The Zarneeka Debate
Chapter 12 opens with a sandal nudging Pavek in the ribs and a voice saying “It’s morning.” He groans. His head is full of bad memories from the night before. He argued with Akashia about zarneeka, then parked himself next to the Moonracer’s honey-ale barrel and drank too much.
Not Joat’s Den levels of too much. But enough for a man who hasn’t been drinking lately. He remembers everyone else leaving for bed while he sat there like a fool.
The Moonracers have already packed up and left. Yohan is standing over him with bitterroot tea and a clean shirt. And the message: they’re waiting for you in Telhami’s hut.
Yohan’s Push
Pavek doesn’t want to go. He told Akashia what he thinks last night. She didn’t listen. Why would today be different?
Yohan drops the act. He tells Pavek straight up: “I agree with you.” The dwarf has been against the zarneeka trade for years. He thinks the city has nothing Quraite needs. They’re surrounded by salt. No point trading for it. And now with Laq turning zarneeka into a weapon, the risk is insane.
But nobody in Quraite listens to Yohan anymore because he always says burn the crop. They’re used to him. They need a fresh voice. They need someone who knows Urik and its templars from the inside.
Pavek pushes back: “I’m no persuader.”
Yohan’s response is basically: you’re a liar. Not to other people. To yourself. You’ve got a better life here than you ever had scraping the bottom of the civil bureau in Urik. You could fight for this place but you won’t because fighting means caring and caring means risk.
Then Yohan punches him in the jaw. Twice.
They square up like brawlers at the well, circling each other, trading feints. Yohan is compact, solid, with huge fists and perfect guard. Fighting a healthy dwarf is pointless and Pavek knows it. But the physical confrontation shakes something loose.
Yohan asks him: do you want Akashia to die in Escrissar’s interrogation chamber? Do you want to see Quraite’s fields burned? What are you if fate proves you right and you die knowing you could have kept this place alive?
“You play the game once, and you play it with your life. Are you brave enough to let Grandmother and the others make up their own minds?”
That’s the line that gets Pavek moving. He turns around and realizes he’s been backing toward Telhami’s hut the whole time. Yohan herded him there while they were arguing. That dwarf knew exactly what he was doing.
The Speech
Inside the hut, about eight druids and several farmers sit along the walls. Telhami is on her sleeping platform with Akashia beside her. Everyone smiles and greets him like he didn’t keep them waiting for hours. Akashia offers tea. He can’t meet her eyes.
Yohan grabs a fistful of his shirt from behind and announces: “Pavek’s ready to talk.”
So he talks. He tells them about Laq. What he saw of its making. How it kills. Then, for no reason he can explain, he starts talking about Zvain.
A kid who lost both parents to poison. An orphan on the streets of Urik. One of those common people they say they’re helping with Ral’s Breath. Picture him, Pavek says. Then ask him how important your zarneeka is when he can’t afford medicine and has to survive the havoc that Laq brings to his world.
His voice rises to an impassioned bellow. Then the words stop as suddenly as they began. His tongue goes lifeless. Every mouth in the hut hangs open.
And Pavek realizes he wasn’t alone. The guardian’s essence was flowing through him. Shaping his words. Lending him power and eloquence he doesn’t naturally possess.
The spirit of Quraite agrees with him. It doesn’t want zarneeka going to Urik.
Someone he can’t see says: “He speaks well for me.” Murmurs of agreement ripple through the room.
But not from Telhami. And not from Akashia.
Telhami’s Choice
Telhami listens. Then she dismisses Zvain as doomed. She says they can’t build the future of Athas by worrying about orphans scrounging food under city streets. She announces that Quraite will not burn its zarneeka. They will not cower. They will return to Urik, study Laq, study Escrissar, and thwart his ambitions.
Mid-sentence, she collapses.
A flickering yellow light radiates across her body. It thickens until Akashia’s arms disappear in the glare. Pavek watches and thinks: she’s dying. The guardian is claiming her the way it claims the bones in her grove.
Then the light collapses. Akashia sits empty-handed in the dusty sunlight.
“She’s gone,” someone whispers.
The room falls apart with grief. But Akashia stands, pale and shaking, and summons the guardian to read its message.
“Not gone,” she announces. “She’s gone to the stowaway. The stowaway’s attacked. The stowaway’s breached.”
Everyone runs for the southeast path. Pavek grabs Yohan’s arm and asks what a stowaway is. Underground storage for zarneeka seeds, the dwarf explains. They follow the crowd to a treeless stretch near the salt flats where Telhami sits on a stone beside a shallow, empty hole. Yellow-stained dirt sifts through her fingers.
Ruari.
