resolve messes on his own. He dropped to one knee and surveyed the land with his own squinted eyes. There was nothing he could do for the fallen trees, but he could see the way the stream used to flow and he could get it flowing again.
The insects had Pavek’s scent and his heat. They swarmed around him in a noisy, stinging cloud. Without thinking, he slapped at his neck. There was blood on his fingers when he glanced at them.
“Brilliant, Just-Plain Pavek, just-plain brilliant,” the shimmering sprite mocked him from her perch. “You’ll run out of blood before you run out of bugs!”
Much as Pavek loved the sensations of druid magic flowing through him, druidry might never be the first thought in his mind when he confronted a problem. Feeling foolish, he closed his eyes and pressed his palms into the mud. Quraite’s guardian was there, waiting for him.
Elsewhere, Pavek thought, adding the image of another scummy pond that might, or might not, exist somewhere in the grove. The guardian’s power rose into Pavek and out of him. It stirred the bugs, gathering them into a buzzing, blurred ribbon of life that abandoned Pavek without resistance or hesitation. Flushed with his own success, Pavek sat down on his heel, sighing as residual power drained back into the land.
Every place had a guardian; that was the foundation of druidry. Every tree, every stone had its spirit. When the Tablelands had teemed with life, the guardians of the land had been lively, too. In the current age of sun-battered and lifeless barrens, druids could still draw upon the land for their power, but except in places like Quraite, where the groves retained a memory of ancient vigor, the guardians they touched were shattered. Those guardians that weren’t weak were mad and apt to pass that madness to a druid who associated too closely with them.
Quraite’s guardian had no personality of its own that Pavek had been able to discover. Telhami, by her own admission, was only a small aspect of its power and sanity. Pavek suspected that every druid who died in Quraite became part of the guardian, and a few Quraiters who weren’t druids as well. He’d sensed another aspect from time to time: Yohan, the dwarven veteran who’d died that day when Escrissar attacked. In life, Akashia had been Yohan’s focus, the core of loyalty and purpose all dwarves needed. In death, he still protected her, not as a banshee, but as an aspect of the guardian.
“On your feet, Just-Plain Pavek, or the bugs’ll be back before you’ve moved a stick!”
Pavek got to his feet. Telhami was right, as she usually was. There was nothing to be gained by thinking of the dead who protected Quraite—or Akashia, whom he would personally protect, if she’d let him. After shedding his belt and weapons, Pavek waded into the pond. One afternoon wasn’t enough to get the stream flowing swiftly again, but before the sun was sinking into the trees, he’d hauled away enough debris to get water seeping through the dam in several places.
“A little luck,” he told the green-skinned spirit on an overhead branch, “and the stream will do the rest of the work for us.”
“You’re a lazy, lazy man,” she replied with approving pride.
The path took an easy route back to the clearing Pavek called home. There was a stream-fed pool for water, a sandy hearth, and a rickety lean-to where he stored the hoe beside his sword. He’d thrown his sweated clothes into the pool and was about to follow them when the leaves on the nearby trees began to shiver and the grass bent low.
“Someone’s coming,” Telhami said from the rocky rim of the pool.
Pavek bent down and swept his hands through the grass. He cocked his head, listening to the leaves. Telhami knew who was coming and, after another moment of listening, he did as well. “Not someone,” he corrected. “Zvain and Ruari.”
“Running or walking?”
He touched the grass a second time and answered: “Running.”
Ruari had his own grove, as befitted a novice druid. He had trees and shrubs, the familiar wildlife that half-elves always attracted, and a pool of water not much bigger than he was. It certainly wasn’t large enough to entertain two energetic youths, since Zvain spent most of his time in Ruari’s shadow, having no gift for druid magic.
Pavek wasn’t surprised that they were coming to visit him. Half the time they were already in Telhami’s pool by the time he returned from