Where human men or templars were concerned, young Ruari’s opinion could not be heard first. She circled Kashi’s face with her fingertips, lifting the younger woman’s head.
“There’s no fault. Not yet. Let this stranger speak for himself.”
Akashia moved aside.
“Templar of Urik, stand before me!” She thumped her staff on the ground authoritatively, but she didn’t invoke Quraite’s guardian to cast a spell, nor did she release mind-bending energy.
“My name is Pavek,” he said, taking the first step of his own will. “I was a templar, a regulator, but no longer. No longer of Urik, either. I’m just plain Pavek, unless there’s another Pavek here already; then call me whatever you wish. I’ve been a dead man since I saw a slave distilling black poison from gold wine and your yellow powder. There’s nothing you can do to frighten me, Telhami, druid of Quraite—”
“On your filthy knees, templar!”
Ruari swung his staff at the stranger’s head, but even with the strength and speed of youth, he was neither strong enough, nor fast enough, to land the blow. This time Telhami did invoke the guardian, and with its aid, traversed the three paces between herself and the half-elf in a heartbeat. Her staff, carved from a living branch of the oldest tree in her grove, absorbed the sweep of Ruari’s wrath. His body trembled as a backlash reverberated through his limbs and his tawny copper skin turned livid.
“Enough.” She chastised with mind-bending more than words. “Enough. Allowances have been made ever since the Moonracers left you behind. Children worship their parents with love, and suffer when that love is not returned; but you are no longer a child.”
“He is a templar,” Ruari insisted, his voice little more than a whisper. “I know what his kind is like.”
“As elves and humans know yours?” she replied with compassion that drained the angry flush from his face.
Shoulders slumped and chin hanging against his chest, Ruari retreated a single, unsteady step. “I’m sorry. Grandmother.” The top of his head moved, but not enough to bring his eyes in line with hers. It dropped again, and he retreated to the farthest edge of the gathering.
She knew what she would have to do if Ruari failed to transform his anger into integrity; she hoped it would never be necessary. Then she thrust her hopes aside and scrutinized Just-Plain Pavek through the mesh of her veil. “Tell me more. Tell me about the slave.”
Pavek blinked once, and his lips tightened before he said, “A halfling slave—”
“A halfling slave?” she interrupted scornfully. “Only a fool would enslave a halfling. Their spirits wither in captivity. Only a fool would say that he saw a halfling slave making poison.”
“I saw what I saw: A halfling slave distilling Laq. His cheeks were carved and blackened. Any Urikite would recognize the pattern as House—”
With a shake of her staff and a surge of mind-bending energy, she nailed the templar where he stood. Anger brought the appropriate memories swimming to the surface of his mind, where she could discern them and their truthfulness. Quickly, she knew as much as she needed to know. Zar-neeka was a halfling word, left from the rime when they and humans dominated a moist, green Athas. As Athas withered, it had seemed that the halflings withered and forgot. But Laq was a halfling word, too. Whatever the halfling was doing, he was no slave, and it was a prudent certainty that he’d recovered more than one mote of ancient knowledge. The rest—the name of his nominal master and the extent of the lion-King’s involvement in the treachery—could remain in the murky depths of a templar’s mind, for now.
The knowledge would be safe there. Templars did the very thing halflings could not: they hid the truths of their lives from themselves. It was the only way they survived.
But Just-Plain Pavek was an imperfect templar. He had a hefty price on his head and a worried look on his face now that his muscles and his thoughts were his own again. The edge was gone from his stolid confidence.
“I’ve come to trade with you, druid. Knowledge for protection. While I wore the yellow, I had free run of the king’s archives. I read scrolls of magic theory and practice that no eyes had seen for generations. I committed them to memory. The scholars mocked me because, with my rank, I could never hope to recite the invocations I’d learned. But I did learn them, and I’ll share them with