Simon Hawke - The Outcast

He came into a luxuriously appointed sitting room, with three more half-elf males standing guard inside. All three were armed. At the far end of the sitting room was a curtained archway, flanked by two heavy iron braziers. The half-elf beckoned Sorak through the beaded curtain. Sorak went through with Tigra while the others remained outside in the sitting room. On the other side of the curtained archway was a large room with a heavy, intricately carved wooden desk at the back, placed before an arched window looking out over the gaming hall below. The window was covered with a beaded curtain, so that it would be a simple matter for someone to pull aside a couple of strands and secretly watch the action in the hall below.

There were two chairs placed in front of the desk, and there were two more doors on either side of the room. Krysta sat behind the desk, pouring water from a chilled pitcher into a fluted goblet. She held it out to him.

“Since you do not seem to care for my mead, I took the liberty of having some water sent up,” she said.

“And I have had some raw z’tal meat brought up for your tigone. Please, sit down.”

As he took the chair she indicated, Tigra began to eat noisily from the large bowl placed on the floor beside the chair.

“You broke your promise,” Krysta said. “You said that you would see me before you left.”

“I had forgotten,” Sorak lied.

“Am I so unmemorable, then?” she asked with a wary smile. Without waiting for a reply, she went on. “I understand you did quite well at the tables tonight”

Sorak shrugged. “It must have been beginner’s luck.”

“Oh, I think luck had very little to do with it,” she replied, opening a small, lacquered wooden box and offering it to him. It was full of neatly rolled, black fibrous sticks. Sorak shook his head, and Krysta pulled back the box, taking one for herself. She lit it from a fragrant candle burning on her desk and drew in a deep lungful of the pungent-smelling smoke, then exhaled it through her nostrils. “Did you really think that you could use psionics in my gaming house and get away with it?”

“She knows we cheated!” said Kivara, in a frightened tone.

“How could she know?” Eyron replied. “The Guardian would have felt it if someone tried to probe us. She is merely guessing. She hopes to trick us into an admission of guilt.” “I don’t understand,” said Sorak with a frown. “Please,” said Krysta, a wry grimace on her face. “Do not insult my intelligence by playing the innocent. I pay a great deal of money to employ the finest game lords in the city. Each of them is expert at computing odds, and at watching how the dice roll. The more clumsy attempts—such as when someone palms our dice and substitutes weighted ones—my game lords can spot at once. And they can usually tell within three or four passes if the dice are receiving a psionic assist. You were very good. It took them three whole rounds before they were certain you were cheating.”

Sorak cursed himself for being careless. It had never even occurred to him that his cheating could be exposed by such ordinary means. He had been on guard against psionic probes when he should have been reading the thoughts of the game lords, as well. The problem was that the Guardian could only exert one psionic ability at a time, and the game had moved so quickly there had been little opportunity to make telepathic probes, even if it had occurred to him to try. “You knew I was cheating, yet you allowed me to play on,” he said. “Why?”

I was curious about you,” she replied. “Also, I did not wish to risk an unpleasant incident. You carry a formidable-looking sword, and I did not want to have any trouble with your tigone. I had no wish to see my guards or any of my patrons injured.”

“I see,” said Sorak. “However, you still allowed me in here with both my tigone and my sword.” He glanced back at the curtained archway. “I suppose those guards are out there listening, ready to burst in at any moment”

“If necessary,” she replied. “However, I do not think it will be necessary.”

As she spoke, Tigra made a groaning sort of growl, tried to get up, then keeled over with a rumbling sigh. “Tigra!” Sorak jumped up out of his chair and knelt by the fallen tigone’s side. The bowl was completely empty. “The meat!” he said as realization dawned. “You poisoned it!” His hand went to his sword.

“Stay your sword hand, Sorak,” Krysta said calmly, “or my guards will have arrows in your back before you can even draw your blade.”

He glanced back over his shoulder and saw several crossbows protruding through the beaded curtain. They were aimed directly at his back.

“Your psionic powers may turn aside one arrow,” she said, “but not several at once. Your pet has not been harmed. I could easily have poisoned it, but I had no wish to kill the beast. The meat was simply laced with sleeping powder, enough to drug at least four grown men. The tigone should suffer no ill effects except, perhaps, an unsettled stomach. Now please, sit down.”

Sorak resumed his seat. “You want me to surrender my winnings? Take them.” He dropped his pack down on her desk, then tossed his purse beside it.

“I do not really care about the money,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It represents no loss to me, only to the players you cheated. They would have lost, in any case. They always do. It is a rare gambler who knows enough to quit while he’s ahead. Had you played against the house, it would have been a different matter, but I noticed you were wise enough to avoid those games.”

“Merely because I was not familiar with them,” Sorak said.

She made a dubious face. “You expect me to believe that?”

Sorak shrugged. “Whether you believe it or not, it happens to be the truth. I have never been to a gaming house before, and I am beginning to regret that I did not heed Zalcor’s warning. If you do not care about the money, then what is it you want of me?”

As he asked the question, he ducked under and allowed the Guardian to come briefly to the fore so that she could look into Krysta’s mind. What she found there came as an interesting surprise.

“I want some answers, to begin with,” replied Krysta. “We can start with who you really are, and why you came here. You are no simple herdsman, that much is certain.”

“No,” said Sorak. “But the rest of what I told you was essentially the truth. As a child, I was cast out into the desert and left to die. I was found by a pyreen elder who nursed me back to health and brought me to the villichi convent. Until I came to Tyr, I had spent my entire life there.”

“Ridiculous,” said Krysta. “You shall have to do better than that. Everyone knows the villichi are a female sect. There are no male villichi.”

“I did not say I was born villichi,” Sorak replied calmly. “Merely that I was raised in their convent.”

“The villichi would never accept a male among them.”

“They accepted me. They took me in because I had great psionic talent and because I was an outcast. The villichi know what it means to be shunned for being different. The pyreen elder asked that I be given shelter at the convent, and because the villichi honor the pyreen, the high mistress granted her request.” Krysta thoughtfully pursed her lips.

“The villichi follow the Path of the Preserver and the Way of the Druid, as do the pyreen. That much, at least, is true. But I find the rest of your story difficult to accept.”

“Why should it matter to you one way or the other?” Sorak said. “Unless, of course, your interest goes beyond mere curiosity and the matter of my cheating in your gaming house. Why not ask Councilman Rikus to join us so that he can ask his questions for himself? He must be growing tired of standing with his ear pressed up against that door.”