Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [53]
Neither Pan nor Prue—for they had discussed it many times when they were alone in the high country—had any use for that sort of rationalization. Nor was either particularly concerned with Man’s insistence on establishing some order of dominance among the Races. It was enough if you knew where you stood with any individual from any Race, and the pecking order would have to sort itself out over time and through trial by fire. Everyone was trying to do the best they could, and success was predicated on things like determination and strength of character and even luck. It had always been so, and they kept clear of those who thought otherwise.
Of course, the Elves were not immune to this sort of oneupmanship, but they were less vocal about it and less inclined to make it known at every opportunity. Some among them believed that theirs was the dominant Race and always had been. They were the oldest of the Races and the most talented. They had been given the gift of magic, and they had used it to great effect until they had lost it through neglect and indecision. That their numbers were less than those of humans because they procreated so much more slowly was of little consequence in the larger scheme of things. What mattered was that they alone had found ways to survive since the time of Faerie. Some even believed that it had been a mistake to come out of hiding during the Great Wars, that if they had stayed hidden the other Races—Man, in particular—would have destroyed themselves, and the Elves would have been the better for it.
The upshot of all this was that neither Men nor Elves had a whole lot of use for the other and kept apart to the extent that it was possible, each casting a wary eye for the other to cause trouble. Only a handful of individuals within each Race understood that they were all rowing in the same boat and all likely to stand or fall on how willing they were to unite in the face of dangers that eclipsed their own petty squabbles.
But that sort of danger hadn’t appeared until now, Panterra knew. So a testing of each Race was close at hand.
Pan flashed momentarily on all of this in response to the looks cast at him by some of the Elves they passed. He knew that his worldview wasn’t particularly sophisticated or experienced. He was not schooled in reading and writing, and he owned no books himself. He had learned to read signs rather than books because teaching himself to be a Tracker was what really mattered to him. He was ignorant of many things, but he was not stupid. He was a keen observer, and he was well traveled throughout the valleys, so he understood a few things about the way the Races related to one another and had thought at length about what that meant. What you knew about people mostly came from coming in contact with them, he reasoned. If your instincts and your senses didn’t lie to you, if your reasoning was sound, then you could draw your own conclusions about the human condition. All you needed to do was to pay attention to what was going on around you. That was what he had done.
His thoughts on the matter were only momentary and then they were gone as swiftly as they had come, and he moved on to what was always a fresh appreciation of the place to which they had journeyed.
Arborlon was an impressive city by any measure, the more so for being the largest and oldest of the centers of habitation in the safehold. Arborlon had been built in a time before Mankind itself was born, in the time of Faerie and magic, before humans