Part 23
1st May 351

Outside Silverleaf Tavern: Smaed leaves The Riven Dell

The last day of April - Walpurgis Night - drew to a close and the sun rose on the 1st of May to the noticeably calmer sound of the Silverleaf Brook. No longer was it a roar of rushing water flooding the banks. Though still loud and lively, it now gurgling musically over the stony riverbed. The spring floods were rapidly abating, even this far north. The blossoms were out in the dell and there was a shimmer of young green foliage around each tree.

Smaed broke camp and, following a goat track, he climbed out of the dell leading to the cliff path. There he stopped and looked out to sea, sniffing the salt air, listening to the cries of the nesting gulls on the cliffs below, watching their graceful glides on the air currents up the cliff-face. Soon the swallows would arrive from the south. He felt the springiness of the now rapidly drying turf. Yes, it was time to leave this enchanted spot.

He looked once again down at the tavern and the settlement and gave a shuddering sigh of longing. Then he turned and faced south, and with long strides he began the two-day coastal hike to Empath Abbey. He did not look back.

Part 24
43rd July 351

Empath Abbey: Smaed writes his story

He reached Empath Abbey a couple of days later and rested up, sleeping in a bed for the first time since he left Empath the year before. He had much time to think, digest his experiences, ponder his path.

He had changed since leaving Stonekeep on furlough three years ago to take a carefree spring holiday at Delvers Croft with his aunt and cousin Jern. A time of golden memories that seemed now to be of another age, enjoying his aunt's home cooking, the picnic trips to the tropical Hidden Valley, visits to the tavern in Trinsic with Jern. A world away, when he was but a child so it seemed. Since then he had learned who he was, resigned from the militia, searched for his father, found him. Now he was back in Empath Abbey.

Smaed sighed. He needed to spend some time putting his thoughts and emotions in order. He would do so by writing up his experiences in a diary of his own that he would call Smaed's Story.

So he bought empty books from the scribes and monks of the abbey and settled down to write. He was by now very short of gold, so he went on hunting trips in the swamp, sometimes as far as the haunted graveyard, to kill the monsters and undead skeletons that he would loot. But mostly he wrote, filling many volumes.