2001

The realm took a year to bury its dead.

The Great War had cost six knights of Talon — Pendleton, Manda, Jannek, Tuiggi, Weston, Koltar — and burned the Pirates Cove guild to the ground. Cowbird had stayed on at Pirates Cove through 2000 and into 2001, overseeing the rebuilding. Cambion, only recently freed from his cell at Knighton, had gone into hiding and would not be seen for years. Iron Claw was in Northshire escorting a possible Talon recruit south. Artimus was in Knighton picking up gear. Hawk had finally moved back to Tanglewood, as he had said he would.

By August of 2001, the realm was quiet.

Drake sat on the porch of Talon with Rooter, watching the road and eating salted peanuts. Rain came and went. The Acorn Festival was a week away — it came around once every ten years, and the city workers were already hanging banners on the oil-lamp poles. It's been one year since the war, Drake said. Rooter agreed. Things had been pretty peaceful. Just basic business to contend with.

Then four Royal Guards arrived from Knighton, asking for Cowbird.

The High Bishop of Knighton — a man named Julius — had requested Cowbird's presence in the city. The realm needed something only Cowbird and a small handful of others could provide: knowledge of a place most people had never heard of, and the names of the few who had survived its end.

Cowbird, Smitty, and Kayleel had once lived in Ashbow Keep — an island created by a volcano, far from any of BlewYonder's charted shores. Six thousand years ago, the island had been founded by clans of Hobbits and Elves who had built quiet lives in its forests. The Hobbits had prospered. The Elves had not. Eventually some old accord had collapsed, and at some point a sacred ring of the Hobbit clan had been taken. Generations later — within living memory of the oldest of those who had escaped — the volcano had erupted, and most of the island had burned.

Magic had saved a few. They had been children, mostly, scattered to whatever villages would have them. Smitty had grown up in one of the smaller towns and had never seen the larger town of Ashbow burn. He was too old now to make the trip back. He would help with the maps.

The Royal Guards waited.

Iron Claw returned from Northshire with his recruit. The Acorn Festival came and went. Cowbird arrived from Pirates Cove a few days later than expected, tired and grayer than the last time he had walked the porch.

The mission was set.

Drake travelled to the thieves' guild alone — the first time he had ever made the trip without one of the old crew alongside him — to gather what intelligence the underground would share. The men at the council door turned him away at first. He left having learned what he had come to learn anyway. The realm had a way of providing.

The party assembled at Talon and sailed for Ashbow. A man named Amos joined them as guide; he had been on the far side of the island when it burned. The crossing took weeks.

The land they reached was broken. The volcano had cooled long ago, but the soil was thin and dark, and the trees had grown back wrong. Cowbird and Big Nast went south to assess what was left of Ashbow proper. Hawk and Amos went north to find what remained of the Hobbit village. Drake, Iron Claw, and Artimus moved through the middle country, where the old roads still showed under decades of moss.

That was where they encountered Mizorlith.

The dragon was the colour of a banked fire — bright red scales, full sun catching every one of them — and lived in the upper chambers of the Ashbow mountain. The fight stretched into the afternoon. From the high openings of the mountain, late in the day, the dragon's body fell, broke its way down the slope, and lay still on the rocks below. The realm had not seen a dragon in many years. They left the body where it landed.

In the Hobbit village, an Old Man lived in a hut.

He had a long white beard and the kind of stillness that does not come from age alone. When asked, he told what he knew: that the Hobbit and Elf clans had built the island together six thousand years before; that the Hobbits had prospered while the Elves had struggled; that the Elves had eventually taken the Hobbit clan's sacred ring and hidden it. The ring was still on the island. He knew where.

They found it at an altar deep in the forest. The ring had a symbol on its outer face. Whoever wore it could turn the symbol toward the inner palm and remove it. Anyone who put it on after that became its master.

They brought it back to the hut.

The Old Man sent Drake north to Three Peaks for the winter to study with Brother Thadius. The ring was not to be worn casually. The ring was not to be misunderstood. Drake spent months in mind-control classes — focus exercises, magic theory, control of thought, control of action. What the Old Man had told him to learn, most of all, was respect. Respect for the power of small things. Respect for what could be unleashed and could not be put back.

When Drake returned to Ashbow, the Hobbit village had grown. The expansion was visible — new construction, more activity, more children playing in the lanes. The Old Man met him in the woods, and without a word snapped his fingers and teleported them both to the altar where the ring had been found.

The Old Man had been studying maps. He had a plan. A young Hobbit had been chosen for a long journey. The ring would be carried three weeks across unknown country to a place where it could be unmade. The ring, if recovered to its origin, could bind whole peoples as one. The journey would be long and hard. The young Hobbit had courage that he did not know yet that he had.

On the day of the young Hobbit's departure, Drake stood at the altar with the Old Man and watched him prepare. The Old Man stroked his long white beard, took a small pod of teleport magic from his pocket, and gave it to the young Hobbit.

This is your teleport spell to get you close, the Old Man said. Your journey will be long and hard. You take with you the legend and power of our people. Do not fail me, or those people.

The young Hobbit agreed.

The Old Man turned to Drake. He told him to remember this one's name.

Drake said he had never been told the young Hobbit's name.

The Old Man shook his head in agreement.

The young Hobbit walked to Drake and stuck out his hand. They shook.

Drake, I hope to be successful on this mission. I will see you soon and hopefully one day I will be a hero like you. My name is Frodo. Wish me luck.

He stepped back and invoked the spell. He was gone.

Drake and the Old Man walked together back to the Hobbit village. The Old Man led him to a teleport hidden in the woods. Drake stopped at the edge of the spell and asked, one more time, for the Old Man's name.

The Old Man stroked his beard.

You have always known my name, Drake. You just never thought hard enough.

Drake stepped into the teleport.

It was November in the realm. The leaves had turned. Cambion was somewhere nobody could find. Cowbird was on the porch of Talon waiting for a woman named Jericho — they had plans for a picnic that day, and he was watching the road. Rooter was eating peanuts. The bells of Knighton's cathedral did not ring.

The storyteller signed off one last time.

The realm went quiet.