They brought Tarren inside and fed him first.
Ainen did that. He did not ask any questions. He put a bowl of stew in front of the thin, sunburned stranger, and a heel of bread that had risen far too well for flour this strange. Then he sat across the table and watched him eat.
Tarren ate like a man who had not eaten properly in eleven days. When he was done, he sat looking at the empty bowl for a long time.
"Thank you," he said.
"Tell us about Westhollow," Almond said.
They were sitting in the great hall, under the walls of names. Big D was there, and Lily, and Rudra and Ainen, and Hessa. The lamps were low.
Tarren looked up at the names on the walls. Then he looked down again.
"Westhollow is small," he said. "Two and a half thousand people, when I was a boy. Our line is old. Older than anyone knows. There's a tree in the middle of it, a great twisted thing with silver bark. We always said it was a hundred years old." He paused. "I suppose now I know what it really is."
