Nothing within Quraite's perimeter was beyond her ken. She could have determined Akashia's location with little
effort. But a little effort was more than she wished to expend, especially when the child was near-bursting with the
answer.
"They're among the fields. One of the kanks is gone, and-Grandmother-the stranger is a great ugly and dirty man
with snarly hair. He's dressed in rags."
"Is he?" she said, smiling. "Well, then we'll have to give him clean clothes and teach him to bathe, won't we?"
She swung her legs over the edge of the woven-reed sleeping platform.
Kashi's mind had been full of the stranger some nights' past when she'd sent her thoughts ahead of the storm,
seeking guidance. The impression Telhami'd gotten then had been considerably different from child's description now.
Her curiosity was piqued, and she took the translucent bowl firmly in both hands.
Strangers came infrequently to Quraite. Some found it on their own, others needed assistance. Either way,
strangers were welcome to stay as long as they wished, or forever. For though strangers came to Quraite, strangers did
not leave. The precise location of the verdant land Telhami guarded was too great a temptation to entrust to anyone
who would not dedicate her or his life to its preservation. More than one hesitant stranger rested among the twisted
roots of the ancient trees in her private grove.
But, mostly, those strangers who came to Quraite had been searching for it, and surrendered willingly to its spirit.
During her guardianship, the green lands of Quraite had spread measurably across barren waste far to the northeast of
Urik. When she arrived, there were only a dozen great trees left in an isolated grove, now there were more than a dozen
interconnected groves, each nurtured by a man or woman who'd started out a stranger, or a stranger's child.
Of course, nurturing a druid grove required innate talents. At any time) the greater number of the oasis's
inhabitants were ordinary folk who worked the fields, tended the animals, or provided a brawny escort when Quraite
needed to trade with the Lion-King in Urik.
Without prying, which she had not done during the storm and would not do now, there was no guessing why
Kashi had wanted to bring a Urikite stranger home to Quraite. Perhaps she'd succumbed to some rough-hewn city-bred
allure. Druids certainly weren't immune to reckless passion: They venerated the wilder aspects of nature. They took
risks, sometimes foolishly.
And Kashi was a young, vigorous woman who looked upon the men of Quraite as brothers, not suitors. It was
only natural that she might stumble upon her first love in Urik. That was, after all, no small part of the reason why
Telhami sent her there in the first place- With Yohan, of course, to watch over her. Two or three human generations
ago, the veteran dwarf had been a stranger in Quraite himself. He strode out of the salt barrens in the heat of the day,
alone and afoot, guided, he'd said, by an emptiness in his heart, From that first moment she'd trusted his dedication as
she'd trusted few others. She bared the mysteries of her grove to him by moonlight but, try as he might, poor Yohan
couldn't grow weeds behind an erdlu-pen. The druids' path was closed to him.
If that ragged, ugly and dirty stranger Kashi had hauled out of Urik had harbored a harmful thought toward
druids in general or Kashi in particular, he'd have died long before the Fist of the Sun closed around him. Kashi had
become Yohan's focus years ago, when her mother died. Yohan would protect her with his life, or spend hereafter as a
wailing banshee.
Thoughts of Akashia and Yohan brought a smile to her lips and energy to her limbs. She sipped the water if of
Quraite, giving appropriate thanks to spirits both living and i inanimate who made it crisp, dear, and refreshing, then
she swallowed the test in two gulps.
"Bring me my hat and veil, little one. They've reached the trees. We don't want to keep them waiting, do we?"
"No, Grandmother," the child agreed, taking the bowl from her hands before fetching the hat from a peg in the
center post of the straw hut.
Telhami bowed her head, but only a little. Once she'd been as tall as Akashia; now she was no taller than a
gap-toothed girl-child. When the gauzy veil had been looped around her neck and shoulders, she took up a gnarled
wooden staff and left her shady hut. Even with the veil, the burning sunlight hurt her eyes. The girl lead her to the
center of the circular village where the travelers and the stranger awaited.
