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"You saw lies, whatever you saw." Her voice hardened. "And you believed the lies because they spoke to the darkest corner of your heart." For the third and final time, she ordered, "Take him to my grove."
The circle of farmers opened, letting Yohan and the stumbling, weeping boy through. Then it sealed again. Ignoring Zvain's cries, they listened as Telhami described the defense Quraite would mount against Escrissar's inevitable assault. Until Zvain's wails could no longer be heard.
Quraite had two defenses: the power of its guardian, which only Telhami and Akashia could effectively wield, and the formidable natural barrier of the Sun's Fist. Plant magic of the sort Zvain had tried to wield could have no effect in the Fist where nothing grew to energize it. Templar spell-craft would work, Pavek suspected, if Escrissar were foolish enough to invoke King Hamanu's name.
On the other hand, the sorcerer-king might well destroy Quraite once he knew where it was; his power was such that no one, not even Telhami, could stand against him; and without Telhami or another druid to shape and focus it, the guardian's great power would lie dormant no matter how great the danger.
Pavek doubted that Escrissar would invoke templar spell-craft, and told Telhami so.
"But while the king might destroy Quraite," he concluded, "he will destroy Escrissar. The interrogator's playing both ends against the middle. If what the Moonracers said is true, and Escrissar has sent Laq to Nibenay with Urik's seal on it, then he's gone much too far. Hamanu coddles his pets, but he'll destroy them if they cross him. There's always someone else waiting to take a favorite's place. Unless Escrissar's ingratiated himself with Nibenay's Shadow-King, the only spellcraft you've got to worry about is your own."
He waited for Telhami's response. The discussion-reduced to the druid and farmer elders, Yohan and himself-had moved inside her hut. Akashia would've been included if she'd had the strength. As it was, she was resting reluctantly in her hut, with a pair of women posted outside her door to see that she stayed there.
Pavek hadn't been included, either, at least not by invitation; but he hadn't been told to leave-yet.
"And do you judge it likely that the Lion's pet would find favor in Nibenay?" Telhami's hat hung on its peg. She framed her question with a single upward-arching eyebrow. "The kings don't trust the templars they themselves have raised; they certainly wouldn't trust a templar another king raised. The Shadow-King could lie as easily to Escrissar as Escrissar lied to Zvain-and abandon him just as easily."
"You think I was too harsh with him, don't you?" It was not the response he'd been expecting, not a subject he wanted to consider, especially with witnesses. "I don't think at all," he stammered. "I shouldn't be here "
"Nonsense. We need to know what you think, and you need to know what I decide. The boy is nothing-part of Escrissar's villainy. A small but important part through which Escrissar could attack your greatest weakness, and so win Quraite."
'Weakness?"
"Your humanity, but a weakness nonetheless. Done is done, Pavek, but he won't reach us through that one again. Despite what the boy would have us believe, Escrissar won't come with magic, and he won't come with ten thousand men, but he won't likely come alone, either. For a while, weeds will grow rampant in our fields; you and Yohan will drill our fanners with hoes and flails. We must be ready for an ordinary battle, mustn't we?"
"It won't be ordinary, Grandmother," Yohan interjected. "Escrissar's a mind-bender. He doesn't need any help to spew his nightmares."
"But he does need help to clean up after himself and his nightmares. You deal with those minions. I'll deal with Escrissar." Telhami stared past them all. Her lips tightened into a thin smile. "I'll deal with the interrogator-personally."
* * *
A kank-back journey fro
m Urik to the guarded lands took four days. Quraite had that long, at a minimum, to prepare for Escrissar's assault, if they believed Zvain told the truth when he said that his master would come as quickly as he could. And in that matter, at least, no one doubted Zvain's veracity.
Quraite might have even more time. The more men, weapons, and supplies Escrissar brought with him, the longer it would take to organize the expedition. That was an inescapable fact of military life every templar, regardless of his rank or bureau, well knew. And Escrissar could hardly assemble his supplies in public or march out of the city gates in splendid formation without Hamanu asking questions Escrissar wouldn't want to answer. Stealth would be required, and stealth took time.
They could have a fifteen-day week before disaster struck. Or much longer. Or less, if Escrissar proved inordinately efficient.
And if Telhami had sent Zvain tumbling before he'd had enough time to reveal the secrets of the Sun's Fist to Escrissar, as Zvain swore she had, there was a chance the interrogator would blunder onto the salt flats unaware of their breadth and unprepared for their dangers.
If Zvain was telling the truth. In Pavek's opinion, the boy still had ample reason to lie:
Contrary to Telhami's expectations, the guardian had not swallowed Zvain. The boy had already spent five long days and longer nights in Telhami's grove. Cut off from everything familiar, twice-betrayed by Elabon Escrissar-once when the interrogator deceived him into believing he'd doomed himself to a defiler's life, and the second time, a consequence of the first, when his carefully memorized spell had failed to kindle a destructive blast of sorcery-Zvain had spilled tales of his life in House Escrissar as freely as a poorly woven basket leaked water whenever anyone checked to see if he was still alive.
"Everything watches me," Zvain said to Pavek on the morning of his sixth day in the grove. A day when Pavek's increasingly sharp sense of guilt and responsibility had driven him across the barrens to visit the boy at last. "The bugs and the birds, the trees and the stones. Everything. Even the water." The boy's red-rimmed eyes flickered nervously, seeming unable to rest on any one object within the grove. "It all watches me and listens."
Zvain's gaze settled then on him, steady and accusing. "Just like at Escrissar's. No better. Worse, maybe." And Pavek couldn't forget being faced with that look, clenched fists in the night.
The hand trembled with what, he suspected, was very real, fear. Zvain had made himself a lair in the middle of the grove's largest grassland, a small hollow some seven mansized strides across. He was noticeably thinner; the druids' assertion that no one could starve in one of their groves apparently did not apply to a prisoner too frightened to pick a handful of berries from a bush with eyes. And when those fingers slipped his and Zvain wrapped his arms around Pavek as he had done so often in the Urik bolt-hole, Pavek found he couldn't refuse to offer the comfort so obviously needed.
"It's not my fault, Pavek, is it? I was looking for you when he found me. He locked me up, just like this, and then he gave me things-I tried to be careful Pavek, I thought he was a slaver, but he was worse, and then it was too late." Zvain's arms squeezed harder. "You've got to believe me. You've got to get me out of here."
Pavek knelt to return Zvain's embrace, and as the boyish arms wrapped around his neck and the boyish head burrowed into his neck, he found himself wondering why it was easier to hug and hold someone he didn't trust than to comfort Akashia, whom he did. Even now, when tears were soaking his shirt and trickling down his ribs, why should he want to reassure the boy when he knew, both in his head and his heart, that Telhami was right? It was a tragedy when an innocent youth was corrupted, but that didn't mean that the corruption should be spared its rightful end.
He, himself, had lived in corruption all his life without succumbing to it-or so both Oelus and Telhami said. Of course, no one had ever tempted him the way Escrissar had tempted Zvain, or abandoned him quite the way he had abandoned the boy. And Zvain was his weak point, the only opening a man like Escrissar needed.
He extracted himself from Zvain's embrace.
