enrich the future of Athas if we worry now about the fates of orphans who live beneath the city’s streets, scrounging food and succumbing to temptations.”
“Zvain—” Pavek began haltingly, seeking words that would explain how ordinary the boy was in the brutal world of Urik, so different from Quraite.
“Is doomed,” Telhami concluded, and it seemed, from the set of her spine and the bright intensity of her eyes, that the guardian flowed with her, now. “There’s nothing anyone can do for him. We must think about those who will survive. They’re the future. We will not burn our zarneeka bushes for their sakes. We will not cower here, hiding from enemies we have not measured for ourselves. We will return to Urik. We will study this poison, Laq, and this High Templar and his minions. And we will thwart his ambitions without—”
Suddenly, Telhami fell, clutching her gut and nearly tumbling from her platform. Akashia was right there, panic in her face and voice, but not in the commands she shouted, “Clear a path! Let the air in! Fetch water!” nor was it in her arms as she cradled the woman she revered as Grandmother.
Pavek retreated with the others, making room for the breezes and for the druid dashed for the well with a bowl in his hands. He crowded against Yohan, whose brawny arm shivered against his back. It seemed clear, if ominous, to a templar: Quraite’s guardian did not approve of Telhami’s plan and Quraite’s guardian was more powerful than any living druid. Perhaps, as Yohan claimed, the guardian had ignored the community’s prior disobedience, as Hamanu tolerated an occasional curse against his name and as slaveowners endured their living property’s sullen insolence; but it wasn’t ignoring disobedience this time.
Before the water arrived, a flickering light began to radiate across Telhami’s body. Swiftly, the soft yellow light thickened until Akashia’s arms could not be seen through the dazzle.
She’s dying, Pavek thought. Quraite’s claiming her, as it claimed the bones in her grove. For a heartbeat he wondered if the guardian’s appetite would be sated with the old woman, or if it would feed on additional disobedience, Akashia’s disobedience. Then the radiance collapsed, and coherent thought fled his mind.
Dazed and blinking, but otherwise unharmed, Akashia sat empty-handed in the dusty sunlight of an Athasian day.
“She’s gone,” someone whispered, a farmer by the look of her.
“Gone,” echoed from the other side of the room, more frantic as the instant of disbelief yielded to grief and unbearable emptiness.
“Grandmother’s gone!” erupted from several mouths, several hearts-bereavement no longer limited to the farmers.
The unimaginable had happened. The unthinkable demanded immediate attention. Akashia stood up, pale and shaken, but apparently aware of her responsibilities. Pavek felt himself grow calmer, felt his feet root themselves in the dirt again as she raised her hands to summon the guardian and read its essence. In the company of so many druids, in such extraordinary circumstances, he felt it, too, though he lacked the wisdom and experience to interpret the message, whipping through his body and his mind.
“Not gone,” Akashia announced after a moment, emphasizing finality and rejecting it at the same time. “She’s gone to the stowaway. The stowaway’s attacked. The stowaway’s breached! She seeks. She finds…”
With her voice trailing off into a sob, Akashia fled the hut. The rest followed, farmer and druid alike, her words having evidently had more meaning to them than they’d had to him. He guessed, but did not know.
He caught Yohan’s arm. “What stowaway?” he asked as dwarf asked: “Who breached it?”
They glowered, each waiting for the other to answer first, and listening as alarm raced through the village. Quraiters who had not been included in the meeting ran past the open door, all headed for the southeast path: the path by which Pavek had entered Quraite and that he had not explored since, because the salt plain encroached closest there.
“Who?” Yohan demanded, breaking loose from Pavek’s grip.
“No idea,” Pavek insisted with a shrug.
He’d felt something, and that was more than Yohan had possibly done, but that was all, and that was completely gone now. He stood in the doorway. Only a few weanling children remained in the common, tended by a few adults whose southeasterly pointing faces proclaimed that they’d rather be somewhere else.
“What’s the stowaway? If I knew that—maybe—”
Yohan pressed behind him in the doorway. “Where they store the zarneeka seeds to ripen and age under the ground.” He shouldered past and started walking.