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. Otik said,
"See? The cook has hauled up more for you. That should make
you happier."
"I'm ecstatic. Thank Riga for me." And she went.
Otik, carefully not thinking of the long day ahead, went through
the necessary preparations as though they were ritual. First he
cleaned a ladle thoroughly and dried it over the fire. While it
cooled, he set a tallow candle into another ladle, centered in the
bowl so as not to drip, and lowered it into the brewing tun,
checking the sides for cracks and split seams. Ale leaking out was
not so damaging as air leaking in. He did the same with each of the
kegs into which he would pour the fully made wort.
Finally he put down his candle and lowered the cooled, dry
ladle into the spring water and sipped, then drank deeply. "Ah."
Forty feet below, near the base of the tree that held and shaped the
Inn of the Last Home, spring water bubbled through lime rock.
Some said the lime rock went down many times farther than a man
could dig, and the spring channeled through it all. Otik was not a
traveled man, but he knew in his heart that nowhere in the world
was there water as sweet and pure as this. Finding hops and malt
equal to it was difficult.
As Tika struggled back with the buckets, she panted, "Otik?
I've never asked why you named the inn-?"
"I didn't name it, child. The Inn of the Last Home was named
by-"
"Why the Last Home?"
"I've never told you?" He glanced around, taking in every scar in
the wood, every gouge half-polished out of the age-darkened
vallenwood
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