Epilogue

A few years later we were lying in our blankets together, enjoying the peace and quiet that the darkness brought.

Our thirteen children were now full grown and scattered (but mostly not too far away) with homes and families of their own. Every week seemed to bring the report of yet another grand-child on the way or an elder grand-child about to now take a wife or a husband of their own!

I have passed on most of my 'duties' to our eldest son Renwald some time ago. He is a stolid man, possessed of relatively little imagination of but of a very serious but kindly disposition. I think he merged the best of Elessa's and my personal traits. He will be a good Lord over his people, and he had married wisely, picking a woman that could fill his own minor weak parts and she is well loved for her good wisdom and charity. They lived in our big old manor house now and they had 8 children of their own, and I'm still not sure they're quite finished yet. Alone in life mostly now, that wonderful great house was far too big for us.

Elessa had taken my hand, and we were helding each other closely. We had made love earlier, and it had been wonderfully pleasant. We were both quite old now and the mood and inclination for physical sex has mostly left us. It had felt very special this time and reminded us of the first time we had enjoined our bodies as true lovers in that cave that day, many long years ago. Indeed it had been 50 years to this day that we had sworn our dreadful Oath together. Today in retrospect, it didn't seem quite so bad after all. But somehow I could not shake a slight sense of foreboding.

At long last, we had found our lost cave!

With all of our children long grown into adults and many of their own children grown as well, we had bid our many friends and family goodbye to take a long summer walking trip to once again retrace the paths of our youth. Despite our age, our footsteps were still spry and no stalked deer in our path stood any chance when under the sight of our bows.

The cave had been right there where we had expected to find it as if it were calling to us, and as we found our way inside it seemed as if we had only left it but a few days, instead of half of a century ago. Our stack of cut firewood and that well-rusted iron cauldron were just as we had left it, and we easily made a small fire to warm our old bones as we stripped off our clothes and joined together once again under blankets in our old refuge.

"You're still not going to offer to tell me what the rest of your prophecy was before we die are you?" I asked her with a grin. She smiled, but shook her head no.

"You've lived through it all, or at least almost all of it, and now it is just history that can be safely forgotten. I will admit though, that the "bearing a full measure of children" line caused me a lot of confusion. In Helden, a measure is usually 12 of something, so I was expecting just 12 children. When I discovered I was pregnant with Larcwide I was all in a flutter until I found out that in the Dweorgen tongue a measure is usually 13, a "gift" from the seller to the buyer of an extra item or portion."

Larcwide was our gift from the Gods but we were never meant I think to enjoy him for long. Even as a lad he was drawn to the study of the Gods and seemed marked by them for some future purpose. He delighted in music, and could word-weave poems with the very best but he rarely bothered to write many down or have remembered by other minstrels or passing gleeman. He cared nothing for personal vainglory, and seemed to know even as a young child that his destiny lay elsewhere. On the day of his manhood, he asked for and received the still black-stained sword that had killed the great Warlock (no one to this day knows his exact name and it's just as well) along with the dagger that had mortally wounded Rheda. In great secrecy, those two blades, along with the cursed blood that had permanently stained them, were reforged into a new magnificent great sword, the like I had never before seen. This sword was heavily ensorcelled with a great many runes from Eilmer and his wife, a Dweorg metal master and a visiting Ylfen wizard over the period of an entire moon cycle. When this task was done, he made his final farewells to us and took that blade with him when he left home the next day. He writes occasionally, and we feel his love - but he is on a path of his own now and we do not expect to see him again in this lifetime.