" I have received this," said the lord, as he lifted from his lap the thing that he had been gazing at. In his hands he held up an eroded parchment, with faded runes etched into its golden rims. " That is the scroll that I gave you, to stop the lich before the hour grew late ! ! " cried Torstein, forgetting everything he had been told before by the knight of Redcliff. " The very same, " said the lord of Lindakar. " I bore it before you had brought it back, and so did each eldest son of our house, far back into the vanished years before the failing of the mage king and his rune war, since Vorondil father of Mardil hunted the wild kine of Araw in the far fields of Xnarull. My son took it years ago, to try and stop the very lich you speak of. He returned not just this scroll, meant to take aw
