Cinnabar Shadows - Lynn Abbey Page 0,33

Ruari asked while they waited.

Pavek shook his head. He hadn’t left any women behind who would come looking for him; none at all who might know him as a high templar. That was an unwelcome title that Lord Hamanu had bestowed upon him, which implied—to Pavek’s great discomfort—that Lord Hamanu had sent the messenger, too.

He strained his eyes staring Urik-ward. There was nothing there to be seen, not yet. He consoled himself with the knowledge that Telhami must have known and that while she would tease and test him relentlessly, her mischievousness didn’t include exposing Quraite to danger.

“Maybe she’s dead,” Zvain suggested, adding a melodramatic cough to indicate the way her death might have occurred.

Ruari countered with: “Maybe she got lost, or maybe she will get lost. The guardian reaches this far, Pavek. It could cloud her mind, if you don’t want to meet her, and she’d wander till her bones baked.”

“Thanks for the thought, but I doubt it,” Pavek said with a bitter laugh. “If not wanting to meet her were enough, Akashia would have done it already.”

If Just-Plain Pavek had been a wagering man—which he wasn’t—he’d have wagered everything he owned that Akashia had done her best to direct the guardian’s power against their visitor. That power was formidable, but it wasn’t infallible or insurmountable. Elabon Escrissar wouldn’t have been able to find Quraite, much less attack it, if he hadn’t been able to pawn Zvain off on him, Ruari, and Yohan while they were distracted rescuing Akashia from Escrissar. But once Zvain was in Quraite he opened his mind to his master. From that moment forward, Escrissar had known exactly where to bring his mercenary force, and there was nothing Quraite’s guardian could do to cloud his mind.

Likewise, Lord Hamanu had apparently known of Quraite’s existence. He’d asked after Telhami by name immediately after he’d disposed of Escrissar and chided her gently about the village’s sorry condition. But even the Lion of Urik hadn’t known where Quraite was until Pavek had unslung his medallion and shown the way. The mind of a sorcerer-king was, perhaps, the most unnatural, incomprehensible entity Pavek could imagine, but he was certain Lord Hamanu hadn’t forgotten any of them, or where they lived.

The sun was gone. The last salt sprites dissolved into powder that would sleep until dawn. Countless shades of lavender and purple dyed the heavens as the evening stars awakened. Pavek recognized their patterns, but he took his bearings from the land itself before he started across the Fist.

There were two places in this world whose location Pavek believed he would always know. Quraite, behind him, was one. He could see green-skinned Telhami in his mind’s eye and calm his own pounding heart in the slow, steady rhythms of life that had endured longer than the Dragon. The other place was Urik, but then, Pavek had roused a guardian spirit in Urik, too, much to Telhami’s surprise.

Druid tradition held that guardians were rooted in places—forests, streams, rocks, and other phenomena of the land, not in man-built cities. Pavek wasn’t about to argue with tradition, but Urik stood on a hill that was no less a place than Telhami’s grove, and the force that distinguished Quraite’s guardian from the lesser spirits of the barrens was born in the generations of druids who’d lived and died above it. Pavek wasn’t bold enough to equate the street-scum of Urik with the druids of Quraite, but he had roused a guardian there, and ever since he’d known without thinking where the city lay over the horizon.

The path between Urik and Quraite was a sword-edge in Pavek’s mind: straight, sharp, and unwavering. As far as he knew, he was the only one walking it, but if there were a woman coming the other way, they’d meet soon enough.

Heat abandoned the salt as quickly as the sun’s light. They hadn’t walked far before the ground was cool beneath their feet and they were grateful for the shirts on their backs. A little bit farther, when the sky had dimmed to deep indigo and the stars were as bright as the moon, Pavek heard the sounds he’d dreaded. Zvain heard them, too, and as he’d done in the face of Akashia’s scorn, he tucked himself into Pavek’s midnight shadow.

“The Don’s bells,” the boy whispered.

Pavek grunted his agreement. Most folk who dared the Tableland barrens did so discreetly, striving not to attract the attention of predatory men and beasts. It was otherwise with Lord Hamanu’s personal minions. They

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