progressed beyond tiny, fast-evaporating spheres of conjured water or fire spells that were more smoke than flame, but he’d begun to build himself a map of Quraite in his mind: the village at the absolute center, surrounded by its cultivated fields and the wilderness between the village and the Sun’s Fist, which was studded with groves—at least twenty of them, if he’d correctly identified the high-rank, grove-tending druids at supper.
And he’d done it all without asking questions. Some habits were harder to break than others. Pavek was getting used to the looser routines of Quraite life. He no longer flinched when someone greeted him with a smile. But he was still a templar in his heart, and templars didn’t ask unnecessary questions because answers, especially honest answers, created debts.
Which was why, though he progressed toward his goal of druid mastery in a day with Akashia—there had been another pair of them since that first day when she’d challenged him to a race through her blind-grass meadow—he preferred a day in Telhami’s grove. The old woman seldom asked questions, never personal ones, but Akashia, try as she might, couldn’t contain her curiosity about the city, about templar life, about his own life, and—worst of all—about the differences between the lessons she gave him and those he received from Telhami.
As if a low-rank templar would ever venture an opinion about one superior to another!
Of course, both women insisted there was no hierarchy in Quraite. Share and share alike, they said. Speak your mind, they said: We value your thoughts, Pavek. Don’t hesitate to tell us what you think.
Did they think he was a gith’s-thumb fool? He could see that everyone bowed and scraped at Telhami’s feet. They smiled and called her Grandmother, and she smiled back and said thank-you…
All very polite and civil.
Hamanu’s infinitesimal mercy! He’d seen a hundred Urik festivals where children laid bouquets of flowers at the sorcerer-king’s feet, and he smiled, and he said thank-you, and no one had a moment’s delusion where the power lay or who had the will to use it, politely, civilly, and utterly without remorse or conscience.
Day after day they told him to send his mind into Quraite’s heart, seeking the guardian. Did they think he hadn’t found the bones beneath the trees? Did they think he hadn’t guessed the fate of those who’d tried and failed?
Don’t hesitate to tell us what you think, they said.
It would have to rain for a hundred days and a hundred nights before he’d stick his head into that trap. A thousand days!
Or so he vowed to himself as he marched across the hard ground.
They were getting to him, these druids with their open, smiling, unscarred faces. He had to ask himself if there weren’t other reasons he preferred the days when Telhami was his instructor, and the answers chilled him to the marrow. Akashia was Telhami’s special pet, her designated successor, and already—as a veteran of the civil bureau measured these things—the next-most-powerful druid in the community. She wasn’t like anyone he’d met before: honest, fair, curious, and as well-tempered as his knife’s steel blade.
All Quraite loved her, but no one loved her more than Ruari—to which she, for all her bright curiosity, seemed oblivious. He wasn’t. He’d eavesdropped on his neighbors’ conversations at supper, learning bits and pieces of the half-elf’s story. If their paths had crossed—if he hadn’t been a boy himself when it happened—he’d’ve killed the templar who ravished the boy’s mother; he’d done as much for the beast who ravished Dovanne and for the same simple reason he’d kill vermin or Elabon Escrissar: They were diseased and had to be eliminated before their disease spread.
It had already spread to Ruari. The half-wit scum saw the world through his scars, real and imagined; there was no use talking to him or trying to make peace. No matter what Akashia hoped or said—and she’d said more than Pavek wanted to hear, blind as she was to Ruari’s adoration—they couldn’t be brothers to each other. She saw herself as the boy’s sister.
Everybody was blind to something. Akashia was blind to Ruari.
But leave him and the scum alone and they might be able to steer clear of each other. He knew he’d be content to ignore Ruari—but for the poison. He’d known exactly what he was doing when he confronted them; would have figured it out without Telhami’s help, though not so quickly.
His gut still ached. Whether from the poison itself or the healing afterward he couldn’t