The Sabotage
Akashia confirms it. Ruari talked to the Moonracer elves. He knew about the Laq situation and the debate. He was terrified Pavek would persuade the druids to send zarneeka to Urik, or steal it himself. So he broke into the stowaway and destroyed the seeds.
Yohan points out the timing doesn’t add up. Ruari couldn’t be eavesdropping on the meeting and wrecking the stowaway at the same time. The moment was too perfect. The guardian may have used Ruari’s act to stop Telhami.
Akashia won’t hear it. She blames Ruari’s hatred of Pavek for everything.
Pavek points out the irony. “He stopped you instead.”
That earns him another bitter look.
What follows is a tense standoff. Telhami says Ruari has retreated to his grove and pulled it in around himself. A druid’s choice. He’s cut himself off from everyone. She says zarneeka will still go to Urik as it always has. She couldn’t let Ruari leave Quraite full of spite, but she won’t force him out of hiding either.
Pavek’s templar rage boils up. He demands to know where Ruari’s grove is. He wants to tell the kid he did the right thing. Telhami refuses. Ruari wished for privacy. She grants it.
The invocation for fire writes itself clear in Pavek’s mind. The guardian’s power throbs under his feet. For one long moment, violence hangs in the air. Telhami looks into his eyes and he sees she knows exactly what he’s thinking. She has far greater power than anything he could summon.
Her voice enters his mind directly. Lips don’t move. “Your choice, Pavek.”
He lets the fire go. He’s not a druid. He can’t hide in a grove. But he refuses to make Telhami’s choice for her, and he refuses to leave Ruari rotting in the thorns.
Finding Ruari
The druids pull in their grove-breezes on Telhami’s orders. No guiding wind to follow. Dead still air. But Pavek has something no druid thought of. His templar medallion. The ceramic token Hamanu placed in his hands on Induction Day. Every templar is linked to theirs. Even here in Quraite, he feels its absence like a nagging hole in his consciousness.
And Ruari has the medallion.
He closes his eyes, turns his head, and starts walking.
He finds Ruari’s grove. A low tangle of briars and saplings, much smaller than Telhami’s or Akashia’s. He fights through thorns that carve bloody tracks in his legs. Calls out. Gets pelted with stones. They trade insults. Then Ruari charges and they brawl properly.
Pavek wins easily. He’s heavier, faster, and has years of combat training. He drops Ruari into the briars twice. The second time, the half-elf can’t get up. He’s wheezing, his lungs struggling. Three kivits, Ruari’s animal familiars, appear and nuzzle against him with anxious dark eyes.
Pavek carries him to a pool and props him against a tree. They talk. It’s not a friendly talk. Ruari says nothing has changed. He still hates Pavek. He still plans to kill him.
But Pavek tells him the truth. While Ruari was wrecking the stowaway, Pavek was trying to convince Telhami not to trade. The guardian spoke through him. They argued for the same side. Ruari actually did the better job.
Ruari says “Kashi.” Meaning: the real reason for all of this.
Pavek shuts it down cold. “Mekillots will fly first.” He tells Ruari he knows better than to overreach. That Akashia would kill him before Ruari got the chance.
Instead of arguing more, Pavek extends a finger and tickles the nose of one of Ruari’s kivits.
They sit by the pool until sunset. Getting past being enemies without becoming friends.
The Twist
When Pavek returns to the village looking for Yohan, the dwarf is gone. So is Akashia. Two farmers. Five kanks.
Telhami conjured a whirlwind to separate the ripened zarneeka from the sand, sealed it up, and sent it to Urik.
While Pavek was in the briars sorting things out with Ruari, Telhami did exactly what she said she would do. The guardian’s speech. Ruari’s sabotage. The whole debate. None of it mattered.
That ending is brutal. Abbey spends the whole chapter building toward the idea that Pavek might change something. The guardian speaks through him. The room murmurs agreement. Ruari destroys the stowaway. Everything seems to be moving in one direction. Then Telhami quietly does what she was always going to do.
This is the clash at the heart of the book. Akashia believes in helping Urik’s sick. Pavek knows the zarneeka will feed a war. The guardian agrees with Pavek. Yohan agrees with Pavek. Even Ruari, in his own destructive way, agrees with Pavek. And Telhami overrules all of them, including the guardian, because she has been playing this game longer than anyone else in the room.
Idealism versus pragmatism. The idealist wins because she holds the most power. Whether that’s brave or foolish is something Abbey lets you decide for yourself. Personally, I’m with Pavek on this one. But I get why Telhami can’t just watch sick people suffer when she has the means to help. There’s no clean answer here. Just people making the best choices they can with incomplete information, and some of those choices are going to get people killed.
The Brazen Gambit by Lynn Abbey, Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas, Book One. ISBN 1-56076-872-X.