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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 call
ed 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."
