Chapter One - Shadows in the Valley The sound of traveling bards wisped away from the valleys, trailed along by a chilling breeze on the noon of the first day of our true journey. I was sitting quaintly in the shelter of a great oak tree on its last leaf, reading a letter of mysterious ordinance set upon my rather unlikely berth. My two kinsmen and guide could be heard frolicking in the loft reciting their vows to their imaginr'y wives that they all wished they'd met by then. It was not to my surprise that the silence then stole our words upon bearing this scroll. Our now hollowed hearts dug scars of sorrow upon the sky, leaving the sun to smolder behind the