Part 50

To any outsider who lasted long enough to notice, the town of Eagle's Crown seemed to have no religion.

There were no temples. No churches. No abbeys, sanctuaries, or shrines. No chapels, no monasteries... no holy places of any kind. There was nothing about the town to indicate adherence to... or tolerance of... any of the religions that thrived in the lands that surrounded the wasteland.

When the people of Eagle's Crown mentioned a god, sect, or religion, it was only in a vague, general sense. "The gods" might be uttered with disdain, but never in reference to a specific deity, and never by name. At first this might have appeared to be a peculiar quirk of the population. At first. But the unusual... and universal... sharpness of that disdain, and the extreme conversational gymnastics some townsfolk would undertake to avoid the mere mention of a specific deity was a sign of something more sinister than mere local custom.

One traveling trader observed that the folk of Eagle's Crown seemed to have replaced god or gods with an unhealthy reverence for their own town... for its history in particular... and reacted with fanatical fervor to whatever threatened either. Men who cared enough to hear the tale often laughed at this. Men who cared too much... men who ventured to Eagle's Crown with questions on their tongues... never returned more often than not.

Whatever secrets they may have uncovered disappeared with them. Those visitors with less curiosity, or smarter tongues, came away with glimpses and more questions. A town with no churches? Sprawling farmlands and healthy cattle in the heart of a poisoned desert? How could this be? What was the secret? Was it a person? A place? An event or an object? Was there magic? What kind, wielded by whom, and for what price?

A wise... and cautious... seeker of these answers might have started at the town hall.

It wasn't the largest building in Eagle's Crown; but it was the oldest. Everything older... the first farms in the early days before the Tribute... were torn down and Forgotton. The stone slab that was to become the hall was built to mark the place where the town's true history began. The hall grew around and over it...its heart constructed of rough stone, and expanded over the years with brick and wood. In the beginning there was one chamber, large enough for the entire town to gather. Later there came a meeting room for the town council... and an office for the mayor. Between those two offshoots from the main building... at the end of a wide hall at the front of the gathering chamber... was the treasury. At the rear of the treasury... which was mostly empty and much larger (and older) than it should have been... hung a large tapestry that covered the height of the rear wall. The work supposedly depicted the original settlers of the town in scenes of both hardship and triumph over the poisoned land.

It was a lie, of course. Its real purpose was the TRUE purpose of most tapestries: To cover the wall. Behind this particular tapestry lay a door. It was metal, but not iron or steel, or bronze. It was closer to lead than anything else, and wide enough for three men to walk abreast through it without touching either side.

At this moment, the door was exposed... the tapestry having been drawn back along a thick iron rod... but was still closed. A small crowd of grim-faced men stood before it. All were waiting. Some were talking... giving news of who was assembled in the main room and who had yet to arrive. Most of the men stood, but one sat atop the closed lid of a deep wooden chest just beside the door.

The man was Lowell Vern.

And every once in a while, the faint sobs of a young boy echoed from within the chest.