The forbidding waste was nowhere to be seen on either side or straight behind, and the sun, shining bright but mild, though in the right place overhead, seemed scarcely familiar. Reflexively, he clutched the empty space beneath his shirt where King Hamanu's medallion had hung.
"Quraite?" he whispered, rubbing his eyes and expecting to see something altogether different when he reopened them.
Akashia, riding behind Ruari now, heard his disbelief and turned around with a smile. "Home."
Carefully tended fields of grain marked Quraite's perimeter. Brick wells with wooden windlasses stood in the center of each field. The druids' oasis sat atop a reservoir large enough, reliable enough to send water to individual fields.
Within the fields a ring of trees grew to such density that whatever lay at the center remained hidden.
Trees.
In Urik, during the Festival of Flowers at the start of Rising Sun, ordinary citizens were permitted onto the streets of the royal quarter. Winding in long, slow lines, they'd wait all day for a chance to peek through the iron gates of King Hamanu's palatial garden where the fabled Trees of Life unfurled fragrant, short-lived blossoms. At other odd times during the years the fruit-trees nurtured in the atrium recesses of their wealthy houses would send clouds of perfume onto the nearby streets. Sometimes the aromas incited riots among those who would never savor sweet nectar on their tongues.
Templars ate fruit regularly-it was one of their many privileges. But in all his life, Pavek had never seen a tree that was not surrounded by guards and walls. The druids might call Quraite their home, but to Pavek, dizzy from heat, thirst, and days of traveling, it had the look of paradise.
Breezes shivered the surface of a clear-flowing stream. Each ripple reflected the sky, creating a vast herd of cloud-creatures that raced westward, toward the setting sun. Telhami swirled her hand through the water, destroying the image. Every sunset, no matter how beautiful, was a moment of dying, and she did not like to dream of death. She moved her dream to the ever-growing grass on the stream bank.
A delicate flower the color of sunrise-bright yellow blushed with pink and amber-poked through the grass. Drops of nectar shimmered in its heart.
Long ago, the flower had had a name. Now it bloomed only in her dreams where memory ruled and names were unnecessary.
A crimson bee whirred out of nowhere. It drank the shimmering nectar, then rode the breeze to Telhami's ear.
"Akashia returns," it whispered. "She's got a stranger with her!"
The dreamscape vanished, replaced by a dry wind: the best Athas had to offer anymore, even here in guarded Quraite where druid spellcraft held the land and memory together.
"Grandmother, did you hear me? Are you awake?"
The voice belonged to a child, not a bee.
"Yes, I heard you, little one," Telhami replied, her eyes still closed. "Go fetch me a bowl of water. I'll be awake when you return."
She heard the light patter of bare feet running to the well. Children ran, grown folk walked, and she, herself, made the simple journey from dreams to wakefulness no faster than a tree grew. Then again, she'd made the journey so many times that it was no longer simple.
Everyone who dwelt in Quraite called her Grandmother, as had their parents before them. She'd been Grandmother to their grandmothers and though she was not as old as Quraite, she remembered the scents of vanished, nameless yellow flowers better than she remembered the loves and laughter of her youth.
She wasn't condemned to frailty. Druid lore offered many detours around the vicissitudes of aging, and many druids availed themselves of restorative spellcraft both directly and through the strength of their followers. In the misty years between then and now, Telhami had purged years, even decades, in a single moonlit night of spellcasting-until she'd acquired wisdom to understand that the way of life was age and, eventually, death. Pursuing immortality would eventually leave her no different than a Dragon or a sorcerer-king, and so, finally, she'd let the years accumulate.
Still, Quraite sustained her as she sustained, guarded, and protected Quraite. She was frail and tired easily. But she was also the master of her small, green world and grateful to be alive.
"I've brought your water, Grandmother. Are you awake yet? Are you ready to sit up?"
The folk of Quraite, including a dusky girl-child with solemn, watchful eyes and a translucent alabaster bowl carefully balanced on her outstretched palm, tended her, their beloved Grandmother, as carefully as she tended Quraite. "Yes, little one, I'm ready. How far away are they?"
Nothing within Quraite's perimeter was beyond her ken. She could have determined Akashia's location with little effort. But a little effort was more than she wished to expend, especially when the child was near-bursting with the answer.
"They're among the fields. One of the kanks is gone, and-Grandmother-the stranger is a great ugly and dirty man with snarly hair. He's dressed in rags."
"Is he?" she said, smiling. "Well, then we'll have to give him clean clothes and teach him to bathe, won't we?"
She swung her legs over the edge of the woven-reed sleeping platform.
Kashi's mind had been full of the stranger some nights' past when she'd sent her thoughts ahead of the storm, seeking guidance. The impression Telhami'd gotten then had been considerably different from child's description now. Her curiosity was piqued, and she took the translucent bowl firmly in both hands.
Strangers came infrequently to Quraite. Some found it on their own, others needed assistance. Either way, strangers were welcome to stay as long as they wished, or forever. For though strangers came to Quraite, strangers did not leave. The precise location of the verdant land Telhami guarded was too great a temptation to entrust to anyone who would not dedicate her or his life to its preservation. More than one hesitant stranger rested among the twisted roots of the ancient trees in her private grove.
But, mostly, those strangers who came to Quraite had been searching for it, and surrendered willingly to its spirit. During her guardianship, the green lands of Quraite had spread measurably across barren waste far to the northeast of Urik. When she arrived, there were only a dozen great trees left in an isolated grove, now there were more than a dozen interconnected groves, each nurtured by a man or woman who'd started out a stranger, or a stranger's child.
Of course, nurturing a druid grove required innate talents. At any time) the greater number of the oasis's inhabitants were ordinary folk who worked the fields, tended the animals, or provided a brawny escort when Quraite needed to trade with the Lion-King in Urik.
Without prying, which she had not done during the storm and would not do now, there was no guessing why Kashi had wanted to bring a Urikite stranger home to Quraite. Perhaps she'd succumbed to some rough-hewn city-bred allure. Druids certainly weren't immune to reckless passion: They venerated the wilder aspects of nature. They took risks, sometimes foolishly.
And Kashi was a young, vigorous woman who looked upon the men of Quraite as brothers, not suitors. It was only natural that she might stumble upon her first love in Urik. That was, after all, no small part of the reason why Telhami sent her there in the first place- With Yohan, of course, to watch over her. Two or three human generations ago, the veteran dwarf had been a stranger in Quraite himself. He strode out of the salt barrens in the heat of the day, alone and afoot, guided, he'd said, by an emptiness in his heart, From that first moment she'd trusted his dedication as she'd trusted few others. She bared the mysteries of her grove to him by moonlight but, try as he might, poor Yohan couldn't grow weeds behind an erdlu-pen. The druids' path was closed to him.