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"Moonracers-Ruari's kin, aren't they? Trouble?"
Yohan let his arm fall. "Maybe," he conceded. "You've seen him at his worst, Pavek. His age and his breed, they take things too hard, too personally. Ghazala didn't have a choice, not really. Moonracers-they're a fast-moving lot, no place for outsiders who can't keep the pace."
"Or remind them of things they'd rather forget?"
"That, too." Yohan cupped a hand around his beardless chin and shook his head. "The boy doesn't understand. When the Moonracers show up, he's all strut and brawl to prove that he's as good as any elf. When they're gone, he
"Not since I heaved into sight," Pavek corrected.
"Aye, well-" The dwarf shrugged. Muscles rippled across his bare shoulders and chest. "Their honey-ale's as good as you'd find in Urik, and maybe the boy will sulk in his grove 'til they're gone."
Pavek didn't know about honey-ale; it wasn't the sort of rotgut Joat stocked in his Den, but where Ruari was concerned, he expected trouble rather than a sulking absence. He kept those expectations to himself, naturally, and fell in step beside Yohan. The dwarf's preferred pace, a bit slower than his own, got them to the village as the Moonrace fore-runners arrived, dusted with salt from their run across the place, but otherwise unsweated and full of breath.
The Quraite farmers were wrestling a stake-and-rope perimeter around the village's fields to protect their crops from the Moonracers" kanks. There was no point in asking the elves to confine their herd. Freedom was a virtue among elves second only to friendship. If Quraite valued Moonracer friendship, it was the farmers' chore to enclose the tender green plants.
Yohan grabbed a rock-headed maul and started hammering stakes into the ground. The stakes, with a burnt opening at one end for the rope and a dirt-caked point at the other- this was clearly not the first time Quraite had hurriedly defended its ripening fields-were bound into easily managed bundles. Pavek hesitated a moment, waiting for someone to tell him to do the obvious, then picked up two bundles and a maul.
Ropes had been threaded through the stakes and knotted fright by the time the heart of the tribe and its herd settled down on the scrubland beyond the village. Tall, elven women and their loose-limbed children visited the wells to replenish their water jugs-always the first and most important task at any encampment. Other elves traded bright-colored cloth and metalware for Quraite's surplus fruits, vegetables, and grain.
For his part, Pavek followed Yohan and the others who had worked up a thirst protecting the fields. They entered the elven camp where, as the dwarf had promised, a barrel of honey-ale had been broached.
And while the Moonrace tribe would not confine their herd nor stoop to farmers' labor, they understood the virtue of compromise well enough to offer the Quraiters as much ale as they cared to drink. Pavek drained his first mug between breaths. The sweet, amber-colored brew slid easily down his throat and shot into his blood. He got a second mug and, sipping it slowly, walked away from the barrel.
Pavek had lived without many possessions, first in the templar orphanage, then the barracks, and now the bachelor's hut. The traders offered little that tempted him, and anyway, he had nothing to offer the elves in return, like his templar medallion, the few coins he'd slung from his belt the day he left Urik hadn't been returned to him. Since Ruari had the medallion, he assumed the half-wit scum had his coins, as well. More from idle curiosity than any desire to feel the weight of his small wealth against his leg again, he glanced among the traders, looking for that unmistakable coppery hair.
He spotted it, too, but not among the traders. Much as Yohan had predicted, Ruari had joined his elven age-mates in their constant games of skill and daring. At least, that was what Ruari was trying to do. Tall and lithe among the Quraiters, Ruari showed his human blood against his Moonrace kin. As Pavek watched, he lost both a footrace and a barrel-leaping contest. The victorious elves made no secret of their contempt for a slow, clumsy, outcast relative and would-be elf.
The elves ridiculed Ruari mercilessly. The scum issued brash challenges he couldn't hope to carry through. Remembering his lesser moments, when he'd joined in the torment of those orphans who did not survive to become templars, he hoped Ruari would have sense enough to back down before the mockery turned physical-though a half-elf would have the edge, if it came to brawling.
