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"Ale? Broy? The halflings make a blood-wine that's sweet as honey and kicks like a molting erdland."
Ruari whispered: "Ale." He couldn't stomach the thought—much less the sight—of the other two beverages, even if he wasn't going to drink them.
The woman snapped her fingers loudly and shouted for two mugs of something that didn't sound like ale. He felt betrayed, but said nothing. They stared at each other until the bucket-sized containers arrived in the fists of a weary, one-eyed dwarf. The human woman smacked her mug against his, sloshing some of the foamy brew onto the table, then she took a swig. Ruari pretended to do the same.
"So—you've got a map that shows the way to a black tree? Even with a map, there's a lot of treacherous country between here and there, especially for a lowlander like you. Kirres may be the kings of the ridge, but there're a lot of other ways to die up there. And the halflings themselves—"
Suddenly she was jabbering away in a language—Ruari supposed it was Halfling—that was full of chirps and clicks as well as singsong syllables.
"Didn't think so," she proclaimed and took another long pull at her mug. "Negotiating with halflings is a tricky pass, if you know their tongue—which you don't. You're going to need a guide, my coppery friend. And not just any guide, someone who knows the ridge well. Let me see your map, and I might be able to tell you who to hire."
It appeared that Mahtra and Zvain weren't the only ones who thought the map was real. Ruari decided he must look very young and very naive. Did she think he didn't remember the looks she'd given him while he was still astride the bug, or her threats? But even as his pride raised his hackles, he could fairly hear Pavek's voice at the base of his skull, telling him that some battles could be won without a fight. At least without an obvious fight.
He fumbled with his mug. "Would you?" he asked with a nervous smile. The smile was forced; the nervousness wasn't. There were no taverns in Quraite, and he'd learned his knavery from his elven cousins, who'd misled him many times before. "It's so hard to know who to trust. I guess I have to start somewhere—" The mug overturned, drenching him from the waist down in a sticky, golden brew— which was not anything Ruari had intended to do, though it worked to his advantage when the woman drained her own mug before demanding refills from the tapster.
After a certain point and a certain amount of ale, a human mind—or any other mind—became as suggestible as a kank's. Ruari had a lot to learn about mind-bending and druidry both, but he'd had a lot of experience lately with bugs. A few rays of sunlight still streaked the open sky above their table when Ruari caught his first predatory thought and wove it back into the woman's mind. The stars were bright from one roofbeam to the other and there were two empty pitchers between them on the table when Ruari figured he'd learned as much as he could.
She laid her head atop her folded arms when he stood up. The tapster caught his
eye. Ruari joined him by the pyramid of casks.
"The lady—" He pointed to the woman whose name he hadn't learned. "Take care of her, please? She said she'd pay for everything."
"Mady?" the tapster replied with evident disbelief.
"On my honor, that's what she swore."
The tapster's eyes made the journey from Ruari to the woman and back again. " 'Tain't like her."
Ruari shrugged. "She said she wasn't feeling well. I guess the ale didn't agree with her."
"Aye—" the tapster agreed, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe so. Didn't give you no problems now, did it?"
"Not at all," Ruari said and hurried out the door where he figured his problems would begin in earnest. "Zvain? Mahtra?" he whispered urgently into the darkness.
With what he'd learned from the woman, Mady, Ruari thought that a bit of druidry and his innate ability to follow the lay of the land could get them through the mountains and into the forest. He was less certain about the halflings. Mady had said the local halflings weren't cannibals, they merely sacrificed strangers to appease the forest spirits, and held celebration feasts afterward if the sacrifices had been accepted. It was too fine a distinction for him to swallow comfortably, but he'd deal with halflings when he had to, not before.
"Mahtra? Zvain?"
The world was edged in elven silver as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Ordinary colors vanished, replaced by the shimmering grays of starlight. Ruari could see the buildings with their hanging hides and skulls and brilliant candlelight seeping through cracked shutters. He could have seen anything moving from his feet to the farthest wall of the farthest building, but he couldn't see Mahtra or Zvain.
Growing anxious and fearing he might have to leave without them, Ruari started toward the pens where they'd left the kanks. The kirre started keening once it caught his scent. He almost missed someone calling his name.
"Ruari! Over here!"
It was Zvain, hiding behind a heap of empty casks between the animal pens and the tavern. Ruari dared to hope the shadow crouched beside Zvain was Mahtra, but that hope was dashed when he realized the shadow was standing and not crouched at all. Gray nightvision sometimes played tricks on a color-habituated mind. Ruari couldn't make sense out of what he saw: The stranger was a bit too tall and bulky to be a halfling. Its head was covered with wild hair that fell below its shoulders, so it couldn't be a hairless dwarf. He was about to decide Zvain had found another New Race individual when the stranger reached up to scratch its hair and pulled a dead animal off its bald scalp.
The stranger was a dwarf, a dwarf wearing a cap Ruari didn't want to see by the light of day.
"I solved all our problems, Ru," Zvain exalted, urging the dwarf forward. "This is Orekel. He says he can get us to the black tree."
It was true that Ruari's trousers were still damp and he smelled of sweat and ale, but the air around Orekel was almost certainly flammable. Ruari shook the dwarf's hand tentatively—and without inhaling—then retreated. Considering what he'd gone through to get free of Mady, Orekel was no improvement.
"We got it all figured, Orekel an' me," Zvain continued, unfazed by Ruari's silent displeasure. "All we have to do is give Orekel our kanks—he'll use them to settle his credit with the tapster in there, an' then he'll be our guide. It's a good deal, Ru—we can't take the bugs into the mountains anyway. Orekel's gone 'cross the mountains and into the forests a lot of times. You've got to hear the stories he tells! He says he can find anything up there—"
"Back up," Ruari interrupted. "You said we give him our kanks? How're we supposed to get home without our bugs?"
"Not a problem," Zvain said before turning to the dwarf. "You tell him, Orekel—"
