The Brazen Gambit by Lynn Abbey; Brom

Author:Lynn Abbey; Brom
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy - General, Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction - Fantasy, Fiction, Puzzles, Science Fiction, Games, Fantastic fiction, General, Science Fiction - Series
ISBN: 9781560768722
Publisher: TSR
Published: 1994-07-15T06:30:09.745000+00:00

* * *

Pavek had begun to run as soon as he saw the vast green-crowned grove on the horizon, and he’d run himself to exhaustion before he realized that no amount of racing would get him there. Gasping and feeling like an utter fool—again—he dropped to his knees. He could only wait, lapping up the sweat that fell from his face into his cupped hands, and wait for the cool wind from the center to blow again.

He was confident that it would. From what he’d seen so far, Telhami wouldn’t miss the opportunity to mock him face-to-face in her grove. He didn’t have to wait long. This time he followed the breeze obediently, even when it curled away from the grove, and set his foot on soft green grass when the sun was only a few handspans above the treetops. The druid’s grove was alive with pattering sound. Pavek flinched left and right at each step before he observed water drops falling through the trees, striking leaves and branches before they dived into the grass. He’d heard or seen nothing like it before. Face up toward the trees, he stumbled through the gentle rain, paying more attention to the foliage than his feet.

“However did you survive as a templar in the lion’s city?” He demonstrated his survival skills, bounding into the air like a startled erdlu, but landing, fists clenched and teeth bared, in a compact, wary crouch.

Telhami reclined on the far bank of a spring-fed stream. At least, he assumed it was Telhami. Quraite’s chief druid had discarded her veil. The sunlight filtered through the trees revealed her as a woman no longer young, but hardly a withered crone. Prejudiced by a lifetime of dealing with templars, he took her relaxed presence and ironic tone as intimidation ploys and countered with insolence: immersing his face in the surprisingly cold water, as if it were something he’d done ten thousand times before.

“Yes, yes, Pavek. Take your time. You already know everything that I could teach you.”

More intimidation, and successful this time—which left him that much more determined to conceal how decisively she’d stung him. He sauntered across the stream.

“I knew enough to get here, didn’t I?” he asked as he sat. “You and Ruari thought I’d wander forever. Well, I followed your cool wind from the center, and now I’m ready to be taught whatever it is that you have to teach.”

Telhami responded with a solitary arched eyebrow. “You run a good race, Just-Plain Pavek, but you don’t know how to win. It doesn’t matter if you’re growing trees or trying to get another scarlet thread for your sleeve—in the end it’s not the power that matters, it’s the will behind it. Here, as you noticed, power drips down from the trees. Hold out your hand and it flows over you, but can you catch it, Just-Plain Pavek? Can you speak its silent language? Can you bend it with your will?”

“That’s what I’m here to be taught.”

The druid flicked her hand, and a water-plume splattered his cheek.

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