Serenthel shifted his shadow out of the moonlight and peered at words written with a masterful brush stroke in ink that had survived nature’s reclamation. “‘Twas not the dragon but the raven,” he whispered into the night, giving voice to the painted letters.
He tried to put it in context, but he could remember no story to match. Dragons had become legend, even to his long lived people, and ravens were portents of chaos and change. There were tales involving each on their own, but none in which they played a part together.
Glancing over his shoulder with a furrowed brow, he thought aloud. “Perhaps some lost fable of our people?”
Forfolyn only stared back in silence. A chill skittered up Serenthel’s spine from a source unknown, and he let the vine droop back over the indiscernible imagery that accompanied the words. Rustling leaves nearby brought contemplation to an end, and Serenthel stood to refocus on a more discernable quarry.
He followed the sound around one broken corner only to have it echo from another. The passageway narrowed, leaving him in front and his faithful companion behind. The elk seemed in no hurry to find the rabbit, or rabbits if the quickly changing location of the sounds were to make any sense. A louder sound echoed, a stone falling and pebbles scattering across hard ground, and Serenthel came to a halt where one roofless passage met another. A breeze snaked its way through the corridor, and it carried with it a harsh whisper.
“Hurry it up!” The voice was male, but young.
“We shouldn’t be here,” muttered an equally male, equally young voice.
“‘Fraid of ghosts?” chided the first.
“Shhh!” hissed the second. “No sense tempting them by yelling.”
“Then hurry up. I’m cold. And hungry.”
The sound of metal clinking against stone followed. “Why don’t you dig, then?”
“I’m holding the lantern,” said the first.
“You sure this is the right spot?” A shovel dug into earth and hit stone again. “Don’t look like no gravesite.”
“Hashan said he found them silver pieces here,” the first encouraged his friend to keep digging.
Serenthel’s expression darkened in the moonlight. Grave robbers, come to plunder what remained of this Elvan ruin. Though his people believed that what was lost should not be dwelled upon, they also believed the past should be allowed to rest where it had fallen. Digging up the bones of what might be his great-great-great grandfather should not go unchallenged.
Serenthel took the passage right, heading for the source of the voices. Coming around a corner, he caught the first glimpse of lantern light and the two shadows it cast over a lowered section of the ruins. He peered through the darkness, getting a lay of the place then slipped back into shadow as the metal shovel clanked against something solid.
“What’s that?” the lantern bearer asked.
“Probably just another stone block,” muttered the digger. “Foundation and what not.”
“Oh, you a mason now, are you?” chided the lantern bearer.
“Might could be,” argued the digger, his voice raised with a touch of burning pride.
Pride. Another human trait to be mindful of, Serenthel reminded himself as he softly stepped around the pedestal of a statue whose face had long ago been weathered away. Forfolyn followed just as quietly, their practiced movements like one body silently dancing between stone and shadow.
“Mom says I can be anything I want,” the digger continued, his shovel held still. “Maybe I’ll go to Ka’veshi, join the Stonemaster’s guild.”
The lantern bearer let out a snide chuckle. “You’d end up a messenger hound, or maybe a Rose’s lapdog.”
“I’ll show you,” the digger muttered. The shovel dug in. Dirt scattered.
The lantern light faltered as its carrier gave a harassed shout. “Watch where you’re flinging the dirt, Kazim!”
Children, Serenthel huffed silently. The grave robbers were human children. Though they may look near the same age as Serenthel, they could not be beyond fifteen years old.
He held up his hand for Forfolyn to stop next to him where he crouched in the darkness beyond the lantern light’s reach. Threatening adults with a raised arrow was one thing, but to threaten children? Serenthel didn’t much care for the idea, especially given the scraggly appearance of the two boys. But, he couldn’t very well let them carry on with their digging.
“Hold up,” Kazim said after scooping his rusty shovel back into the dirt. He crouched down and plucked something from the ground. “Look at this, Yanishk! It’s a treasure box!”
“What?!” Yanishk nearly dropped the lantern in his excitement and grabbed the box from his brother’s fingers. “Give it here!”
The lantern light shimmered off the box’s silver, unblemished surface. Mithril, Serenthel suspected. A rare ore, and having the skill to work with it rarer still. Most of the mithril metalsmiths had been lost when D’nas Glas fell into shadow. None who knew its secrets remained within the Mother’s Grove. Only the one remaining metalsmith that Serenthel knew of, further south in the Painted Mountains, had the hands skillful enough to work with the delicate ore, and she neared her final years.
A treasure box, indeed. Serenthel inhaled deeply and stared at the silver box clutched in dirty, grubby human hands. Children or not, Serenthel could not let such an item become a trinket sold in some market to sit on a rich man’s fireplace mantel next to other prized possessions from histories that were not his own.
“How does it open?” Yanishk had set the lantern down and now struggled with a reddening face to open the box’s lid.
“Some Elvish trick, maybe?” Kazim offered. “Like them puzzle boxes sold at the summer bazaar.”
Serenthel stood up with the intention of buying the box from them before they could open it. He had coins in his pouch, gold and silver mined from the Painted Mountains. Worthless to his people, except for their artisan crafts, they kept the rich mines a
