The Brazen Gambit Part 21

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 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes. 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes.

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 pa.s.sages used the elven market.

"That dwarf, that hairy b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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-"

"How did did you get out, Yohan?" Pavek seized Yohan by the shoulder and spun him around-a testament to the dwarf's weakness and exhaustion. "There's no way through the walls from the market. Who helped you? What did he give you in return?" you get out, Yohan?" Pavek seized Yohan by the shoulder and spun him around-a testament to the dwarf's weakness and exhaustion. "There's no way through the walls from the market. Who helped you? What did he give you in return?"

"Pavek! No!" Ruari shouted, trying ineffectively to loosen Pavek's hold on Yohan.

Pavek let go of his own accord, shoving the dwarf backward and turning his helpless fury on the half-elf. "There's no pa.s.sage 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, sc.u.m. Escrissar! Escrissar! Escrissar set him free, sent him back to us!" 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 farmers 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 sc.u.m 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d," 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 Not now and and Later. Later. He gave Ruari's shoulder a friendly shake, then released him. 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.

"Sc.u.m's got a right," he said, negotiating in flat, unemotional tones. "He tried his best, busted up the 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.

"We'll tell tell Telhami that we're going to fix the mistakes she's made, and that we'll Telhami that we're going to fix the mistakes she's made, and that we'll all all turn into banshees to haunt her if she tries to stop us." turn into banshees to haunt her if she tries to stop us."

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."

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 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!" 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 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, Akashia, 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 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 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 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 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 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.

"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 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 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."