“The Road to Ravenhollow”
A common room tale told over sour ale and sweet rumor.
The Shaded Lantern was louder than usual for a foggy midweek night. Rain slicked the
windows and the hearth had burned low, but the air inside crackled with talk.
At the center of it all—half-standing on a barstool, one foot in an empty soup bowl—was
Calto the Nearly Bold, an aspiring bard who’d yet to master rhythm, rhyme, or modesty.
“—and just as the bandit king raised his axe over poor Tomas’s head, the tall
one—what’s his name, the noble with the sword—Aulrick!—he rose from the dirt, blood
pouring from his mouth, eyes blazing with ghostfire, and caught the blade between his
bare hands!”
A groan swept through the common room.
“That’s not what the girl said,” muttered Olma, a barmaid who’d been scrubbing the
same spot on the bar for the better part of an hour. “She said he was knocked out and
the preacher—Daxxon—healed him. Whispered something over him, like a chant.”
“No, no,” interrupted Gregor the Cobbler, slamming down his tankard. “The boy said it
was the red-haired one—Lyra?—that she turned into wind, or fog, or something, and
spooked the horses. That’s why the bandits panicked.”
“Well I heard,” croaked Old Marnie, who hadn’t stood from her chair in three years, “that
the halfling gave ‘em all candy laced with curses. Froze ‘em in place, one by one. Said
‘trick or treat’ and cackled. Just like that.”
She demonstrated. Several drinks were lost in the recoil.
“I heard,” said Bennick, the bar’s least sober regular, “that the kids weren’t rescued at
all. Whole thing was a setup. The bandits were theirs. Staged the rescue to look like
heroes.”
The room quieted.
“I’m just saying,” he went on, wobbling in his chair. “They vanish for five weeks right
after? No word. No sign. That’s what people do when they’ve got something to hide.”
Olma frowned. “Or maybe they’ve been fighting worse things than your rotten breath.”
“No, no,” Gregor leaned in, voice low. “I heard they made a deal with something. That’s
why the tall one wears that pendant. Keeps the pact sealed.”
“They call them the Lantern Pact now,” Calto added, a little too proudly—as if the
phrase were his invention. “Because of the bell. That night. The way it tolled with no
wind.”
The room hushed again, not with awe this time, but with unease.
It wasn’t that they believed the worst of them—not exactly. But five weeks is a long time
for silence to settle in a place like Umbrafell. And silence feeds shadows.
Then the door opened.
Rain and torchlight pooled in the doorway. Five silhouettes stood framed in fog—mud-
slicked, road-worn, eyes sharp and weary. They were not what they had been, nor yet
what they would become. But the room knew them, all the same.
Aulrick stepped in first, dripping water onto the floor. He scanned the room, the silence,
the wide eyes—and let out a long sigh.
“Well,” he said, voice dry as the wine he missed. “Sounds like we missed some good
parties.”
He reached into his coin pouch, pulled out a gleaming handful, and tossed it onto the
bar with a heavy clink.
“Drinks are on me.”
The silence broke in an instant.
Olma shouted for mugs. Calto scrambled for his lute. Marnie called for a cushion. Even
Bennick stood up—briefly—before sitting down again with a thunk.
By night’s end, no one agreed on what really happened on the road to Ravenshollow.
But no one cared.
The Lantern Pact was back.
And tonight, that was enough.
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