might run-before standing still, looking at his feet.