Lynn Abbey - The Brazen Gambit

"You're supposed to jump, not trip over your own big, baazrag feet," he said, trying to make light of what he knew-from personal experience-was a very painful moment, and hoping, as the moments lengthened, that the silent, huddled-up youth wasn't nursing broken bones.

"Now you tell me," Ruari finally replied in a choked, quavery voice. His face was pale when he looked up, but he did a hero's work trying to laugh. "You're supposed to be my teacher."

Pavek lowered the hoe and extended a hand. "Sorry, scum-didn't think you were that stupid. Can you stand?"

Ruari nodded, but took the help that was offered. He held onto Pavek's wrist an extra moment while he took a few hobbling steps.

"Men," a woman grumbled from not too far away. "Never too old for child's play."

They both turned toward the sound. Ruari gasped: "Grandmother," and dropped Pavek's wrist as though it were ringed with fire. There was no guessing how long she'd been watching them, no reading her purpose through her hat's gauzy veil.

"Yohan's coming back. He's on the Sun's Fist."

"Alone?" Pavek snaked an arm around Ruari's shoulder before Telhami answered, ready to restrain the boy, if the answer was what he suddenly feared it would be.

"Alone," she admitted, and for a heartbeat that broad-brimmed hat seemed to shake and shrink.

Ruari surged on wobbly ankles. Pavek caught him before he shamed himself with a fall.

"Easy. If he's on the salt, we've got time, don't we?" He imagined meeting the eyes behind the veil and making them blink. "You don't already know what went wrong?"

"No," her voice was barely audible. "I know that he's alone, nothing more. I've come to you, before the others. You've a right."

She turned away and, gripping her staff in a white-knuckled fist, began the long walk to the village and her hut. Pavek almost felt sorry for her, except: "You sent them! You wouldn't listen, not to me, not to your guardian. You thought your zarneeka was more important, and that you were so much smarter, wiser. Damn you, Telhami, this falls on you!"

Telhami's form shimmered and vanished.

"You shouldn't've said that, Pavek."

"It's the truth. Somebody's got to say it."

"Not you. You should've kept your mouth shut."

"Good advice, scum-but I don't listen to good advice." He picked up the hoe, tried to break the shaft over his thigh, and when that failed hurled the tool at the half-round disk of the setting sun. "Damn!-"

They met Yohan in the wastes between the village and the Sun's Fist. The dwarf had aged profoundly since they'd last seen him. His eyes were red-rimmed and set in deep, dark hollows. His muscles had withered. His bedraggled kank was as shaky as him, and not one of the sleek Moonracer-bred bugs the Quraiters favored. He needed a steady hand when he slid from the saddle and would not meet either man's eyes as he told his story in broken, near incoherent snatches.

He said he'd ridden day and night, sleeping in the saddle when he could no longer keep his eyes open. Eating hadn't been a problem; he'd had no food with him when he escaped from Urik, and hadn't wasted time stealing any. He'd had water, for the first few days. Since then he'd kept going on will alone.

Pavek, having suspected something similar from the moment Telhami gave them the news, offered Yohan a waterskin fresh from the village well. The dwarf brushed it aside.

"It's no use. I'm finished."

"What happened first? How did it go bad?"

"Escrissar."

Pavek swore. He'd dared to hope that, whatever the catastrophe, Yohan had simply left Akashia in some temporary shelter, before racing back to Quraite for help. Hearing Escrissar's name, he could only hope that she was already dead.

Very dead.

He took a swallow from the flask to calm himself.

"Stan at the beginning-"

Yohan obliged. Between Ruari's game ankles and the dwarf's exhaustion, their pace was slow enough that the tale was nearing its elven market climax as the three men approached the green fields.

"How'd you escape?" Pavek demanded, stopping short while they were still on barren ground. He knew his city and a dozen ways through the walls that didn't involve the gates. But none of those secret passages used the elven market.

"That dwarf, that hairy bastard in a procurer's robe, and a common woman with serpents tattooed on her arm were coming for us. I don't know-maybe I could have taken them both, but that still left Escrissar, the mind-bender, and Kashi hadn't kenned where he was all afternoon. I wanted to stand together right there, or stand alone to give her the escape." Yohan ground his knuckles against his eyes and stared at the violet sky. "One of us had to get back to Quraite, she said. I couldn't keep the secret, not against what we were facing: a mind-bender Kashi couldn't ken. But she swore she could. And I knew the way out; she didn't-"

"Pavek! No!" Ruari shouted, trying ineffectively to loosen Pavek's hold on Yohan.

Pavek let go of his own accord, shoving the dwarf back-ward and turning his helpless fury on the half-elf. "There's no passage in the market; the walls there are solid. He had to have help to get out of the market and out of Urik. Escrissar's help, scum. Escrissar! Escrissar set him free, sent him back to us!"

"Not Escrissar," Yohan said wearily. "Elves. An old debt. A tribe that didn't die at the same time a free village went down to templars. They named me 'friend' and said they- all of them, whatever tribe-would owe me life whenever I needed it. They got me out. Debt's paid now. Understand?"

Reluctantly Pavek nodded. He wanted to lash someone with his rage, but what Yohan said made sense. It even answered some of his questions about Yohan himself. But the dwarf's history couldn't hold his thoughts, which skewed back to his original question:

"How did you escape? You were up against Rokka and Dovanne." He knew them by their descriptions. "You could've taken them in a fair fight But if Escrissar was lurking, you shouldn't have gotten away, Yohan. He should've nailed you to the ground, just like he did those poor-sod fanners you left guarding the cart."

The dwarf turned away, took a half-step toward the salt, and stopped. "Last thing she said: 'Don't believe what I send.' She blasted us, Pavek. Turned her mind inside-out. Let the nightmares fly free: the hates and fears we all have locked up inside. But she'd warned me, and I didn't believe. I dropped to my knees and howled but didn't believe. Then it all just stopped. That woman and the dwarf, they were rolling on the ground; they'd believed. I got to my feet, and I saw him walking toward her... the masked one you talked about: Escrissar, with the talons. He looked at me, reached through my ribs and pulled out my heart. It was mind-bending, all mind-bending. But I believed him, and by the living doom of Kemelok, I ran away."

It didn't take a mind-bender to read a proud man's shame in the next few moments of silence. With his back still toward them, Yohan rubbed his eyes again and finished the tale: "That's all. The elves found me and got me out late the next day. I don't know where, but-for what it's worth-not through the elven market. I stole a kank, made sure no one was following me, and headed back here. It's over. I'll tell Grandmother and be gone again."

"To Urik?"

"Aye, to Urik, to Elabon Escrissar. She's gone, Pavek. I failed her, and I lost her, and my banshee will haunt that mind-bending scum until he's rotted in his grave."

"I'm going with you," Pavek said, surprising himself for a heartbeat. "I can get you into the templar quarter, into his house-"

"You're no dwarf. It doesn't matter whether I get through the city gates, as long as I'm close before they kill me. She was my focus, the faith of my life. My banshee will find him soon enough. Don't go wasting your life on my account."