Any journey to Quraite was a strenuous experience. When the journey was compounded by the Smoking Crown
storm, which fury Telhami had sensed in her momentary mind-bending contact with Akashia, it was no surprise that
the travelers seemed weary to the point of exhaustion. Kashi accepted the steadying hands of her friends and
neighbors as she dismounted; Ruari, riding doubled-up behind her and favoring a swollen, discolored knee, clearly
needed them. Even Yohan was a shade slow leaping down from his kank's saddle.
But no amount of hard-traveling, wind, rain, or mud could account for that tattered stranger atop the
soldier-kank. He was, as the girl-child promised, a big man- although his cramped position, wedged beneath the cargo
racks, had made him seem larger than he was. His face was marred by a much-broken nose. There was an old scar
twisting his upper lip and new ones streaked across his cheek. She had to look at him with her mind's eye to see that
he was still a young man, no more than a few years older than Kashi herself-
Where had Kashi found him? Sleeping drunk in some Urik alley?
The stains and tears in the stranger's clothing were older by far than the storm. His hair and beard hadn't been
properly groomed in weeks. There was a story here, and she could feel her old-bones weariness melt with anticipation
of hearing it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a breeze of children bearing three bowls of water among them, one for each of
the returning Quraiters: Akashia, Ruari, and Yohan. There no water for the stranger, who was not yet a part of the
community or its traditions.
Brawny humans suffered almost as much as half-giants in the Fist of the Sun. The stranger's thirst hung like an
aura around him, an aura she observed closely through her veil. He stood still, like the kanks, while the others drank,
giving away nothing of his inner character.
A strange stranger, indeed, if he could watch mouthfuls of water splash and vanish in the dirt without blinking
his eyes or running a pasty tongue over salt-cracked lips.
Where had Kashi found him?
And though she'd kept the question strictly within her own thoughts, Kashi looked her way before returning her
half-full bowl to the children. Kashi pointed them in the stranger's direction and gave them a gentle shove before
coming over.
"I have brought a stranger to Quraite, Grandmother," she said in the formal tones the occasion required. "He
calls himself Just-Plain Pavek. He acted without thinking to save Ruari's life during-"
"He's no stranger! He's a templar!" Ruari interrupted, surging between the just-named Pavek and the children,
knocking the bowl out of their hands before the stranger got anything to drink. "A street-scum, filthy, yellow-robe
templar. Don't trust him, Grandmother. Send him away before he brings more disasters on us. Put him beneath the
trees!"
She felt a gasp of horror and revulsion ripple through her community. Ruari's snarling, desperate face blocked her
view of Pavek, but sidelong glances at Akashia and Yohan confirmed the basic truth of the youth's angry words. The
pieces fell into place: the scars, the resignation, the apathy on the smooth, hard surface of his mind.
It was easy to think of templars as beasts; they thought of each other, and themselves, that way.
But Akashia had brought him here, and Yohan had permitted it. "Why?" she whispered, unable to purge the
shock and outrage from her voice. "What place can there be for a templar in Quraite?"
"A former templar, Grandmother. A fugitive." Akashia replied in an uncertain voice. "The templarate put a
forty-gold-piece price on his head because he's seen our zarneeka powder transformed into something he calls 'Laq'-"
Her ancient heart stuttered, and she heard the rest of Akashia's words with half an ear. Laq... older than the
oldest trees, older than King Hamanu or his square, high-walled city, the syllable-sound awakened sadness and fear in
Quraite's guardian spirit. Zarneeka bushes had survived since the days of abundant water in the shade of the trees
Telhami and her predecessors nurtured. As the trees had spread, zameeka had spread, too, until there was enough to
share with the downtrodden and aching folk of Urik, who called it Ral's Breath. But Laq, like the delicate yellow flower
of her dreams, had been forgotten.
Who had dredged Laq from its well-deserved grave?
Hamanu?
The Lion-King had the skills and the inclination to wrest the dark secrets from the dilute powder called Ral's
Breath, but if he or his defiler-minions had done so, they would have given their seductive poison a self-celebrating
Urikite name.
"Grandmother-? Grandmother-?" Akashia knelt quickly, her wind-blown hair trailing on the ground before her.
"I'm sorry, Grandmother. It seemed as if he told the truth; at least he believes he tells the truth. I thought-I thought you
should hear him yourself, see him yourself. It's my fault. Mine alone. Ruari never trusted him, not for a moment"
She rested gnarled hands gently atop the younger woman's head. Of course Ruari had not trusted the stranger.
