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"On your feet, Just-Plain Pavek, or the bugs'll be back before you've moved a stick!"
Pavek got to his feet. Telhami was right, as she usually was. There was nothing to be gained by thinking of the dead who protected Quraite—or Akashia, whom he would personally protect, if she'd let him. After shedding his belt and weapons, Pavek waded into the pond. One afternoon wasn't enough to get the stream flowing swiftly again, but before the sun was sinking into the trees, he'd hauled away enough debris to get water seeping through the dam in several places.
"A little luck," he told the green-skinned spirit on an overhead branch, "and the stream will do the rest of the work for us."
"You're a lazy, lazy man," she replied with approving pride.
The path took an easy route back to the clearing Pavek called home. There was a stream-fed pool for water, a sandy hearth, and a rickety lean-to where he stored the hoe beside his sword. He'd thrown his sweated clothes into the pool and was about to follow them when the leaves on the nearby trees began to shiver and the grass bent low.
"Someone's coming," Telhami said from the rocky rim of the pool.
Pavek bent down and swept his hands through the grass. He cocked his head, listening to the leaves. Telhami knew who was coming and, after another moment of listening, he did as well. "Not someone," he corrected. "Zvain and Ruari."
"Running or walking?"
He touched the grass a second time and answered: "Running."
Ruari had his own grove, as befitted a novice druid. He had trees and shrubs, the familiar wildlife that half-elves always attracted, and a pool of water not much bigger than he was. It certainly wasn't large enough to entertain two energetic youths, since Zvain spent most of his time in Ruari's shadow, having no gift for druid magic.
Pavek wasn't surprised that they were coming to visit him. Half the time they were already in Telhami's pool by the time he returned from the grove's depths. But he was surprised that they were running. The druid groves were only a small part of Quraite, and between the groves the land was blasted by the bloody sun, just like every other place in the Tablelands. Usually, Quraiters walked, like everyone else, unless they had good reason to run. He snagged his shirt before it drifted downstream and started to follow the bending grass toward the verge.
He hadn't taken ten steps before Ruari burst through the underbrush, running easily right past Pavek to leap fully clothed into the pool. Zvain came along a few heartbeats later—a few of Pavek's heartbeats. The boy was red-faced and panting from the chase. Ruari might never be able to run with his mother's elven Moonracer tribe, but no mere human was going to catch him in a fair race: an inescapable fact that Zvain had failed to grasp. Extending an arm, Pavek caught the boy before he flung himself into the chilly water.
Somewhere between Urik and the grove, between then and now, Pavek had become the closest thing to a father any of the three of them had ever known, though only the same handful of years separated him and Ruari as separated Ruari and Zvain. The transformation mystified Pavek more than any demonstration of druidry, especially on those rare occasions when one of them actually listened to anything he said. Zvain leaned against him and would have collapsed if Pavek hadn't kept an arm hooked around his ribs.
"He said it wasn't a race—" Zvain muttered miserably between gasps.
"And you believed him? He's a known liar, and you're a known fool!"
"He gave me a twenty-count lead. I thought—I thought I could beat him."
"I know," Pavek consoled, thumping Zvain gently on the top of his sweaty
head.
It wasn't so long ago that he'd been having pretty much the same conversation with Ruari, who'd nurtured the same futile hope of besting his elven cousins at their games. Life was better for the half-elf now. Like Pavek, Ruari had become a hero. He'd rallied the Quraiters to defend Pavek while Pavek summoned the Don-King. Then, when Escrissar's mercenaries had been annihilated, he'd gone to Akashia's aid, helping her to direct the guardian's power against Escrissar himself after Telhami had collapsed.
The past two sun phases had been kind to Ruari in other ways, also. The half-elf could no longer be mistaken for a gangly erdlu in its first molt. He'd stopped growing and was putting some human flesh on his spindly elven bones. His hair, skin, and eyes, were a study in shades of copper. There wasn't a woman in Quraite—young or old, daughter or wife—who hadn't tried to capture his attention, and the Moonracer women were almost as eager. Ruari had grown into one of those rare individuals who could quiet a crowd by walking through it.
No wonder Zvain ached with envy; Pavek felt that way himself sometimes. The two of them were both typical of Urik's human stock: solid and swarthy, good for moving rocks rather than the hearts of women. Zvain had an ordinary face that could blend into any crowd, which, by Pavek's judgment, was an advantage he himself had lost before he escaped the templar orphanage. The stupidest fight of a brawl-prone youth had left him with a gash that wandered from the outside corner of his right eye and across the bridge of an oft-broken nose before it came to an end at his upper lip. Years later, the scar hurt when the wind blew a storm down from the north, and his smile would never be more than a lopsided sneer. He'd put that sneer to good use when he wore a yellow robe, but here among the gentler folk of Quraite he was embarrassed and ashamed.
Ruari surfaced with a swirl and a splash of water that pelted Pavek and Zvain where they stood.
"Cowards!" he taunted, which was enough to get Zvain moving.
Pavek hung back, waiting for the other pair to become engrossed in their bravado games before he stepped down into the pool. A stream-fed pool still unnerved a man who'd grown up never seeing water except in calf-deep fountains, sealed cisterns, or hide buckets hauled out of ancient, bottomless wells. Zvain loved water; he'd learned to splash and swim as if water were a natural part of his world. Pavek liked water well enough, provided it didn't rise higher than his knees. And at that depth, of course, he couldn't learn to swim.
Early on, Pavek had hauled a rock into the shallows where, left to his own preferences, he'd sit and enjoy the current flowing around him. Sometimes—about one time in three—his companions would leave him alone. Today was not one of Pavek's lucky times. They double-teamed him, sweeping their arms through the cold water, inundating him repeatedly until he struck back. Then, Zvain wrapped his arms like twin water-snakes around Pavek's ankle and pulled him into the deep, dark water of the pool's center.
He roared, fought, and splashed his way back to the shallows, which merely signalled the start of another round of boisterous fun. Pavek trusted them to keep him from drowning—the first time in his life that he'd trusted anyone with his life. He trusted Telhami as well. The other two couldn't perceive the old druid's spirit, but Pavek could hear her sparkling laughter circling the pool. She wasn't above lending the youths an extra slap of water to keep him off-balance, but she'd help him, too, by making the deep water feel solid beneath his feet, if he breathed wrong and began to panic.
The fun lasted until they were all too exhausted to stand and sat dripping instead on the rocks.
"You should learn to swim," Ruari advised.
Pavek shook his head, then raked his rough-cut black hair away from his face. "I keep things the way they are so you'll stand a chance against me. If I could swim, you'd drown— you know that." Snorting laughter, Ruari jabbed an elbow between Pavek's ribs. "Try me. You talk big, Pavek, but that's all you do.
Yet when Ruari slipped and started to fall, Pavek's hand was there to catch him before any damage could be done.
