"Telhami?"
Pavek had thought she was dead, but she opened her eyes and, after a moment, smiled. It seemed that not only did King Hamanu know Telhami, she knew him, and not as an adversary.
"So-" the king began, "this is Quraite."
Telhami's smile deepened with evident pride, but she said nothing. Perhaps she couldn't speak, or move. Her hands seemed waxen in the light.
"It has seen better days, I think. Don't you?"
There was a moment's pause, then Hamanu laughed, an incandescent sound that echoed lightly from the trees.
"But I was invited!"
The king extended his hand toward Pavek, who reluctantly came closer. When he was in range, Hamanu ran a clawed finger down Pavek's neck, hard enough that he could feel its strength and sharpness, but not-he thought-hard enough to break the skin. That, he was certain, would come later, after the king had toyed with him and tired of his fear.
"I never grow tired of fear, Pavek," King Hamanu assured him with a grin that revealed glistening fangs. "Never." Then he hooked the inix leather thong of Pavek's templar medallion, which the king withdrew into the firelight. "A regulator of the civil bureau." A claw gouged through the marks that indicated Pavek's rank, effectively eliminating him from that rank and that bureau. Hamanu let the defaced, but intact, medallion thump against Pavek's breast-bone, in effect proclaiming that he was a templar without a formal rank: a High Templar, if he ever chose to claim that distinction. "The best always slip away, Pavek. Remember that."
And for a moment Hamanu seemed-he could not possibly be-less a leonine sorcerer-king with sulphur eyes and more a man, an ordinary man with clear brown eyes and a face a woman-Telhami-might find attractive.
Then King Hamanu turned back to the sleeping platform.
"Come back with me, Telhami. It's not too late. Athas has changed. Borys is gone; the stalemate is broken. Nothing is as it was, Telhami. For the first time in a millennium, I do not know what will happen after I wake up. Come back to Urik-"
He fell silent and remained that way until Telhami closed her eyes. Then he stood up with a sigh of disappointment and age creaking in his bones. "Hold them tight or set them free, they always slip away. Always," he said to no one in particular and stared at the moons.
"Was this your plan?" the king asked suddenly, his private rumination ended and, apparently, forgotten.
Pavek, at whom the question had been directed, was, at first, too startled to answer. When the shock faded, a single word hung in his mind: "Yohan."
But Yohan wasn't there to take the credit for his concentric ramparts. Yohan was gone, and Pavek did not feel better that he was alive instead.
"They die, Pavek. They slip away when your eye's on something else, and you can never get them back. Learn to live with it. Think of them as flowers: a day's delight and then they die. You'll die yourself if you care about them."
Then King Hamanu walked out through the ramparts, through the trees, and into the night.
Pavek's gaze hadn't left the place where he'd disappeared when he felt an arm slip around his back. Silently, Akashia rested her head against his chest. Hesitantly-he didn't think such things would ever seem easy to him-Pavek put his hand on her neck and soothed the knotted muscles he found there.
Quraite took a final count of its losses the next day when the sun rose. More than half the adults had died fighting on the ramparts. A dozen groves would languish, unless strangers were drawn quickly across the salt flats or farmers who'd been content with the simple magic of green sprouting through broken ground began to hear the wilder call of druidry. Most of the children-the future-had survived. Akashia took them to her grove where they gathered wild-flowers to place on the shrouds of those who would never see the sun again.
Out beyond the fields the farmers had dug a common grave where, with Pavek's help, they carried the remains of Quraite's dead. Akashia said the simple words of remembrance and peace. Each Quraiter who survived threw a shovelful of dirt into the hole. Pavek stayed with the men to finish the task. When they returned to the village center, a procession was ready to carry Telhami to her grove one last time.
Pavek suspected she didn't need a half-dozen people to carry the bier they'd made from her sleeping platform across the barren land. She was light enough he could have carried her himself. Moreover, though it was clear that she was dying, she wasn't dead. Her mind was as sharp as it had ever been. He was certain she could have invoked the guardian with no difficulty at all and whisked herself to her grove in the blink of an eye.
He heard laughter while that thought still circulated inside his head.
They need to fed needed and useful.
Shifting his hold on the platform, Pavek looked over at her face. Her eyes were closed; nothing had moved. Nothing would move. But it was Telhami, he was certain, speaking directly into his mind.
Of course it is, Just-Plain Pavek. Have you made your decision?
"What decision?" he said aloud, drawing the puzzled stares of his companions.
Your future. The Lion has made you a handsome offer. I know; I took it once. Hamanu would not have ruled for a millennium if all his favorites were like Elabon Escrissar.
Telhami's words pressed against Pavek's consciousness; he couldn't absorb them. He'd hung his life around certain assumptions. What Telhami said didn't truly threaten those assumptions. He'd known somewhere, deep within himself, that Urik could not have survived if King Hamanu was not as wise as he was cruel, if his templarate was uniformly depraved and rapacious. But she'd drawn pathways between his assumptions, and he was not ready to walk down them.
Then, decide to stay in Quraite.
She was in his thoughts. He shook his head vigorously to dislodge her, and once again drew stares.
A man was entitled to some privacy!
Laughter, followed by: You aren't sure, are you? Urik's your home.
His home. He remembered what he felt when he stood beside House Escrissar with his hands pressed against the rough plaster. Kashi, of course: her anguish, his desire, and more than that-the surging power of Urik, seething with life and passion, like the Lion-King's eyes.
The essence of the ancient city. A guardian.
That gave his Unseen eavesdropper a flashing moment of surprise. So-there were some things even Telhami didn't know.
Many things, Just-Plain Pavek. Many things. I do not know what happened to the halfling alchemist. Do you?
He didn't, though he remembered that scarred face with its hate-filled eyes very well. There'd been half-elves among Escrissar's allies, but no halflings, and Escrissar, himself had been alone when Hamanu found him. Perhaps the Lion-King had absorbed the interrogator's memories when he absorbed his essence. Perhaps the problem had already been solved with the king's customary thoroughness.
Not likely. The Lion does not notice the grass 'til it's grown high enough to scratch his eyes.
"I must go back-"
More stares, and the realization that the trees of Telhami's grove loomed close ahead.
Is that your decision?
Was it? Pavek asked himself. Was he ready to turn his back on Quraite? On Akashia who-without saying a word, had, last night, asked him to stay? On Ruari-?
Who will keep him in line, if you're not here to do it? Maybe Quraite is also your home?
"I don't know," Pavek whispered as the grass of Telhami's grove began to brush against his legs.
He stumbled when the procession came to an unexpected stop. Craning his neck to one side, peering around the heads in front of him, he spotted a thin, wiry arm and a patch of wild dark hair blocking their way.
Zvain, he thought with guilt and shame, which Telhami echoed. They'd forgotten their prisoner, the misguided, betrayed, and abandoned orphan whose parents' death had brought so many consequences to them all. Especially Akashia at the procession's head. Pavek imagined the looks that had passed between them as Zvain raced away. Belatedly, he noticed that the boy's shirt was in tatters.