Yohan was speechless, but Pavek swore loudly enough to awaken the entire village.

And Quraite's guardian. Awareness flowed into him- threatened to destroy him with its intensity-then Ruari's hand was flat against his arm, helping him shape the power he'd instinctively invoked.

"Don't coddle me with your forgiveness," he roared, "or your tally of what's been paid and what's still owed. I know better; I know Escrissar! Look at me, Telhami. Look inside me! Look at what I know about Elabon Escrissar and tell me that there's nothing left to do!"

The old woman did not use her mind-bender's power to take the images he so desperately wanted to hurl into her mind's eye. She didn't even raise her eyes to meet his, but she did, somehow, cut him off from the guardian's power.

Ruari's hand slipped away, and the energized air within the hut dissipated on the midnight breeze.

"Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy is far greater than yours," Pavek whispered. She'd diminished his voice when she reaped the guardian's strength away from him. "He'd never let a favorite slip away unavenged."

His legs were dead-weight beneath him. Each step was precarious as he turned and plodded toward the door. Telhami said nothing, did nothing to stop him.

There were three fresh kanks, provisions, and well-crafted obsidian weapons waiting beside the central well when Pavek picked himself up from the tree-shaded place where he'd fallen-literally-to sleep after leaving Telhami's hut. Telhami wasn't around. Ruari said she'd left the village for her grove at dawn, walking with just her staff to support her. He said that she was sorry, that she'd grieved and sobbed, torn her clothes and wailed that she was ready to die before she left her hut. Challenged by both himself and Yohan, Ruari admitted he'd spent the night spying and promptly ran off.

The boundless energy of youth, Pavek thought enviously while he washed sleep-grit from his eyes. He was stiff and sore, as if he'd been the loser in an uneven brawl-as, in a sense, he had been: Telhami had bested him before he'd known he was in a fight.

And then, before dawn, she'd conceded defeat.

He threw a leather harness over the kank's carapace, narrowly dodging its saliva-drenched mandibles. It trilled in the high-pitched, nerve-jangling way of bugs, making the hair all over his body stand on end, but the bug minded its manners. He tightened straps around the food sacks and water jugs, and attached a long, obsidian knife to his belt.

Yohan was already mounted. The dwarf's eyes were still a study in red and black, but his strength had been restored by a haif night's sleep. Ruari was returning with a fourth kank..

"In case we find her," he explained before any questions could be asked. "In case we get very lucky."

An extra kank couldn't hurt-especially if, as Ru said, they got very lucky. Pavek waited in silence while Ruari harnessed both his kank and the extra one. Villagers came to see them leave. The farmers saluted them with fingers twisted into various luck-signs or pressed sprigs of tiny white flowers into their hands. The druids hung back, their expressions more complex and much harder to read.

Few words were exchanged. Everyone, presumably, had heard Pavek's midnight explosion-by rumor, at least, if he hadn't actually awakened them. There wasn't much more to say. The sky was bright and cloudless, as it usually was. A storm-dust, wind, or Tyr-might sweep down on them before they got to Urik, with no one in Quraite ever the wiser. But, if there were no storms, they'd reach Urik in about four days. And after that-?

What could anyone say to three men riding to certain and unpleasant death?

What could they say to each other?'

Nothing.

Yohan tapped his kank's antenna to get it moving. Ruari went next with an optimist's bug at the end of a rope. Pavek took up the rear.

Telhami was waiting for them on the verge of the Sun's Fist. Her silhouette was hunched and shrunken. Despite the familiar veiled hat, Pavek didn't recognize her at first. She asked-an honest request, not a disguised command-to use her arts together in their minds to sequester their knowledge of Quraite against all inquiry. It wouldn't, she insisted, prevent them from returning, but it would thwart Elabon Escrissar or anyone else who sought to unravel their memories.

"For Quraite-?" she asked.

Ruari and Yohan dismounted; Pavek stayed where he was. They knelt on the hard ground and were entranced by mind-bending and spellcraft. He and Telhami were effectively alone.

"For Quraite," she repeated, and he wasn't swayed. "The guardian will keep your secrets safe from Elabon Escrissar."

Settling himself in the kank's saddle he realized he knew exactly what the emptiness had contained: the background against which he'd lived his recent life. There were names: Telhami, Akashia, the farmers and the other druids, each associated with a familiar face and floating in an unnatural gray fog, as if he had dwelt in a cloud of smoke since leaving Urik.

He had Telhami's word that he could find his way back, if me was lucky enough to escape Elabon Escrissar; and that he would betray nothing if his luck ran out. It was thin, cold comfort, and he shivered the length of his spine, prodding the kank onto the dazzling Sun's Fist behind Ruari and Yohan.

They left the kanks at a homestead barely within the broad belt of irrigated farms from which Urik drew its foodstuffs. A small shower of silver from Yohan's coin pouch bought promises that the bugs would cared for and left in an open pen. There was risk. There was always risk when one man bought another man's promise; neither knew who else might raise the asking price.

But few things held as much risk as breaking into a High Templar's house with thoughts of assassination in their minds.

Getting into Urik wasn't so difficult. Generations of templarate orphans had dared each other into reckless explorations of the city's remotest corners. They lacked prestige and promotions, but their knowledge of Urik was legendary. And just as Pavek was certain that there was no passage through walls near the elven markets, he knew there was one beneath the northwest watchtower. The only thing he feared as he cleared away the rubble from a loose foundation stone was meeting a band of his younger counterparts somewhere in the narrow, twisting passageway.

He knew they were halfway to the templar quarter when the passage widened into the shimmering blue-green curtain of the sorcerer-king's personal warding.

"You first," he said to Ruari, who turned gray in the eerie light and refused to move. "You've got my medallion. Give it back if you don't want to go first." He held out his hand.

"What makes you think I've got it with me?" Ruari countered, all spit and vinegar, and clutching his shirt where Pavek had known the ceramic lump was hidden.

He cocked his head toward Yohan who, with a weary sigh, thumped the half-wit between the shoulders, propelling him through the curtain, which hissed and sparkled but did not harm him. He and the dwarf scurried through before the sparking died.

"What if I didn't?" Ruari demanded.

"You'd be dead," he said bluntly and kept walking.

The passage ended not far from the orphanage along the interior wall of the templar quarter, the most familiar part of the city for him, but not for the other two, who were clearly daunted by the monotonous tangle of precise intersections and nearly identical facades.

"How do you know where we're going?" Ruari asked in an urgent whisper, revealing that he failed to recognize the subtle decorations that distinguished a High Templar's private house from a civil bureau barracks- and that he couldn't read the inscriptions painted above every door.