Elves were lousy wrestlers, no match for a well-made fist. They took more than their share of bruises and broken bones on the practice fields where he'd trained with and against every Tableland's race. A templar's training was as thorough as his enemies were numerous; it had to be. From where Pavek stood, he could see any number of ways he, a heavy-set human, could have bested the boasting elves. Even a few that didn't resort to cheating. With his nearly full mug of ale clutched in his fist, he found a piece of shade with a view not only of Ruari's hapless struggle, but of most of the village as well. The Moon-race elders with their piercing eyes and wind-carved faces had begun to assemble near the central well. Akashia, Yohan, and several others, including several Pavek had marked as farmers, not druids, appeared with platters of Quraite's finest fruit.
The offering was accepted and, following Akashia, the tribal patriarch led the way into Telhami's hut. Pavek considered moving closer. The memory of Rokka slipping a handful of gold coins into a salt sack at the customhouse had flitted across his mind's eye. He wondered what the Moon-racers might offer in trade for gold. They had the look of true nomads who ranged over the entire Tablelands, not merely the environs of a single city-state. The sort of elves-truth to tell-that made Urik's templars nervous when their flags appeared in the elven market, selling their knowledge of the outside world along with ordinary contraband.
Then he added the thought of Escrissar's threat to spread Laq to the other city-states, and he did move closer to the hut, only to find himself in a stand-off with an elf with a metal-tipped spear half again her height.
"You're new here," she said, narrowing her eyes and turning the statement into an insult.
Elves had very keen eyes and memories for outsiders. Pavek didn't bother answering. Or sticking around. He retreated to the edge of village, where the young elves and Ruari had also retreated, now that their competition had expanded to include javelin-hurling and an acrobatic contest in which two youths ran full-tilt at each other until one dropped to his knees and the other attempted to avoid a collision by leaping over his shoulders. Once again, Ruari played the loser's part, always trying leap when he should have ducked. Everybody had a blind spot. Ruari's futile ambition to be an elf blinded him to the strengths he did possess. If he'd stuck one hand up while he was bent over and grabbed an elven ankle as it soared overhead, he'd've had one bruised elf who wasn't going to leap or run for a while.
Sometimes people were only interested in what they couldn't have: a flashy obsidian sword instead of a serviceable flint-studded club. A graceful, acrobatic leap instead of a ground-hugging tuck-and-roll...
Druidry instead of something simpler, something for which he was better-suited?
Yohan was in Telhami's hut, making decisions, so were some of the peasant farmers. A man could be important here even if he wasn't a druid. If he'd wanted to be important. But Pavek wanted spellcraft. Whether it was in the templar archives or in a druid's grove, magic was all that he lived for, all that made his life worth living. He'd cheat everywhere else, if he had to, but not there. He memorized those scrolls down to the smears and inkblots. When Telhami said Seek the guardian, he held nothing back. He'd master magic on magic's terms, not his own.
The same way Ruari played elven games.
Games that Ruari could never win.
Magic that he could never master?
Pavek stared into his ale-mug, telling himself that the brew was like broy and led a drinking man into the quagmires of his mind, places he'd never willingly go sober, or drunk on some more reputable liquor. Never mind that his post-hammering peers were red-faced and happy, or that a second barrel had been tapped and euphoria was spreading. For him honey-ale was the same as broy, and he emptied his mug into the roots of the nearest tree.
An offering, perhaps, to the guardian. A prayer that he was not as foolish as that half-wit scum, Ruari who leapt short again, and landed in a groaning sprawl of arms and legs.
If the honey-ale was truly like broy, a few hours should see him clear of its melancholy. He could wait until his head was clear before he let another thought wander between his ears. The sounds of Quraite, from bargaining traders to Ruari stumbling and the distant drone of a grazing kanks lulled him into a pleasant, muzzy mindlessness.
&nbs
