one-time mentor. She knew what she’d been doing. There were fewer rules along the Unseen Way than there were in druidry. Still, it didn’t take rules to know that Telhami wouldn’t approve of her meddling in the white-skinned woman’s dreams.
“Grandmother.”
A statement, nothing more or less, a paltry acknowledgment of Telhami’s presence in this hut, their first meeting since Telhami’s death a year ago. For in all that time, no matter what entreaties Akashia offered, Telhami hadn’t left her grove, hadn’t strayed from the man to whom she’d bequeathed that grove.
Even now, after all that silence, Telhami said nothing, only lifted her hand. Wind fell from her outstretched arm, an invisible gust that scoured the ground between them. When it had finished, the touchstone pattern had reappeared.
“Is this what I taught you?” Telhami’s first words. Grandmother’s voice, exactly as Akashia remembered it, but heavy with disappointment. While Telhami lived, Kashi had never heard that tone directed at her.
She drew a veil of her own around her thoughts, preserving her privacy. While Telhami might have the mind-bending strength to pierce Akashia’s defenses, Akashia had survived more fearsome assaults than Grandmother was likely to throw at her, no matter how great her disappointment. Courtesy of Elabon Escrissar, Akashia knew what dwelt in every murky corner of her being, and she’d learned to transform that darkness into a weapon.
If Telhami wanted to do battle with those nightmares, Akashia was ready.
“Is this judgment?” Telhami’s spirit demanded, adding its own judgment to its disappointment.
Akashia offered neither answer nor apology to the woman who’d raised her, mentored her, ignored her and now presumed to challenge her.
“I asked you a question, Kashi.”
“Yes, it’s judgment,” she said, defying the hard bright eyes that glowed within the veil. “It had to be done. She came from him!” she snarled, then shuddered as defiance shattered. Escrissar’s black mask appeared in her mind’s eye. And with the mask, bright unnatural talons fastened to the fingers of his dark-gloved hands appeared also. Talons that caressed her skin, leaving a trail of blood.
The New Race woman’s mask was quite, quite different. Her long red fingernails seemed impractical; nevertheless a rope had been thrown and pulled tight. Akashia couldn’t think of one without thinking of the other.
“It had to be done,” she repeated obstinately. “I told Pavek to take her to his grove—to the grove you bequeathed to him—but the Hero of Quraite refused. So I judged her myself.”
“Ignoring his advice?”
“She’d already blinded his common sense. I’m not afraid, Grandmother; I’m not weak. There was no reason for you to turn to him instead of me. Pavek will never understand Quraite the way I do, even without your grove to guide me. He doesn’t care the way I care.”
“The white-skinned woman came from Hamanu, not his high templar,” Telhami corrected her, ignoring everything else. “The Lion-King sent her. She alone traveled under his protection, she alone survived the Sun’s Fist. It’s not for druids to judge the Lion-King, or his messengers. If you will not believe the woman herself, if you refuse to listen to Pavek, believe me.”
Why? Akashia wanted to scream. Why should she believe? All the while she’d been growing up, learning the druid secrets under Grandmother’s tutelage, Urik and its sorcerer-king had been Quraite’s enemy. Everything she learned was designed to nurture the ancient oasis community and hide it from the Lion-King’s rapacious sulphur eyes. The only exception was zarneeka, which the druids grew in their groves and which Quraite sent to Urik to compound into an analgesic for the poor who couldn’t afford to visit a healer. And then, they learned that Escrissar and his halfling alchemist were compounding their zarneeka not into Ral’s Breath, but into the maddening poison Laq.
They’d made a mistake, she and Telhami; Escrissar’s deadly ambitions had taken them by surprise. They’d paid dearly for that mistake. Quraite had paid dearly. Telhami had died to keep Escrissar from conquering zarneeka’s source, villagers and other druids had died too, and they’d be years repairing the damage to the groves and field.
But they would have won—had won—before the sorcerer-king’s intervention—Akashia believed that with all her heart. What she couldn’t believe was Urik’s ruler on his knees beside Grandmother’s deathbed, caressing Grandmother’s cheek with a wicked claw that was surely the inspiration for the talons Escrissar had used on her.
The sense of betrayal souring Akashia’s gut was as potent now as it had been that night. Clenching a fist, relaxing it, then clenching it again, she waited for the spasms