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Her last conscious thoughts were for Yohan's safety and escape, then she surrendered completely to the darkest corners of her imagination. She let out hatred, fear, and vengeance: every malicious thought she'd ever had and repressed-exactly as Grandmother had told her she'd have to do if she came to a moment like this, when everything important was at stake.
And even though she risked losing herself forever in the dark.
* * *
Akashia regained consciousness in a room filled with sweet incense and soft voices. A lightweight linen sheet covered her from feet to shoulders; the air against her face was cool. Night had almost certainly fallen, and she had almost certainly fallen into the hands of the tattooed woman, the ugly dwarf, and the mind-bender, Elabon Escrissar-the very enemies Pavek had warned them about.
"Pavek's enemies, not yours. Not yet," a smooth, masculine voice replied, by which she understood that Escrissar was a powerful mind-bender, indeed.
Akashia opened her eyes. The mind-bender wasn't wearing the black mask and robe Pavek had described. In plain, pale domes, he was simply a bland-looking man, a half-elf by birth and radiantly evil by temperament. A scarred halfling stood to one side, neither smiling nor scowling: the alchemist responsible for Laq. There was no sign of the ugly dwarf or the tattooed woman, but there was a dark-haired boy by the open door of the small, luxurious room where they'd brought her.
The boy smiled when he caught her looking at him. It was a smile that made Akashia's blood freeze in her heart.
"I do not want to be your enemy, dear lady. Pavek was born a thick-skulled idiot; he'll the a sorry hero. But not you. You understand. You've held power yourself. You have ambitions."
He came up the shadowed, twisted pathways she had blasted through her defenses, through her very self. All silk and seduction, he touched the tender, aching places of her mind, of her body, offering her things she had scarcely imagined before this horrifying moment.
She drew a shuddering breath, closed her eyes, and fought with all her might to throw him out.
Chapter Fourteen
Pavek's days had assumed a different routine while Akashia was gone. He still went to Telhami's grove every other day-they scrupulously avoided certain subjects of conversation: zarneeka, Urik, Laq, and Akashia, herself. But on the day between, he carried a hoe into the fields and worked with the farmers. The back-breaking work gave him time to think about the lessons Telhami gave him, and the subjects they did not discuss. Thinking was good for his incipient druidry: he could wring water out of the air now, on demand and without a headache, but as the empty days of Akashia's absence began outnumber his fingers, his mood darkened.
Aside from Telhami, only one person intruded on his enforced solitude: Ruari.
They had not become fast-friends after they returned from the youth's grove, although Pavek had stood firm, in his brawly templar way, for the half-elf s right to rejoin the community then and there. Remembering himself at Ruari's I age, Pavek reckoned that he'd saddled the boy with too great a debt and was content to let him keep his distance. Besides, the half-witted scum was a whiner, and a complainer; and Pavek, veteran of the orphanage and the civil bureau, had no patience for either trait.
He looked up from his hoeing and saw Ruari waiting for him at the end of the row-the row he'd intended as his last row of the day, unless he showed Ruari his back now and kept working until the scum gave up and left. But he'd let Ruari catch his eye, which was all the invitation Ruari required.
"Go away, scum," he said when a long, lean shadow touched his feet. It was a polite, even friendly, greeting among templars.
"You beat me up bad. I couldn't fight you off. I want to learn how."
"Keep your mouth shut." He offered the advice he'd heard and ignored many times before. "That way you won't start so many fights you can't finish."
"I don't start fights," Ruari snapped, giving the lie to his words with the tone of his voice. "They just happen. Maybe if I won once in a while, I wouldn't have so many."
A vagrant laugh slipped into Pavek's mouth. He clamped a hand over his chin to contain it.
"Wind and fire! Why're you laughing? What's so funny?"
Ruari took a swing at him, which Pavek blocked with his forearm. The hoe slid off his shoulder and landed in the dirt. The scum was quick; Pavek would grant him that Too quick. Once he was riled, Ruari whipped up the air with his fists, landing blows that were little more than love-taps, and leaving himself vulnerable to the powerful punch of an admittedly slower, far-more-massive opponent. But instead of a punch, Pavek reached through Ruari's guard, grabbed shirt and skin, and lifted him off the ground.
"You've got two arms, scum. Two fists. Keep one of 'em at home for yourself."
"That's what Yohan always says."
"Listen to him." Pavek let go, and Ruari landed lightly and easily on the balls of his feet. "He's a good teacher." "He's not here-" "Just go away, scum."
"I want to learn from you. Aren't you impressed? Flattered?" The whine was back in Ruari's voice; it grated in Pavek's ears, "/think you're better than the old dwarf. Me- the half-wit scum who hates all rotted, yellow-robe templars, and tried to poison you-I want you to teach me how to fight."
There was a fading bruise on Ruari's chin, another on his arm, and a third, larger, one across his chest, visible through the open neck of his shirt, all souvenirs of their last encounter. Pavek picked up the hoe with a display of hostility that made Ruari dance back a pace or two and hoist his fists again. But he was only teasing, not taking bait. He dug into the dirt where Ruari had been standing.
The boy reafeed he'd been gulled. "Pavek-?"
He broke up a clod of dirt with the blade of the hoe and threw a handful of weeds over his shoulder onto the barren ground beyond the irrigated fields. Ruari's shadow didn't move, and neither did his mouth, for a pleasant change. Another long, silent moment passed. Pavek kicked the blade into the ground, then he headed out of the field. With a wave of his fingers, he invited Ruari to join him.
"Show me what you've got," he said, and the half-elf bobbed on his toes, with his slender arms and fists in front of him.
