[Belin]

Remdil stared at the ragged urchin for a few moments. What difference could one place or another make to a boy like this, who slept in streets and ate what he could get? What was destination to one whose alternative was to go nowhere? The question was as absurd as the boy's presence.

"We'll stay here, for the moment," he answered. "We had a late start, I'll admit, but we may have still arrived before the--the people we seek." The word that had come first to his mind struck him as unsuitable for one so young, not to mention undignified before elves. "Or they may be here already. You know the news of the town, of course?" he added as the boy suddenly began to strike him as at least modestly useful. Eolinda did think of everything, after all.

"Do you think they're stupid?" suddenly put in the Elf, who had been rather silent ever since they had reached Neniant. She was staring at him with an expression that (for once) more closely approximated curiosity than impertinence.

Remdil blinked blankly at her for a moment before answering.

"Only a great fool would leave a town with nothing to eat and anger behind him."

Dineniel rolled her eyes at him. "Is that you this time, or is that your grandfather speaking again?"

"Who are you to talk about my grandfather?" cried Remdil. Even the supposedly oblivious innkeeper flinched slightly.

"All right, you lunatics, enough," said Eolinda. She turned the boy, who had been watching attentively. "We aren't certain where we may end up," she told him in a very polite, almost apologetic tone. "But we'll follow our daughter and whoever is with her. We can't say where they're going" --Remdil sat up straight as a jolt ran through his memory-- "but such is the nature of our purpose, d'ye see?" She leaned toward him, and something about her hard, shrewish face struck him as suddenly... "tragic" was the word he would have used, had he known of such things.