“I came to keep her company,” Tolin said in answer to my unspoken question. “And to make sure that you hadn’t gotten yourselves killed on this little excursion..”
He’d never struck me as the bodyguard type, but it made sense. Faryn would have been very nervous about traveling all this way. Who better to help her overcome her fear than an old friend and his cat?
I chuckled. “You left the temple unattended? Did you find some other guy from another world to take care of it while you’re away?”
“The Unwashed Temple can take care of itself.”
“Yeah? So all the cleaning was just some Mr. Miyagi shit?” I asked.
Tolin’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I was teaching you a lesson.”
“Consider it learned.”
“Hmph. You’re still wet behind the ears, and you’re off galavanting across the countryside. You never thought to say goodbye before you left?”
I tried to hold back a smile. “Didn’t get an opportunity.”
“If you paid as much attention to manners as you did to polishing the temple lamp, then—”
Faryn cleared her throat. “I think we should discuss the task at hand. There’s more to this excursion than simply delivering a message.”
“Care to elaborate?” Vesma asked as she fed the fire.
“Local feuds, such as Radiant Dragon’s conflict with the Wysaro Clan, often run deeper,” Faryn answered. “There are forces at work within the empire, forces that threaten to tear us apart and leave civilization in peril. This task may go beyond mere talking. Intervention may be needed to keep our fragile peace.”
“You sound a little stiff there, Master,” Vesma said pointedly.
“My words came from the mouth of Guildmaster Xilarion himself,” the elf told us. “It’s the best I can presently recall.”
There it was. Faryn’s words had confirmed my prediction that this mission held more than a simple messenger service. That was good. I wasn’t really the mailman type.
I poured the tea and passed the cups around. Master Softpaw emerged from the grass and rubbed up against me.
“Hey, buddy,” I said as I scratched his head. “Are you done hunting?”
Softpaw climbed into my lap and curled up. I stroked his back, and he purred as he settled down to sleep. The rest of us sipped at the boiling tea, a much-needed refreshment after a run through the forest and the fight against the fishmen. I hadn’t realized how much my energy was flagging until the liquid warmed my insides and invigorated me.
“Where is the sword that I gave you?” Tolin asked suddenly.
“It was swallowed by a hellhound,” I said. “Long story.”
“Why didn’t you carve it from its corpse?” Tolin asked. “Did you learn nothing from the guild?”
“I found something better.”
I held out the Sundered Heart Sword. I expected the old priest to reach out and take it for a closer look, but he just eyed it and sipped his tea with a strange expression. I wasn’t sure if it was fondness, suspicion, or something else entirely.
“Nydarth,” he said. “The Sundered Heart. I see you didn’t exaggerate when you spoke of your arrival at my temple gates. How is the old girl doing?”
“Very well,” Nydarth said inside my head. “In spite of how you left me, you old goat.”
I decided to relay her message to Tolin a little more politely.
“She’s doing well,” I said. “For someone trapped in a sword.”
Tolin snorted. “I imagine that she said it a little differently.”
I stroked Softpaw’s head while I considered a series of pressing concerns. I had a lot of questions about Nydarth. The dragon spirit was in a habit of keeping me in the dark. I doubted that my old mentor would be willing to answer my questions about the Sundered Heart either. That left me striking a balance between the most useful question and the one most likely to get a response.
“I’ve been wondering about your relationship with her,” I said. “What was the connection between you two?”
“I played some part in the Sundered Heart’s movements,” Tolin said. “When the last person who wielded her got himself killed, he left the Sundered Heart laying in a ditch. That was not place for such a powerful artefact, so I retrieved it. I placed the sword in the depths of the Ember Cavern, for safekeeping.”
“Safekeeping, he says?” Nydarth muttered. “The old man practically imprisoned me!”
I narrowed my eyes at my mentor. “You made it up the mountain and past all the fire beasts that fill that place?”
After a moment, I remembered how Tolin had made the piece of boiled chicken disappear when I’d first met him. If he could use some variation of that skill in battle, he would be a fearsome Augmenter unlike any I’d seen so far. But maybe it had just been a trick? A sleight of hand meant to impress me?
“Oh, so I’m too helpless to do such things?” Tolin asked, his tone indignant. “Just a frail old man who needs to be pandered to and left somewhere safe and warm until he breathes his last?”
“Yes,” Vesma said bluntly. “Such is the way of our elders, in the end.”
Faryn laughed at the impertinence, but Tolin’s cackle caught me off guard.
“You’re right,” he said to Faryn. “It is a good thing Ethan has people like this one to watch his back.”
“And who watches your back, old man?” I asked him. “Master Southpaw is a formidable warrior, but something tells me he’d rather let you be killed than offer a paw to help.”
“I was not always as you see me now. Time may not take its toll at the same pace for all of us, but no one starts out white-haired and wrinkled.”
“So, you’ll be coming with us to the Resplendent Tears Guild?” I asked. I didn’t know what the guild members would make of the
