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And they all realized that Telhami had left the mirage strictly for them, to restore their strength and faith, and guide them across the featureless salt flats.
The heat and brilliance of the Sun's Fist was brutal, though not, by his memory, as brutal as it had been the first time Pavek had crossed it, when he hadn't known what lay on the other side. To spare Zvain that anxiety, he'd asked both Ruari and Yohan to describe the guarded lands to a city-bred boy before they set foot on the salt.
But no±ing they said erased the shadows of panic that rimmed Zvain's eyes. When they made a quick camp at sundown to water the kanks and themselves, he asked an exhausted-looking Zvain if he would prefer to ride the last leg of the journey with him or Yohan. "I'll be all right. I'll be fine once I see Quraite with my own eyes."
"This is home," Ruari cried eagerly. "This is Quraite. It can't hurt Kashi's eyes!" And he tugged the cloth down until it hung below her chin and circled her neck.
The half-elf was wrong. Akashia shrieked with pain and terror, but they were within the larger expanse of Quraite now, where the land itself was a-living thing, and where the guardian would carry Telhami wherever she wished in an instant.
The kank skittered when Telhami materialized at its side. But a bug's panic was no match for Telhami's determination to see Akashia for herself. The creature trilled once, then stood stock-still. The claws of all six feet dug into the ground as Telhami approached.
Kashi's screams had ceased. She sat motionless in front of Ruari, face buried in her hands, and moaned. Pavek and Yohan jumped down from their kanks and with Ruari's help lowered Akashia to the ground.
"Let me see her," Telhami commanded, and dropped down beside Akashia.
There was no druidry in the old woman's movements as she gathered Akashia in her arms and held her against her ancient breasts. No magic or mind-bending at all until, in her gentle efforts to move Kashi's fists, she brushed against the knotted cloth around Kashi's neck.
"What is this?"
Telhami's voice was barely audible, though Pavek stood opposite her with Ruari and Yohan flanking him. Taking the linen strip in both hands, she yanked once and the knot undid itself. The ends of the cloth fluttered in a breeze Pavek couldn't feel, then Telhami tossed it aside. With absent-minded curiosity, Pavek bent down to retrieve it.
"Later."
Her voice was still a whisper, but the most powerful and frightening whisper he'd ever heard. The hat turned toward his hand, and he was grateful for the veil that hid Telhami's face. "Help me," she said in the same awesome voice, this time to Ruari, who fell to his knees opposite her and held out his hands.
She called upon the guardian in a series of short, powerful invocations, and it came like a whirlwind rising out of the ground. Pavek's legs vibrated from the force surging through Ruari. Ruari himself cried out as the power whipped through his body, but his hands held steady and, just before it seemed the copper-haired youth would burst, Telhami began a different invocation, and the guardian's shaped energy leapt from their clasped hands to Akashia.
For a heartbeat it seemed that the land itself would open to engulf them all, then, as suddenly as the spellcraft had begun, it was over. Ruari slumped against Pavek's leg- hard-he needed all his strength and determination to keep his balance against the weight.
Telhami sat back on her heels, her hands resting palms-up in her lap, each fingertip shiny with blood. But for all their efforts-hers, Ruari's, and the guardian's-Akashia lay still, peaceful as a corpse.
Squatting on one knee, Yohan extended his hand slowly toward her face and traced the curve of her cheek and jaw. Blue-green eyes blinked open once, twice, and focused.
"Yohan," Kashi said, raising her hand to clasp his before he could withdraw it. "Yohan."
The celebration ended before it had begun. Telhami seized the linen cloth.
"Who did this? Who soaked this cloth in halfling poisons?" That terrible hollow sound was back in her voice. "Who tied this around her eyes?"
"I-I did, Grandmother," Ruari stammered, still sitting on the ground and clearly too terrified to lie.
The half-elf had tied the cloth each morning, but he wasn't the one who made it. Pavek stood, taller even than the kanks, while the others sat or knelt. He could see farthest, and he began to look for the dark-haired boy-who wasn't beside them.
"Zvain made it." He spotted the boy, then, doubled over; on the ground a hundred or so paces away. Zvain's arms were outstretched on the ground beyond his head, pointing toward the trees of Quraite. He seemed to be praying, as well he should.
He shouted the boy's name.
Kashi echoed him and added another name "Escrissar!" as she struggled to rise. She couldn't stand, but she could crawl-and growl like some enraged beast in the arena.
Time itself slowed as Pavek's thoughts charged toward a single inescapable, yet incomprehensible conclusion. Zvain wasn't praying. Zvain was doing his desperate best to establish a mind-bending linkage between himself and Elabon Escrissar.
It had to be Escrissar; it accounted, justified, explained why Akashia recognized him, why the sight of him filled her with such fear at first and such vengeful determination now.
And it explained the boy's behavior since he'd appeared in the bolt-hole-so eager to please, to be helpful, to make certain that they'd bring him to Quraite, the secret Akashia had suffered so grievously to protect.
And as the toes of his sandals dug into the hard ground, driving him toward that corruption in the form of innocent youth, he had time to dunk, time to remember his now-and-again suspicions, and to remember how expertly Zvain had transformed those suspicions into guilt.
They'd learn soon enough how Zvain had fallen in with Escrissar: for the sluggish moment, all that mattered was that Zvain had mastered the interrogator's insidious craft, and that he be stopped before the connection between his mind and Escrissar's was complete.
