forest was cooler than the Tablelands, but not by much, and its moist air had glued Pavek’s silk shirt to his skin. He knelt on the bank, his sword at his side, and plunged his head beneath the surface, as he would have done after a day’s work in Telhami’s grove. The forest spoke to him while he drank, an undisciplined babble, each rock and tree, every drop of water and every creature larger than a worm trumpeting its own existence: wild life at its purest, without a druid to teach it a communal song.
Pavek raised his dripping head. The moons had risen above the treetops. Javed was right: little Ral was slipping, silently and safely, across Guthay’s larger sphere. Silver light mixed with gold. He could feel it on his face, not unlike the sensations a yellow-robe templar felt when Hamanu’s sulphur eyes loomed overhead and magic quickened the air.
Insight fell upon him. Templars reached to Hamanu for their magic. Druids reached to the guardian aspects of the land for their magic. Kakzim had wanted the power of two moons when he aimed to poison Urik or sacrifice Ruari. It was a useless parade of insights: Magicians reached for magic to work their magic. Different magicians reached to different sources. A magician reached to the source that worked for him, and magic happened.
Anyone could reach, but if a man grabbed and held on with all his strength, all his will, magic might happen. And if you were already a doomed fool, you might as well reach for the moons, and the sparkling stars, too.
Pavek reached with his hands and his thoughts. He drew the silver-gold moonlight into himself and used it to summon the voices of the forest. When he held them all—moons and voices together—and his head seemed likely to burst from the strain, he shaped a single image.
Kakzim.
Kakzim with slave-scars, Kakzim without them. Black-eyed Kakzim, hate-eyed Kakzim. Kakzim who had come this way.
Who had seen Kakzim pass? What had felt him?
Pavek heard a shadow fall on the far side of the brook, felt a whisper: This way. This way. A child-sized footprint floated on the water, reflecting the silver-gold moonlight. Not daring to look away, Pavek found his sword by touch alone, returned it to its scabbard, and forded the brook. More footprints greeted him on the far side. Branches glimmered where the halfling had brushed against them. The forest creatures whose minds he had touched echoed Kakzim’s image according to their natures. Something large and predatory shot back its own potent image—food—warning Pavek that with or without magic, he was not the only hunter in the forest.
He wasn’t a fast runner, even measured against other humans, but Pavek was steady and endowed with all the endurance and stamina the templar orphanage could beat into a youngster’s bones. One of his strides equalled two of Kakzim’s, and one stride at a time, Pavek narrowed the gap between himself and his quarry.
The moment finally came when merely human ears heard movement up ahead and merely human eyes spied a halfling’s silhouette between the trees. Releasing the forest voices and the silver-gold magical moonlight, Pavek drew his sword. Still and silent, he planned his moves carefully, borrowing every trick Ruari had ever shown him. But physical stealth wasn’t enough.
Kakzim struck first with a mind-bender’s might. The halfling’s initial strike stripped Pavek of his confidence, but that wasn’t a significant loss: Pavek truly believed he was an ugly, clumsy, dung-skulled oaf—and unlucky, besides. Relieved of those burdens, Pavek was alert and centered behind his sword as he approached the trees where Kakzim lurked. Next, Kakzim sent his mind-bending thoughts after Pavek’s bravery and courage, which was a waste of the halfling’s time. Pavek had never been a brave man, and his courage was the same as a tree’s when it stood through a storm.
“You are an honest man!” Kakzim muttered in disgust, but loud enough for Pavek to hear the halfling judge him as Hamanu had judged him. “You have no illusions.”
And with that, Kakzim shrouded himself in an illusion of his own. Instead of bringing his sword down on a halfling’s unprotected neck, Pavek found himself suddenly nose-to-nose with an enemy who wore Elabon Escrissar’s gold-enameled black mask and took the stance of a Codesh brawler with a poleaxe braced in both hands.
It was a poor illusion, in certain respects. Pavek could see moonlight through the mask and did not believe, for one heartbeat, that he faced either Escrissar