Bowshot
Bowshot
This hamlet stands on the western side of the Trade Way, a day’s and a half’s ride south of Liam’s Hold, and two day’s ride north of the Way Inn. Named because it was just a bowshot away from the Misty Forest, it has been a logging center for a hundred years—and it has been so successful that the forest is now miles away to the east.
Bowshot consists of the Bowshot Inn, a sawmill, six farms (two run by men who shoe horses as well as any smith), and almost a dozen home woodcarvers who turn out yokes, coffers, wheel spokes, tool handles, and whimsical carvings. The place deserves mention because of recently discovered caves beneath its western fringes. They are entered from the horse-well behind the inn, and by at least one cave mouth in the stands of trees north and west of the hamlet.
Heluvianal
Your apprenticeship to Delfen Yellowknife has always been strange. For one, he's never recognized you as his apprentice--not that you need his recognition, of course, just his knowledge. For another, none of his other apprentices pay for their education with sweat. More than once you've felt like an oddity or an exhibit. As if part of your payment were to be 'seen,' if only by his other apprentices and guests. Moreover, you are the only of his apprentices that is male. While they watched you with sidelong glances, eyes drawn to inhumanly powerful musculature and ethereally fine features, they seemed largely unaware that the oddly ageless but clearly old Delfen watched them with equal interest.
For years you've served--scrubbing and sweeping floors, studying under private tutelage at night, but never before has Delfen called you to service.
Until this night.
The moon and stars gleamed through the window lighting the pages under study. Delfen always lit torches, candles, or spells when there were humans with him in the dark, but never with you. Neither of you really needed it. Whether Delfen was being secretive toward the humans or merely courteous he never said. There bent over the pages of your book transcribing the spidery writing of Xoonthamar's 66th formulation ofVisual and Auditory Phenomena Manipulation in Variance and Caprice which Delfen has subtitled Improved Phantasmal Force, Delfen broke the silence.
"Edrie headed South some time ago with that young dwarf and his band. She's falling behind. My eyes miss the sight of her."
And that is how you found yourself in Bowshot sitting on a wooden stool in a mediocre inn serving considerably less than mediocre squirrel stew. But then, could any human hand prepare squirrel stew like that simmered over the cookfires of your tribe in the Laughing Hollow?