the words every drill-field instructor barked at the end of a training session: Heal quick or heal forever. Pavek had left his wounds malingering for nearly two weeks—had no choice, really. A competent healer could seal a cut with a finger’s touch, but Pavek couldn’t purge poison or regenerate muscle overnight. His body informed his mind that this healing wasn’t finished and sometimes it told him that he must open his mouth to scream.
Strangely, even with his own anguished sounds filling his ears, Pavek was unafraid. After that first awakening, when his thoughts had swirled with questions and doubts, he did not worry about anything. Hands would slip beneath his neck to raise his head for a sip of water or a thick broth that tasted pleasantly of honey and meat. Only the halfling woman with the diamond tattoos spoke directly into his mind; the others ministered in total silence.
There was never light, never a clear memory of the healcraft that must be taking place while he slept. And mostly he did sleep, without dreams, without time. He was grateful, but it wasn’t natural; nothing about this underground chamber was natural. The water tasted pristine, but the broth could hide a dozen concoctions beneath its robust flavor, including one that left him in calm and blissful acceptance of very strange circumstances.
* * *
Pavek awoke again and found the chamber awash in the shadowy light of a small oil-lamp. The drowse that had insulated him from worry was gone, as was the stone weight around his elbow. He needed no help to raise his head or sit—though he regretted the latter. He’d been on his back too long. Blood drained from his head. The chamber spun in spirals, dimmed to a charcoal fog.
“Easy there, Pavek my friend. Be a bit more considerate of my hard work.”
A man’s voice, probably human and speaking with a familiar Urik accent, drifted through the fog. A man’s hand, big-knuckled and callused, clapped between his shoulders, pushing his head forward and down until his forehead banged against his knee. Blood reversed its flow, and he got an odd-angled look at the cleric who’d healed him: unruly hair atop a round, soft-featured face, ropes of mottled clay beads clattering against a barrel chest, and a robe the exact color of the chamber walls.
Pavek shrugged free of the helping hand. He sat up with no further ill effects, looking straight into guileless brown eyes. “Are we friends? I don’t know you. You know my name; what else do you know about me?” His neck was naked; the medallion was missing, where or when he couldn’t begin to guess. The rest of him was naked, too, although a linen sheet allowed the pretext of decency.
“Everything mat’s worth knowing.” The cleric’s grin was as merry as any Pavek had seen on a sober man. “Oelus,” he added, offering his hand, which Pavek regarded with undisguised suspicion.
“You are a healer, a cleric bound to some temple or sanctuary? You aren’t… hidden?”
“Veiled?” Oelus spoke the word with raised eyebrows; his hand remained outstretched. “No more than you. But, if you’re asking if the Alliance knows where you are, the answer is yes.”
“I remember a boy. Was there a boy?”
“Very definitely—and scared out of his wits. He’d got you halfway to safety, then had to leave you where you fell. Worst place to be, my friend, halfway to safety. Very exposed and a risk to all concerned. You can be sure our veiled friends moved quick to get you here, no questions asked ’til much later.”
Oelus’s words percolated through Pavek’s skull. By implication, the boy had, indeed, been leading him to an Alliance bolt-hole, which wouldn’t have been safety—not for a templar. The templarate hunted Veiled mages as vermin, and the vermin returned the favor. No quarter was asked or given from either side. He wouldn’t have drawn two breaths inside an Alliance bolt-hole; the boy, himself, would have needed luck to get out alive.
Making a mistake like that, the boy couldn’t be an initiate. Pavek had no idea where he’d collapsed, but the hand of fortune had tripped him just in time: to protect their bolt-hole, the magicians must have spirited him into the hands of an amenable sanctuary and the competent hands of an earth-worshipping cleric, Oelus.
“And the boy? Zvain, Zvain—that’s his name, isn’t it? I can remember his face. What of him? Did he suffer for what he did? For what he meant to do?”
The cleric’s eyes narrowed—thinking, analyzing—then the