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Baerdagh gaped up at the Harper as if he'd just grown three heads, and a crown on each one. "How did you know about that? Caladaster doesn't know about that!"

The Harper clapped his shoulder gently. "It's our business to remember heroes…forever. We're minstrels, remember?"

He strode to the door and said, "There's a very good ballad about you…"

And then he was gone. Baerdagh half rose to follow, but Caladaster pushed him firmly back down. "You sit, and eat. If we don't come back, ask the next Harper through to sing it to you." He went to the door, then turned with a frown. "All those years," he said, scowling, "and you never told me you were the Lion! Just such a little thing it slipped your mind, huh?"

He went out the door. Tabarast and Beldrune followed. They just gave him shrugs and grins at the door, but Tabarast turned with his fingers on the handle and growled, "If it makes you feel better, you're not the only one who doesn't know what's going on!"

The door scraped shut, and Baerdagh stared at it blankly for a long while…long enough that everyone else had come back from the windows and watching the four men walk out of town, and sat down again. Alnyskawer lowered himself into the seat beside Baerdagh and asked hesitantly, "You were the Lion of Elversult?"

"A long time ago," Baerdagh said bitterly. "A long time ago."

"If you could go back to some moment, then," the tavern master asked a tankard in front of him softly, "what moment would it be?"

Baerdagh said slowly, "Well, there was a night in Suzail… We'd spent the early evening running through the castle, there, chasing young noble ladies who were trying to put their daggers into one another. Y'see, there was this dispute about…"

Turning to Alnyskawer to properly tell him the tale, Baerdagh suddenly realized how silent the room was. He lifted his eyes, and turned his head. All the folk of Ripplestones old enough to stand were crowded silently around him in a ring, waiting to hear.

Baerdagh turned very red and muttered, "Well, 'twas a long time ago…"

"Is that when you got that medal?" Alnyskawer asked slyly, pointing at the chain that disappeared down Baerdagh's none-too-clean shirtfront.

"Well, no," the old warrior answered with a frown, "that was…"

He sat back, and blushed an even darker shade. "Oh, gods," he said.

The tavern master grinned and slid Baerdagh's tankard into the old warrior's hand. "You were in the castle in Suzail, chasing noble ladies up and down the corridors, and no doubt the Purple Dragons were chasing you, and…"

"Hah!" Baerdagh barked. "They were indeed…have you ever seen a man in full plate armor fall down a circular stair? Sounded like two blacksmiths, fighting in a forge! Why, we…"

One of the villagers clapped Alnyskawer's shoulder in silent thanks. The tavern master winked back as the old warrior's tale gathered speed.

"Not all that much more sun today," Caladaster grunted, "once we're in under the trees."

"Umm," Beldrune agreed. "Deep forest. Lots of rustlings, and weird hootings and such?"

Caladaster shook his head. "Not since the Slayer," he said. "Breezes through the leaves, is all…oh, and sometimes dead branches falling. Otherwise, 'tis silent as a tomb."

"Then we'll hear it coming all the easier," the Harper said calmly. "Lead on, Caladaster."

The old wizard nodded proudly as they strode on down the road together. They'd gone some miles and were almost at the place where the overgrown way to the ruins turned off the coast road, when a sudden thought struck him…as cold and as sudden as a bucket of lake water in the face.

He was very careful not to turn around, so that the Harper could see his face…this Harper who'd never given his own name. But from that moment on, he could feel the man's gaze on him…a cold lance tip touching the top of his spine, where his neck started.

The Harper had called him by his full name. Caladaster Daermree.

Caladaster never used his last name… and he hadn't told the Harper his last name, he never