Chapter 6: To Edmond's Field

In an attempt to tell as complete a story as possible, I must speak of events I was not witness to. Please understand that I cannot be totally unbiased in this retelling and will make little attempt to do so.

Where did I leave off? Oh, yes. We were leaving Suzail to make our way to Edmond's Field, and Anarion was not telling me about his knighting. That is very typical of him, by the way, but it was much more pronounced on the days immediately following Quinlan's passing. He was then and remains to be a very private man. I will reveal as much of his doings as is prudent, but understand that always you (and I, to my frustration) will only learn as much as he wishes, not what fully transpired.

As I have said earlier, I am not lacking in talents of persuasion (though some have referred to them as 'unholy nagging') and so I did eventually learn of how Anarion was knighted. After the funeral, he was invited to the king's private library, where his majesty and several of his friends gathered to share their own private memories of that great man. After the expected interrogation into Quinlan's last hours, the king decided that the best way to honour Quinlan was to create an order of knights that celebrated his ideals, and he offered to make Anarion its founding member.

For reasons he did not reveal to me, Anarion refused and the king proved his magnanimity by amending his offer to be that of a Knight Errant. Anarion accepted and was knighted on the spot. Once accepting his position, he was given a letter addressed to Quinlan (obviously penned before word of his demise) that had arrived only the previous morning. It was written by an acquaintance of his, one Garnett of Edmond's Field. Garnett was the reeve of the small village, which was located north of the Hullack Forest, north east of Arabel. He begged Quinlan's aid on a matter of 'urgency and discretion' and referred vaguely to circumstances that Quinlan knew of but had kept secret.

As Quinlan's apprentice and heir to his ideals, Anarion felt honour bound to answer Garnett's plea, and so the two of us rode out of Suzail on a thoroughly wet morning on the back of Asfaloth who for once seemed happy. I will admit that, like many other things, I know little of the riding of horses, but on the back of Asfaloth —who did not seem the least bit burdened by the two passengers who rode upon him—we outran even the wind.

I do not have the words to describe the speed he ran and the ease with which he did it, nor the smoothness of his gate while he did so. The journey to Arabel normally takes three days, yet we competed it in less than an half a day and, to my relief, bypassed the city entirely. By late afternoon (and it had been a wet, miserable day, let me tell you) we had journeyed the length of almost the entire country and found ourselves at the edge of Rhygard's Forest, the small wood within which Edmond's Field rested.