The Dragonstone

Arin and her companions put up in the Red Goose in Bridgeton, in this traders' town, and rested the remainder of that day and all the next, replenishing their diminished supplies and enjoying as well hot baths and hot meals and cool ale and rich red wine… and sleeping on soft featherbeds. And they sang sad and sweet and rousing songs in the common room of the i

The following day Arin and her comrades crossed the stone bridge above the Ironwater, and as they did so, two men on a great, rough, rope-bound raft of logs waved gaily up to them as they floated below downstream, perhaps logger-merchants from Dael riding the timber to Rhondor, a city of tile and clay and brick, where wood is precious.

Eastward fared the Elves along the Landover Road, intending to follow the tradeway all the way to the town of Vorlo on the border of Aralan. Steadily they wended along the road, an arc of the Rimmen Mountains in the distance to their left, the miles passing dustily beneath the shod hooves. They rode by day and stayed in crofters' haylofts or in wayside i

On they rode easterly, along the Landover Road, now ru

Late in the evening of September thirteenth they finally arrived at Vorlo, the city along the west bank of the River Ve

They spent that night and all the next day and night in this border town, resting and replenishing their depleted supplies, just as they had in Bridgeton, some eight hundred and fifty miles and thirty-four days behind. Eight leagues a day they had been riding, twenty-four miles each dawn to dusk, and another three hundred thirty or forty leagues lay before them, a thousand miles or so to Darda Vrka. Arin sighed. Surely we could have reached Rwn ere now, but for the rovers' blockade. Damn the Kistani pirates!

The following morn they led their animals down to the Vorlo Ferry, and across the river they fared and into Aralan. They followed the Overland Road another mile or so and then veered off to the left, heading northeastward across the open land, riding parallel to the River Ve

Two weeks or so did they keep the valley of the Ve

It was during these same two weeks that the autumnal equinox came and went, and on the eve of the day when light and dark exactly balanced one another, near mid of night and in the western light of a yellow gibbous moon, the Dylvana and Silverleaf solemnly paced out the Elven rite celebrating the harvest and the turning of the seasons.

They dressed in their very best leathers and took their starting places, Darai facing north, Alori facing south, and then singing, chanting, and pacing, slowly pacing, they began a ritual reaching back through the ages. And enveloped by moonlight and melody and harmony and descant and counterpoint and the rustling brush of leather, the Elves trod gravely… yet their hearts were full of joy.

Step… pause… shift… pause… turn… pause… step.

Slowly, slowly, move and pause. Voices rising. Voices falling. Liquid notes,from the dawn of time. Harmony. Euphony. Step… pause… step. Arin turning. Rissa turning. Darai passing. Alori pausing. Counterpoint. Descant. Step… pause… step…

When the rite at last came to an end-voices dwindling, song diminishing, movement slowing, till all was silent and still-Darai and Alori once again stood in their begi

Comforted somewhat by the ancient ritual, Arin glanced at the starlit sky-the pale yellow moon had fallen nigh the western horizon, having covered a quarter of the spangled vault in its silent journey downward during the arcane dance. Its movement only served to remind her that time was irretrievably flowing into the past.

On the eve of the sixteenth of October they sighted the Skog, that hoary forest in the northern extent of Aralan. Autumn had fully come upon this woodland, for its leaves were now all golden and shimmering in the crisp wind blowing down from the distant Grimwall Mountains. And this wind carried with it the hint of the winter to come, and, gauging by the shag the horses and mules had taken on, it would be a brutal season.

Arin and her companions rode along the forest flank for nearly eight days as the gilded leaves turned scarlet and the nights grew even more chill, but at last they came to the margins of Darda Vrka.

Led by Rissa, they had reached the Wolfwood at last, and somewhere within they hoped to find Dalavar the Mage.