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offered, leaving the vengeance to others. His smile faded, and she asked for
his side of their bargain.
"Tell me about the makers-you promised."
"They are very old; they were old when the Dragon was born, older still when
he was made-"
Behind her mask, Mahtra gasped with surprise: one life, both born and made!
"Yes," he said, with a quick, almost angry, twitch of his chin. "They do not
make life, they make changes, and their mistakes cannot be undone." He touched
the leather of the mask. "But there are masks that cannot be seen. You could
speak clearly through such a glamour. Hamanu would grant you that. But I must
leave now. He will come, and I cannot be seen beside him."
And he was gone, before Mahtra could ask him his name or what he meant by
masks that couldn't be seen. She didn't see him leave, any more than she'd
seen him arrive. There was only a wind waft from the place where he'd been
standing and a second against her back, which had been toward the golden
doors.
Mahtra remained on the bench until she heard a commotion beyond the doors: the
tramp of hard-soled sandals, the thump of spear-butts striking the stone floor
at every other step, the deep-pitched bark of men issuing orders that were
themselves muffled. A few words did penetrate the golden doors: "The Lion-King
bestrides the world. Bow down! Bow down!" And though, at that moment, she
would have preferred to hide behind the black boulder, Mahtra prostrated
herself before the doors.
The doors opened, templars arrayed themselves with much foot-stamping and
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spear-pounding. They saluted their absolute ruler with a wordless shout and by
striking the ribs over their hearts with closed fists. Mahtra heard every
step, every salute, every slap of their leather armor against their bodies,
but she kept her forehead against the floor, especially when a cold shadow
fell over her back.
"I have read the message of Xerake, august emerita of the highest rank. I have
heard the testimony of the woman, Mahtra-made of the Pristine Tower, and find
it full of fear and truth, which pleases me and satisfies me in every way. My
mercy flows. Rise, Mahtra, and ask for anything."
The first thing Mahtra noticed when she rose nervously to her feet was that
King Hamanu was taller than the tallest elf and as brawny as the strongest
mul. The second thing was that although he resembled his ubiquitous portraits
in most ways, his face was less of a lion's and more of a man's. The third
thing Mahtra noticed, and the thing that made her gasp aloud, was a pair of
dark amber eyes beneath amusement-arched eyebrows.
Vengeance? A mask that could not be seen? Or nothing at all, which she could
hear Father's voice telling was the wisest course. That smile-full-lipped,
perfect, and cruel- appeared on King Hamanu's face. For a heartbeat she felt
hot and stiff as her innate protection responded to perceived threat, then she
was cold as the cavern's water. The king brought his hands together over her
head. She heard a sound like an egg cracking. Magic softer than her shawl
spread over her head and down her body. It had no effect that she could see or
feel, but when she tried to speak, even though she could not join two coherent
thoughts together, the sounds themselves were soft-lipped and pleasant.
"A mask that cannot be seen," the king said with a slight nod. "An everlasting
glamour, so you can do what I need you to do. As you brought me a message from
Xerake, you'll take another across the sand and salt for me. There is a man
there-an ugly, human man, a high templar who owes me service. You will give
him my message, and together you shall have your vengeance on Kakzim."
Chapter Four
Pavek leaned on the handle of his hoe and appraised his morning's work with a
heavy sigh. He'd shed his yellow robe over a year ago. Exactly how much over a
year had become blurred in his memory. The isolated community of Quraite that
had become Pavek's home had no use for Urik's ten-day market weeks or its
administrative quinths. By the angle of the sun beating down on his shoulders,
he guessed high-sun was upon the Tablelands and another year had begun, but he
wasn't sure, and he no longer cared. He was farther from his birthplace than
any street-scum civil bureau templar ever expected to find himself; he'd been
reborn as a novice druid.
These days he measured time with plants, by how long they took to grow and how
long they took to die. Elsewhere in Quraite, the plants he had spent all
morning setting out in not-quite-straight rows would have been called weeds
and not worthy of growth. The children of the community's farmers hacked weeds
apart before throwing them into cess pits where they rotted with the rest of
the garbage until the next planting phase when they'd be returned to the
fields as useful fertilizer.
Farmers treated weeds the way templars treated Urik's street-scum, but druids
weren't farmers or templars. Druids tended groves. They nurtured their plants
not with fertilizer but with magic-usually in the form of stubbornness and
sweat. Telhami's stubbornness and Pavek's sweat. Right now, his sweaty hide
was rank enough to draw bugs from every grove and field in Quraite. He wanted
nothing more than to retreat to the cool, inner sanctum of the grove where a
stream-fed pool could sluice him clean and ease his aches.
Armor-plated mekillots would fly to the moons before Telhami let him off with
half a day's labor in her grove. Telhami's grove-Pavek never thought of it as
his, even though she'd bequeathed it to him with her dying wishes-was
Quraite's largest, oldest, and least natural grove. It required endless
nurturing.
Pavek suspected Telhami's grove reached backward through time. Not only was it
much larger within than without, but the air felt different beneath its oldest
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trees. And how else to explain the variety of clouds that were visible only
through these branches and the. gentle, regular rains that fell here, but
nowhere else?
It was unnatural in less magical ways, too. Druids weren't content to guard
their groves or enlarge them. No, druids seemed compelled to furbish and
refurbish; their groves were never finished. They transplanted rocks as
readily as they transplanted vegetation and meddled constantly with the
water-flow, pursuing some arcane notion of 'perfect wilderness' that a
street-scum man couldn't comprehend. In his less charitable moments, Pavek
believed Telhami had chosen him to succeed her simply because she needed
someone with big hands and a strong back to rearrange every rock, every
stream, every half-grown plant.
Not that Pavek was inclined to complaint. Compared to the mul taskmaster who'd
taught him the rudiments of the five templar weapons-the sword, the spear, the
sickles, the mace, and a man-high staff-while he was still a boy in the
orphanage, Telhami's spirit was both good-humored and easygoing in her
nagging. More important, at the end of a day's labor, she became his mentor,
guiding him through the maze of druid magic.
For all the twenty-odd years of his remembered life, Pavek had longed for [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]