"You first," he said to Ruari, who turned gray in the eerie light and refused to move. "You've got my medallion. Give it back if you don't want to go first." He held out his hand.
"What makes you think I've got it with me?" Ruari countered, all spit and vinegar, and clutching his shirt where Pavek had known the ceramic lump was hidden.
He cocked his head toward Yohan who, with a weary sigh, thumped the half-wit between the shoulders, propelling him through the curtain, which hissed and sparkled but did not harm him. He and the dwarf scurried through before the sparking died.
"What if I didn't?" Ruari demanded.
"You'd be dead," he said bluntly and kept walking.
The passage ended not far from the orphanage along the interior wall of the templar quarter, the most familiar part of the city for him, but not for the other two, who were clearly daunted by the monotonous tangle of precise intersections and nearly identical facades.
"How do you know where we're going?" Ruari asked in an urgent whisper, revealing that he failed to recognize the subtle decorations that distinguished a High Templar's private house from a civil bureau barracks- and that he couldn't read the inscriptions painted above every door.
"Magic."
And knowing that Ruari would realized that he'd been pulled and would need to even the score, Pavek drifted closer, allowing the nervous scum to jab a fist into his arm. He hoped physical contact would settle the youth down. Curfew hadn't rung, and though the foot-traffic was light, fellow wasn't the only color on the streets. There were artisians and tradesmen making their way to homes in other quarters. A little laughter and sport helped them blend in. Hugging the shadows would've drawn precisely the attention he didn't want, especially as they neared their destination.
Outwardly, House Escrissar looked no different from any other flat red and yellow facade. There were three doors- High Templars lived in luxury, but nothing was allowed to disturb the symmetry of the quarter-each marked with the same angular symbol the halfling alchemist wore on his cheek. There were interrogator's glyphs, too, and warnings that no one was welcome across the threshold unless specifically invited.
The orphans had respected those warnings. Their scavenging expeditions stayed well away from House Escrissar, at least during Pavek's lifetime. But the buildings of the templar quarter were identical, and he had no trouble locating the boiled leather panel that, when lifted, revealed a midden shaft: High Templars did not bury their rubbish in their atrium gardens, nor did they dump it out the upper story windows as folk did in those mixed quarters where scroungers kept the streets clean. They-or their slaves-gathered it up discreetly in buckets and barrels for other slaves to collect.
Pavek warned his companions to watch their footing while me studied the shaft that stretched to the rooftop above them. There was no shimmering curtain to block his view of the stars. But not all wards declared themselves so boldly. Escrissar might have sealed himself within invisible wards, but even he would have had. to beg the spell from King Hamanu, and the king might have wondered why. Pavek was willing to wager his life that there were no invisible wards in the shaft or anywhere else. Not that it mattered much. He wasn't expecting to be alive when curfew struck. He'd never had many ambitions, had never expected to grow old-even when his life was secured by a yellow robe with a regulator's colors woven through the sleeves. Death gathered up men like him sooner rather than later; but he'd never considered that death was waiting around midnight's corner. Suddenly his pulse was racing, and he shook so badly he leaned against the wall for support.
Pavek's thoughts turned gray and filled with open, honest faces, brown-haired teal-eyed Akashia foremost among them. If home-that place beyond the empty fog-had held Akashia, he would have gone. He wouldn't die for Laq or Ral's Breath or Urik; but she was here, needing vengeance, needing rescue. Her cries echoed through fog and dark.
She was here.
"Pavek-?"
That was Ruari's voice calling him out of the fog, and Yohan's heavy hand steadying his shoulder. He shrugged the hand away.
"She's here. She's still here, still alive. I heard her."
"Pavek-whatever you're doing. Stop!"
Stop what? he wondered, then he felt it, the same swirling power he felt in the groves of Quraite. Quraite-the name, the place he shouldn't remember, mustn't remember. Confused and moaning, he wound his fingers in his hair, twisting it tightly until there was enough pain to take away the fog, the faces, and-finally-the name itself.
The mote of emptiness in his memory had returned. The name and everything associated with it was gone. He sank into a deep squat, trying to understand what had just happened.
"What was that all about?" Yohan demanded.
"An evocation," Ruari said, his voice as shaky as Pavek felt. "You evoked something... something. Hamanu. Did you evoke Hamanu?"
Pavek looked up in time to see Ruari fumbling with the medallion. "No," he whispered, still mystified, himself. "Not Hamanu. I don't know.... It felt like-" The emptiness loomed around him, and words failed utterly. "I don't know," he said, and repeated the phrase several times.
"A guardian."
He denied it, and Yohan swore; but Ruari was certain. "Guardians arise from the spirit of Athas," he said, as if he were reciting one of Telhami's lessons. "But a guardian isn't Athas. It's what makes one aspect of Athas different from all the others: one mountain, one grove, one stream-one unique something."
"There's nothing here," Yohan objected. "Buildings and people. They've sprawled over everything. There's nothing left for a guardian."
"Urik. Urik's here. Urik's unique."
Pavek stood up. He pressed his palms against the wall of House Escrissar and closed his eyes. The presence was there: Urik, far older than the sorcerer-kings-massive, and powerful. It rose to meet him, and he stepped back, letting the power subside once he had sensed what he needed, and nothing more.
"She is here."
The smoothed and painted plaster of the templar quarter facades did not extend to the midden shafts, where unfinished brick provided a multitude of handholds for three men climbing to the roof. Like most wealthy Urik residences, House Escrissar was built around a courtyard filled with fruit trees, fragrant flowers, fountains, and pools, and lined from ground to roof with an arbor of berry-vines. The courtyard was quiet except for the fountains. It was dark, too, with only a faint dappling of light seeping through the tracery of a few of the many rooms that faced the courtyard. It was also deserted-or so Pavek devoutly hoped. Neither experience nor logic suggested where they should lower themselves from the roof to the upper story of living rooms, but, having come further and survived longer than any of them had expected, they grew more cautious with each passing moment.
"Are you certain?" Yohan asked when Pavek hoisted his leg over the balustrade.
"I think she's here. I think she's alive. I think this is the way. But I'm not certain of anything. Pick some other place, if you want. This is the way I'm going."
And the way Ruart and Yohan followed: swinging down from the roof into the vine arbor whose support slats sank ominously beneath both him and the dwarf. For several moments, they paid more attention to their footing, then Pavek heard an all-too-familiar voice:
"... Now or later, my dear lady, dead or alive. It makes no difference to me, but I will have your secrets. Your guardian can protect your past; I possess your present and your future. Remember that each time you resist."
Silence followed and a sense that the night had become darker. Pavek caught Yohan's arm as he surged toward the voice they'd heard.