The unknown stranger smiled and bowed as the two disappeared for a few minutes, turning to gaze into the fire without a word until the elderly man returned. Though the inn still looked a wreck, with chairs and tables overturned everywhere, the traveler did not ask or show any typical signs of curiosity, and seemed content to find they would put him up for the night and had goodwill in their hearts.
As the host returned, the blue-and-white clad stranger turned around regally, quickly noting the girl that dashed away hurriedly upstairs before turning to the man before him.
"I am sorry if I arrived at an...unfortunate time." He offered, "It seems as though you have had trouble here. Is there something I can do to help?"
He paused for a moment. "Also, could I ask for the name of this village and who rules here? I'm searching for a particular person in this realm and I wondered if perhaps you would know."
Gildor turned to pick up a chair and sit in it, as he saw a rough one lying by the fire, when a movement in the shadows caught his eye. Caught in mid stoop, he suddenly looked up suddenly, snapping his gaze at the darkness that was out of the fire's bright reach and near the entryway of the inn. For a long moment he watched the shadows there.
After a moment, a hand slipped down into his cloak where he sword was, in it's scabbard on his belt.
Gildor's eyes narrowed. "Who's there, hiding in the dark?" He growled.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What Gildor did not know was that he was actually very close to the man he sought. Well, somewhat.
The darkness didn't hurt anymore. It seemed more like a friend than otherwise.
In the depths of a dungeon, however, things of that kind hardly mattered.
Some scores of leagues away, where the green, true forest gave way to a black, twisted wood made of more ash than life, and where the gentle quiet of the green wild stopped and the dead silence of a dead world began, there lay a tower built of stone. Though surrounded by blacken, dead woods and brown dusty flats on all sides for miles around, the tower itself stood up weirdly, built of a pale, silvery limestone that looked the color of dried bone from a distance. Though perhaps a low, mournful wind blew across the wasted forest once in a while, the land was otherwise dead and abandoned...except for the single tower. A straight, tall structure, there was not a window, balcony, or other opening to be seen except for a single pair of black double doors at it's base, no other entry or exit. Not a single mark or unique build distinguished the tower itself, other than that it stood twice as tall as any black tree around it. Long ago, though, that had ceased to matter. It got very, very few visitors those days anyway. Long ago normal folk had ceased to live near it.
But in it's dark, underground heart, the tower's dungeons were as black as the trees surrounding it. Flights of stairs, endless passages and dark, empty cells filled the roots of the tower, with the occasional red torch along to glow with a dim light. Dark, wet, and cold, the black dungeons of the unknown tower were a nightmare to those who knew them.
The sounds began again. He flinched and moved in his chains, slightly. The unnatural, unusual, disturbing sounds that seemed unreal continued to echo through the black corridors and somehow made it down into his own little cell, ringing in his ears along with the constant dripping of water in his prison. Up above, he thought he heard someone cry out...but it was muffled and obscure.
The chains seemed just another part of his hands now, they had been there so long. Had it been weeks? Months? Years? It was an eternity ago.
If light had been there to see, his sharp, pale features might have stood out. Unkempt black hair, now nearly shoulder length, fell over his face in a mass of knots as he leaned forward and bent over in his chains. His dark-eyed, clear gaze, eyes as sharp and piercing as a hawk's, were nearly blind for lack of light. Left hanging in tattered clothes and filthy rags, he barely resembled a human creature anymore, even to the grim captors who daily brought him his single meal. Just another prisoner of the tower, and the tower's master. A long hunted man, the master was.
A groan from some other cell further down made the imprisoned man open his eyes, again to see nothing but pitch black. Nothing. He moved his hand in front of his face, chains rattling as he did so. Still, nothing.
He muttered a single, limp word, something incomprehensible, and fell back against the wall.
"Ewan." There was a long pause, the quiet broken only by the sounds of the tower's workings above. Apparently the master of the tower was busy in his experiments that day...or night. Or whatever it might be.
"Ewan." He muttered again. It was his name.
Ewan, the prisoner of the tower for what felt like eternity, fell silent.
How had this happened? How had he gone from being a simple ranger youth in the forests, to being the prisoner of this tower? How had he exchanged his simple but content forester's life, for the life of a forgotten captive in the black heart of this monstrous machine?
The questions echoed again, over and over, mocking and laughing at him, as they did every day. He hung his head again, his face once again disappearing under a curtain of tangled black hair.
"...Ewan..."
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