"What is this?"
Telhami's voice was barely audible, though Pavek stood opposite her with Ruari and Yohan flanking him. Taking the linen strip in both hands, she yanked once and the knot undid itself. The ends of the cloth fluttered in a breeze Pavek couldn't feel, then Telhami tossed it aside. With absent-minded curiosity, Pavek bent down to retrieve it.
"Later."
Her voice was still a whisper, but the most powerful and frightening whisper he'd ever heard. The hat turned toward his hand, and he was grateful for the veil that hid Telhami's face. "Help me," she said in the same awesome voice, this time to Ruari, who fell to his knees opposite her and held out his hands.
She called upon the guardian in a series of short, powerful invocations, and it came like a whirlwind rising out of the ground. Pavek's legs vibrated from the force surging through Ruari. Ruari himself cried out as the power whipped through his body, but his hands held steady and, just before it seemed the copper-haired youth would burst, Telhami began a different invocation, and the guardian's shaped energy leapt from their clasped hands to Akashia.
For a heartbeat it seemed that the land itself would open to engulf them all, then, as suddenly as the spellcraft had begun, it was over. Ruari slumped against Pavek's leg- hard-he needed all his strength and determination to keep his balance against the weight.
Telhami sat back on her heels, her hands resting palms-up in her lap, each fingertip shiny with blood. But for all their efforts-hers, Ruari's, and the guardian's-Akashia lay still, peaceful as a corpse.
Squatting on one knee, Yohan extended his hand slowly toward her face and traced the curve of her cheek and jaw. Blue-green eyes blinked open once, twice, and focused.
"Yohan," Kashi said, raising her hand to clasp his before he could withdraw it. "Yohan."
The celebration ended before it had begun. Telhami seized the linen cloth.
"Who did this? Who soaked this cloth in halfling poisons?" That terrible hollow sound was back in her voice. "Who tied this around her eyes?"
"I-I did, Grandmother," Ruari stammered, still sitting on the ground and clearly too terrified to lie.
The half-elf had tied the cloth each morning, but he wasn't the one who made it. Pavek stood, taller even than the kanks, while the others sat or knelt. He could see farthest, and he began to look for the dark-haired boy-who wasn't beside them.
"Zvain made it." He spotted the boy, then, doubled over; on the ground a hundred or so paces away. Zvain's arms were outstretched on the ground beyond his head, pointing toward the trees of Quraite. He seemed to be praying, as well he should.
He shouted the boy's name.
Kashi echoed him and added another name "Escrissar!" as she struggled to rise. She couldn't stand, but she could crawl-and growl like some enraged beast in the arena.
Time itself slowed as Pavek's thoughts charged toward a single inescapable, yet incomprehensible conclusion. Zvain wasn't praying. Zvain was doing his desperate best to establish a mind-bending linkage between himself and Elabon Escrissar.
It had to be Escrissar; it accounted, justified, explained why Akashia recognized him, why the sight of him filled her with such fear at first and such vengeful determination now.
And it explained the boy's behavior since he'd appeared in the bolt-hole-so eager to please, to be helpful, to make certain that they'd bring him to Quraite, the secret Akashia had suffered so grievously to protect.
And as the toes of his sandals dug into the hard ground, driving him toward that corruption in the form of innocent youth, he had time to dunk, time to remember his now-and-again suspicions, and to remember how expertly Zvain had transformed those suspicions into guilt.
They'd learn soon enough how Zvain had fallen in with Escrissar: for the sluggish moment, all that mattered was that Zvain had mastered the interrogator's insidious craft, and that he be stopped before the connection between his mind and Escrissar's was complete.
Air burned in Pavek's lungs as time's slow movement corrected himself. He was running recklessly, over-reaching with every stride. Zvain had risen to his knees, his hands clenched high above him.
He stretched himself to his limit and beyond. The sole of his left sandal skidded on a loose stone; he lurched and twisted to keep his balance-felt muscles tear deep in his side-but his right foot landed solidly, and he kept going until a blast of hot, dry air exploded in his face.
The last thing he saw before his chin struck the ground was Zvain collapsing in a boneless heap under the whirling force that was Telhami's staff.
Chapter Sixteen
"I told him!" Zvain shouted, his voice filled with the intense hatred of youth-betrayed. "I told him where you are. He's seen it in my mind. He's coming with an army of ten thousand men and giants. It doesn't matter what you do to me. You're all going to die. Quraite's going to die. Everything's going to die."
His nose and lips bloodied by Telhami's staff, the boy backed away from his druid accusers, directly into one of farmers who had formed a tight and solemn ring around the scene. The woman seized him and flung him back into the circle. He stumbled, but pulled himself together to stand, defiant and terrified, some four paces in front of Telhami and Akashia.
Pavek himself stood a bit to one side, not in the farmer's constraining circle, nor among the outraged druids. Zvain had looked his way more than once with wide, unreadable eyes. He'd met the boy's stare, figuring he owed him that much.
He still didn't know how Zvain's path had crossed Escrissar's or how he'd been seduced into an alliance with the ultimate Laq-seller. Telhami hadn't asked. Telhami wasn't interested in such small details. Quraite had been betrayed, and Akashia had been tormented; that was all that mattered. The laws of Athas, whether in Urik or Quraite, made no exceptions for children. Mercy was a rare gift, and, looking it Akashia's hard, unforgiving frown, not one Zvain was likely to receive.
Nor one he deserved
"Take him to my grove," Telhami pronounced coldly. "The guardian will make him useful again."
"Stay away!" Zvain held one hand palm-out, then dug beneath his shirt with both hands. When his hands reappeared, a dull gray powder leaked from one small, shaking fist and a dull brown powder from the other. "I'm a-a defiler! I know a spell that will destroy you all if you touch me."
Telhami was unmoved. "Take him to my grove," she repeated, nodding toward Yohan.
The dwarf strode forward, his faith in Telhami apparently stronger than his fear of the magic Zvain claimed to com-Snand.
Zvain's eyes widened, his lips trembled, then tightened into a pout as he defiantly mixed the powders together.
Telhami did nothing to stop him.
The boy's eyes squeezed shut, and he began to recite dark spellcraft syllables from that other, unfamiliar magical tradition that, by everything Pavek understood, drew its energy and power from the life essences of green plants. Those who were called preservers somehow managed to draw small amounts of energy from many plants without damaging any of them seriously. Defilers left only ash.
Quraite was plants. The most conscientious preserver could wreak havoc without depleting its green-life essence. A defiler's power, even with a small spell, might be unlimited.
And still, Telhami's calm remained.
But Pavek's breath stuck in his throat as Zvain lifted his hands, and the hot wind off the salt flats carried the powder away, and-
Nothing happened.
There was no magic.
Zvain's defiance crumbled; all that remained was the terror. His knees buckled. Yohan caught him as he went down. "He said it would work.... He gave me magic and said I was a defiler forever." Tears began to flow, and brokenhearted sobs. "He said I'd made my choice. That I couldn't go back."