They met outside the King’s Inn at the end of the day. The inn stood two stories. To its left was a stable, exuding the odor of horses and the stamping of hooves. Across the square, a one-story warehouse lay low and flat. They could still hear the arguments of traders a few hundred feet down the dusty street.
“King’s Inn?” asked Sam. “Which king?”
“Is the owner pro-kingdoms?” asked Charlotte.
“Nah,” said Gralen. “I know the owner. He’s faithful to the church. It’s his name, Rex King. Hey, did you know his first name means his last name in the Ancient language?”
“I might’ve heard that before,” said Will.
“You don’t count, I told you this morning.”
“And yesterday morning.”
“Whatever,” said Sam. “Charlotte, what have you and Gralen decided?”
“Let’s go up to our private room,” said Gralen. “I don’t want anyone else to hear this.”*
…
“So?” asked Sam. “What’s your plan?”
“Four days there,” said Gralen. “Three days exploring, four days back.”
Sam looked at Charlotte.
“What’s in it for us?”
“Equal shares of any money or salable items we bring back,” she replied. “We’ll be like a merchant company, but our business will be ruins and our mission statement the lost treasure of the Astronomers.”
“The Company of the Lost Stars,” said Gralen. “Nice ring to it. If we find Kristagna it will be lucrative.”
“I didn’t know you cared about gold,” said Will.
“The Astronomers were sorcerors,” said Gralen. “If I can find their notes, I can reconstruct their spells.”
“You’re sure there’s money in the ruins?” asked Sam.
“We’re not sure of anything,” said Gralen.
“I am,” said Charlotte. “No one has ever found it; it has to still be there. Unlike Illustrious Castle, stripped bare up north in Biblyon, Kristagna is south of the Leather Road. No one goes there.”
“No one goes there for a reason,” said Will. “Monsters live there. Night trolls, and dragons. And how do we know the Astronomers are gone?”
“No one’s heard from them since the war,” said Gralen. “The war ended in cataclysmic year 901.”
“It’s inconceivable that they survived the war but never came to Hightown for supplies,” said Charlotte, “or crossed the mountains to Crosspoint.”
“Further,” said Gralen, “they were an all-male Order. After ninety years of no contact with the outside world, they’d be dead one way or another.”
“I’m still unclear on the troubadour twins’ history lesson,” said Sam. “What were the Order of Illustration and the Order of Astronomers fighting over?”
“Knowledge,” said Gralen. “Or theory. The old scholastic orders took their science very seriously. Scientific consensus was settled on the field of battle. A theoretical dispute could and often did mean war.”
“That’s crazy,” said Will.
“That’s why most of the old Orders died out,” said Charlotte. “I think the only remaining orders are the Knights of the Thistle and the Knights Caelius.”
“And the Astronomers had money?” asked Sam.
“It will be dangerous taking it,” said Charlotte, “but yes.”
“Okay,” said Will. “I could do this. Enough gold, I could set up my own caravan company, stop working for my dad.”
He turned to Sam.
“You could work for me,” he said.
“If we come back with gold,” said Sam, “I’m never working for anyone again.”
“The moon is nearly full,” said Gralen. “That means good light even at night. We’ll have a full moon in three days, and, while it’ll shift below the horizon at different times, we’ll be back before it completely wanes.”
“Each of us will need food and water to last a week. Water we can replenish in the forest. Food we can probably replenish, but bring dry food just in case.”
“And arms,” said Will. “Just in case.”
“I’ll get us a pack horse,” said Gralen.*
Next morning Will and Gralen entered the square first. Will led a small horse. A pair of saddlebags hung over the animal’s back, and a coil of rope was attached to the bags. Will had already belted his longsword on his right side, and a leather pouch on his left.†
Gralen walked beside the horse, patting it on its back. Gralen also wore a leather pouch, tied to the belt of his black leather coat. His coat hung to his knees, and he wore a brown cap pulled low over his forehead.
Charlotte walked with a heavy six-foot staff, a foot taller than her and gnarled to a bulky knob at the top, which, Will thought, looked like as much a weapon as an aid to hiking. She also had a large leather pouch slung over her shoulder. In her left hand she carried a lantern. She hung it from the horse’s saddlebags, and removed several flasks from her pouch and placed them inside the bags.‡
Sam wore a short sword on her side, and a small crossbow slung over her back. She also had coils of a very light rope slung over her left shoulder, and a large pouch slung from her right.*
“To the Company of the Lost Stars,” said Charlotte, raising her staff in a salute to the low moon on their right.
“The company of the daft song is more like it,” said Will.
“But if the song is right about the breasts,” he added a few minutes later, “what about the thing that gropes the wood?”
“I’m not touching that line with a ten foot pole,” said Sam. And then she tapped him on the head with her ten-foot pole. Will turned bright red.† Finding the tall pole uncomfortable to walk with under trees, she tied it to the horse.
An hour later and three miles south, a raven swooped low past them, circled the tip of Gralen’s cap, and rose back into the sky.
Will unslung his crossbow from his back and stuck his foot into the stirrup.‡
“What’s with the cheeky blackbird?” asked Sam.
“It’s a bad omen is what it is,” said Will. He loaded a bolt into his crossbow and raised it toward the bird. Gralen cried, “wait!” and rushed toward him. He gently pushed Will’s crossbow back toward the ground.
“This particular raven is a very good omen,” Gralen said.
“Ah. Sorry about that. Didn’t know it was a friend of yours.”
With the sun still hidden and the air still chilled in the shadow of the High Divide, the company of the daft song walked across the Leather Road and into the Deep Forest.