Ruari couldn't look at a human man without thinking of his father, and when that human man was also a templar the
hatred redoubled. No matter that this Pavek was much too young to have been the yellow-robed scum who'd ravished
Ruari's elfin mother and left her for dead in the midden-heaps outside Urik's walls.
That man was long dead. Ghazala's kin might have shunned her while she carried her ill-gotten son, but they'd
avenged her promptly. For Ghazala and the rest of the Moonrace tribe, it was over, forgotten. For Ruari, the hatred had
begun at the moment of his lonely birth and was entwined in his own flesh, neither wholly elf nor human. It wouldn't
end for Ruari until he accepted himself-which Telhami did not expect to see, even if she lived to be twice her current
age.
Where human men or templars were concerned, young Ruari's opinion could not be heard first. She circled
Kashi's face with her fingertips, lifting the younger woman's head.
"There's no fault. Not yet. Let this stranger speak for himself."
Akashia moved aside.
"Templar of Urik, stand before me!" She thumped her staff on the ground authoritatively, but she didn't invoke
Quraite's guardian to cast a spell, nor did she release mind-bending energy.
"My name is Pavek," he said, taking the first step of his own will. "I was a templar, a regulator, but no longer. No
longer of Urik, either. I'm just plain Pavek, unless there's another Pavek here already; then call me whatever you wish.
I've been a dead man since I saw a slave distilling black poison from gold wine and your yellow powder. There's
nothing you can do to frighten me, Telhami, druid of Quraite-" "On your filthy knees, templar!"
Ruari swung his staff at the stranger's head, but even with the strength and speed of youth, he was neither
strong enough, nor fast enough, to land the blow. This time Telhami did invoke the guardian, and with its aid,
traversed the three paces between herself and the half-elf in a heartbeat. Her staff, carved from a living branch of the
oldest tree in her grove, absorbed the sweep of Ruari's wrath. His body trembled as a backlash reverberated through
his limbs and his tawny copper skin turned livid.
"Enough." She chastised with mind-bending more than words. "Enough. Allowances have been made ever since
the Moonracers left you behind. Children worship their parents with love, and suffer when that love is not returned;
but you are no longer a child."
"He is a templar," Ruari insisted, his voice little more than a whisper. "I know what his kind is like."
"As elves and humans know yours?" she replied with compassion that drained the angry flush from his face.
Shoulders slumped and chin hanging against his chest, Ruari retreated a single, unsteady step. "I'm sorry.
Grandmother." The top of his head moved, but not enough to bring his eyes in line with hers. It dropped again, and he
retreated to the farthest edge of the gathering.
She knew what she would have to do if Ruari failed to transform his anger into integrity; she hoped it would
never be necessary. Then she thrust her hopes aside and scrutinized Just-Plain Pavek through the mesh of her veil.
"Tell me more. Tell me about the slave."
Pavek blinked once, and his lips tightened before he said, "A halfling slave-"
"A halfling slave?" she interrupted scornfully. "Only a fool would enslave a halfling. Their spirits wither in
captivity. Only a fool would say that he saw a halfling slave making poison."
"I saw what I saw: A halfling slave distilling Laq. His cheeks were carved and blackened. Any Urikite would
recognize the pattern as House-"
With a shake of her staff and a surge of mind-bending energy, she nailed the templar where he stood. Anger
brought the appropriate memories swimming to the surface of his mind, where she could discern them and their
truthfulness. Quickly, she knew as much as she needed to know. Zar-neeka was a halfling word, left from the rime
when they and humans dominated a moist, green Athas. As Athas withered, it had seemed that the halflings withered
and forgot. But Laq was a halfling word, too. Whatever the halfling was doing, he was no slave, and it was a prudent
certainty that he'd recovered more than one mote of ancient knowledge. The rest-the name of his nominal master and
the extent of the lion-King's involvement in the treachery-could remain in the murky depths of a templar's mind, for
now.
The knowledge would be safe there. Templars did the very thing halflings could not: they hid the truths of their
lives from themselves. It was the only way they survived.