She opened her hands. The yellow-stained dirt streamed to the ground. "I didn't send him anywhere. He's hiding in his grove."

"Where's his grove?"

"I can't tell you," her voice was faint and listless. "He wished for privacy, Just-Plain Pavek. I grant it to him. He wants to be alone for a while. I told him what you said. He needs to be alone."

"The guardian wouldn't suck his bones into the ground, for you?" He could hear the foolishness in his voice. He wished he could swallow his tongue, but recklessness was another old habit, impossible to resist when righteousness fanned its flames. "He wished for privacy, instead, and you granted his wish. For how long, Telhami? How long does Ruari need to be alone in his grove. Until he starves?"

"A druid can't starve in his grove," Yohan said from behind. "Mind yourself. Ruari's safe enough in his grove, if mat's where he is."

Recklessness, it seemed, was catching.

He spread his feet to shoulder width and propped his fists atop his hips. "Where is the scum? I want to tell him he's done the right thing. I need to tell him. How can I find him?"

"You can't!" Akashia sprang, shouting, to her feet. She smashed her fist sincerely, but ineffectively, against his chest. "Ruari's gone to his grove and pulled it in around him. He's cut himself off. He doesn't want to be found. He doesn't want anything to do with anyone, ever again."

"I'm not interested in what the scum wants. Point me toward his grove. I'll walk until I find the little beggar."

"Knowing where Ruari's grove is-was-won't help you. He's hiding, Pavek," Telhami said in a soft voice that, nonetheless, captured his attention. "There's nothing any of us can do, you least of all. Ruari's hiding. His choice-a druid's choice-not mine. Ruari hasn't stopped anything. Zarneeka will go to Urik as it always has; that's my choice. He couldn't accept that. I couldn't let him leave Quraite, not as full of spite and vengeance as he was. He chose to hide forever and a day. Forever's a long time, Just-Plain Pavek, but a day or a week will do him good. But the choice to hide was his, and the choice to return will be his. And mine. This is not a quarrel between him and you, Pavek. Ruari is a druid, and this is the way it must be, Pavek. Do you understand?"

"In my dreams, great one." The invocation for fire was written clearly in his mind's eye. The power to transform the very air around them into a wall of flames throbbed beneath his feet. Telhami knew it; he could look into those ancient, unblinking eyes and see the knowledge there. And power far greater than any he could hope to command.

Your choice, Pavek. Her voice was clear, but her lips hadn't moved.

The tips of his fingers touched; the guardian's power surged within him, then ebbed. He wasn't a druid. He couldn't choose to hide in a grove. He could choose between understanding and incineration: a familiar sort of choice for a man who'd worn King Hamanu's yellow. A comfortable choice.

Ruari meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. The scum simply hated him to the point of poison and beyond, because of his father, not zarneeka. Let Ruari hide in his damned grove. Let him stay there until he rotted, if he couldn't starve. He was more trouble than he was worth; the world wasn't losing anything-

Except justice: a balance of rights and wrongs between him and Ruari that could never be redressed with one of them hiding forever and a day. The invocation erased itself; the power evaporated.

"I don't understand, and I refuse to make your choice. I will find him." The cool, guiding breeze from a druid's grove blew only when the druid willed it to. The air around the ruined stowaway grew still as Quraite's druids, one by one and following Telhami's example, inhaled the essence of their groves.

But druidry wasn't the only magic in Quraite. A small, ceramic lump had entered the guardian's land with Pavek. He had taken it directly from King Hamanu's hands when he was still a boy living in the templar orphanage. The memory of the king's stale breath, his sulphurous eyes, and the burning heat of his flesh would never fade. No

r, King Hamanu had assured him and the dozen other youngsters inducted into the templarate that day, would his memory of each of them. A Urik templar was linked to his medallion.

Though the crude ceramic might be exchanged for fine carved stone or precious metal-if a templar rose high enough through the ranks-the unique impression made on Induction Day endured.

The medallions could only be used by the templar into whose hands it had been placed by the king. Woe betide the forgetful templar who lost his medallion, and greater woe betide the fool who, finding a stray medallion, tried to use it.

Pavek could have selected his medallion from a hundred perfect forgeries. Even here in Quraite, where the guardian averted Hamanu's prying eyes, he felt its absence as a nagging hole in his consciousness, stronger or weaker depending on the medallion's actual location.

Depending on Ruari's location, since Ruari had the medallion.

Without the competing influences of twenty-odd breezy groves to confound him, Pavek needed only to close his eyes and turn his head to determine the direction in which bis medallion could be found. There was a chance the half-wit scum had left it in the bachelors' hut with his bedding, but Pavek found himself looking away from the village when he opened his eyes. He started walking without saying a word.

Akashia called him; Telhami also-and voices he didn't recognize. If Yohan's had been among them, he might have reconsidered. But the dwarf held his peace and soon the only sounds were those of his own sandals on the dry ground.

* * *

He expected something odd, something sudden or frightening, but Ruari's grove, when it came into sight, was a low-lying tangle of briars and saplings, far smaller than Telhami's or Akashia's, but otherwise essentially the same. A shimmer of druidry hung about the place, which from the outside seemed no more than few hundred paces across. There certainly was no sign of Ruari himself, though the ache of the missing medallion was a palpable force in Pavek's mind. He hesitated before wading into the rampant shrubbery, and held his breath until his lungs burned once he entered the grove. Thorns carved bloody tracks into his legs, but that was the true nature of thorns and nothing magical.

"Ruari!" he shouted loudly enough to penetrate every shadow. "Stop hiding."

There was no answer; he hadn't truly expected one. He thrashed and cursed his way to what seemed to be the visible center of the grove. The medallion felt close enough to touch, but Ruari was nowhere to be seen.

"She says this hiding-thing is your choice. You may as well come out where I can see you. I'm not going anywhere until you know you did the right thing, wrecking the stowaway."

Something cracked the base of Pavek's skull. It might have been a nut or a small stone; he didn't turn around.

Tags: Lynn Abbey Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net