of course, he couldn’t learn to swim.
Early on, Pavek had hauled a rock into the shallows where, left to his own preferences, he’d sit and enjoy the current flowing around him. Sometimes—about one time in three—his companions would leave him alone. Today was not one of Pavek’s lucky times. They double-teamed him, sweeping their arms through the cold water, inundating him repeatedly until he struck back. Then, Zvain wrapped his arms like twin water-snakes around Pavek’s ankle and pulled him into the deep, dark water of the pool’s center.
He roared, fought, and splashed his way back to the shallows, which merely signalled the start of another round of boisterous fun. Pavek trusted them to keep him from drowning—the first time in his life that he’d trusted anyone with his life. He trusted Telhami as well. The other two couldn’t perceive the old druid’s spirit, but Pavek could hear her sparkling laughter circling the pool. She wasn’t above lending the youths an extra slap of water to keep him off-balance, but she’d help him, too, by making the deep water feel solid beneath his feet, if he breathed wrong and began to panic.
The fun lasted until they were all too exhausted to stand and sat dripping instead on the rocks.
“You should learn to swim,” Ruari advised.
Pavek shook his head, then raked his rough-cut black hair away from his face. “I keep things the way they are so you’ll stand a chance against me. If I could swim, you’d drown—you know that.”
Snorting laughter, Ruari jabbed an elbow between Pavek’s ribs. “Try me. You talk big, Pavek, but that’s all you do.
Pavek returned the gesture, knocking the lighter half-elf off the rock, into the water. Ruari replied with a wall of water that was a bit less good-natured than his earlier pranks, as was the arm that Pavek swung at him. For all the time they spent together, despite the fact that they’d saved each other’s lives, Pavek didn’t know if they were friends. Friendship wasn’t something Pavek had learned in the templar orphanage where he’d grown up or in the civil bureau’s lower ranks. And it wasn’t something the half-elf understood particularly well either. Sometimes they couldn’t get two breaths into a conversation before they were snarling at each other.
Yet when Ruari slipped and started to fall, Pavek’s hand was there to catch him before any damage could be done.
“You two are kank-head fools,” Zvain announced when the three of them were sitting again. “Can’t you do anything without going after each other?”
Zvain wasn’t the first youth, human or otherwise, whose need for attention got in the way of his good sense. Needing neither words nor any other form of communication, Pavek and Ruari demonstrated that they didn’t need to fight with each other, not when they could join forces to torment their younger, smaller companion. It was a thoughtless, spontaneous reaction, and although Pavek reserved his full strength from the physical teasing, Zvain was no match for him or Ruari alone, much less together. After a few moments, Zvain was in full, sulking retreat to the pool’s far side where he sat with his knees drawn up and his forehead resting between them.
The youngster didn’t have a secure niche in the close-knit community. Unlike Pavek and Ruari, he hadn’t been a hero during Quraite’s dark hours. Following a path of disaster and deceit, Zvain had become Elabon Escrissar’s pawn before Ruari, Pavek, and Yohan spirited him out of Urik. He’d opened his mind to his master as soon as he arrived in the village. Although Zvain was as much victim as villain, in her wrath and judgment, Telhami had shown him no mercy.
Young as he was, she’d imprisoned Zvain here, in her grove.
He’d lived through nights of the guardian’s anger and Escrissar’s day-long assault. Ruari said he was afraid of the dark still and had screaming nightmares that woke the whole village. Akashia still wanted to drive the boy out to certain death on the salt flats they called the Fist of the Sun. Kashi had her own nightmares and Zvain was a part of them, however duped and unwitting he’d been at the time. But the heroes of Quraite said no, especially Pavek whom she’d once accused of having no conscience.
So Zvain stayed on charity and sufferance. He couldn’t learn druidry—even if he hadn’t been scared spitless of the guardian, his nights in this grove had burned any talent out of him. The farmers made bent-finger luck signs when the