Crypt of the shadowking - Mark Anthony [73]
"Someday," he said to the wooden soldier, "Father will come and take us from this place, and things will be so good…"
Kellen climbed into bed then, tucking in the wooden soldier carefully. He held the memento of his father tightly, then let the darkness of sleep finally blanket him.
The square of moonlight from the window crept across the floor and up the bedcovers. It moved across the small boy's sleeping form, touching his dark hair, his pale cheeks. It reached his hand which had fallen open in the peace of sleep. The light shone softly on the object that rested there.
It was a small silver pin, wrought in the shape of a crescent moon encircling a harp.
The companions rode into the village with the long shadows of sunset, weary and ready for rest. They had been traveling for over a tenday now. It had taken four days of riding west from Iriaebor to reach the trade city of Berdusk. The distance might have been covered faster, but they had avoided all roads, traveling overland instead. So far they had seen no further sign of the shadevar.
They had spent one night in a disreputable inn on the outskirts of Berdusk. The bustling trade city was where Twilight Hall-one of only two permanent meeting places kept by the Harpers-was located. Caledan had asked Mari if she wished to contact any of her colleagues. Oddly, she had seemed disinterested, but Caledan did not push the point. He had no desire to meet with the Harpers himself. One was enough.
They had not lingered in Berdusk, and the ride to Elturel had taken six days more. The spring weather had turned fine and clear, and Caledan had found himself beginning to enjoy the trek. Each of the members of the Fellowship had fallen comfortably into his or her old familiar habits. Estah and Tyveris took charge of meals, Ferret constantly prowled the terrain, and Morhion kept to himself, perpetually studying his spell books in silence-the curse of being a mage. Everything was almost exactly as it had been during the days of the Fellowship, almost as if the Fellowship had never disbanded. Except there was one glaring difference: Mari Al'maren rode with them, and Kera… Kera did not.
Just a glance from the Harper, and Caledan could feel his heart beating faster. Yet each time he resolved to speak with her alone something stopped him, forced him to turn away. And something seemed to be restraining the Harper as well.
Mari had not wished to pass through Elturel, even though it was the city where she had grown up. "There's nothing there for me now except memories," she had said as they skirted around the city's walls. Caledan hadn't known how to respond. He knew that, sometimes, memories were all a person had left.
Now Elturel lay three days behind them, and they trod on the very edges of the Fields of the Dead. Somewhere in the vast rolling plains before them lay the tomb of Talek Talembar-and, they all hoped, the key to fighting the dark magic of the Nightstone.
The village was little more than a sparse huddle of stone houses with thatched roofs. A few peasants picked their way through the churned mud of the village's one and only street, but these looked up in fright as the companions approached, hurrying indoors. Wary eyes watched from cracked shutters as the companions rode down the street, but no villagers came out to greet them.
"Friendly place," Caledan noted. "Ferret, did you notice any inns or taverns while you were scouting?"
"I saw a large building on the far side of the village," the thief said. "If the owners aren't willing to