Then the shaking started.
He couldn't accept what he'd done. He had nothing but contempt for the fools of Tyr who'd challenged a dragon, yet he'd done something just as reckless and for less reason: for Ruari, who was a callow mongrel with a streak of cruelty cut through his half-wit's heart, not worth a moment's mourning.
Yohan came back: one comradely hand between his heaving shoulders, steering him out of the fading but still-potent storm, offering a small-mouthed flask. He took a swig with-: out thinking, just as he'd picked up the staff. A camphor-laced liquid made his eyes water. When his vision cleared, so had his mind. He sat on the ground, with Ruari's staff resting across his thighs.
There were fresh gouges all along the wood and a fractured chunk of chitin as long as his forearm wedged near one end. He traced the jagged edge with a trembling finger.
"You saved his life, templar-Pavek."
Akashia, beside him, didn't have to shout in order to be heard. The thunder was receding, and compared to what they'd been, the wind and rain were insignificant.
Pavek grunted, but kept his attention focused on the chitin chunk. His mind held no recollection of striking the creature who had lost it. Its dull yellow color was wrong for a kank. The inner edge was razor-sharp. He could have lost an arm, a leg, or his head.
"Your shoulder's bleeding, Pavek. May I tend it for you?"
Akashia knelt beside him, and noticing the gash for the first time, he began to shiver. She placed her hand on his brow. The shivering ceased. He didn't flinch when she peeled his shirt away from the wound, though he'd been to the infirmary often enough to know he was going to hurt worse before he felt better.
But the druid's touch was pleasantly warm. It soothed his nerves before numbing them. Maybe Oelus was right. Maybe there was something in the nature of the power King Hamanu granted his templars that caused pain. Or, just as likely, the infirmary butchers simply didn't care.
Curiosity got the better of him, as it often did. He observed Akashia's every move until the gash was a tidy scab some two handspans in length. Words for thanks were hard to find in his mind, awkward on his tongue; he grunted a few about appreciation and respect.
"I owe you that and more," Akashia assured him as she got to her feet. "I think I have misjudged you, Just-Plain Pavek. Without hesitation or thought of reward, you risked your life to save Ruari's, after you twice swore to kill him. There is more to you than a yellow robe. You might be a man, after all."
A hand came between them, long-fingered and lithe. It grabbed the staff and retreated.
"He's a templar, Kashi. The worst kind of templar. He pretends to be what he's not. Wash your hands after you touch him."
Chapter Eight
The huge blood-orange disk of the sun had climbed its own height above the eastern horizon when Pavek stretched himself awake, more refreshed than a battered man had any right to be after a half-night's sleep. No trace of the Tyr-storm remained-except for the crusted mud and the dark angular silhouettes of kes'trekels rising through the dawn, scouting the storm-wrack for scavenge.
Nearby, Yohan cinched the cargo harness around the soldier-kank while the insect masticated a heap of forage. The adobe walls of the roofless hut had been reduced to muddy mounds, pocked with the deep tracks of panicked wildlife. Here and there, shards of pottery grew out of the mud: the trampled remnants of a good many of their water jugs.
There'd be more room for him on the cargo platform, less water.
Overall, it was a bad trade.
Two of the riding kanks were foraging nearby. He looked around for the third kank, and found it collapsed in the hardening mud, with Akashia crouched over its head. He wandered over for a closer look.
"It's no use," she said sadly. She'd heard someone coming, but hadn't raised her head to see who it was. "They're scarcely conscious of their own life. They shed whatever healing energy I can impart to them."
"It must be very frustrating to try so hard with such little result."
Weariness turning to wariness when Akashia craned her neck toward him.
"Just curious. Didn't mean to disturb you."
She sighed, tucked storm-tangled hair behind her ears, and faced him with the hint of a smile on her lips. "Are you sure you're not Just-Curious Pavek instead of Just-Plain Pavek?"
Embarrassed for reasons he couldn't decipher, he shook his head and retreated. Her almost-smile broadened into a grin, then faded. Ruari's shadow-long, lean, and reinforced by his longer, leaner staff-fell between them.
"It's no use," Akashia repeated. "I cannot heal it, and it begins to suffer. Help me?"
There was no mistaking the question in her voice, or the need. Pavek thought he understood. Templar healers could kill without hesitation either on the battlefield or, afterward, among the wounded. A druid, whose powers did not flow from a sorcerer-king, might feel differently. Ruari seemed to have a sufficiently cruel temperament to enjoy what others might call mercy.
But Ruari laid down his staff. He sat opposite Akashia, carefully arranging his knee with his hands as he did. The joint was functional, but obviously sore and delicate. For a moment Pavek felt sorry for the troublesome half-wit whose life he'd saved, then everything was lost in astonishment. They pressed their pains together above the kank's head.
With her eyes tightly closed, Akashia began a droning, wordless chant The complex rhythms passed through her swaying body to Ruari, who began an eerie countermelody. Pavek's mind filled with thoughts of death and desperate flight, but his curiosity was stronger, and he remained where he was while the pair wove a spell to end the kank's suffering.
The insect had no eyelids to close over glazing pupils, no proper lips or nostrils through which a dying breath might pass; nonetheless, he knew the moment when its spirit departed. An inhumanly piercing wail seemed to emerge " directly out of Akashia's heart before she went suddenly silent and limp. Ruari held her wrists until he finished the chant with another ear-splitting wail.
So, Ruari was a druid, too.
Pavek hid his slack-jawed surprise behind a hand. His thoughts leapt to a comforting conclusion: if that sullen, vengeful scum could summon Athas's latent magic, then there was hope for a determined ex-templar who'd already learned the words and lacked only the music.
And he needed a full measure of hope later that day.
Within hours of settling himself among the remaining water jugs and empty racks on the soldier-kank's cargo platform, he looked across a landscape where there were no streets or walls.
No signs of life at all.
The gentle sloshing of the water jugs was a constant reminder of mortal vulnerability to the elements. He put his faith in the wheel and closed his eyes.
They traveled steadily, uneventfully, from sunrise to sunset for two days. On the third day, for reasons Pavek could not guess and the others would not explain, they made camp early. Their journey-bread was almost gone and more than half the jugs were empty. A man could survive out here beyond the city, if he was well-prepared and cautious. But not forever, not long enough to get back to Urik, even if he knew the way.
The only creatures that thrived in the parched badlands were the carrion-eating kes'trekels, always circling high overhead, vigilant for opportunity. Maybe the druids were lost. Maybe they'd realized there wasn't enough water to get them where they were going. Maybe Akashia and Ruari would hold their hands over him as he slept, and he'd never wake up again.
He resisted sleep until the moons, Ral and Guthay, were both above the eastern horizon and his companions were snoring softly. Then, remembering that the kank had not suffered, he let his eyes close. He wandered alone through a dreamless sleep and was still alive when morning came. The druids were alive, too, though their expressions were as bleak as the land around them.