He left the commons, headed for the fallow fields, where, according to Yohan who kept an eye on him when he was in the village and made regular reports to Telhami, he would sit by himself, recreating his memorized spellcraft in the dust with a piece of straw.
“What will become of him, Grandmother?” she asked, though she knew there were only two alternatives: he would master their spellcraft and become a druid, or he would become a farmer, as all other Quraiters were farmers. She refused to consider the third alternative: that he would wind up in the roots of Telhami’s grove.
“Too soon to say.”
While other Quraiters relaxed into a twilight of song and storytelling around a crackling fire, Akashia remained on the porch. The greatest of Quraite’s mysteries did not reside in any ancient grove or in the guardian’s mystic presence; they resided in Telhami’s keen understanding of the forces that shaped the Tablelands. And so Akashia sat, listened, and learned another lesson about the movements of the moons and the winds, of seeds, oil, metal, and salt, and every other thing upon which their lives depended.
Pale Ral, the smaller moon, rose above the trees to begin its journey through the stars. Ral was solitary this evening, Guthay was resting with the sun. The heat of day gave way to the chill of evening and the fireside gathering dispersed, singly and in pairs and families. She would have gone with them if she could. Her day had begun earlier than usual, and she hadn’t had Grandmother’s advantage of an afternoon nap, but Telhami was talking about salt and gave no sign of tiring. So she waved to friends who walked past, and tried to stay awake.
Her eyes were still open but her thoughts had wandered into dreams when someone shouted their names. A moment passed while she collected her wits. By then Telhami had vanished, using the guardian’s energy to travel instantaneously to the problem. She had to wait until a boy skidded to a stop in front of her.
“It’s the templar,” the child said breathlessly. “He’s dying. Grandmother says, bring her herbs, and hurry.”
Surprisingly and inexplicably numb from heart to fingertips, she collected a handful of thong-wrapped pouches. The boy led her beyond the trees where Pavek’s moans were a better guide than the boy.
“What’s happened?” she asked, although Pavek’s pain-contorted body told an eloquent tale.
“Poisoned himself,” Telhami muttered, taking two of the pouches from her hand.
“Poisoned himself?”
She would have sworn to anyone, including the guardian of Quraite, that Pavek had been in the best of spirits when they returned from her grove. He’d shaped the elements with only a little help from her; his belief that he would master druidry had been restored. He’d smiled, and even laughed—as if he were made of the same emotional stuff as other men. “He had no cause to poison himself,” she concluded, trying to assure herself as much as Telhami and the other shadows beneath the trees.
“Poison,” Telhami repeated, and this time, as a black froth bubbled through Pavek’s lips, there could be no further doubt.
She cradled his head in her lap and forced his mouth open enough for Telhami to dust his tongue with herbs. His eyes rolled white, his back cracked like a whip, and he writhed loose. A moan erupted deep in his gut, and he began to retch up a foul-smelling, viscous fluid that shimmered briefly before turning dark and dead.
The herbs confirmed the diagnosis, nothing more. Telhami turned toward the shadows—
“Yohan?”
“Nothing, Grandmother,” he said wearily. “Whatever he ate, he ate it to the last crumb and drop, or he didn’t eat it here in the village.”
“He ate supper with the rest of us,” another shadow interjected, going soft and slow at the end. “We all ate what he ate.”
No one said anything for a moment, while Pavek, no longer vomiting, pressed his fists into his gut and curled around them. He was conscious, after a fashion, muttering names between his moans: Dovanne, Rokka, Escrissar. But he was unaware of his immediate surroundings. Of Telhami or Yohan… of her as she once again tried to shield his head.
“That won’t help,” Telhami chided. “Give me your hands.”
Obediently, because Telhami was right, she raised her hands, palms-out, above Pavek’s chest. As Ruari had channeled the lifeforce of Athas for her when she wrought healer’s spellcraft on the injured kank, she took the second’s role for Telhami. Here in Quraite, where