with Mahtra, but she could admit that now, at least silently to herself, and with the admission came the strength to say good-bye before dawn, two days later.
She was proud of herself, that there were no tears, no demands for promises that they would return, only embraces that didn’t last long enough and, from Pavek, something that might have been a kiss on her forehead just before he let go. Standing on the verge of the salt, Akashia watched and listened until the bells were silent and the Lion-King’s kanks were bright dots against the rising sun. Then she turned away and, avoiding the village, walked to her own grove.
There were wildflowers in bloom and birds singing in the trees—all the beautiful things she’d neglected since her return from Urik. There was a path, too, which she’d never noticed before and which she followed… to a waterfall shrouded in rainbows.
Chapter Seven
A trek across the Athasian Tablelands was never pleasant. Pavek and his three young companions were grateful that this one was at least uneventful. They encountered neither storms nor brigands, and all the creatures who crossed their path appeared content to leave them alone.
Pavek was suspicious of their good fortune, but that was, he supposed, his street-scum nature coming to the fore as he headed back to the urban cauldron where he’d been born, raised, and tempered. That and the ceramic medallion he’d worn beneath his home-spun shirt since leaving Quraite.
The closer they came to Urik, the heavier that medallion—which he had not worn nor even touched since Lord Hamanu strode out of Quraite—hung about both his neck and his spirit. The medallion’s front carried a bas-relief portrait of the Lion-King in full stride. The reverse bore the marks that were Pavek’s name and his rank of third-level regulator in the civil bureau, marks now bearing a lengthwise gouge where the sorcerer-king had raked his claw through the yellow glaze. Ordinarily, high templar medallions were cast in gold, but it was that gouge, not the precious metal, that declared a templar had risen through the ranks of his bureau to the unranked high bureau.
High Templar Pavek. Pavek of the high bureau. Lord Pavek. He could call himself whatever he chose now, although Just-Plain Pavek still felt like his name.
Still, with nothing but the relentless sun, the clanging kank bells that limited conversation among the travelers, and the mesmerizing sway of the saddle to distract him, Pavek let his imagination run wilder each day of the ten-day journey from Quraite to Urik.
There were no more than fifty high templars in Urik—men and women; interrogators, scholars, or commandants—whose power was second only to Lord Hamanu’s. Pavek considered paying a visit to his old barracks, the training fields, or the customs house where he’d worked nine days out of ten. Not that he’d left any friends behind who might congratulate him; he simply wanted to witness the reaction when he unslung the medallion and made the gouge visible.
There’d be laughter, at first. No one in his right mind would believe any templar could rise from third rank to the top, especially not within the civil bureau where the ranks weren’t regularly thinned by war.
But that laughter would cease as soon as someone dared touch his medallion. That lengthwise gouge couldn’t be forged. Even now, quinths after the Lion-King had touched it, the medallion was still slightly warm against Pavek’s chest. Anyone else would feel a sharp prickling: high templars had an open call on their patron’s power and protection.
Once convinced of the mark’s authenticity, he’d have more friends than he knew what to do with. In his mind’s eye, Pavek watched the taskmasters, administrators, and procurers who’d run his life since his mother bought him a pallet in the templar orphanage trample each other in their eagerness to curry his favor.
Pavek had countless fantasies beneath the scorching sun, but he indulged them only because he knew that many of those whose comeuppance he most wished to witness were already dead, and that he’d never act on the rest. He’d had too much personal acquaintance with humiliation to enjoy in any form.
Besides, in his calmer moments Pavek wasn’t certain he wanted to be a high templar. He certainly didn’t want to have regular encounters with Urik’s sorcerer-king. On the other hand, the more he learned from Mahtra, frequent encounters of any kind were a decreasing possibility. First he had to survive this, his first high-templar assignment. Night after night as they sat around a