The abyss widened. Pavek shook his head helplessly.
"Something wrong?" Oelus asked, taking Pavek's left hand between his own. He poked, prodded, twisted, and flexed until his patient yelped. "Pain? Expect a little stiffness. Your muscles had rotted, Pavek. Would've been easier to lop it off right here-" He pressed the edge of his palm into the muscle below Pavek's shoulder. "But I figured to let you make the decision for yourself: fight for your arm and keep it; languish and lose it."
"You're my problem, Pavek. Mine alone," Oelus stated firmly. "You were my patient; now you're my problem."
"And your solution to that problem? Do I walk out of here or have I been buried forever?"
"Neither. Oh, you could walk out of here, and you might even find your way back to the sun before you starved, but your name, Regulator Pavek, is still written in red on the gatehouse walls. You should be honored: The reward is up to forty gold pieces and, from what I hear, many have died trying to collect it."
He sucked his teeth, but was otherwise speechless.
"It's no great secret that the templarate consumes itself. No secret and no loss. But to be so noisy about it!" Oelus chuckled and shook his head. "I wondered myself: How did a mere third-rank, civil bureau regulator gain so many enemies? And why were his enemies having such trouble reeling him in? You roused curiosity underground, Pavek, as surely as you roused your enemies above it. The weather-eye was out for you, but you slipped through every net until the boy stumbled on you, by chance. Or so I heard."
"Zvain," Pavek repeated the boy's name with a sigh and experimented with a fist. "If you know everything about me, you know his name, and you know it wasn't by chance."
"A slight exaggeration," Oelus admitted. "You raved a bit those first few days, and I know how to read a body's tale. You're basically too healthy for a slave or peasant, too much muscle for a nobleman-not enough for a gladiator. The wrong calluses and scars for any artisan. And you've got all your teeth. Add that up and it comes out yellow, even though you weren't wearing yellow and you had a putrid wound. I read the walls and listen to the morning harangues. I figured the boy was coincidence."
"A coincidence who just happened to know a short path toward the Veil?"
Oelus gave an open-handed smile. "To be sure, that's what he was doing-but did he know it? I don't think so, and neither do you. The boy's his own mystery: not my problem or yours, agreed? If die Veil's got a weather-eye on him, at his oh-so-innocent, oh-so-corruptible age, I don't want to know any more about him, do you? Better he remain a coincidence, don't you think? Or maybe you have an intersest in him yourself?"
Time was-time when there was a medallion around his neck-that he would have slain the cleric on the spot for the insult. That time was past. "Someone's taught him to read the walls."
"No one from the Veil," Oelus said, weighing his clay beads between his fingers. "If they know your boy can read, they'll keep him at a double arm's length until he's old enough to keep a vow with his life. Too much risk otherwise."
Pavek bristled. "He's not my boy. He's an orphan. Lost his mother and father the same night not long ago. If the Veil's interested in Zvain, they're risking his life leaving him alone on the streets. If they wouldn't take him in, they should've killed him outright. This way, they've got no more mercy than Hamanu's dead-heart necromancers."
"None whatsoever," Oelus agreed. "No room for sentiment behind the Veil. They feed on their own, too. Best be glad that boy's not your problem." Oelus uncannily echoed the thoughts swirling in Pavek's head. "Or mine. You're enough of a problem for me. What should I do with a 40 spelled gold-piece regulator?"
Pavek's wits had steadied. He was not the disoriented man he'd been when he'd awakened, and Oelus, though round-faced and smiling, was not a jovial fool. The beads and the color of his robe proclaimed his devotion to the element of earth; otherwise, there was nothing about him to connect him with any particular sect or sanctuary, or his position within it. But there was a good chance Oelus stood near the top of his hierarchy rather than at its bottom: A renegade regulator with a 40-gold-piece reward, was, however, a very real problem.
For which Pavek had an inspired solution.
"Initiate me into your order. Let me become one of you. I know-"
Oelus silenced him with a look of genuine astonishment. "Templars have no talent. Mekillots will fly before the elemental spirits hear a templar's prayer, or heed it. It's beyond question."
He hadn't expected the path to true mastery to be an easy climb, but neither had he expected it to be summarily blocked from the start. Pavek responded to the disappointment as he'd responded to it throughout his life: with a jut-jawed scowl and a brazen disregard for consequences.
"Be damned! Templars aren't questioned for talent. For all you know, friend, I might have more than you, but you're too dead-heart cowardly to find out."
The cleric had the decency to look embarrassed. "You might well have had, Pavek. Have had-that's the important part. I think you were cut from a decent length of cloth, but you were sewn up as a templar all the same. The king's magic corrupts all who use it, Pavek. That's the simple truth. Find that orphan boy, instead, Pavek; stand him in your shade. Your former friends might still be looking for you, but they'll never recognize you sheltering a youngster. You've got a strong back and a clever mind-you'll make way enough for two in Urik."
"And if I refuse?" he flexed muscles that, though less impressive than a dwarf-human half-breed mul's, were more than sufficient to smash a cleric's round skull against the nearest wall. "Do you have another solution to your problem? What if I refuse to leave your sanctuary?"
Oelus matched his tone without physical display. "You don't remember arriving here; you won't remember leaving. I'm not often wrong about a man; I don't want to be wrong about you. Listen to your heart. The poor, parched earth of Athas knows how you've managed to keep it alive where you've been. Listen to it..."
An amber flame danced hypnotically on the wick of the oil lamp. Pavek stared and cursed inwardly.
Suppose Oelus was right; suppose his templar's life had placed all spellcraft beyond his reach? Could he still barter his knowledge of the zarneeka misappropriation to the druids in exchange for... what?
But compare that with life scrounging in the city. What good was a clever mind or a strong back when he'd always be looking over his shoulder for a flash of yellow?
And why not take a wiry, orphan boy with him? Was he a dead-heart, too--no different from Elabon Escrissar or the fanatics behind the Veil?
"Damn your eyes, priest," Pavek said aloud, his own way of conceding the wisdom of Oelus's suggestions.
The radiant smile reappeared on the cleric's face. He pumped Pavek's hand and clapped him on the back. "You are a good man. I predict good fortune for you, and for the boy. A woman will come later with your supper. Eat heartily, without fear. Tomorrow you'll greet the sun as a new man with a new life."
Pavek shook off the camaraderie. "Naked as the day I was born and just as poor. Spare me, priest. I grew up in a templar orphanage; I've heard it all before. Bring me your potions in a plain cup-"
"All that you came with will be returned," Oelus insisted, his smile undimmed. "Saving the shirt, which was not fit for rags. We'll give you another-and a few bits for your purse, enough to see you and the boy started."
"I had a knife, a gray steel knife-"