the south. Somewhere south there’s a place—the Tower—that takes what it finds and changes it into something else—”
“Made, not born,” Zvain echoed.
Pavek sighed. They were young. One of them had seen too much; the other, not enough. All men were made, women, too. Talk to any templar. “Made, not born. All by themselves, no mothers or fathers, sisters or brothers. They die, though. Just like the rest of us.”
Ruari shuddered. “She’s not dead. I heard her—felt her—breathing.” He shuddered a second time and wraped his arms over his chest.
Her eyes were closed and she lay with her arms and legs so twisted that Pavek had taken the worst for granted. His mastery of druid spellcraft didn’t extend this far from the grove and didn’t include the healing arts, but Ruari was a competent druid; he knew enough about healing to keep her alive until they found Akashia.
Kneeling beside the fallen New Race woman, he held his hands palms out above her breasts and looked Ruari in his moonlit eyes. “Help me.” The words weren’t phrased as a request. Ruari shrugged and twisted until their eyes no longer met. “You’re wrong, Ru,” Pavek chided coldly. He loosened the length of fine, dark cloth the woman had wound around her head and shoulders, then he laid his big, callused hands on her cheek to turn her head and expose the fastenings of her mask.
“Don’t!” Zvain shouted.
The boy had finally come closer and taken Pavek’s place beside the manifestly uncomfortable Ruari. Had his arms been long enough, Pavek would have grabbed both of them by their ears and smashed their stubborn, cowardly skulls together. He might do it anyway, once he’d taken care of the matters at hand.
“Don’t touch her!”
He’d be damned first, if he wasn’t already. Pavek touched her cold, white skin and found it scaled, exactly as Ruari had warned, but before he could turn her head, a Zvain-sized force struck his flank, knocking him backward. Blind rage clouded Pavek’s eyes and judgment; he seized the boy’s neck and with trembling fingers began to squeeze.
“She’ll blast you, Pavek!” Zvain said desperately. He was a tough, wiry youth, but his hands barely wrapped around Pavek’s brawl-thickened wrists and couldn’t loosen them at all. “She’ll blast you. I’ve seen her do it. I’ve seen her, Pavek! I’ve seen her do it.”
With a gasp of horror, Pavek heard the boy’s words, saw what he, himself, had been doing. His strength vanished with his rage. Limp hands at the end of limp arms fell against his thighs. Zvain scampered away, rubbing his neck, but otherwise no worse for the assault. Pavek was too shamed to speak, so Ruari asked the obvious question:
“Where did you see her?”
Shame was, apparently, contagious. Zvain tucked his chin against his breastbone. “I told you she was a rotter. I told you. She’d come to—you know—that house, almost every night.”
Pavek let the last of his breath out with a sigh. “Escrissar? You saw her while you were living with Escrissar?” He swore a heartfelt oath as the boy nodded.
“She’s got a power, even he couldn’t get around it, and she doesn’t like anyone to touch that mask.”
“What was she doing at House Escrissar?” Ruari demanded, his teeth were clenched and his hands were drawn up into compact fists. He’d never forgive or forget what had happened to Akashia in House Escrissar; none of them would. Lord Hamanu had exacted a fatal price from his high templar pet without slacking Quraite’s thirst for vengeance.
Zvain didn’t answer the question. He didn’t willingly answer any questions about Elabon Escrissar or his household. Akashia remembered him from her own nightmare interrogations. That was enough for her, but Pavek, who knew the deadhearts better and despised them no less, suspected Zvain had endured his own torments as well as Akashia’s.
“What was she doing there?” Ruari repeated; Zvain withdrew deeper into himself.
“He doesn’t know,” Pavek shouted. “Let it lie, Ru! He doesn’t know. She can tell us herself when we get her to the village—”
“You’re not taking her where Kashi’ll see her?”
Pavek didn’t need the half-elf’s indignation to tell him that it was a bad idea. He knew enough about women to know there were some you didn’t put together unless you wanted to witness a tooth-and-nail fight. If he had half the wit of a stone-struck baazrag, he’d haul himself into one of the empty saddles and head south with Lord Hamanu’s message and the New Race woman in tow behind him, but having only the